Caroline Graham - The Killings at Badger's Drift

Opposite the layby where the houses ended a wooden sign said: Gessler Tye: One Mile. The track was quite wide and tyre marks were clearly visible. Barnaby indicated that they should drive down and Troy eased the car carefully between the edges.

‘Good job we’re not in the Rover, sir.’

‘If we were in the Rover,’ snapped Barnaby, ‘I’d hardly be asking you to attempt it, would I?’ His chicken and watercress sandwich had met with and was being vanquished by Mrs Rainbird’s monstrously calorific spread. And he had left his tablets in the office.

‘Suppose you wouldn’t, sir.’ Sergeant Troy thought Barnaby was a good name for someone who was always behaving like a bear with a sore head, and pictured himself in some years’ time cutting his own sergeant down to size. He drove through a gap in the hedge which opened out into a large piece of roughly levelled ground and parked. Both men got out.

Creepy, thought Troy at his first sight of Holly Cottage. It was grey and austere, squatting on the very edge of the wood like a humped toad. In spite of the warmth of the day he shivered. You could imagine a witch crawling out of there all right and gobbling up Hansel and Gretel. Really Grimm. He smirked a little at his cleverness, wondered whether to relay this witticism to Barnaby, and decided against it. Things were fraught enough today as it was.

Then, as they approached the porch, the sun came out, striking the south-facing wall. The flints caught fire, glowing with the most subtle colours. Barnaby touched one. It was like a huge boiled sweet, all toffee-brown and cream striations. He knocked on the door. No reply.

He noticed a honeysuckle then, almost at his feet, small and struggling in a rank clump of nettles. Perhaps the girl had planted it, weeding the ground, watering, no doubt hoping that it would eventually climb all over the porch. Two flowers had opened against all the odds. It looked like a Serotina.

‘Let’s try the back.’

Behind the house was a small concrete yard, many more nettles, a water butt greenly stagnant with a thick crust of slime and three black plastic bags suppurating with rubbish. There were also two small windows, the panes filmed with dust. Barnaby rubbed at one and peered through.

A man wearing a blue shirt and corduroy jeans stained with paint was standing at an easel. He had his back to the window. He seemed to be working feverishly, the brush shifting from palette to canvas and back again in sharp, almost stabbing movements.

‘He must have heard us, sir.’

‘Oh I don’t know. People in the throes of creation ... he’s probably miles away.’

Sergeant Troy sniffed. The idea that painting made you deaf was not one that he was prepared to countenance. He had no time for what he called the arty-farty element who contributed nothing whatever of value to society and then expected to be paid good money for it. Barnaby rapped on the window.

Immediately the man swung round. There was a blur of movement, a white face quickly turned away, and he almost ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. Barnaby heard a key turn then walked quickly back to the front of the house. He and Troy arrived in the porch just as Michael Lacey opened the door.

He was only slightly taller than his sister and enough like her to make the relationship unmistakable. The same deep violet eyes, the same dark hair cut very short and curling tightly all over his well-shaped head. He had neat small ears set rather far back which, coupled with the wide-set eyes, gave him a slightly dangerous look, like that of a wicked horse.

Remembering Mrs Rainbird’s remark about the iron, Barnaby was expecting to see some dramatic and livid mutilation but, at first glance, Michael Lacey’s face seemed completely unmarked. Then Barnaby noticed that from the top of the left cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth the skin was unnaturally tight; glassy sugar-pig pink skin. It must have been some burn to have needed a graft that size. As well as good looks (which the strangely shining strip of skin hardly seemed to mar) he exuded crackling sardonic masculinity. Not warmth, though. Michael Lacey would organize the world and its inhabitants to suit himself. Barnaby felt sorry for Judy Lessiter. And even, come to that, for the repellent Mr Rainbird.

He said, ‘May we come in for a moment?’

‘What do you want?’

‘We’re police officers -’

‘So you’re police officers. What am I supposed to do? Run up a flag?’

‘We’re visiting everyone in the village -’

‘I don’t live in the village. I’m amazed that your deductive powers have led you to believe that I do.’

‘- and the surrounding area. This is quite usual, Mr Lacey, during a general -’

‘Look. I’m sorry about Miss Simpson. I liked her. But I take no part in village affairs, as any of the local gossips will confirm. And now you’ll have to excuse me -’

‘We won’t keep you a moment, sir.’ Barnaby moved forward very slightly and Michael Lacey stepped back very slightly, just enough to let the two men enter the cottage. Uncarpeted stairs were directly to the left of him and he sat on them, leaving the other two standing.

‘Did you know Miss Simpson well?’

‘I don’t know anyone well. She let me do a series of paintings of her garden ... different times of the year ... but that was ages ago. I hadn’t seen her for ... ohh ... a couple of months at least.’ He gazed at the chief inspector, alert, detached, a little amused, deciding to treat this enforced interruption as an entertainment.

‘Could you tell me where you were on the afternoon and evening of last Friday?’

‘Here.’

‘Well that’s certainly a prompt reply, Mr Lacey. Don’t you need to reflect at all?’

‘No. I’m always here. Working. Sometimes I take a break to walk in the woods.’

‘And did you walk in the woods that day?’ inquired Barnaby.

‘I may have done. I really don’t remember. As all my days are the same I don’t need to keep a diary.’

‘It seems rather a dull life for a young man.’

Michael Lacey looked at his bare feet. They were beautiful feet: long, narrow, elegant, with papery skin and fine bones. Byzantine feet. Then he looked directly at Barnaby and said, ‘My work is my life.’ He spoke quietly but with such a charge of passionate conviction that Barnaby, dabbler in watercolours, casual member of the Causton Arts Circle, felt a stab of envy. He then told himself that conviction didn’t mean talent, as many an exposure to Joyce’s drama group had confirmed. Armed with this rather churlish perception, he said, ‘There are one or two more questions, Mr Lacey, if you wouldn’t mind -’

‘But I do mind. I hate being interrupted.’

‘I understand,’ continued Barnaby smoothly, ‘that you were present when the late Mrs Trace was killed.’

‘Bella?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Yes I was but I can’t see ...’ He paused. ‘You don’t think there’s any connection ... ?’ His previous animosity seemed forgotten. He looked genuinely interested. ‘No ... how could there be?’

‘I gather from the newspaper report that you were the first person to reach Mrs Trace.’

‘That’s right. Lessiter said not to touch her but to run and ring for an ambulance, which I did.’

‘Was there anyone at Tye House at the time?’

‘Only Katherine. Toadying away like mad.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In the kitchen making sandwiches, stuffing vol au vents, chopping up hunter’s pie.’

‘Whilst you were helping with the beating.’

‘That’s different. I was being paid!’ Barnaby’s dig stung the anger back into his voice. He confirmed that no one in the party had been in a position to shoot Mrs Trace, then said, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me. I didn’t even have a gun.’