Caroline Graham - The Killings at Badger's Drift

Barnaby murmured something noncommittal. Sergeant Troy dug out a packet of Chesterfields with trembling fingers.

‘And don’t do that in here, young man. You’ll put us all at risk.’ He dropped the cigarettes on his lap, leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘Now,’ she smiled sweetly at Barnaby, ‘tell me how you’re getting on with your disquisition. Are you any further forrard?’

‘We’re continuing our investigations.’

‘There’s no need to be so hoity-toity, Chief Inspector. After all if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have a case at all. And you did say I could help.’ She accompanied this outrageous lie with a shining glance, as clear and candid as a child’s. Before Barnaby could get his breath she added, ‘Have you spoken to that dreadful Mrs Rainbird?’

‘We have.’

‘What’s she say? Did she see anything?’

The chief inspector saw no need to conceal Mrs Rainbird’s revelations. No doubt they were all over the village by now. ‘She did see Miss Lacey that evening. Going out to post a letter.’

‘Hmmn.’ Miss Bellringer snorted. ‘That girl is far too beautiful for other people’s good. Look here - there’s no point in dancing around the mulberry bush. It’s pretty obvious to an old hand like myself why we’re all being questioned about the afternoon as well as the evening. Emily saw something in the woods and it’s my belief that what we’re talking about here is illicit passion.’ Her voice rang out, investing the words with positively Brontëan splendour. ‘To wit Katherine Lacey and her inamorato . It’s as plain as a horse’s tail. Can you imagine what discovery would have meant? No marriage, for a start. Henry might be besotted but he’s not that much of a fool. It would have been goodbye to Tye House and all that money and, incidentally, to an easily cuckolded spouse. Madly in love and confined to a wheelchair? Talk about a combination devoutly to be wished. She’d be able to do more or less as she liked. And there’s bad blood in that family. The father was no good. Drove his poor wife into her grave.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Old sins cast long shadows.’ Barnaby was silent. ‘Did Mrs R see the girl coming back?’

‘Apparently not. She started playing Monopoly with her son.’

‘The slithy tove?’ Barnaby smiled appreciatively.

‘She did say Miss Lacey had one of the beagles with her.’

‘ One of the beagles .’ Miss Bellringer seized his arm. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Mrs Rainbird’s sure.’

She crumpled back into her seat. Even her buoyant draperies, today trimmed with what looked like shredded beetroot, seemed to wilt. ‘Then our case collapses.’

‘Why is that?’ asked the chief inspector, letting the ‘our’ pass for the time being.

‘There was no noise from Benjy. He was good if a person he knew came to the door ... good as gold ... but let another dog as much as set foot in the garden and he went berserk. And I would certainly have heard him. Living so close.’

‘Perhaps Miss Lacey could have tied him up,’ suggested Troy, stimulated in spite of himself by the vitality of the narrative. ‘The beagle I mean.’

‘Hooo.’ A sound like a ship’s hooter. ‘You don’t know beagles. They won’t sit meekly down and wait while you go about your business. They’re a highly vociferous lot. If she’d tied him up the whole village would have known about it. No - not a dog barked, I’m sure. Ah well’ - she opened the right-hand door, knocking ten years off the life of a passing cyclist, and stepped smartly out - ‘we’ll have to think again. I’m loathe to part with the Laceys, mind you. What about the brother?’

‘The brother has no motive, Miss Bellringer. And now I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.’

‘If someone had wrung her neck I could understand it.’ Troy drew a deep, juddering breath as he drove off. ‘They just don’t care, do they? Your genuine eccentrics? They don’t care what you think.’

‘A genuine eccentric,’ replied Barnaby, ‘doesn’t even notice what you think.’ He added, ‘Keep an eye out for that dog,’ as Troy entered the cobbled yard of Tye House and parked, almost chastely and quite without his usual pizzaz, near the kitchen door. But the warning was unnecessary. Benjy did not come to meet them but lay on the step, very thin, his grey muzzle resting on his paws. His tail heaved off the ground and thumped up and down once or twice as he peered anxiously towards them. Like Ulysses’ hound he waited, faithful to the last.

‘Poor old boy,’ said the sergeant. ‘Good boy.’ He was about to stroke the dog but as he bent down Benjy turned his head and something in his eyes stayed Troy’s hand. ‘They should’ve had this dog seen to by now.’

Barnaby pointed to the far end of the lawn. ‘In the garden,’ he said. As the two men descended the steps between the stone urns brimming with flowers he felt a welcome breeze against his temples. It pressed the lemon voile of Katharine Lacey’s dress close against the slender curves of her body. She was standing behind Henry’s chair, her arms across his chest, her head close to his. As Barnaby approached she pointed to a nearby grove of poplars. Henry shook his head and they both laughed. Then she started to push the chair in Barnaby’s direction.

‘We’re going to have a hundred people here on Saturday, Inspector,’ called Trace. ‘Where do you think we should put the marquee?’

Spoilt for choice, really, thought Troy, in a garden that size. Still all the money in the world wouldn’t make his legs more lively. Imagine going down the aisle to a gorgeous piece of skirt like that in a wheelchair. He smiled confidently and said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lacey.’

‘Wherever we put it,’ she smiled at the two policemen, ‘it’s going to make a terrible mess.’

‘Oh grass soon recovers,’ replid Henry. ‘Are you a gardening man, Inspector Barnaby?’

Barnaby indicated that he was and asked if they’d come to any decision yet about the rosarium. This led to a lot of pleasant horticultural chat and to Henry describing his wedding gift for Katherine, which was nineteen old-fashioned moss and climbing roses: ‘A flower for each year of her life.’

‘Then we shall plant one on all our wedding anniversaries until we’re old and grey,’ said Katherine. ‘And that will be our rosarium.’

Barnaby let this amiable pool of conversation fill up for a while then dropped his stone. ‘Oh - a small point, Miss Lacey. When I spoke to you a few days ago I understood you to say that you spent the evening of the seventeenth here with Mr Trace.’

‘That’s right, I did.’

‘And you didn’t go out at all?’

‘No. We were here all the time.’

‘You were seen walking in the village.’

‘Me?’ She looked genuinely puzzled. ‘But I couldn’t have - Oh! Of course. I ran out to post a letter. D’you remember, darling? We said we’d order a Notcutt’s catalogue and I thought I’d do it straight away.’

‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to do that by telephone?’

‘They’re not free. You have to send a cheque.’

‘That would be their main branch at Woodbridge?’ She nodded. ‘Do you remember how long you were out?’

‘Not exactly. I just ran Peel to the end of Church Lane and home again. Surely,’ she added crisply, ‘whoever saw me going out saw me coming back?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Dear me. Sleeping at their post were they?’

‘You didn’t see anyone whilst you were out?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘You would support what Miss Lacey says, sir?’

‘Well ... I didn’t see Katherine leave—’

‘No, you dropped off after dinner. That’s the only reason I went just then, really.’