Caroline Graham - The Killings at Badger's Drift

They were halfway along the dirt track leading to Holly Cottage. Barnaby stopped and listened. Someone was yelling, the words thick with rage and unintelligible. The two men moved silently along, hidden behind the tall hedge, to where it opened out into the car space. Keeping in the shadow of the trees they approached the house. A window on the ground floor was wide open. And the words became clear.

‘But you must come, Michael ... you must ...’

‘No must about it. You needn’t expect me to present myself with a carnation up my nose and a pair of matching bloody candlesticks to watch you sell yourself to the highest bidder.’

‘It’s not like that. You’re so unfair. I do care for him ... I do. How can I help it? He’s been looking after us for years.’

‘I’ve never heard such sentimental crap. It makes me want to vomit. You’ve certainly pulled the wool over his eyes, poor bastard.’

‘That’s a lie! He knows exactly how it is ... I haven’t pretended to anything I don’t feel. I shall be a good wife—’

‘God! Tied to a bloody cripple at your age.’

‘You just won’t understand! It’s different for you. All you care about is your work. It’s all you’ve ever cared about. As long as you can paint, the rest of the world might as well not exist. But I’m not like that. I’m not especially good at anything. I’m not trained for anything. I have no money - I wouldn’t even have a home if it wasn’t for Henry. For heaven’s sake, Michael, what’s so wrong with wanting security—’

‘We’ve got security. He’d never turn us out. He’s so besotted with you you could keep him dangling for years.’

‘But I don’t want to stay in this damp gloomy place. I hate it.’

‘Well you certainly don’t come cheap. Tye House and five thousand acres. I don’t know why you don’t just take to the streets and make a proper job of it.’ There was the sound of flesh meeting flesh with some force. Michael Lacey shouted, ‘Spiteful bitch!’ Katherine cried out. Barnaby drew his sergeant behind a clump of larches. Moments later Katherine Lacey flew past them, her face contorted, making little strangled choking sounds, and disappeared down the path towards Church Lane. The cottage door slammed and Michael stood in the porch for a moment looking undecided. Then he turned and strode off into the woods behind the house, kicking a fallen branch furiously out of the way.

When he had disappeared Barnaby approached the house, opened the front door and slipped inside. Troy, concealing his surprise, followed. If I’d suggested this, he thought, I’d have got a right bollocking.

They stood in the hall, the dank chill seeping into their bones. It seemed perfectly natural that these walls should witness bitter words, tears and sorrow. Barnaby felt that any happiness accidentally immured in such surroundings would have no chance to develop and thrive but, like the honeysuckle by the porch, be slowly choked and strangled by the forces of despair. He led the way to the kitchen. It was not an attractive room. The units were cheap and showing signs of wear. A few rugs lay about on the original cold and bumpy brick floor. A half-empty can of spaghetti and a clumsily hacked wedge of bread were on the wooden table with a mug, teapot and half a bottle of cheesy-looking milk. There were flies everywhere.

The room adjacent to the kitchen facing the front of the house had rush matting, a table, four chairs, bookshelves, a two-seater settee and a telephone. The second room on the ground floor was locked.

‘This is the place where he was painting when we came before, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Barnaby tried the door again, then left it. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about that without a warrant. We’ve bent the rules enough already.’

Too right, thought Troy, following his chief up the uncarpeted stairs. He couldn’t see why they were roaming around the place at all. Surely the whole point of coming to the cottage was to check Lacey’s alibi for that afternoon?

‘The more you know about a suspect, Sergeant, the more cards you hold. And that includes his natural habitat.’

Troy blinked in some alarm at this spot of telepathy. A very worrying development. If a man couldn’t call his thoughts his own a man could remain a sergeant for life.

There were three bedrooms. The smallest had a single bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. The bed was rigidly and efficiently made, a hospital bed. A nightdress was folded neatly on the pillow. The wardrobe was nearly empty and the chest of drawers had a thin film of dust. A bunch of wild flowers in a jar gave the room a mild fragrance. Again Barnaby recalled the Serotina struggling in the nettle patch.

A much larger room was next door, empty but for a small old-fashioned bed, two wicker chairs and a garden table. ‘I suppose this is where the nanny slept,’ offered Troy.

The third room, biggest of the three, clearly belonged to Michael Lacey. The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled, one of the pillows on the floor. There was some grey scummy coffee on a scarred bedside table next to a copy of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists , and a packet of Gitanes. The acrid smell of the cigarettes hung in the air, mingled with the smell of stale sweat. The only chair was decorated with a shirt and a grubby pair of Y fronts. Sergeant Troy, ‘clean from the skin out every day’ as his wife was wont to boast in their local laundrette, turned up his nose and sniffed.

‘A bit careless,’ he said as they re-entered the hall, ‘leaving the door unlocked.’

‘Oh I don’t know.’ Barnaby opened it a fraction and checked the view, then stepped out. ‘The only room where there might be anything worth pinching was secured.’

‘Great works of art d’you mean?’ jeered Troy as they walked back towards the hedge.

‘I was thinking of canvases - they cost a hell of a lot. So do paints. Or of course he might be doing a Keating.’

‘Come again, sir?’

‘Tom Keating. A very successful forger.’

‘Well whatever he’s doing he’s not successful. I’ve seen families on the Social living better. Didn’t even have a telly.’

‘And you can’t sink much lower than that.’

Troy looked at his chief suspiciously as they walked on but Barnaby’s expression remained bland. As they came to the junction of Church Lane and the Street several more police cars arrived. The crowd, now swelled by the return of the local work force, was being urged to move along or go home. Barnaby wondered how long it would be before the nationals got hold of the story. There was a rustle of speculation as the two men appeared, a rustle that became a loud hum as Barnaby and Troy turned into the Lessiters’ driveway. The fact that everyone in the village would shortly be questioned was, even if it had been known, supremely irrelevant. It was the Lessiters whom the police were visiting. The Lessiters who were, in some way as yet unrevealed, connected with the crime.

As Barnaby stood once again beneath the Madame le Coultre and looked through the window he, once again, saw Barbara Lessiter. This time far from looking afraid and shaken she had taken a combative stance. He could not see her face but her shoulders had a martial set and her hands were clenched into angry fists. He heard Lessiter shout, ‘You sang a different tune in bed last night.’

‘That was last night.’ She tossed her head as she yelled her rejoinder and Barnaby caught a glimpse of her tight angry profile. Troy raised sandy eyebrows, muttered, ‘Naughty naughty.’ He rang the bell.

Stepping into the sitting room was like stepping on to a battlefield. The whiff of the last two salvoes hung, still and trembling in the stifling air. Barnaby gave them a moment before ascertaining that they had both heard of Mrs Rainbird’s death.