Minette Walters - The Ice House

McLoughlin replied seriously, "She's ill. Looks to me as if her husband's disappearance has sent her off the rails. Don't you think we ought to get her some help?"

Walsh pondered. "There was a vicarage a few houses down, wasn't there? We'll stop off on our way back to the Grange."

They looked up as the door opened again and Mrs. Thompson reappeared with a pair of highly polished black leather shoes clasped against her chest. "Size eight," she said, "and a narrow fitting. I never realised what dainty feet he had. He wasn't a short man, you know."

Reluctantly, Walsh opened his briefcase and produced the clear plastic bag containing the brown shoes. He placed the shoes, in the bag, on the flat of one hand and held them out for the woman to examine. "Are these your husband's shoes, Mrs. Thompson? Do you remember him having a pair like this?"

There was no hesitation in her reply. "Certainly not," she said. "My husband wouldn't dream of wearing corespondent shoes."

"The white patches are where the shoes have got damp, Mrs. Thompson, not white leather. The shoes were uniformly brown once."

"Oh." She moved closer, then after a few moments, shook her head. "No, I've never seen them before. They're certainly not Daniel's. He had only one pair of brown shoes and he was wearing them the day he"-she gave a little sob-"the day he vanished." She used the sodden scrap of lace to dab at her eyes again. "They were very expensive Italian shoes with pointed toes. Nothing like those. He was very conscientious about his appearance," she finished.

Walsh put the shoes back in his briefcase. "When you reported your husband missing, Mrs. Thompson, you said he'd had some business worries recently. What exactly did you mean?"

She shied away from him as if he'd tried to touch her. "He wouldn't leave me," she said again.

"Of course he wouldn't, Mrs. Thompson, but pressure at work does make some men act irrationally. Perhaps he couldn't cope with his problems and needed time on his own to sort them out. Is that what you meant?"

Tears poured from the sorrowful eyes in a.flood. She wore her despair like a tatty cardigan, something she had grown used to and was comfortable with in spite of its ugliness. She sank on to the sofa. "His business is bankrupt," she explained. "He owes money all over the place. It's all being sorted out by his assistant but people-creditors-keep ringing me. There's nothing I can do. I've told them he's dead."

"How do you know?" asked Walsh gently.

"He wouldn't leave me," she said, "not if he was alive."

Walsh looked at McLoughlin and nodded towards the door. They stood up. "Thank you for giving us your time, Mrs. Thompson. There's just one thing. Has your husband ever been to Streech Grange or had dealings with the people living there?"

Her lips thinned to an angry slit. "Is that where those awful women live?" she spat. Walsh nodded. "Daniel would sooner walk into the lion's den"-she fingered her cross-"than be contaminated by their sin." She kissed the cross and started to undo the buttons of her dress.

"Fair enough," said Walsh with some embarrassment. "We'll let ourselves out."

Andy McLoughlin paused in the living-room doorway and looked back at her. "We're going to ask the Vicar to pop round and see you, Mrs. Thompson. It might do you good to have a chat with him."

The Vicar listened to the expression of police concern with ill-disguised panic. "Frankly, Inspector, there's nothing I can do. Believe me, our little community has bent over backwards to assist poor Mrs. Thompson. We've enlisted the aid of her doctor and a social worker, but they're powerless to act unless she herself requests psychiatric help. She's not mad, you see, nor, in the accepted sense, even depressed. In fact, outwardly, she's coping magnificently." He had a pronounced Adam's apple which bobbed up and down as he spoke. "It's only when people visit her, particularly men, that she acts-er-strangely. The doctor's sure it's only a matter of time before she snaps out of it." He wrung his hands. "The truth is neither he nor I like to go there any more. She seems to have developed sex and religious mania. I'll send my wife, though to be honest her last encounter with Mrs. Thompson was less than happy, some accusation about seeing me in church with only my socks and shoes on." The Adam's apple crowded nervously towards his chin. "Poor woman. Such a tragedy for her. Leave it with me, Inspector. I'm sure it's only a matter of time, of coming to terms with Daniel's disappearance. There must be a text to deal with it. Leave it with me."

Detective Sergeant Robinson rang Anne's doorbell and waited. The door was slightly ajar and a voice called: "Come in," from a distance. He went down the corridor to the room at the end. Anne was sitting at her desk, a pencil tucked behind her ear, one booted foot propped on an open drawer and tapping time to "Jumping Jack Flash" playing quietly from her stereo. She looked up and waved him to an empty chair. "I'm Anne Cattrell," she said, taking the pencil from behind her ear and marking a correction on a page of typed paper. "Vaginal Orgasm-Fact or Fiction," had straggled its way towards some sort of climax on five sheets of A4.

He sat down. "Detective Sergeant Robinson," he introduced himself.

She smiled. "What can I do for you?"

Hell, he thought, she's OK-more than OK. With her cap of dark hair and wide-spaced eyes, she reminded him of Audrey Hepburn. From the way McLoughlin had talked the previous evening, he'd been expecting a real dog. "It's not much," he said, "just something that doesn't square."

"Fire away. Does the music worry you?"

"No. One of my favourites," he said truthfully. "It's like this, Miss Cattrell, both you and the majority of people in Streech village have made out that you and your friends are lesbians." He paused.

"Go on."

"Yet when I mentioned it to Mr. Clarke at the pub this morning, he roared with laughter and said, though not in quite these words, that you were very definitely heterosexual."

"What were his actual words?" she asked curiously. He noticed the full ashtray on her desk. "Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Cattrell?"

She offered him one of hers. "Be my guest." She watched him light the cigarette in silence.

"He said you've had more men that I've had hot dinners," he said in a rush.

She chuckled. "Yes, that well-worn cliche sounds like Paddy. So, you want to know if I'm a lesbian, and if I'm not why I've given the impression that I am." He could almost hear her mind clicking. "Why would a woman give people reason to despise her unless it's to put them off the track of something else?" She levelled her pencil at him. "You think I've murdered one of my lovers and left him to rot in the ice house." Her hands were as small and delicate as a child's.

"No," he lied gamely. "To be honest, it's not very important one way or the other, it's just something that's puzzled us. Also," he went on, taking a shot in the dark, "I took to Mr. Clarke more than any of the others I spoke to, and I can't really believe he's the one who's wrong."

"Clever of you," said Anne appreciatively. "In matters unconnected with sex, Paddy has more sense in his little finger than the whole of Streech put together."

"Well?" he asked.

"Was his wife there when you spoke to him?"

He shook his head. "We spoke entirely in confidence though what he said about you was intended to be passed on. He said he was fed up with the b-er-rubbish that was spoken about the three of you."

"Bullshit?" she supplied helpfully.

"Yes." He grinned boyishly. "Actually, I met his wife as I was leaving. She scared the hell out of me."

Anne lit a cigarette. "She was a nun once and incredibly pretty. She met Paddy in church and he swept her off her feet and persuaded her to break her vows. She's never forgiven him for it. As she gets older, her fall from grace assumes larger and larger proportions. She thinks it's God's punishment that she hasn't any children." She was amused by his astonishment.