The body had no head. That single, grisly detail was the most prominent feature of the police photographs that were being passed among the three CID officers gathered at the circular table in the Scotland Yard office.
Father Hart looked nervously from one face to the next, and he fingered the tiny silver rosary in his pocket. It had been blessed by Pius XII in 1952. Not an individual audience, of course. One could never hope for that. But certainly that trembling, numinous hand making the sign of the cross over two thousand reverential pilgrims counted for a powerful sort of something. Eyes closed, he’d held the rosary high above his head as if somehow that would allow the Pope’s blessing to strike it more potently.
He was well on his way into the third decade of the sorrowful mysteries when the tall, blond man spoke.
“‘What a blow was there given,’” he murmured, and Father Hart looked his way.
Was he a policeman? Father Hart couldn’t understand why the man was dressed so formally, but now, upon hearing the words, he looked at him hopefully. “Ah, Shakespeare. Yes. Just the very thing somehow.” The big man with the awful cigar looked at him blankly. Father Hart cleared his throat and watched them continue to scrutinise the pictures.
He’d been with them for nearly a quarter of an hour and in that time barely a word had been exchanged. A cigar had been lit by the older man, the woman had twice bitten off something she’d intended to say, and nothing more had occurred until that line from Shakespeare.
The woman tapped her fingers restlessly on the top of the table. She at least was some sort of police person. Father Hart knew that by the uniform she wore. But she seemed so entirely unpleasant with her tiny, shifting eyes and her grim little mouth. She would never do. Not what he needed. Not what Roberta needed. What should he say?
The horrid photographs continued to be passed among them. Father Hart did not need to see them. He knew far too well what they captured. He’d been there first, and it was all so unspeakably engraved on his mind. William Teys sprawled out on his side-all six feet four of him-in a ghastly, quasi-fetal position, right arm extended as if he’d been reaching for something, left arm curled into his stomach, knees drawn up halfway to his chest, and where the head had been…There was simply nothing. Like Cloten himself. But no Imogen there to awaken in horror by his side. Just Roberta. And those terrifying words: “I did it. I’m not sorry.”
The head had rolled into a mound of sodden hay in a corner of the stall. And when he’d seen it…Oh God, the stealthy eyes of a barn rat glittered in the cavity-quite small, of course-but the quivering grey snout was brilliant with blood and the tiny paws dug! Our Father, who art in heaven…Our Father, who art in heaven…Oh, there’s more, there’s more and I can’t remember it now!
“Father Hart.” The blond man in the morning coat had removed his reading spectacles and had taken from his pocket a gold cigarette case. “Do you smoke?”
“I…yes, thank you.” The priest snatched quickly at the case so that the others might not see how his hand trembled. The man passed the case to the woman, who shook her head sharply in refusal. A silver lighter was produced. It all took a few moments, blessed time to allow him to gather together his fragmented thoughts.
The blond man relaxed in his chair and studied a long line of photographs that had been posted on one of the walls of the offi ce. “Why did you go to the farm that day, Father Hart?” he asked quietly, his eyes moving from one picture to the next.
Father Hart squinted myopically across the room. Were those pictures of suspects? he wondered hopefully. Had Scotland Yard seen fit to begin pursuing this malevolent beast already? He couldn’t tell, wasn’t even certain from this distance that the photographs were of people at all.
“It was Sunday,” he replied as if that would somehow say everything.
The blond man turned his head at that. Surprisingly, his eyes were an engaging brown. “Were you in the habit of going to Teys’s farm on Sundays? For dinner or something?”
“Oh…I…excuse me, I thought the report, you see…” This would never do. Father Hart sucked eagerly at the cigarette. He looked at his fingers. The nicotine stains climbed past every joint. No wonder he’d been offered one. He shouldn’t have forgotten his own, should have bought a pack back at King’s Cross. But there was so very much then… He puffed hungrily at the tobacco.
“Father Hart?” the older man said. He was obviously the blond’s superior. They’d all been introduced but he’d stupidly forgotten their names. The woman’s he knew: Havers. Sergeant, by her garments. But the other two had slipped his mind. He gazed at their grave faces in mounting panic.
“I’m sorry. You asked…?”
“Did you go to Teys’s farm every Sunday?”
Father Hart made a determined effort to think clearly, chronologically, systematically for once. His fingers sought the rosary in his pocket. The cross dug into his thumb. He could feel the tiny corpus stretched out in agony. Oh Lord, to die that way. “No,” he answered in a rush. “William is…was our precentor. Such a wonderful basso profundo. He could make the church ring with sound and I…” Father Hart took a ragged breath to put himself back on the track. “He’d not come to Mass that morning, nor had Roberta. I was concerned. The Teyses never miss Mass. So I went to the farm.”
The cigar smoker squinted at him through the pungent smoke. “Do you do that for all your parishioners? Must certainly keep them in line if you do.”
Father Hart had smoked his cigarette down to the filter. There was nothing for it but to stub it out. The blond man did the same although his was not half-smoked. He brought out the case and offered another. Again the silver lighter appeared; the fl ame caught, produced the smoke that seared his throat, soothed his nerves, numbed his lungs.
“Well, it was mostly because Olivia was concerned.”
A glance at the report. “Olivia Odell?”
Father Hart nodded eagerly. “She and William Teys, you see, had just become engaged. The announcement was to be made at a small tea that afternoon. She’d rung him several times after Mass but got nothing. So she came to me.”
“Why didn’t she go out there herself?”
“She wanted to, of course. But there was Bridie and the duck. He’d got lost somehow, the usual family crisis, and she couldn’t be settled down until he was recovered.”
The three others glanced at one another warily. The priest reddened. How absurd it all sounded! He plunged on. “You see, Bridie is Olivia’s little girl. She has a pet duck. Well, not really a pet, not in the actual sense.” How could he explain all of it to them, all the twists and turns of their village life?
The blond man spoke, kindly. “So while Olivia and Bridie were looking for the duck, you went out to the farm.”
“That’s so exactly right. Thank you.” Father Hart smiled gratefully.
“Tell us what happened when you arrived.”
“I went to the house first, but no one was there. The door wasn’t locked and I remember thinking that was strange. William always locked everything tight as a drum if he went out. He was peculiar that way. Insisted I do the same with the church if I wasn’t about.
Even when the choir practised on Wednesdays he never once left until every person was gone and I’d seen to the doors. That’s the way he was.”
“I imagine his unlocked house gave you a bit of a turn,” the blond man said.
“It did, really. Even at one o’clock in the afternoon. So, when I couldn’t raise anyone with a knock…” He looked at them all apologetically, “I suppose I walked right in.”
“Anything peculiar inside?”
“Nothing at all. It was perfectly clean, as it always was. There was, however…” His eyes shifted to the window. How to explain?
“Yes?”
“The candles had burned down.”
“Have they no electricity?”
Father Hart looked at them earnestly. “These are votive candles. They were always lit. Always. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“For a shrine, you mean?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A shrine,” he agreed immediately and hurried on. “When I saw that, I knew at once something was wrong. Neither William nor Roberta would ever have let the candles go out. So I went through the house. And from there, out to the barn.”
“And there…?”
What was there really left to report? The chilling tranquillity had told him at once. Outside, in the near pasture, the bleating of sheep and the cry of birds spoke of sanity and peace. But in the barn, the absolute quiet was the core of diablerie. Even from the door the rich cloying smell of pooled blood had reached him, over the mixed odours of manure and grain and rotting hay. It had drawn him forward with seductive, unavoidable hands.
Roberta had been sitting on an overturned pail in one of the stalls, a big girl born of her father’s stock, used to the labour of a farm. She was motionless, staring not at the headless monstrosity that lay at her feet but at the opposite wall and at the cracks that mapped its surface.
“Roberta?” he had called urgently. He felt sickness rising from stomach to throat and his bowels loosening.
There was no response, not a breath, not a movement. Just the sight of her broad back, her sturdy legs curled beneath her, the axe at her side. And then, over her shoulder, he’d seen the body clearly for the fi rst time.
“I did it. I’m not sorry,” the only thing she’d said.
Father Hart squeezed his eyes shut against the memory. “I went at once to the house and rang Gabriel.”
For a moment Lynley believed that the priest was talking about the archangel himself. The odd little man did seem a bit in touch with other worlds as he sat there painfully struggling through his story.
“Gabriel?” Webberly asked incredulously. Lynley could tell that the super’s patience was wearing thin. He fingered through the report for some indication of the name and found it quickly enough.
“Gabriel Langston. Village constable,” he said. “And I take it, Father, that Constable Langston phoned the Richmond police at once?”
The priest nodded. He looked warily at Lynley’s cigarette case and the other man opened it and offered another round. Havers refused and the priest was about to do so as well until Lynley took one himself. His throat felt raw, but he knew they’d never get to the end of the story unless the cleric was supplied with nicotine, and it appeared that he needed a companion in his vice. Lynley swallowed uncomfortably, longed for a whisky, lit up again, and let the cigarette burn itself to nothing in the ashtray.
“Police came down from Richmond. It was all very quick. It was…they took Roberta.”
“Well, what could you expect? She admitted to the crime.” Havers had spoken. She’d risen from her seat and wandered to the window. Her voice clearly informed them that in her opinion they were wasting their time with this foolish old man, that they ought to be barrelling towards the North at this very moment.
“Lots of people admit to crimes,” Webberly said, motioning her back to her seat. “I’ve had twenty-five confessions to the Ripper killings so far.”
“I just wanted to point out-”
“That can come later.”
“Roberta didn’t kill her father,” the priest went on as if the other two had not spoken. “It’s just not possible.”
“But family crimes happen,” Lynley said gently.
“Not when there’s whiskers.”
To the priest’s bizarre comment-so obviously logical and satisfactory to himself-no one made a response. No one spoke at all or looked particularly at anyone else. There was a lengthy, unendurable pause in the proceedings, broken by Webberly, who pushed away from the table. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I’m terribly sorry, but…” He stalked to a cabinet at the corner of the room and pulled out three bottles. “Whisky, sherry, or brandy?” he asked the others.
Lynley sent a prayer of thanksgiving to Bacchus. “Whisky,” he replied.
“Havers?”
“Nothing for me,” she said primly. “I’m on duty.”
“Yes, of course. Father, what’ll it be?”
“Oh, a sherry would be only too-”
“Sherry it is.” Webberly tossed back a small, neat whisky before pouring again and returning to the table.
They all stared meditatively into their glasses, as if each wondered who’d be the fi rst to ask the question. Lynley finally did so, his throat newly soothed by the fragrant single malt. “Ah…whiskers?” he prompted.
Father Hart looked down at the papers spread out on the table. “Isn’t it in the report?” he asked plaintively. “About the dog?”
“Yes, it does mention the dog.”
“That was Whiskers,” the priest explained, and sanity was restored.
There was collective relief. “It was dead in the stall with Teys,” Lynley noted aloud.
“Yes, don’t you see? That’s why we all of us know Roberta’s innocent. Aside from the fact that she was devoted to her father, there’s Whiskers to consider. She would never hurt Whiskers.” Father Hart eagerly sought out the words to explain. “He was a farm dog, part of the family since Roberta was five. He was retired, of course, a bit blind, but one just doesn’t put down dogs like that. Everyone in the village knew Whiskers. He was a bit of a pet to all of us. He’d wander down of an afternoon to Nigel Parrish’s house on the common, have a bit of a lie in the sun whilst Nigel played the organ (he’s our organist at church, you see). Or sometimes he’d have his tea at Olivia’s.”
“Got on with the duck, did he?” Webberly asked, straight-faced.
“Oh, famously!” Father Hart beamed. “Whiskers got on with us all. And when Roberta was out and about he followed her everywhere. That’s why, when they took Roberta, I had to do something. And here I am.”
“Yes, indeed, here you are,” Webberly concluded. “You’ve been more than helpful, Father. I believe Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers have all that they need for now.” He got to his feet and opened the door of his offi ce. “Harriman?”
The Morse-like tapping of word processor keys stopped. A chair scraped on the fl oor. Webberly’s secretary popped into the room.
Dorothea Harriman bore a modest resemblance to the Princess of Wales, which she emphasised to a disconcerting degree by tinting her sculptured hair the approximate shade of sunlight on wheat and refusing to wear her spectacles in the presence of anyone likely to comment upon the Spencerian shape of her nose and chin. She was eager to advance, swept up in her “c’reer,” as she monosyllabically called it. She was intelligent enough to make a success of her job and would most likely do so, especially if she could bring herself to renounce her distracting manner of dress, which everyone referred to as Parody Princess. Today she was wearing what looked like a drop-waisted pink ball gown that had been shortened for everyday wear. It was utterly hideous.
“Yes, Superintendent?” she asked. In spite of threats and imprecations, Harriman insisted upon calling every employee at the Yard by his or her full title.
Webberly turned to the priest. “Are you staying in London, Father, or returning to Yorkshire?”
“I’m on the late train back. Confessions were this afternoon, you see, and as I wasn’t there, I did promise to have them until eleven tonight.”
“Of course.” Webberly nodded. “Call a cab for Father Hart,” he told Harriman.
“Oh, but I haven’t enough-”
Webberly held up a restraining hand. “It’s on the Yard, Father.”
On the Yard. The priest mouthed the words, coloured with pleasure at the implication of brotherhood and acceptance behind them. He allowed the superintendent’s secretary to shepherd him from the room.
★ ★ ★
“What do you drink when you do drink, Sergeant Havers?” Webberly asked when Father Hart had gone.
“Tonic water, sir,” she replied.
“Right,” he muttered and opened the door again. “Harriman,” he barked, “fi nd a bottle of Schweppes for Sergeant Havers… Don’t pretend you haven’t the slightest idea where to get one. Just get one.” He slammed the door, went to the cabinet, and brought out the bottle of whisky.
Lynley rubbed his forehead and pressed tightly at both sides of his eyes. “God, what a headache,” he murmured. “Have either of you any aspirin?”
“I do,” Havers replied crisply and rooted through her handbag for a small tin. She tossed it across the table to him. “Take as many as you like, Inspector.”
Webberly regarded them both thoughtfully. He wondered, not for the first time, if this partnership of two such antipodal personalities had even the ghost of a chance for success. Havers was like a hedgehog, curling herself into a protective ball of thistle at the least provocation. Yet underneath that prickly exterior of hers was a fine, probing mind. What was left to question was whether Thomas Lynley was the right combination of patience and congeniality to encourage that mind to overcome the wrangling of the termagant personality that had made it impossible for Havers to work in successful partnership with anyone else.
“Sorry to take you out of the wedding, Lynley, but there was no other way. This is the second run-in Nies and Kerridge have had up North. The first one was a disaster: Nies was right all along, and crisis ensued. I thought,” he fingered the rim of his glass and chose his words carefully, “that your presence might serve to remind Nies that he can sometimes be wrong.”
Webberly watched carefully for a reaction from the younger man-a stiffening of muscles, a movement of the head, a fl icker behind the eyelids. But there was nothing to betray him. It was no particular secret among his superior offi cers at the Yard that Lynley’s single run-in with Nies nearly five years before in Richmond had resulted in his own arrest. And however premature and ultimately spurious that arrest had been, it was the only black mark on an otherwise admirable record of service, a denigration that Lynley would have to live with for the rest of his career.
“It’s fine, sir,” Lynley replied easily. “I understand.”
A knock on the door announced Miss Harriman’s successful quest for the Schweppes, which she placed triumphantly on the table in front of Sergeant Havers. She glanced at the clock. Its hands were nearing six.
“As this isn’t a regularly scheduled workday, Superintendent,” she began, “I thought I might-”
“Yes, yes, go on home.” Webberly waved.
“Oh no, it isn’t that at all,” Harriman said sweetly. “But I think in Regulation Sixty-fi ve-A regarding compensatory time…”
“Take Monday and I’ll break your arm, Harriman,” Webberly said with equivalent sweetness. “Not in the middle of this Ripper business.”
“Wouldn’t think of it, sir. Shall I just put it on the tick? Regulation Sixty-fi ve-C indicates that-”
“Put it anywhere, Harriman.”
She smiled understandingly at him. “Absolutely, Superintendent.” The door closed behind her.
“Did that vixen wink at you as she left the room, Lynley?” Webberly demanded.
“I didn’t notice, sir.”
It was half past eight when they began gathering together the papers from the table in Webberly’s office. Darkness had fallen and the fluorescent lighting did nothing to hide the room’s genial air of disarray. If anything, it was worse now than it had been before, with the additional files from the North spread out on the table and an acrid cirrus of cigarette and cigar smoke that, in conjunction with the mixed scents of whisky and sherry, produced the effect of being in a rather down-at-heel gentlemen’s club.
Barbara noticed the deep lines of exhaustion that were drawn on Lynley’s face and judged that the aspirin had done him little good. He had gone to the wall of Ripper photographs and was inspecting them, moving from one to the next. As she watched, he lifted a hand to one of them-it was the King’s Cross victim, she noted needlessly-and traced a finger along the crude incision that the Ripper’s knife had made.
“‘Death closes all,’” he murmured. “He’s black and white, flesh with no resilience. Who could ever recognise a living man from this?”
“Or from this, for that matter,” Webberly responded. He brusquely gestured to the photographs that Father Hart had brought.
Lynley rejoined them. He stood near Barbara but was, she well knew, oblivious of her. She watched the expressions pass quickly across his face as he sorted through the photographs one last time: revulsion, disbelief, pity. His features were so easy to read that she wondered how he ever managed to conduct a successful investigation without giving everything away to a suspect. But he did it all the time. She knew his record of success, the string of follow-up convictions. He was the golden boy in more ways than one.
“We’ll head up there in the morning, then,” he said to the superintendent. He picked up a manila envelope and tucked all the materials inside.
Webberly was examining a train schedule which he had unearthed from the jumble on his desk. “Take the eight-forty-fi ve.”
Lynley groaned. “Have a bit of mercy, sir. I’d like at least the next ten hours to get rid of this migraine.”
“Then the nine-thirty. And no later than that.” Webberly glanced round his offi ce one last time as he shrugged into a tweed overcoat. Like his other clothing, it was becoming threadbare in spots, and a small patch was worked poorly into the left lapel where, no doubt, cigar ash had done its worst. “Report in on Tuesday,” he said as he left.
The superintendent’s absence seemed to rejuvenate Lynley at once, Barbara noted, for he moved with amazing alacrity of spirit to the telephone the moment the man was gone. He dialled a number, tapped his fi ngers rhythmically against the desk top, and peered at the face of the clock. After nearly a minute, his face lit with a smile.
“You did wait, old duck,” he said into the phone. “Have you broken it off with Jeffrey Cusick at last?…Ha! I knew it, Helen. I’ve told you repeatedly that a barrister can’t possibly make you happy. Did the reception end well?… He did? Oh Lord, what a scene that must have been. Has Andrew ever cried in his life?…Poor St. James. Was he absolutely slain with mortification?…Well, it’s the champagne does it, you know. Did Sidney recover?…Yes, well, she did look for a while as if she’d get a bit maudlin at the end. She’s never made a secret of it that Simon’s her favourite brother… Of course dancing’s still on. We promised ourselves, didn’t we?…Can you give me, say, an hour or so?…Hmm, what was that?…Helen! My God, what a naughty little girl!” He laughed and dropped the phone back onto its cradle. “Still here, Sergeant?” he asked when he turned from the desk.
“You’ve no car, sir,” she replied stonily. “I thought I’d wait to see if you needed a ride home.”
“That’s awfully good of you, but we’ve all been kept here long enough for one evening, and I’m sure you’ve far better things to do on a Saturday night than see me home. I’ll catch a cab.” He bent over Webberly’s desk for a moment, writing quickly on a piece of paper. “This is my address,” he said, handing it to her. “Be there at seven tomorrow morning, will you? That should give us some time to make more sense of all this before we head to Yorkshire. Good evening, then.” He left the room.
Barbara looked down at the paper in her hand, at the handwriting which even in a hurry still managed to be an elegant scrawl. She studied it for more than a minute before she ripped it into tiny pieces and tossed them into the rubbish. She knew quite well where Thomas Lynley lived.
The guilt began on the Uxbridge Road. It always did. Tonight it was worse when she saw that the travel agency was closed, preventing her from gathering the material on Greece as she’d promised. Empress Tours. Where had they ever come up with a name like that for such a grubby little shop where people sat behind plastic-topped desks that were painted to look as if they were wood? She slowed the car, peering through the dirty windscreen to look for signs of life. The owners lived above the shop. Perhaps if she banged on the door a bit, she could rouse them. No, it was too ridiculous. Mum was no more going to Greece than to the moon; she’d just have to wait for the brochures a bit longer.
Still, she’d passed at least a dozen agencies in the city today. Why hadn’t she stopped? What else did Mum have to live for but those silly little dreams? Overcome with the need to compensate in some way for her failure, Barbara pulled the car over in front of Patel’s Grocery, a ramshackle affair of green paint, rusting shelves, and precariously stacked crates from which emanated that peculiar blend of odours that comes from vegetables not quite as fresh as they ought to be. Patel was still open, at least. Leave it to him never to miss a chance to make ten pence.
“Barbara!” He greeted her from inside the shop as she bent over the boxed fall fruit on the pavement outside. Mostly apples. A few late peaches shipped in from Spain. “Whassa doin’ out so late?”
He couldn’t imagine her having a date, of course. No one could. She couldn’t herself. “Had to work late, Mr. Patel,” she replied. “How much for the peaches?”
“Eighty-five a pound, but for you, pretty face, we say eighty.”
She picked out six. He weighed them, wrapped them, and handed them over. “I was seeing your father today.”
She looked up quickly and caught the guard dropping over Mr. Patel’s dark face like a mask when he saw her expression. “Was he behaving himself?” she asked casually, shouldering her handbag.
“My goodness, yes. He always behaves!” Mr. Patel took her money, counted it twice carefully, and dropped it into his register. “You take care now, Barbara. Men see a nice girl like you and-”
“Yes, I’ll take care,” Barbara interrupted. She tossed the peaches onto the front seat of the car. Nice girl like you, Barb. You take care. Keep those legs crossed. Virtue like yours is defi nitely easy to lose, and a woman fallen is fallen forever. She laughed bitterly, jerked the car into gear, and pulled out onto the road.
In Acton there were two potential areas of residence, simply called by inhabitants the right and wrong streets. It was as if a dividing line split the suburb arbitrarily, condemning one set of residents while it elevated others.
On the right streets of Acton, pristine brick houses boasted woodwork which always sparkled admirably in the morning sun in a multiplicity of colours. Roses grew in abundance there. Fuchsias flourished in hanging pots. Children played games on unlittered pavements and in patchwork gardens. Snow kissed gabled roofs in peaks of meringue in the winter, while in summer tall elms made green tunnels through which families strolled in the perfumed evening light. There was never an argument in the right streets of Acton, never loud music, the smell of cooking fish, or fi sts raised in a fight. It was sheer perfection, the single ocean on which every family’s boat of dreams sailed placidly forward. But things were much different as close as a single street away.
People liked to say that the wrong streets of Acton got the heat of the day and that’s why things were so different there. It was as if an enormous hand had swept down from the sky and jumbled up houses and avenues and people so that everything was always just a bit out of sorts. No one worked quite so hard on appearances: houses sagged moodily into decay. Gardens once planted were soon ignored, then forgotten altogether and left to fend for themselves. Children played noisily on the dirty pavements, disruptive games that frequently brought mothers to doorways, shrieking for peace from the din. The winter wind spit through poorly sealed windows and summer brought rain that leaked through the roofs. People in the wrong streets didn’t think much about being anywhere else, for to think of being elsewhere was to think of hope. And hope was dead in the wrong part of Acton.
Barbara drove there now, turning the Mini in on a street lined with cars that were rusting like her own. Neither garden nor fence fronted her own house, but rather a pavement-hard patch of dirt on which she parked her little car.
Next door, Mrs. Gustafson was playing BBC-1. Since she was nearly deaf, the entire neighbourhood was nightly regaled with the doings of her favourite television heroes. Across the street, the Kirbys were engaging in their usual preintercourse argument while their four children ignored them as best they could by throwing dirt clods at an indifferent cat that watched from a nearby fi rst-fl oor window sill.
Barbara sighed, groped for her front door key, and went into her house. It was chicken and peas. She could smell it at once, like a gust of foul breath.
“That you, lovey?” her mother’s voice called. “Bit late, aren’t you, dear? Out with some friends?”
What a laugh! “Working, Mum. I’m back on CID.”
Her mother shuffled to the door of the sitting room. Like Barbara, she was short, but terribly thin, as if a long illness had ravaged her body and taken it sinew by sinew on a march towards the grave. “CID?” she asked, her voice growing querulous. “Oh must you, Barbara? You know how I feel about that, my lovey.” As she spoke she raised a skeletal hand to her thin hair in a characteristic, nervous gesture. Her overlarge eyes were puffy and rimmed with red, as if she had spent the day weeping.
“Brought you some peaches,” Barbara responded, gesturing with the sack. “The travel agent was closed, I’m afraid. I even banged on the door to get them down from above, but they must’ve gone out.”
Diverted from the thought of CID, Mrs. Havers’s face changed, lighting with a dusty glow. She caught at the fabric of her shabby housedress and held it bunched in one hand, as if containing excitement. “Oh, that doesn’t matter at all. Wait till you see. Go in the kitchen and I’ll be right there. Your dinner’s still warm.”
Barbara walked past the sitting room, wincing at the chatter of the television and the fusty smell of a chamber too long kept closed. The kitchen, fetid with the odour of tough, broiled chicken and anaemic peas, was little better. She looked gloomily at the plate on the table, touched her fi nger to the withered fl esh of the fowl. It was stone cold, as slippery and puckered as something kept preserved in formaldehyde for forensic examination. Fat had congealed round its edges, and a single, rancid dab of butter had failed to melt on peas that looked as if they had had their last warming in a former decade.
Wonderful, she thought. Could the “lovely crab salad” have even come close to this epicurean splendour? She looked for the daily paper and found it, as always, on the seat of one of the wobbly kitchen chairs. She grabbed the front section, opened it to the middle, and deposited her dinner on the smiling face of the Duchess of Kent.
“Lovey, you’ve not thrown away your nice dinner!”
Damn! Barbara turned to see her mother’s stricken face, lips working in rejection, lines drawn in deep grooves down to her chin, pale blue eyes filled with tears. She clutched an artificial leather album to her bony chest.
“Caught me, Mum.” Barbara forced a smile, putting an arm round the woman’s bird-like shoulders and leading her to the table. “I had a bite at the Yard, so I wasn’t hungry. Should I have saved it for you or Dad?”
Mrs. Havers blinked quickly. The relief on her face was pathetic. “I…I suppose not. No, of course not. We wouldn’t want chicken and peas two nights in a row, would we?” She laughed gently and laid her album on the table. “Dad got me Greece,” she announced.
“Did he?” So that’s what he was doing out of the cage. “All by himself?” Barbara asked casually.
Her mother looked away, fingering the edges of her album, picking nervously at the artificial gold leaf. She gave a sudden movement, a quick, brilliant smile, and pulled out a chair. “Sit here, lovey, let me show you how we went.”
The album was opened. Previous trips through Italy, France, Turkey-now there was a bizarre one-and Peru were fl ipped through quickly until they arrived at the newest section, devoted to Greece.
“Now, here’s the hotel we stayed at in Corfu. Do you see how it’s just right there on the bay? We could have gone down to Kanoni to a newer one, but I liked the view, didn’t you, lovey?”
Barbara’s eyes smarted. She refused to submit. How long will it take? Will it never end?
“You’ve not answered me, Barbara.” Her mother’s voice quivered with anxiety. “I did work so hard on the trip all today. Having the view was better than the new hotel in Kanoni, wasn’t it, lovey?”
“Much better, Mum.” Barbara forced the words out and got to her feet. “I’ve got a case tomorrow. Can we do Greece later?” Would she understand?
“What sort of case?”
“It’s a…bit of a problem with a family in Yorkshire. I’ll be gone a few days. Can you manage, do you think, or shall I ask Mrs. Gustafson to come and stay?” Wonderful thought, the deaf leading the mad.
“Mrs. Gustafson?” Her mother closed the album and drew herself stiffly upright. “I think not, my lovey. Dad and I can manage on our own. We always have, you know. Except that short time when Tony…”
The room was unbearably, stifl ingly hot. Oh God, Barbara thought, just a wisp of air. Just this once. For a moment. She went to the back door, which led out to the weed-choked garden.
“Where’re you going?” her mother asked quickly, that familiar note of hysteria creeping into her voice. “There’s nothing out there! You mustn’t go outside after dark!”
Barbara picked up the discarded chicken dinner. “Rubbish, Mum. I won’t be a moment. You can wait by the door and see I’m all right.”
“But I…By the door?”
“If you like.”
“No, I mustn’t be by the door. We’ll leave it open just a bit, though. You can shout if you need me.”
“That sounds the plan, Mum.” She picked up the package and went hurriedly out into the night.
A few minutes. She breathed the cool air, listened to the familiar neighbourhood sounds, and felt in her pocket for a crumpled pack of Players. She shook one out, lit it, and gazed up at the sky.
What had started the seductive descent into madness? It was Tony, of course. Bright, freckle-faced imp. Fresh, spring air in the constant darkness of winter. Watchme, watchme, Barbie! I can do anything! Chemistry sets and rugger balls. Cricket on the common and tag in the afternoon. And horribly, stupidly chasing a ball right onto the Uxbridge Road.
But he didn’t die from that. Just a stay in hospital. A persistent fever, a peculiar rash. And a lingering, etiolating kiss from leukaemia. The wonderful, delicious irony of it all: go in with a broken leg, come out with leukaemia.
It had taken him four agonising years to die. Four years for them to make this descent into madness.
“Lovey?” The voice was tremulous.
“Right here, Mum. Just looking at the sky.” Barbara crushed her cigarette out on the rock-hard ground and walked back inside.