A Place Of Safety(39)

It was only a message for Lionel but afterwards Ann saw the interruption as miraculously timely. What a fool she had been even to contemplate confiding in Louise. How well did she really know the woman? The Fainlights’ house almost overlooked the Rectory. Louise would be in a perfect position to see just when she went out, leaving the coast clear. How easy to run over, deliver the letter, watch for the victim’s return then come round to gloat. Look how sneakily she had entered the house, not even ringing the front door bell.

Ann stared suspiciously across the table, quite forgetting that she herself had invited Louise. Now Louise was withdrawing, preparing to leave. Just as well. From this moment Ann would keep a very sharp curb on her tongue. And trust absolutely no one.





The 9 p.m. briefing was just that, brief. And as disheartening as Barnaby feared it would be. There were no leads at all. The house-to-house, now concluded, had come up with virtually nothing they didn’t know already. There seemed to be no dark secrets in Charlie Leathers’ past. He was born and raised in the village and everyone knew everything about him. His life was an open, if not very pleasant, book.

The DCI left the incident room and its wall of hideous blow-ups for the much more pleasant surroundings of the press office where he was due to record a television appeal for information, to be shown at ten thirty at the end of the local evening news summary.

He sat stoically being powdered against shine - a procedure he loathed - while wondering how Nicolas could stand putting the muck all over his face two afternoons and six nights a week. Having done his stuff and washed his face he was on the point of leaving the building when Sergeant Troy put his head round the door to say there was someone waiting to see him in reception.

‘I’m really sorry to come so late.’ It was Hetty Leathers’ daughter. ‘Tell the truth, I thought you might be gone.’

‘Not at all, Mrs Grantham.’ Barnaby led the way to a couple of worn leather seats at the far end of the reception area.

‘It won’t take a minute.’

Actually Pauline was now in rather a different frame of mind from when she had first heard about Charlie’s ‘scrapbook’ from her mother. Coming so close to the discovery of the murder, it had appeared extremely significant. Then, gradually, its possible significance had faded and now she sat with her carrier bag full of chopped about newspaper feeling a bit of a fool. In fact she had almost chucked the stuff back in the bin and forgotten the whole idea.

Hurriedly she explained all this to Barnaby, adding several flurried apologies for wasting his time. But he seemed grateful that she had come in. Far from taking the bag with a quick thank you, he questioned her closely as to what had led up to the discovery.

‘Well, it was when you asked if Dad had done anything out of the ordinary in the last couple of days.’

‘I remember.’

‘Apparently the night before he . . . it happened he went into the front room with the paper and some scissors. He was in there ages. When Mum went to see if he wanted a cup of tea he flew at her.’

‘What made your mother think he was compiling a scrapbook?’

‘He was cutting things out. And there was a pot of glue on the table. And another funny thing, Pauline continued hastily as Barnaby seemed about to speak, ‘he cleared up after himself. And that’s not just a first, it’s a bloody miracle.’

‘And these sheets are what was left?’

‘Yes - trimmings, everything. He put them in the dustbin. Lucky it was Tuesday not Monday or the bin men would have had it.’

Back in his office Barnaby pulled some chopped-about sheets of The People from the KwikSave plastic bag. The front page - ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ - was dated Sunday, 16 August. Troy, still hanging about and welcoming the overtime, handled the sheets in some bewilderment.

‘Don’t see how making a scrapbook can get a man knocked off.’

‘He wasn’t making a scrapbook.’

‘What then?’

‘Use your brains.’

Troy flirted with that one for a moment, tucking his eyebrows into a serious pleat and looking intense. He was about to give up when something occurred to him.

‘Whatever Leathers cut out, he did it for a reason. So we won’t find the missing pieces in here.’

‘They’ll be in the original. Take this to the incident room before you go and get somebody from the night shift on to it. Then we can compare.’

‘Ah. Nice one, chief.’

It seemed so obvious when pointed out. So why couldn’t he, Troy, just once come up with something startling and original and perceptive. See a link that everyone else had overlooked. Place a piece of evidence in just the right position to shed a light over the whole case and bring it to a successful conclusion. Once was all he asked. A chance to pip the DCI to the post before he retired. Dream on, sunshine. Dream on.