“Ah. Yes. Of course. The Parade of Horses. Worth seeing, Joe, if you’ve got the time and stomach for it.”
“It’s the parade of humans I wouldn’t miss for anything. I don’t forget I’m down here to tease out the puzzle of Lavinia’s death. About which Goodfellow is sinisterly silent. Don’t you think? He throws a distorted light on an ancient murder but drops not a hint of the recent one in his letter.”
“Eager to get off and pack? Not the world’s most fluent writer—he wasn’t about to embark on a further chapter?”
“Hard to believe he had nothing to say. If that chap had had mud to hand I don’t think he’d have hesitated to throw it.”
“You’re right. There was a little something he was keeping in reserve. You’ll see! Extra blackmailing ammo? He’s skilled in the use of hanging threats over people. Not too much, not too little. Push a man just far enough and no further. The ones who get away with it, the ones who never turn up on our books are the clever ones, the ones who are so close to their victims they can judge their every reaction and have the restraint never to demand more than can be borne. Like the East African farmers who live on their beasts’ blood—always allow the victim to recover and thrive before you open up his vein again. In connection with which—you might like to cast an eye on Goodfellow’s outbuilding before you go.”
“Outbuilding? He has a latrine somewhere about the place I suppose?”
“Well he was only human. It’s carefully camouflaged and architect-designed in keeping with the main building. You’ll find it twenty yards northeast of the rear. Have a rummage around. Here, put these gloves on. Oh, and you may want to hold your sensitive nose.”
A smaller, simpler version of the pine cabin stood, door closed, hidden from all eyes by a thick screen of hawthorn bushes and tangled ivy. A shed any man would have liked to install in his back garden, at first sight. Joe opened the door and entered gingerly. On the left was, indeed, an army-style latrine of the best continental porcelain. Scrupulously clean and scented with hanging bunches of lavender. A large enamel water jug stood by ready for service. On the right another door opened into an allotment holder’s heaven. A potting bench ran the length of the cabin, seed trays, used, cleaned and awaiting the next sowing stood in piles, gardening and woodworking tools were fixed on racks on the walls. An old, horsehair-stuffed armchair was still dented from Goodfellow’s last occupancy, a pile of Men Only and Liliput magazines lurked underneath.
It was the range of wooden shelves with their pigeon-holed compartments that took Joe’s eye. The kind of fitting you could see in any pharmacy, it had probably been bought in at a farmers’ auction. Some of the compartments had a name inked in on their surface. Joe read names of herbs—hartshorne, white willow, marshmallow … One of them seized his attention. It had a piece of writing paper torn from a police notebook stuck on it with a piece of elastoplast. “Look in here, Sandilands! This drawer was slightly open when I entered. The only one.”
The drawer must have been airtight. The smell of the contents would have been held in check. Joe decided to leave a detailed inspection of the scrapings of black residue to Hunnyton’s forensic boys and merely noted that essence of something deeply unpleasant lurked within. It brought instantly to mind the smell of the offering Lady Truelove had been trying to make to Lucifer. He slammed it shut. Lavinia had sent her maid with Goodfellow’s hand-written prescription for spices to the chemist but the second formula, the one she had used along with the toad’s bone with such disastrous consequences, had come straight from this workshop.
Joe put his head round the door. “Got the message! How are you doing, mate?”
Hunnyton sighed and looked down at his notebook. “It’s hopeless! Joe—can I be frank?” He looked up at Joe with a wry smile. “If you were the officer in charge of this bloody case you’d have to arrest yourself! I think you know what I’m saying.”
Joe stepped inside and kicked the door shut. He ignored the newspaper doormat and went to stand directly in front of Hunnyton, challenging him, eye to eye.
“No. I don’t. I think you’d better elucidate for me, Superintendent.”
Hunnyton swallowed and turned away, unable to withstand the challenge of his superior officer’s response. “Oh, come on, Joe. You must see it!”
CHAPTER 20
Hunnyton waved his notebook under Joe’s nose as though it had suddenly caught fire and he was about to get his fingers burned. “Every word of my notes reflects procedure done by the book. You can read it for yourself and tell me what conclusion any sane man would come to. Any judge, any jury. Any Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner. Why don’t you give it a go?”