The Killings at Badger's Drift(5)

‘Did you hear a dog bark?’

‘No.’

‘And that’s all you remember?’

She looked distressed, fretting her brows, afraid she had disappointed him. ‘I’m afraid so . . . at least . . .’ A long pause, then she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Barnaby got up. ‘Well thank you Miss -’

‘Bazely. But I’m always called Terry. We only use Christian names here.’

‘Thank you. You’ve been extremely helpful.’

She opened the door for him. ‘There was something else . . . I know there was.’

He thought there probably was. She didn’t look like the sort to make something up just to please. ‘It’ll probably pop into your mind when you’re at work or doing the washing up. Give me a ring if it does. Causton Central.’

‘Even if it doesn’t seem important?’

‘Especially if it doesn’t seem important. And’ - he closed the door - ‘you do understand that all this is completely confidential. Not to be discussed even with your colleagues?’

‘Oh.’ Doubt flooded back. She looked more worried than ever. ‘But . . . I shall have to put your visit in the book.’

‘Just enter me,’ smiled Barnaby, opening the door again, ‘as an unnamed client worried about a death in the family.’





It was almost nine o’clock. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby sat at the dining-room table facing a plateful of leathery strips, black and shiny as liquorice, surrounded by coils of yellowish green paste.

‘Your liver and greens are spoiled, dear,’ said Mrs Barnaby, implying that there had once been a time when they were not.

Tom Barnaby loved his wife. Joyce was kind and patient. She was a good listener. He always talked when he came home, usually about work, knowing her discretion was absolute. And she would look as interested and concerned at the end of half an hour as she had at the beginning. She was, at forty-six, ripely pretty and still enjoyed what she called, with a nudge in her voice, ‘a bit of a cuddle’. She had brought up their daughter with affectionate firmness, doing most of the things parents were supposed to do together by herself because of his job, and with never a word of complaint. The house was clean and comfortable and she carried out lots of boring chores in the garden willingly, leaving all the creative and interesting bits to him. She could act very well and sing like the lark ascending and did both, con brio, in the local amateur operatic and dramatic society. Her only flaw was that she could not cook.

No, thought Barnaby, as a particularly resilient bit of liquorice sprang up and hit the roof of his mouth. It was not just that she couldn’t cook, it was much, much more. There was between her and any fresh, frozen or tinned ingredient a sort of malign chemistry. They were born antagonists. He had observed her once making a tart. She didn’t just weigh and handle materials, she squared up to them, appearing to have some terrible foreknowledge that only an instant and combative readiness could bend them to her will. Her hand had closed over the shrinking pastry ball with a grip of iron.

When Cully was about thirteen she had persuaded her mother to go to cookery classes and, on the evening of the first lesson, she and her father had stood at the gate gripping each other’s hands, hardly able to believe their good fortune. Mrs Barnaby had set off carrying a basket of good things covered with a snowy cloth like a child in a fairy tale. She had come home three hours later with a small leather mat thickly studded with currants, crunchy as bits of coal. She had gone a few more times then given up - out of, she explained, kindness to the teacher. The poor woman, never before having experienced failure on such a monumental scale, had started to get terribly depressed.

Chief Inspector Barnaby rearranged his paste and strips and finished telling his wife about Miss Bellringer and Miss Simpson.

‘It’s an intriguing story, darling.’ Mrs Barnaby lowered her knitting, an exquisite puffball of silky creamy wool. ‘I wonder what she could have seen?’ Her husband shrugged. She was not deceived by the casualness of the gesture. ‘I suppose your next step will be to talk to the doctor?’

‘That’s right.’ Barnaby laid down his knife and fork. You could ask just so much from ordinarily tempered cutlery. ‘Probably after his evening surgery, so I might be late again. Don’t worry about keeping anything hot. I’ll eat out.’





‘You may go in now.’

Barnaby had turned up, at Doctor Lessiter’s suggestion, at eleven the following morning. He entered the consulting room to find the doctor seated behind his desk and as busy as a bee. All through their conversation his fingers were never still: fiddling with pencils, tidying a stack of pharmaceutical literature, pulling down his cuffs or just drumming away on his blotter. He glanced quickly at the chief inspector’s warrant card.