Barnaby put the notebook aside and started on the files. He realized immediately that his previous supposition when first checking out the loft had been the correct one. Mrs Rainbird appeared to have a fresh and not unreasonable approach to her profession. Barnaby hesitated to use the word Marxian to describe such an individualistic, anti-social business as blackmail, but there was no doubt that the woman’s demands were nothing if not sensible. People paid what they could. From each according to his abilities.
One man had delivered over (Barnaby checked back) the last ten years eggs and vegetables twice weekly. Someone else regular loads of wood. A few months before these offerings had ceased and Mrs Rainbird had drawn a neat line underneath and written ‘Deceased’. Poor old devil, thought the chief inspector, wondering what peccadillo the old man had been guilty of. Probably nothing too terrible. Ideas of right and wrong in a small village, particularly among the older inhabitants, often seemed archaic to more modern minds. He opened another file. Two pounds a week for three years, then nothing. Perhaps the victim had decamped. Driven out of the place as the only way to avoid payment. He read on. Fifty pounds a month. One pound a week. A regular servicing of Denny’s Porsche. Ironing done, shrubs supplied. Who would have thought in a village of some three hundred souls there would have been so much ‘sin’ about?
But of course there was also Brown’s. And Dennis with his slimy ways, driving round Causton visiting the bereaved and offering oleaginous comfort. People talked unrestrainedly in times of grief and gossiped at funerals. Rich pickings there. Between them he and his mother must have covered a pretty wide area.
Barnaby picked up the last pink folder, casually, with no sense of premonition. No idea that this would be the chamber with the bullet. Spin number six.
No need to wonder now, he thought, looking at the long column of figures, where the silver car came from or the partnership in the funeral parlour. Number 117C had paid out thousands. Even before he looked at the date of the first payment he knew what he would find. Not many crimes could command that sort of blood money. In fact perhaps only one. He felt a surge of emotion too strong to be called satisfaction. He felt on top of the world. He had not been able to let the shooting of Bella Trace alone. Without the slightest shred of evidence, indeed with all those present insisting that only an accident could have occurred, Barnaby had carried the incident around with him for a week whilst it plucked at the edges of his mind like a child with a story to tell. And now here he was, vindicated. A gentle tapping on the window of the car broke into his reverie.
‘Ah, Troy.’ He got out and slammed the door. ‘Did you see Miss Cadell?’
‘Yes. She’s been at this new place all day, she told me. Then I tried Holly Cottage again like you said but it’s still empty.’ He hurried alongside Barnaby. ‘Seems to have an endless supply of cottages, Mr Trace. Takes some people all their lives to buy -’
‘Show me where Phyllis Cadell’s house is, would you?’
‘Oh, she’s not there now, Chief. She left when I did. Eating with the Traces.’
‘Right.’ Barnaby crossed the road. ‘How did she seem?’
‘Well, she didn’t know of course, about the murder. After I told her she went a bit funny. She laughed a lot but it sounded . . . oh I don’t know . . . I think she’d been drinking, actually.’
Phyllis Cadell was standing by the window in the room where they had first met. She turned as they entered and as soon as Barnaby saw her face he knew his suspicions were correct. He stepped forward.
‘Phyllis Cadell. I arrest you on suspicion of the murder of -’
‘Oh no!’ She turned from him and ran to the far end of the room. ‘Not now . . . not now!’ Then she covered her face with her hands and started to shriek.
Chapter Six
Barnaby crossed the room. As he approached Phyllis became quieter and stared at him. The intensity of her gaze, the utter, utter misery in her eyes, lifted her for a brief moment from the realms of bathos and made her appear an almost tragic figure. Barnaby completed the caution. Troy, trying to look as if all this was no more than he expected, produced his notebook and sat down by the door.
Phyllis Cadell gazed at them both, blinking convulsively, then said, ‘How did you find out?’
‘We have removed several files from Mrs Rainbird’s bungalow. Yours was amongst them.’ She would never know that no details of the crime were stated in the file and that the blackmailer’s victim was identified only by three figures and an initial. Or that, lacking any sort of proof, Barnaby had hoped to frighten her into an admission of guilt. She started to speak.