The Killings at Badger's Drift(84)

He took a bite of the excellent plum cake, stiff and black with fruit, and a swig of Teachers. In his mind he sat again on the unyielding Rexine sofa overlooked by a constellation of smiling Laceys. Mrs Lacey as a child and young woman, wedding photographs, christenings. The children growing up, so alike and watchful; always close.

‘She was the strong one,’ said Mrs Sharpe. ‘Took after her father.’

‘Not an easy man, I understand?’

‘He was wicked!’ Mrs Sharpe’s thin face flushed. ‘I don’t go in for all this modern understanding-what-makes-people-tick rubbish. There are some people just born wicked and he was one of them. He broke my poor girl’s heart and drove her to her death. She was a lovely creature too . . . so gentle. And other women . . . he was supposed to have met this smart piece he went abroad with after Madelaine died. Well I’ve never believed that and I never will. He was carrying on with her all along, to my way of thinking.’

‘The boy was more like his mother, then?’

‘He worshipped her. I felt so sorry for him. He tried to be brave . . . to protect her, but he was no match for his father. Gerald was a very violent man . . . once he threw an iron at Madelaine and Michael jumped in between them and got it full in the face. That’s how he got that mark, you know.’

Barnaby shook his head. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘But Katherine was all for her father. And he went off and left her without a backward glance. It would have damaged a weaker person for good and all but she . . . well . . . she was a chip off the old block all right. She didn’t seem much like him on the surface. He was flamboyant, always showing off . . . she’d draw into herself more, but in their hearts they were a dead spit. Fiery tempers and a cast-iron will. And when he’d gone she turned all her attention to Michael. And he, poor boy, with his mother dead, clung to her in desperation. You’d never have thought he was the elder. She was mother, father, sister, everything to him. Sometimes I wondered what I was doing there at all except there had to be somebody while they were still under age.

‘Michael started painting when he was about fourteen. Seriously, I mean. He’d always been good at art at school and they kept on at him to go to college. He went for a bit then walked out. Said they were a load of rubbish. And Katherine encouraged him. Told him he’d be better off travelling round Europe, going to galleries, museums and suchlike. That’s what painters always did, she said. Anyway, that’s how things stood till just before Katherine was seventeen. Michael’d had his eighteenth birthday a couple of months before and that’s when the rows started. Adolescent rows as I saw it. Picking fault with each other all the time, every day a slanging match. She’d scream at him, he’d fling himself out of the house. And yet, Inspector’ - she leaned forward and her voice became very quiet - ‘all the time this was going on I felt there was something wrong. I could sense the undercurrent of their feelings for each other as strong as ever. The rows seemed . . . forced somehow . . . unnatural.

‘Then, one night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours till at three o’clock I gave up and decided to go downstairs and make some tea. I was walking past Katherine’s door when I heard sounds . . . little cries. I thought she was having a nightmare so I opened the door and . . . looked in.’ Her face burned with the memory and she covered it with her hands. ‘I couldn’t stay after that. I gave the excuse to the Traces that the children - I still thought of them like that, you understand - were simply too much for me and I wanted to retire. My sister had died a few months before and left me this bungalow. My last couple of weeks at the cottage were as different again. No need to stage any more rows to put me off the scent. They didn’t bother to conceal how they felt. Didn’t even seem to think there was anything wrong. It was so natural for them, you see . . . just an extension of their close feelings. They couldn’t understand why I had to leave. Why I wasn’t happy for them both. I did try once or twice considering the possibility of staying on . . . they were still my babies in a way and I had promised their mother I’d look after them, but then one day Katherine started talking about their European tour. Oh they were going here . . . they were going there . . . I don’t know where they weren’t going. I asked then, “Who’s paying for all this?” And she said, “Henry, of course.” And Michael said, “Kate can get Henry to do anything.”

‘They were standing together at the time behind the kitchen table, arms around each other’s waists. And I suddenly realized how strong they were . . . They fed off each other. You could almost see it . . . energy flowing to and fro between them . . . doubling . . . doubling in strength. And I felt afraid. I thought, there’ll be no stopping them. Whatever they want . . .