‘Eleven, twelve. I’m hopeless with time. Ask anyone.’
‘Were you the last to go?’
‘As far as I recall.’
‘And how did you leave Mr Hadleigh?’
‘Alive and well.’
‘And in good spirits?’
For the first time Jennings paused. He looked down at his olive-green walking boots then across the room at a crime-prevention poster showing a disembodied hand creeping into an open handbag. ‘Hard to say, really. He didn’t strike me as someone who gave a lot away.’
‘What did you talk about? After the others had gone.’
‘Writing. That is why I was asked.’
‘Do you often accept this kind of invitation?’
‘Not as a rule, but Midsomer Worthy was quite near. Also I thought it might be amusing.’
‘And was it?’
‘No. A positive Valhalla of tedium.’
‘Perhaps you could tell us—’
‘For heaven’s sake! What on earth have my impressions got to do with this shocking business? We’ll be here all night at this rate.’
‘As an outsider, Mr Jennings, you have a viewpoint that could be uniquely helpful. I’m not only interested in your opinions of individual group members but also in any cross currents or tensions you may have picked up during the course of the evening.’
‘Relating to Hadleigh, you mean?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Max regarded a poster on the other wall, this time seriously and at some length, as if gradually coming to terms with the notion that Neighbourhood Watch could change his life. Sergeant Troy, who had been leaning against the door, picked up an orange vinyl chair and sat just behind his chief. The room was very quiet. Just the hiss of tape and the occasional scraping of a chair leg as Jennings fidgeted about . . .
‘In your business,’ Barnaby nudged the conversation back on the rails, ‘you must need a keen eye and ear. Your raw material aren’t they, people? Surely you must have noticed something.’
‘There was a woman with red hair - I’m afraid I forget her name - who was in love with Hadleigh. And extremely unhappy about it. A ghastly little man called Clapton. Hopelessly ineffectual and, I suspect, completely un-talented, with his poor squash of a wife. A sweet old chap so distrait it hardly seemed safe to let him loose without a keeper and a fearsome, barking-mad woman with legs like Nelson’s column and a quite Laurentian idolatry for what she kept calling “true English blood”.’ He looked back and forth between the two policemen. ‘Is the theory then that one of them came back later and did him over?’
Barnaby admitted to some surprise at this suggestion. ‘You’re the only person I’ve yet spoken to who didn’t assume the murder was the result of a break-in.’
‘Oh, no writer worth his salt’s going to settle for that. Far too tame. Where’s the plot?’
‘Why did you go and visit this group, Mr Jennings?’
‘I’ve already been asked that.’
‘Your agent was frankly disbelieving. She implied it was the sort of thing you’d never do.’
‘Talent? What on earth have you been talking to her for?’
‘We were trying to trace you. After your wife had told us—’
‘You’ve been to my house?’ The words emerged in a tangled skein as if the man’s tongue was so stiff it could not shape or separate them properly.
‘Obviously. Mrs Jennings seemed to think you had gone to Finland.’
‘Jesus Christ. What did you tell her?’
‘At that stage there was nothing we could tell her. And in any case she was hardly in a condition to take much in.’
‘It was your Mr Stavro,’ said Troy, ‘who described your movements. According to his statement you asked for an early call, saying you had to drive to Heathrow. He also mentioned that you got home on the night in question at one a.m. and not, as you have just suggested, between eleven and midnight.’
‘I told you. I never know what time it is.’
‘Rather a waste of that beautiful watch then, sir.’
Jennings seemed not to have heard. ‘Have you . . . ? Did you go back to the house? Talk to my wife again?’
‘No.’
‘So, as far as she knows . . .’
‘You’re still pussyfooting around Helsinki.’
Even as he spoke Barnaby wondered how true that was. He recalled the woman’s bitter, wasted smile and eyes that could take no more yet knew that more was surely on the way. Saw her coppery limbs, banded with cold fire, cleaving through the water; up and down, up and down, like some glittering, cruelly constrained tropical fish.
Jennings’ infidelities were his own affair (unless they had some bearing on the present case) and should have been a matter of complete indifference to Barnaby. Yet, momentarily, he felt both pity and disgust which he made no attempt to conceal. To his surprise, for the writer had struck him as self-contained to a fault, Jennings immediately started to explain and justify himself.