Written in Blood(148)

As they walked off down the corridor Audrey said, ‘When will you tell her the rest, sir?’

‘When she’s up to it. I’d say she’d had enough for one night.’ As they passed through reception he looked at the hospital clock. It was almost one thirty. ‘And I think that goes for all of us.’





Coda

Nearly always, even when a case has, on paper, been solved there will be ramifications that remain forever unexplained. Characters on the fringe of the investigation for instance whose precise involvement remains mysteriously undefined. A tangle of snippets and loose ends that are fated never to be unravelled or neatly tied.

Accepting this, Barnaby had assumed the actual identity of the woman in Gerald Hadleigh’s ‘wedding’ photograph would remain undiscovered and had dismissed the matter from his mind. Then one evening Troy, ringing up in great excitement, said that he had found her.

The sergeant had been re-running, not for the first time and to his wife’s increasing annoyance, his video of The Crucible, in which the chief’s daughter had so radiantly performed. In the court scene, when various women were racing all over the place and screaming their heads off, Troy had spotted a face in the background that looked vaguely familiar. He had pressed the freeze-frame and there she was. Mrs H. to the life.

They had traced her easily, first through BBC casting then via Equity. She was a registered film extra and, at the time of the photograph, had also been on the books of an escort agency. She certainly remembered the business with Mr Hadleigh, for it had been the easiest hundred pounds she had earned in her life and all strictly Kosher. She had even been allowed to keep the hat and veil, but he had been quite short with her when she had tried to find out what lay behind it all. The church had been in the country not far from Burnham Beeches. It had all been pretty much as Max Jennings surmised.

All that was nearly a month ago. Barnaby, due for some leave, was now taking it, for Cully and Nicholas were about to fly home and he did not want to miss even a moment of their company. They would be staying a couple of days before returning to London.

As he sat now, engrossed in a relatively unclawed section of the Independent, he thought how very nice it would be to see them again and hear all about the on- and off-stage dramas that seemed to be permanently simmering in their closed and over-heated world. So different, thank God, from his own.

His left leg was going to sleep. He stretched it out, flexed his toes, then crossed the other leg over it with some vigour. The kitten, who had been playing with his shoe lace, went flying through the air to land on a cushion in the opposite armchair.

‘Tom!’

‘What?’ He lowered the paper. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Try and be more careful.’ She was running across the room and picking up Kilmowski, who immediately struggled to be put down.

‘What have I done?’

‘You could have really hurt him.’ The kitten was already plodding back to the settee, where it started to make its way determinedly up Barnaby’s trousers.

‘Do you want your drink now or with your meal?’

‘Now, please, love.’

A glass of Santa Carolina Grand Reserve was poured and very toothsome it turned out to be. Barnaby forced himself to sip rather than glug. Tomorrow, when the children were here, they would have champagne. A lovely smell was wafting from the direction of the oven. Rabbit casserole baked with lemon grass, capers and celeriac. Comice pears were in there too. He had made a sauce of half-fat cream cheese pushed twice through a sieve then flavoured with a dash of Madeira and some toasted amaretti crumbs.

Barnaby drank a little more and lay back, content. This, even with pins and needles being systematically pushed and pulled about one’s upper arm, was definitely the life.

The phone rang. Joyce took it in the kitchen. She cried out with pleasure. ‘Oh, hello darling - how lovely to talk to you.’

Barnaby’s happiness went on hold. Something had gone wrong. They weren’t coming. Or, if they were, they couldn’t stay. If they could stay it was only overnight. Perhaps they were bringing people and he and Joyce would never have a chance to talk to their daughter or Nicholas properly.

‘Tom?’ There was the sound of the receiver being laid down and Joyce’s face appeared in the serving hatch. ‘Do you want a quick word? She’s just ringing to check we’ve got the time right for Heathrow.’

‘Might as well.’

‘Don’t come round. I’ll pass it through.’

Cully sounded as if she was in the next room. It was going to be great to see him and Ma again. She had bought a super carved wooden rack in Poland for all his spices. What was he cooking tomorrow night? Had he remembered to video The Crucible? Tour had been terrific. Director an absolute toad. Nicholas utterly brilliant as Don John. She had never really got Beatrice right.