Written in Blood(19)

The gate of Plover’s Rest now stood half open. He walked boldly up the path. He had decided to knock on the back door and ask to borrow some milk. Transparent certainly and, like most people unaccustomed to lying, Rex had already reinforced this simple request by an elaborate sub-structure of quite unnecessary detail. When he couldn’t sleep only cocoa helped. Made with water it gave him tummy ache. Milk bottle slipped through his fingers when taking it from the fridge and smashed on the floor. Saw Max’s car so knew you would still be up.

There was no light in the kitchen but the inner door was open and Rex could see through to the section of room in which Max was sitting. He was talking and gesturing in an open-handed rather appealing way, as if he were offering a present. Then he became silent and his stance changed. He shook his head vigorously and leaned forward, listening. His profile showed a deeply involved attention. He looked - Rex sought for the exact word - concerned. Yes, that was it. Deeply concerned. Like a Samaritan.

Now, if only he could see Gerald. Rex screwed his head sideways, laid his cheek against the glass and squinnied with effort, but all to no avail. He stood upright again, aware of a sharp crick in his neck. Everything seemed all right. It looked, in fact, as if old Gerald had been worrying over nothing. Anticipating a disaster that just wasn’t going to happen. On the other hand, he (Rex) had definitely promised . . .

It was precisely then, as he stood hesitating, that Rex became aware of an unpleasant, crawly feeling somewhere between his shoulder blades. After a moment the feeling intensified and changed direction, worming its way coldly down his spine. He swung around.

Behind him barely defined trees gathered, crowding the bare borders, together with dense, black clumps of shrubs. Gripping his stick, telling himself that the kitchen door was a mere few feet away, Rex moved towards the willow fence. Then, staring hard into the massed trunks and tangle of branches, he called out.

‘Hullo?’ Silence. No leaf rustled. Not a night creature moved. ‘Is there anybody there?’

Rex heard only his own breathing. But he knew, as surely as he felt the freezing ground beneath his feet, that someone, or something, was out there. And staring straight back at him.





Midsomer Madness

Tom Barnaby was missing his daughter. Cully was in Eastern Europe with an Arts Council tour of Much Ado About Nothing. She was playing Beatrice while Nicholas, her husband of eighteen months, had been cast in the colourful but vastly subordinate role of Don John. This after a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company had failed to offer the kind of parts he spent all his offstage moments dreaming about.

They had visited the Barnabys the night before their departure and Tom, who knew Nicholas well and his daughter very well indeed, could see trouble on the horizon. Nicholas was plainly torn between pride in his wife’s success and resentment at the widening gap between their professional fortunes. To rub in the salt, Cully had recently been filming in The Crucible, a prestigious production for BBC2 to be shown while they were away.

Of course Nicholas could have turned Much Ado down and hung around London waiting for something better, but there was no way, he told his father-in-law on the eve of their departure, that he was letting Cully racket around half Europe in the company of a dozen male actors. He and Barnaby were sitting in the conservatory at the time, drinking Clare Valley Shiraz. Watching his beautiful girl, arm in arm with his wife and on the point of joining them, Barnaby sympathised keenly.

It was not, he was sure, that the lad did not trust his wife. The root of the problem lay in Nicholas’s own insecurities. He still could not credit that he had won such a prize. Even on the wedding day, passed in a golden haze of bliss, Barnaby had noticed quite clearly this obverse shadow of disbelief.

They had been away now nearly two weeks and had left behind a memento - an enchanting Russian Blue kitten, Kilmowski, acquired just before the tour was offered. At least, Joyce described it as enchanting. Barnaby regarded the animal as a damn nuisance. He could no longer sit down without remembering to check both chair and cushions or open a door without a warning squeal from his wife. Yesterday the Independent had been torn to shreds on the doormat, unreadable even before wee’d on.

And, as if his daughter’s absence and the kitten’s presence was not enough, Barnaby was now faced with the misery of dieting. Always a big man, he had taken up cooking a couple of years previously, largely in self-defence, for Joyce’s food was so spectacularly bad that friends, invited for dinner, had been known to bring it with them.

He had taken to the art like a duck to orange sauce and had discovered, after years of munching on indescribable indefinables chased by antacid tablets, that he had, by nature, the appetite of a king. It was just his luck that the king in question happened to be Henry the Eighth.