‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, Gavin.’
‘It’s the same everywhere.’ Troy removed the empty, coffee-stained polystyrene beaker and dropped it, together with the pastry, in the bin. ‘Maureen’s stopped putting the news on.’
He produced a snowy handkerchief, smoothed the rest of the crumbs into his hand and disposed of them. Then he wiped his palms and fingers carefully.
‘When you’ve finished dusting,’ said Barnaby, long familiar with his sergeant’s obsessively meticulous behaviour but still capable of being entertained, ‘I want you to go and see Clapton again. Lean a bit. Find out just what he was up to on Tuesday night when he was supposed to be taking this quick turn round the Green.’
‘I’m so glad you could come round.’
‘We were lucky. Me with a break. You on afternoons.’
Sue dunked tea bags in stone mugs. Camomile for herself, Sainsbury’s Red Label for Amy. There was a home-made oat and carob slice each, too. All on a tray balanced on the cracked old Rexine pouffe in front of the fire.
Amy took her tea, murmuring, and by no means for the first time, ‘A terrible day.’
‘Oh, yes - terrible. Terrible.’
They had talked about it and talked about it. Amy starting even before she had taken her coat off.
It was twenty-four hours now since the police had called at Gresham House. After their visit, and the dreadful revelations they had left behind, Amy had naturally expected that she and Honoria would sit down and slacken their disbelief together. Absorb the shock (as she and Sue were doing now) over a warm, comforting drink. But Honoria had appeared satisfied merely to deliver a run-of-the-mill diatribe describing the sociological forces that had combined to bring the criminal element so firmly into their midst. These, though varied, were neither wide ranging nor original.
Ignorant and indulgent parents, lax teachers, spoon-feedings by the state from the cradle to the grave and easy access to the depravities of television. Contempt for authority came next, closely followed by the abandonment of corporal and capital punishment and the deliberately malicious council policy of siting municipal dwellings a mere thieving’s distance from the homes of decent, tax-paying citizens. All or any of these heinous components could, it seemed, be permed any which way to produce the thing that had killed Gerald Hadleigh - for that he came from the dregs of society went without saying. Foolishly, Amy had argued.
‘Aristocrats killed people. Elizabeth the first was always chopping heads off.’
‘Royalty is different.’ Honoria had stared at Amy with her round, hard pebbly eyes. ‘If you’re so interested you should have asked that turnip-faced hobnail of a policeman if you could go over and have a look.’
‘Honoria! What an awful—As if I would ever—Ohhhh.’
Amy’s fingers trembled anew as she broke off a piece of her carob slice. To be made to feel like a morbid snooper, like those awful people parked on the Green. She didn’t want to see anything. Indeed felt quite ill at the thought. But surely (and she had said so) it was no more than human to wish to discuss such an appalling incident on one’s own doorstep.
‘In that case,’ Honoria had replied, ‘I’m glad I’m not human.’
‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ said Sue, as Amy passed this on.
They had cried a little together, as they had separately the previous day. Sue had wept when the news hawks had finally left her in peace, Amy during the brief moments she had spent in St Chad’s after visiting Ralph’s grave.
Not knowing if Gerald had been religious, and not being especially religious herself, she had kept her prayer simple, merely asking that his soul should be accepted in heaven and there find peace. Of course all this sort of thing would be properly and officially attended to at the funeral, but Amy had a vague notion that time was thought to be relevant in these matters and that there should not be too much delay.
Sue spooned thick meadow-flower honey into her tea. ‘I got in touch with Laura and Rex,’ she said,‘when I knew you were coming, in case they wanted to join us. She was really short with me and Rex seemed to be out when I went round.’
‘Oh well.’ Amy was not really disappointed. She loved sitting in this room with Sue, the fire crackling, throwing shadows on the dark red walls. It was like being in a snug cave.
They had become friends almost by default - drawn together as two English people might be if marooned in a foreign country, reaching out in their isolation, sensing immediately a kindred spirit. Without words each understood the other’s situation. They never needed to ask, as outsiders might (and frequently did), why on earth do you put up with it?