Brian, now so relaxed he was putting his slippers on, was explaining how he had rejected Cambridge as too elitist choosing instead Teacher Training College in Uttoxeter. His pale eyes shone behind his Schubert glasses. Even his dingy bottle-brush moustache bristled, with satisfaction at this sweet unrolling of his prideful narrative.
Troy, whose mum had always dinned it into him that self-praise was no recommendation, found it as boring as tears.
‘All this is very interesting, Mr Clapton,’ he lied pleasantly, ‘but perhaps now we’d better get down to the matter in hand.’
‘Oh.’ Brian had almost forgotten why they were there. ‘Yes, all right.’
‘Just a small point.’ Troy rustled the pages of his notebook in the pretence of finding a reference. ‘The night of Mr Hadleigh’s death, you told us’ - more rustling, this time at greater length - ‘that you left the house somewhere about . . . let’s see . . . quarter to eleven. Turning right, you walked once around the Green to, I believe the phrase was “blow the cobwebs away”.’
‘Yes,’ said Brian, though not without a pause.
‘And that is correct?’
‘Indeed it is. My yea is my yea, sergeant, and my nay my nay, as all who know me will confirm.’
‘Well, I’m afraid we have a witness, Mr Clapton, who says they saw you return at just gone midnight. And what’s more approaching your house from the entirely opposite direction.’
The expression on Brian’s face was that of someone suddenly savaged by a dove. He stared at the man who, only seconds ago, had been listening to the story of his life with such courteous interest. Troy smiled. Or at least parted his lips slightly. His sharp teeth gleamed.
‘Ahhh . . . really . . . ? I don’t know who this person is supposed to be, but perhaps it might be in order to ask them a few questions. Such as what they were doing, hiding in hedges at that hour of the night, spying on people.’
‘Hiding in hedges?’
‘Well, I didn’t see anyone.’
‘That is strange. Because you would certainly have passed him had you, in fact, been coming back from a walk around the Green.’
Silence. Brian, moisture prettily pearling his brow, closed his eyes. Immediately he lost thirty years. Aged three, he picked up a Victoria plum on a neighbour’s lawn and took it home. His parents, greatly alarmed at this early example of their only offspring ‘getting into trouble’, dragged him, crying, next door to apologise and return the booty. After that, forewarned, they laboured ceaselessly to protect Brian from his baser instincts.
He was taught that speaking to strange children or even trying to share his sweets would get him into trouble, as would bringing friends home or going to their houses. Cheeking grown-ups, especially those with even the slightest shred of authority, would, more than any other misdemeanour, bring disaster on them all. Brian cursed their cringing servility from the bottom of his heart. They had eviscerated him. Taken out his guts and left him defenceless.
‘You are aware, sir, that this is a murder investigation?’
‘Oh yes, yes. And anything I can do to help. Anything at all.’
Troy was standing very still, one arm lying across his notebook on the stone window shelf, the other resting at his side. Behind him the sun caught his hair, which glowed, an aureole of fiery quills. There was something concealed behind his blank expression that hinted at great determination. He looked like a rigorously disciplined monk. Or enthusiastic inquisitor.
Brian could, with no trouble at all, see him applying some troublemaker’s face to a hotplate.
‘So. The other night. He may be correct, your witness. Or she of course. If it was a she. I don’t know.’ Hyuf, hyuf.
‘Go on, sir.’ Troy clicked his Biro and smoothed out the paper.
‘Possibly I walked into the village. In fact, now you come to mention it, I remember passing the letter box, so I must have done. Walked into the village that is.’ Pause. ‘I can’t imagine why I said I’d gone round the Green. I can only assume that, as you’d only just that minute told me about Gerald, I was picturing Plover’s Rest and had sort of tangled the two things up in my mind.’
‘Perfectly understandable, Mr Clapton.’
‘Yes, it is. Isn’t it?’ A wisp of colour returned to Brian’s cheeks.
‘See anyone on your walk?’
‘Not a soul. It was a filthy night.’
‘So I understand. I’d’ve wanted a jolly good reason to go out on a night like that, myself.’
‘I did explain—’
‘I would have thought a couple of minutes in the back yard would have been quite long enough to blow a whole lorryload of cobwebs away. Myself.’