‘If you’d like coffee the gubbins is over there.’ She jerked a thumb first towards a white, rather dirty Formica table then at a couple of battered armchairs.
‘No ... um ... really ...’ If Barnaby was thrown it was not because of the woman’s appearance but her truly remarkable voice. Very husky, extremely melodious, luxuriant and warm, it crackled with vitality. My God, thought the chief inspector, sinking into one of the armchairs, what my daughter wouldn’t give to sound like that.
‘Feel free to indulge,’ said Miss Calthrop, shaking a Gitane out of a cellophane-wrapped packet and lighting up.
‘Thank you,’ said Sergeant Troy, reaching inside his jacket before catching the chief’s eye and thinking better of it.
‘So, what’s all this about Carlotta?’
‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, Miss Calthrop—’
‘Next to nothing. Just that the police wanted some information on her background. What’s she done now?’
‘Run away,’ said Sergeant Troy.
‘Oh, come on. The CID fronting the show and she’s “run away”?’
‘Obviously there’s slightly more to it than that.’
‘Bet your Aunt Fanny,’ said Miss Calthrop.
‘There was an argument where she was staying—’
‘Old Rectory, Ferne Basset.’ She tapped a file on her desk with a huge white sausagey finger in which were embedded several beautiful rings. ‘One of dear Lionel’s many benisons.’
‘She was accused of taking a pair of diamond earrings,’ Barnaby took up the story. ‘In some distress apparently, she ran away. Very soon after this we received anonymous information saying someone had fallen into the river.’
‘Or jumped,’ said Troy.
‘She would never have jumped,’ said Miss Calthrop. ‘She was far too fond of herself.’
This was so like what Jackson had said that Barnaby was both surprised and impressed. Surprised because he had assumed the man had been offering a Carlotta of his own making to fit in with whatever story he had in mind.
‘Tell me about her,’ said the chief inspector, relaxing in his chair and looking forward to the next few minutes provided he could only surface breathe. He always enjoyed the process of trawling for new information.
Troy dug out his notebook while also trying to relax in his chair. As he had a spring sticking in his bottom this was not so easy. Still sulking over the lack of a ciggie, he produced his biro and started clicking it on and off, much to Barnaby’s annoyance.
‘Some of the young people that have sat where you’re sitting now, Inspector ...’ began Miss Calthrop, ‘the wonder is not that they have grown up delinquent but that they have managed to grow up at all. To read their files, to understand the poverty, cruelty and total lack of love which has been their lot since the day they were born is to despair of human nature.’
Barnaby did not doubt Miss Calthrop for a minute. He, too, had listened to some appalling stories as the background of the accused had been read out in court. But, although not unsympathetic, he was compelled to keep an emotional distance. It was not part of his job to try and help or heal a fragmented personality. That was for the social services, probation officers and prison psychiatrists. And he did not envy them.
‘But Carlotta Ryan,’ continued Vivienne Calthrop, ‘had no such excuse. Her background was comfortably middle class and I understand her childhood to have been reasonably happy until her parents broke up when she was thirteen. Her mother remarried and Carlotta lived with them for a while but she was very unhappy and ran away more than once. Naturally one wonders if the husband was abusing her ...’
Naturally? thought Barnaby. God, what a world we live in.
Troy was easier now he had something to do and scribbled happily. He had also noticed an Amaretti biscuit tin on the filing cabinet and wondered if he could persuade a few to walk his way.
‘But Carlotta assured me this was not the case. Her father was working in Beirut - not the safest of places to take a child - but she decided she wanted to be with him. Her mother agreed and off she went. She was very rebellious and, as I expect you know, the Lebanon is not a country where women, even foreigners, can behave as they do here.’ She tugged at some frizzy fronds of hair like ruby-coloured seaweed on her forehead. ‘Her father was very concerned she might end up in serious trouble and both parents decided the solution might be to send her to boarding school.’
‘How old would she be then?’ asked Barnaby.
‘About fourteen. Carlotta asked to go to somewhere that concentrated on drama training but her parents were afraid the educational standards might not be too high so they put her in a place near Ambleside.’ Miss Calthrop paused for an inhalation so cavernously deep and powerful that her eyes almost crossed themselves with surprise and pleasure at the shock of it. The fat cheeks didn’t even dimple.
‘Why a stage school?’ asked Troy, breathing deeply alongside. ‘Did she want to be an actress or something?’
‘Yes, she was very keen. I got the impression that if they’d let her go, she wouldn’t have veered quite so wildly off the rails.’
Always an excuse. Sergeant Troy swiftly transcribed all these details. As he did so he tried to think as he knew the boss would be thinking. Bring the girl alive in his mind, picture her flouncing, arguing, determined to get her own way. What his gran would have called ‘a right young madam’.
Actually, he was wrong. Despite his good intentions, Barnaby was having quite a struggle keeping his mind on the meaning of what Vivienne Calthrop was saying. Seduced by the remarkable beauty of her voice and the extraordinary and exotic grandeur of her appearance, his curiosity was given over to speculating by what circuitous route she could possibly have arrived in this sordid den.
He watched her stub her cigarette into an ashtray already brimming with crimsoned dog ends and rearrange the marquee of rose and turquoise silk draped around her person. All this jelly wobbling made her earrings dance. They were very long, reaching almost to her shoulders, delicate chandeliers of sequinned discs, enamelled flowers and tiny moonstones all trembling on a fan of golden wire.
Barnaby became aware that he was being severely looked at. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m not going through all this for nothing, I hope, Chief Inspector?’
‘Of course not, Miss Calthrop. I was just engrossed in that last point you made. It raises interesting ...’
Vivienne Calthrop sniffed. ‘You’re with us now, I trust?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then she ran away for the third time and on this occasion they didn’t get her back.’
Troy’s arm ached. He was dying for a cuppa and some of that interestingly named confectionery. All right for some, with nothing to do but loll back in an armchair with no broken springs and stare out of the window. Nice to see him ticked off for once though.
‘Our file,’ she picked a folder from the tottering pile on her desk, ‘covers the time from when she first came to the attention of the social services until her stay with the Lawrences. There are solid facts here and there are statements from Carlotta which could be truth or fantasy or a mixture of both.’
‘What do you think, Miss Calthrop?’ asked Barnaby.
‘It’s difficult to say. She enjoyed ... how can I put this ... presenting herself. She would never just come into a room, sit down and simply talk. Every time there had to be a different Carlotta. Wronged, unhappy daughter. Talented girl denied her chance of fame. Once she appeared with a tale about being stopped in Bond Street by a scout for a model agency. Gave her a card, asked to see a portfolio of photographs. All nonsense. She was nowhere near tall enough, for a start.’
‘And what about her record?’