Blame The Dead

That cut out a fair bit of territory, and I could add David's room and probably a few larders and cloakrooms and coal-houses where Mrs Benson had the grazing rights. Which didn't leave us much positive information except that men hide things high rather than low, unless they're young or short-arsed, and Fenwick had been neither.

All those rules are taught in the best CI schools and are both beautiful and true, but they miss out one thing: there has to be something there to be found. And here, there wasn't. After nearly two hours, I was absolutely damn certain of that. It wasn't in the cellar and it wasn't in the attic and it wasn't anywhere in between. It wasn't in the gardening shed and it wasn't in the garage.

Of course, it might be locked in a treasure chest and buried anywhere in the acre or so of ground – but that didn't make sense. Fenwick hadn't been laying it down for the future like port or savings bonds. This was a live piece of evidence; if he'd bothered to hide it at all, it had to be somewhere simple, where he could get it back quickly.

Like his bank or his solicitors' office?

I drifted gloomily back to Fenwick's study and sat down at his desk and helped myself to a mouthful of Norwegian aquavit from a bottle in the corner. It was a nice, small, crowded, very masculine room; all tobacco browns and rich dark greens. A couple of comfortable deep leather chairs, rows of Folio Society books, one of those bone galleons that French prisoners on Dartmoor used to carve in Napoleonic times. Or a good fake of one, of course.

A handsome room, although maybe a bit like the Master's Study layout in a furniture exhibition, and a bit wasted, seeing how little time Fenwick can have spent here. Unless somebody else had built it for him, as bait.

Thirty

Lois – I was beginning to think of her by her Christian name, now – got back soon after four. I heard the Morgan grinding across the gravel and went out to open the garage doors for her.

'Any luck?' she asked cheerfully.

I shook my head. She drove past me and parked beside the Rover. I picked some of the food boxes out of the back; there was enough there to feed an army for a campaign.

'David'll be home on Tuesday,' she explained, then looked a little bleak. 'At least I hope so.' She perked up again, and turned to my problem. 'Never mind, I expect it'll turn up. Perhaps he left it at his apartment in town.'

'He didn't.'

She turned quickly. 'How d'you know?'

I shrugged. 'I managed to get in there.'

She looked at me carefully, then smiled. 'I suppose you have to do things like that. And you didn't find anything?'

'Nothing.' We went up into the house, me wondering why she had looked shocked at my turning over the flat when she hadn't even blinked at the idea of me doing it to her own house. But not wondering very hard.

We dumped the boxes in the kitchen and she looked around and said, 'It's very tidy. You don't seem to have moved anything. But I suppose you were trained to leave it like that.'

'Something like it. Well – thank you for letting me try.'

'Must you hurry back to London? Would you like a cup of tea?'

Some silences are louder than a scream, some things unsaid are clearer than a parade-ground order. I hesitated, looking at her and seeing only a gentle, guileless baby-faced smile. But thinking suddenly of her as a woman, not Fenwick's widow or David's mother or a style or an accent… but as small neat breasts that looked sharp and would feel very soft, and pale skin like silk and long, agile legs and a clutching warm welcome…

'Yes,' I said carefully. 'A cup of tea Would be very nice.'

We sat on opposite sides of the big kitchen table and sipped politely.

'What are you thinking?' she asked innocently.

'Oh… about the weather.'

'Of course.' Her smile got a little mischievous. 'Warm, for the time of year, what? '

'Something to do with a region of high pressure.'

'No cold fronts, then.'

'Strictly warm ones. Or occluded, of course.'

'I never understood what an occluded front was.'

'A mixture of warm and cold fronts.'

She nodded. 'How very wicked it does sound.'

'No, that's just the way it looks on the weather map.

'Does somebody have to draw you a map?'

She smiled innocently again.

And the phone rang.

We stared at each other, eyes steady with false calm. Then she slowly got up and went out to the hall to answer it.

I collected the cups and saucers and teapot and jug and sugar and put them away or stacked them neatly. I don't know why. Instinct, from living alone. Or for something to do.

Then I went out to the hall. She was standing with the phone, listening and nodding. She reached out a hand to me and I held it. Her strong slim fingers twined around mine.

She said into the phone, That's all right, Mr Baker, but you don't have to worry about that side of it."

She lifted my hand and rubbed it gently against her cheek. I moved closer and smelt just the slightest touch of scent; something fragile and fresh, like a broken petal.

'No, Mr Baker, my father's lawyers'll handle all that. I only-'

Baker muttered on. I leaned and started nibbling her ear; she lifted her head towards me.

'Yes, Mr Baker, but the house is still in his name so I couldn't decide that anyway.'

She moved my hand slowly and drifted it across her breasts, caressing herself with me. Her bra under the blouse was very thin; I could feel her nipples hardening slowly.

'Well, Mr Baker, if the tax people really want an answer then they'd better write to the States. I can't tell them.'

I moved my other hand across and down her body.

'All right, Mr Baker. Any time. Goodbye.'

She turned towards me and let the receiver clatter loose on the table and her mouth reached for mine.

It happened there, on the hall rug, a fast frantic rape -except I don't know who raped whom. In a few minutes we were lying side by side in a tangle of rugs and clothes -1- not even naked ourselves.

'Do you think of me as a loose woman now?' she asked dreamily.

'Well, not exactly as a tight one.'

She laughed quietly, then shivered and wrapped herself in a corner of the long-haired white rug. 'Does this all go in your reports?'

'I'm not writing reports for anybody.'

'Ah. You must be a very private detective to employ yourself.'

'I'm not a detective. Can I have a drink?'

I found my trousers and carried them through into the drawing-room. It was suddenly bright in there, although the day beyond the windows wasn't. Just that the hall had a permanent twilight.

I heard her going upstairs.

A quarter of an hour later she came in, looking bright and fresh and now wearing a light-blue cashmere sweater and rather worn blue jeans. She'd tidied her hair a bit, as well.

I had a glass of weak Scotch and water in my hand. 'Can I get you one?'

'No thanks, Jim. Or is it Jimmie or what? I really ought to have asked before.' She actually blushed.

I laughed aloud. 'Jamie, mostly. The Scottish thing.'

'Let's go out and have a drink. I haven't been to a pub in – oh, I don't know…'

'What about the neighbours?'

'We'll find a small village place where nobody'll possibly recognise me.'

So we went. On the way out, at the top of the steps, she stopped suddenly and said, 'Kiss me.'

I did. She was suddenly shaking all over.

We sat in the corner of a small boozer, too small for the brewery ever to bother tarting up, just across the Sussex border, and talked in near-whispers. We were the first there and the barmaid's ear was waggling like a radar aerial only eight feet away.