Troy handed over the envelope and switched on the portable television to catch the eleven o’clock news. There was an interview with Miss Myrtle Tombs, village post-mistress at Compton Dando, who had been so cunningly placed before an excellent still of the Manor House that she appeared to be actually standing in the drive. She had nothing to say about the Gamelin case or the house’s inhabitants and was saying it with great conviction and at great length. Troy switched off just in time to hear a lengthy hiss of indrawn breath from the far side of the office.
Barnaby was staring at the paper in front of him, his mouth slightly open, his eyes disbelievingly blank. Troy crossed over, slid the report from his chief’s slackened grasp, sat down and read it.
‘This can’t be right.’ He shook his head. ‘They’ve cocked it up.’
‘The appliance of science. Highly unlikely.’
‘You’ll check back though?’
‘Oh yes.’
Where does this leave us if they’ve got it right?’
‘Up the bloody creek.’ Barnaby began savagely punching at the buttons as if in retaliation for some mortal insult. ‘Without a bloody paddle.’
Felicity was up and dressed and sitting by the open window of her room. She was wearing the contents of the pigskin case: a Caroline Charles cream silk two-piece splashed all over with poppies and wild flowers. There were some companion shoes, bright grass-green sueded by Manolo Blahnik. Peep-toes and heels like oil derricks. May put these firmly away in a drawer and offered a pair of comfortable slippers instead. Before putting them on, she had massaged Felicity’s feet with a little scented oil. The orangey-copper skin was like fine wrinkled paper; her ankles the size of May’s wrists.
‘We must feed you up,’ May had said, smiling. ‘Lots of fresh vegetables and home-made bread.’
‘Oh I can’t eat bread.’ Felicity immediately added an apology. ‘You’re very kind but I have to stay size ten.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘... well ...’ The fact was that all of Felicity’s acquaintances were size ten and the minute they weren’t they rushed off to a Health Hydro until they were again. Faced with twelve stones of blooming benevolent amplitude, this explanation seemed both feeble and insulting. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You have a very long journey, Felicity. You will need all the help we can give you but you must also help yourself. Now, at the moment you are very weak and can only do a little, but that little must be done. It is your contribution, do you see?’
‘Yes, May.’ Felicity was disturbed at the notion of a contribution - feeling that her spirit, brittle as ice, might well crack beneath the strain. At the clinic, where she had lived in a cosseted dream, her contribution had been purely financial. Perhaps that was what May meant. A nervous question revealed this not to be the case. Felicity gathered up the lees of a waifish courage and asked what she would have to do.
‘For now, just eat a little and rest. Then as you get stronger we shall see.’
Felicity stretched out her hand. As she did so her mind kicked up a vivid memory. Arriving home from her first drying-out, she had turned to Guy reaching out, precisely so. He had called her an emotional vampire and turned his back. But May took Felicity’s hand between her own still faintly scented palms, kissed it and laid it against her cheek. Felicity felt her veins unfreeze.
‘You haven’t any more of that dreadful stuff that goes up your nose?’
‘No, May.’
‘That’s right. The body is the temple that houses your immortal soul. Never forget that. And never abuse it. Now,’ she gently removed her hand, ‘I must go and help Janet with the lunch. There’ll be some nice soup and you must try and drink a little.’
In spite of having promised at breakfast to do the main course once more, there was no sign of Janet in the kitchen. May started on the soup, chopping up Jerusalem artichokes and leeks and sweating them in a little Nutter. She had a look on the seasoning shelf, wondering what flavour might best tempt Felicity’s appetite. The soup looked rather pale. May dwelt on the possibility of adding a pinch of saffron. Brother Athelstan’s Herbal assured her that it ‘makyth a man merry’ but added a cautionary postscript telling of the Norwegian mystic Nils Skatredt who, after a heavy night on the pistils in 1462, OD’d on the stuff and died laughing. May replaced the tiny box and took down a jar of bay leaves.
Once the soup was nicely bubbling she went in search of Janet, first going up to her room. Janet wasn’t there but a letter was, propped up against a copy of Pascal’s Pensées. May opened it then took herself off to the nearest telephone determined, after their telling off over Trixie’s departure, to get it right this time.
‘What she says, Chief Inspector, is that she’s a pretty good idea where Trixie is and if she isn’t back this evening - Janet I mean - she’ll ring and let us know what’s happening ... Not at all. It’s a pleasure. How are you? And that poor boy with - ’
But her contact had hung up so May went to seek out the others and put them in the picture.
Janet sat uncomfortably jammed up against the burning window of a double-decker by a stout woman with two bursting shopping bags. One of them was half lying across Janet’s knees but the woman made no attempt to rearrange it or apologise. When Janet got off, she saw that some squashed tomatoes had left juice and pips on her skirt.
She had changed the stretch trousers for a summer dress at the last minute. Overlong and full-skirted, patterned with harsh electric blue and tan splodges, it had a scooped neckline. This exposed the rather scrawny hollow at the base of her throat, so Janet had put on a loosely strung necklace of large transparent beads resembling old-fashioned cough lozenges. The dress had an outside pocket to which her fingers constantly and nervously strayed. Tucked in there were instructions on how to find Seventeen Waterhouse. (That really had been the complete address. A block of flats the post office said). There was also a bumpy homemade bag of lavender which Heather had thrust into her hand as she was coming downstairs, saying, ‘It’s only a teeny tiny, Jan, but it comes with all my love.’
At the terminus Janet dismounted, leaving the bus station, turning right as per her instructions, then right again. She had reached the traffic lights when her eye was caught by an exquisite little Georgian bay window - a jewel in its own right - fronting a jewellery boutique. She crossed over for a closer look.
The window was nearly empty, as is the way when the price is immaterial. Just a fold or two of ivory velour, some stunning earrings in thinly beaten bronze and a scarf. This lay as if casually abandoned, a glowing pool of lustrous, irridescent green and shining turquoise. There was a white ticket turned blank side up. Hardly aware that she was doing so, Janet went inside for a closer look.
The scarf was a thirty-six inch square of pure silk, marvellously fine and slippy. The sort of stuff people used to say could be drawn through a wedding ring. Janet imagined it thrown over Trixie’s fair curls, casting a verdant shadow on her creamy complexion. It cost a hundred and twenty pounds.
Janet bought it, trying to recall the final figure of her most recent bank statement whilst writing out the cheque. They wrapped it beautifully in a flat black-and-white striped box lined with scarlet tissue and tied with scarlet silk ribbon. The shop’s name, XERXES, was stamped across the top in gold.
Walking away, thrilled by her purchase, imagining Trixie’s face as she excitedly removed the ribbon ... the lid ... the tissue and, finally, the lovely scarf, Janet felt briefly, uncomplicatedly happy. Then doubts started to rise.
When had she ever seen Trixie wear such colours? Trixie liked pastels: cream, rose, pale blue. Come to think of it, thought Janet, when have I ever seen her in a scarf? She had some, crammed into her underwear drawer, but hardly ever brought out and worn. Oh - Janet stopped dead on the pavement, causing a man to bump into her and curse. How foolish a thing to do. Stupid, wasteful. Idiotic.