“What about you, chief?” said Troy. “Any luck?”
“If it turns out we’re looking at murder, I’ve a nice juicy suspect. Someone who beat up Hollingsworth after the man had apparently swindled him out of a lot of money.”
Troy whistled. “No longer Mr. Nice Guy then, our Alan.”
“If he ever was.”
They had reached Nightingales. There were a handful of people outside but, as the gates were closed and the constable on the front doorstep was a silent and unforthcoming stranger, no one lingered.
“Got a message for you, sir,” said the constable. “Lady next door, to the left, wanted a word with a senior person.”
PC Ramsey had got this information from his colleague guarding the rear of the house. Apparently Kevin, hearing a rustle just beyond the fence, had gone to investigate and found a face peering at him through a tangle of green stuff. The whispered request having been delivered, the face vanished, as if its owner had been sharply pulled away.
Barnaby, wrongly assuming a prurient interest in the goings-on at the Hollingsworths, made his way to The Larches. Troy rapped on the fruit-gum panels. They moved inwards, as if by magic.
Barnaby called out, “Hullo?”
“Come in.”
The words, whispered from directly behind the door, were barely audible. The two detectives stepped inside.
Ten minutes later, though the tension in the room twanged like a harp, Barnaby had still not been told exactly why they were there. He sat on a sofa eating a sandwich so fine it dissolved on the tongue like a Communion wafer. It was thinly filled with bland, almost tasteless cheese and had a droopy fringe of cress. It was also ice-cold. Mrs. Brockley obviously kept her bread in the fridge. Barnaby’s teeth had started to ache and he drank some tea hoping to warm them up.
The Brockleys were looking at each other. Not the silent “You,” “No, you” matey joshing that couples sometimes go in for. Their glances did not quite meet. His seemed to say, don’t you dare. Hers was harder to read. She was plainly distressed and under a lot of strain but she was also angry. Her eyes glittered.
“You asked us to come round, Mrs. Brockley?” said the Chief Inspector, not for the first time.
“Yes.” She looked directly at him and he realised that her eyes were glittering not with anger but with tears. “Something very—”
“Iris!”
“We’ll have to talk to them sooner or later.”
“You needn’t have asked them here. The whole place will know.”
Barnaby, becoming impatient with all this prevarication, attempted reassurance. “Mr. Brockley, we are going to be carrying out a house-to-house inquiry shortly regarding Mrs. Hollingsworth’s—”
“What’s that? House to ... ?”
“It means everyone in the village will be visited. I’m sure, once this gets underway, people will simply think we happened to start here.”
“You see,” cried Iris.
Reg seemed unconvinced. Looking at them both, the word “corseted” entered Barnaby’s mind. Practically obsolete in these days of teddys and bodys, Lycra and Spandex, but a word surely made flesh by these two rigorously constrained people. Tightly-laced, pushed and pulled and whaleboned into a respectably shaped life that was beyond reproach. A life that surely could not properly breathe.
“Our daughter’s disappeared.”
It was Iris who had spoken. Reg covered his face with his hands as if suddenly exposed to public shame.
“Brenda went out on Monday evening in the car. Rather suddenly, actually. When she wasn’t back by ten—”
“She did ring up Inspector,” interrupted her husband.
“That was two days ago,” shouted Iris.
Sergeant Troy, sussing that he was about to partake in the most boring non-event in the history of mankind, polished off his fourth scone, scooped up a couple of chocolate biscuits and let his attention wander. He glanced at the clock yet again.
It was hard to miss this splendid timepiece. Wherever one looked in the room its movement caught the eye. Diamanté numerals on a black velvet face and golden hands. On the tip of the minute hand perched a large pink and yellow butterfly with sequined wings and long wobbly antennae. Every sixty seconds it jumped forward and Troy’s nerves were starting to jump with it.
“Is she usually back by ten, Mrs. Brockley?” asked Barnaby.
“No,” said Reg. “She doesn’t go out, you see.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, to work of course. And occasionally shopping.”
“But not at night.”
“How old is Brenda?”
“Twenty-nine.” Though Barnaby’s face remained expressionless, Iris must have sensed incredulity, for she added, “I realise she’s not a child but she’s never, ever done anything like this before.”
“In her entire life,” said Reg.
“So when did she telephone?”
“About nine o’clock. Said she was staying with a friend.”
“Not staying with,” Reg corrected his wife. “Just with. As in being with. Talking to.”
“We didn’t even know she had a friend,” said Iris with unconscious pathos.
Even if she had not been twenty-nine, Troy, having glanced at the elaborately framed studio portrait on the sideboard, would not have given her as much as the wax from his ears. Talk about a dog. Worst in show at Crufts and then you were insulting the canines. No point tuning up your whanger for that one.
“It’s all very well her saying not to worry,” said Iris. “But of course we did.”
“All night long.”
“And in the morning ...”
They had argued for nearly two hours about ringing Brenda’s office. Iris, black shadows round her eyes, was a thousand per cent for, Reg totally against at first then wavering in the face of his wife’s extreme agitation. They had faced each other over the unlaid kitchen table—breakfast would have choked them—torn between doing what was socially acceptable and correct and easing the sick uncertainty in their hearts.
“What on earth will they think?”
“Fiddle to what they think.”
“It’s not business etiquette, Iris.”
“I don’t care.”
“Personal calls are frowned on. Brenda’s always been very hot on that.”
“You don’t have to talk to—”
“We’ll get her into trouble.”
“Just ask if she’s there. Say it’s business. Pretend to be a customer.”
“She’ll be home at half past six.”
“I can’t wait nine hours,” screamed Iris.
So, to the accompaniment of his wife wailing and the poodle barking, Reg had rung the Coalport and National Building Society. He had been put on hold and exposed to a bagpipe and electric organ rendering of “Ye Banks and Braes,” a tune that, for the rest of his life, he could never listen to without a cold and nauseous upsurge of reminiscent dread.
Eventually he was transferred to Personnel to be told that Miss Brockley had not arrived for work that morning and that there was no message. After Reg put the phone down, he and Iris had sat very quietly for a long time. Even Shona crept back to her basket uninstructed.
The next twenty four hours crawled by. The Brockleys couldn’t eat. Cups of tea were made and stood around, uncoastered, on various pieces of furniture until they were stone cold.
It was Iris, by Wednesday morning nearly demented, who had seen the policeman in the Hollingsworths’ back garden and impulsively spoken to to him. Reg had hurried to stop her, a second too late.