Fleeing from this new oppression Mrs. Hollingsworth found herself accidentally entrapped once more with her brute of a husband and this time was lucky to escape with her life.
And so on and convincingly on ...
You could forget all about a murder charge. What evidence would the Crown Prosecution Service have been able to offer? That the prisoner had washed up a glass and an ice bucket? They’d be laughed out of the Old Bailey, all the way down to Blackfriars and over the river to Southwark.
If the more-sinned-against-than-sinning defence came off she might get away with three to four years. And as anything under four was automatically halved all the red blooded males in the country could have a shot at the pleasure of her company in a mere eighteen months’ time. The lucky bastards.
“Sir?” It was the desk sergeant.
“Oh, sorry.” Barnaby looked up. “You waiting for the room?”
“We are Chief Inspector, actually.”
“I was miles away.”
“Going over the Hollingsworth case?”
“Well, at that precise moment sergeant I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich.”
“Really sir?”
“Saw one of her old movies last week on television.”
“Good was it?”
“Excellent,” replied DCI Barnaby. “Very true to life.”
But there was some justice to be had, after all. Just a little. A short while later the Chief Inspector was pleased to discover, via the good offices of Fanshawe and Clay, that Alan Hollingsworth’s will, carefully and very tightly drawn, left every single one of his assets and whatever monies accrued from these to his brother, Edward.
The bequest had one condition. Alan’s widow was to be housed, fed and cared for in every way necessary to her basic well being by Edward and Agnes Hollingsworth unless or until she remarried, upon which all financial provision would cease.
Barnaby would have given much to be present when Simone discovered that the day she walked out of Nightingales in her plain grey dress and simple earrings, leaving behind her entire wardrobe, her necklace and diamond solitaire and the ingeniously raised ransom money, the whole kit and caboodle already belonged to someone else.
Barnaby could not help but wonder, when he heard about all this, if Alan had not always had some inkling of the darker side of his wife’s personality.
A happier side effect of this surprising legal document was when Edward Hollingsworth, informed of Gray Patterson’s plight and discovering it to be the result of his own brother’s immoral behaviour, decided to reimburse him fully.
Sarah Lawson was brought from Holloway Prison to Wood Green Crown Court where she was charged under Section One of the Criminal Law Act, 1977, with conspiracy to obtain money by falsely claiming to have kidnapped Simone Hollingsworth. When requested to stand and face the court it became plain that Miss Lawson was unable to do so without assistance. She received the charge calmly and, when asked if she had anything to say, chose to remain silent.
Later that same week Renee and Ronald Atherton were charged on suspicion of obstructing a police inquiry. Neither had form, much to Barnaby’s surprise, and would probably end up with little more than a caution or a suspended sentence.
Sergeant Troy came back to work, not quite his old self. In his first lunch hour he went out to W. H. Smith and bought the Joan Collins book for Maureen’s birthday. He added a large box of Belgian chocolates from Marks and Spencer and a vast bouquet of flowers, which was really two put together. He chose a card with some care.
PC Perrot remained on the Chief Inspector’s mind. Barnaby remembered the inexperienced constable’s early lapse in reporting the interview with Alan Hollingsworth and compared it to his own crass error of judgement, after thirty years in the business, in relation to Sarah Lawson.
It seemed to Barnaby, after these reflections, that he had treated Perrot unreasonably. He then made the decision that it would be not only unkind but foolish to remove the policeman from a job that he was doing superbly well. He dictated a memo to this effect and received reams of thankful gratitude in response. Interleaved with the ten-page letter were details of all the coming events in every village on Perrot’s beat and a request, if it was not too much trouble, that they be put on the station’s notice-board.
Gradually, in the offices of Causton CID, the machinery of the case was wound down and the inquiry team absorbed into other ongoing investigations.
Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby licked his wounds in private. This was not his first failure and doubtless would not be his last but it was one that he found especially irksome. He imagined the station discussing the affair, not entirely sympathetically. Recalling the day a pretty blonde, with the face of an angel and the temperament of an assassin, ran rings round old Tom.
But one had to keep such things in proportion and, in the end, they did not really matter. What mattered was that in two days’ time it would be Joyce’s birthday.
Barnaby planned a tomato mousse to be served with slices of avocado and lettuce hearts. After this there would be grilled wild salmon with Hollandaise sauce and new broad beans from his garden. Cully and Nicholas were bringing an apricot tart from Patisserie Valerie and some Perrier—Jouet Belle Époque.
They would eat out in the garden and afterwards sit on together in the dusk under the diffused radiance of the stars. Barnaby and his daughter and her husband would sing “Happy birthday to you” and then Joyce would sing to them, as she always did. “Greensleeves” perhaps. Or “There’s No Place Like Home.”