His dislike of her was irrational and intense. He jerked his head in the direction of the main part of the house. "Have you corrupted her children the way you've corrupted her?"
She laughed softly and stood up. "You'll find Mrs. Goode in her sitting-room, I expect. I'll show you out." She led the way along her corridor and opened the door. "Walk straight through the main body of the house until you reach the west wing. It's a mirror image of this. You'll find a similar door to mine leading into it." She pointed to a bell on the wall which he hadn't previously noticed. "I should ring that if I were you. At the very least, it would be polite." She stood watching him as he walked away, a scornful smile distorting her lips.
Andy McLoughlin had to pass the library door to reach the west wing so he looked in to tell Walsh it would be a few minutes yet before he returned with Diana Goode. To his surprise, she was in there already, sitting in the chair Phoebe had sat in. She and the Inspector turned their heads as the door opened. They were laughing together like people sharing a private joke.
"There you are, Sergeant. We've been waiting for you."
He took his seat again and viewed Diana with suspicion. "How did you know the Inspector wanted to talk to you?" He pictured her outside the French windows listening to Anne Cattrell making a fool of him.
"I didn't, Sergeant. I popped my head in to see if you wanted a cup of coffee." She smiled good-humouredly and crossed one elegant leg over the other. "What did you want to talk to me about, Inspector?"
There was an appreciative gleam in George Walsh's eye. "How long have you known Mrs. Maybury?" he asked her.
"Twenty-five years. Since we were twelve. We were at boarding school together. Anne, too."
"A long time."
"Yes. We've known her longer than anyone else, I suppose, longer even than her parents did. They died when she was in her early twenties." She came to a halt. "But you know all about that from last time," she finished awkwardly.
"Remind us," Walsh encouraged.
Diana lowered her eyes to hide their expression. It was all very well for Anne to say don't let the bastards intimidate you. Knowledge itself was intimidating. With one casual reference, the sort she might make to anyone, she had rekindled the sparks of an old suspicion. No smoke without fire, everyone had said when David disappeared.
"They died in a car crash, didn't they?" Walsh prompted.
She nodded. "The brakes failed. They were dead when they were cut out of the wreckage." There was a long silence.
"If I remember correctly," said Walsh to McLoughlin when Diana didn't go on, "there were rumours of sabotage. Am I right, Mrs. Goode? The village seemed to think Mrs. Maybury caused the accident to get her hand prematurely on her inheritance. People have long memories. The story was resurrected at the time of Mr. Maybury's disappearance."
McLoughlin studied Diana's bent head. "Why should they think that?" he asked.
"Because they're stupid," she said fiercely. "There was no truth in it. The Coroner's verdict couldn't have been clearer-the brakes failed because fluid had leaked from a corroded hose. The car was supposed to have been serviced three weeks before by a man called Casey who owned the garage in the village. He was just a bloody little crook. He took the money and didn't do the job." She frowned. "There was talk of a prosecution but it never came to anything. Not enough evidence, apparently. Anyway, it was Casey who started rumours that Phoebe had sabotaged the car to get her hands on Streech Grange. He didn't want to lose his customers."
McLoughlin looked her up and down, but there was no appreciative gleam in his eyes. His indifference was complete and, to a woman like Diana who used flirtation to manipulate both sexes, it was daunting. Charm was powerless against a stone wall. "There must have been more to it than that," he suggested dryly. "People aren't usually so gullible."
She played with the hem of her jacket. "It was David's fault. Phoebe's parents had given them a little house in Pimlico as a wedding present which David used as collateral for a loan. He lost the lot on some stock market gamble, couldn't make the repayments and they were in the throes of foreclosure at the time of the accident, with two small children, no money and nowhere to go." She shook her head. "God knows how, but that became public knowledge. The locals lapped up what Casey was saying, put two and two together and made five. From the moment Phoebe took over this house, she was damned. David's disappearance a few years later simply confirmed all their prejudices." She sighed. "The sickening thing is, they didn't believe Casey either. He went bankrupt ten months later when all his customers deserted him. He had to sell up and move away, so there was some justice," she said spitefully. "Not that it did Phoebe any good. They were too damn stupid to see that if he was lying, she was innocent."
McLoughlin leaned back in his chair, splaying strong fingers against the desk-top. He flicked her an unexpectedly boyish smile. "It must have been awful for her."
She responded guardedly. "It was. She was so young and she had to cope with it alone. David either took himself off for weeks'at a time or made matters worse by getting into rows with people."
His eyes softened, as if he understood loneliness and could sympathise with it. "And I suppose her friends here deserted her because of him?"
Diana thawed. "She never really had any, that was half the trouble. If she had, it would have made all the difference. She went away to boarding school at the age of twelve, married at seventeen and only came back when her parents were dead. She's never had any friends in Streech."
McLoughlin drummed his fingers softly on the mahogany. " 'The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.' Francis Bacon said that four hundred years ago."
She was quite taken aback. Anne used Francis Bacon quotes as a matter of course but they tended to be flippant, throw-away lines, tossed into a conversation for careless effect. McLoughlin's dark voice lingered over the words, rolling them on his tongue, giving them weight. She was as surprised by their aptness as by the fact that he knew them. She regarded him thoughtfully.
"But he also said, 'The mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.' " His lips twisted cruelly. "It's odd, isn't it, how Mrs. Maybury brings out the worst in people? What's her secret, I wonder?" He stirred the photographs of crude death with the end of his pencil, turning them slowly so that Diana could see them. "Why didn't she sell the Grange and move away, once she'd got rid of her husband?"
For all her surface sophistication, Diana was naive. Brutality shocked her because she never saw it coming. "She couldn't," she snapped angrily. "It's not Phoebe's to sell. After a year of marriage to that bastard, she persuaded her father to change his will and leave the house to her children. We three rent it from them."
"Then why haven't her children sold it? Have they no sympathy for their mother?" He caught her eye. "Or perhaps they don't like her? It seems to be a common problem for Mrs. Maybury."
Anger threatened to overwhelm Diana. She forced herself to stay calm. "The idea, Sergeant, was to prevent David turning the house into ready cash and leaving Phoebe and the children homeless the minute the Gallaghers died. He'd have done it, too, given half a chance. He went through the money she inherited in record time. Colonel Gallagher, Phoebe's father, left instructions that the house could not be sold or mortgaged except under the most exceptional circumstances before Jane's twenty-first birthday. The responsibility for deciding whether those circumstances-principally financial distress on the part of Phoebe and her children-ever materialise was left to two trustees. In the view of the trustees, things have never got so bad that the sale of the Grange was the only option."