Paddy's great chuckle boomed about the room, stirring the heightened adrenaline into a responsive froth.
Phoebe's voice shook. "It was all her fault anyway. She would keep calling Benson a dirty dog." Quite unconsciously, she took on the refined tones of Dilys Barnes. " 'Your dirty dog should be ashamed of himself, Mrs. Maybury.' God, it was funny. She couldn't bring herself to say that Benson had rogered her ghastly bitch." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "So I said, I was very sorry but, as she knew better than I, you couldn't stop dirty dogs poking into smelly barns." She looked up, caught Diana's eye and laughed out loud. The room quivered.
Eddie Staines, not too bright but with a well-developed sense of humour, grinned broadly. "That's good. Never heard it before. That why they call old man Barnes 'the dirty dog' then? God, struth!" He doubled up as Peter Barnes, without any warning, swung a booted foot and kicked him in the groin. "Ah, Jesus!" He backed away, clutching his balls.
McLoughlin watched this little sally with amused detachment. "And presumably Dilys got lumbered with Smelly?" he said to Paddy.
The big man grinned. "For a month or two, maybe. Far as I recall, Dirty Dog stuck to Tony longer than Smelly Barnes stuck to Dilys, but the damage was done. Takes herself too seriously, you see. When you're eaten up with frustrated ambition, there's no room for humour." His eyes rested on the bitter young face of the boy. "Respectability," he said with heavy irony, "it's a sickness with her. With this one, too. They won't be laughed at."
And that, McLoughlin knew, was as far as Paddy could take him. He had been suspicious enough of Peter Barnes to set him up, but he had no proof that the lad had struck Anne any more than he had proof that Dilys initiated all the slander against Phoebe. "She's far too cunning," he had said that morning. "She's a type. Pathologically jealous. You come across them now and then. They're usually women, invariably inadequate and their spite is always directed against their own sex because that's the sex they're jealous of. They are completely vicious. As often as not, the target is their own daughter."
"So why single out Mrs. Maybury?" McLoughlin had asked.
"Because she was the first lady of Streech and you buggers dropped her in the shit. For ten years, Dilys has been wetting herself because she can look down on Mrs. Maybury of Streech Grange. God knows, she was never going to do it any other way."
"What did she do?"
"Piled shit on shit, of course. People were ready to believe anything after you lot left, and murder was the least of the garbage Dilys fed them."
"What a sewer you live in, Paddy." McLaughlin spoke quietly, his voice level.
The big man surprised him. "If it is, it's Phoebe's fault," he had observed. "She's the focus for it all. Whatever the rights and wrongs, any normal woman would have sold up and moved on. The Grange isn't worth the price she's had to pay for it."
No, McLoughlin thought, Paddy was wrong about that. The Grange was worth whatever Phoebe had to pay, and she would go on paying because it was cheap at the price. The real cost was being borne by the people who loved her. He glanced across at her with a sudden irritation. God damn the woman! People loved her or hated her. The one thing no one seemed to feel was indifference.
"OK," he said abruptly into the silence, "you"-he jerked a finger at Eddie Staines-"are going to listen to a few home truths. You're not the brightest thing on two legs but you have to be brighter than this dickhead here." He scowled at Barnes, then held up a finger. "Number one, Eddie. Mrs. Maybury did not murder her parents. Colonel and Mrs. Gallagher died because their brakes didn't work, and their brakes didn't work because K.C. hadn't serviced the car properly. Had he done so, he would have found the corroded brake hose. Got that?"
"Yeah, but who corroded it?" asked Eddie triumphantly. "That's the question."
"Read the coroner's report," said McLoughlin wearily. "Colonel Gallagher took the car to K.C. because the brakes felt soft. He wrote a note to that effect and the note, in his handwriting, is in the file. K.C. ignored it." He held up a second finger. "Number two. Mr. David Maybury walked out of this house alive ten years ago. No one murdered him. He legged it because he had finally run through all of Mrs. Maybury's money and he didn't fancy working for his living."
"So who's arguing? Saw the bugger myself three months ago. Mind you, he's dead now." Eddie glared at Phoebe. "Hell of a way to get your own back, lady."
McLoughlin held up a third finger. "Number three, Eddie. That man wasn't David Maybury."
He looked sceptical. "Oh, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah. It was K.C. And it's not a matter for debate. It is a matter of proven fact."
There was a long silence. Very slowly, recognition dawned. "Hell, happen it was, too. Knew I knew him. But that Inspector of yours was damn sure it was Maybury."
Paddy snorted. "The only people who are ever damn sure of anything are idiots and politicians. Same difference, some would say."
They could almost follow Eddie's thought processes in the contortions of his face. "Still, I don't see it makes much difference. We're back to square one. If it was K.C. she did in this time, then stands to reason she did her old man in ten years ago. The only proof you thought she didn't was that I thought the old guy was him. You follow me?"
"I follow you," McLoughlin told him. "But the whole thing stinks. Didn't it occur to you that if it was Maybury this time, then you've been beating up on an innocent woman for ten years?"
"There was her parents-" He broke off as his brain caught up with his mouth. "Yeah, well, as I say, we're back to square one now."
"Anything but. Mrs. Maybury didn't kill K.C., Eddie. You did."
"Cobblers!"
"He wasn't murdered. He died of cold, starvation and self-neglect. You were the last person to see him alive. If you'd offered him a hand he wouldn't be dead now. He needed help, and you didn't give it to him."
"Now listen here, mister. You trying to set me up or something? The Inspector said he was stabbed in the gut."
Between the Scylla of Barnes and the Charybdis of Walsh, was it any wonder, thought McLoughlin, that Phoebe had retreated into her fortress? Without a twinge of regret, he rode rough-shod over Walsh's thirty years on the Force. "The Inspector greased a few palms and was over-promoted," he said bluntly. "It happens in the police just as it happens everywhere else. They'll give him early retirement as a result of this cock-up and get shot of him."
"Jesus!" said Eddie, impressed by so much honesty from a policeman.
"You cretin," muttered Peter Barnes. "He's running bloody rings round you."
McLoughlin ignored him. "Number four, Eddie," he went on. "When you and the scum you associate with come up here for a spot of queer-bashing, you miss the mark. There are no queers living in Streech Grange. Who told you there were?"
"It's common knowledge." Eddie looked uncomfortable. "The three dykes. The three witches. They're always called one or the other." He darted a quick glance at Peter Barnes. "Me, I'm not into queer-bashing."
"I see." McLoughlin transferred his attention to Barnes. "So it's you who's not keen on queers." He yawned suddenly and rubbed his eyes. "What happened? Someone try it on at that school you went to?" He saw the sudden pinching round the boy's nostrils and his brooding face cracked into a grin. "Don't tell me you enjoyed it, and now you're busting a gut to prove you didn't."
"Fucking perverts," the boy blurted out. "They make me sick." He spat at Phoebe. "Fucking perverts. They should be locked up." A well of loathing seemed to overflow. "I hate them."