"I don't know the first thing about brewing."
"I wouldn"t want you for your brewing skills. That's my province. Organise the business, find me customers, get me whole thing rolling. You'd be good at that. I need someone I can trust."
McLoughlin grinned. "You mean someone Customs and Excise trusts? You're too anarchic for me, Paddy. I'd be a nervous wreck in three months, trying to remember what I was supposed to be hiding."
Paddy gave a roar of laughter and punched him on the shoulder. "Think about it, old son. I enjoy your company." He left.
Jonathan had retreated to an armchair where he sat in embarrassed silence, studiously avoiding everyone's gaze. His anger had long since abated and he was desperately trying to come to terms with what he had done to Peter Barnes. He could find no excuses for his violence. Fred coughed politely. "If there's nothing more I can do, madam," he said to Phoebe, "I'll be heading back to the Lodge. The wife and young Jane will be wondering how we got on." Jane had been sleeping at the Lodge with Molly for the past few nights while Fred patrolled the grounds with McLoughlin and PC Williams.
"Oh, Fred," said Phoebe with genuine contrition, "I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I never really thought you were one of them. It was the shock. You do believe that, don't you? I'll take you down for your tetanus tomorrow."
Fred looked at his bandaged hand, washed, disinfected, cried over and dressed by Phoebe and Diana amidst a welter of apology. "I think, madam," he said severely, "that if one more word is said on this matter I shall be forced to give in my notice. I can stand a lot of things, but I can't stand fuss. Is that understood? Good. Now, if you will excuse me?"
"I'll drive you," said Phoebe immediately.
"I'd rather the young doctor drove me, if that's all right. There's something I'd like his opinion on."
The door closed behind them.
Phoebe turned away to hide the dampness in her eyes. "God broke the mould after He made Fred and Molly," she said gruffly. "They never deserved any of this and yet they've stuck with us through thick and thin. I've made up my mind, Di," she went on fiercely, "I will brave that wretched pub tomorrow. Someone's got to make the first move and it might as well be me. Fred's been going there for years and no one, apart from Paddy, ever talks to him. I'm damn well going to do something about it."
Diana looked at her friend's, furious face. "What, for instance? Hold your shotgun on them till they agree to talk?"
Phoebe laughed. "No. I am going to let bygones be bygones."
"Well, in that case, I'll come with you." She looked at McLoughlin. "Can we do that? It's all over now, isn't it? The Inspector was very curt over the phone but he seems to have absolved us."
He nodded. "Yes, you're absolved."
"Was it suicide?" asked Phoebe.
"I doubt it. He was a confused old man whose memories of Streech survived all his other memories. I think he made his way back here, looking for somewhere to die."
"But how could he possibly have known where the ice house was?"
"From the pamphlets your husband had printed. If you're touting for tourists, a garage is the obvious place to leave them. On paper, K.C. probably knew this garden better than you did."
"Still. To remember it after all this time."
"But the memory is like that," said Diana. "Old people remember every detail of their childhood but can't remember what they had for breakfast." She shook her head. "I never knew the man but I've always felt very bitter about what happened to Phoebe's parents and the lies he told afterwards. Still"-she shrugged-"to die like that, alone and with nothing. It's very sad. It may sound silly, but I wish he hadn't taken his clothes off. It makes it worse, somehow, as if he were pointing out the futility of living. Naked we're born and naked we die. I have this awful feeling that, for him, everything that happened in between was worthless."
McLoughlin stretched. "I wouldn't get too sentimental about that, if I were you, Mrs. Goode. We've only Wally's word for it that the corpse was nude. I think he's probably a little ashamed of himself. There's a world of difference between taking some unwanted, folded clothes and undressing a corpse to rob it." He looked at his watch. "Anything else?"
"We'd like to thank you," said Phoebe.
"What for?"
"Everything. Jane. Jonathan. Anne. Us."
He nodded and made for the door into the hall. The two women looked at each other.
"You will be coming back, won't you?" said Diana in a rush.
He laughed quietly. "If I have to, I will."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Phoebe chuckled. "I think it means that he wasn't planning on leaving. He can't come back if he's never gone, can he?"
The gun-shot and shouting had dragged Anne from a deep barbiturate-induced sleep to a lighter sleep where dreams enacted themselves in glorious Technicolor. There were no nightmares, just an endless parade of places and faces, some only half-remembered, which fluttered across the screen of her sleeping mind in surrealistic juxtaposition. And, somewhere, irritatingly, McLoughlin was tapping the double-glazing in the windows of a huge citadel and telling her it needed two people to lift it if they weren't to be buried alive.
She sat up with a start and looked at him. Her bedside light was on. "I dreamt that Jon and Lizzie were getting married," she said, isolating the one memory from the cloud of others which vanished forever.
He pulled up the wicker chair and sat on it. "Given time and room to breathe, perhaps they will."
She thought about that. "You don't miss much, do you?"
"That depends. We've caught your assailant." He stretched out his long legs and gave her all the details. "Paddy wants me to join him in starting a brewery."
She smiled. "Do you like him?"
"He's a bastard."
"But do you like him?"
He nodded. "He's his own man. I like him very much."
"Will you join him?"
"I shouldn't think so. It would be too easy to get addicted to that Special of his." He looked at her through half-closed lids. "Jon's going back to London tomorrow. He asked me to find out if you wanted your love letters returned. He says he can try and fish them out before he goes."
She looked at her hands. "Do you know where he's put them?"
"I gather they're in a fissure in the old oak tree behind the ice house. He's a little worried about whether or not he can retrieve them. He asked me to give him a hand." He studied her face. "Should I, Cattrell?"
"No. Let them stay there." She raised her head to look at him. "When I'm firing on all cylinders again I'll take some cement and stick it into every crack in the oak tree so the damn things never see the light of day again. I had to ask Jon to hide them-he was the only one there when Walsh took me away-but he's the last person in the world I want looking at them. Oh God, I wish they were love letters." She fell silent.
"What are they?"
"Photographs."
"Of David Maybury?" She nodded. "After Phoebe had killed him?" She nodded again.
"One of your famous insurance policies, I suppose."
She sighed. "I never thought we'd get away with it. I kept a record in case the body was found and Phoebe needed a defence." Her face clouded. "I developed them myself. Awful, awful pictures, showing David two weeks after Phoebe killed him, showing Phoebe herself, looking so damn mad you wouldn't believe it was the same woman, showing what the vandals did to the house, showing the tomb I built in the cellar. I never want to see them again."