‘Yes,’ said Brian, though not without a pause.
‘And that is correct?’
‘Indeed it is. My yea is my yea, sergeant, and my nay my nay, as all who know me will confirm.’
‘Well, I’m afraid we have a witness, Mr Clapton, who says they saw you return at just gone midnight. And what’s more approaching your house from the entirely opposite direction.’
The expression on Brian’s face was that of someone suddenly savaged by a dove. He stared at the man who, only seconds ago, had been listening to the story of his life with such courteous interest. Troy smiled. Or at least parted his lips slightly. His sharp teeth gleamed.
‘Ahhh ... really ... ? I don’t know who this person is supposed to be, but perhaps it might be in order to ask them a few questions. Such as what they were doing, hiding in hedges at that hour of the night, spying on people.’
‘Hiding in hedges?’
‘Well, I didn’t see anyone.’
‘That is strange. Because you would certainly have passed him had you, in fact, been coming back from a walk around the Green.’
Silence. Brian, moisture prettily pearling his brow, closed his eyes. Immediately he lost thirty years. Aged three, he picked up a Victoria plum on a neighbour’s lawn and took it home. His parents, greatly alarmed at this early example of their only offspring ‘getting into trouble’, dragged him, crying, next door to apologise and return the booty. After that, forewarned, they laboured ceaselessly to protect Brian from his baser instincts.
He was taught that speaking to strange children or even trying to share his sweets would get him into trouble, as would bringing friends home or going to their houses. Cheeking grown-ups, especially those with even the slightest shred of authority, would, more than any other misdemeanour, bring disaster on them all. Brian cursed their cringing servility from the bottom of his heart. They had eviscerated him. Taken out his guts and left him defenceless.
‘You are aware, sir, that this is a murder investigation?’
‘Oh yes, yes. And anything I can do to help. Anything at all.’
Troy was standing very still, one arm lying across his notebook on the stone window shelf, the other resting at his side. Behind him the sun caught his hair, which glowed, an aureole of fiery quills. There was something concealed behind his blank expression that hinted at great determination. He looked like a rigorously disciplined monk. Or enthusiastic inquisitor.
Brian could, with no trouble at all, see him applying some troublemaker’s face to a hotplate.
‘So. The other night. He may be correct, your witness. Or she of course. If it was a she. I don’t know.’ Hyuf, hyuf.
‘Go on, sir.’ Troy clicked his Biro and smoothed out the paper.
‘Possibly I walked into the village. In fact, now you come to mention it, I remember passing the letter box, so I must have done. Walked into the village that is.’ Pause. ‘I can’t imagine why I said I’d gone round the Green. I can only assume that, as you’d only just that minute told me about Gerald, I was picturing Plover’s Rest and had sort of tangled the two things up in my mind.’
‘Perfectly understandable, Mr Clapton.’
‘Yes, it is. Isn’t it?’ A wisp of colour returned to Brian’s cheeks.
‘See anyone on your walk?’
‘Not a soul. It was a filthy night.’
‘So I understand. I’d’ve wanted a jolly good reason to go out on a night like that, myself.’
‘I did explain—’
‘I would have thought a couple of minutes in the back yard would have been quite long enough to blow a whole lorryload of cobwebs away. Myself.’
Troy wrote for a moment then said, ‘How long would you say you were out, sir? Altogether?’
‘Ohh ... about an hour.’
‘In that weather?’
‘Yes.’
‘For no reason?’
The sergeant lowered his head and the sun hit Brian full in the face. He clambered down from his stool, caught his foot on a low cross strut and stumbled away from the blinding light, dragging the stool with him.
‘You weren’t perhaps,’ continued Troy, ‘on your way to some sort of tryst?’ He was glad of a chance to use this word, which he had picked up from a chocolate commercial on the telly.
‘Tryst?’ The faint blush of colour on Brian’s cheeks deepened and spread like an ugly naevus. A tic doloreux danced beneath his left eye. He croaked, ‘Of course not.’
‘In that case, Mr Clapton, let me put my own theory on the table. I think you left the house intending to turn right - which was how you came to make the slip in your earlier statement - but saw that someone nearby had observed you. So you turned left and walked off, returning later when the coast was clear.’
‘Clear? Clear for what?’
‘For you to re-enter Plover’s Rest of course.’
‘Talk about Jemima Puddleduck,’ said Sergeant Troy, who had recently taken on the sweet pleasures of reading to his daughter. ‘Another five minutes I’d’ve had to mop the floor.’
He was sitting in the incident room rejigging the scene in the science cupboard for Barnaby’s benefit, twirling with satisfaction on a tweedy swivel chair and nicely relaxed after a spaghetti bolognese, double chips, Bakewell tart and custard and several cups of tea in the staff canteen. All this consumed in time unofficially included in the visit to Causton Comprehensive.
‘He admitted he’d gone in the opposite direction from what he’d told us. Gave me some rigmarole about getting confused. Still insists he just went for a walk to clear his mind. I suggested that he had in fact left his house intending to return to Plover’s Rest, seen someone hanging around and been forced to depart elsewhere until they’d gone, whereupon he made his way back there, presumably to get on with the dirty deed.’
‘Did you now?’ said Barnaby, entertaining himself by fleshing out the scene. ‘And how did he react?’
‘Nearly passed out.’
‘You must have enjoyed that, sergeant.’
‘Just doing my job, sir.’
‘Quite. Did you believe him?’
‘I did actually,’ said Troy. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s got the guts to crack a flea let alone do a bloke’s head in. He looked dead guilty but he’s the sort who’d look guilty if a copper asked him for a light.’
‘He took the trouble to lie though, which means he wasn’t simply out for a constitutional.’
‘My bet is he was hanging around Quarry Cottages.’
‘The Carters’ place?’
Troy nodded. ‘Came over all hot and bothered talking about them. And he’s just the sort of pathetic sod to peer through bedroom windows jerking off.’
‘I agree,’ said the chief inspector, for Brian had struck him as a sad case - the sort of man whose personality was out of print before the ink was dry on his birth certificate. ‘He’d be well advised to keep his distance. They’ll have his balls in the shredder.’
‘Got to find them first,’ said Troy, recalling Brian’s limp cords. Hard to believe they held as much as a tin whistle let alone two fun bags and a hot dog.
‘But what really made his day,’ continued the sergeant, chortling happily, ‘was when I said I thought his wife’s paintings were so good I’d decided to commission one. That did for him good and proper.’
‘So now we know of two people at the meeting who went out again that night. St John I feel has been honest with us. Certainly his remorse strikes me as totally genuine. Clapton’s something else. You might well be right about the Carters but I don’t want to leave it there. Give him a breathing space to get nice and comfy then try again. We got his prints yet?’