Invited to sit, Barnaby lowered himself with immense care on to a Regency cane sofa. Beside him was a papiermâché card table inlaid with mother-of-pearl on which were a swansdown waistcoat under a glass dome and a jasper chess set. Troy sat on what looked to him like a section of some old choir stalls and marvelled that he should ever see the day.
Laura asked if they would care for a drink then, the offer being refused, poured herself half a tumbler from a Georgian decanter. The warm, peaty smell of excellent whisky pervaded the room. She started to drink it immediately. No casual sipping here. Or pretence that she was indulging merely to be sociable.
Barnaby was reminded of Mrs Jennings. Expensive cut-glass misery was apparently fashionable everywhere. Not that the present situation was without its satisfactions, for nothing loosened the tongue like a drop of the hard stuff and she was already pouring a second.
‘I can’t imagine how I can help you any further, chief inspector.’ She had put her tumbler down on the marble mantelpiece and picked up an enamelled vinaigrette which she handled nervously, fiddling with the stopper and the fine-linked chain. ‘I told you what little I knew yesterday.’
‘Not quite, perhaps.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sounded aggressive, which was bad news so early in the interview. What he was after was alcoholic reminiscence and careless recollection, not boozy defiance.
‘Please don’t misunderstand me, Mrs Hutton. I’m not at all suggesting that you’ve concealed anything that has a bearing on the case. What I’d like to ask you about, if I may, is your connection with Gerald Hadleigh.’
‘There was no connection! I told you yesterday. We only met at the writers’ group. How many more times.’ She seized the glass again and the golden liquid slopped and trembled.
‘Perhaps I should have said,’ Barnaby’s voice was softly apologetic, ‘your feelings for Mr Hadleigh.’
A pause. She looked everywhere but at him. Her glances, swift as the flight of birds, darted to every corner of the room, glanced off the ceiling.
‘You were seen, Mrs Hutton,’ said Troy. ‘Late at night, loitering in his garden.’
He caught the almost imperceptible shake of his superior’s head a second too late and retreated into a cross silence. He was always doing that, the chief. Did it yesterday with that cleaning woman in the kitchen. It was a bit much. Any distressed females to be interviewed and Troy was judged surplus to requirements. He found it deeply offensive. As if he had no compassion. As if delicacy and sensitivity had somehow been missed out of his make-up. Hit the spot with this one all right though. She was looking as if someone had clouted her round the chops with a brick.
‘Oh, God.’ Laura’s expression, by no means calmly ordered in the first place, became even more disturbed. ‘It’ll be all around the bloody village. At least Honoria never gossips.’
‘Miss Lyddiard is aware—?’
‘She barged in here the day of the murder. Quite disgusted to find me in my dressing gown at eleven a.m. Not to mention bawling my head off. Who is this other person ... ?’
‘Someone walking their dog. We didn’t get a name,’ he lied.
‘So you follow up anonymous rumours? Charming.’ But the hostility had gone from her. She looked tired, slightly bewildered and in dire need of further recourse to the grain.
‘It was the night before Mr Hadleigh died, Mrs Hutton. Quite late.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Barnaby stretched his legs out over the smoke-blue carpet. Another couple of feet and his boots would be touching the opposite wall. He waited and felt like Alice, growing.
‘I’m divorced, you know.’ She sounded defensive, as if he had accused her of old-maid deprivation. ‘Got married, stayed married, got unmarried. All with no more discomfort than a mild toothache. I didn’t know what love was until I saw Gerald. I curse the day I came to live here.’
She poured slightly less this time. Barnaby, concerned, sympathetic, kept his glance fixed on her face. He could see she wanted to talk and suspected that, once started, there’d be no stopping her, but she was not yet irrevocably set upon that path. He caught her eye and smiled encouragingly but she seemed to have forgotten he was there. All to the good.
‘I fell totally and absolutely. At first sight, like a teenager. I thought of nothing else. Saw his face everywhere. Lay on my bed and dreamt about him. Wrote long mad letters which I burned. He said once, casually, that he liked yellow. I went out and bought masses of yellow clothes that I look hideous in. I even had this room done in case he ever came to the house. When I discovered he was a widower I was so happy. I could see he was reserved but I thought I could easily overcome that. I’m not used to failure in these matters.’
Barnaby could believe that. Even now, wretchedly miserable and unmade-up, the face beneath the tousled mass of burnished hair was very attractive.
‘I wangled an invitation for a meal, à deux as I thought, at his house. Went along, all dressed up like the dog’s dinner. Half the street was there.’ She laughed, an ugly, tearing sound. ‘Even then I didn’t give up. Told myself that on that first occasion he had needed people round him. That he was shy. So, a few weeks later, I tried again. He’d mentioned once that he was fond of Victorian paintings. I had a small oil in the shop - a rather sentimental fireside scene, late 19th century. I wrapped it up and took it round one afternoon. Tea time.
‘I knew, as soon as he opened the door, that I’d made a mistake. He showed me into the kitchen, looked at the picture and admired it but said he didn’t really have the wall space. We staggered through a bit of quite artificial conversation, then someone came to the door. It was Honoria, wanting some smilax for the church. Gerald was so relieved at the interruption. If it hadn’t been so painful it would have been funny. He went off with her into the garden and started snipping at green stuff. They seemed to be good for a few minutes.
‘I didn’t plan to run upstairs, yet suddenly I was there. I suppose I must have seen it as a chance to find out more about him. Where he slept, what sort of soap he used - stupid things like that. I remember I took his pyjamas from under the pillow and held them against my face. Opened the wardrobe, ran my hands over his clothes. All the while going back and forth to the window checking they were still busy outside. In a chest of drawers I found a shoe box full of photographs. I lifted them up and took one. From the bottom, thinking he’d be less likely to notice. As I was putting it down my bra I heard their voices coming closer to the house. I ran downstairs, bundled up my painting, called goodbye through the kitchen door and left.’ She paused, rolling her glass between the palms of her hands, swilling the liquid.
‘I gave up then. Not loving him - would that I could! But trying to force any sort of intimacy. I was afraid if I pushed things too far he might leave the group and then I’d never see him at all. So that’s how things were for months, then, gradually, human nature being what it is I suppose, hope returned. I knew about Grace of course, how happy they’d been, but nobody can mourn forever. And I was greatly consoled and comforted by the fact that, if he didn’t want me, at least he didn’t appear to want anyone else. Or so I thought.’
The ensuing silence went on for a long time, yet Barnaby was loath to break it. She had withdrawn totally and was staring into the speckled but extremely grand Venetian mirror over the fireplace, frowningly perturbed, as if the person looking back at her was a stranger. He hoped all these painful recollections had not brought some immovable portcullis clanging down in her mind leaving her beyond the reach of his questions and immune to all persuasion. He was on the point of interrogatively reprising her final remark when she started to speak again.