‘What absolute and utter rubbish!’ Amy was so angry her face had gone bright red.
‘It is,’ said Sue. Then, after a slight pause, ‘Isn’t it?’
‘The mean-spirited little toad.’
‘I didn’t believe him.’
‘I should jolly well hope not. If that was all, they’d have sent the drawings back with an encouraging letter asking you to keep in touch.’ Sensing a slight diminution of the radiance opposite she followed through with an interrogative clincher. ‘Right?’
‘Right.’
‘That’s settled then. Now - what are you going to wear?’
‘God knows. Everything I’ve got’s held together with Sellotape and willpower.’
‘We’ll go round the charity shops. They have some lovely things. And this time it’s a loan and no argument. You must look nice.’
‘Thank you.’
‘After all, she might take you to the Ritz.’
‘W-e-l-l.’ Unaccustomed as she was to literary lunches this did strike Sue as flying a trifle high. ‘Probably not the first time.’
‘You must tell me every single thing about it. From the minute you set foot in the restaurant till the minute you leave. What the place is like, everything you eat and drink, what the waiters are like and the other diners—’
Sue started laughing again. ‘I’ll never remember all that.’
‘Right up to the time you help her into a taxi.’
‘Why will I have to do that?’
‘Oh, she’ll be well away by then,’ explained Amy airily. ‘They all drink like whales.’
Sue regarded Amy’s amused, animated, totally involved expression and warm brown eyes with feelings of deep affection and gratitude. The old saw which promised that when in trouble you soon found out who your friends were had never struck her as all that profound. Of course, in a crisis, people rallied round, sometimes out of genuine concern, more often perhaps because they welcomed the opportunity to become briefly involved in lives crammed with more dramatic incident than their own. But how much harder was it to truly rejoice in another’s good fortune, especially when your own had been so savagely cut short.
‘It’ll be you next time.’ Sue stretched out her hand, slipping it, for comfort, into Amy’s. ‘Once you’ve finished Rompers they’ll all be fighting over it.’
For a moment Amy did not reply. She appeared withdrawn and a little sad. Sue wondered if Ralph had come into her mind. If Amy was thinking how pleased he would be to know that she was writing a book. She went on quickly, ‘And I’ll be able to help. I’ll get an agent - you always can once you’ve signed a contract - and I shall insist they take you on as well.’
‘Oh, Sue ...’
They both fell silent, acknowledging the splendour of the new situation. The glorious difference between yesterday and today. And when I wake up tomorrow, thought Sue, it will still be real. No one can take it away from me.
‘Gosh - I’ve been so carried away I’ve not told you what else has happened.’
‘Something happened here, too.’
‘Amy - what?’
‘You first.’
‘OK. I’ve been really worried about Rex. I rang two or three times and got no reply, so I went round and discovered him in an appalling state.’
Sue described her visit. Amy listened closely to the very end then said, ‘But surely it can’t be true. I mean - that Max Jennings murdered Gerald.’
‘That’s what I said. Famous people just don’t do such things.’
‘For a start the police would have arrested him. It would have been in all the papers.’
‘I tried to convince Rex there must be a rational explanation. He was ... dying, Amy. Actually dying of shame. It was dreadful.’
‘You must have worked a miracle. I saw him on the Green this morning with Montcalm.’
‘Yes. And he’s going to try writing again, which will help. But he won’t be his old self till they find out who really did it.’
‘Mrs Bundy said yesterday they were looking for a suitcase.’
‘What, one of Gerald’s?’
‘Yes. Brown leather. Apparently whoever killed him took it away.’
‘That definitely points to a burglar. I must tell Rex. It will cheer him up.’
Sue began repacking the cake. Amy tried to stuff the cork back into the wine bottle.
‘Do they know what was in it?’
‘The entire contents of a chest of drawers,’ replied Amy, ‘according to Mrs B. She went on about it at great length.’
‘I’m surprised Honoria didn’t shut her up.’
‘Reading her runes elsewhere. Got it!’ Amy spoke too soon. The cork popped straight out again, shot across the room and rolled under the cooker. As she bent to fish it out she spoke again, this time with her voice all squeezy. ‘I’ll give a hand with Rex. Visit him, I mean. And maybe we could ask Laura.’
‘Ah - that’s the other thing I meant to tell you. She’s moving’
‘Moving?’ Amy was washing the cork under the tap. ‘Moving where?’
‘Doesn’t know yet. I went round last night. I was so worried about Rex and desperately needed to talk to somebody. I could have saved myself the trouble. She was in ever such a funny mood. To tell you the truth, I think she’d been drinking.’
‘I’m not surprised. This awful business is enough to drive anyone to drink.’
‘Don’t worry about that Amy,’ (the cork was proving twice as awkward the second time) ‘tell me your news. I have to go in a sec.’
‘Well, it was yesterday. Just gone one.’ Amy spoke so seriously and looked so perturbed that Sue, who had got up after packing her basket, sat straight down again. ‘Honoria came in complaining that lunch was late. And maybe because I was extra cold or lonely or unhappy or hungry or depressed I finally told her I’d had enough.’
‘Amy!’
‘And that I was going to leave.’
‘You didn’t.’ Sue gazed at her friend in deep consternation, as if surprised to find her still alive. ‘What did she say?’
‘It was awful. She started going on about how she’d get the heating fixed and give me more money for food. Then she said I couldn’t go because she had promised Ralph she’d look after me.’
‘Oh, deep dread.’
‘Exactly. And it was so weird because I could see it wasn’t the truth. I don’t know why she really wants me here—’
‘Unpaid slavery—’
‘No. Well, perhaps, but that’s not the main reason. I’ve got a feeling that I have something she wants. I can sense her watching me. Sometimes, when I’m working in the house or in the garden, she’ll come up so quietly, like she did yesterday, and I won’t know she’s there. It’s really frightening. She’s waiting for something, Sue. And she doesn’t want me to go until it’s happened.’
‘But you must go.’
‘Yes. I have plans. Remember those ads I told you about - in The Lady? I’m going to start replying. Thing is, can I give your address? I don’t want her to know.’
‘Of course you can.’ A vista of loneliness opened suddenly in front of Sue and desolation briefly marked her face.
‘Don’t look like that, love. We’ll write. All the time.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’ll need to come back often. To visit Ralph.’
A couple of hours later, Barnaby, awaiting the arrival of Mrs Lyddiard, was jotting down a few notes. Pointers to questions rather then the questions themselves for, although he could be relentlessly inflexible when the need to pin down was urgent, he preferred to work in an open-ended, even slightly meandering way, casting his net wide. Visitors often left his office after having been quite shrewdly interviewed feeling they’d enjoyed nothing more than a pleasant conversation.
Barnaby was patient in the way an animal squatting silently outside the lair of its prey is patient. And he was genuinely curious about people, unlike Troy, who was not interested in anyone for their own sake, but merely for what they could contribute to the matter in hand. Barnaby’s method got results. People told him things they hadn’t meant to tell him. Sometimes they told him things they didn’t even know they knew.