A Place Of Safety Read online

  ‘Could you tell us something about her background, Mr Lawrence?’ asked the chief inspector.

  ‘It’s all on record at the Caritas Agency.’

  ‘Yes, and we shall be talking to them. But right now I’m talking to you.’

  The Reverend looked rather taken aback at the sudden hardening of his interrogator’s voice.

  ‘I don’t see how prying into the girl’s past will help find her.’ He blinked weakly. ‘Everyone has a clean slate here.’

  ‘I believe she often received airmail letters.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that, you know.’ Lawrence smiled indulgently.

  ‘Apparently she threw them away unopened,’ added Sergeant Troy.

  ‘Who on earth told you such a story?’ It didn’t take him long to run through the possible suspects. ‘I’m surprised you attend to servants’ gossip, Inspector.’

  This brought a response from the blue armchair. Ann Lawrence gave a muffled cry and struggled to sit up. She tried to speak but her tongue, a huge lump of inert flesh in her mouth, would hardly move.

  ‘Herry . . . no . . . not . . . serv . . .’

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ He crossed over to his wife, propelled, it seemed to Barnaby, more by annoyance at her behaviour than care for her wellbeing. ‘We must get you upstairs, Ann.’ He glared at the two policemen who stared stolidly back. ‘If you want to talk to myself or my wife again you can make an appointment in the proper manner.’

  ‘That’s not how it works, I’m afraid, sir,’ said the chief inspector. ‘And I have to inform you that if you remain uncooperative, any future interviews could well be taking place at the station.’

  ‘We’ll have to watch our step there, chief,’ said Troy with a chuckle in his voice as they were crossing the gravel. ‘Him and his fancy handshake connections.’

  Barnaby commented briefly on the Reverend Lawrence’s Masonic connections, employing the vividly concise gift for imagery and pithy dialogue that made his subordinates so apprehensive of getting a summons to his office.

  Troy had a good laugh and went over the retort a few times to make sure he remembered it to pass on in the canteen. By the time he’d got this well and truly sorted, they were standing by the door of the garage flat.

  This time he had seen them coming. Seen the car, seen them go into the main house. He would be well prepared. Barnaby, recalling the interruption from Lawrence on the last occasion they talked to Jackson, trusted the Reverend would be spending the next twenty minutes or so remonstrating with his wife.

  Sergeant Troy’s thoughts were running along precisely the same lines. One more up-chucking display of snivelling hypocrisy from the chauffeur and he could see the Red Lion’s Apricot and Raspberry Pavlova suddenly forming a tasteful mosaic on the smart cream carpet. And he would not be cleaning it up.

  The door was opened. Jackson stood there wearing a silvery tweed jacket and black cotton polo neck sweater. His face wore an expression of unguarded candour. ‘And to think when you said you’d be back, Inspector, I thought you was just stringing me along.’

  ‘Mr Jackson.’

  ‘Terry to you.’ He stood politely aside and they all went upstairs.

  The flat looked pretty much the same as the last time they were here except for a new ironing board leaning up against a wall by the kitchen. Both the kitchen and bathroom doors were wide open as if to deny they had anything to conceal. There was a copy of yesterday’s Daily Star sunny side up on the coffee table.

  Jackson sat on the settee. His manner was bland and compliant. But his eyes were keenly focused and Barnaby noticed he sat well forward, hands resting lightly on his knees, the fingers curled like a sprinter.

  ‘Do you always drive Mr Lawrence, Terry?’

  Jackson looked surprised then wary. Whatever he had expected, it had not been this.

  ‘Yes. Me or Mrs L. He never got round to learning.’

  ‘Tell me what happened today.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Everything leading up to this doctor’s visit.’

  Jackson hesitated. ‘I don’t know that Mr Lawrence would like that.’

  ‘I’ll either get it here or down the nick,’ said Chief Inspector Barnaby. ‘It’s up to you.’

  So Terry Jackson told them how he had been bringing Lionel back from a meeting at Causton council offices to discuss improvements to the training of magistrates. Driving along the High Street they had spotted his wife wandering about in a high old state. Lionel had tried to get her into the car but she had started shouting and waving her arms about.

  ‘Shouting about what?’

  ‘Nothing that made any sense.’

  ‘Come on. Something must have made sense.’

  ‘No, honestly. It was all jumbled up. Then I got out to help but that just seemed to make her worse.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ muttered Sergeant Troy.

  ‘At first Lionel asked me to drive home but then he changed his mind. Their doctor’s at Swan Myrren, Patterson, and we went directly there. He saw her straightaway. Must have given her a whacking shot of something. She was like a zombie when she came out.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Stopped off at the chemist’s for a prescription and drove back here.’

  ‘Do you know why she went into Causton?’

  ‘No.’

  A hair’s breadth of hesitation. He knew and he didn’t want to tell them. Good. A minuscule scrap of progress. Barnaby paused, considering whether to make anything of this now or save it for later. He decided to wait, noting, with some satisfaction, that Jackson’s forehead was now lightly beaded with sweat.

  Changing tack entirely, he said, ‘There was a young girl staying here until a few days ago.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Carlotta? A stuck-up bitch.’

  ‘You didn’t hit it off then?’ said Sergeant Troy.

  ‘Thought she was above me. And she was nobody, right? Come through the system same as I did.’

  ‘Turned you down, did she?’ suggested Barnaby.

  ‘She didn’t get a fucking chance!’

  ‘That make you angry?’

  Having responded to the jibe apparently without thinking, they now watched Jackson step back. He said, carefully, ‘I never came on to her. I told you. She weren’t my type.’

  ‘D’you know why she ran away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lawrence never discussed it with you?’

  ‘None of my business, was it?’

  ‘What about Mrs Lawrence?’

  ‘Do me a favour.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Troy’s fingers gave a little snap of pretend recollection. ‘She won’t have you in the house. That right?’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Jackson sullenly turned away from them and started chewing the inside of his right cheek.

  ‘There is a possibility that she may not have run away at all,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘You what?’

  Sergeant Troy took up the story. ‘We received a report, at roughly the same time she was supposed to have gone, that someone had fallen into the river.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been Carlotta.’ Jackson laughed for the first time. ‘She’s far too sharp. Always looking out for number one.’

  Look who’s talking, thought Troy. He repeated himself: ‘Fallen. Or been pushed.’

  ‘Well, it weren’t me. I were in Causton the night you’re on about. Waiting to collect Lionel from a meeting.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Pure as the driven, I am.’

  Barnaby remembered his mother saying that when he was little. Pure as the driven slush. He wasn’t unduly depressed by Jackson’s story. Presumably the man had had time to squander while hanging around and Ferne Basset was only a twenty-minute drive at the most. Less if you put your foot down. And he had no alibi for the crime that truly did exist. The murder of Charlie Leathers.

  Barnaby got up then an
d Troy, rather disappointed, did the same. Almost at the door the DCI turned with one of his ‘gosh I almost forgot’ starts. These were invariably followed by a laboured rendering of ‘by the way’. Troy always got a kick out of this little number. An absolute hoot which would not have deceived a baby.

  ‘Oh, by the way . . .’

  ‘You’re not going?’ said Jackson. ‘I was about to put the kettle on.’ He gave a shout of spiteful laughter.

  ‘A bit of news about Mr Leathers,’ Barnaby pressed on.

  ‘Charlie?’ Jackson spoke absently. He seemed miles away. ‘You got anybody in the frame yet for that, Inspector?’

  You had to hand it to the bastard, thought Sergeant Troy. He’d got more front than Wembley Stadium.

  ‘I’ve started fancying you in that position actually, Terence.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘He was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?’

  At that single word, the atmosphere changed. They watched Jackson making a great effort to pull himself together and sharpen his concentration. A struggle which showed in the jumping jack nerve in his temple and the rigid line of his jaw.

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘We have grounds for thinking it’s true.’

  ‘Oh, sure. The grounds that I’m the only one round here with a record. The only one whose face fits. The only one you can take down the slammer and work on just because I’m vulnerable.’ Jackson was recovering fast. He looked about as vulnerable as a puff adder. He sauntered away into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, ‘Come back when you know what the fuck you’re on about.’

  Barnaby put a quick hand on Troy’s arm and half eased, half dragged him out of the flat. As they were crossing the drive, he saw the Reverend Lawrence’s startled face through the dining room window and lengthened his stride.

  ‘Can I say something, sir?’

  ‘Of course you can “say something”, Troy. What d’you think this is, the Stasi?’

  ‘It’s not a criticism—’

  ‘OK. It’s a criticism. I expect I’ll survive.’

  ‘I just wonder if it was a good idea to tell Jackson we know about the blackmail. I mean, he’s on his guard now but we still can’t book him for anything.’

  ‘I wanted to spring it before he picked it up somewhere else. To see his reaction.’

  ‘Which was very satisfactory.’

  ‘Indeed. I don’t know what exactly is going on here but I’d say whatever it is he’s in it up to his greasy neck.’

  It was almost dusk as they made their way back to the Red Lion car park. Halfway across the Green, an extraordinary thing occurred. Barnaby stopped walking and peered into the pearly mist of early evening.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘I can’t see . . .’ Troy squinted, frowning hard. ‘Blimey!’

  A strangely fluid outline was looming, retreating, shifting and hovering some distance away. It emitted shrill little calls and cries and seemed to be somehow perched on waves of surging foam. Gradually the whole mysterious presence came closer.

  ‘If we were in the desert,’ said DCI Barnaby, ‘this would be Omar Sharif.’

  A woman approached them. Stout, middle-aged and wearing floppy green trousers, a crimson velvet poncho and a trilby hat with peacock feathers in the brim. The foam resolved itself into several cream-coloured Pekinese dogs who continued to surge as the woman introduced herself.

  ‘Evadne Pleat, good afternoon. Aren’t you Hetty’s chief inspector?’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ replied Barnaby, and gave his name.

  ‘And I’m Sergeant Troy,’ said Sergeant Troy, already enamoured of the dogs, daft-looking things though they were.

  ‘I heard you were going round. I just wanted to say that if there is anything, anything at all, that I can do to help, you must call.’ Her round rosy face shone with earnestness. She had a sweet smile. Nothing like the common or garden smirk of daily exchange that barely reaches the lips, let alone the eyes. She smiled as a child will, enthusiastically, quite without calculation and confident of a friendly response. ‘It’s Mulberry Cottage. Over there by the Rectory.’

  ‘I see.’ Barnaby glanced over at the small, pretty house. ‘Hasn’t someone already visited you?’

  ‘Oh yes. A very efficient young man if somewhat fussy about his clothing.’ She had watched Constable Phillips standing at her gate for ages, frowning crossly and picking balls of pale fluffy stuff off his uniform trousers. ‘I’ve told him my ideas though I’m not sure he quite appreciated the wide range of my knowledge and experience.’

  ‘Would that be in some special subject then?’ asked Sergeant Troy politely.

  ‘Personal relationships,’ replied Evadne, beaming at them both. ‘The ebb and flow of emotion in the human heart. And really, isn’t that what all your investigations come down to in the end?’

  During this conversation the Pekes had been lunging about and Evadne had lunged with them, hanging on to her trilby as best she could.

  ‘I’ll certainly keep what you say in mind, Miss Pleat,’ muttered Barnaby. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else . . .?’

  ‘Not at the moment. But if there is anything specific you need help with, you only have to ask. Say goodbye to the nice policemen,’ instructed Evadne.

  Although they had not stopped barking since the conversation started, the dogs now redoubled their efforts, yapping and leaping and tumbling about and getting their leads mixed up.

  ‘What are they called?’ Sergeant Troy lingered and heard an irritated snarl somewhere in the region of his left ear.

  ‘Piers, Dido, Blossom, Mazeppa - don’t do that, darling. Then there’s Nero and the one right at the back is Kenneth.’ She indicated a tiny white chrysanthemum, squeaking and jumping straight up and down into the air.

  Troy had to run halfway across the Green to catch up the chief.

  ‘You’re a fast mover, sir.’

  ‘I am when I want to get away from something.’ Barnaby approached the car with feelings of relief. ‘How does she ever hear herself think?’

  ‘They were only being friendly.’

  Barnaby gave him a look to turn the milk. They got in the car. Troy switched on the ignition and tried to think of a conciliatory remark to jolly up their homeward journey.

  ‘Unusual name, Evadne Pleat.’

  ‘You think so?’ Barnaby could afford to sound superior. He was recalling the occasion, some years back, when he and Joyce had visited her brother in America. Colin, exchange teaching in California, was living in an apartment owned by a woman called Zorrest Milchmain. You had to get up early to beat that one.

  Joyce was laying the table. A pretty blue-and-yellow Provençal cloth, honeysuckle in a tall crystal vase, narrow elegant wine glasses.

  Everything except the soup (carrot and coriander) was cold tonight. Joyce had popped into Fortnum’s on her way to Marylebone station and had set out wild smoked salmon, steak and chestnut pie, artichoke hearts and Greek salad.

  She had been to London for lunch at the National Theatre. Nico’s audition was at eleven thirty. Joyce and Cully met him in the Lyttelton foyer. They sat for a while listening to a flute, viola and piano trio playing a Fauré romance then went up to the Olivier restaurant where Joyce had booked a table.

  Everyone had a glass of champagne because, although Nicolas wouldn’t know the results of the audition for at least another week, it had still been a wonderfully exciting day. He had auditioned for Trevor Nunn on the Jean Brodie set and was high as a kite simply on the strength of having stood on the same spot and walked the same boards as the greatest theatrical names of the century: Scofield and McKellan; Gielgud, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. This was the place where Ian Holm had played King Lear. Had Joyce seen Lear? It was the most breathtaking display of bravura . . . ohhh . . . heartrending . . . you just couldn’t believe . . .

  Joyce smiled, content to let him run on. That was one of the comfortable things about actors. They were so easy. You were never short of
a subject for conversation.

  She watched Cully kiss her husband’s cheek, raise her glass, happy and excited. But having a daughter in the business had made Joyce sharply aware of the vagaries of the artist’s life. Up one minute, down the next. And she knew Nicolas, too, quite well enough to understand that by the evening doubts would gradually be breaking the surface of all this sparkling ebullience. Even now having just said that Trevor Nunn seemed really encouraging, he added, ‘Of course, seemed . . .’

  Joyce looked out of the window at the sun glittering on the river and at London’s great iron bridges and sighed with pleasure. She had the gift of always knowing she was having a wonderful time while she was actually having it, not just in retrospect like so many people. It would be such fun telling Tom. When he came into the kitchen she was still lost in reverie.

  ‘I say!’ He was staring at the table. ‘This looks a bit of all right. What’s that?’ He pointed to a spectacular pudding.

  ‘Pear Charlotte. You can just have the pears.’

  ‘Where d’you get all this?’

  ‘Fortnum’s.’ Then, when her husband looked puzzled, ‘I’ve been to London.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Tom, honestly.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘I’m not going to.’

  ‘There’s some Chardonnay in the hall that would go a treat with this. D’you mind, love?’

  When Joyce returned from the wine rack, a bottle of Glen Carlou in her hand, Barnaby said, ‘Nico’s audition.’

  ‘You looked at the calendar.’

  ‘Has he got in?’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it over supper.’ She opened the wine. ‘The Gavestons cancelled, by the way.’

  ‘Jolly good. So . . .’ he waved his hand at the crystal and glasses and flowers. ‘What’s all this for?’

  ‘It’s for us.’ Joyce gave him a glass of wine and a brisk kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Mm.’ Barnaby drank deep. ‘Very nice. A cheeky little number with a warm undertow and a steely backbone. Reminds me of someone not a million miles away.’ He started to sing ‘The Air That I Breathe’ quietly, under his breath. It had been their song, years ago, played at their wedding. ‘ “If I could make a wish I think I’d pass . . .” ’