Ann Granger - Mitchell and Markby 09 - A Touch of Mortality p.02

*5*
Meredith awoke, rolled over, and fumbled for the clock at her bedside. She saw with a groan that she'd overslept. It was sale day. She had planned to go and bid for the glassware and she wanted to find out how Sally Caswell was this morn­ing. It was nearly nine and she had intended to phone Sally at the cottage before her friend left for the auction rooms, if leave she did.

Meredith sat up and swung her legs to the floor, fingers reaching for the robe thrown over a nearby chair. Her legs still felt a little wobbly when she stood up. Cursing the 'flu's obstinate legacy, she padded downstairs to the telephone and punched out the Caswell's number.

Liam answered. "She's just about to leave. Sal!" In answer to his shout, a distant female voice could be heard.

"Ought she to go? Is she all right?" Meredith asked in concern.

Liam didn't reply. There was an exchange of voices at the farther end of the line and then Sally herself came, breathless, to the phone.

"Meredith? I'm just leaving. You're coming along to see the fun today, aren't you? Bidding for your Victorian glasses? I'll see you there!"

"Hang on!" Meredith urged down the phone. "Are you sure about this?"

"Positive. I can't let Austin down on sale day. It will be very busy. I'm fine, really."

Meredith thought she detected an echo in Sally's voice akin to the one in her own when she assured Alan the 'flu was all in the past.

"Austin can surely get in someone else?"

"Hey," said Sally, "it's my job we're talking about here! I don't want to put the idea into Austin's head that I'm re­placeable!"

Meredith set down the phone, hitched the robe around her shoulders and rang Alan. She explained that Sally meant to go in to work. "It's not a good idea, Alan. Can't you give her a call and talk her out of it? She must still be very shocked and she had a nasty crack on the head."

He was irritatingly non-committal. It was up to Sally, after all, was the burden of his argument. Meredith put the phone down again, this time with some force.

She went upstairs and turned on the shower.

When these terraced cottages had been built, bathrooms had not been considered necessary. There'd been a brick privy in the yard. (Still there but used as a shed.) Otherwise people washed in the kitchen or in a basin in the bedroom. To create a modern bathroom had meant sacrificing one of the three bedrooms. None of the bedrooms was large and the least of them little more than a boxroom. Lack of space had meant only the smallest of bathtubs had been installed in it.

This had been the situation when Meredith bought the little house, but she'd soon got fed up with sitting in the mini-tub with her knees under her chin. It had also been old and badly stained. The answer had been to gut the bathroom, remove the antiquated fittings and replace the bath with a roomy shower.

The shower set Meredith's skin tingling. As she was rub­bing herself down vigorously afterwards, there was a move­ment at the frosted glass window over the washbasin which wasn't a reflection.

"It's that cat again," she murmured.

She went to push open the sash window, letting out the steam and letting in a whistle of cold draught. The cat, crouched on the wide stone ledge, peered under the open win­dow frame, wide yellow eyes alert, body tensed ready to make a leap to the wall below.

"Hullo, Tiger," she greeted it. "You are a Peeping Tom!"

It opened its pink mouth and returned a soft squawk to this corny joke.

Meredith was encouraged to reach out to push up the win­dow a little further. But the movement alarmed the cat. Like a tumbler, it leapt, twisting and turning in the air, to land with ease on the broad brick wall dividing her backyard from next door's. For a split second it paused to look up, inviting ad­miration at its cleverness. But as she leaned out, it slithered over the wall and dropped down on the farther side.

Meredith retreated from the knife-edge thrust of the icy air. She pulled down the window, wrapping her towel more firmly around herself.

She hadn't time to worry about the cat. Sally took prece­dence. At least, at the saleroom, she'd be able to keep an eye on her friend.


The friend in question had replaced the receiver in the cottage, following Meredith's call, and made her way thoughtfully to the kitchen.

It was all very well joking with Meredith about it, Sally thought. She didn't feel cheery, fine or even part-way reason­able. But she had to get out of this cottage. She held out her hands and studied them. Reasonably steady. She ought to be able to get through a day at Bailey and Bailey's without com­pletely cracking up. She supposed Liam would be all right here alone. Perhaps she ought to stay and keep him company? On the other hand, he would be working on the book.

She set about preparing the two vacuum flasks as usual. Although "usual" could never be quite the same. Now, whenever she switched on the kettle, she heard in her head the echo of the explosion, followed by the clatter and crash of crockery. Sally twitched. She was not going to let this get to her.

Liam was at his computer, working. "Coffee!" she said, putting down the vacuum flask.

He glanced up. "You're going in to work, then? Do you think it's wise?"

"It will take my mind off things. You'll be all right here?"

"Sure. Wouldn't be surprised if the coppers don't come back in their size twelve boots and start tramping around the place. I hope that Markby fellow doesn't come, but he prob­ably will. He threatened to. Or send his minions. Don't know which will be worse."

"Alan? Didn't you like him? He's Meredith's friend. I thought he was rather nice."

"You would." Liam struck the keyboard with unnecessary force. "I found him an arrogant, supercilious blighter."

"Perhaps if the police come, they'll expect to see me," Sally said, worried.

"They can find you at Bailey's, can't they?"

Clearly, he was in a mood. All the more reason to go into work. The qualms she'd had about leaving him here alone were effectively squashed.

Sally ran up the narrow staircase and into the main bed­room. To dignify the room with the title "main" was estate-agent-speak. It was the larger of the two bedrooms the cottage possessed. Since the other was minuscule, "larger" meant "average-sized." The ceiling slanted, reducing space still fur­ther and the tiny dormer-windows were set in narrow embrasures. Like Meredith, Sally was finding it difficult to accommodate her lifestyle into a space which originally had housed a family with several children. Such was progress.

There was little room for furniture and most of the floor space was taken up with the double pine bed. The dressing table was out of style with the room, but here because Sally liked it. It had been one of Aunt Emily's pieces, a thirties-designed extravaganza with triple oval mirrors atop and a row of tiny drawers, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, below. The sur­face was polished walnut veneer.

Sally always felt, when she sat before it, rather like one of those goddesses of the silver screen, a Hollywood Great of the days of glamor. She ought to wear a satin negligee trimmed with swansdown and the surface of the dressing table should be covered with cut-glass perfume sprays and huge powder puffs. As it was, Sally never sat before it in anything other than a toweling bathrobe and its surface carried only basic make-up items and a jumble of things which oughtn't to be here at all: letters and scribbled memos; paperclips and elastic bands. Nor could her face and figure be described as glamorous. Still, anyone could dream.

Not, however, this morning. No time for fantasy worlds. The bed hadn't been made. If she left it like this, it would still be in its unmade state when she got back. It wouldn't occur to Liam to tidy it.

Sally pulled the duvet straight and punched the pillows. Thumping them made her feel better.

So much for the bed. If only every problem could be dealt with so easily, with simple application of brute force! She understood why people, faced with no other way out of a dilemma, were tempted to see violence as the answer. Biff, biff, biff! She stopped, struck by guilt. It didn't justify those who'd sent the letter-bomb. They had no excuse for what they'd done. But that was ugly real-life violence, not vicari­ous fantasy violence. Just as real life was a toweling robe and not a diaphanous negligee.

The exercise had caused her to work up a sweat and when she peered in the oval mirror of the dressing table, her face had a healthy glow. She dabbed powder on her nose to re­move the shine and applied a thin coating of lipstick to her mouth. Pressing her lips together and studying the result, she decided that, though an improvement, it could be better.

Her hand strayed toward one of the tiny drawers which held recent impulse-purchases of mascara and eyebrow pen­cil. "For whom am I doing this?" she asked herself. "For Austin?"

If so, she oughtn't to be. She withdrew her hand. But she remained before the dressing table, staring down at the little row of drawers. Unwillingly, as if propelled by some outside force, she stretched out her fingers again, but this time to a drawer on the extreme left which contained miscellaneous small items belonging to Liam.

It was his personal drawer but she knew what was in there. He thought she didn't. She hadn't told him of her discovery. He'd lose his temper, wanting to know why she was rum­maging in his drawer, anyway? She'd discovered it by chance about a month ago. She'd bought a new shirt-blouse with turned-back cuffs and had thought that a pair of men's cuff­links might look smart. Liam didn't normally use such things except on formal occasions but he had two or three pairs. Seeking them, in the little morocco-leather case which held them, she'd found the tie-pin.

Sally slid open the drawer and took out the box. The tie-pin was still there. She unfolded the tissue wrapping and it lay in her palm, still attached to its plush mount. It was gold, no question of it, but a horrid thing, designed like a snake with a ruby eye.

She ran the tip of her finger along its sinuous body, allow­ing herself the pleasure of criticizing it. "Flashy," that was the word. There was also satisfaction in knowing about it, when Liam thought she didn't. She returned it to its place.

Sally hurried back down the stairs, unhooking her jacket as she passed the rack in the hall, and putting her head around the study door as she struggled to thrust her arms through the jacket's sleeves.

"I'll be back around four," she promised.

Liam, sitting at his computer, his back to her, muttered, "I'll see you then." He didn't turn, but tapped the keyboard and script rolled across the monitor.

She wanted to tell him he might have the courtesy to look at her. She even took a step forward and reached out her hand before thinking, what am I about to do? Hurl the keyboard to the floor? Smash the screen? Such tantrums weren't in her nature.

Her hand dropped back by her side. The anger, subdued, was pushed back into her subconscious, like a wild animal returned to a cage.

Liam was not even aware of her movement. She muttered "Goodbye!" and scurried out.


Dave Pearce's elevation to inspector weighed heavily on his shoulders, (encased today in a brand-new jacket). Since join­ing the force, Pearce had never lacked ambition. First to make it into CID and then to continue upward and onward. Just how far up and on, he hadn't been sure. He was privately worried that lack of extensive formal education and a hint of country accent might put a halt to his rise beyond a certain point.

"All bloody graduates these days!" he'd informed his new wife, Tessa. "I mean, what chance do I stand against the university boys?"

But he'd assiduously burned the midnight oil and passed his exams, and here he was, detective-inspector. Tessa had immediately insisted on the new jacket. The other Mrs. Pearce, Dave's mother, had visited, phoned or (in the case of a cousin in Australia) written to every acquaintance she had to spread the glad news of her son's success. Dave suspected that, had the elder Mrs. Pearce been able to persuade the vicar, she'd have arranged for the church bells to be rung to announce the tidings to the countryside at large.

Now that it had come, his promotion, he had to deal with it. Put up or shut up, as the saying went. He couldn't let down Tessa nor the dowager Mrs. Pearce. Their faith in him was absolute. He couldn't let himself down, though his faith in himself was by no means so complete. He couldn't let down his old guv'nor and mentor from Bamford, Chief Inspector, now Superintendent, Markby, with whom Pearce found him­self again working. He was pleased (secretly delighted, in fact) to be back on Markby's team. But it added to that in­visible burden. Above all, he hadn't to fail in Markby's eyes.

This morning it was extremely cold but without the frost. Instead it was dank, with overcast skies and a promise of rain or even sleet. A clamminess infested the atmosphere which crept through the weave of Pearce's new jacket and even seemed to lend a damp feel to the papers he'd placed on Markby's desk.

The gray skies added to Pearce's somber mood. He picked up his polystyrene cup of coffee, coaxed from a dispenser in the corridor on his way to Markby's office, sipped and burned his tongue. He muttered, "Shit!"

"What's that?" The superintendent, shuffling irritably among the forensic reports, didn't look up. Pearce said hastily, "Prescott's checking out that raid at Caswell's lab last year. I asked him to bring along the file as soon as he's located it."

"Good." Markby swept the sheets of paper into a heap, picked it up, tapped it on the desk to knock it into shape and then placed it foursquare on the desk. Satisfied at last it was tidy, he rested his forearms on top of it, hands clasped.

"Expert opinion is that the package was an amateur effort, for all its effectiveness. Certainly it was unstable which was why it went off as it did. The explosive itself was probably old, perhaps badly stored. The bomber's supplier for his ma­terial may have been a stranger in a pub. It might have gone off at any time, long before it reached the Caswells. Might even have gone off in the maker's own face."

Pearce nodded, grimacing, but not because of the careless­ness of the bomber. The coffee tasted awful, bitter but without flavor. It might be better to drink it very hot, at the risk of scalding. "If whoever sent it hadn't done it before," he ob­served, "he mightn't realize it was so powerful."

Markby hunched his shoulders. "True. Or perhaps he just didn't care. That could indicate someone particularly fanati­cal. Perhaps a group we haven't come across before. There are several small do-it-yourself outfits in the animal rights movement generally. It might consist of just one man, or a couple of people, one of whom has just sufficient knowledge to rig an explosive device but not enough to make a profes­sional job of it."

Pearce nodded, staring into the coffee tub. A dark stain was forming on the top of the coffee, reminiscent of oil seep­ing up from a submerged wreck.

Markby slapped the desk. Pearce jumped. The coffee slopped and he hastily held it away from the new jacket. "Sir?"

"The senders are obviously totally irresponsible and may well strike again, having failed this time!" Markby empha­sized the words, obviously aware of some inattention on the part of his listener. "Warnings are being sent to all research establishments engaged on work involving animals and lead­ing experts in the field put on their guard. They—whoever they are—may not strike here next. Having diverted us to one target, they may now seek out another. That doesn't mean Caswell and his wife are in the clear. I've asked someone to go out to Castle Darcy and show them both how to check their cars for booby-traps. That could be the next thing they try."

His voice tailed away and he turned his head to stare out at the leaden sky. "Dirty business and we're in for some dirty weather. Pity. At least the frost made the place look attrac­tive."

"Anyone rung to ask how Mrs. Caswell is today?" Pearce was anxious to prove his mind was on business.

"Meredith rang early this morning. I mean, Miss Mitchell. You remember?" Markby turned questioning eyes on him.

Pearce cheered up and grinned. "Course I do! I mean, yes, I remember the lady."

Markby treated him to a suspicious look. He was well aware that when he'd been at Bamford, his underlings had run a book on when he and Meredith would announce their engagement. It hadn't happened. She liked things between them just the way they were. He hadn't given up hope of persuading her one day to think about a change in their sit­uation, though he'd resigned himself to a long wait.

"Meredith knows Mrs. Caswell from way back." He spoke briskly. "After she rang Castle Darcy, she rang me. Mere­dith's worried. It seems Sally Caswell intends to go to work today. She works at Bailey and Bailey, the auctioneers. It's a sale day and she feels she ought to be there. Meredith hoped I'd step in and dissuade her. I didn't because, between you and me, I'm glad she's there rather than in that isolated vil­lage. At least I know where she is and that she's safe. It only leaves me with Dr. Caswell to worry about for a few hours." He glanced at his wristwatch. "She'll be at Bailey's now."

Pearce's coffee had cooled. Bravely ignoring the dark stain on the surface, he drank it down, wincing.

"You don't look as if you enjoyed that," Markby ob­served. "Why don't you bring in a flask? Several people do."

"I'll get used to it," Pearce said nobly. "We can't guard Dr. Caswell night and day."

"No. He'll have to take all possible precautions himself. I've told him to get in touch the moment anything odd hap­pens and especially if he receives any more mail, anonymous or not, which is about his work. I hope he does." Markby let out his breath in a hiss of annoyance. "He's an awkward type. He receives threats and doesn't report them. Doesn't like be­ing bothered with questions. Doesn't like policemen. Doesn't like anything interfering with his work!"

Pearce said slowly, "To be honest, sir, I don't much care for the idea of people messing about with dumb animals in laboratories. I like animals. We've got a new puppy at home. I'd hate to think of someone, well, cutting it about or giving it diseases on purpose."

"So do I, so do most of us. But Caswell's work is perfectly legal and according to him, his animals didn't suffer. We've only his word for that, I know. But the point is, whatever we feel about it, we have to try and find who is sending bombs through the Royal Mail. There's never any excuse for that!"

A tap at the door heralded Sergeant Prescott. His entrance was mildly dramatic, owing to a magnificent black eye which marred his youthful looks.

"Still in the rugby team, I see," Markby remarked. "Good match, last Saturday, was it?"

"Yessir. We thrashed Bamford Town!" Prescott touched the purple flesh with pride and added, "It was a bit of a roughhouse but no one stretchered off. All walking wounded."

"Don't break any bones," Markby begged him. "That's all I ask. We're short-handed enough as it is! Is that the file on the animal liberation gang?"

Prescott hastened to put it on the desk. "The ringleader was a bloke called Michael Whelan. When he was picked up for the raid on the lab, he'd already got form. He got another six months for the raid. He must be out by now. There's an address for him. He lives out at Cherton, the Spring Farm estate."

Markby and Pearce groaned in unison. Pearce added, "Wouldn't he just?"

"Glad you're happy about it!" Markby told them both. "Because you're going over there to interview him! If he served a jail sentence after the raid on Caswell's lab, he may bear a personal grudge against Caswell, quite aside from any­thing to do with the animals."

"Right!" Pearce got to his feet and dropped the empty polystyrene tub into the wastepaper basket. He resolved to stop somewhere en route to Whelan and get a proper cup of coffee!

"Better not go alone." Markby nodded at Prescott. "Take our sporting hero with you! That shiner might impress Whe­lan!" He slapped the file on the desk. "As for me, I think I'll go and talk to Miss Libby Hancock."

They both looked baffled.

"Miss Hancock," Markby explained, "delivers the mail to Castle Darcy. Someone's got to talk to her. It'll save an of­ficer a job if I go, and do me good to get out of this office!"

"He hasn't changed," said Pearce unwarily to Prescott as they set off to find Whelan.

Prescott gave him a curious glance. "The superintendent? You know him of old, don't you? That's what someone said."

"Markby? He was my chief at Bamford." Pearce grinned at the memory. "He always hated being stuck at a desk! He loves being out and about talking to people!"

"I sometimes think," said Prescott, "I wouldn't mind a desk job. On mornings like this, anyway. I can't say I'm keen to go and talk to a bunch of villains in Spring Farm."

"We've only got to check out Whelan and it shouldn't take us long." Pearce had something else on his mind. "Before we go there, do you know anywhere around here which does a decent cup of coffee?''


When Markby arrived at Bamford postal sorting office, most of its employees were out on the various "walks." The hectic reception and sorting of overnight mailbags was long completed. However, a recent delivery must just have taken place because a fresh stack had been emptied onto the tipping table and busy hands were picking it over.

The manager emerged from his office and shook Markby's hand. "Libby? She came in this morning but I had to send her home. She was in no state to take the van out. This has given her a terrible shock. Given us all a hell of a shock! Sort of thing can happen to any of us. Libby's a friendly sort of girl, knows a lot of the people she delivers to. The idea that she personally handed the Caswell woman the package, well, you know. Nasty. Left us short-handed this morning." He glanced wryly around the sorting room.

"You haven't had any similar incidents recently, say within the last six months? Any suspicious packages taken your eye?"

The manager shook his head. "Not here. If anything hap­pens elsewhere, we get an opsflash. We stick it up on the board here." He led Markby to a corkboard by the entrance. A small printed notice was affixed. It gave details of the pre­vious day's package to the Caswells and warned staff to look out for further mail addressed to Castle Darcy.

"Got our own opsflash today!" said the manager with a grim smile.

"What do you do if you get a suspicious package?"

"Take it out to the yard and drop it in the bomb box, then phone your lot. What else can we do?" The manager gazed moodily at the opsflash. "Ruddy maniacs! Don't give a damn whether a postal worker gets his hands blown off!"


Libby Hancock lived in a neat red-brick terraced house. The brass letterbox was burnished bright. Crisp lace curtains dec­orously draped sparkling windows. The door was opened by a worried-looking, middle-aged woman in a hand-knitted pullover and polyester slacks.

"Oh, police!" she said flustered. "Come in, won't you? I don't know what Libby can tell you. She's that upset. You won't go frightening her, will you?" She peered at Markby, seeking reassurance.

A door at the far end of the narrow passage opened before he could answer. A balding, mustachioed man emerged and bore down on them.

"Boys in blue?" he demanded loudly. "Oh, plainclothes, eh? CID job!" He tapped the side of his nose and winked at Markby, as if they shared some secret.

"This is my brother," said Mrs. Hancock in a flat voice. "He's come to have a word with Libby, Denis."

Denis sidled up to Markby. "Bring back the cat!" he ad­vised hoarsely. In case Markby should misinterpret this as a request to seek out a missing kitty, he added, "Flogging! That's what's needed!" Undeniable relish entered his voice. "Bring back the birch! Joy-riders, football hooligans, bomb­ers, the lot!"

"All right, Denis!" said Mrs. Hancock, showing signs of spirit. "He doesn't want to hear your views!"

"Yes, he does!" argued Denis. "I'm a member of the pub­lic. They want to know what the public thinks, do the coppers. They like to know Joe Public is behind them. That's why you get all them programmes on the telly, like Crimewatch. If it wasn't for the public helping, the coppers wouldn't catch half the crooks!"

"Quite," said Markby, edging past Denis in the narrow confines of the hallway. "Er, your daughter, Mrs. Hancock?"

"String 'em up!" continued Denis, undeterred. "Bring back hanging! Corporal punishment and—" He paused, hunt­ing the word. "And the other sort! Capital punishment, that's it! Corporal and capital punishment. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! That's in the Bible," he concluded piously.

"Take no notice," said Mrs. Hancock to Markby. "He goes on a bit. He means well. In here!"

Libby Hancock sat in the neat front room by a coal fire. A pair of budgerigars, one blue and the other green, hopped about a nearby cage. As the stranger entered, they set up a loud chirrup of alarm.

"They'll settle in a minute," said Mrs. Hancock. "The gentleman wants a word, Libby. Police officer."

"Hullo, Libby," said Markby.

"Hullo," she returned almost inaudibly.

"I'll fetch in a cup of tea," said Mrs. Hancock. She went out and could be heard in lively conversation with her brother.

"Did you meet Uncle Denis?" Libby asked.

Markby smiled. "Yes. Does he live here?"

She gave a faint smile in return. " 'Fraid so. He's all right in his way. He'll probably go out soon. Down the bookies. It'll be quieter when he's gone."

Her voice lingered wistfully on the last phrase and he won­dered whether she meant Denis's departure in a permanent sense. He studied her. She was a sturdy young woman and although off work today still wore her uniform navy-blue sweater, skirt, dark stockings and strong lace-up shoes. But she had gone into work this morning to be sent home. Markby told her he'd stopped by the sorting office.

"I would've stayed!" she said, becoming agitated. "I don't like letting people down. Someone will have to do my round after he's done his and people will get their mail late!"

"They'll understand. You don't mind if we talk about yes­terday?"

She shook her head. "No. But I can't tell you anything helpful. I still can't believe it." Her voice dropped to a whis­per again.

"Mind out the way, Denis!" came Mrs. Hancock's exas­perated voice outside the door.

"Just opening the door for you, Mary!" protested Denis.

Mrs. Hancock entered with tea-cups on a tray and a plate of biscuits. She set it down while Denis hovered hopefully in the background. Mrs. Hancock retreated, pushing her brother forcefully ahead of her and the door closed.

The budgerigars had settled down. One pecked at a spray of millet and the other balanced on its little swing. Markby reflected that Denis was doubtless living very comfortably in this cosy little home. He wondered if the lodger-relative did any kind of job.

"I went into work yesterday as usual," Libby was saying. "I got there just before five."

Five o'clock on a chilly winter morning. While Denis was probably still abed, thought Markby, his niece was out in the frosty dawn, making her way to work. Irritation rose in his throat. He picked up a cup of tea and handed it to the girl.

She took it absently. "There wasn't much mail for Castle Darcy. But there were a couple of packages, one of them a padded mailbag for the Caswells. It was a bit heavy and who­ever had sent it had put on extra postage. I remember saying to Mrs. Caswell, that really it's best to get things weighed."

She looked up in sudden agitation. "I should have thought—I should have known then that something was wrong with it! It's one of the things we're told to look for, a package like that where someone had obviously not wanted to hand it over at a post office counter and had just stuffed it into a mailbox." She heaved a sigh. "But it's coming up to Christmas, you see. And people do things like that around Christmas. They want to get a Christmas present off and they haven't time to take it in, so they just stick on as many stamps as they've got in the house and hope it'll be enough. I just thought—so stupid of me—"

"All right," Markby told her soothingly. "As you say, it's coming up to Christmas and there are a lot of packages going through the mail, a lot of them wrongly labeled or packed."

She looked at him gratefully. "I put it on the front seat beside me. Castle Darcy's not my first call, though. I go to Cherton first. There's always more for Cherton because of all the housing estates there. Not that I do them all. I take half and someone else takes the other half. After I finished Cher­ton, that's when I put Castle Darcy's mail on the front seat."

All in all, from sorting office to delivery, she'd handled the package several times and each handling potentially lethal. Markby reached for his own tea, frowning.

Libby's brow was also furrowed, in recollection. "The other package was for Mr. Bodicote, recorded delivery. He had to sign for it. I had to wait while he unchained the door and then while he went and got his glasses. He is a funny old man. He keeps goats."

"Yes," Markby smiled. "I met Mr. Bodicote and heard about Jasper."

She dimpled. "He's very proud of Jasper. He lets him out first thing every morning. If he's late, Jasper nearly kicks the door of his little hut down! Let's see, there were some letters and—and the package for the Caswells." She looked up anx­iously. "She is all right, Mrs. Caswell?"

"She's fine!" Markby assured her. "I believe she's gone to work today."

"I've been so worried. She's such a nice person. It's so awful!" Libby's voice trembled. "And I do feel so respon­sible!"

"Drink your tea!" he advised. Her concern seemed to be entirely for Sally Caswell. He wondered whether shock had temporally obscured the fact that she could herself so easily have been the victim.

She took a sip of tea. "I handed it over and got back in the van and drove on. I didn't hear any—any noise, nothing like breaking glass or an explosion. I only learned about it much later when I got back. I go off shift around twelve-thirty. Just as I was going, the news came in. I couldn't be­lieve it. I still can't. Who would want to hurt either Dr. or Mrs. Caswell?'' She gazed at her visitor, her large pale blue eyes distraught.

"You say there wasn't much mail for Castle Darcy? Apart from Bodicote and the Caswells, was there any other mail for the village?"

Hate mail of any sort, as Markby knew, was sometimes aimed at a community, rather than any one individual. More than one person received letters. The explosive package was special. The anonymous letters might not be related to it. They couldn't just assume so.

"Mrs. Goodhusband!" Libby said firmly. "Mrs. Goodhusband at The Tithe Barn. That's the name of her house. It's a lovely big house. She always has lots of letters. Apart from that, there were a couple of single items for other village people. Nothing unusual. A lot of Mrs. Goodhusband's mail was in brown envelopes, business type."

She was a good witness, Libby Hancock, Markby thought. Although shocked, she had good recall and she volunteered everything she could and let him sort it through. She didn't preselect as some witnesses did, telling the police only what they, the witness, thought of interest.

"Will you be able to find who sent it?" Libby asked him.

He drew a breath. "Well, we think, although we don't know, that Dr. Caswell may have been targeted by animal rights extremists because of some work he did last year, in his laboratory. Keep an eye open for any mail addressed to him. But try not to worry. With a little luck, we'll catch up with whoever sent the package before too long."

She smiled at him uncertainly.

Mrs. Hancock was in the passage, waiting by the door to show him out. "I've shut Denis in the kitchen," she said, as if her brother had been a disruptive pet. "I told him not to come out until you'd gone. He's like a big kid, you know. You mustn't mind him."

Markby reflected that he hadn't to mind Denis, since he hadn't to share a roof with him. He felt sorry for these two women, who did.

Mrs. Hancock's view of what had happened hadn't missed the implication for her daughter. She fixed him with a direct look. "It could've been my Libby, couldn't it? That wicked thing could have gone off in her hands!"

"Yes, it could, but it didn't," Markby soothed her.

"I don't normally take any notice of Denis's ideas about the hanging and that," she told him. "But when something like this happens, to your own, it makes you think a bit, doesn't it?"



*6*
Spring Farm estate was a notorious spot, a run-down council estate at Cherton. Cherton itself had once—long ago—been quite an attractive village. There were still a few old people, marooned in the handful of original cottages, who remem­bered it so. Sadly for them, and the village as a whole, the place had early been designated as a dormitory area for sur­rounding towns. It still was, and estates were still being built, although now a move upmarket was taking place and the new houses were smart and expensive.

Not so Spring Farm, which represented the first wave of development, on farmland from which it took its name. Built of prefabricated units, the houses had not been intended as permanent. The manufacturers had suggested a natural life-span of twenty years. Forty years on, the deteriorating flats and semi-detached homes of Spring Farm appeared ghosts from that distant time.

Respectable council tenants had long ago been channeled elsewhere into newer housing. The problem families, by tacit agreement, were allocated the crumbling dwellings of Spring Farm. Over recent years, when so much of the better stock of council housing had been sold off under privatization schemes, Spring Farm remained untouched and obstinately unprivatized. No one wanted to buy any of its homes. No housing association saw in it a good investment. Its tenants passed through in as disorganized a fashion as befitted their surroundings. Most moved out as soon as they could. When they departed, the council boarded up the dwellings and left them empty to decay even faster.

In theory, the whole area was due for demolition and re­development. But the money had run out for such brave schemes, as money had a habit of doing. Slowly and inevi­tably, Spring Farm had become a village of the Damned. A hard-core population remained, drifting about its ugly, weed-and-rubbish-infested pavements by day and screeching around its eerie streets in stolen cars by night. The cars were gen­erally stolen from the new executive housing at the other end of Cherton and it wasn't uncommon to find a burnt-out wreck smoldering in the dawn light. Hardly anyone in Spring Farm had a job. Most were behind with the rent. Quite a few had served prison terms.

Pearce and Sergeant Prescott sat in the car opposite the low-rise block of flats where Michael Whelan lived. They sipped at coffee bought en route as they discussed how to go about their call. Their eyes flickered watchfully over the cup rims, taking in every detail of the scene. The police were not welcome in Spring Farm.

The block comprised six flats, three to either side of the central main entry. Whelan lived in the bottom floor right. The bottom floor left was boarded up, sprayed with graffiti and apparently abandoned. Whelan's flat had dirty lace cur­tains at the windows so that no one could look in. One win­dow was cracked and mended with carpet tape. It was pushed open a few inches and the grimy gauze drape caught up on what looked like a tap. This was presumably the kitchen. A lidless dustbin stood outside and directly beneath. It suggested that Whelan, when he had rubbish to dispose of, simply opened the window and dropped it into the waiting bin.

"What a dump!" said Prescott, placing his empty polysty­rene tub in the well of the car.

Dave Pearce grunted agreement. "Let's get it over with!"

They got out. The slam of the car doors echoed around the deserted street. If anyone was watching, and it was almost certain that several pairs of eyes were, they did so surreptitiously. The inhabitants were well acquainted with the law in all its forms. Plainclothes and unmarked cars didn't deceive them, they would have sussed out the callers at once. Some were probably hastily hiding suspect microwaves and televi­sion sets.

Things got even less attractive the nearer the two police officers got to the building. In the hallway a lingering odor of urine permeated the stale air. Crushed cigarette packets, empty soft drink and lager cans, and crumpled pieces of aluminum foil lay strewn about. Prescott pointed silently to these last.

Before Pearce could comment, heels tapped on the slogan-bedaubed stair and a young woman carrying a baby appeared at the turn of the stairwell above them. She was thin, straggly-haired and mean-faced. She wore leggings, high-heeled shoes, a baggy mauve sweater and was smoking. The child perched in her arm was about a year old. She and the baby were equally in need of a bath and clean clothes. The mother stared down at them. Her free hand hung by her side, smoke spi­ralling up from the cigarette smoldering between her fingers. "Who d'you want?" she asked belligerently.

"Michael Whelan," Pearce told her.

She looked relieved but put the cigarette to her lips in an attempt to hide the expression.

"Ain't seen him for a week," she said. "He mightn't be there. Why don't you try down the pub?"

Initially she'd clearly been worried they were seeking someone else. Now their visit no longer bothered her directly. Whelan was nothing to her. All the same, she created a token delay so that if Whelan had seen the police approach, he'd have time to hide or destroy anything he thought he should. The inhabitants of Spring Farm stood by one another against officialdom, even though they were otherwise split into war­ring factions.

"But he still lives here?"

The smoke from the cigarette drifted into the baby's face. It put up its little fists in a pathetic attempt to protect its eyes and whimpered.

She joggled her arm to quieten the infant but didn't remove the cause of its distress.

"That smoke's going in the kid's eyes!" snapped Prescott, annoyed.

She looked surprised. "Oh, yeah..." She waved her hand, still with the cigarette smoldering, to dispel the smoke and only spread it further.

"He lives here, Whelan?" Pearce persisted.

"Suppose so. He did. He's a quiet sod. Haven't seen him for a week. What d'ya want him for?"

The two officers exchanged glances and by mutual consent turned away from her. Pearce rang the doorbell. Then he knocked loudly, to make sure. The girl with the baby re­mained where she was, watching.

After a moment they heard someone come to the door. There was a fit of coughing. A voice asked, "Who is it?"

"Police!" Prescott called loudly.

A chain rattled. The door opened just wide enough to admit them and a voice hollowly invited them to come in, then, if they wanted.

The tiny hall was dark and smelly. The man's outline, sil­houetted in the kitchen doorway, was disconcerting, a stick-like Lowry figure.

"Michael Whelan?" Prescott asked.

The stick figure moved, as awkward as a marionette, joints askew. "Come in the kitchen." The voice, like the body from which it issued, was reedy and lusterless.

The kitchen was filthy, unwashed dishes in the sink, grease-spotted tiles on the walls and a table still cluttered with the remains of breakfast.

"Want to sit down?" Whelan pointed listlessly at two plas­tic chairs.

"We'll stand," said Prescott, giving the chairs a distasteful glance. He held out his identification. "Sergeant Prescott and this is Inspector Pearce."

Pearce gave an automatic tug to the new jacket. He was only human. Being introduced as "inspector" still gave him a glow of satisfaction.

Whelan glanced at the card but didn't appear interested. "What do you want?"

Pearce took over. "Only a word. Have you been ill, Mr. Whelan?" He was genuinely curious, in the kitchen light, Whelan could be seen to be almost skeletal. His hair, lank and receding, was brushed back from a domed forehead glis­tening with beads of sweat. His sunken eyes burned above drawn cheeks and almost lipless mouth. At one corner of the mouth was a sore. He put out the tip of his tongue and manoeuvered it so that it touched the blemish, of which he was evidently self-conscious.

"I'm clean," he mumbled. "I've done nothing."

"Didn't say you had," said Pearce conversationally. He glanced around. On the wall was a calendar, showing a pic­ture of a mare and foal in a field. "Still interested in animal welfare?"

"I care about animals!" Whelan became agitated. "But I've got nothing to do with the action group. Not any more."

"You're referring to the group which raided the laboratory last year?"

"I did my time," Whelan repeated, "I'm clean. I've done nothing. I don't have anything to do with the group any more."

He moved toward the sink, a gaunt figure in jeans which had slipped at the waist to rest precariously on his bony hips. His faded tee-shirt hung loose around his ribs and his inner arms were patched with livid bruises.

"You remember the names of any of the scientists who worked at that lab?" Pearce asked him.

Whelan turned his head to stare at him, then away. "No."

"How about Caswell? Dr. Liam Caswell? Remember him?"

Whelan shook his head. "Don't remember any of them. I don't remember..." He paused. "Names and things, they slip my mind." For a second an expression of bewilderment which almost, but not quite, became panic, crossed his face. The watching officers saw Whelan push away the frightening truth which lurked somewhere in his confused mind.

"See any of your old mates in the action group, as you call it?" Prescott took up the questioning. "I'm not asking if you take part in any of their activities. Do you ever see them to have a pint, talk over old times?"

As the sergeant spoke, Pearce's gaze was drawn again, un­willingly, to those dark patches of mottled flesh on Whelan's arms. When he'd first joined the force, his introduction to sudden death had come in gruesome form, by way of a body discovered by schoolchildren, part-buried in woodland. It had been there some time and putrefaction had been well advanced. Pearce, as a young constable, had looked down at it and wondered, in a way which had surprised himself, at the many curious colors of the decomposing flesh. Wondered, that was, until the smell of it took over and he'd turned aside to throw up. It had been embarrassing but the sergeant in charge at the time had pointed out cheerily, a copper got used to it.

And he had got used to it. Up to a point. Occasionally something brought back a memory of that thing in the woods, the strange sweet sickly smell of it and all the colors, the greens, yellows, purplish-blacks ... colors very like those emerging on Whelan's arms in a kind of hideous portent of what was to come.

Whelan was speaking and Pearce forced his attention to return from the distant past to the present and this squalid kitchen.

"I don't have anything to do with the group any more." The words came out as if Prescott's question had pressed a button activating a recorded message. The tone was dead. "They don't come near me." The voice was firmer. Whelan's dark eyes, feverish bright, turned to Pearce. "My cover's blown, see?"

Pearce saw. Whelan was too well known now to the au­thorities and had served time in prison. At the first whiff of trouble, the police were on Whelan's doorstep. His old acquaintances had dropped him. He was too dangerous to have around now. He was on his own.

"All right," Pearce said. "Thanks for your help. We may call back." He hesitated as he and Prescott made toward the door. "Do you need medical help of any kind? Social services to call around?"

"You can keep those buggers away!" Whelan said briefly with the first flicker of energy since remarking that he still cared about animals.

"All right. But there are centers where they help you—" Pearce faltered. Prescott gave him a curious glance. Pearce plowed on, "There are substitutes—"

He wasn't allowed to finish.

"I'm all right," Whelan's flat tones contrasted oddly with the flickering light in his eyes. "I've got a touch of 'flu." He shivered as if to prove it. "Be all right when it goes. There's a lot of it about." He pushed his head forward anxiously and gave a nervous smile.

"What do you reckon?'' Prescott asked when they were back in the car. "What do you think he's using? Heroin? How long's he been shooting up? Nothing in his file says he was a druggie at the time of his arrest."

Pearce shrugged. He was conscious, as in that far-off time when he'd thrown up by the side of a decomposing body, that he'd let himself down. By way of compensation his tone now was uncompromisingly hard-boiled.

"He might have picked up the habit in prison."

"We ought to try and find out where he's getting the stuff," Prescott offered.

Dave Pearce gave him a disgusted glance. "Look around you! You can buy anything in this place! Who're we going to ask? Whelan? That woman with the kid? The neighbors? Think they're going to tell you? Or do you think we can stake the place out and watch for packets changing hands? They can smell the Old Bill coming a mile off around here!"

There was a silence. "How long d'you give him?" Prescott asked, switching on the ignition. The engine leapt into life.

"Who knows? A year? A few months? Even less if he's sharing needles. Dying on his feet. He's past caring about Caswell or anything else. Let's go." Pearce's voice gained ferocity. "Let's get out of this hellhole!"


Meredith had arrived at the auction rooms. The dull day hadn't deterred potential bidders. A large crowd had already gathered, many clutching catalogues. Some had already armed themselves with the obligatory numbered cards. Even more lots had appeared since the previous day. The sale, the more robust and less desirable part of it, now spilled into the yard. Rusty farm implements jostled empty picture frames, boxes of mixed crockery and stacks of stained volumes by once popular novelists now long passed into obscurity.

Meredith, rubbing chilled fingers, edged into the salerooms out of the wind. There, people were taking a last good look at the numbered lots. Austin Bailey wasn't to be seen but a rostrum had been set up at one end of the room, bearing a reading desk and decorously draped with a green cloth. Ted, in his apron, stood by the wall between a long case clock and a linen-press and watched the crowd with sharply appreciative gaze.

"Hullo," he greeted Meredith. "You may have to pay a bit more for your glasses. The dealers are here. That chap—" He nodded toward the far side of the room where a burly man wearing a tweed hat picked over the china and glassware. "He buys a lot of glassware, Victorian and Edwardian stuff. He's got a coupla antique shops."

But Meredith's attention had been attracted by a glimpse of another figure, an unexpected presence. Beyond the col­lection of glass and china, Bodicote stooped over a spread of old books on a battered pine kitchen table. His tortoise head strained forward to decipher the lettering on the spines through spectacles perched on the very end of his nose.

"Excuse me," Meredith murmured to Ted. She made her way to the book table and approached Bodicote unseen.

"Good morning, Mr. Bodicote!" she said brightly.

Bodicote froze. He turned slowly and peered at her over the top of his spectacles without returning the greeting. He wore an ancient gabardine raincoat which hung in folds al­most to his ankles and had either been made for someone larger or been purchased when Bodicote had been a heavier man. In style it recalled grainy black and white footage of the Soviet hierarchy in the 1950s. Its age, signalled by its im­mensely wide lapels, almost qualified it to be in the sale. No two buttons on it were alike.

Bodicote placed her at last. "You're that woman as was visiting Mrs. Caswell last night."

"That's right. Everything all right today, Mr. Bodicote?"

"I suppose it is. I'm all right," Bodicote added meaning­fully. "If you wants Mrs. Caswell, she's in the back office there." He nodded down the room. "You want to ask her yourself if she's all right."

"Yes, I mean to."

Meredith looked down at the pine table. "You're interested in these books, are you? Going to bid?"

Bodicote's head turned slowly on his long thin neck in the direction she indicated. "I like a good yarn," he said. "But they don't write them no more, not like they did."

"There are some books outside, novels," she suggested.

"Seen 'em!" said Bodicote dismissively. He moved away and began leafing through a stack of yellowing motoring mag­azines.

Meredith picked up the topmost leatherbound volume of those on the table. It was entitled The Clergyman's Vade Mecum. Opening it, she saw that it was published in 1790 and, just inside the cover, spikily inscribed in black ink, "The Rev. J. F. Farrar 1797."

The pages were crepe-like to the touch with uneven hand­set print. Meredith raised the volume nearer her nose and breathed in. The odors of old paper, animal-based glue, dust and printer's ink entered her nostrils. But more besides. Tan­talizing hints of everything which had been in the vicinity of this book during two hundred years. Coal fires, candlewax, snuff, mulled wine, camphor. She could smell the eighteenth century, preserved between the covers of a country parson's sermon crib.

She closed it gently and replaced it. The other books were of equally worthy subject matter. All were bound in scuffed leather binding, some spines cracking, titles stamped in gilt. Moral guidance for the many, but if Bodicote wanted a "good yarn," he wouldn't find it here.

Meredith left the table and made her way toward the back office in search of Sally Caswell.

The office was small and Sally invisible behind a crowd of would-be bidders anxious to be provided with a number be­fore the sale began. Meredith waited patiently until the scrum thinned and departed, clutching cards, and then put her head around the door and called,, "Hi!"

"Meredith!" Sally looked up from her table and gave a grin of delight. "Glad you made it! Got your card?"

"Not yet. How's it going?" Meredith eyed her friend with some concern. Sally's forehead still wore a large plaster.

Sally handed her a white card, perforated midway. "It's going fine! Fill in the bottom half with your name and phone number and give it back to me. Keep the top half with the number and wave it at Austin if you want to bid. If he doesn't see you, shout."

As Meredith scribbled on the card, Sally went on, "It was a shock yesterday, but I've made up my mind to get over it. I owe it to Liam. We weren't hurt, neither Liam nor I, and that's the most important thing! Liam's refusing to let it frighten him and is carrying on with his book as usual. So I'm carrying on as usual, too. We'll stick together on this!" She nodded determinedly.

That was all very well, Meredith thought, and thoroughly British. But there were other considerations than Liam's book! Not that Liam was likely to think so. Still, as Alan had said earlier on the phone, it was in the end up to Sally herself. Meredith handed her the completed card. "Bodicote is out in the saleroom. Has he taken a card?"

"Yes, he did." Sally grimaced. "He always comes to sales."

Meredith showed her surprise. "What does he buy?"

"Job lots of books and bits of china, mostly. He picks up odd items of ironmongery. Lord knows what he does with it. But country people are like that. They find a use for things the rest of us would just see as junk. Well, they find misuses for good things which would horrify us! I don't dare tell Austin this. But Bodicote has a really nice big Victorian jardiniere outside his back door. Glazed pot with birds and flow­ers on it. And do you know what he uses it for? He puts some sort of dried food he feeds the goats in it."

They were disturbed by the clanging of a handbell.

"Sale's beginning!" Sally said. "Outside first. Are you going out or waiting in here? It's a bit nippy out there."

Meredith hesitated. "I'll take a look."

Sally picked up her vacuum flask. "I'm going to have a drink of my tea while I've got the chance. Come back and join me."

Outside Austin Bailey had appeared. His appearance, in fact, was eye-catching, with a touch of the evangelist about it. He stood on a wooden box, well wrapped up against the wind in a heavy jacket and with a yellow woollen scarf wound around his neck. The ends of the scarf, and its wearer's hair, fluttered in the breeze. Austin's face was alight with enthusiasm. He clapped his hands together, waved his printed list of lots and bawled, "Good morning, everyone!"

Then, with a briskness born partly of long experience and partly out of recognition that none of them wanted to hang about out here in the cold, he was off.

The first lots went quickly. But it was obvious they would be out here some little while. Without warning, a trembling assailed Meredith's knees, a return of the weakness which had become familiar since the 'flu. It would be better, she realized, to wait inside until the outside bidding was over. She slipped away.

Sally was alone in the office, doing as she'd said she would, grabbing a hot drink while she had the chance.

"Thought you'd be back! Too cold out there and he'll be at least twenty minutes. Here, have a cup of this. It's my special brew! Garden herbs and honey."

Sally unscrewed the flask and poured out a cup of a treacly-looking beverage which she handed Meredith.

Meredith took it, cupping her hands around it for warmth and subsiding onto a chair. "It is cold out there! I think I'm feeling it more too, since the wretched 'flu."

Sally eyed her. "You look a bit pale. Did you try the chamomile tea I recommended?"

"I did, honestly. But I found I could only drink so much of it. What's this? Something similar?"

"Not really. It's my own concoction."

Meredith sipped the tea. At first she could only taste the honey. But following on that, came a brackish taste which, to be honest, she didn't much like.

"It takes a bit of getting used to," Sally, watching her, said.

"Don't think my tastebuds are doing it justice." Meredith took a last heroic swallow and put down the cup.

The sound of Austin Bailey's voice was heard through the open door. Sally cocked her head.

"He'll be finished outside in about ten minutes. Get your­self a chair in the main room before the mob arrives in about five minutes. The canny ones start drifting in then. The suc­cessful bidders will be in here soon, paying."

She cleared flask and cups away from her desk. Meredith realized that Sally was politely clearing the decks of her vis­itor too, before business became brisk in the tiny office. But she had something she wanted to get off her chest before she went into the saleroom.

"Alan and I went for an Indian meal last night, after we left your place," she began.

Sally, tapping at the keyboard, only nodded.

"This is a bit embarrassing," Meredith persisted.

Sally turned her head. "Why? What did you do? Tip your curry all over the floor?'' She grinned.

"No, we had a talk."

Sally abandoned her keyboard. "About our explosive pack­age?"

"Not directly. Alan doesn't gossip about his work. But he did want to talk about you and Liam. He asked me how I met you both and, well, if Liam had any enemies I knew of. Of course, I don't know whether Liam has and it's not my busi­ness, anyway. But I had to tell Alan that I knew Liam has had a few spats along the way." She accompanied her words with a rueful look.

Sally was silent for a moment. "That's all right," she said at last. "I appreciate your telling me. I know Liam does fall out with people. But it isn't always his fault!" Her voice rose indignantly. "Things just seem to happen sometimes. Liam gets caught up in the middle of it."

Meredith picked at the corner of her numbered card. "Alan told me as we walked home that Bodicote seemed upset about the goats. He's old, we both realize that, and he probably gets overwrought. But he seemed to think someone had tried to poison them. He said something about turnips. Do you know what he meant?"

Sally threw both hands in the air. "Oh, the wretched tur­nips! That's a perfect example of what I was saying. That things just seem to happen around Liam. Only really, what happened that time, happened to me. It was my doing!"

She heaved a deep sigh of exasperation. "I don't know anything about goats, Meredith. That's how it all came about. I didn't mean any harm. You see, someone called into the auctioneers here one day to see Austin and brought a bag full of turnips. I don't mean to sell. Bailey and Bailey aren't greengrocers. It was someone who knew Austin. He'd grown a load of these vegetables and he wanted to get rid of them. Well, Austin couldn't use them all so he gave me some. But to be truthful, I don't like turnips much and neither does Liam.

"I brought them home to Castle Darcy, wondering what on earth I could do with them. I didn't like to just throw them out. It seemed so wasteful. They were very good turnips, as turnips go! Then I looked out of the window and saw Bodicote's goats in their paddock. I thought, Right! The perfect use for the turnips! Goats eat anything. When they get into our garden they eat my plants! They eat their way through the hedge to get there. So I walked around to Bodicote's place with my bag of turnips and knocked on his door. But he was out. I thought, I'll just tip the turnips into the field and let the goats nibble at them. And I did. All the goats trotted up and seemed to like the turnips and started munching away, as happy as anything. I went back home feeling very pleased with myself. As if I'd done my good deed for the day. Only I hadn't."

Sally buried her head in her hands. "Oh, Meredith, you can't imagine the fuss! Old Bodicote suddenly appeared about an hour later, absolutely purple with rage. I thought he was going to have some kind of a fit! He could hardly speak! It seemed the goats had finished nearly all the turnips when he got home and he arrived just in time to see them gobbling up the last few scraps. Someone passing by the cottage, appar­ently, had seen me with my bag of goat-goodies and had told him I was the culprit—I mean, I'd put the turnips out."

"And goats shouldn't have turnips to eat, is that it?" Mer­edith asked, puzzled.

"So it appears. Turnips taint their milk. They don't make the animals ill, just ruin the milk yield until the food has worked its way through the animal's system. I was very sorry, I tried to tell Bodicote so, but he wouldn't listen! He acted as though I'd done it on purpose! He had to throw their milk away until it came right again. It was all an awful muddle. I had to pay him for the ruined milk. A cheese manufacturer buys it from him. Liam said I shouldn't because I hadn't acted out of malice. But I was truly sorry and I felt so badly about it, I wanted to do something to make it up. Bodicote has never forgiven me—or Liam. It's so stupid! Why should I do something like that on purpose?" Sally finished in an aggrieved tone.

"You wouldn't. He's probably one of those people who sees bad intentions everywhere," Meredith consoled her. "Old people sometimes grow very suspicious."

Sally gave a snort of disgust. "Well, tell Alan—or I'll tell him. I am the phantom goat-poisoner!" She declared the last dramatically and struck her breast.

"Alan thought it was probably something like you've said. He doesn't think you go about poisoning anything!" Mere­dith got to her feet. "Thanks for the tea. I may see you later. I'll go and grab myself a chair. I think people are coming indoors."

Out in the saleroom, several chairs were already occupied and the rest being taken fast. Meredith sat down on the nearest and looked around for Bodicote. But she couldn't see him. Perhaps he'd got what he wanted from the goods on sale outside.

Austin hurried in. He'd divested himself of his thick coat and yellow scarf. He climbed on his rostrum and from evan­gelist now took on the appearance of a political orator.

"Right, ladies and gentlemen!" He smoothed back his long hair. "We'll proceed to Lot 31. Two prints in Japanese style."

Ted stepped forward and, using a long thin rod, indicated the two pictures hanging on the wall to the right of the ros­trum.

"Am I bid five?" asked Austin hopefully.

Meredith settled down and waited for the turn of the glass­ware. The warmth imparted by Sally's herbal drink had worn off and she was beginning to feel chilled again. As she waited, the lots were sold at what, it seemed to her, was an ever-slower pace. Her head began to ache. She turned the sheet of her catalogue. The glasses she wanted were at lot 124 and they'd only got as far as lot 61. She glanced along the row and saw the man in the tweed hat sitting nearby. He was bidding already for something else. He held up his num­ber in a brisk, no-nonsense way. He also seemed to be paying quite large sums of money. If he wanted the glasses, he'd outbid her for sure.

Suddenly, Meredith no longer wanted to wait here. She was cold, her head ached, pains were running up and down her spine. She got up between lots and slipped out.

Outside she felt better, but decided to go home. It would take her about twenty minutes to walk there. She set out as briskly as she could.

She had not gone far when she realized that she was walk­ing crookedly. She was getting funny looks from passers-by. Perhaps they thought she was drunk! She made an effort to straighten her progress, keeping to the buildings side of the pavement.

A horn blared and someone shouted. She had nearly stepped off the pavement in front of a car.

" 'Ere!" said a kindly, concerned voice. "You want to watch out, dear!"

"Yes..." she muttered. "I didn't see..."

"You all right, dear?" She was vaguely aware of a worried face peering into hers. A hand touched her elbow.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. I've had a bit of 'flu..."

"Nasty, the 'flu! You want to go on home, dear, and stay indoors."

She mumbled something to the effect that she meant to do that. The face receded. The shock had at least jolted her out of the fog which had descended on her senses. Concentrating desperately, she continued homeward, counting off the land­marks as she passed them.

She finally stumbled into her own terraced cottage, sweat­ing and dizzy. Pushing the door shut, she crawled up the stairs and into the bathroom where she threw up in the handbasin, retching with a violence which strained the muscles of her diaphragm. When she at last staggered away, head thumping and feeling iller than in the worst days of her 'flu, it was all she could do to make the bedroom. There she collapsed fully dressed on the duvet and remained there miserably all after­noon.



*7*
Alan Markby stood by the telephone in his hallway. It was a little after eight in the morning and he was about to leave for work. He was debating whether to call Meredith before he left.

It was an early hour to call anyone. But she hadn't been in touch for a few days, not since phoning him the morning after the Caswell letter-bomb about Sally. Markby himself had tried phoning Meredith that evening and again the fol­lowing morning, but to no avail. He didn't know whether she wasn't at home, possibly in London, or—and this was the worry at the back of his mind—she was there, but unable for some reason to come to the telephone.

He had not thought she looked at all well, the last time he'd seen her. Admittedly she'd been upset on Sally's ac­count. But there'd been a distinct lack of the usual sparkle. The 'flu was taking its time to clear up.

His hand closed on the receiver. It would do no harm to call. He'd let it ring just six times. Perhaps ten times, to give her a chance to get downstairs. He lifted the receiver and, with his free hand, punched out the numbers.

She answered on the ninth ring, just as he was deciding that drastic action was called for and he'd better dash around there.

"Hullo? Alan! Was it you calling recently? Someone's been ringing but I've been a bit under the weather. I really couldn't take calls. I phoned the office to arrange extra sick leave."

Markby cursed to himself. He should have gone around and seen what was wrong.

"No point in your calling around. Nothing you could do. I've been back to see Dr. Pringle. He thinks I must have been harboring some secondary virus. Anyhow, I'm better today. Honestly!"

"I'll come around this evening." He said this so as to brook no argument.

"Yes, do." She sounded relieved. "I'm absolutely fed-up and I could do with some company!"

"I'll be there around seven!" he promised. "I'll bring in something to eat. Chinese, fish and chips, Indian, pizza, name it!"

"My turn's not back to normal. Something I can eat a small piece of and you can have a reasonable meal. Pizza would be fine. Not pepperoni!" she added, as an afterthought. "I've got plenty of wine here. Yes, do come, we'll crack a bottle." As he was about to put down the receiver, she called. "Alan! Hang on! You couldn't bring in a tin of catfood, could you?"

"Catfood? What for? You're not developing strange eating habits, are you?"

"Very funny. There's a stray cat hanging around. I've been feeding it Mrs. Harmer's fish. But I thought perhaps I ought to vary its diet and the smell of cooking fish lingers in the kitchen."

"Watch it," he advised. "You'll end up a cat-owner."

"I think he's too independent. But I rather like cats. This one isn't friendly but he is thin. Buy a decent brand. Cheap catfood smells awful."

She hung up before he could inquire where she'd become an expert on tinned catfood.


"Morning, Mrs. Caswell!" said Libby. "Everything all right today?"

"Everything's fine, thanks." Sally held out her hand for the mail. "How about you? I am so sorry about what hap­pened."

"Not your fault!" said Libby. "Only letters today, but I thought I'd hand them over in person, not just put them through the letterbox. I wanted to ask how you were."

"I'm absolutely fine. And you, got over the shock?"

Libby grimaced. "More or less. My mum's still worrying about it. And my Uncle Denis is still going on a bit." She paused. "But he's always going on about something, so it's no different from usual."

She waved cheerily as she got back in her van and rattled off toward Castle Darcy's other scattered dwellings.

Sally made her way to the kitchen. "That's such a nice girl," she said, as she entered.

The kitchen had been restored to working order after a fashion. Gas and electricity engineers had called and checked the safety of the appliances. The scorched table, damaged beyond reasonable repair, had been removed. In its place had come a make-do model, one from Bailey's salerooms which no one had bought. Not surprisingly, in Sally's view. It had a horrid bright red plastic surface which made it appear as if something had been butchered on it. She had covered this with a blue cloth. The broken windows had been reglazed. But elsewhere woodwork was still scored by flying glass, and damaged sections of the fitted units had to be replaced. When it was all done, then it would have to be entirely redecorated. That meant getting someone in, or Sally doing it herself. It was no use asking Liam. Liam didn't do things about the house with paint or tools.

Sally had got over the appearance of the kitchen, turning a blind eye to the evidence. She was still sorry about the loss of a set of decorative Christmas plates which she'd collected assiduously over the years since their marriage. The blast had sent the lot crashing to the floor. Likewise, china on the open shelves of her kitchen dresser had been reduced to a pile of fragments.

But it was no use grieving over it. Life meant more, she told herself, than possession of things. Things were replace­able. People weren't. Yet there was a not-to-be ignored sym­bolism in all those smashed plates, each representing a year of her marriage to Liam.

She put that thought firmly aside. But one thing she still hadn't quite got under control was her reaction to the sound of the morning's mail coming up the path, and in that respect she'd lied to Libby about everything being fine. Her heart beat faster at the sound of the post office van and that sick, tight feeling assailed the pit of her stomach. It was only nerves. But she'd been physically sick the last two mornings, just after getting up.

She wasn't pregnant, she was sure of that. They had tried for a baby when they'd first been married. No baby had come along and subsequent investigation had revealed no baby would come. Liam hadn't seemed to mind. But the knowledge lurked at the back of Sally's mind, growing, as the years went by, into a sad acceptance.

Anyone else might have tried IVF or adoption. But Liam had never suggested they remedy their childless state. She knew, in her heart, Liam didn't want children. Children were demanding and noisy and cost money. That's what he'd said at the time, when the doctors had warned them they faced a childless marriage. Far too many kids being born nowadays, anyway, Liam had added.

That wasn't how she'd felt about it. But Liam didn't know how she felt about it. She'd never told him and he'd never asked. But that day, the doctor had told them the bleak truth, had been among the blackest of her life. For a long time she'd been fascinated by the sight of any baby in a carriage or stroller. Every young woman seemed to have one. Country towns were like that. They didn't have too many career women around here. They had young mums, some of them very young and some, it seemed to Sally, incredibly careless with regard to the infants they lugged around with them. They were treated like an inconvenient appendage, an overweight shopping-bag, to be parked in shop doorways and left on benches.

She'd learned to disguise the longing, to push it away deep down inside her. To look away from the babies. To avoid the exit gates of the primary school at half past three when the children rushed out and the parents scooped them up, bundled them into waiting cars and drove off, home to children's tele­vision and child-friendly food and bedtime battles. Not for her, for Sally. Not ever. Instead, Liam had become her child, a spoilt overgrown infant, demanding and ungrateful, trading on her love, breaking her heart. But forgiven, always for­given. For what was the alternative? Nothing but emptiness.

So if sickness hadn't been of the morning variety, it had surely been because she feared the arrival of the mail. Psychosomatic and unnecessary. Today it was just letters. No suspect fat packages. Thank God, she thought!

"All for you," she said, handing the letters to her husband. No matter how many times she told herself it wouldn't, couldn't, happen again—that the mail sorting office was on the look-out for anything suspicious; that the senders had tried it once and it hadn't worked so they wouldn't try again—never, ever again, would she open any mail not clearly ad­dressed to her alone. Not because she'd prefer it to happen to Liam! She was afraid to, simple as that.

Liam, scraping muesli from his bowl, grunted and took the sheaf of mail. She felt a twinge of annoyance that he didn't say "thank you." Lots of little things were annoying her about Liam lately. Perhaps they'd annoyed her for years. Per­haps, she thought, since the explosion I've become better at facing reality. He really doesn't have any manners. If he weren't a highly educated man, let's face it, he'd be a lout. She didn't have to put up with this. She didn't. The worm, after so many years, was turning! Or seriously thinking about it.

But she did put up with it one more time. She went to the stove. "Ready for your eggs?"

Again he didn't reply but she didn't expect it. He'd finished his cereal. She began to spoon scrambled eggs onto two plates. A burst of profanity from her husband caused her to stop and turn, startled, saucepan in hand.

"Bloody cheek!" He held out some sheets of paper. "Flaming nutcases!" His hand was trembling and his face red with rage.

The sick feeling returned, wrenching Sally's stomach and sending a wave of nausea over her. "You mean—more of those letters?"

No, no, please no! begged a voice in her head. It had to be a mistake!

"One of 'em. Threatening and illiterate. Well, two of them, if you count this one." He waved the sheet of letter paper in the air. "Except that this one isn't anonymous. It's from that crazy woman. What's her name, Goodhusband. Lives up the other end of the village in that rambling great house. No threats, just sanctimonious middle-class moralizing."

"Yvonne?"

Sally pulled herself together. She put down the saucepan and transferred the two plates of eggs to the table. Seating herself opposite Liam, she shook out her napkin and asked, "Well?"

"What? Oh, here, look. This is the cut-and-paste job."

He handed over one of the letters. The paper was cheap, ruled, torn roughly from a pad so that the top edge was un­even. The words were cut from a newspaper and glued on. No signature.


WE WILL GET YOU NEXT TIME
The nausea was replaced by anger. "How dare they?" she exclaimed. "How dare they persecute us?" She looked up. "You'll give this to the police?" It wasn't really a question. He'd give this one to the police or she would. No arguing. It had gone far enough. Far too far.

A glance at her husband's face told her that he thought so, too. Liam's eyes blazed now. In a bearded face, undue atten­tion is drawn to the eyes, Sally'd noticed before: if Liam were to shave off his beard, she'd often thought, it might be easier to argue with him. But for the first time, she was aware that, within the thick brown brush of his facial hair, his mouth trembled, and probably his chin.

"It's scared him!" she thought. "The letter's scared him!" She felt a curious thrill, almost of satisfaction, which quite shocked her.

He was nodding agreement. "Yes, all right. I'll ring that superintendent fellow, Markby. Supercilious blighter. Take the sneer off his face. Acting as if he didn't believe me last time!"

"Of course he believed you! What did you say the other letter was? From Yvonne Goodhusband?"

Liam handed over the remaining sheets in silence. As she took them, a printed folder fell out. On the front of it was a poorly reproduced photograph of some chickens, wedged uncomfortably in a tiny cage. They were a picture of misery. The one nearest the camera appeared to have been part-plucked alive.

Sally let it lie on the table and read the letter. It was on expensive notepaper, with an embossed address at the top. The handwriting was even, flowing, decided.

Dear Dr. Caswell,
I was, as you can imagine, extremely distressed to learn of your recent bad experience. I do hope that your wife is quite recovered.

As you know, I am myself very interested in animal welfare, and together with like-minded friends, have formed a pressure group. I must stress that neither I, nor any member of our group, would ever consider vi­olence in any form. I am strongly against the methods of groups such as those which targeted your home with an explosive package.

The hope and belief of myself and my group is that reason and sound argument will eventually prevail. I'm sure, if people only took time to think, they would see that so much is wrong in our attitude toward fellow creatures which are unable to speak for themselves. I was very sorry to learn that you have been using ani­mals in your laboratory. I hope that I can call at some convenient time and we can discuss this matter?

In the meantime, I have taken the liberty of enclosing one of our leaflets as a sample of the information we distribute.

Yours very sincerely,
Yvonne Goodhusband


"The woman's loony," said Liam. "And if she thinks I'm going to let her lecture me in my own home, she's got another think coming! I'm going to send this letter with the other one to Markby. As far as I'm concerned, it constitutes harassment."
"I wouldn't like to upset Yvonne," Sally protested. "I'm sure she didn't intend to be offensive. She's been one of the few people to welcome me to the village. Because someone takes up a good cause—" she met Liam's scowl and amended this to "—what they consider a good cause, it doesn't mean they're crazy. Yvonne's a bit of a stickler for conventions in lots of ways. I've been to a couple of her coffee mornings and they were positively formal!"

"Now you see what hob-nobbing with her leads to," said Liam unkindly.

Sally picked up the leaflet. The featherless chicken stared out between bars at her, accusing, reproachful. She looked at her plate of scrambled eggs.

"I bought our eggs at the supermarket in Bamford. I think they may have come from that battery chicken place down the road. Do you know the one I mean?"

"Know it? I can smell it every time the wind blows from that direction!"

"Do you think..."

Liam leaned forward. "No, I don't! You're going to ask, are all the birds at the place down the road crowded into tiny cages, pulling one another's feathers out with what remains of their clipped beaks, aren't you? These places are checked by the Ministry inspectors. They have to meet standards."

"Yes, I realize that. But these pictures were taken some­where. And how many inspectors does the government em­ploy? I bet not enough."

Sally's eye was drawn to the leaflet again. "I think I'll start buying free-range eggs. They only cost a little more. After all, I don't buy so many. It won't make much difference to my grocery bill."

"Please yourself," said Liam. "Go and join Ma Goodhusband's action group, while you're about it, why don't you?"

Sally had been reading the leaflet. Suddenly she slammed it down on the table. The crockery jumped and rattled. Liam looked startled.

"Don't!" she said. "Don't patronize me! I may not be a scientific genius but I am as entitled to my opinions and my feelings as the next person—certainly as entitled as you are to yours!"

There was a silence. "All right," he said. "I was only joking. What's the matter with you? Is it that bang on the head you got the other day? You ought to go and see Pringle."

"I sometimes think," Sally heard herself say, "that I ought to go and see a good divorce lawyer!"

She jumped up from the table and the now unwanted break­fast and stormed out into the garden.

She hadn't got a coat and it was cold out there. But she didn't want to go back indoors, not just yet. It wasn't Liam's fault, she told herself, the residue of her loyalty still prompt­ing her conscience. He had so many things to worry him and it made him brusque. But in her heart she knew that what had begun as a conscious willingness to indulge Liam in his abruptness and self-centered attitude to life, had slowly turned into a continual fabrication of excuses for him.

"And why the hell should I?" she muttered aloud. "We all have worries. I have worries. A bomb went off nearly in my face the other day. I'm physically sick when the mail arrives. Austin wants—" This last was pushed aside.

The crisp air absorbed her words. Sally folded her arms, hugging herself, and walked slowly down the path to the very bottom of the garden. It was a good long way, terminating in an untidy area of unproductive apple trees, gnarled and dying. Cottage gardens were generous, designed to allow a laborer's family to be sufficient in vegetables and soft fruits and keep a few chickens or a pig. Down here, besides the trees, were equally neglected gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes. She ought to do something about it all, get herself more organized. The trees could be replaced, the bushes too. Just think of all that free fruit, she thought. The jams and jellies, the chutneys, apple tarts, fruit flans...

But gardening took time and what with one thing and an­other, the building of the extension, her job at Bailey and Bailey's—and Liam.

Her grievance returned.

"I don't take out my worries on other people," she said to the bare-twigged blackcurrant bushes. "So why should Liam think he can? Tell me that!"

"Mrs. Caswell!"

Sally gave a squeak and jumped. The voice issued, as if in reply, from the blackcurrant bushes. But then she realized that, to be more precise, it came from the middle of the hedge behind the bushes, the one between this property and Bodicote's. It was Bodicote's voice, too, but she couldn't see him.

The hedge shook. It was hawthorn. Leafless now in winter, it was nevertheless an impenetrable tangle of twisted branches and sharp spikes, rooted in a low bank. It and the bank made a barrier standing altogether some five feet or so high. If it had been properly maintained over the years, even Bodicote's goats would have found themselves foiled by it.

But it hadn't been maintained and in places was broken by bare patches where it had died, been broken down or rooted out. Here Bodicote—because it was his hedge, his property border—had blocked up the holes with whatever came to hand, with more success in some spots than in others.

He was on the other side and making his way toward the nearest gap, half-heartedly blocked with a crinkled sheet of corrugated iron. He appeared suddenly, or the top half of him, over the wavy iron sheeting. He was wearing his usual grubby cap and a thick donkey-jacket besides, together with a plaid muffler.

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Bodicote," Sally said without enthusiasm.

"I've been keeping an eye open for you," he said. "Look­ing out to see when you was in your garden. Only you've not been out here much."

"It's the wrong weather for gardening." She hesitated. "What did you want? You could have come around."

He looked shifty. "Best not. On account of him." He nod­ded toward the extension and obviously meant Liam. He was probably right. Avoiding Liam was the best thing to do these days. Only she couldn't do it.

"I got something for you," the old man was saying.

"For me? What's that?"

He was tugging at the corrugated iron sheet and dragged it out a little. "Can squeeze through there, can you? Come on up to the house. It's in the kitchen."

She didn't know what it was, couldn't guess, and frankly, didn't care. But if it delayed returning to her own kitchen and Liam, it would be five minutes well spent. Sally squeezed through the gap and followed Bodicote along the hedge to­ward his back door.

"You wants to put a coat on, cold day like this," he ob­served. "You'll catch your death, walking about in just that thin pullover you got there."

The goats had been let out today and were wandering around the place, browsing on what they could find. He'd put some hay out for them, too, and the big brown one with the horns, the billy, the one she didn't like much, was eating that. He raised his head and fixed her with a malicious look.

"You don't want to mind old Jasper," said Bodicote, di­vining her thoughts. "He's got a deal of mischief in him, but no malice. Just keep your eye on him. He knows if you're watching and then he don't get up to none of his tricks!"

They'd reached the end of the hawthorn hedge and reached a strip of mixed shrubs, mostly bare of leaves now, but one or two with a few green leaves still attached. It was at this point that the goats had eaten through during the summer. Here was the old bedhead with which their owner had patched the largest area of damage. Bodicote turned left and cut across the grass toward his door. Sally followed dutifully behind.

She'd been in his kitchen before and knew what to expect but the smell still made her gag.

"I've been boiling up mash," said Bodicote. "Now then, where did I put it?"

"The mash?" Had he taken into his head she wanted some of the horrible stuff?

He was hunting in a cupboard. She waited, looking about her, noting the ancient gas-cooker which seemed so rusted away and generally wonky it was a wonder that it didn't explode. And the table, a good one basically. Austin would be able to sell that table. A dealer would buy it and do it up and sell on for a good profit. It was certainly Edwardian if not Victorian. But it was encrusted with grime, scratched and scored. One leg had met with an accident, splitting it length­wise and had been bound around with string by way of repair. Lord knew when the place had last been painted. Sally's kitchen, even in its damaged state, was Homes and Gardens stuff compared with this. Her gaze rose to take in a high, cobwebby shelf, laden with odds and ends of china. A Staf­fordshire cream jug in the shape of a kneeling cow. My God, she thought, those things are collectable. What else has he got, hidden away in this place?

Bodicote emerged from his cupboard, holding a margarine tub with a lid which, from the look of it, was on its way to becoming an antique among margarine tubs.

"I've been thinking." Bodicote stood staring at her ear­nestly. "You're not a bad sort of woman."

"Thanks," she said drily before she could stop herself.

He took it at face value. "No, 'tis true. I'm really sorry for what happened the other day, you getting such a fright. All the glass blown out your windows and the rest of it."

He was apologizing! Sally said impetuously, "I was very rude to you then, Mr. Bodicote. When you came into the cottage. It was because you startled me. I didn't mean it."

"No matter." He held out the margarine tub. "Thought you might like some of this."

What on earth could it hold? And did she really want to know? It was possible, of course, that he'd just gone batty. She'd heard that could happen after years of eccentricity. One day, complete madness. All thread of reality lost.

Seeing she was looking at the tub doubtfully, he chuckled and pulled the lid off. Inside was a mix of dried leaves very similar to one of her own herbal mixes.

"I know you do like the tea from stuff in the garden. So did my old mother. I don't mind a cup myself from time to time. I dried this little lot off back in the autumn. It's all from my garden out there. Thought you might like to try it."

"Oh, thank you." She took it, embarrassed both at his kindness and at her own unflattering thoughts. "I—I'm sorry about everything, Mr. Bodicote. The goats and—and that business of the turnips."

Bodicote looked grim for a moment, then rallied. "Well, it's water under the bridge, any road."

They parted on this mixed metaphor. Sally took the gift back to her kitchen where she found Liam rinsing his break­fast plates. He glanced at her as she came in.

"Saw you gossiping. You went through the hedge into Bodicote's. Did the old blighter block it up again properly?"

"I expect so. Look, he gave me some herbal tea. I think he wanted to make amends."

Liam wiped his hands on a towel. "You oughtn't to fall for that, encourage him! Next thing you know, he'll be up to some piece of devilry or other. Dealing with the enemy puts you in a false position."

She put the margarine tub by her pots of herbs. "Say what you like. I think it was kind of the old fellow. I don't consider him my enemy. I'll try out his tea one day. It's a mix his mother used to make."

"Grotesque!" growled Liam and stomped off to his study.

"Don't forget to call the police about those letters!" she called after him.


Markby had arrived at regional HQ still in his good mood. As he walked toward his office, a door opened and Dave Pearce erupted into the corridor, jacketless, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up and holding a half-eaten bacon sandwich.

"Thought I heard you, sir!" His voice was indistinct. He must just have taken a bite out of the sandwich, presumably his breakfast. "Caswell's just been on the phone. He's had some letters."

"Plural?"

Pearce swallowed. "One an anonymous cut-and-paste job, newsprint. The usual sort of thing. The other is a regular signed letter from someone living in Castle Darcy. A woman called Goodhusband."

"Goodhusband?" Markby hunted through recent memory. "I've heard that name. Ah yes, Libby delivered mail to her on the morning of the Caswell package."

"It seems she runs an animal welfare pressure group. Noth­ing violent. They distribute leaflets and write to the press, demonstrate sometimes in an orderly fashion. Only one com­plaint has ever been lodged against them, by some chicken farm or other which they picketed. It got into the press and brought the farm bad publicity. Those places are sensitive."

"We can check that out. Try the office of the Bamford Gazette. That sort of dispute usually makes the local news. So, I assume Caswell already knew her, before the letter arrived this morning? Since she lives in his village."

Pearce looked unsure. "He seems to be a bit of a hermit in that cottage. Put it this way, he knows about her now and he's furious! Because of the publicity over the letter-bomb, she's learned about his animal experiments. Now she wants to talk to him. Wouldn't give much for her chances."

"Did you tell him to keep the envelope of the cut-and-paste job?" Markby demanded.

"Yes, sure. He's bringing the whole lot in."

"When he does," Markby said softly, "I'd like to see him."


Liam Caswell arrived around eleven that morning. He took the letters and their envelopes from his document case and placed the cut-and-paste one on Markby's desk with exaggerated care. "There you are, all right?"

"We'll get this anonymous one over to the experts right away." Markby picked it up. It was similar to hundreds of others he'd seen. "There is another one, I'm told, regular and signed?"

Liam hesitated. "Yes, it's from a madwoman in our vil­lage. Here!" He pushed it forward.

Markby glanced through it. "It seems reasonable enough to me, Dr. Caswell. Not mad, certainly."

Liam flushed. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, his hands gripping the case on his lap. "I want it put on record that I don't like your attitude!"

Markby raised his eyebrows. "If you have a complaint, we'll be happy to look into it. There is, of course, a recog­nized procedure if you're seriously displeased."

Liam emitted a snarl. "That's what I mean. Your attitude. It's not what you do, or say, it's the way you say it. You act as if I'd done something wrong!"

"A policeman must sometimes act as devil's advocate, Dr. Caswell. I have to ask questions."

"If I thought you were just doing your job," Liam retorted nastily, "I'd accept that. But my distinct impression is that you're not doing your job! Anyone reasonably competent would have nailed the blighter who sent that package by now!"

The public always assumed the police could work miracles, Markby reflected. But it was routine which brought results, hours of painstaking inquiries, sifting through paperwork, comparing notes. And routine took time. He tried to explain this to Liam.

"A team of officers went to your laboratories, Dr. Caswell, and interviewed everyone there. All were asked whether they'd received any abusive or anonymous mail or threats of any kind. They were warned what to look for, and how to behave if it happened. No one reported having been threat­ened and no one has come forward since to report anything. The details of the attack have been circulated all over the country to see if a similar incident has occurred elsewhere. Modus operandi often points to a particular criminal or, in this case, organization. Known animal rights' activists are be­ing checked in this area and elsewhere. So far nothing's come back to us. It takes time."

"I don't believe this," Liam's eyes rolled alarmingly. "What I take all that to mean is that unless someone else gets blown to kingdom come, you're prepared to sit back and just let things potter along on the off-chance you get a break! What does it matter, for crying out loud, if no one else at the lab got any foul letters or a bomb shoved through their front door? I did! Isn't that enough? What do you want, a massa­cre? I'm expendable, is that it? Just one more boffin."

Markby's anger spilled over. "I did not say anything of the sort, Dr. Caswell! I personally take as an insult any sug­gestion that my officers aren't trying their best! I've got everyone I can spare on this! I appreciate that you're upset but, frankly, it doesn't give you the right to come in here and make unfounded accusations!"

Liam rose to his feet, shaking. "I'll make any accusation I want! I'm the one being hunted down by maniacs! I'm a tax-payer. I employ you, I pay your salary! And I want to know what you're going to do about it!" His voice quivered. His face had gained an unnatural pallor and the impression was of a man under intolerable pressure.

Markby had regained his self-control. He regretted the out­burst as he always did. But he was still filled with a deep yearning to dot Caswell on the chin. He spoke now with grim formality. "I told you, we'll get this letter over to forensics." He indicated the newsprint collage.

"What about that woman Goodhusband? Because she puts her name to her letters and is so damn civilized about it, doesn't mean she isn't just as much a fanatic as all the oth­ers!"

"I shall call on Mrs. Goodhusband," Markby snapped. "Personally!"

Liam's mouth twisted unpleasantly. "Good luck to you!"

"He seems a bit rattled," observed Pearce as Liam stomped out. "Do you think it's finally got to him? He's just realized this business isn't just going to go away because he wants it to?"

"Rattled? Good," muttered Markby. "It's time someone shook him up a bit. He might even start cooperating if he gets scared enough."

He picked up the letter again. The heavy cream paper was embossed with gold Gothic lettering. He doubted crass meth­ods would achieve much with the writer of this missive. She was the sort to observe the social niceties.

"Tell someone to ring her and say I'll call this afternoon if it's convenient."

"Seen the house," said Pearce, as if to support his boss's reasoning. "Posh."


The Tithe Barn had probably once been just that. In essence the house was still basically barn-shaped and its thick stone walls were many hundred years old. It had been considerably altered and added to and was now an imposing residence. Unlikely, so Markby thought, one for someone given to mak­ing letter-bombs or cut-and-paste threatening letters. More of­ten, in his experience, people who lived in such houses were the recipients of these items.

The five-barred gate was open, perhaps on his account. But as he turned into the drive he had to swerve to avoid a black cat with a white bib which crouched slap in the middle of the gravelled way. It didn't move and as the car passed by, watched with unwinking eyes, its stony stare suggesting it thought this visitor ought to have used some tradesman's en­trance.

A little further on a second black and white cat strolled toward the car exhibiting similar suicidal habits. He avoided that one too, remarking to it through the window that it was fast using up its nine lives. Since the whole frontage appeared to be inhabited by felines who regarded motor vehicles as of no consequence, he decided to park and walk the remaining few yards.

He could see, now that he was out of the car, that the extensive garden was not well kept. It must once have been a delight. But the shrubbery had been allowed to run riot. Grass and weeds grew over what had been flowerbeds. Hedgerow plants had found their way in from the village lanes. Around the remains of an ornamental pond, various types of umbelliferae had rooted and though now blackened by frost, their tall stems and the shrivelled remains of their distinctive leaves and flowerheads could still be identified. It was all a sad sight.

His reverie was disturbed by a third cat, marmalade in hue, which shot out of the shrubbery and bounded across his path. He walked up to the front door, wondering what he'd find there.


"I'm very glad you were able to call, Superintendent," Yvonne Goodhusband said, as if she had requested him to come and not the other way about.

He judged her in her mid-fifties, her well-groomed chestnut hair streaked with gray. He thought her a striking woman, not least because she wore what Markby was sure his mother would have called an afternoon dress. He couldn't recall when he'd last seen a woman so formally turned out at three-thirty in the afternoon. The dress was of pale blue woollen material, long-sleeved with gilt buttons at the wrist. It fitted snugly over the lady's well-rounded hips and the cross-over bodice neatly encased her equally shapely bosom on which was pinned a small gold brooch. She had good legs, too. She was, in fact, very easy on the eye and he tried not to stare.

"Would you like some tea?" she inquired graciously.

He declined the tea, although he was sorely tempted. Not because he was thirsty, but because he would have liked to observe the ceremony he was sure would be attached to this refreshment. Little embroidered napkins and bone china, he suspected. But he hadn't time for such things.

"You'll know why I'm here," he began.

She interrupted. "Of course I do. I appreciate your calling to make an appointment. Good manners are so rare nowadays. It led me to make a few telephone inquiries about you. I hope you don't mind? I like to be prepared."

So did he, but he'd given her the chance to get ahead of him. So much for good manners. Next time, he made a note of it, call on her unexpectedly and hope to find her in her curlers!

"It seems we have a mutual acquaintance."

Blast. "Who?" Markby asked bluntly.

"Annabel Pultney," Yvonne said. "She tells me you are a cousin."

Oh lawks, Belle Pultney, the terror of her local Persian cat society.

"Several times removed!" Markby said firmly. He was in trouble. He dug himself out of it with renewed vigor. "I haven't seen her in years. She's still—er—judging at cat shows and so on?"

"No longer, she's had to give it up. The varicose veins, you know."

"Er—yes." He attempted to visualize this distant relative's legs which he'd never seen unclad with thick brown stock­ings. His memory conjured up accompanying stout brogues and tweeds. And a lot of cat fur. Wherever he'd sat in that house, he'd got up with his suit decorated with clinging white hairs. A good-hearted sort, though, Belle. Fond of a gin and tonic and a Panatella.

"She does manage to get up to London three or four times a year. We meet for lunch at Harvey Nichols. She tells me you're a very reasonable sort of chap so I hope we shall understand one another."

"This letter!" said Markby forcefully, producing the doc­ument in question with a flourish. He really had to stop this blatant manipulation of the old-girl network. He wished now he'd sent Pearce.

He was to be interrupted yet again.

The door opened and a young man slouched in. Slender in build, he was nevertheless quite tall, with long curling fair hair framing a narrow face with aquiline nose and small full lips. This rather girlish look was negated by tattered denims, heavy boots, a washed-out black tee-shirt bearing the name of a Heavy Metal band, and a none too clean suede waistcoat. It was difficult to guess his exact age. He might have been early or late twenties. Older looking younger, Markby thought. It suddenly occurred to him that this might also be true of the mother. His first judgment of mid-fifties might be out by some half-dozen years.

"My son, Tristan," Yvonne said.

"Hi!" said Tristan and flopped into an easy chair.

"Tristan gives me a hand," said his mother fondly.

"Really?" Markby thought Tristan didn't appear to have the energy to lift a hand, much less lend one.

"He is publicity officer of our little committee," Mrs. Goodhusband went on. "I am its chairperson. Our secretary is Beryl Linnacott. She's so sorry she couldn't be here today to meet you. She's had to go to Norfolk to be with her daugh­ter. She's just had twins."

The daughter, presumably, not Beryl. It occurred to Markby to wonder about Mr. Goodhusband. He didn't seem to be in evidence at all, not even by way of a snapshot. Per­haps he'd been driven out by his wife's devotion to good causes, a modern Mr. Jellaby.

"About the letter," he began again with a touch of des­peration.

"Quite." She graciously acknowledged that after all this social chit-chat it was time for business. "The Caswells are comparatively recent arrivals in our village. Sally seems a sweet girl. Her husband, I have to say, I have always found a morose sort of man. On the few occasions I've met him about the village, he has rejected any attempt at conversation. One tries to be welcoming to newcomers, but if they don't want it, one can't force oneself forward. Sally did come and have coffee here. She told us her husband was engaged in some research work of a scientific nature. But nothing..." Yvonne's voice hardened. "Nothing had prepared us—the committee—for the shocking revelation that Dr. Caswell has in the past conducted experimental programs involving ani­mals! The committee was distressed to learn of it and we held an emergency meeting, didn't we, Tristan?"

Appealed to, Tristan said, "Yeah."

Markby studied him briefly. Mentally he was adding even more years to his initial impression. Despite the youthful garb and attitude, to say nothing of the flowing hair, this was a man of thirty to thirty-five. One of those, he suspected, locked in permanent adolescence preparing to be a forty-year-old teenager, and after that?

An image of Libby's Uncle Denis formed in Markby's head. Would Tristan finish as one of those lost figures with hair which grew longer at the back as it became thinner on the top, and too-tight jeans, who assiduously kept up with the latest jargon and fashions? A starfish stranded on a beach when the tide had gone out on his generation?

"Did you know about Dr. Caswell's work? I mean, before the affair of the letter-bomb?" he asked.

Tristan met his gaze. "Not that I recall. Don't think so, no."

Yvonne took charge of the conversation again. "Our com­mittee is strongly against the use of animals in laboratory experiments, as I hope you are, Superintendent?"

"I don't like the idea," Markby took her letter from his pocket. "But I'm here because of this letter. Or rather, I'm here because Dr. Caswell has been the recipient of several items of abusive mail."

She raised her eyebrows. "You consider my letter abu­sive?"

"Indeed, no! Don't misunderstand me. I'm looking at all letters received by Dr. Caswell which are on the same topic, shall we say."

Unexpectedly Tristan blurted, "He hasn't had any other mail from us!" He sat upright in his chair. "And we don't aim to splat people over the carpet, either! So you're not sticking that explosive doodah on us!"

"As Tristan says, we don't resort to violence," said his mother in the manner of an interpreter.

"What do you do?'' Markby asked candidly.

"We lobby. It is, I believe, the most effective way in the end. I believe in going to the top." Mrs. Goodhusband smiled thinly. "Votes, Superintendent. Politicians worry very much about votes. The agricultural lobby is itself a strong one, we realize that. But the ordinary voter is ignored at his or her peril! Supermarkets, too, are customer-conscious. They provide what the customer wants. If we can persuade the cus­tomer to demand, for example, free-range eggs, then that is what the supermarket will stock."

"And how do you go about lobbying and persuading? Just by letter? Like this one?" He waved the letter received by Liam at her.

"We produce several well-informed and illustrated pam­phlets. I write regularly to members of Parliament, all parties, and to all our Euro-MPs. Beryl writes to the drug companies and to the manufacturers of cosmetics and hair-care products. Shampoo is sometimes tested on rabbits in unspeakable fash­ion. We have on occasion picketed but never—" She bent a steely gaze on him. "Never in a disorderly fashion. Rowdy­ism puts people off. We want to win them over."

"Mrs. Goodhusband," Markby said. "Your aims appear to be above reproach and your methods equally so. You can­not, however, be unaware that some other groups, with aims similar to yours, adopt very different means."

"They are nothing to do with us!" she snapped. "And some of them, Superintendent, are perhaps not entirely frank about all their aims!"

She was no fool. She was, in fact, of a breed he'd met before, educated, articulate, well-organized and utterly deter­mined. She wouldn't send cut-and-paste threatening mail nor explosive packages. Nor would Mrs. Linnacott, recently be­come grandmother of twins. He was less sure about Tristan. Clearly that young fellow (whatever his actual age) was the apple of his mother's eye and it wouldn't do to suggest it.

He rose to take his leave, making his thanks.

"I'm glad it's been sorted out." Yvonne smoothed the pale blue dress over her hips. "I intend to call on Dr. Caswell soon to explain our objections to his use of animals. I hope, probably in vain, that he will be as pleasant as you have been. I shall not give up! I find if one is both reasonable and de­termined, Superintendent, most people are eventually open to persuasion."

As Markby was conjuring with the consequences of Mrs. Goodhusband cornering Liam Caswell, without warning, Tristan came to life. He jumped out of his chair and went to a nearby desk. He returned proffering a stack of leaflets. "Here, take some of these."

Markby took them, feeling rather as he did when represen­tatives of religious cults pushed such things at one in the street. He saw that the topmost one concerned battery chicken houses and was identical to the one sent to the Caswells.

Seeing that Markby was studying it, Tristan said a touch smugly, "I designed it. I design them all." He tossed back his long fair locks.

"Really?" Markby turned the leaflet over. "How did you come by the photographs?"

Tristan's full lips twisted in what might have been intended either as a grin or a sneer. "You're not expecting me to admit to breaking and entering? I came by them more or less legally. No hassles. You just have to be ingenious—and quick on your feet."

His mother was growing restless, clearly disliking the turn of the conversation. She cast her son a look to silence him and then bent her imperious gaze on Markby. A diamond encrusted hand indicated the leaflet he held.

"Read it!" Yvonne commanded.


"Read this!" Markby dropped the pamphlet and its fellows on Pearce's desk. "I don't think we need bother Mrs. Good-husband again. But you might check on her son, Tristan. Too much the mother's blue-eyed darling to be true."

Pearce picked up the pamphlet with its sad photographs of imprisoned hens. "Poor beggars," he said. "We kept chick­ens when I was a kid. They scratched around the yard. Clean up all the bugs and things, you know, chickens do. We'd never have kept them like this." He looked up. "What's she like then, this Mrs. Goodhusband?"

"Boadicea in a tea-gown."

"A what?"

"Never mind. But believe me, when the Yvonne Goodhusbands of this world devote their minds and energy to a cause, they generally carry off victory at the end of the day. And they don't need letter-bombs to do it!"