Ann Granger - Mitchell and Markby 09 - A Touch of Mortality p.05

*16*
Sally was not conscious of having found her target. But she heard a gasp, followed by a low hiss of rage.

The creature staggered back, gripping one yellow knitted sleeve with a yellow-gloved hand. It had dropped the ham­mer.

Sally didn't wait to find out how severely she'd hurt it. She turned, unlocked the kitchen door and raced out to the car. She threw the knife onto the passenger seat, thrust the key into the ignition with trembling fingers and, lurching and crashing through the gears, drove away from Castle Darcy. Fortunately, she didn't pass through any speed checks on the way.


"I don't like her being out there alone," Meredith said down the phone. "She's only just come from the hospital. Honestly, Alan, I could wring Liam's neck. What's he thinking of, just pushing off back to his wretched lab? He's told her he'll be home at four."

"She probably doesn't want him around," Alan's voice replied. "And who can blame her? Do you want me to call her?"

"Could you? I've already rung once and spoken to her and I don't want it to look as if I'm being a busybody."

"Perish the thought!"

"She's survived two possibly lethal attacks, Alan!" Mer­edith snapped.

"Pox! I know it. I'll call her straight away. If I'm not satisfied, I'll go out there myself, pronto. All right?"

When he'd put down the phone, Markby frowned. He doodled for a moment or two on his notepad. When he realized what he was drawing he saw that it was a row of daisies in pots. Inappropriate, to say the least.

He picked up the phone and dialled Castle Darcy. No one answered. The ringing tone had a forlorn sound to it, as phones seem to have in empty houses. That might be mis­leading. She might be asleep or gone out for a walk. Yet he put the phone down, deeply dissatisfied.

After a moment he got up and unhooked his jacket. "I'm going out for an hour, over to Castle Darcy, if anyone wants me!" he informed Pearce on his way out.

"Want me to come along, sir?"

"No." Markby thought about it. "Get on to Bamford. They're the local station for Castle Darcy. Ask them, if they've got a patrol car in the area, to go to the Caswells' cottage. It won't do any harm."

Pearce was picking up the phone as he went out of the room. There was some unwritten law which meant he never got from his office to the main door of the building without being stopped at least twice on the way. This time was no exception. Markby dealt with both delays as quickly as he decently could, and finally ran down the stairs and out into the car park. His sense of urgency heightened by the hold­ups, he drove off without more ado. He did not, therefore, see Pearce, who'd sprinted after him, signaling wildly that he should wait.

What Pearce had wanted to tell him was that, having phoned Bamford as requested, he'd been informed that a patrol car had already been dispatched to Castle Darcy in response to a 999 call.

As it was, Markby discovered this for himself when he arrived at the cottage and found a police car outside. Two uniformed men were searching the area of the garage in des­ultory fashion.

Markby called out to them and introduced himself. "What's going on?" he demanded.

Mclntyre took it upon himself to explain. "The lady called 999, sir. She was nearly hysterical, by all accounts. The op­erator wasn't sure she wasn't just drunk or high. She reported being attacked by a chicken. The operator asked her if she really didn't want the RSPCA? Then she said it was a person dressed as a chicken. That's when the operator thought she had a nutter on the line. Anyway, fortunately the operator passed it on to us. We knew straight away it wasn't a joke because the chicken costume was reported stolen earlier. From a Mrs. Linnacott..."

Beryl Linnacott, grandma of twins. "The animal rights group?''

"Yessir. They held a protest march to the chicken farm this morning."

Markby swore beneath his breath. He looked at the cottage. "No sign of her?"

"None, sir. We've been right through the house. And down the garden. Both front and back doors were unlocked. There's no car here so she might have driven off somewhere. There is one thing ... Got that hammer, Gary?"

Barrett produced a hammer wrapped in a sheet of news­paper.

"This was on the kitchen floor. We thought perhaps forensics might look at it. Neither of us can see any blood on it, not with the naked eye. There's damage to the back door. Not outside though, as if someone tried to force a way in. It's inside, as if someone tried to break out. Doesn't seem to make much sense. I mean, the door being unlocked anyway."

"What about Dr. Caswell? Her husband?"

They glanced at one another. "No sign of anyone else, sir. He should be informed, you mean?"

"Yes. Hang on. I've got his workplace number on me." Markby hunted through his notebook. "Here, let him know the bare facts. You were called out. She wasn't here when you got here. Don't mention that—yet." He indicated the hammer. "And find the chicken outfit. Whoever wore it couldn't leave the village in it. It has to be discarded some­where."

"Not on the property, sir."

Markby looked toward Bodicote's empty cottage. "Try next door, in the garden and paddock. There's an empty goat-house."

While they went to look, he went back to his car and ra­dioed Pearce with the information. "We have to find her. Try the hospital again and Bailey's auction rooms. She may have gone—or be trying to get—to Meredith. I'll go there."

"If she's alive," said Pearce discouragingly.

"We've no body and as yet no evidence of one. No blood­stains, just, so I'm told, a hole on the inside of the back door which I'm about to take a look at."

It wasn't a hole so much as a sizable dent. The door was unlocked, the key, the same old-fashioned Chubb, was inside. The front door, on the other hand, had a Yale lock. That too, according to the two constables, had been open when they arrived.

There was a shout from the direction of Bodicote's cottage. Barrett was coming toward him, beckoning.

"In the goat-house, just like you said, sir. The body and the feet, that's to say, the yellow shoes which made up the feet. The rest of it, the head and sleeves and gloves are chucked behind a hedge at the bottom of the paddock."

"Get them all over to forensics," Markby ordered. "And tell Inspector Winter, I said so."

Winter wouldn't like his men being commandeered, but Winter could lump it.


The ring at the door came as Meredith was rinsing out her few lunch dishes. One plate, one mug and a knife, to be pre­cise. She left them on the draining board, wiped her hands on a towel, and went to see who it was.

The door had a frosted glass panel. Through it she could see the outline of a head and shoulders. The head was bulky, as with longish hair. The whole upper-body shape was sway­ing to and fro in a curious manner and it seemed to her that she could hear, through the glass, labored breathing. The whole thing was alarming enough to stop her in her tracks.

As she stood irresolutely in the hall, a fist struck the door several times. "Meredith!" cried a voice, familiar despite be­ing distorted.

Meredith darted to the door and jerked it open. A dishev­eled Sally Caswell stood on the step. Her face was streaked with sweat and grime. Strands of wet hair clung to forehead and cheeks. She opened her mouth, but seemed unable to explain her distress. Instead, she raised a hand holding a sharp kitchen knife.

Actions speak louder than words and Meredith's instinct was to slam the door. Sally must have read the message in her face.

She exhibited increased distress, imploring, "No ... Mer­edith! Please, let me in!"

"Put the knife down, Sal," Meredith did her best to sound reasonable despite the hideous possibilities of what her friend might have done. "Just drop it on the ground. You don't need it."

"Knife?" Sally's eyes stared at her in bewilderment. Then she looked down at her own hand and gave a little cry of dismay. "I didn't realize ... It's all right ... I don't know what to do with it."

"Give it to me, then?" Meredith stretched out a cautious hand. "Here, I'll take it, like this, fine."

She detached the knife from Sally's hand easily and stood aside to allow the visitor to enter.

Sally stumbled into the hall and tried to push back her hair. "I'm sorry ... I didn't mean. Meredith—someone tried to kill me."


It took a little while and a glass of brandy to get the story.

"I'll call the police," Meredith said.

"No!" Sally stretched out a hand to prevent her. "I've already called them. I called 999. They said they were on their way. But I didn't wait."

"Then all the more reason for calling them now! If they turned up and found the place deserted like the Marie Celeste, they won't know what to make of it." A thought struck Mer­edith. "What about Liam? Should I call him too?"

"Liam?" Sally appeared to find it hard to concentrate on the name. "Oh, yes, Liam. He said he'd be home at four. I don't want to frighten him." She spoke the last sentence au­tomatically.

The sensitivity of Liam's feelings wasn't something wor­rying Meredith. She glanced at her wristwatch. "I'll call the lab," she said firmly. "If he arrives home and you're not there, Sal, he'll worry. It's best I call him first."

But at the lab, they said Dr. Caswell had been in and had left. He was, Meredith supposed, somewhere between Oxford and Castle Darcy. She tried Regional HQ and was told Superintendent Markby wasn't available. She asked for Pearce and told her story to him.

"He's called in," said Pearce. "He's been out at the cot­tage. They're looking for Mrs. Caswell. I'll let him know. Keep her there with you, can you, Miss Mitchell?"

That wasn't difficult. Sally clearly had no intention of leav­ing. She was slumped in the corner of Meredith's sofa, shak­ing and crying quietly.

"I'll make some tea." Meredith would have liked to call Dr. Pringle. But a suggestion that she did had already been vigorously rejected by Sally.

"They'll take me back to the hospital, and I don't want that! I'm not sick! I was attacked! I can't stand much more of this. I don't know what's out there, Meredith. I only know it hates me!"


To Meredith's relief, Alan arrived some twenty minutes later. Sally was calmer and persuaded to retell her story in a fairly coherent way.

Alan, for his part, supplied what he knew, that the chicken suit had been reported stolen earlier and that remains of it had been found in Bodicote's goat-house. He also had some questions which he put as gently as possible.

"You ran out of the cottage via the back door, the kitchen door, Sally?"

"It was in the kitchen!" Sally's eyes filled with tears. "I couldn't get past it!"

"Alan..." Meredith began anxiously.

He signaled to her to be patient a moment. "Sally, I don't want to upset you, but there's something I've got to clear up. The front door of the cottage was open when the police car got there. Did you leave it open?"

She shook her head.

"How do you think the person in the chicken suit got into the cottage?"

She leaned forward. "But that's just it, Alan! It couldn't—but it did! I'd locked the back door. The windows were all shut. The front door was shut on the Yale lock."

"It must have—" Meredith began, met Alan's eye, and didn't finish what she'd been about to say.

"What about Liam?" Sally mumbled. "He must have got back to the cottage by now. He won't know what's hap­pened."

"Police officers are still there. They rang the lab to let him know but it seems he had just left to return home. I expect he's reached Castle Darcy by now. In any event, the officers will wait until he turns up." Alan studied Sally. "What do you want to do, Mrs. Caswell?"

"Stay here," Sally whispered. "If Meredith will let me."

"Of course!" Meredith assured her.

Alan nodded. "That sounds like a good idea to me."

"I don't want to go back to Castle Darcy."

"I don't think you should, not just at the moment." Alan looked at Meredith. "Can she stay with you for a while, a few days? I don't know about Liam Caswell."

The idea of Liam beneath her roof didn't appeal much, but Meredith was prepared to make a heroic effort in the circum­stances. It proved not to be necessary.

"I don't want Liam here," Sally said unexpectedly. "I can't cope, not with all this and Liam too. I don't want to see him, not just yet."

Alan caught Meredith's eye and they retired to the hall.

"We'll hope to get a fingerprint from the knife, but if the attacker wore gloves, any prints will probably turn out to be those of Sally herself or yours!" Alan said quietly. "Clearly it's dangerous out at the cottage and neither of the Caswells ought to be staying out there. Liam may wish to go to a hotel, although that would mean leaving his computer and all his work which he couldn't conveniently move, I suppose. He might not wish to do that. In any case, I'd like her to stay here. She needs the company and support of a friend. Need­less to say, I'd appreciate it if you kept a close eye on her and didn't let anyone into the house you might have any doubts about."

"Does that include Liam?" she asked.

Alan avoided her eye. "I don't think you can keep him out, if he calls, and she's agreeable. But it's up to her whether she wants to see him. If she doesn't, shut the door in his face. It won't do him any harm." He hesitated. "He might make a fuss, I realize that. Think you can manage?"

"Of course I can manage!" she snapped. "Liam Caswell? One hand tied behind my back! I've been storing up the things I'd like to say to Liam for years!"

Alan had to laugh despite the circumstances. "Just don't annihilate the poor fellow!"

"Alan?" She lowered her voice. "Whoever attacked her must have opened the front door. The chicken—I mean, the person in the suit—it had a key. It must have had a key!"

"I had a key yesterday," Alan said. "The one Austin keeps. I took it back to Bailey's in the late afternoon. Austin made great show of putting it away in his safe. But previously he kept it in an unlocked drawer. Anyone who walked in his office could have borrowed it for a few hours and got a copy cut in minutes by a shop with the appropriate machinery. Austin wouldn't have missed it. The drawer's full of keys."

"You think that's what happened?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But whatever you do, don't let her out of your sight!"

When he'd left, a rattle of tea-things directed Meredith to the kitchen where she found Sally washing the dishes. Her hands were still trembling, and the crockery was in imminent danger, but the household task seemed to be helping her regain some control.

"I heard," she said. A cup chinked noisily against its neighbor in the bowl.

Oh well, Meredith thought. It wasn't expensive crockery.

Aloud she asked, "What Alan and I said in the hall? Alan's right. It's up to you if you want to see Liam or not. It's my house and he can't barge in."

"I don't want to make any trouble for you." Sally straight­ened up, reaching for the tea-towel. Her eyes mirrored her misery. "But I can't see Liam, not just yet."

"If you heard what I said to Alan, you'll know I'm spoiling for a fight with Liam." Meredith grimaced. "I suppose he is your husband and I oughtn't to say that to you."

Sally turned her head away. After a moment she said, "I keep thinking there's something I ought to have told Alan. Not about the chicken. About something else. It is something which happened the day I was rushed off to the hospital. Earlier, as I was driving into Bamford."

"When you were taken ill," Meredith reminded her, "and while we were at the medical center, you mumbled something about Yvonne and Bodicote. Something Yvonne had said?"

"I've forgotten!" Sally admitted. "It might come back. Yvonne said how sorry she was about Bodicote. Then some­thing more about all of them being used to that."

"To what?"

"That's what I can't remember. Oh, by the way, I let your cat in."

"Cat?"

"Yes, a striped one. It was sitting outside the kitchen door in the yard, mewing very pitifully. I think he ran into the living room."

Meredith went back to the sitting room. The cat sat before the electric fire, bolt upright with his tail curled around his front paws. He surveyed her with wary yellow eyes.

"Hullo, Tiger, where have you been?" she asked. "I've been wondering about you."

He closed his eyes slowly and reopened them.

"All right," she said. "You can stay. I'm not going to throw you out."

He responded with a chirrup and lowered himself stiffly to a crouching position.

Sally came back. "He is yours, then, is he? I wasn't sure because you've never said you had a cat. Is he all right? I mean, don't take this wrongly, but he's a bit thin."

"It's all right," Meredith told her. "I've got a cupboard full of catfood."


Liam arrived not much later. Meredith opened the door to find him on the threshold, red in the face and furious.

"What the hell's going on?" He stepped forward as if he expected her to usher him indoors. Finding that instead, she blocked his route, he stopped, momentarily disconcerted. "Where's my wife? They said she's here!"

"Yes, she is here. She's resting." Meredith remained blocking the door.

Liam glared at her. "Well, let me in then!"

"No, sorry, Liam." Meredith smiled at him serenely. "It is my house, you know. She's quite all right but she's had a very bad experience."

"I know that!" Liam yelled. "The police were at the cot­tage when I got there! I couldn't make head or tale of their story. Something about a chicken! Turned out they meant that foam creature on the protesters' march! I saw it myself, ear­lier. I always knew those people were dangerous! Have they arrested her? That barmy woman Goodhusband?"

"Another marcher, a Mrs. Linnacott, reported it missing after the demonstration, so it doesn't have to be one of the protesters. We don't know who was wearing it, Liam—" Meredith braced herself for the outburst which must surely follow. "Sally doesn't want to see you right now."

"Rubbish!" The shouted word echoed across the street. Liam, as if aware that he could attract unwelcome attention, lowered his voice and went on gruffly, "She's my wife and I don't know what your game is! All I know is, I want to see her and I don't believe she doesn't want to see me!"

"I'll call you later, Liam, when she's better able to decide what she wants."

He stared at her, baffled. "What have you put into her head?" he demanded hoarsely. "What the devil have you been saying to her? You were always a bad influence on her, from the moment she first met you!"

"What?" It was a turn in the conversation for which Mer­edith hadn't been prepared. "What does that mean?" she de­manded indignantly.

"What I say. You liberated professional women and your bloody independence! She was perfectly happy as my wife. But every time she'd been hobnobbing with you, she came back behaving as if she'd been at some wretched women's lib meeting!"

"Actually," Meredith snapped. "The impression I got was that she was miserable as your wife!"

"What do you know about it?" Liam made as if to push past her, but she was as tall as he was and the resolute look in her eye made him hesitate.

Nevertheless, he'd succeeded in rattling her composure. The question was one she couldn't answer. No outsider, how­ever close, understands exactly all the little nuances of the relationship between husband and wife.

Meredith took refuge in, "She's told me she doesn't want to see you right now, Liam. I think you ought to respect that."

"I'm not like your police boyfriend, you know," Liam retorted. "Picked up and dropped, picked up and dropped again. I don't play those kind of games. And you can tell her that, from me!"

"And you," Meredith took up his earlier question, "know nothing of the relationship between Alan and me!"

"For the last time," Liam drew in a deep breath. "Are you going to allow me to see my wife?"

"And for the last time, no. Not just now. She's had a very nasty fright. For goodness sake, Liam!" Meredith burst out in exasperation, "Can't you understand that? Haven't you got any sympathy for her point of view?''

"What about me?" Liam yelled. "I've had a number of frights! People have been trying to kill me!"

She gazed at him in wonderment. "No, they haven't. They've been trying to kill Sally! The person in the chicken suit, the poison in the herbal tea—for all I know, even the parcel bomb was meant for her!"

"I was there, too!" Liam shouted.

"But you didn't open it, did you?" Meredith heard herself say. "Even though you were there when it arrived. You took very good care not to open the thing! Poor Sal did that!"

There was an ominous silence. Liam's faced had paled to a waxy white. "Are you saying—" His voice croaked. "Are you saying that I, in some way for some reason God only knows, tried to harm my wife?"

"Did you?"

She had thought Liam might attack her physically at that point, but instead he put a hand to his beard and rubbed his fingers across it, keeping his gaze fixed on her face.

"You're crazy," he said at last in a flat voice. "It's probably your hormones. You single career women are all the same, neurotic as hell."

"Get lost, Liam!" Meredith abandoned finesse. She slammed the door in his face.

When she went back into the house, she found a stricken Sally standing in the kitchen doorway.

"I'm sorry, Meredith. I shouldn't have put you through that. It's not fair to expect others to fight my battles for me. I should have seen Liam and told him to leave."

"No, you shouldn't!" Meredith retorted, still in battle mode. "I'm better equipped, as of this moment in time, to deal with him." She reflected on the episode. "Although, I suppose I finished up saying things to him I shouldn't have said."

"You can say what you like to him," Sally's voice was more resolute than Meredith had heard in a long time. "I meant what I said to Alan. I don't want to go back to Castle Darcy while Liam is there. In fact, I don't want to be any­where Liam is. I don't want to see him today, tomorrow, ever again. We're finished."

There was a silence. "I'm glad," Meredith said at last. "That's another thing I oughtn't to say. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think you were doing the right thing." She shrugged. "I've never been married and it's a bit rich, urging someone else to quit their marriage. But for crying out loud, Sal, I don't know what Liam needs, but it isn't a wife. A keeper, perhaps."

Sally walked past her into the sitting room where she sat down again, smoothing her skirt over her knees. "I'm not walking out on Liam in pique. I'm not just doing it because of what happened today. I could have gone long ago, but I didn't. I hung on, trying to make things work. You see, Aunt Emily brought me up to believe marriage was forever."

"Was Auntie Em married herself?" Meredith asked, lean­ing on the doorframe, arms folded.

"No." Sally allowed herself a small smile. "But she had strong ideas about the state of matrimony. I go along with them in essence. I mean, I would stick it out, if I thought things would get better. But they won't. I irritate Liam. I smother him. And sexually, I bore him."

"He's said so?" Meredith bounced off the doorjamb in indignation.

"No! Calm down, Meredith! But he doesn't have to say so. He's been having affairs for years. That means he's bored with me, right? I think he's had every overseas student at the lab. He thinks I don't know." Sally grimaced. "I sometimes think I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm not that daft. I do realize—have realized it for some time. The latest one gave him a really grisly present, a tie-pin like a snake. He's got it hidden in a drawer and thinks I don't know. You should see the horrid thing!" Sally essayed a weak grin.

"For a while I told myself it was only to be expected. It isn't all his fault. After all, Liam is a very attractive man. Of course, those girls, they—they chase after him. I've had to expect that. It's very hard for him to resist all the time."

Meredith could have disputed this interpretation of things. It was, she suspected, rooted in another of Aunt Emily's ar­ticles of faith: namely that Liam Caswell had been a "catch'' and Sally lucky to have captured him. Emily had told her niece this and impressionable, unworldly, nineteen-year-old Sally had believed it. She'd continued to believe it though Liam had proved a faithless husband and a self-centered bully. He remained a distinguished man in his chosen field, good-looking and, though desired by other women, he was her husband. It had consoled her for his infidelities. Even now, she still clung to it like a child who cannot face the dark without a particular soft toy, even though that toy may have long been reduced to a bundle of rags.

Sally was gearing herself up to further revelations. "I'm going to go into partnership with Austin."

"What!" That came as a shock. But perhaps it shouldn't. Sally had gone from Aunt Emily's house to a husband's bed. She'd never faced the world alone and couldn't envisage it, even now. She needed an alternative safety-net.

"I mean a business partnership," Sally urged. "Not any other kind. That is, Austin would like another sort of part­nership as well. But I'm not ready for that. It's going to take me a while to get over Liam. I couldn't commit myself to another close physical relationship yet. But the business, yes. I've gone through all the figures with Austin. It's a good investment. And I'm interested in it. I like the work. I'll be there full-time and learn more about the whole thing. It's a whole new future for me and I'm looking forward to it."

"Does—Have you told Liam about this, going into busi­ness with Austin?" Meredith asked the question slowly.

Sally's confident manner faltered. "No. He doesn't know. I didn't want to say anything till I was sure. He won't like it. But now, it doesn't matter if he likes it or not." She re­gained her confidence and smiled brightly at Meredith. "Does it?"



*17*
Markby stepped out of Meredith's house into the street and found himself beneath the fitful glimmer of the lamplight. The inky blue dusk which had been the backdrop to his arrival was fast deepening into night, a winter evening well set in. Even so, it was only—he glanced at his wristwatch—twenty past four.

He went first to Bamford police station. Winter greeted him with a certain amount of embarrassment.

"To think those two numbskulls went through that cottage and saw all those books and just didn't bother to report it! They thought the old man might have been a bit odd!" Winter snarled.

"No denying he was odd," Markby pointed out.

Winter fidgeted about and said, "About his death. I've gone through it all again with a toothcomb, all the evidence we presented to the coroner, the autopsy report, the lot. There was nothing which could allow us to argue for suspicious circumstances." He paused. "If it was rigged, it was bloody well rigged."

"Yes, it was. I haven't come to talk about Bodicote. I've come to ask a favor. This knife..." Markby produced the article in a paper bag borrowed from Meredith. "It's impor­tant evidence in an attack on Mrs. Caswell. I need it sent over to forensics at once. I'm not going back to regional HQ at the moment. I've—I've got another call to pay. Could you take care of it?"

Winter brightened, glad of a chance to restore confidence in his organization. "I'll send a car over with it at once. Got anything to send with it?"

"I've scribbled a few notes." Markby proffered torn-out sheets from his notebook.

The knife in safe hands, Markby drove out of town. At the junction where he had to turn left if he wanted to go to Ox­ford, he hesitated. There was no car behind him. He sat for a moment in thought, until a flash of yellow light from the mirror dazzled him. Headlights were coming up behind him and forced a decision. He turned the car toward Oxford.

He headed for the laboratories and made it just in time. In the reception building, the guardsman was putting together her belongings prior to departure for the day. She wasn't pleased to see him.

"Dr. Caswell has left." Her manner indicated that Liam, persecuted beyond endurance, had sought sanctuary else­where. Emigrated, even.

"I know. I really want to see Miss Muller, one of the post­graduate students, if possible and she hasn't gone home yet."

"No."

"Not gone home yet?"

"No, you can't see her. It's not possible." She swept up a jumble of papers and thrust them into a steel filing-cabinet drawer which she shut with unnecessary vigor and locked. "Miss Muller didn't come in today."

"Oh, why is that?"

The woman receptionist delivered what she no doubt hoped was a definite rebuff. "I believe she's feeling unwell. She phoned in first thing. She will have had one of her heads, poor child."

"Which head might that be?" Markby asked politely.

"I can assure you, Superintendent, that migraine is no laughing matter!" She bristled and glared at him.

"Believe me, I wasn't laughing. Migraine, I know, is very distressing. Can I have her home address?''

She was deeply shocked. "Most certainly not! I would never give out the address of one of our single women—to a man!"

Markby smiled at her. "Most commendable. But I am a policeman, and that's a little different. My wish to see Miss Muller is in connection with an inquiry."

She was the type of defender who is killed at his or her post. "You can't visit her now. She's ill with the migraine. I've just told you. You surely don't intend to bother the poor young woman when she's on her sickbed?"

"Look, Mrs.—" Markby consulted the nameplate perched on her desk. "Mrs. Worral, that's for me to decide. All I want from you is her address. Now, please."

She conceded defeat with a last swipe. "I don't like this. I shall report it in the morning to Dr. Caswell. It's highly irregular." She waited to see if this last-ditch threat might sway him. It didn't. She sighed again, reopened one of the filing-cabinet drawers and took out a folder. After a quick search through it, she found what she needed and scribbled an address on a notepad.

"Here you are." She tore it off with a flourish and handed it over. "But if, despite all I've told you, you're intending to call on her tonight, it's rather late, isn't it? Even for police work?" There was a definite nasty note in the last question. She had him down as one of Those Men who preyed on young women.

"A police officer," said Markby, "can never be sure he'll pack up at the end of the day when the clock reaches five."

Despite herself, she glanced at the clock, and flushed.

"Well, it's nice to know," she said primly, "that our po­lice force is always on watch!"

"Like Cerberus," he said, "the force has many heads and one of them is always awake. Oh, by the way, you won't go phoning Miss Muller and warning her I'm on my way, will you? I'd rather you didn't. That's an official request, by the way."

The look she gave him was indescribable.


The house was another of Oxford's many red-brick Victorian villas. Like numerous others, far too large for a modern fam­ily, it had been converted to multiple occupancy. Markby, standing outside beneath the streetlight, checked the address and looked up at the bay-windowed frontage. He'd parked around the corner and approached on foot to avoid announc­ing his arrival. He couldn't, in any case, have parked before the building. All curb space was taken up by other cars, in­cluding a venerable lime-green Mini. The windows in the front of the house were lit, including the basement's. Those were uncurtained and he could see a young man lying on a divan. Earphones were clamped to his head, his eyes were shut and he was clicking his fingers.

Hopefully, Marita Muller was also alone. A row of bells by the front door was matched by a row of namecards.

Markby pressed "Muller."

For a while nothing happened and then a window was pushed up above his head. He stepped back, out of the porch and looked up.

Marita Muller's mane of russet hair appeared over the ledge. She peered down suspiciously at him.

"Good evening, Miss Muller!" he called.

"The police," she returned, investing the words with total scorn. "You were the one who came to the laboratory. What do you want?"

"Five minutes. Just a talk with you. Can I come in?"

"I am in my bath."

"No, you're not," said Markby reasonably. "You're lean­ing out of the window."

"Pig!" she retorted and slammed down the window.

Shortly afterwards, feet pattered toward the door which was inched open. Her voice issued through the crack. "You can talk to me here."

"Fine!" Markby said loudly. "It's about Dr. Liam Caswell!"

The door flew open and revealed Marita clad in an emerald green kimono which enhanced the color of her eyes. He won­dered whether the old green Mini also belonged to her.

"You can come in," she said discouragingly. "But five minutes only. You said five minutes. I am getting ready to go out."

He followed her up the stairs to the first floor. On the way he noticed that whoever had converted the house into flats had been free with muddy-hued linoleum and brown paint.

Marita's flat provided instant contrast to this dull entry. It blazed with color. The furniture was mostly elderly. But soft furnishings had been draped with bright Indian print shawls and wooden furniture had been painted white. Scarlet, green and orange cushions were scattered everywhere. Across one wall stretched a mural, an abstract, in the same brilliant colors. A gas-fire burned pale flames. The combined effect hurt his eyes. He blinked.

"What do you want to say about Dr. Caswell?"

He brought his gaze back to the defiant figure in the green robe which stood in the middle of the colorful room, arms folded. She put him in mind of an exotic bird in a tropical garden.

"Mrs. Worral, the receptionist at the laboratory, told me you'd phoned in sick with a migraine. You say you're getting ready to go out?"

"It is better. Migraine is like that. It comes and it goes." She shrugged. The wide kimono sleeve slipped revealing the edge of a bandage.

"And you've hurt your arm, too! My, you are having a run of bad luck," Markby consoled her.

"You said you wanted to talk about Liam."

"Liam now, is it? Not Dr. Caswell? But you must know him fairly well, after all, working with him. He's had some bad luck recently too. So has his wife. She's had another bad experience today but you'll be glad to know she's all right and staying with a friend."

Marita hunched her shoulders. "So? They're staying with friends! I'm really not interested. Should I be?"

"No, not both of them. Only Mrs. Caswell. Dr. Caswell is still at Castle Darcy, on his own. How did you hurt your arm?"

She hissed at him. "It's not your business! I cut it—in the lab. I dropped some glass slides."

"Really? Difficult to cut your arm like that, I should have thought. Cut your hand, perhaps. Not upper forearm."

The green eyes glittered. "What is it you want? You said five minutes. Already two minutes are gone. Now you have three."

Markby seated himself uninvited on one of the white painted chairs, ignoring her signs of increased annoyance.

"I understand you're one of the post-graduate students tak­ing part in a regular exchange scheme? What is your home university?''

She set her mouth in a straight line, squeezing out the name, "Jena!"

"Oh? Really? In the former DDR?"

She gave him a pitying look. "Times have changed, you know. Germany is one Germany again, now."

"So Jena, that's not your home town, then?"

She shifted her stance and tugged at the kimono sleeve. "I don't have what you'd call a home town."

Markby smiled at her. "To be without real roots is a pity. Are both your parents German? This room—" He indicated the decor around them. "It makes me think of a hot climate, bright colors, Latin rhythms."

She thought before she decided to answer. "My mother was from Cuba, a singer. She studied in the DDR." Although Markby had pronounced these letters in the English fashion, she pronounced them day-day-air. "She met my father there and married him."

"Really? And did she never go home again, to Cuba?"

"Yes, she went back to Cuba. We all moved there when I was a small child. My father was an agricultural chemist. He worked in Cuba until my mother died and then he brought me back to Europe again."

"How old were you then?"

"I was seven." She was growing restive. "My life isn't interesting to you."

"But it is. Did you know, I wonder, that Dr. CaswelFs wife is a very wealthy woman?"

She blinked, disconcerted by the jump in the conversation and frowned. Obligingly, he repeated the sentence.

"Yes, I understand!" she snapped. "But it still has nothing to do with me. I suppose she's lucky to be rich. I don't know."

"Some people might say Dr. Caswell was lucky. When he was an impecunious young doctor, he married a wealthy young woman. Now, some years later, just at a time when, possibly, much of her original fortune has been spent, she's inherited a second fortune from an elderly aunt."

The green eyes narrowed. "This is not important to me. Why do you insist on telling me these things?"

"I think it's very important to you, Marita," he said.

She studied him, then without warning, smiled serenely. "I know what you mean to say by all this. But you're wrong. I respect Dr. Caswell. He is a famous man, you know, in his own special field. I like him, too, very much. I think he likes me. It's not a crime, I think, not even in England. But I'm not some silly romantic kid. I don't expect him to leave his wife for me."

"Indeed, you're not. You're a highly intelligent and, I imagine, hardheaded young woman. It must be quite a culture shock to someone brought up under the old East German regime, suddenly to be in a Western consumer society. A little like Ali Baba when he found himself in the robbers' cave. Do you know that old story?"

"I know it." Her voice was filled with scorn. "It's a story for children."

"Not only for children. Those old tales are about human nature. Ali Baba found himself surrounded by riches and felt he was entitled to help himself, arguing, no doubt, that the goods were ill-gotten anyway. But there was a snag. In his case, forty of them. Do you remember the end of the story, Marita? The faithful Morgana killed all the thieves with boil­ing oil. When I was a kid, it puzzled me that no one tried to return the thieves' booty to its original owners. Wasn't Ali Baba also a thief? Now I know why. The human conscience is highly adaptable to circumstance."

As he spoke, a succession of reactions had gleamed in her eyes: anger, suspicion, dislike, caution. Now the eyes were cold, the extraordinary green irises glittering like the frost of recent early mornings.

She caught at the edge of the kimono sleeve and tugged it well down over her bandaged arm. "I know this much about England and how you do things here. I don't have to let you stay here in my flat, Policeman, and I don't have to talk to you or listen to your tales of the Arabian Nights. You have your five minutes all finished. Goodbye."

He rose to his feet. "Thank you for the five minutes, Mar­ita. I'm sure it's been interesting for us both."

He got out while the going was good.

He went back to his car around the corner and sat reviewing matters in his head. He was jerked from his reverie by the rattle of an elderly engine. The lime-green Mini shot out of the street, across his bows, turned left and buzzed away like a demented maybug.

Markby reached for the radio, praying Pearce was still at regional headquarters. He was.

"Dave? I think I've started a hare. The girl, Marita. She's just driven off like a bat out of hell. I think she'll be making for Castle Darcy. I kindly let her know Liam is there alone. I'm following. Get hold of Prescott if he's still there and meet me out at the village."


The minor road out to Castle Darcy was little used at this time of the evening. Markby's headlights swept through the darkness and picked up the place name. A moment later, an­other set of headlights was switched on, flashed once, and darkened again. They pinpointed a stationary car on the other side of the road, parked onto the grass beneath some trees. Markby pulled over to join it and got out.

Pearce and Prescott emerged from the other car and came to meet him. Prescott produced a torch.

"The girl's just arrived," Pearce said. "We only just got here in time. She scooted up in the Mini and let herself into the cottage. Front door. Caswell must've given her a key. Bit daft of him. I'd have expected a brainy bloke like that to have more commonsense!"

"Not the same thing, Dave."

Guided by Prescott's torch the three police officers walked along the dark country road until they reached the pair of cottages. Bodicote's was abandoned to the night, but lights gleamed behind the downstairs windows of the Caswell cot­tage. The Mini was parked just past the cottage in the gateway to a field.

"Right, time to disturb the lovebirds. I'll go to the front and you keep a watch at the back. She may make a run for it."

Markby walked up the path and knocked at the cottage door. A curtain twitched at a window. There was a delay and Markby thought he caught the mutter of voices. Then Cas­well's voice called out, "Who is it?"

"Superintendent Markby!" As if you don't know! thought Markby. "Like to talk to you, Dr. Caswell."

"Just a moment!"

There was some movement behind the door and a rustle. Liam opened the door fractionally and peered through. ' 'Oh, it is you. Well, come in then."

He stood back to allow Markby to squeeze past. At the same moment there was a female shriek from outside the cottage and the sound of some vigorous disturbance.

"What—?" Liam started forward.

Pearce and Prescott appeared around the side of the cottage, bearing the struggling Marita between them.

"Making a run for it, like you said, sir."

"Ah, Miss Muller," said Markby genially. "Join us, won't you?"

He didn't understand the words, but was fairly sure she was swearing at him.

It was a curious party. Liam and Marita sat rigidly side by side on the sofa, careful to avoid touching. Markby sat at apparent ease in an armchair. Pearce sat thumbing through his notebook and Prescott lounged bulkily by the door.

"This is a high-handed intrusion into my home!" Liam announced. "And I shall want an explanation for it! You don't have a warrant I'm sure!"

"Don't need one, Dr. Caswell. You invited me in!"

"I can throw you out again, too! Even though you've sta­tioned your thug there blocking the door."

Prescott looked mildly offended.

"You can certainly request us to leave and return when we have a warrant, but I don't advise it, Dr. Caswell. Best to get the air cleared now, don't you think?"

The girl said, "You are Fascist pigs!" She rubbed her arms. "You have hurt me. I shall complain!"

"Sorry, dear," said the amiable Prescott from the door. "Didn't realize you had a bandaged arm."

She scowled.

"Keep quiet, Marita, and leave it to me!" Liam instructed her. "Now then, Superintendent. As it happens, I agree with you. It's best to clear the air now. I understand you went to see Miss Muller here and frightened her. She's from that part of Germany which was formerly the German Democratic Republic. A visit from a policeman is more alarming to her than you might realize. Old memories die hard. She is alone in this country and didn't know where to turn for advice. So she came to me, the person in charge of her department at the laboratories. Quite understandable in the circumstances, I think?"

"Letting herself in with her own key," Pearce said.

"Ah—" Liam fell silent, chewing his lip. "I gave her a key a while ago so that she could come and fetch some papers for me, one day in the laboratory when I was busy. I forgot she hadn't returned it." He turned to her. "That's right, isn't it, Marita?"

"Yes!" she said woodenly.

"A great pity," Markby observed, "that you didn't re­member about it when I specifically asked you who had ac­cess to your cottage. When I requested a key so that I could come out here and check the layout, I was directed to Austin Bailey. Why didn't you think of Marita's key then?"

"I've told you what happened," Liam said. "Being a cop­per, you'll try and twist it, no doubt. But that's what hap­pened."

"If we're going to tell fairy stories," said Markby, "why don't I tell one? Miss Muller knows I'm interested in old tales. It might make good listening."

"I doubt it," Liam told him.

Marita raised her hand and made a circular motion by her temple. "His story will be as crazy as he is!"

Markby smiled cheerfully. "All the same, let's see how it goes—or I think it goes. A handsome and successful research scientist and a beautiful young student begin an affair. It's not a criminal offense so we won't argue about it. I doubt very much that when it began, however, the scientist quite realized what a redoubtable young woman she was." Markby turned his gaze to meet Marita's fierce green eyes. She stared back with disdain and made another circular movement of her forefinger.

"The scientist is famous but his work has not been finan­cially well rewarded. He is dependent on the money brought to the marriage by his wife, who had inherited a considerable estate from her father. But he has tired of his wife. The money's almost all spent and he has begun to think that per­haps he can now leave her and set up with his new love. But then, his wife inherits a second fortune. No question now of leaving her and forfeiting a share in the money and the com­fortable lifestyle it would provide! Nor does his new love fancy domestic bliss in a small flat. She has had a glimpse of better things. So he and his girlfriend hatch a plan. A callous plan which will remove the wife—but leave him in posses­sion of her fortune. I gather there are no other surviving mem­bers of Mrs. Caswell's family? You and she have made mutually beneficial wills?"

Liam, his voice trembling, said, "This is outrageous!"

"I agree. It gets more so. They get an idea. A year ago animal rights extremists targeted the lab. Why not, then, use this to cover any attack now on the wife? What's more, the young woman announces she can rig up an explosive pack­age! I don't know about your father being engaged on agri­cultural projects in Cuba, Miss Muller. I fancy he may have been in weapons research! However...

"The package is posted to arrive while the scientist is away in Norwich. Only, due to an unforeseen cancellation of plans, he doesn't go to Norwich and is here when it arrives. He's able, however, to make sure his wife opens it. Incidentally, it's addressed simply to 'Caswell,' just in case the postwoman remembers.

"But the wife isn't killed. The scientist realizes he's been very foolish and put himself in a dangerous situation—and in the hands of a very dangerous partner." Markby nodded at Marita.

"But he's got the tiger by the tail, as the saying goes. He can't cut loose. Their original plan has failed. But they haven't given up, or at least, the young woman hasn't given up and the scientist, having let the djinn out of the bottle, can't do much about it.

"One or other of them has been tampering with the herbal teas drunk by the wife for some time, experimentally. So far, all they've done is make her feel off-color. Incidentally, they must have collected the flowers, leaves and seedheads back in the summer, which shows premeditation.

"When the old man next door dies, they have a new opportunity. The chance to tamper seriously with some tea given to the wife by him. After all, he's dead and can't deny the charge. Sooner or later the wife will drink the tea and, with luck, have some kind of accident whilst drugged, perhaps in her car. The plan fails because the wife's friend takes her immediately to a medical center. The conspirators are getting desperate. The scientist is possibly too frightened by now to act, but the mistress is made of sterner stuff and not afraid to take a risk. He has told her that his wife has returned to the cottage and is there alone. The mistress realizes she has a not-to-be repeated opportunity. She arms herself with a knife and sets out for Castle Darcy.

"By the time she gets there she's realized that she needs to formulate some plan in case she's seen. But luck is with her. She arrives in the village to find a demonstration taking place just outside it, at a battery chicken farm. People are taking part in it who don't look like villagers and she will be just one more stranger if she associates herself with it. She lurks about the fringes of it and sees the grotesque chicken figure retire behind a hedge and divest itself of its costume. The mistress slips behind the hedge and makes off with the disguise. She may have intended to use her key to gain entry to the cottage, but in the event, it's not necessary because the wife emerges and begins to stroll down the long, secluded garden. It couldn't be better and the disguised mistress at­tacks."

Markby shook his head. "But she fails again. The wife escapes and in her hand, she's holding the knife which the attacker wielded but was forced to drop. The attacker was careful to wear gloves and probably thinks there won't be any fingerprints. However, Mrs. Caswell remembers striking out with it at her assailant. She doesn't know whether she in­flicted any damage. However, if the assailant was wounded by that knife..."

Marita's fingers strayed toward her bandaged arm and were snatched back.

"Then quite possibly there will be traces of blood on the blade. Perhaps sufficient to give a DNA fingerprint which will tell us the identity of the person struck."

The room was quiet. Liam sat expressionless. Marita said in a high, uncertain voice, "I don't believe you."

"I've just arranged for the knife to be sent over for forensic examination. We may require a blood sample of you, Miss Muller."

"I shall refuse."

"Why should you do that?''

Before Marita could reply, Liam said, "Be quiet, Marita. You shouldn't answer questions without a lawyer present." To Markby he added, "Miss Muller is a student in my exchange program. I'm responsible for her. I cannot allow you to question her in such a way that she may say something which could be misunderstood. This whole thing is a tissue of fantastic speculation. You are trying to use Miss Muller to give it some credibility."

"All right," Markby told him. "Let's turn to the husband's actions. Following the attack, the thing the husband fears most happens. His wife has fled to her friend's house and declines to return to their home. She may seek a divorce. He isn't sure how much she knows about his adulterous affairs over the years. But any competent inquiry agent could get the information for her. Moreover his general treatment of her has been intolerable, as several people have witnessed. He has little hope of emerging from the divorce with anything but a couple of suitcases. He will have to move heaven and earth to get her back or the money will slip out of his hands forever. And it is the money which matters, isn't it? If nec­essary, the scientist is more than willing to dump his mistress. The world's full of pretty girls, but few of them bring a for­tune with them."

Marita's manner had changed. The anger had faded in her green eyes, to be replaced by a more thoughtful look. She leaned her head against the sofa cushions, but the air of re­laxation was deceptive, Markby was sure.

"This—every word of it—is absolute nonsense!" Liam was breathing heavily. "Of course, the danger to me and to my wife comes from extremists! I received anonymous threat­ening mail!"

"So you said. But you didn't report it and your wife didn't see it. You didn't even mention it to her until after the ex­plosive package."

"But I received others, a crazy letter from Yvonne Goodhusband and another cut-and-paste letter which was anony­mous, you saw it yourself!"

"Oh, yes. I think you made the cut-and-paste one yourself, Dr. Caswell, and got Marita to mail it in London."

Liam rose slowly to his feet, almost unable to speak with emotion. ' 'You cannot prove a word of this preposterous tale. You certainly can't prove that I had any part in it!" He clutched his head. "All right, I know I've been stupid! I admit it—I flirted with Miss Muller and she may have mis­understood my attachment to her. But I certainly never plotted with her or anyone else to harm my wife. I wouldn't ever do such a thing. I love my wife, Superintendent. I realize that your girlfriend has persuaded her to leave me temporarily, but I assure you, I shall leave no stone unturned until I get Sally back!"

Marita turned her head to look up at him.

"As for Miss Muller," Liam hurried on, "I know very little about her background. It's possible—as you have described—that she took it into her head to try and kill my wife, believing that if Sally were dead, I would enter into some kind of per­manent relationship with her. But I assure you, that was never my intention and I never suggested to her—''

"You bastard!" Marita snatched a small bronze ornament from a table by the sofa end, and leaped at him.

It took three of them to pull her off, by which time she'd succeeded in inflicting considerable if superficial injury to Liam, scratching his face, and gashing his brow with the bronze horse.

"I think," Markby said, panting, to Pearce, "that you'd better take the young lady with you, Inspector!"

Still putting up vigorous resistance and swearing in several languages, Marita was escorted away by Pearce and Prescott.

Liam who'd sought remedy for his injury in the bathroom, returned, holding a facecloth to his damaged forehead. A thin trail of blood had run down one side of his nose and into his beard.

"The girl's crazy!" He seemed genuinely shocked. "She's mentally ill! You saw how she went for me! What more proof do you want?" He glared at Markby beneath the impromptu dressing.

"Proof of what?" Markby asked him.

Liam blinked. "Of what you were saying, that she tried to kill Sally! You were telling the truth, were you, about that knife? There could be Marita's blood on it?"

"Examination of it will tell. I'm hopeful."

Liam ran his tongue over his lower lip, his face a picture of fear. "For God's sake, I didn't know what she was up to! I thought it was all the animal rights people! They sent me abusive mail! I know I didn't report it but you can't prove I didn't get it! As for the one I gave you, you're mad if you think I pasted it up myself! I bloody didn't! It just turned up in the post, promising to 'get me.' A grubby, illiterate little threat from some grubby and illiterate hooligan!"

There was a ring of true grievance in his voice.

It was enough to cause a flicker of doubt in Markby's mind. "I'll get my proof. At the very least, I think you realized what Marita was up to, as soon as that explosive package arrived! And you went along with her plans. Although, for my money, you were in on it from the start!"

The fear had faded from Liam's face. "You—" he jabbed a finger at Markby, "are as crazy as that Muller female! I'm phoning my lawyer, right now! Gerald Plowright. He's in London. Stay there! The phone's in my study!"

He burst out Markby followed to the door and stood lis­tening from the hall as Liam engaged in agitated conversation on the telephone. In due course, Liam reappeared, still clasp­ing his brow with the blood-stained facecloth, but otherwise in control.

"Gerald, my solicitor, advises that I should say nothing until he gets here, which won't be until tomorrow. He'd like a word with you, Superintendent."

Markby walked past him and picked up the phone. "Su­perintendent Markby."

"Gerald Plowright here," said a smoothly efficient voice at the other end. "My client has given me a resume of what's occurred. I have advised Dr. Caswell to say nothing more to the police until I arrive. Unfortunately that can't now be be­fore tomorrow morning. In the meantime, should you have any idea of taking Dr. Caswell into custody, I must strongly object. You cannot question him now until I arrive, and you certainly cannot claim that he is likely to abscond. He is a distinguished scientist with an international reputation and not a petty criminal. He is, he assures me, entirely innocent of any misdoing and most anxious to clear his name. And, of course, to restore the harmony of his marriage."

"We have detained his mistress," Markby said. "I think she'll talk."

Plowright uttered a sound of worldly dismissal. "Pah! Come, come, Superintendent. The fantasies of a hysterical young woman?'' He paused to lend weight to his next words. "A foreign young woman, at that? Hardly grounds for hold­ing Dr. Caswell in detention overnight."

Markby managed to keep his voice even. "You'll appre­ciate, Mr. Plowright, that we're talking of a serious crime, attempted murder."

Plowright pounced, verbally at least. "It is serious, I agree! Dr. Caswell is reeling—reeling, Superintendent—from the knowledge that this young woman tried to kill his wife! What's more, she attacked him, I understand? In the presence of the police! Clearly, she's unhinged. Have you other evi­dence against my client, aside from the demented ramblings of this girl?" Into Plowright's oiled tones crept a hint of the hand of steel within the velvet glove. "I hope I shan't have to apply for a writ of habeas corpus?"

"I have no clear evidence at the moment," Markby ad­mitted.

"Then I suggest I meet you with my client at your office at, let us say, eleven tomorrow morning?"

Markby set down the receiver. Liam was waiting in the hallway. He took the facecloth from the gash and inspected it in a mirror. "This will leave a scar. She's mad. You want to get a psychiatrist to her!"

"I will see you tomorrow at eleven, together with Mr. Plowright, in my office!" Markby growled.

Liam quitted the mirror and went to the front door. "Right! Gerald will sort this out, you'll see! Goodnight, Superinten­dent!"

Markby walked down the path reflecting, not for the first time in his career, that those who could afford expensive legal advice stood an excellent chance of manipulating the system to their advantage.

"But they are not," he muttered, "going to run rings around me!"

Stopping them doing so, however, might be difficult.



*18*
Markby stepped from the light of the Caswell cottage into the blackness of a country night. Not that Castle Darcy was com­pletely without street-lighting. But such as it was, it was a quarter of a mile along the road where the main collection of buildings was sited.

This fact reminded him that Castle Darcy had a pub, The Traveller's Rest, which had a good reputation. During the summer months it was the focus of a popular evening excur­sion from Bamford. Pearce and Prescott had already departed with Marita. He felt, after all that had taken place, in need of a pint. Instead of following in their wake, he turned his foot­steps toward the village.

He soon began to wonder, as he picked his way over the verge and along the unlit country road, whether he wouldn't have done better to have used the car. A twisted ankle would just about round off this day. The walk wasn't lonely. At night, in the country, one is never alone. There is another world all around which only comes to life as the sun goes down. Ahead he could see a dull glimmer of light which hovered over the village and the pub to which he cautiously wended his way. Far across the fields to his left he could make out pinpricks of light which were probably the battery egg-layer units, source of so much concern to Yvonne Goodhusband and her friends.

In such circumstances, one's own senses become sharp­ened. Hearing is more acute, so that when something fell or jumped into the water at the bottom of a wayside ditch, the tiny splash was magnified on the night air and Markby nearly jumped out of his skin. His nostrils, no longer stifled by traffic fumes, caught a whiff of disturbed stagnant ooze, a powerful rottenness.

His feet crunched on the road surface as if he walked in seven-league boots. Once, pausing to look across at the chicken farm, he thought he heard an echoing crunch and turned his head. Something moved in the gloom beneath the trees but all around was other movement. Odd rustlings in the hedgerows accompanied him and the chill wind rattled the bare branches of the trees above. Despite himself, he quickened his pace, hurrying instinctively toward the comfort of the glow of light ahead, heedless now of the danger of tripping.

The pub appeared out of the darkness like a brightly lit liner out at sea, full of life and noise. He pushed his way through the door into the warm interior, a place of low, black­ened oak beams and uneven plaster. There were few people in the bar tonight. It was early, he realized. The place had only just opened up for business. He bought his pint and leaned on the bar to talk to the landlord, a burly man with heavy shoulder muscle turning to fat. A bell rang in Markby's memory.

"Expect to be busy later on?" He wondered if the same stirring of memory troubled the other man.

"Might be." My host wiped down the bar in slow motion. His hands, extremely hairy on the backs, were like shovels. Markby glanced up at the license pinned above the bar. It informed him that Moses Lee was permitted to sell beers and spirits. There was another notice informing the customers that the pub was part of a network which kept its members informed of troublemakers' identities. Banned from one pub, you were banned from them all. It was unlikely that Mr. Lee got much trouble in his pub. Not with forearms like that.

"Provided it don't turn frosty again," pronounced that gen­tleman. "Summertime we get a load of visitors. In winter, the road puts people off. They think it'll be dangerous driving back to town, no lights and the surface tricky. Council never does any gritting on our road."

Markby picked up on this grievance. "They probably don't realize how many drivers use it."

The landlord agreed. A raddled blond in a skin-tight dress unsuited to her figure and years appeared at the other end of the bar. Her eyes, ice-sharp, raked Markby and he knew he might as well have the word "police" hanging above his head in neon letters, rather as Moses Lee had his license to trade hanging above his.

"Give the gent another on the house, Moses!" she ordered huskily.

Mr. Lee was built like a baron of beef, but clearly his fair helpmeet ran the pub.

"Please," said Markby. "I appreciate it, but another time, if I may. I'm driving." He turned his attention back to Moses. "Village has grown in size, I expect, over the last few years."

The landlord agreed again, but with a new access of cau­tion. It had grown somewhat but they'd been spared any new housing estates. "We don't want to happen to us what happened to Cherton. You can't see the old village there now. Just surrounded by the new houses. Terrible."

"A lot of people are looking for homes in a village like Castle Darcy, unspoilt," Markby went on. "A friend of a friend of mine brought a place out here somewhere. Name of Caswell."

The expression on the landlord's battered features became increasingly wary. "That'll be out of the village, back on the road to Bamford. Coupla cottages standing by themselves. They bought one of them."

"You know the Caswells, then?"

"I know about him.''' The landlord chuckled but choked the laugh off mid-way. "I know his wife to exchange the time of day. Seen her down the village shop. Nice-looking woman and very pleasant."

"I've often thought I'd like to buy a place somewhere like this. No other cottages for sale that you know of?"

The landlord leaned on the wooden bar, which creaked be­neath his weight, and surveyed Markby as if judging his suit­ability to be a resident of Castle Darcy. "Old feller died recently, right next door to the Caswells, Old Hector Bodicote. He was a village character. His place might go on the market. Mind you, you'd need to spend a small fortune on it, doing it up. Old Hector never did anything to it. I'm not saying the family will sell. Maybe one of them might come and live in it. His niece farms over Westerfield way, but I heard her son's thinking of getting married. He might take the place on."

More people came into the bar and the man abandoned Markby, who drained the last of his pint and pushed his way out of the warm interior into the chill of the night again. He retraced his steps.

As before, he was aware of leaving light and company behind him and venturing forth into a more primitive world. And as before, he hadn't gone far when he fancied his ear caught the rattle of footsteps dogging his own.

"This," he told himself, "is pure imagination!" He began to whistle softly to himself and strode out, resolutely blocking his ears to any faint scrape and scuffle behind him.

He passed Liam's cottage and wondered what he was doing now. Back on the phone to Gerald Plowright, probably, hatch­ing up tomorrow's strategy.

Markby almost walked into his own car, barely able to make it out where he'd left it. He unlocked the door and slid into the seat with undeniable feelings of relief. Inside the car was warm, slightly stuffy, and reassuring. As he reached for the ignition, however, he got the fright of the night.

A hand tapped on the window, right by his ear.

Markby let out a muffled curse, nearly dropped the key, and raised a startled gaze. What he saw caused him to swear more loudly and struggle with an alarm rooted less in surprise than in something much older and atavistic.

A face peered in, surrounded by long, tangled hair, its ex­pression urgent. It was hard not to believe for a moment he hadn't been approached by some nocturnal woodland deity. However, Markby realized, after the first initial jolt, that it was human. A tramp? No, there was something familiar about it. The hand rose again from the gloom outside and rapped on the window more loudly. The being's mouth formed, "Hullo!" and he faintly heard the word through the glass. It was Tristan Goodhusband.

Markby let down the window. "What do you want?" he snapped. It was bad enough to have been given a fright. After the frustrating interview with Liam and suffering the bland but determined words of Gerald Plowright, Markby felt that just now, the last person he could be bothered with, was Tris­tan.

"To talk. Sorry if I made you jump." Tristan, in apologetic mode, was probably as rare an apparition as any Green Man. He appeared uncharacteristically unsure.

"Did you follow me down to the pub and back?" Markby demanded.

"Yes. I wanted to see where you were going," Tristan was frank about it, at least. Even more frankly, he went on, "When you went into the pub, I didn't go in after you be­cause I didn't want to be seen hobnobbing with the police. Besides, I steer clear of Moses and his old lady. Private mat­ter. I didn't know what you wanted in there. I reckoned you were making inquiries. Then you started off back again and I thought I wouldn't get a better opportunity to talk to you on your own, without letting everyone know about it. Fact is—" he hesitated. "Perhaps I should have had a word with you before this."

Markby sighed and leaned across the front passenger seat to unlock the far door. Tristan walked around the car and got in beside him.

"All right," Markby said. "What's it all about?"

Now he was in the car, Tristan seemed more certain of himself. "I was walking by the cottage earlier this evening. I saw Caswell's tart drive up and later on, your men. So I hung about and then you came. They took her away!" Tristan grinned. "She put up a hell of a fight. It took the two of them to get her into the car! She kicked one of them in the crotch, the big burly chap."

Markby wasted no time on sympathy for the luckless Prescott.

"You call her Caswell's tart, so I presume you know of an affair between them?'' His dislike of Tristan was increas­ing. But he'd long suspected the young man knew more than he cared to tell. If this was the moment he'd decided to impart some of his knowledge, Markby would listen, especially if it was about Liam.

"Whole village knows about it," said Tristan. "As soon as Mrs. Caswell drives out of one end of Castle Darcy to go to work, the girl drives in the other end and they're at it all day until just before Mrs. Caswell gets back. The girl always leaves in time. Once or twice, mind you, Mrs. Caswell nearly caught them. People in Castle Darcy like Mrs. Caswell, so no one's ever mentioned it. Not wanting to upset her, you see."

Little wonder, thought Markby, that Liam's book had been making slow progress! He grunted. It was always the way that people knew more than they let on. For whatever reason, in this case a mistaken sense of decency and kindness, they'd kept knowledge of Liam's extramarital affair to themselves. If just one person had spoken of it to the police when inquiries had begun into the explosive package, they'd have got onto Marita at once.

"Will you get him?" Tristan asked.

"Caswell? Get him for what?"

"I don't know. For sending that dodgy package, maybe."

"What do you know about that?" Markby snapped.

"I know it wasn't sent by any animal rights group. I'd have heard about it on the grapevine. Everyone in any branch of the movement has been talking about it. No one knows a thing about who sent it. It's upset a lot of people, our more respectable sympathizers especially, which is bad for us. We don't operate in that way, but mud sticks. We've been getting the blame for something we haven't done. Word has it, even the extremists are miffed. Not that they've any objection to letter-bombs. But they're usually quick enough to brag about any stunt they pull off. Now someone's stolen their thunder."

Tristan shrugged. "So, if none of us sent it, it has to be someone else. If his wife hadn't been the one to open it, I might have thought she'd done it. Found out about the girl­friend, perhaps, and decided to send him a farewell present in every sense of the word! But as she was the one who got caught in the blast of the thing going off, it had to have been him or the foreign bird."

"You could," Markby said with barely concealed anger, "have told me this before! To have been assured it hadn't originated in the animal rights movement would have saved us a lot of wasted time on inquiries."

"Sure I could have told you. And you'd have believed me?" Tristan laughed. "Course you wouldn't! As soon as it happened, your heavies were around to Mick Whelan's, lean­ing on him. I didn't like that." Tristan's humor evaporated. "Mick's a sick man. If I'd had any ideas about helping you, I forgot them once I saw you were leaning on Mick."

"No one leaned on him. Inspector Pearce is actually quite concerned about the man's health. But go on." Markby tapped his hand on the steering wheel.

"Keep your hair on!" advised Tristan. "Listen, I want you to understand why I—I took the line I did."

"By line," growled Markby, "I take it you mean with­holding information pertaining to a crime?"

Tristan grew angry. "I'm trying to tell you, all right? But if you're going to take that attitude, stuff it! I don't feel kindly toward the police. Why should I? I've been grabbed by the boys in blue any number of times and slung in a van, duffed up on the quiet—and don't say no copper ever does that sort of thing, I've had the bruises! I've been charged with public order offences, all that kind of crap. Why should I help the police? No reason at all. Don't give me any good citizen bilge. I make up my own mind what's right for me. The animal rights movement is right for me. I'm still not quite sure I want to help you now."

Markby asked suddenly, "Did you send a cut-and-paste threatening letter to Dr. Caswell? It arrived the same morning as a letter from your mother."

Tristan hesitated. "All right, yes I did. Only the once! I didn't send him any others. It was more a joke, really. Mum was writing him one of her oh-so-reasonable invitations to talk through his problem with her! I thought, what the hell. Let's give the guy a bit of a fright. So I made up my own letter, glued up bits of newsprint. I've been traveling around the country, from demo to demo. I was passing through Lon­don, so I stuck it in a mailbox there, just to confuse the trail." Tristan looked surprised. "That's funny?"

"No," Markby suppressed a moment of wry humor. So Liam, after falsely claiming to have received threatening mail had actually received such an anonymous letter! No wonder Markby had sensed the fear in Liam when Caswell had brought both letters to him! Matters had been slipping more and more out of Liam's control.

Tristan had interpreted the stifled chuckle. "You don't like him, either, do you? You'd really like to get Caswell, if you could. Am I right?"

Markby didn't reply. His silence was taken for assent.

"Thought so." Tristan's belligerence had faded. "My mother's out at a meeting tonight. Over at Beryl Linnacott's. Thank God someone stole that chicken suit. Old Beryl looked a complete nutter in it. Made people laugh at us and I kept telling her so. It might get us publicity and pictures in the papers, but who wants that sort of publicity? Like we'd all escaped from the local asylum? Anyway, there's no one at home. I've got something I'd like you to see. I can't really explain it. I can only show you."


The Tithe Barn stood dark and deserted. The cats were gray shadows prowling through the dark undergrowth. One emerged to twine itself around Markby's legs as Tristan hunted for his key. Markby's heart gave another hop. He'd finish a nervous wreck at this rate.

Tristan let them both in and led the way upstairs to a self-contained flat.

"My place. My mother, she's a good sort, but she's over­powering. If I'm to live at home, I have to have my own space."

Markby looked around. Basically, the flat was a large bed-sitting room with an ensuite bathroom and a small kitchen unit in one corner. As a rent-free dwelling, it was very comfortable.

"I don't cook or anything," Tristan had noticed Markby's appraisal of the facilities. "I eat with my mother. But I make coffee and so on. Want a cup?"

"No, thank you." Markby sat down. "I haven't time to waste, Mr. Goodhusband. Whatever it is, just show me or tell me or whatever it is you want to do."

"Right." Tristan went to a cupboard and returned holding a camcorder. "Just watch the TV screen over there." He bus­ied himself setting up the camcorder to run the film.

"I took this early one morning. I was on my way back over the fields. I'd—I'd been over to the egg-units, trying to get some film of the interior of the chickenhouses. I didn't, as it happens, the alarm system went off. So don't think you can dream up some charge of breaking and entering."

Tristan paused. "There's a right of way over the fields, it runs behind the pair of cottages where Caswell lives and old Bodicote lived. I rather liked old Bodicote with all his faults. He was nuts, of course, definitely a weirdo, in fact a D.O.M. But it was all genuine, not faked. A real eccentric."

"D.O.M?" Markby was slow on the uptake.

"Dirty Old Man. Our local Peeping Tom. Didn't anyone tell you that? Suppose they wouldn't. The villagers are clan­nish. Them against the outside world. He was well-known was old Hector, for creeping up and peering through your windows or snooping on courting couples. In fact, I had a bone to pick with him myself. I think he was spying on me and—and a girl the other evening. She spotted him in the bushes and let out a squawk. He scarpered pretty quick so I didn't catch him. But I thought, if I ran into him in the village, I'd let him know I was onto him.

"Anyhow, I was on the other side of the hedge to the goat-house that morning when I heard the nannies kicking up a dickens of a fuss. That made me curious and as I wanted a word with the old chap anyway, as I told you, I parted the hedge and peered through. I saw—" He stopped.

Markby leaned forward, "Go on. What did you see?"

"I saw something I'll never forget." The bluster had gone from Tristan. "And I filmed it. Watch."

The camcorder whirred softly into action. On the TV screen appeared a jumble of images, resolving into a spray of hedge­row. It was followed by a shot of the corner of the goat-house and then—

Markby drew a sharp breath as Bodicote's sprawled body appeared on the screen, but lying on its back, not—as Mer­edith had found it—on its stomach. A figure appeared to the left of the screen and stooped over Bodicote. Liam Caswell. Liam caught at the old man's shoulders and heaved the body over. With a sick feeling in his stomach, Markby realized that he was watching the final stages of a murder.

Liam arranged his lifeless victim with painstaking care, tak­ing his time. The calm orderliness of the way he treated the body, as if it had been no more than a first-aid dummy, was more chilling to see than any act of violence itself. Only once did Liam seem to suspect any other presence and it called up the single moment of emotion. He lifted his head and looked up briefly toward the hedge, suspicion in every line of his tensed frame.

"Nearly caught me then," said Tristan. "I ducked down and held my breath. I've often thought, since then, that if he'd caught me, he'd have killed me, no doubt about it. It was a close shave."

Liam, satisfied he was still unobserved, relaxed and con­tinued to pose the body as he wished it. He pushed the lump of rubble with his foot until Bodicote's wounded head rested against it. Then he stood up, surveyed his handiwork and gave a little nod. He turned and went out of the frame. The film continued to focus on Bodicote for a few minutes and then abruptly ended.

In the ensuing silence, Tristan sat, with the camcorder on his knees, watching Markby.

"You—had—this—" Markby said very quietly. "And you said nothing about it? You deliberately suppressed evi­dence of the most serious crime which can be committed against the person?" His voice had been rising in volume as he spoke.

"No!" Tristan defended himself. "I didn't suppress it. Haven't suppressed it, you've just seen it, haven't you? I didn't make any decision about it. I wasn't in any state to! For Chrissake, I was in shock! It's not the sort of thing you expect to stumble on during an early morning walk in the country. I didn't know what to do with the film."

"You didn't—?" Words almost failed Markby. "There was no question what you should do with it! You should have brought it to the police at once!"

"The old man was dead!" Tristan shouted. "After Caswell had left the scene, I nipped through the hedge and took a look for myself. He wasn't breathing! I couldn't bring him back to life! You couldn't expect me to make up my mind there and then. I brought the camcorder back home here and ran the film several times. Each time made me realize more what a weapon it was. I wanted to make the best use of it. I had Caswell in the palm of my hand with it! I'd never get another chance like this one."

"Blackmail? You intended blackmail?" Markby half rose from his chair.

"No! Not in the way you mean! I wasn't after money! I worked out that, if I kept it, and if in the future Caswell's laboratories started up their foul animal experiments again, I could use it to make Caswell stop. If I gave it to the police, they'd arrest Caswell, but someone else would take on his work! I wanted to be able to stop Caswell's animal research projects! Maybe that isn't what seems most important to you, but it was what seemed most important to me!"

A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box. The quotation had been Markby's own response when Bodicote had referred to a question of priorities. It wasn't so simple. The line between altruism and selfishness, thought Markby now wryly, was thinner than might be supposed.

"What matters to me," he told Tristan, "is justice for an old man."

Tristan was silent.

"What changed your mind about showing me this?" Markby nodded at the blank TV screen. "Since you seem to have decided to keep it and use it for your own purposes, something must have caused you to do a U-turn."

Looking down, Tristan mumbled, "When Mrs. Caswell was taken to hospital and Caswell started telling everyone Bodicote had tried to poison her. I realized that he meant to kill her, too, to kill his wife. I put two and two together, the letter-bomb and the poisoned tea. The man was a killer and I was crazy to keep the evidence to myself. I knew then I had to show you the film. But I'd put myself in a bit of a fix, not showing it to you at once, I knew how you'd react. So I dithered a while, if you like. But I've shown it to you now."

Tristan looked up. "So you can get him, can't you? That is, it won't show he was trying to kill his wife. I don't know what evidence you've got on that. But he killed old Bodicote, didn't he? He's not going to talk himself out of that one, is he?"

"No," Markby said. "And neither are you going to talk yourself out of your extraordinary behavior in withholding evidence which would have solved all this from the outset. You knew that no one in the animal rights movement was claiming responsibility for the letter-bomb. You knew that Caswell's mistress regularly visited the cottage. You knew that Bodicote was a Peeping Tom and probably spied on Caswell and the girl. Finally, you filmed this—" He indicated the screen. "From start to finish, you knew. You might even, had you come forward earlier, have saved the old man's life."

"Bloody ingratitude!" Tristan seemed more resigned than angry. "But it's what I expected. You can't oppose the cop­pers and you can't help them. No wonder the police have got an image problem."

He tossed back his long hair and fixed Markby with a sen­tentious gaze.

He had succeeded, for the moment at least, in reducing the superintendent to silence.



*19*
"My client," said Gerald Plowright, "would like to amend his earlier statement."

It was two in the afternoon and a great deal had happened since Liam had arrived with Mr. Plowright, as arranged, at eleven.

Faced with the camcorder film, Liam had been frightened but defiant. "So? I lost my nerve! I mean, I found him like it. I thought I'd get the blame, so I—I arranged him a bit. He was dead!"

"Found him like what, Dr. Caswell?"

"Lying on the ground. He'd fallen, bashed his head."

"So there was no need to rearrange him."

"I just improved a bit. I know it's not the done thing. Like improving the lay in golf." "Improving," said Markby with open disgust, "is what you're doing now to your story."

"Look here!" began Liam but was summarily ordered to silence by Mr. Plowright.

Plowright's attitude toward his client had perceptibly al­tered during the day, as had his own manner. The film had rattled the solicitor. From smug and confident, he'd become terse and tetchy. From time to time, he darted impatient glares at Caswell. Liam had, to use a popular phrase, "dropped Ger­ald in it."

Hence, thought Markby, the announcement of a revised statement.

"A complete statement this time?" he asked.

"Yes!" yelled Liam. "I didn't know about the letter-bomb. I didn't know Marita had made the thing. It was all her doing! I would never had tinkered with anything so damn dangerous! When it arrived, that morning, and went off, I thought, I really believed, it had been sent by extremists, probably the same ones who had broken into the lab last year! After all, I'd been receiving abusive letters—"

Markby stared at him. Even now, after all this, Liam was still insisting he had received the phantom hate mail. That niggle of doubt which had assailed Markby throughout made itself felt again.

"You destroyed them, you say. You said nothing of them to anyone. Dr. Caswell, I have only your word for it that you received any."

Liam leaned forward, his jaw thrust out pugnaciously. "I got 'em! I tore them up in disgust! They were vile—said things about my book! I wasn't going to show the things to anyone!"

"About the tampering with your wife's herbal teas," Markby switched tack.

"Don't know—"

"I should tell you that the girl is talking her head off."

"Unreliable witness!" interpolated Mr. Plowright.

Markby was irresistibly reminded of a television courtroom drama, an early Perry Mason, perhaps. "Objection!" "Sus­tained!"

"She couldn't have done it without your help and conniv­ance, Dr. Caswell."

"I was influenced," said Liam baldly, staring at the op­posite wall. "I was completely under her spell." His gaze lowered and met Markby's. "She's that sort of girl, Marita. She's hypnotic, like a snake. She's got a thing about snakes, too. She gave me some jewelery, a pin, and she'd got a matching necklace herself. It gave me the creeps. Made me think of human sacrifice."

"Made you think of murder?"

"I was only talking of Marita's taste in trinkets!"

"My client," resumed Plowright, his protuberant eyes moist with candor, "is a scientist, a practical man. He was defenceless against the wiles of Miss Muller. Putty in her hands, Superintendent. She subjected him to the most astute emotional blackmail."

"Marita did it all!" mumbled Liam. "I don't know about these things! You can't expect me to have controlled someone like Marita. You can't blame me. I didn't make a bomb! I didn't dress up as a chicken—'' He groaned and clasped his head. "I didn't know what she was going to do next! But I couldn't stop her!"

Markby had his man and knew it. "To get back to the teas," he began remorselessly. "Who collected the hemlock and where? I notice it grows profusely around Castle Darcy."

Mr. Plowright settled in his chair. This was going to be a very long day.


"So that's it," said Sally. "Funny sort of feeling, knowing that your husband and his latest fancy bit have been trying to bump you off."

"You must try and put it all behind you, Sal," advised Meredith, replenishing the gin and tonics.

For one who had been such a modest tippler, Sally was taking to the odd dram with alarming ease. Meredith resolved to keep an eye on this development. For the moment, how­ever, Sally needed a stiffener or two. Now that Liam had started talking, the revelations coming from both him and his mistress promised to keep the tabloids happy for weeks when the matter came to trial.

"Enough for several blockbuster novels," Alan had said. "From Marita alone. All about her affair with Liam, about plotting to send the package—still saying Liam knew about it, by the way—tampering with Sally's own tea and with Bodicote's herbal blend. Dressing up in the chicken suit. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! Or left to carry the blame, whichever it may be."

"Just you remember that!" Meredith had advised him. "Was there blood on that knife?"

"A little, probably not enough for our purposes. Fortu­nately there were more stains outside the cottage and we found the chicken mask and gloves, hidden on Bodicote's land. They were both bloodstained. Marita must have bled quite a bit, giving us good samples. She folded in the face of the DNA evidence. A research scientist herself, she knew what it meant."

"Of course you must have Aunt Emily's chairs and cup­board," Sally urged. "I'm really very grateful, Meredith, for your support right through this. Rushing me off to the medical center when I was poisoned and taking me in as you did after that horrible business of the chicken. I still have nightmares about that thing."

"Glad to help, Sal. But you must let me pay for the chairs. I don't think, sadly, that after all, I've room for the cupboard too. This is a very small house."

There was a pause while they both glanced critically around Meredith's tiny sitting room.

"I certainly shan't let you pay for them!" Sally declared. "It'll be nice to know they have a new home where they're appreciated. I remember auntie dusting and wax-polishing them. To have watched them go through Austin's salerooms would have been much harder to bear."

"Well, thanks again. I will look after them, I promise, al­though any polish in this house is sprayed from a can. How is Austin, by the way?"

"Being very sweet. We're definitely going into business, but I've had to explain that marriage is out for the moment. Austin says he'll wait. He's inclined to be old-fashioned in romantic matters. Not that I mind." Sally gazed meditatively into her gin. "I suppose I have to carry my share of the blame for everything that happened. I should have divorced Liam years ago. I knew in my heart he was no good. Couldn't bring myself to admit it aloud."

"Sal!" Meredith yelped. "You can't excuse what he did on the grounds you didn't leave the man!"

Sally looked up, her frank features unusually guilty. "Mer­edith? I did do something really nasty."

"You? Find it hard to believe."

"I find it difficult to credit that I did it. It wasn't the sort of thing I'd ever done before. I can only put it down to being under a lot of stress! Well, I know now they were tampering with my tea, but even so, I'd really had it, up to here!" Sally gestured with her hand held flat to indicate the limit of her tolerance.

"And?" Meredith was curious and a little apprehensive.

"1 just focused on Liam's book. It seemed to represent everything which was wrong with our marriage. His work, his obsession with the research, all those affairs which were with nubile lab assistants, so tied in, do you see? I—I made up some cut-and-paste letters, saying awful things about his book. A couple of mornings when Liam thought I'd gone to Bailey and Bailey's, I'd hopped on the London train and mailed the things so they'd have a London frank. I just wanted to tell him how I felt. But I couldn't. So I did it in the letters, anonymously."

Sally bit her lower lip. "He never said a word about them. I knew he'd had them. I saw them come in the mail. Until the morning of the letter-bomb, then he told me about them. So I had to mention them to Alan. I mean, I had to say Liam had told me about them. But do you think, now all this has turned out the way it has, I ought to tell Alan the truth? That I sent Liam the poison pen letters? Not the one which came the same time as Yvonne's letter. But the other, earlier ones?"

"Yes," said Meredith faintly. "I think you ought to tell him."


"It floored me," Meredith said.

"You? It knocked the wind completely out of my sails! I was so sure the fellow had invented the letters!"

All around them, the buzz of voices, laughter and the chink of glassware and cutlery on china indicated a busy Saturday night at The Old Coaching Inn. Its particular ambiance of chintziness and Olde Englishery was unchanged. However, its former manager, Simon French, had departed to even greater glories, it was said, in the Surrey stockbroker belt. Meredith rather missed his brash presence. But if French hadn't left, there was no way Alan would have been per­suaded to come here tonight.

"Compared with everything else, it was harmless enough," Meredith defended her friend. "And she was suffering both emotional stress and herbal poisoning."

"No one's going to charge her with anything. There's no evidence, anyway. Liam destroyed the letters. But it was a dangerous thing to do and it wasn't without effect! It gave Liam and Marita the idea to send a letter-bomb! After all, one bit of abusive mail can lead to another! Liam's shifted his ground, by the way. His story about finding Bodicote dead has changed. He now says Bodicote was blackmailing him. There was a quarrel and he thought Bodicote was going to attack him. He, Liam, picked up the rock to defend himself. Bodicote came at him and he lashed out."

"Liam must be barmy," she said. "If he thinks a jury will buy that."

The Hungarian-style chicken was very good and she had got her appetite back. The 'flu was now a distant memory. Monday would see her back on Bamford station at crack of dawn waiting with all the other glum commuters. Rush-hour on the London underground. A new week in the office and a brimming in-tray. Back to work. Back to life. Marvelous.

"Not clinically," Alan objected. "He won't pull any di­minished responsibility plea!"

"I mean barmy to think he could get away with it, with all of it. All those affairs with leggy students. His wife had to twig sooner or later. Dicing with fate in the shape of the super­charged Marita. As for murdering poor old Bodicote—" Mer­edith picked up her wine glass. "That was a foul, cowardly thing to do. Can he prove he paid Bodicote money?"

"No, that's a weak point in his present defense. But Plowright is working on it."

"So why did Liam kill him? What harm could he have done?"

"From Liam's point of view, he could have done a lot. 'Poor old Bodicote,' as you call him, was actually rather an unpleasant old man. He was a book thief on a grand scale. He was a voyeur. A Peeping Tom. It's a nasty little habit whatever the circumstances. In Bodicote's case, it also proved fatal."

Into Alan's voice crept a resigned despair. "And they all knew! The whole damn village! He crept up on couples snog­ging in cars or doing what comes naturally under the hedge­rows of a summer evening. He peeped in cottage windows and lurked about while young women pinned their undies to the washing-line. He was an absolute and thoroughgoing pest. But would one of them mention it to Gwyneth Jones when she was making inquiries about him, after his death? Oh, no. They talked about his family, about their distant schoolday memories of him, about his expert knowledge of goat-care. But about his sneaky little habits? Not a word. Because he was, when all was said and done, a local. One of themselves. The nearest anyone came to it was when Yvonne mentioned to Sally that Bodicote wandered about but that they 'had all got used to it.' Poor Sally, drugged, realized nevertheless that whatever it was the village had got used to, the police might like to know of it. But in her confusion, she lost it, and only really remembered the other day."

"Speak no ill of the dead," Meredith suggested. "That still holds good in old-fashioned societies."

Alan swallowed a mouthful of steak and reached for the wine bottle to top up their glasses. "You know what bugs me most? The old chap more or less confessed it to me! During our conversation that night, after the explosive pack­age had arrived at the Caswells', I asked what he'd done on hearing the explosion. He told me that first of all, he ran down to check on Jasper. The next thing he did was go through into the Caswells' garden, approach their cottage from the rear, listen to Liam and Sally arguing in the kitchen and then go and peer through Liam's study window. I should have realized the old man had done that sort of thing many times. Liam himself even complained to us that the old man snooped. Or take the way Bodicote described Liam's com­puter to me. That machine of his was switched on, with writ­ing all over it, like a telly—That's not the description of a computer literate man. But it is the description of a man who'd seen Liam's computer before and could describe it. Bodicote had surely never been invited into Liam's study. No, he'd seen it through the window."

"And through one of the windows, I suppose," Meredith mused, "he also saw Liam and Marita?"

Markby chuckled. "And how! 'At it!' in the apt phrase of Tristan Goodhusband! Completely carried away, with a gawp­ing Bodicote, nose pressed to the windowpane, as spectator. Marita tells us they caught him several times. They chased him off.

"Bodicote knew, as the whole village knew, about Marita. Bodicote, like the other villagers, liked Sally and didn't want to upset her so had said nothing. In addition, of course, he was coy of calling attention to his own activities, spying on Liam and his mistress. But Bodicote, unlike the other villagers, had another, private, battle with Liam—over the goats. On one of the occasions when Liam and Marita had caught him ogling them, there was an exchange of abuse. Bodicote shouted words which were a threat—or construed by Marita and Liam as a threat—to tell Sally what was going on. Liam, knowing that Bodicote dearly wanted the Caswells to quit the cottage, was afraid he'd do just what he threatened. Marita now claims Liam told her not to worry about Bodicote tipping off Sally. He'd take care of it. Take care of it, he did."

Markby's face and voice had grown somber. "I had a gut feeling that set-up was all wrong. The old fellow laid out like that. The cap turned downwards, his head pointing toward the goat-house."

"There was another thing, too," Meredith said. "When I took Jasper back through the gap in the hedge, the old bed­head blocking it had fallen onto Bodicote's land. But if Jasper had pushed at it from Bodicote's side, surely it would have fallen onto the Caswells' side? Liam must have propped it back on returning home, but at the wrong angle and not very securely. It fell down on its own."

Alan sighed, crumbling a piece of bread into a heap of crumbs. "I did see that and I can confess to you now, it put me wrong. I was too clever for my own good. The bedhead having fallen down on Bodicote's side seemed just too ob­vious. I thought, if anyone had killed Bodicote, then perhaps that person had tried to throw suspicion on Liam by making it look as if someone had come through from the Caswell side. Liam's continual rows with Bodicote must have been well-known, making him a near-perfect fallguy. But it was as you say. Liam jammed it hastily back into place after going through the gap. Pushing it into the hedge from his side, it leaned toward Bodicote's ground. It's a heavy thing. It just toppled under its own weight and a little later, Jasper wan­dered through."

"By the way," Meredith asked him. "What's happened to Jasper? Bodicote was very fond of him."

"Mrs. Sutton's got him. She farms and has plenty of graz­ing. She didn't want to keep the nannies and has sold them on, but she's kept Jasper for old time's sake."

"I'm glad," Meredith told him. "I've been a bit worried about Jasper."

The waiter came to take their plates, promising prompt ar­rival of that moment of truth—the dessert trolley.

"You know," Alan said. "In that conversation with Bodicote, the old fellow also told me something which, later, ought to have suggested how he died. Every morning, first thing, he went down and let out the goats. But Jasper was let out first because Jasper kicked up merry hell until he was freed from his overnight pen. Bodicote told Libby, the mail-woman, about it. Everyone knew. When Bodicote heard the explosion, the first thing he did was run down to check on Jasper. Because, as you say, Jasper was a friend and if you think a friend might be in trouble, you drop everything and run."

Across the room, Meredith could see the dessert trolley wending its way toward them, groaning with cholesterol. She fought her own inclination to run.

"Liam knew it, too. On the morning of his death, Bodicote got up as always and went down to the goats. He let out Jasper. Then he went into the nannies' house. Liam was lurk­ing nearby. He caught Jasper—which actually wasn't neces­sarily difficult. Jasper was curious by nature and could be tempted to approach. Liam picked up the rock Bodicote used to prop open the door—he'd pinched that from Liam, so Liam probably thought it sweet revenge! Then Liam did something to make Jasper bleat out in distress.

"Bodicote wouldn't have thought twice. He'd have aban­doned the nannies and come running out of their house with­out a moment's hesitation. Liam was waiting. Afterwards he tried to be clever by making it look as if Bodicote had been walking toward the goat-house when he stumbled and fell—or was butted by Jasper."

The trolley had arrived but Meredith was silent. "Madam?" asked the waiter.

"Could you come back?" she asked. "In a couple of minutes?''

"Life goes on," Alan prompted gently. "Don't let this put you off your food."

"I'm not put off. Wish I was in a way!" She grimaced. "I lost a few pounds with the flu but I'm putting it all back on again."

"You look just fine!" he told her loyally.

"Thank you, kind sir! It's just that, thinking about that arrogant blighter, Liam, ties my stomach in knots."

"He is arrogant. You described it to me. His brilliance, the nature of his research work, the adoration of all those female students, all contrived to encourage him to think there was nothing, but nothing, he wasn't entitled to do if he saw fit. The idea he might go to jail, even now, doesn't register with him. He is, as he sees it, too important. A man not like others! He still thinks he's going to get off, with a little help from Mr. Plowright."

Alan snorted. "Not if I have anything to do with it! The old Greeks had a word for it, hubris. The gods up on Olympus kept an eye open for any mortal who got ideas that he could do as he wished with impunity. That was the prerogative of the gods themselves and any human who tried it, got re­minded in no uncertain way he was only mortal! A touch of mortality is what Liam's personality lacks."

"And Tristan? Will he be charged with anything?"

"Oh, him," said Markby. "He's been let off with a lecture. He did come across with the vital evidence. Still, no harm in giving him a fright."

"He's had a few frights," Meredith observed. "Bodicote spying on him and his girl in the bushes. Finding Liam crouched over the body."

"Oh yes, the girl. It seems she's the daughter of the local pub landlord and he's rumbled what's going on. Tristan is currently terrified of leaving home. Serve him right! Any man who presumes to take advantage of Moses Lee's daughter must need his head examined. He used to be a prize fighter, you know."

"Mr. Lee? Isn't that illegal?"

"Course it's illegal. That's how I know about it. We busted up a secret 'mill' when I was at Bamford, years ago. Moses was the star turn. Big money changing hands. Blood everywhere. Moses has reformed since, with age. But still, not a man to annoy."

"Poor Tristan! Got to feel a bit sorry for him."

"You know," Alan reflected, "Tristan said to me that 'it wasn't the sort of thing you expect to stumble on during an early morning walk in the country!' But Bodicote would have had the answer to that."

Alan leaned back in his chair and quoted, "It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

"Copper Beeches," said Meredith.

"Ah! Another Sherlockian!"

She rested her chin in her hands. "We don't need dessert, do we? Shall we have coffee back at my place?"