Caroline couldn’t stop the tears. They’d started while Sam was still there, and that had made him worse.
She stared at the door when she heard the knock. Had he remembered some obscenities that he hadn’t used? ‘ Who is it?’ she asked, her voice betraying the tears.
‘It’s Philip.’
Philip. Come for his drink. Come to stare at her with his hungry eyes while he pretended to carry on a conversation. She didn’t know why she had asked him up for a drink in the first place. She opened the door.
‘What’s he been doing?’ Philip asked, limping badly as he came in.
She wiped away the tears, but they still kept coming. ‘ Didn’t he tell you?’ she asked, closing the door.
‘He said he’d upset you,’ said Philip. ‘Why? What did he say to you?’
Caroline smiled, despite the tears. ‘ I really wouldn’t like to repeat any of it,’ she said.
Philip looked baffled. ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked.
Caroline shook her head, and wiped the tears again. This time they stayed away.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You can delete the expletives.’
‘That would leave a few pronouns and the odd conjunction,’ she said.
There was, of course, a word for people like her. There were, as it turned out, several words. And they might not have shocked her, hurt her so much if he had been railing at her, shouting his graphic abuse; but he hadn’t raised his voice once.
The gist was that she had caused the police to suspect him owing to an overestimation of her desirability, that she had nothing that other women didn’t have, and that what she did have was less than tantalising. He had not been reduced to a frenzy of sexual frustration because she had denied him her body, and she was deluding herself if she thought that she was capable of inspiring such a thing in anyone other than the sexual inadequate whose sick fantasies’ – given vivid expression – fed her own.
‘Let’s forget it,’ she said, as Philip, after much mental preparation for the effort, sat down at last. ‘I promised you a drink.’
She poured two glasses from the bottle of wine she had bought in the town to give herself both a reason for being there and a drink to offer him.
‘Won’t you even tell me what it was about?’ he asked, as she handed him his glass.
She sat beside him. ‘ Maybe he was just telling me some home truths,’ she said.
Perhaps Sam wouldn’t have upset her so much if she didn’t feel so frightened, all the time. Someone had been watching her, perhaps whoever raped Diana. It hadn’t been her imagination. And she had thought at the time that it was Sam. She shivered.
Concerned eyes looked into hers, and then he gave a little smile. ‘Sam’, he said, clinking his glass with hers, ‘ is a fake from head to toe. He wouldn’t know a home truth from a home perm. If he happened to hit on one or two, then it was because he used machine-gun tactics, and he had to hit something.’
That was when she knew why what he had said about Philip had been the most hurtful part; that was what had made her cry. Because every now and then she could see the man that Philip was, behind the constant pain and the frustration about which Sam had been so crudely eloquent.
The Philip that Andrew had told her about; the Philip who lived his life and let other people live theirs, the Philip to whom people turned if they had a problem. Who always had some girl in love with him, who was always going to write a novel, and who had once described himself as living life in the bus lane. She smiled at the memory; Philip asked why she was smiling, and she told him.
He laughed. ‘I’ve never understood yuppies,’ he said. ‘Screaming down a car phone in your Porsche and giving yourself ulcers doesn’t sound like fun to me.’
‘Why are you teaching at a school full of embryonic yuppies?’ she asked. The wine was beginning to make her feel better. Philip was, too; for the first time, they were just talking.
‘I liked the idea of being in the countryside,’ he said. ‘And of working with Andrew—’ He broke off, his face slightly pink. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I like talking about him.’
He nodded. ‘And maybe I hoped I could get one or two of the boys to smell the roses.’
‘Are you succeeding?’
‘I have quite high hopes of Matthew Cawston,’ said Philip. ‘He likes reading – it’s a start.’
‘Andrew liked Matthew,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m never very sure that I do.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Philip asked.
‘I always feel as though he follows me about,’ she said, and then wondered what Sam would have to say about that. ‘He does follow me about,’ she said defiantly, as though Sam were there.
‘I don’t blame him,’ was all Philip said.
‘And he’s a bit too smooth,’ she said. ‘Too charming.’
Philip grinned. ‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘That’s one complaint you can’t have about Sam.’
‘There must be a happy medium,’ she laughed.
‘There is,’ he said. ‘Me.’ He smiled at her for a moment without speaking. Then his face grew serious. ‘Do the police really suspect Sam?’ he asked.
‘He’s done his best to make himself seem suspicious,’ Caroline said. ‘It was only because they were asking about him that I ever told them about—’ She broke off.
‘About what?’ he asked gently.
‘Oh – I just .…’ She could feel herself begin to blush. At the memory, at Sam’s subsequent thoughts on the matter. ‘Sam made a pass at me last night,’ she said. ‘ I encouraged him, I suppose. Well – not really. But I didn’t discourage him. And then I .…’ She smiled, gave a little shrug. ‘ I would have said that I let him down, but he says it was no let-down at all, so I’m overestimating myself, as he pointed out.’
And it was true, she conceded, that the discovery that his pen was missing had made Sam even angrier than she had; she had put it down to sheer frustration, but Sam had assured her during his visit that it was because the pen meant more to him than anything she had to offer. Or a colourful phrase to that effect.
Philip put down his glass. ‘This morning you said that you and he weren’t involved.’
‘We’re not,’ Caroline said quickly. ‘I don’t even like him!’
So why had she encouraged him at all? She waited, but Philip didn’t ask the question.
‘I know it makes no sense,’ she said. ‘But it’s the truth.’
‘I’d better be going,’ Philip said suddenly, arranging the stick to take his weight.
‘Philip – it’s the truth. There’s nothing between me and Sam.’
‘None of my business if there is,’ he said, grunting with the strain as he heaved himself to his feet.
‘I want you to understand,’ she said.
‘Why?’ But he sat down again, with a little grunt of pain. Caroline wished he would see a doctor; and maybe Sam was right, she thought. Maybe she was attracted to Philip because they were two of a kind.
They had both been damaged in an accident that was none of their making.
‘I still haven’t told you about my further enquiries into the thefts,’ Judy said.
They had met up at Lloyd’s car, the atmosphere between them frostier than the weather.
Lloyd grunted, uninterested, as they drove through the interminable snow to the main building. That was the second time she’d tried to give him chapter and verse on the thefts. All right, so she was going to make a federal case out of it. Let her. He hadn’t wanted her to stay there, with Waters making remarks. It wasn’t that he had one rule for Judy and another for other officers, he told himself. Her presence was hampering the interview, that was all. But he had wanted to annoy her. It was childish, but there it was.
‘We’ve got a murder inquiry,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in petty theft right now.’ He pushed open the door at the top of the steps, standing to one side to let Judy through. Their footsteps on the wooden flooring echoed round the emptiness of the school building. But it wasn’t like any other school Lloyd had ever come across.
‘Is the entire teaching profession comprised of weirdos, or do they just come here to die?’ he asked, as they climbed the stairs to Treadwell’s office.
‘Ssh,’ said Judy. ‘Someone might be in.’
‘Would they care? Most of them seem quite proud of it.’
‘Well,’ said Judy, ‘I did some checking when I had to come about the thefts in the first place.’ The sentence was accompanied by a glare in his direction. ‘And it costs less to send your child here, and it pays less to teach here, than at any other school of comparable size. So .…’ She shrugged. ‘You get what you pay for, I suppose. Though it has as good if not better an academic record as the others.’
Lloyd toyed with the grammar lesson, but decided that it was too advanced, and too likely to get him a smack in the mouth. He wished he hadn’t snapped at her. He wished he hadn’t done a lot of things.
‘So weirdos make good teachers?’ he said.
‘Looks like it,’ she said. ‘But, to be fair, Sam Waters is the only out-and-out weirdo, isn’t he?’
‘Is he?’ said Lloyd, pushing Treadwell’s open door. ‘What about Hamlyn?’
A man rose as they came in. Not tall; thin, bespectacled, well into his fifties, possibly sixties. ‘Mr Lloyd?’ he said.
Lloyd, startled, nodded. ‘I don’t believe we’ve—’
‘No,’ he said, a little shyly. ‘ Robert Hamlyn.’ He extended a hand.
Oh, God. Well, nothing to do about it now. Lloyd grasped the outstretched hand more warmly than he might otherwise have done. He had expected a much younger man. ‘Mr Hamlyn,’ he said, ‘I am very sorry about your wife. We’re doing all we can.’
He nodded, and looked down at the floor.
‘This is Sergeant Hill,’ said Lloyd. ‘We didn’t want to bother you with questions until you felt up to it.’
‘I realise’, he said, lifting his eyes with difficulty, ‘that you will have a great many questions. But – I would like to say something to you first, if I may.’
‘Of course,’ Lloyd said, sitting behind the desk. ‘Would you have any objection to my sergeant taking notes?’
‘None,’ said Hamlyn, but he still stood.
Lloyd watched Judy become aware that Hamlyn wasn’t going to sit down until she did. She took a chair from the wall, and she and Hamlyn sat down in unison.
‘People here’, said Hamlyn, in his quiet, clear voice, ‘ find – found – my relationship with my wife difficult to understand.’ He smiled a little. ‘Perhaps I should say even people here,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’
Judy shifted a little in her chair. Lloyd nodded slightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, there not being much more he could say.
‘No need for apology,’ said Hamlyn. ‘Sam Waters calls us flotsam and jetsam – you call us weirdos. People have a need to label others.’
Lloyd took a breath, intending to defend himself, until he realised he really didn’t have a defence.
Hamlyn continued. ‘And it’s true,’ he said. ‘ In a way. The school has a – well, policy would be too definite a word – a tendency, let’s say, to recruit from the ranks of non-career teachers, to put it politely. It’s a matter of economy as far as the school is concerned, but it does have an odd side-effect. You see, sometimes those who aim for the top forget what they originally set out to do. By employing those who would be rejected by a more rigid system, the school gets – as your sergeant said – as good a result as schools charging several times the fee.’
Judy wasn’t taking notes, but surely she should be, Lloyd thought. Wasn’t this a lecture? Lloyd hoped that Hamlyn would get to the point in the end.
‘And I am one such,’ he said. ‘ I love what I teach. And I love being able to teach my way. Not teaching by numbers.’
There was a pause, but Lloyd knew that it was still not his turn to speak.
‘I didn’t become a teacher until I was almost forty. I was a bachelor, I was in industry, and one day I realised how much I hated it. They needed teachers, in those days, and I went back to college. I started out teaching in a private day-school, twenty years ago.’
The man spoke like a book. In neat paragraphs, with a space left between them. It was like listening to the radio.
‘Diana was fourteen years old when I met her.’
Lloyd’s eyes widened slightly, and he refrained from catching Judy’s.
Hamlyn’s hands were clasped in front of him. They twisted constantly and nervously, belying the calm delivery. ‘ It was wrong, obviously. I didn’t even want it to be like that, but Diana .…’ He hunched his shoulders slightly.
‘Well, it was what she wanted, and I didn’t want to lose her.’
Humbert Humbert lives, thought Lloyd. Lolita, on the other hand .…
‘We married when she was eighteen,’ he said. ‘We ran away; at the age of forty-three, I eloped with an eighteen-year-old girl, Mr Lloyd. It doesn’t do a lot for your career chances.’
Lloyd could see that it wouldn’t.
‘I think it had probably started by then. Her … infidelity.’ He looked up. ‘I am assuming that someone – if not everyone – has told you about Diana,’ he said. ‘I was the first. But I was very far from being the last.’
‘Someone did mention that she might have had a bit of a problem,’ said Judy carefully, rescuing Lloyd.
Hamlyn nodded. ‘I shudder to think how she would have lived if she hadn’t married me,’ he said, then looked away again. ‘But, then, she might not have died.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘She couldn’t help herself,’ he said. ‘ She was perfectly ordinary in other respects.’ He smiled sadly. ‘She was sensible about everything,’ he said. ‘Except men.’
This time Lloyd couldn’t resist sneaking a look at Judy. Baffled brown eyes looked back for an instant, before returning to her notebook.
‘When I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t happening, we had rows. We separated, even. But we weren’t happy apart. You see’ – the hands clasped and unclasped, the fingers twisting round one another – ‘we were very fond of each other,’ he said. ‘But I was never very keen on … the physical …’His hands came together in a helpless little mime. ‘ In a way, I think that that’s what Diana liked about me.’
Lloyd became aware that his mouth was slightly open.
‘And I realised that I simply wasn’t being logical. I was acting the aggrieved husband. I was doing what I thought other people would do. What other people expected me to do. But she needed me, and I needed her. So, we settled for a platonic relationship, which we both enjoyed very much. What Diana did was no concern of mine.’
Lloyd nodded, trying to look as if he came across this every day.
‘It had begun to concern me – that is – I was concerned about Diana, with all the talk of disease, and so on. But other than that .…’ He shook his head.
‘Mr Hamlyn—’ Lloyd began, but Hamlyn moved his hand just enough to indicate that he had not finished. Lloyd glanced at Judy again, but she was steadfastly writing in her notebook.
‘I understand’, he said, ‘ that you have been questioning Sam Waters about my wife’s death.’
Lloyd was taken by surprise at the sudden return to the matter in hand.
‘I – we – are talking to everyone, Mr Hamlyn.’
‘But you are paying very close attention to Sam.’
‘I’m sorry – I can’t .…’
‘No,’ said Hamlyn. ‘Of course not. But I feel that I may inadvertently have caused you to suspect Sam rather more definitely than you should.’ He paused. ‘Last night, at dinner, I deliberately indicated that I believed Sam was with Diana.’
Lloyd scratched his forehead. ‘But you didn’t believe that?’ he asked, tentative for the first time that he could remember since childhood.
‘I had no reason at all to think that he was with Diana. She was involved with him – but that was all over eighteen months ago. Sam ended it.’
Lloyd saw the little frown that came and went on Judy’s brow.
‘You know it was Sam who ended it?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Did – er – did Mrs Hamlyn talk to you about her relationships with – er – other …?’ He tailed off, out of his depth.
‘No,’ Hamlyn said. ‘But I’m afraid everyone knew about her new man, once they had been discovered together – and it isn’t hard to tell when Sam is offended. Besides which, Diana simply wouldn’t have ended it.’
‘Mr Hamlyn,’ Judy said, just as tentative as Lloyd had been. ‘Forgive me. Would that have been the incident with the handyman?’
He nodded. ‘All a bit Lady Chatterley, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t anyone do any work here?’ Lloyd asked, unable to keep quiet any longer.
‘The school wasn’t open,’ said Hamlyn, obviously feeling he had to defend what was left of the school’s honour. ‘ It was during the summer break. And he wasn’t a handyman, not really. He mended the odd broken window, but we have a caretaker for that. Treadwell got a two-year driving ban, and he needed a driver.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t think he is ever entirely sober,’ he said. ‘That’s his little drawback. We’ve all got one.’
Lloyd wasn’t sure if he meant that it was a qualification for working at the school, or if he was being philosophical.
‘Anyway, he called him a handyman on the books. The young man had a lot of time on his hands, and so did Diana.’
Lloyd lapsed into silence again.
‘Treadwell discovered them – he was shocked, not unnaturally. Sacked the young man instantly. It was all round the school in no time, and Sam was far from pleased. I came in for some barely veiled comments about her availability, and just who was taking advantage of it – he presumably thought I didn’t know what she was like. The truth was that Sam didn’t know what she was like, and once he did it was all over, as far as he was concerned.’
Lloyd groped around for the question that would, he supposed, have a logical answer. But it was Alice-in-Wonderland logic. ‘ Then – Mr Hamlyn – why did you say that you thought she was with Sam?’
‘I had my reasons. Childish revenge, I suppose. And I don’t like Sam Waters. He was trying to make a fool of everyone, as usual, and I had no qualms about dropping him in it, as the boys would say. But I can’t let you suspect him of murder because of what I said. I’ve no idea who she was with; I have no doubt that she was with someone. I suggest – purely from experience – that you look at the new man.’
‘Mr Newby?’ said Lloyd.
He nodded. ‘ That was the pattern,’ he said. ‘The handyman was new. Newby is the new man now, and Diana would doubtless be interested in him. He, of course, may not have reciprocated; it didn’t follow that the new men were necessarily interested in her. But that was the sequence.’
Which number comes last in this sequence? Logic, thought Lloyd. It was all very logical. Judy would like it.
‘Do you have any more questions you’d like to ask me?’ Hamlyn said.
Yes, thought Lloyd. Why is a raven like a writing-desk, Mr Hamlyn?
‘No,’ was what he actually said. ‘Thank you for being so frank with us.’
Hamlyn removed his glasses, putting them away in a pouch. ‘ I want you to find out who did that to Diana,’ he said, standing up.
‘We will,’ said Lloyd quietly.
Hamlyn nodded, his eyes sad and trusting, like a basset hound’s. ‘I believe’, he said to Judy, ‘that some men buy their wives flowers when they have erred in some way. That’s how I felt. As though I had been bought flowers.’
Lloyd waited until the door had closed before he looked at Judy. He sighed. ‘ Well?’ he said.
‘Wel.’ She closed the notebook, her hand resting on it. ‘And you think our relationship’s irregular,’ she said.
Lloyd put his hand on hers. ‘ Just not quite regular enough,’ he said, and smiled. He didn’t want to fight with her.
‘He thinks we should lay off Sam,’ Judy said, with her disconcerting ability to switch instantly back to work. Lloyd had made the rule; only Judy ever kept it.
‘Mm,’ he said, reluctantly following suit. He told Judy Sam’s latest revelation. ‘But he says he saw her with one of the boys,’ he concluded.
‘One of the boys?’ repeated Judy.
‘I don’t know why that should surprise you, in this place,’ said Lloyd.
‘Which one?’
Lloyd shrugged. He wasn’t at all sure that he believed Waters anyway. He told Judy what Sam said he had seen, and she looked thoughtful.
‘What?’ he asked. He knew that look. ‘What is it?’
‘The boys were allocated ladies to dance with,’ she said. ‘Who did Diana Hamlyn get?’
For once, he had got there before her. ‘I’ve checked that out,’ he said. ‘The boy has a dozen witnesses to prove that he went back to his table, and stayed there all evening. Good thought, though,’ he said, smiling.
Treadwell walked into the office, preventing Judy from giving vent to her obvious irritation at his patronising approbation.
‘Did Robert Hamlyn see you?’ he asked. ‘ I told him he should wait in here.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Lloyd.
‘How well did you know Mrs Hamlyn?’ Judy asked, as Treadwell looked through papers in a drawer.
‘Not particularly well,’ he said. ‘ We didn’t have a lot in common.’ He found what he was looking for and straightened up.
‘It’s been suggested that she might have been seeing one of the boys,’ said Judy.
Treadwell stared at her for a long moment before speaking. ‘By whom?’ he demanded, when he did speak. ‘ Who made the suggestion?’ He made an impatient noise. ‘As if I need to ask! There’s only one person in this school whose mind works like that.’
‘Then you don’t think that there’s any truth in it?’ said Lloyd.
‘Of course there’s no truth in it! She would never have dreamed of having a relationship with one of the boys. It’s just the sort of foul suggestion I’d expect from Waters!’
‘But you’ve just said you didn’t know her very well,’ Judy pointed out, her voice quiet and reasonable.
‘I didn’t,’ Treadwell repeated. ‘But I did tell you this morning, Sergeant. Mrs Hamlyn was good with the boys.’ He shot a look at Lloyd. ‘And I don’t want any ribald comments,’ he said.
Lloyd’s eyes widened. ‘You weren’t going to get any, Mr Treadwell,’ he said angrily.
‘No,’ he said, slightly flustered. ‘I do beg your pardon – I’m obviously too used to dealing with Mr Waters. Mrs Hamlyn understood the boys. Youngsters have problems with everything from acne to arson – she could deal with them, better than anyone else here. The deputy head has responsibility for pastoral care, and I had no doubt that it would be Mrs Hamlyn who provided it. Robert’s too logical to understand what adolescents are going through, and Mrs Hamlyn would have been an asset. The suggestion is monstrous.’ He closed the drawer. ‘If you could let me know when you’ve finished with my office,’ he said, by way of a full stop.
‘Won’t be long now,’ said Lloyd.
Treadwell left, and Lloyd looked out of the window at the starlit night, and the frost which was already forming. So much for spring. A silence fell; idly he flicked through the little brochure which advised new parents of their responsibilities. His eyebrows rose as he read; according to Judy, it was cheaper to send your offspring here than to anywhere else, and he would need a loan just to get the clothes required. A policeman’s lot.
‘About the thefts,’ Judy said.
God. He’d thought they’d reached a truce. ‘We’ve got a murder inquiry, Judy,’ he said. But really, he should have known her better than that. He knew it as soon as he had spoken.
‘You never know, sir,’ she said. ‘ It might help with your murder inquiry, sir. If it’s all right for me to get involved in important things, sir.’
‘How could it help?’ he asked, trying to ignore her.
‘I follow orders,’ she said. ‘ I was told to work on the thefts, so that’s what I did.’
Lloyd knew he was walking into something, and he didn’t know what.
‘I finally got Treadwell to do me a list. And one item hasn’t been recovered. Something he described as .…’ She turned back the pages of her notebook. ‘Here it is – a ‘‘niblick’’ – wasn’t accounted for. I didn’t know what that was, so I asked him.’
Lloyd closed his eyes. ‘I know what it is,’ he groaned.
‘It’s an old golf-club,’ she went on. ‘ It was in the Barn one minute, and gone the next, apparently. It was stolen just before Christmas.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.
‘I tried to. Twice. You said you weren’t interested.’
‘What have you done about it?’
‘I’ve got people looking for it – what do you think I’ve done about it? I’m checking who was here and who wasn’t. I’ve given the lab details of the sort of club it was. I’ve—’
Lloyd held up a hand. She had, of course, done everything that he would have done. He looked at her, feeling ashamed of the streak of pettiness that had made him pull rank in front of Waters, of all people. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘ I expect I deserved that.’ ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘ You did.’
Sam opened the door, and smiled. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s the fuzz.’
Chief Inspector Lloyd eyed him with distaste but, then, almost everyone did.
‘What now?’ Sam asked. ‘Come to arrest me, have you?’
They walked in without being asked, and Sam stood extravagantly to one side, his arm extending an invitation to the empty doorway.
‘Mr Newby,’ said Lloyd unexpectedly. ‘Is he in?’
‘No,’ said Sam, closing the door. ‘He’s upstairs, visiting. And that required considerable fortitude, let me tell you, because going anywhere at all is excruciatingly difficult for our Mr Newby at the moment, never mind tackling a flight of stairs.’ He sat down. ‘But, then, he lusts after our Mrs Knight.’
‘Do you have another topic of conversation?’ enquired the chief inspector.
Sam grinned. ‘Now and then,’ he said. ‘But a sex murder on the premises does make you think a bit about the power of our sexual urges, doesn’t it? I mean,’ he went on, picking up a can of beer, ‘it’s an urge that gets Newby up a flight of stairs when he can hardly walk – even though he’d be too knackered when he got to the top to do anything anyway. If he can do anything, which I doubt.’
‘Oh?’ said Lloyd.
Another knock at the door; Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘Popular chap I am, all of a sudden,’ he said, opening the door to someone’s chest. He looked up into the face of a young man who could have been nothing else on this earth but a policeman.
‘Sir?’ the young man said to Lloyd, failing even to acknowledge Sam, but at least refraining from entering without permission.
Lloyd went out, closing the door. Sam looked across at Sergeant Hill. ‘Finally got around to wondering about our Mr Newby, have you? Caroline didn’t tell you about him, did she? Oh, no. She enjoys it. As soon as someone takes a healthy interest in her, that’s when she blows the whistle.’
‘And Mr Newby’s interest is unhealthy?’
‘It all goes on in his head,’ said Sam, tapping his own head as he spoke. ‘And that’s where she wants it to stay. Give her a touch of the real thing, and she has the vapours.’
‘You mean because she rejected you she must be frigid?’ enquired the sergeant.
‘She’s got the same problem as you, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Nothing that a good seeing-to wouldn’t cure.’ She didn’t react at all, not like the more volatile chief inspector.
‘Sorted out your thefts, have you?’ he asked, opening the beer.
‘The inquiry is proceeding,’ she said.
‘When do I get my pen back?’ he asked, twisting off the ring-pull.
She smiled. ‘Your pen will be returned in due course.’
‘When?’ he said. ‘I want it back.’
‘We wouldn’t dream of depriving you of it,’ she said. ‘But the culprit hasn’t been discovered yet.’
‘You can’t hang on to it! I don’t give a shit who stole it.’
‘I do. Your pen went missing on the night of the murder – it could be evidence.’
‘Evidence my arse! You’re doing this on purpose, you bitch. That pen’s important to me, and I want it back.’
The door opened. ‘Trouble, Sergeant?’ asked Lloyd, coming in without even knocking this time.
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ said the sergeant.
‘You should be a traffic warden, you know that?’ said Sam. ‘Hard-faced—’
‘Mr Waters,’ Lloyd said, timing the interruption to cut him off. ‘Don’t say it.’ He sat down. ‘Suppose you tell me again what you were doing on Friday night.’
‘I was getting pills and potions, and goodness knows what all,’ said Caroline. ‘We hadn’t been married long – I suppose that’s why it hit me so hard.’
His mouth caressing her breasts, tongue tracing erect nipples ….
‘It must have been terrible,’ he said. ‘How long were you married?’ He should know. Andrew must have told him.
Releasing the fastenings at the top of her stockings, sliding sheer nylon down long, long legs ….
‘Almost three years,’ she said. ‘ It would have been our third anniversary that month.’
‘Andrew and I had lost touch,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know he was married.’
His mouth claiming hers; their bodies coming together, only silk between them … her gasps at the thrusting pressure against the soft barrier ….
‘He’d lost your address,’ she said. ‘He was so pleased when you applied for this job.’
Hooking his fingers over the waistband, drawing the silk down; lips travelling back up the smooth legs, gently, expertly, stimulating her … her back arching, twisting her against him … her groan of pleasure as he entered her, repeated over and over with the rhythmic movements … her body writhing, shuddering under his; slowly bringing her to a climax, the soft moans under her quickened breath growing louder, louder, turning to cries of ecstasy—
‘Why don’t you let me join in?’ she asked.
The rush of blood burned his face while everything else in the universe froze into solid ice. He could hear; he could hear the radio playing downstairs. He could hear the water gurgling through the old-fashioned radiator. He could hear the ever-present police call to one another. He could see; he could see the faded, threadbare rug beneath his feet. He could see scuff marks on his shoes. He could see the empty wine-glass on the floor. He could have seen Caroline, if he had looked up, but he couldn’t look at her. Not ever again.
‘I’m sure it would be better fun if I was doing it, too,’ she said.
Say something, you fool. Say something. ‘I was staring, wasn’t I?’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry – I …’
‘You were doing a bit more than staring,’ she said. ‘You’ve been doing it ever since you arrived.’
‘I .…’ He couldn’t look at her at all. He tried to get up. ‘ I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do it. I don’t know I’m doing it – I … well, I do, but .…’ He grasped the arm of the sofa, trying desperately to get to his feet. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you tell me to sod off?’ It wasn’t a question; it was a plea, mumbled, his eyes firmly fixed on his shoes. Why wasn’t she angry? He could take anger.
‘If you were anyone else, I would. But you’re not. You’re Andrew’s friend, and I know you. Feel as if I know you.’
Oh, God, if only he could move. Then he could run away from this.
‘Why, Philip?’ she asked.
His skin was on fire again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I can’t … can’t .…’ His courage failed him.
‘Can’t what?’ she said.
His shoes looked back at him, no help. ‘I can’t do anything else,’ he said.
‘Have you tried?’
He shook his head.
‘Then how do you know you can’t?’
‘I know,’ he muttered. Oh, God, let him get out of here.
She was pouring him another drink, handing it to him. He took it, looking at the glass, not at her.
‘What does the doctor say?’ she asked.
‘He just keeps saying that it isn’t physical.’ That wasn’t true; it was not all the doctor said. He said a lot of things that didn’t help.
‘That much was fairly obvious,’ she said.
Oh, God. The humiliation burned on his face. Was that supposed to be some sort of comfort to him? It had all been in his mind; he hadn’t had to wrestle with his clothes, to heave his body into doing what was required of it Because it couldn’t, he knew it couldn’t. It could only make him want to die of embarrassment.
‘Sorry,’ she said. He could hear the smile in her voice, and he wanted to die. Please, please let me leave, he begged God, Caroline, anyone with the power to grant his wish. Please don’t make me talk about it. Please let me die.
‘Philip,’ she said.
He stared at the rug. He wanted to crawl into its faded pattern, and fade with it. Disappear. Die.
‘What sort of doctor?’ she asked.
‘Psychiatrist,’ he muttered.
‘Are you straight with him? Do you tell him everything?’
He had to look at her. She wasn’t going to let him go.
She sat beside him, fully clothed. For the first time, he tried deliberately to have his fantasy, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even have that, not now that she had faced him with it.
‘I told him,’ he said miserably. ‘When it started. Total strangers – women in bus queues, girls behind the counter at the bank. I told him. I was frightened I’d molest someone. But he – he just says it’s because I’m depressed.’
‘He’s probably right.’
Philip shook his head. ‘That’s why I’m depressed,’ he said. ‘ Why can’t the fool see that? I don’t want pills and pep-talks. I’m frightened.’
‘You’re not going to molest anyone,’ she said, smiling again.
‘That’s what he says.’
‘What else does he say?’
‘He says I’m avoiding physical contact, not looking for it. He says that’s why I pick women I can’t have.’
‘What makes you think you can’t have me?’ she asked.
‘You were Andrew’s wife!’
‘You were Andrew’s best friend,’ she said. ‘ I’m not going to let you turn into a dirty old man.’ And she smiled again.
The knock at the door made him jump, jarring his back. It was impossible. Whatever she said, whatever the doctor said.
‘Don’t go away,’ she said, going to the door.
‘I believe Mr Newby’s with you?’
It was, of course, Chief Inspector Lloyd. He always seemed to appear just when his discomfort was at its height. Philip reached for his stick, and even that was agony. He wanted his fantasy back, because there could be nothing else.
‘I’m glad you’re together,’ said Lloyd breezily. ‘Because you both reported seeing someone on the fire-escape outside the Hamlyns’ bedroom window. I’d like to talk to you about that, if I may.’
Caroline was open-mouthed. ‘You saw him?’ she said. ‘ You saw him, too?’
Philip nodded, intensely grateful to Lloyd for the change of subject, even if it was to this one. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well – thought I did. Just a glimpse.’
‘I didn’t imagine it.’ She shivered. ‘ I thought maybe it was just my reflection or something.’
Philip wanted to reassure her, but how could he?
‘Well – perhaps we can get a reasonably precise time,’ said Lloyd. ‘Mr Newby – about when did you see this person?’
‘I don’t know for certain. It was just after I’d arrived in the car park. About five to eleven, or so.’
‘I thought it was a few minutes after eleven,’ said Caroline. ‘ I told your sergeant.’
‘Still – we’re agreed that it was about eleven o’clock,’ Lloyd said. He looked at Philip. ‘You didn’t see whoever it was come down again?’
‘No. It was just a figure – it was there, and it was gone. I thought I’d imagined it, too.’
‘Did you put the bedroom light out when you left, Mrs Knight?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ she said.
‘But you might have, automatically. In which case …’. He turned back to Philip. ‘He could have come down again without your seeing him. It’s very dark out there.’
‘Yes,’ said Philip, his voice flat. ‘ But the light didn’t go out,’ he said.
‘So where did he go?’
Philip shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Well – thank you both. I apologise for the intrusion.’
Lloyd went, and Philip got to his feet. He had the stick now, and he could leave at last. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ I’m terribly sorry I upset you.’
‘Don’t go,’ she said.
‘I must.’ He opened the door.
‘Don’t think you won’t be welcome here,’ she said. ‘Please, Philip. Come back tomorrow. When you’ve had a chance to think.’
Matthew had watched as the daylight faded, and the playing-field emptied. They seemed to be checking every blade of grass. There had been a whole team of people in the Barn, looking for something. He had spoken to the pathologist; he had been pleased to be asked, and explained that the tiniest of objects could yield clues. Murderers rarely left anything obvious behind, not if they were intent on getting away with it. Most of them weren’t, oddly enough, he told Matthew. Some of them gave themselves up, some even killed themselves. But most just waited for the reckoning, and didn’t bother to deny it.
The interesting ones were the ones who thought they could beat the investigation teams. But if they only knew, he said, what they could discover from mud, from blood – from anything that was found in the area. It wasn’t just in Sherlock Holmes that footprints – he called them footmarks – and cigarette ends gave the murderer away. They really did.
He had shown Matthew how they took casts of footmarks, explained how even the way the soles were worn down was sometimes how they proved someone’s presence at the scene. But the ground in this case had still been frozen, despite the rain, and hadn’t proved much help. But there were other things, he said. He had explained how the injuries themselves could point to someone in particular – someone left-handed, for instance. And how they could work out how many blows had been struck – that, he said, gave you an idea of the state of mind of the attacker.
Matthew had been fascinated.
‘Do you think forensics might interest you?’ he had asked.
‘I’m sure it would,’ Matthew had replied.
The pathologist had beamed; a sudden, wide smile that changed his whole face. ‘Then, you should talk to your careers master,’ he had said. ‘ Do you have one?’
Matthew had nodded.
‘If he needs to know anything – tell him to contact me.’ He had given Matthew a card. ‘I’ll show you round,’ he said. ‘ When we’re not so busy.’
Matthew had watched him drive away, and had raised his hand in salute, still holding the card. It was the first profession that had ever really caught his attention, the first time he had ever known what he wanted to do. His father had suggested the law, which had had some appeal. But this was much better. Piecing evidence together, like a jigsaw. Proving what must have happened, perhaps even proving who must have done it, from tiny fragments of information. A piece here, a piece there, the pathologist had said. He did his job, the police did theirs and, if they were lucky, it all came together to prove or disprove someone’s story.
Of course, he had said, they didn’t always win. But there was always excitement, always urgency, always something interesting to work on.
It was what he wanted to do, he realised, as he saw the chief inspector and the sergeant leave the staff block, and walk towards the car park. He had been waiting for them when he met the pathologist, but he couldn’t tell them anything. Not now.
‘Right,’ Lloyd said to Judy, as they sat in his car in the school car park.
Everyone else had gone with the daylight; they would be back at dawn, looking for the murder weapon.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
Judy smiled. ‘Do you really want to know?’ she asked, reaching into her bag for her notebook, turning on the interior light.
‘No, but I expect we’d better make some sense of it all, if we can.’
‘We’ve got Newby. Whose explanation about what he was doing between ten twenty-five and ten fifty-five is uncorroborated.’
‘Except Sam reckons he’s impotent,’ said Lloyd.
‘Sam reckons he’s an expert on everyone’s sexuality,’ said Judy. She smiled. ‘ Including mine. But would Newby have had the strength to kill her? He can hardly move, and you can see he’s in real pain. All the time.’
‘But only since last night,’ said Lloyd. ‘If we are to believe Sam. Again. And if that’s true – what happened to him? Would throwing up be enough exertion to do that to him?’
Judy shrugged. ‘He could certainly walk better than that when I saw him last month,’ she said. Something still bothered her about that. She would have to think about it.
‘And both Caroline Knight and Philip Newby say that someone was hanging round the junior dormitory,’ said Lloyd. ‘ What do you make of that?’
Judy looked up at the bedroom window, and the easy access it gave to the fire-escape door on the balcony. The window should have a lock, she thought, with her crime prevention officer’s hat on. ‘It’s quite possible,’ she said. ‘ The lab might come up with something.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So what was he doing? Trying to get in? Was Mrs Knight going to be his victim if Newby hadn’t turned up?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Unless he thought the flat would be empty,’ he said. ‘He might have been trying to get into the building to hide somewhere, after he’d killed Mrs Hamlyn.’
‘I’ve got them looking for this handyman person,’ Judy said. ‘His name is James Lacey. But the golf-club doesn’t make sense. He was long gone when it went missing.’
Lloyd grunted. ‘It’s not just the golf-club that doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘It could just be a coincidence, I suppose. But I doubt it. That’s what Freddie thought it was straight away.’ He sighed, a deep sigh of frustration. ‘I don’t know these people,’ he said. ‘And Sam Waters is right about one thing.’
‘Really?’ said Judy, unwilling to concede that the odious Mr Waters was right about anything.
‘Flotsam and jetsam,’ Lloyd said. ‘ They all work here and live here, but that’s it. They’re all loners, they’re all failures. Putting Diana Hamlyn in amongst them was bound to end in disaster.’
Judy nodded a little sadly.
‘They don’t like one another,’ Lloyd went on. ‘They don’t trust one another. They accuse one another – but I’d swear not one of them has told us the truth. Sam Waters did go to a club, like he said. Sandwell checked up – that’s what he came to tell me. They know him in there – he was there from about half past midnight until about two, according to the owner. But he says he left here at about ten past eleven. It only takes half an hour to get into Stansfield.’
‘But Newby confirms that he saw him leave,’ said Judy. ‘And Freddie says she was dead by then anyway. Does it matter?’
‘But where did he go?’ asked Lloyd. ‘To dump the murder weapon? But I’ll let Mr Waters stew for the moment. He’s coming to the station to make a statement about what he saw. I’ll have a few more questions for him when he does.’
‘He could be making it up about seeing a boy with her,’ Judy said. ‘Treadwell certainly thinks he was.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘He could,’ he said. ‘And we ought to check up on that film he was supposed to be taking Caroline Knight to – it could be some sort of alibi. You said Treadwell isn’t convinced that there was a film. We should pay the club secretary a visit.’
‘I rang,’ said Judy. ‘ You had to book – and Mrs Knight booked two tickets in January.’
Lloyd looked a little disappointed.
‘You just want to see if the club secretary can get a pirate video of that film that was supposed to be on,’ Judy said.
‘How do you know about that?’ he asked.
‘Because I tried to watch it.’
‘Why? I thought it wasn’t your kind of thing.’
She gave a little sigh. ‘Because I knew you’d be watching it,’ she said. ‘We might as well go straight to the pub,’ she added quickly, before he could say anything. ‘We don’t want to keep Freddie waiting.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘All right,’ he said, and waited until she had got the car started before leading the way out of the school, and into Stansfield, and the car park of the Derbyshire Hotel.
‘Anyway, Sherlock,’ he said, as they sat down with their drinks.
‘You scored a bull’s-eye with the pen. How did you know it was his?’
Judy smiled. ‘You know the pattern down the side?’
‘Yes,’ said Lloyd warily.
‘When I looked at it more closely, I realised it was ‘‘SW’’ linked over and over again.’ She smiled. ‘And I enjoyed taking the wind out of his sails for a moment,’ she said.
Freddie was good company when it was possible to steer him away from pathology humour. He had come with bits and pieces of information; the bag and shoes were covered with too many prints to be of any use. But the squashed shoe had been run over by a car wheel.
Judy frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
Freddie didn’t deign to reply. ‘So there must have been a car involved,’ he said.
Which sounded as though it hardly needed to be said, except that Judy knew what he meant. A car furthered his theory, which he didn’t have, because he didn’t have theories. The back seat of a car seemed a quite likely place for consenting sex, even to Judy.
‘But cars aren’t allowed up at that end of the school,’ Judy said.
Freddie spread out his hands. ‘Allowed or not, there was a car in the Barn,’ he said. ‘And we haven’t found her buttons in the Barn or the field,’ he said. ‘I presume Mrs Hamlyn wouldn’t go to a dinner dance with buttons missing from the front of her dress, so it’s a reasonable assumption that they came off in the car.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Lloyd, his voice heavily sarcastic. ‘All we have to do is find out which car it was. There were only about two hundred people there. Have you any idea?’
‘We’re checking,’ said Freddie. ‘It all takes time, Lloyd.’
A niblick fitted the bill, he said, and pointed out to Lloyd that he hadn’t been so far off when he suggested a sand iron. Sam Waters’s suit had yielded nothing of interest. He was delighted because he had apparently made a convert while he was at the school.
Judy excused herself to make a phone call, and ordered another slimline tonic when Freddie got another round.
‘Did you have to?’ Lloyd muttered, as Freddie went to the bar. ‘I just want to get out of this place.’
‘You’re the one who made the arrangement for you and Freddie and I to have a drink,’ she said. ‘So we’re having a drink. All right?’
‘You and Freddie and me,’ he said, and smiled.
Freddie came back with the drinks. ‘We’ve found a couple of strands of grey wool on Mrs Hamlyn’s clothes,’ he said, also, it would appear, a saver of the best till last.
‘Grey wool?’ said Lloyd. ‘ Like a school blazer?’
‘Could be,’ said Freddie. ‘Get me one of the blazers, and I’ll tell you.’
When they left the pub, and got into their separate cars, she didn’t go home, but followed Lloyd to the flat. She pulled in beside him, and got out of the car.
It was dark in the garage area. She couldn’t see his face.
‘Judy,’ he said, his voice tired. ‘I’m getting too old for this. Setting alarms, looking at watches. It’s not for me.’
‘No alarms,’ she said, and it seemed that her voice echoed quietly through the buildings.
There was a little silence. ‘ Does this mean you’re not going to stay with him after all?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it means I can spend the night with you.’
‘And then go home to your husband?’
She was cold, shivering inside her coat, and it wasn’t just the weather. ‘No,’ she said. ‘And then go home. Michael just lives there, too, that’s all.’
She still couldn’t see his face. Just his shape, as he stood irresolutely beside his car.
‘I can’t stay here anyway,’ she said. ‘ It would be silly moving to a flat, just to have to move again in a few months.’
‘That’s Michael talking. I can hear him.’
Having a relationship with a mind-reader wasn’t easy. ‘ It’s true, all the same,’ she said.
He came up to her then, and she could just see his face in the strand of light from the street-lamp. He was angry. ‘Was it Michael you phoned from the hotel?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He looked at her for a moment. ‘Do you mean we have Michael’s permission?’
‘No, of course not! I just told him I wouldn’t be home tonight.’
‘Well, you were wrong. Unless you’ve somewhere else to go.’
Judy’s heart was beating painfully hard. ‘What?’ she said. ‘You don’t mean that.’ She was shivering.
‘You have no intention of leaving him.’
‘I have,’ she said helplessly. ‘But not until the transfer. I made him a promise.’
‘You made me a promise.’
‘I kept it! I told him – and I am leaving. I just didn’t know it would hurt him like this!’
‘It was going to hurt someone,’ said Lloyd. ‘Just as long as it wasn’t you.’
‘That isn’t fair!’
‘Fair?’ he said. ‘ What’s fair? Is what you’re doing fair? Go back to Michael, Judy. I don’t want this any more. Do you understand? No more. I don’t care what you do – leave him, stay with him, do what the hell you like. But don’t come back here. I’ve had enough.’
He turned, and walked away, into the flats.
Judy waited motionless by the car, until she could no longer hear his footsteps on the stairs. Numbly, she drove away, her hands and feet automatically manipulating the controls, her mind blankly refusing to face the situation. The road seemed to steer; she made signals and turned comers, but there was no will, no decision. The car stopped outside the house, and the path took her to the front door. They key opened it, her feet took her into the sitting-room.
‘Change of plan?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t want to talk just now,’ she heard her voice saying, as she turned back into the hallway to go upstairs. She stopped, frowning, at the suitcases.
‘I do,’ Michael said. ‘I’ll be making an early start. Since you’re here, we might as well get things sorted out.’
Still frowning with the effort of regaining her thinking processes, she went back into the room. ‘Have you got a business trip?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m moving into the penthouse.’
The penthouse was the flattering name given to the flat at the top of the office block where Michael worked.
‘Ronnie and Lisa moved into their cottage today,’ he went on. ‘Shirley and I are moving into the penthouse tomorrow. I’ve got the removal people coming on Monday – it’s furnished, so we won’t need much. But I want the stuff from my study, and the hi-fi and records, and so on. Just my own things.’
Carefully, Judy searched for her wits, and gathered them gingerly together. ‘You and Shirley?’ she repeated, her voice small.
‘Oh, you don’t know her. She came to work for us about six months ago.’
Judy stared at him, sudden tears pricking the backs of her eyes. ‘Then … what was all that stuff about Woolworth’s?’ she said.
‘Well – you’d just gone back to work. Seen Mr Lloyd again. I had to do something.’
‘Why?’ Her voice was a whisper.
‘I couldn’t have you leaving first,’ he said. ‘It would have spoiled the surprise.’
She blinked painfully as he smiled at her.
‘What was all that about, this morning?’ she asked, bewildered.
‘I wasn’t going to let you upstage me,’ he said. ‘Why should I make it easy for you?’
She gave an uncomprehending shake of her head.
‘If you’d ever bothered getting to know me, you would have known it was rubbish,’ he said, and shook his head as he looked at her. ‘You were good enough to tell me this morning why you married me. Do you want to know why I married you? A reason that won’t have occurred to you.’
She could feel the tears hot on her face.
‘I loved you,’ he said. ‘But I don’t any more. And I sincerely hope that your unexpected return means that I have screwed things up between you and Mr Lloyd.’
She turned and ran blindly upstairs. She was opening drawers, delving in the wardrobe, taking out underwear and clothes and shoving them into a laundry-bag. She couldn’t see what she was doing because of the tears; she had no idea what she was taking.
Her toothbrush. She ought to have her toothbrush. She went into the bathroom, elbowing Michael aside as he arrived on the landing.
Toothbrush, comb, make-up. She swept them all up, taking a sponge-bag from the back of the door. Some of the things fell as she tried to undo the drawstring, and she kneeled down, picking them up, trying to wipe away the tears. She got everything into the bag, and pulled the string tight. A nightdress. She would need a nightdress.
She turned to the door, and stopped. My God, Lloyd had never seen her in a nightdress, she realised, as she went back into the bedroom, with Michael still on the landing.
She was trying to open the drawer that always jammed, tugging at it uselessly as Michael came into the bedroom. The surge of anger served to open the drawer. She looked at him through a mist. ‘Loved me?’ she said, and it hurt to speak. She consigned the nightdress to the bag, and picked it up.
‘We should talk,’ he said. ‘About the house, and so on.’
She ignored him.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Lloyd’s.’
‘Are you so sure you’ll be welcome?’
‘No,’ she said.
She threw the bag into the back of the car, and sat in it until the tears subsided. She drove off, back to Lloyd. No, she wasn’t sure she would be welcome.
But he would let her in. And that, she told the absent Michael, that was love.
Treadwell read for a while after going to bed, but he couldn’t
get interested. He leaned over Marcia to turn off the light.
‘No, Barry,’ she said.
Nothing had been further from his thoughts; her response was
automatic, produced at the first sign of anything that might be construed as an overture. It had made him smile once, long ago; it was a hangover from their chaste courting days, he had thought, given that in those early months of marriage it had not apparently been a serious rejection. As time wore on, however, the cajoling and persuasion had become wearisome, the objective hardly worth the time and trouble expended on its achievement.
Without discussion, an understanding had evolved that his requests – it would be overstating the urgency to call them demands – would be met, despite the token protest, at infrequent intervals. This was one such, and he availed himself of the opportunity on the grounds that it might be a while before the next time, and it might serve to make him feel better. Marcia took little notice of the proceedings; he expected no more than her occasional compliance.
He supposed he must have slept, or he couldn’t, presumably, have woken up. He had no idea what time it was; it felt like morning, despite the darkness. He looked across at the smudged blur of light on the bedside table. Six forty-five; it was morning, despite the blackness beyond the window, despite the lack of noise. Schools were unbelievably noisy places, with hundreds of feet scurrying along uncarpeted floors, hundreds of voices raised at once in separate, animated conversations. The walls echoed with sound from dawn till dusk; only now was the place still and silent. But this morning the silence had a different quality.
Treadwell got out of bed, shivering a little in the chill air of the room. He reached for his dressing-gown, and was still struggling with it in the darkness as he crossed over to the window. Outside, the dim lighting revealed the outlines of the buildings. Beyond them, though he couldn’t see it, lay the playing-field. The rain that had drenched that dreadful night had gone as though it had never been; even the sleety snow had gone, and the ground was dry and cold once more.
Perhaps it had all been a bad dream. Perhaps the rain hadn’t happened. Perhaps – Treadwell sighed – perhaps none of it had happened. Perhaps Diana was still vibrantly alive. And it seemed almost possible that none of it had happened. He had had dreams that had remained real for minutes after waking. How did he know? He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t, standing here in the dark with the school lying as frostily still below him as Marcia had. It didn’t look like a place where a murder had happened.
Treadwell left the bedroom, went downstairs, and out into the cold, dark morning. Past the staff block, across to the junior dormitory, going to where he could see the playing-field, its frost-covered surface gleaming as dawn broke.
He had had to see for himself the proof that it had all happened. He hadn’t really believed that it had just been a dream, but some sort of desperate hope had made him go and check. And there they were, two lines of ribbon across the field, as if it had been marked out for a cross-country run. Tomorrow, once again, police would inch their way across the grass, looking for something, anything, to lead them to Diana’s killer.
Treadwell turned away, and became consciously aware of the muffled sound. He had been aware of it all along, he supposed. The peculiar quality of this morning’s silence was that it wasn’t silent; sounds of the rude world were intruding. A sound. An engine, running.
Puzzled, a little tentative, he walked round the side of the junior dormitory. The sound was marginally louder, but not loud enough to be coming from one of the dark shapes in the car park. He walked slowly, disbelievingly, towards the sound, towards the private garage that came with the junior dormitory. His hand reached out of its own accord, and he tried to push the door open. Something was jamming it; cloth, paper, something.
He pushed harder, almost falling as the door swung up, releasing the dense, choking fumes into the morning air.