It was almost noon when Troy parked his Bentley in front of Foxx’s house, on a hill high above the town.
Foxx hefted her one bag. Troy stood with his hands in his overcoat pockets, looking around at the mix of inter-war and post-war houses, with the odd stone cottage breaking the uniformity, unrepentant reminders of a Georgian past, of a pre-industrial peasantry that had raised pigs and hammered out nails in the days before the machines came. And over it all, the red brick chimney “up at t’mill”— except that the mill was not up, but down from where he stood. Nor was it dark or satanic, by all appearances.
“What’re you looking at?”
“Oh, just seeing if the curtains twitch.”
“Don’t worry, they will. They may not twitch for me in my own right, but I am Stella Foxx’s sister and if the scandal has died down so soon, I’ll be flabbergasted.”
“Ask not for whom the curtain twitches. It twitches for thee.”
“Oh, yes. Very funny I’m sure.”
Stella had left home well ahead of her twin sister. Run off with the man from the carpet emporium, to be set up in a love-nest in Brighton—and to be murdered. Not one scandal but two. Troy had solved the murder, and in keeping with Foxx’s new-found philosophy, had found the right hole in which to lodge it. Foxx was here and Foxx was Foxx. He gave little thought to the circumstances of their meeting.
He’d never done this. Returned to an empty house he had once called home. Let cold, and that hollow sound that empty always made, ferret around in his feelings.
Foxx had set down her bag and sighed.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger.”
The house was clean. Troy realised someone had to be coming in once in a while and, if nothing else, dusting. It had been remiss of him not to ask, callous not even to have wondered. How much had she packed the day they had, true to cliché, run away together? Bra, knickers, spare T-shirt, spare jeans? He doubted it had been more than that. If he had to run what would he have taken? Books? Well … he could have done without the complete Jane Austen. Although he knew a man who couldn’t.
“Troy. Why am I doing this?”
“The heart has its reasons.”
“Isn’t that a book title or something?”
“Duchess of Windsor. Dreadful woman. Never bothered to read it. I just like the title. She pinched it from Pascal. ‘Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.’ Or something like that.”
“Oh God. Am I being that irrational?”
“No, no, you’re not. Do this. Take your time. Take as long as you need. Salvage what you will, then kill the beast.”
She disappeared upstairs.
He put the kettle on. Made tea. Found an ineffectual one-bar electric fire in the broom cupboard and plugged it in. In a year or two it might just take the chill off the kitchen.
Foxx heard the kettle whistle.
“If you’re making tea, you’ll need to nip out for milk. That’ll be a first.”
“Eh?”
“I’d bet that you’ve never been in a corner shop in the north of England, and I’d bet the woman behind the counter has never heard an accent like yours before.”
“So much for one nation.”
“Just buy the fucking milk! I am, as they say around here, ‘parched.’”