‘ARE YOU SURE, ANGUS?’
‘Quite sure, thank you.’
‘You haven’t forgotten anything?’
Angus Sinclair considered the question with furrowed brow.
‘If I had, I probably wouldn’t remember it, would I?’ He stole a sideways glance at his companion.
Lucy Madden frowned. The raw December day had been sharpened by a cold wind that had got up overnight and she was showing a pair of cheeks that must be as red as his own.
‘You’re being defensive now,’ she said finally, ‘but there’s really no need. We all get forgetful as we grow older. You mustn’t think you’re to blame; it’s your hippocampus that’s at fault.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I was reading about it only the other day, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as a matter of fact.’
‘Am I to take it that’s your bedtime reading?’
The chief inspector—for so he was still called by many despite having long since retired from his job at Scotland Yard—was enjoying the moment. They were walking arm in arm along the path beside the stream that led to the Maddens’ house, Lucy having come down to his cottage to ‘collect him’, as she put it, making him feel for a moment like a parcel, albeit a well-contented one. Pleasures were hard enough to come by at his age, he reflected, and there were few to compare with the satisfaction of being fussed over by a lovely young woman, one moreover whom he had known since childhood and had a deep affection for.
‘Now you’re being facetious,’ she accused him.
‘Not at all. Tell me about this hippocampus.’
‘It’s a neural structure shaped like a seahorse located in the medial temporal lobe of your brain, and its job is, or was, to process short-term memories and then dispatch them to the appropriate part of your cerebrum where they wait ready to be summoned up.’ Lucy spoke like a child reciting her homework. ‘Unfortunately, as we get older it tends to atrophy and stops doing its job. Hence your ability to recall something that happened twenty years ago as though it were yesterday, but not something that might or might not have happened this morning, like forgetting to bring your pills, for example. That’s what I’m here for,’ she added kindly. ‘Just think of me as your hippocampus.’
They had reached a stone bridge that spanned the stream and Sinclair paused in the middle of it to gaze down at the running water below. Lucy eyed him.
‘You’re trying to think up a suitable riposte, aren’t you?’
‘I was just picturing tomorrow’s headline in the Daily Mirror.’ He mused. ‘Hippocampus found strangled in stream. Police at a loss.’
‘That’s very unkind.’ She giggled. ‘And not at all appreciative. You haven’t answered my question.’
‘What question might that be? It seems to have slipped my mind.’
‘Have you remembered to bring your pills?’
By way of an answer Sinclair reached into his coat pocket and with a flourish fished out a small bottle filled with white tablets.
‘I’m sorry.’ She was contrite. ‘But Mummy said I was to make sure you didn’t go off anywhere without them.’
Lucy’s mother, Helen Madden, was the village doctor and, since Angus Sinclair’s decision on his retirement from the Metropolitan Police at the end of the war to make his home in Highfield, his physician as well.
‘And to remind you that you had to take one in the morning and one in the evening . . .’
‘. . . and at any other time of the day if I happen to feel dizzy or breathless. Thank you, my dear. I haven’t forgotten that.’
The chief inspector was not unaware of the worry that lurked behind his companion’s lighthearted tone. He realized that Lucy’s mother had probably revealed her own concern for his health before going off on holiday. She had made no secret of it to him.
‘It’s your blood pressure, Angus,’ Helen had told him at their last meeting. ‘It’s starting to worry me. Not enough blood is reaching your heart. It’s caused by a hardening of the arteries and since that’s a symptom of age it’s not a problem that will go away. These tablets I’ve given you will help, they’ll thin your blood, but you must promise to take them as prescribed. If not, you may start to feel a shortness of breath and very possibly a pain in your chest that could spread to your arms and neck, and then you must take a pill at once and rest for at least ten minutes. Otherwise . . .’
‘. . . otherwise I shall probably keel over on the spot.’ He had smiled. ‘There! I’ve said it for you.’
They had known each other for the better part of thirty years and Sinclair was perfectly prepared to admit—to himself if to no one else—that his feelings for her went well beyond friendship. They were best described by the French word tendresse, a deep if unexpressed emotion that had grown to embrace her daughter, whose resemblance to her mother, not only in looks, but in word and gesture, was so marked that there were times when he felt he had been transported back decades to the day when he first cast eyes on the young woman who was to become the wife of his friend and then colleague, John Madden.
‘You’re looking very thoughtful,’ Lucy observed.
They had entered the garden by way of a wooden gate and having passed through the orchard, now bare of both fruit and foliage, reached the long lawn that led up to the half-timbered house where the Maddens lived.
‘I was wondering if you’d heard from your parents,’ Sinclair said.
‘I had a letter from Mummy two days ago. She said Venice was enchanting.’
The Maddens had departed for Italy three weeks earlier to stay with an old school friend of Helen’s who had married a Venetian nobleman of all things and lived in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.
‘He’s a count,’ Helen had explained before their departure. ‘That sounds very grand, I know, but according to Angela they’re ten a penny in Italy. But he does have a palazzo, so John and I are looking forward to a taste of the high life.’
‘They had just been to a ball the night before in some other palazzo,’ Lucy revealed now. ‘Mummy said it was lovely, but rather cold, so she danced all night to keep warm.’
‘But not with your father, I imagine.’
They shared a conspiratorial chuckle. Madden’s rare forays onto the dance floor were a source of mirth to his family and friends.
‘They’ll be back on Wednesday. They’re coming straight home from the station, so you’ll see them before I do.’
Lucy lived in London and by all accounts (mainly her brother Rob’s, who shared a flat with her) enjoyed a social life that would long since have left most other mortals, himself included, prostrate. A rising star in the salon of a well-known dress designer, she had recently been named head of a department, though Sinclair didn’t know which since Lucy had made nothing of her promotion, being possessed of that peculiarly English vice—in the chief inspector’s stern Scottish eyes at least—of never wanting to appear to be trying too hard. Knowing how busy her days were, he was all the more touched that she should have found the time to come down to Highfield to see how he was managing.
‘You will be back on Monday, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously.
‘That’s certainly my intention.’
‘I’m not sure Mummy would have approved of you dashing off like this.’
‘Dashing off?’
‘It seems to have been very much a last-minute invitation. I do think Sir Wilfred might have been more considerate.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. The explanation’s really quite simple. They’ve got a guest staying with them who wants to meet me. But she only revealed that after she arrived. She’s apparently a well-known neurologist called Ann Waites who has also practised as a psychiatrist and has a particular interest in criminal psychopaths.’
‘And you couldn’t resist the temptation, of course,’ Lucy scoffed.
‘Why ever should I?’ Sinclair refused to rise to the bait. ‘Anyway, Sir Wilfred decided to ring me on the off-chance that I could come over.’
‘I just hope he realizes you’re not to exert yourself.’
‘Now, Lucy, that’s enough.’ The chief inspector stopped in his tracks. ‘I’m not an invalid. And if it comes to that, Bennett is no spring chicken himself. As like as not we’ll probably spend most of the weekend sitting by the fire mulling over old times.’
‘Old crimes, you mean.’ Lucy Madden’s smile was the mirror image of her mother’s. ‘Actually, it’s a pity Daddy won’t be there too. The three of you always have a wonderful time when you get together, raking up the past.’
Formerly an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, the man they were speaking of, Sir Wilfred Bennett, had been in overall charge of the CID when Sinclair and Madden had worked together as detectives. Retired for some years now, he had settled in the neighbouring county of Hampshire, but the three of them had kept in touch and Bennett and his wife had visited Highfield more than once as guests of the Maddens.
‘I’m not sure your father enjoys it that much.’ Sinclair was judicious. ‘One of the things you have to learn as a detective is how to distance yourself from violent crime, particularly murder. You mustn’t let it get to you, as the Americans say. Your father never quite managed that, even though he was so good at the job. It affected him.’
‘Is that why he gave up being a detective?’
‘Partly.’ The chief inspector caught her eye. ‘Though I suspect meeting your mother had more than a little to do with it.’
They shared a knowing smile.
‘Then again, John always wanted to live in the country and work the land. He grew up on a farm . . . but you know that.’
They had climbed the steps from the lawn up to the terrace and Lucy led the way around the house to the garage, where her mother’s Morris Minor was parked. In a matter of minutes she had settled Sinclair in the passenger seat and stowed his light suitcase, which she had insisted on carrying, on the backseat behind them.
‘I won’t be here when you get back,’ she warned him as they started down the drive. ‘I have to be at work on Monday. But Will has promised to be at the station to meet you.’ She meant the Highfield bobby, Will Stackpole, an old friend of Sinclair’s. ‘He’ll see you safely back to your cottage.’
‘In case I can’t remember the way?’
‘Now stop that, Angus,’ she scolded.
He studied her profile.
‘I know I’ve mentioned it before,’ he said, ‘but you really ought to get married. It will give you someone else to badger.’
‘That’s what Rob says. Mind you, he just wants the flat for himself. But I’ve told him I’m not ready yet to dwindle into a wife. In fact, I may never be.’
‘Dwindle . . .’ Sinclair savoured the word.
‘The trouble is I can’t see myself tied to any one man.’ She sighed. ‘The shine wears off so quickly. What I’d really like is to be one of those sultans who had scores of wives and kept them in a harem. I could probably manage with four or five—husbands, I mean. It would be so nice to be able to say, I’ll have you today . . . No, not you . . . you.’
‘You’re joking of course?’
‘Am I?’ She sent a sly glance his way.
The chief inspector shook his head in despair.
‘Somewhere there’s a young man who even as we speak is all unknowing and I can’t help pitying him. He’s got absolutely no idea of what’s lying in wait for him.’
‘You and Rob should compare notes. He says if I ever acquire an actual fiancé he’ll advise him to flee the country at once.’
She had slowed the car as they entered the village and she turned to look at him.
‘You were married years ago, Angus. It’s sad your wife died so young. But I can’t help noticing that you never took the plunge again.’
‘True enough,’ Sinclair admitted. He had been a widower for the better part of twenty years.
‘So tell me honestly: what’s your opinion of marriage—as an institution, I mean?’
‘Why, I believe it’s an honourable estate, just as the Book of Common Prayer says.’
‘That’s hardly an answer.’
‘And not one to be taken in hand wantonly to satisfy carnal lusts and appetites, nor lightly as you seem to be doing, but reverently and soberly in the fear of God.’
‘Thank you. I should have known better than to ask.’
Lucy spun the steering wheel and came to a halt in front of the station entrance. She turned to him.
‘Dear Angus, please take care.’ She spoke in a different voice. ‘Don’t overdo things, and don’t forget your pills. Do as Mummy says, please.’
‘But of course.’ He was caught off guard by the sudden change in her manner.
‘I never knew my grandparents, you see.’ She took hold of his hands. ‘They died before I was born. I’ve only got you.’
‘Meaning . . . what? That I’m better than nothing?’ He tried to keep up the teasing tone.
‘No . . . better than anything.’
She kissed him on the cheek and then hugged him for a long moment.
‘My dear child . . .’ He was overcome in spite of himself. ‘I’m only going away for the weekend, and only as far as Hampshire.’