Chapter Two
"I don't want you to go and see them." Mark was a willowy young man with curly hair which kept falling over his face.
"What has it got to do with you?" screamed Trixie. She turned off the hob and emptied the saucepan of spaghetti in tomato sauce inelegantly onto two plates on the kitchen table. "I have to see them. And Fleur."
Mark sniggered. "Your baby sister."
"Don't call her that. I hate her." Trixie picked up the pepper-pot and hurled it at Mark, who luckily ducked. The pepper-pot shattered on the fridge-freezer at the other end of the kitchen.
Trixie was a blousy young woman whose good looks had been coarsened by self-indulgence. Alcohol abuse had given her a bloated appearance which belied her twenty-nine years.
"Trixie, I've had enough of this," said Mark, going to pick up the pieces of pepper-pot. "You only came back to me because I've made some money." In fact he had made a small fortune from selling shares in Vortex PLC at the top of the market shortly before it crashed.
"Money, money, money, that's all you think about," said Trixie. To Mark's alarm she picked up the opened wine-bottle on the table, but it was only to drink from it.
"And you shouldn't drink so much," he said.
Trixie put the bottle down on the table with a bang. "I haven't come back to be told what to do," she said. "That's why I left Jake. He was always telling me what to do."
"You were with him for seven years," said Mark, "shacked up in that caravan in Essex. Or were there others?"
Trixie looked round for something to throw, but couldn't find anything within reach except the bottle of wine, which she was self-controlled enough to know was more valuable as a source of alcohol.
"Bastard," she said.
"You're a disgrace," said Mark, now into his stride. "You're an irresponsible mother."
"What?" Trixie stood up, her bloated face contorted with rage.
"Leaving your baby in a doorway like that," said Mark, attending to his spaghetti.
"She was brought up by nuns! And anyway, what about you? You're a thief!" Trixie picked up her plate of spaghetti and hurled it at Mark.
"That's it," said Mark, getting up and wiping some of the tomato sauce and spaghetti strands off his chin, the plate having crashed to the floor, "I'm off. I can't take any more of it," and he stormed out of the kitchen and out of his own house.
Trixie started to cry, the cheap mascara running down her cheeks, and took another slug of wine.
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David Payton gnawed his knuckles as he heard the clip-clop of Buster, the eight year old horse he had given to his wife as a birthday present, outside the window of their comfortable cottage in Midsomer Mallow. How could he tell her? He cleared his throat.
"Darling," said Ellie, bursting into the room in jodhpurs and riding boots and undoing her riding cap, "don't forget the Open Day next Saturday. We've got to go." She shook her long black hair onto her shoulders.
"Ah," said David, temporarily forgetting his mission. "Why have we got to go?"
"I promised Mummy."
"Ah." David cleared his throat again. He knew that even his best friends described him as dull, but he never felt as tongue-tied as when he had to tell his wife something she did not want to hear.
"What is it, David?" Ellie went out into the hall to hang up her riding cap. David felt compelled to follow her.
"You know – 'The Professor'?"
"Ye-es," said Ellie patiently.
"I've had to sell him." David blurted it out and immediately felt great relief.
"You what?" Ellie sounded incredulous. "You must be joking."
"I'm not joking, Ellie."
"You sold our prize racehorse without consulting me? Who did you sell him to?"
"Mark Slofield."
"Mark Slofield – that nouveau riche upstart?" David knew that Ellie regarded The Professor as her own and that her passion for horses was greater than her affection for him.
"I had to. I've lost my job, remember?" Redundancy had come without warning to David, who had thought, wrongly, that his hundred-thousand a year management post in a large construction company was secure for life.
"You're contemptible." Ellie snatched her riding cap from the peg in the hall again and said coldly "I'm going out on Buster."
David gnawed his knuckles.
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"Do we really have to go to this Open Day on Saturday?" asked Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby, pulling on his shoes.
"Yes, we do," said Joyce, holding his jacket open for him. "The Braithwaites are very influential people. And anyway, I promised Betty."
"Who's Betty?" Tom tightened the knot of his tie.
"Betty Bootle. She's teaching me flower arranging in Midsomer Mallow church hall."
"Oh, well, in that case." Tom was convinced. He kissed his wife lightly on the cheek. "See you this evening, Joycee."
"Bye, Tom. And don't get mixed up in any more murders." She closed the front door behind him and returned to the kitchen, where she was keen to follow a Raymond Blanc recipe for roast turbot with fennel and anchovy essence.
