Chapter 5: An Unclear Road
Folders lay scattered across the table: open, stacked on one another, pages askew. Barnaby rustled through a collection of the papers in one, then returned them and closed the manila cover before pushing the folder aside to choose another file. Here, two hours ago, Joyce had delivered a better than average supper (slightly lumpy and woefully under-salted potato soup, salad, wine, and mercifully no Bakewell Surprise); an hour ago, she had swooped in to solve his anagram puzzle in seconds. Half of the blocks remained smothered beneath all the paper, still in the order she had set them. Now, he just read through his reports again and again.
Whatever the day, the crime, the horrid visions he endured, just a few minutes with his wife began to chase everything out of his mind. Not that it always stayed away, but her presence immediately granted a reprieve, like new and blessed air for a drowning man who finally broke through the surface. With reason, Joyce was often irritated when the workday encroached on what was meant to be their time together; she would hardly be human if she wasn't. Yet the anger rarely lingered, sometimes evaporating with a speed he did not comprehend. If the disconnect between her over allocated enthusiasm and near absent talent for cooking was her greatest flaw—and Barnaby was inclined to think it was—then he had been blessed with good fortune indeed.
By his hand, a cup of fresh tea steamed. But it could wait. Amazing, really, how quickly tests could deliver results now. The SOCO team, Barnaby felt, had only just collected their swatches of matted hair and cotton swabs of blood, fingerprints and scrapings from beneath the corpse's nails. Yet here before him, mysteries were already elucidated and spinning new questions of their own.
A key rattled in the front lock; the door opened and then quickly shut again as feet wandered through the hall and across the sitting room to the kitchen. "Hi, Dad," his daughter said, waving a hand clenched around her keyring.
"Oh, hello, Cully." He smiled up at her before she kissed his cheek. "Sit down, sit down." The manila blurred together, finally a single pile of reports and photos, exposing the blocks. Already, the analysis whirred in the back of his skull, questions Barnaby hardly heard: where, what, why, when, who? They were too familiar to keep quiet.
As she settled into a chair across from him, Cully took a letter—the R—just looking at it, a bit confused. "What's all this?" she asked, just as quickly returning it to—almost—finish the name.
"Something that was nothing, until your mother was good enough to decipher it. 'Maureen', if the last letter shows up." Won't be Troy's favorite name, Barnaby thought. He didn't recall him mentioning her for...he wasn't sure how long. He'd long since stopped listening for it.
"About the case, are they?"
One by one, Barnaby took the blocks, stacking them in two layers beside the folders. Though any forensic inquiries would be useless by now, they still likely had a place in the case. Their appearance was either a joke and irrelevant, or something calculated by a person intelligent enough to leave no traces behind in the first place; he favored the latter. Either way, Harry the Pool Man had already handled them far too much to seriously hope for a suspect's identity. "I didn't dig them out of the attic to review my spelling lessons."
His daughter grinned. "I'd hope not. Where did you find them, then?"
"Someone has been tossing them over a fence into a pool, one at a time."
"To one of your suspects?"
Barnaby shrugged his shoulders. "One of my suspects and one of my victims."
The perplexed look was back as she set her elbows on the table, but already fading to interest. "More than one murder?"
His face tightened—visibly, he was sure—and his voice was a bit rougher when he spoke. "No." One of the constant questions answered and noted before he could halt the process: who? His daughter knew the rumor mill of any Midsomer village to be highly suspect regarding anything but common sentiment, and early radio reports were often just as vague. Little information had been released, so far as he was aware. The crime was reported too late for the morning paper. To inquire if it had transformed into a murder was one thing, but more than one was what she had said. Knowledge prefaced that statement, not conjecture.
"I thought I heard you come in," Joyce said, her clear voice not enough to drag him out of his deliberations as she stood in the doorway. "Have a good evening?"
Cully did not speak for a moment, just glancing to the table. "Yes, quite nice." Tense words. When, though that was hardly the most pressing, was now known, clinging to the previous answer.
"Really?" Barnaby said, suspicions and thoughts already transforming into certainties. "And how was Troy?"
Cully frowned as she looked to her mother. "I met Gavin for a cup of tea." What and where were now known as well. How had not made the list, but Barnaby had a guess: that phone call he had interrupted, his sergeant's slightly paler face and hurried goodbye.
He scowled a bit. Maybe it was best to keep why unanswered. "Again?"
His wife crossed her arms over her chest. "Tom..." She could say so many things with that single word, and he heard it now: quiet. "How is Gavin? I haven't seen him for a while."
"My daily reports aren't enough?"
"Dad!" It was almost...indignation, Barnaby decided. "He's fine, Mum," Cully said, now one hand in her lap as she shifted in the chair. "Still playing cricket, in Causton this time."
"Well that's good to know," Joyce said. "I mostly hear a lot of comments about leaping to conclusions from your father."
"All well deserved," he said.
"Sometimes."
This was not the evening he wanted. The workday so often impinged, and he had almost believed it would do so no more tonight. And, god, not this way! "He has a match on Saturday," Cully continued.
"Oh?" His wife sounded as interested, he decided, as if their daughter was merely discussing a friend.
"Yes, I—I thought I'd go out to see it."
"Did you run into him in town again?" Barnaby asked. He reached for the pile of folders, then stopped. No use ignoring it, searching for a distraction, making it the elephant in the center of the kitchen.
His daughter sighed as she stood. "No, I rang him this afternoon."
So the how was definite. "I'll suppose that he's your source of information about Midsomer Market?"
"Even if—"
"Well, you didn't mention much about it last night." His wife's voice, again, was an interruption, like she had surely intended it to be. And her face: it was not blank, but he was unable to read anything there.
"There wasn't much to say about it, then," he said.
Barnaby wasn't accustomed to the weight of the sudden silence, and he couldn't believe his wife or daughter were, either. Perhaps the nearest comparison was Cully's adolescence—fraught with enough unhappy stares for a lifetime—but that time was long past. And it was more than to be expected, choices certain to drive a parent mad and little explanation for them. This was not anticipated, if there was any this at all. Why should there be? he asked himself.
Cully was fidgeting, running her fingers along the back of the chair. He knew the signs: thinking, creating, reworking. "He talked about it," she said after a moment, "some."
"Ah." All she had said was what he already knew. "What else did you talk about?"
She looked to the ceiling for a moment, as if to think and catch her breath. "Nothing you need—"
"Still catching up from the past few months?" Joyce asked, moving quickly across the kitchen. She fiddled with a couple of utensils still resting on the draining board, the clatter of forks and spoons rather louder than needed.
"Yes." The word was sharper, not defensive but guarded, matching her fiercer eyes. "Why didn't you tell Gavin I was doing that production of Hamlet?"
He finally picked up one of the folders, pulling out a fingerprint report; it could have been the postmortem report, for all he cared. Any report. On the walking stick, a few sets were clear: most belonged to the victim—Marjorie Empson—but the others would be of little consequence even after identification. Every print there matched several others in the dining room. No doubt remained that she had known her murderer, and wasn't it only kind to retrieve a walking stick for a friend in need? No, the stick was exhausted, an excuse for any fingerprints readily available. "Slipped my mind," he said, frowning.
"Are you hungry, Cully?" Joyce asked, gathering the cutlery and opening the proper drawer, metal clattering as she placed them heavily in the wooden divider. "There's plenty of soup left from supper."
"No, but thanks, Mum," she said. Sliding her chair under the table, she gave her mother a brief smile. "Good night."
"Are you going to bed already?" Barnaby asked before she was halfway into the hall. He glanced at his watch: a few minutes before ten. It was hardly early, but certainly not typical of his daughter.
The sharpness on her features had faded, and her face was as impossible to decipher as his wife's had been. Like mother, like daughter. "It's been a long day," she said, then disappeared into the dim corridor. Even muffled by the carpet, he heard every footstep to and up the stairs; those in the upstairs hall were too far to distinguish.
He thrust the forensics report into its folder, distractions no longer necessary. "That's twice in three days, Joyce," he said quietly. It wasn't a whisper, but god, it was an awful enough conversation to have with his wife, let alone with her, too.
"You're overreacting, Tom," Joyce said, slipping around the table to sit where her daughter had, considering the plastic letters for a second. "Just like before."
"I work with the man every day. It's out of the question."
"It's not yours to answer."
"I'm not allowed to be concerned?" He was speaking too loudly, he knew. It wasn't anger, but maybe frustration. They had already been down this path before, all of them. More than once!
"Yes—"
"Then I will be."
"—but...I would have thought you'd avoid leaping to conclusions, as often as you complain about Gavin doing so." Barnaby scowled again, and his wife just sighed. "Anyway, they've been friends for a while."
"Only after..." He couldn't say it, but he was certain she knew: those bloody Pinter tickets, that damn woman, and everything that had come of it all!
"And you made far too much of that at the time, I said it then."
She had smiled, he remembered, almost laughed! "She's out. She's got a new boyfriend. Actually, I think he's a policeman, too." Like there was nothing wrong, even while his skin prickled and he writhed beneath it. "Every day, Joyce, every day." Day after day, year after year...Did they really think they knew Gavin Troy better than he did?
"You're doing it again."
"What?" he snapped.
"Overreacting."
Even her cool voice was not enough to soothe the thought, the possibility of his daughter—and his damnable bag carrier!—resurrecting past foolishness. Instead, it only speared him with a bit of guilt for his outburst. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, quieter as he slumped forward. This was too much to add to the day.
She touched his hand, her palm smooth on his knuckles. "To not worry, but you're not going to do that." Just as quickly, Joyce pulled her hand away. "She's only just back, surely you can give her a moment to catch up?"
"Twice in three days, that's more than a moment," he said, a grumble deep in his throat following the words. God, this is too much.
"You're only doing it to yourself, dear," Joyce said, standing. And then she was at the draining board again, tucking away the dry bowls and plates as if nothing was wrong.
"Why didn't she say—" He had to pause, to breathe. "I am not—"
"You wouldn't be so bothered if you weren't." She wiped the tiled surface by the sink with the tea towel, then replaced it on its loop, simply looking at him as she leaned against the counter's edge and crossed her arms again.
"Joyce—" Barnaby stopped, breathing slower to calm the rising burn in his throat. Even his face felt red. "Joyce, you don't know him."
"Maybe not," she said. "How well do you?"
He scraped the feet of the chair on the floor, standing before he felt the movement, turning almost angrily. "Well enough—"
"You don't." Walking to him, her steady gaze caught his, and the brief surge of fury—he didn't know whom he meant to launch it at—ceased just with that look. Be quiet, it said, as clearly as when she had spoken his name before. She had practiced it their entire married life, disarming the worries and frustrations of each day. "Neither of us really do," she went on. "You only know Sergeant Troy. She probably knows him better than either of us."
She was right, he realized, as she settled a hand on his shoulder then slid her arm around his back, like she meant to calm him. It wasn't comforting.