Chapter 44: Pot Holes
Most often in the Barnaby household, Sunday mornings were a rather leisurely time spent around the kitchen table over a cooked breakfast—or what passed for one—rather than a bowl of cereal. This one was no different, with eggs, bacon, beans, and toast (butter and marmalade on the side), with plenty of tea to go around. And just as most mornings, Barnaby had the Causton Echo, local rag though it might be, open to the most recent crime reports. It was typically an informal day, but he was dressed more worse for the wear than normal, a pair of jeans with frayed hems and snags in the pockets and an already stained t-shirt. After Cully went upstairs the previous evening, Joyce had persuaded him to finally do some touch up painting in the back room with her. He'd bought the paint a fortnight ago, but either was called to CID or successfully avoided her tasks.
Speaking of Cully…
Barnaby lowered the paper an inch or so, just enough to peer across the table. Her hair was a bit flyaway, but she wore a light grey jumper over a white collared shirt, a small gold necklace falling against the skin of her throat. About right for a cricket match, he thought lifting the paper again. Just to his right, Joyce said, "There's no need to hurry, Cully."
"I just don't want to be late."
Barnaby twisted his wrist round, glancing at the hands on his watch. "It's hardly gone nine."
"That's plenty of time, dear—"
"And I want to get a good view of the pitch," Cully added, smearing a thin layer of butter across her toast.
"It's the local league, not a test match," he said, turning the thin crinkling page. Mostly, it was news from the Midsomer villages: a few last summer fêtes, opinions for and against felling some wood at the edge of the county, protests against restricting free access to green space...Nothing much for him to worry about as he closed the paper.
"I know, I know."
"Well, wish Gavin good luck for us," Joyce said, taking a quick sip of her own tea.
"Don't worry, Mum, I wouldn't forget."
Of that, I had no doubt, Barnaby thought, dropping the newspaper into his lap. Across the table, his daughter yawned, hiding her mouth behind the back of her hand. "I thought you were trying to get to bed early yesterday," he said, tucking into the eggy and bready remnants of his breakfast.
"I did, just..." She reached for her tea as her words tapered into silence. "The wind woke me up, once or twice. That's all."
"Oh?" Joyce asked. "It didn't sound that bad to me."
Cully glanced down. "Maybe it was just...nerves."
"Over what?" he asked.
"What—might come to the Playhouse next, that's all."
Barnaby narrowed his eyes. "Of course," he muttered, hardly able to hear himself. Clearing his throat, he added, louder, "So there's no indications of what might be on the way?"
"Just a few rumors." Cully took a small bite of toast, swallowing it quickly. "I think they've been having some trouble getting newer productions, since..." She trailed off, choosing another mouthful of toast rather than to finish. But Barnaby knew: since the Amadeus tragedy. Despite the years that had passed, they both strove to avoid it around Joyce. It still troubled her, for though she knew he saw so many nastier moments than that one, it was something foreign for her. Just like Cully, he thought.
"Oh?" his wife said, quieter than before.
"Well, Salomé has been mentioned."
"The tragedy of John the Baptist, eh?" Barnaby said, scraping beans onto his own toast. "Think we have a copy of it, someplace."
"Oh?" Cully looked up, her eyes a little wider. "I've never seen it. I thought I'd have to find a copy at the library after I dropped off the van."
"It's in a collection of his works. Came from my mum, I think. Have you read it?" Barnaby asked, leaning back in his chair.
"Yes, though I don't remember it perfectly. It's been…years since I read it."
"Who is it by, Cully?" Joyce asked.
"Oscar Wilde—originally in French, too."
Don't know how good his French is. "Hmm." The sound escaped Barnaby's lips before he could stop it. "Didn't know you'd kept up on your French," he added quickly.
"Dad..." She rolled her eyes as she finished her tea. "It was translated, just a few years later, something like that."
"Oh." He fell quiet for a second. "Well, there's no guarantee of such things, is there?"
"Well, when it's by such a famous writer, you'd hope so." Clearing the final few bites of her breakfast, Cully pushed her chair back from the table, the gentle scraping of the chair's feet on the tiled floor making Barnaby wince. She collected her plate and utensils, taking them to the sink and running each piece under water before any last bits had a chance to stick.
"You can leave those," Joyce said, turning towards their daughter, "if you really want to get to the pitch."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. We have to wash up later anyway."
"Thanks." Finished with the rinsing, Cully turned the hot tap hard to the right before drying her hand on the white tea towel to the side of the sink.
"Mustn't be late," Barnaby muttered.
"I'll see you this afternoon." Touching her mother's shoulder, Cully didn't stop to say farewell to him. Her goodbye was the scuffing as she donned her shoes at the door, the clatter of the door knocker, then the crash as she closed it, a little louder than usual.
His wife narrowed her eyes, the gaze refusing to move beneath her wispy bangs. "Tom," she said, shaking her head as she finished the last of her tea.
"I didn't say anything!"
"You mean, you didn't say much. But you were thinking it."
He shrugged his shoulders, tossing his paper onto the table; with Cully gone, there was more room for it. "Can't legislate for feelings, can you?"
"No. And neither should you."
"I know, I know."
"You say that every time," she said, clearing the first of the breakfast dishes, stacking them atop the crumbs, remnants of baked beans, and butter from the eggs.
"I—" Barnaby stopped himself before he put his foot in his mouth, sighing instead. "Let's just get on with things, Joyce."
"I told you before—you're just waiting for someone to get murdered, before you're twiddling your thumbs even more."
"Now that's not true." He had to hide his smile, though. Joyce had an uncanny way of lifting him from the beginnings of melancholy, to just bring the smallest hint of levity. All those years ago, still stationed in London, it was the first thing he recalled: her infectious happiness that shone through the darkness he was newly seeing every day. And though life had gone along many different, unexpected paths in their time together, her smile was constant.
"See what I mean?" she went on, setting the dishes in the sink. "You're not meant to investigate burglars."
"Just murderers, then?" Barnaby reached for the remaining dishes on the table, piling them up before standing and handing them to his wife. "Well, where shall we start?"*
"The back room, Tom. Just like we discussed yesterday."
Even as he sighed, Barnaby let a small smile out. "And here I was hoping you'd forgotten."
Despite the day's looming projects, Barnaby took a few minutes to wash the dishes with his wife, just as he had with his daughter the evening before. As Joyce went about moving a few things around the front room—she was determined to rearrange some of the paintings and portraits, hopefully without knocking another hole in the wall, Barnaby tarried in his study. The discussion over breakfast still lingered in his memory. The bookshelf was not particularly organized—he admitted defeat years ago—but he swiftly found Oscar Wilde's writings. The book's hard binding was cracked and worn over the years, ink vanishing from sunlight and flaking. And yes, Salomé was among the works it contained.
Barnaby flicked to its first page, then further into the text, searching for the start of the play itself. After a few pages of introduction and author's notes, he found the list of characters and actors portraying them. And then, the play itself, spare words and letters, patiently awaiting metamorphosis on the stage: voices and bodies, grace and movement, blood and bone.
The Young Syrian: "How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!"
The Page of Herodias: "Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things."
"Truer words never spoken," Barnaby whispered, sliding his finger down the page.
The Young Syrian: "She has a strange look. She is like a little princess who wears a yellow veil, and whose feet are of silver. She is like a princess who has little white doves for feet. You would fancy she was dancing."
The Page of Herodias: "She is like a woman who is dead. She moves very slowly."
"Well, I wouldn't say that." With a snap, Barnaby slammed the covers of the volume together, sliding it back to its home on the shelf. "A woman looking for something dead is quite right, I'd say."
"Tom? Do you have the plastic down yet?"
With his breakfast finally settling, Barnaby readied himself for Joyce's first appointed project: touching up the paint in the back room. It looked out onto the back garden, and most afternoons the sun gleamed through the windows, dancing across the armchairs and pillows and cream-colored paint, illuminating the tiny patchy streaks in the first layer. His first task was to shift the furniture to the center of the room; there wasn't enough to empty the place. Next, he lay down the plastic tarp (when they first moved, he had bought too many meters, so squirreled them in the garage), taping it to the baseboards at the bottom of the wall.
Have to work quickly, he thought, the pale tape already peeling back from the wood. Popping the lid from the new tin of paint and sliding it to the farthest corner of the plastic—he hadn't held out any hope that the original paint he used had lasted—Barnaby stirred it with his paintbrush. As much as Joyce moaned about his handyman skills, he knew enough to seal the top edge of the tape with a layer of paint. After the first few minutes, he groaned as he stood, paint and brush in his hands. The last time he had painted was when they moved in, and over those years, he had forgotten how monotonous the process quickly became.
After a quarter of an hour or so, he fell into a rhythm, strokes flowing in the same direction, overlapping just as much as needed, fast enough to smooth out the lines left from the bristles. The sunshine rose higher on the wall as the morning wore on, his shadow beginning to hide a few patches of wall in need of touch ups. Joyce dropped in with a cup of tea for him around eleven, happy with his progress as she continued switching paintings round in the front room, wondering if now was the moment to switch the furniture round, too. ("I knew you could do it.")
Half eleven, with some of the second wall under way, Barnaby just heard a whisper of a knock on the front door. After a few seconds of silence, it came again. Bit odd on a Sunday morning, he thought, wiping his brush off against the inner edge of the paint can. "I'll get it," Joyce called.
"As you will." Loading the bristles again, Barnaby continued with his progress on that second wall. Once again, he was well pleased to have a shirt so old: the hems of his shirtsleeves were spattered with eggshell toned paint, despite rolling them up to his elbows.
He just heard the front door creak open, and then: "George! What on earth are you doing here?"
"Joyce..." Though muffled by several walls—well, the man was often soft-spoken, in any event—Barnaby recognized George Bullard's voice.
"You should have called and said you were coming. Whatever is it?" The front door squeaked again as it closed, and Barnaby scraped the excess paint on the rim of the jar again before balancing the wet bristles on the top.
"Not for—this."
"Ah..." Joyce stopped. "Is something wrong?"
"Is Tom around?"
Hmm? Barnaby dusted off his hands, wiping a few last spots of paint on his already stained shirt. He stepped around the drops on the plastic tarp, heading through the doorway into the small hallway to the foyer. There, in her own type of seen better days work clothes, Joyce was saying something else to George Bullard, the pathologist clad in a suit as he nearly always was. His tweed pants were neatly pressed, a like waistcoat over a white buttoned up shirt and black tie, with a matching suit coat over it all. So pristine, all ahead of slicing and sawing, sketching and noting: listening to the dead and their final stories.
"You don't usually make house calls," Barnaby said, both his wife and his friend turning to his voice. "Not really a part of your area of expertise."
Bullard shook his head, running a hand over the bare skin where hair had long ago vanished. "No, and I'm sorry, Tom, that I have to."
Joyce stepped back as Barnaby stepped forward, reaching for her hand, any paint be damned. Her fingers were cool in his own larger ones, like a chill had slithered down her arm through blood and bone. "What's happened?" she asked.
"What is it, George?"
"It's..." Bullard drew a deep breath before beginning anew. "It's your aunt, Tom."
Barnaby's heart throbbed, suddenly aching as it sped up. "Alice?" But why would Bullard be here, discussing a woman he had never met?...There's only one reason. "What..." His mouth ran dry, and his face had to be pale. "Is that it?" he managed, swallowing against his parched tongue.
The pathologist nodded slowly, dropping his gaze to his shoes and the pale carpet. "I'm afraid so. One of her neighbors rang the station, earlier this morning, after her newspaper wasn't picked up for a few days. And she didn't answer the door when they knocked."**
Barnaby coughed for a second, dropping his wife's hand. A half dozen questions already chased themselves round his mind, clawing over one another, scratching at the newborn grief, demanding attention. Answers. "Do you—know what happened?"
"I'll need to do a full examination, Tom, you know that. But, so long as things are in line with her medical records, I shouldn't need to perform a postmortem." He stopped again, meeting Barnaby's eyes. "I don't doubt it's her, but...I will still need a formal identification."
A formal identification. Standing at the window, the blinds opening, a pathology technician in scrubs folding back blue cloth destined for the incinerator or sterilization...all for a simple "yes" or "no". Over all these years as a detective, Barnaby had waited beside men, women, children barely at the end of their adolescence: some silent, some crying and inconsolable, some careless and impatient and desperate to return to their own lives. "Of course."
Beside him, he heard Joyce draw a shuddering breath, that sound he knew from all those years, the refusal to weep. Wrapping his arm around his wife's shoulder, he pulled her against his side, kissing her cheek, already clammy. "I can't believe it, Tom."
"I know."
"I—I thought she..."
The burning began in his own eyes, he said again, "I know."
"Tom"—Bullard took a small step forward—"I need one of you for—as soon as possible."
"Of—of course," Barnaby said, nodding as his heart beat even faster, his fingers unfeeling, unknown, unfamiliar. "I'll do that." Joyce...didn't need to see what such this sort of death transformed into, how the simplicity of such a natural end turned to something worse, something seared into the memory and imagination. For more than twenty-five years, he had protected his wife and daughter from the ugliest moments of the world, its darkness and contempt. There was no reason for this to be different.
"Tom—"
"No, Joyce, it's fine." He couldn't say the rest, but as the tightness slipped from his chest to his stomach, he knew. I need you to be here with Cully.
"Ah..." Bullard caught himself again. "I can give you a lift to the hospital—"
"No, that won't be necessary," Barnaby interrupted. "I'll be there later, this afternoon."
His friend nodded, letting out a sigh as he frowned. "I...truly am, sorry." Before Barnaby realized it, Bullard stepped forward, quickly pressing his arm around Barnaby's back, even as he still held Joyce at his side. It was only a moment—a brief second—but it cut through the chill and the ache. As he retreated, Bullard added, "Call my office line when you get there."
Nodding, Barnaby said, "Of course. Thank you for coming yourself, George."
"I wouldn't do anything else for a friend."
Bullard didn't wait for either of them to open the front door, letting himself out and closing the door hard enough that the knocker crashed against the wood a couple of times. Left alone in silence, Joyce let out a cough, that same sort of shuddering cough of someone desperate to hold in tears. "But..." She coughed again, deeper this time. "She looked so well, last time we visited."
"That was a month ago, though," Barnaby said, tugging Joyce toward the settee. "Just...sit down, for a few minutes at least, Joyce." It all felt so simple, suddenly. A month without visiting her, the aunt and great-aunt they all loved, just at the edge of the county past Newton Magna...He drove that distance most days when a nasty case presented itself. But a few hours at the weekend to visit...somehow, there was no time for that.
"But..." She dropped onto the cushion as he unwrapped his arm, staring across the room for a moment, her hands falling to her side. "But she can't—can't be..."
"I know, Joyce." Leaning down, he kissed her again. "I'm just going to try to get hold of Cully." He stepped away from her, towards the phone on the side table behind the settee.
"Should you just go collect her?" she asked, her voice newly hollow in a way he hadn't heard for years. Like...there was something empty.
"I'd rather not leave you." Lifting the receiver, he punched the first few digits, then tapped the switch with his index finger; one of the numbers was incorrect. "If she'll answer," he muttered, beginning the number again. As it rang through—shrill and sharp—Barnaby heard his hopes running through his thoughts. Please answer, Cully. I don't want you to come home and— He cut off that idea. Again and again, it rang, until the tone clicked off.
"'Hi, you've reached Cully Barnaby and I can't answer your call.'" As the remainder of the message continued, Barnaby sighed. Of course. But, perhaps this was an unanswered phone call he could not fault, for Cully was out, at the weekend, not expecting any phone calls. Not— The tone to leave a voicemail pierced through his thoughts, and he stood up straighter.
"Cully—" He had to stop again, not wanting his words to break. "Cully, it's me. Call us at home as soon as you can." He pulled in a deep breath. "Please." Dropping the receiver back on the hook, he let that same breath out. How was something so inevitable so...hard? Death would come to everyone, no denials to be had. He had watched it claim his parents more recently than comfort allowed remembrance—was there ever enough time and distance?—and, a few months before their marriage, Joyce's great-grandmother. Tears all around, certainly, but there had always been a tinge of...relief, happiness at release and peace, the end of suffering. Somehow, this was...odd, different ("Tom?"), something entirely new ("Tom?") and vicious.
"Tom!"
"Hmm?" A hand touched his shoulder. "What?"
"Do...Can I make you a cup of tea?" Joyce asked, just behind him.
"Uh—yes, please," Barnaby said quietly.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Just a few minutes."
As his wife walked into the kitchen, he finally collapsed into a chair himself. God, the noise in his head was already too much. A funeral to organize, an identification to make, other relatives to notify...Barnaby already felt the throbbing beneath his skull, everything there was to do. It wasn't that he was the only family member she had, just that he was now the closest. Physically and emotionally. When his mother died several years earlier—Cully had just started secondary school—Alice had stepped in, not as a new mother, but someone who called, asked, cared, treated his daughter as more than a great-niece but more like...a granddaughter. A person whom his daughter finally came to love, visit, and embrace rather as she had her grandmother.
The phone remained silent, refusing to reveal a return call, so Barnaby stood, returning to the phone. Pressing the redial button on the dial pad, he gritted his teeth through the electric tune of her mobile number, then the ringing again...again...again...again...and again. And again, the start of her voicemail message. "'Hi, you've reached—'" He slammed the receiver onto the switch before her cheery voice finished; if she had yet to hear the first, a second would make no difference. Even before the stinging of those rings left his ear, he heard Joyce coming back into their front room, undoubtedly with tea. The mug shook as she handed it to him, milky tea rippling from edge to edge. "Tom, just go get her," she said quietly. "Go get Cully."
Barnaby refused to remove his hand from the bottom of the mug, though it remained burning hot and his fingers twitched from the heat. "Are—are you—"
"Yes." As she walked around the front of the settee, sitting beside of him, she drew everything in together, pressing her knees together, her elbows against her things, clutching her mug with her palms. "I'll be fine. I think she would rather you do that than...anything else."
Barnaby brought the first mouthful of sweet tea to his mouth, a myriad of thoughts cascading over him. So many years ago, when his own mother had died, Cully had arrived home after an evening's studying with a friend...to a home already in mourning, laughing as she closed the front door. In that one moment, as she peered around the front room with her happiness silenced, he felt what he knew was writhing in her chest: confusion, loss, and the beginning of pain that might need a lifetime to ease. Taking another sip of tea—not wanting to ask anything new—Barnaby asked quietly, "You're sure?"
Joyce nodded, her own tea untouched. "Yes, I promise—"
The phone interrupted his wife, unexpected and unhappy. Not waiting, Barnaby set his tea on the side table as he stood, dashing around the settee's arm. Grabbing the receiver rather faster than normal, Barnaby brought it to his face. "Hello?"
"Dad?" Cully asked. "What is it?"
Though he heard the smack of the bat against the ball, the murmur of voices, an echo of applause, he still asked, "Where are you, Cully?"
"At the cricket pitch in Causton, of course. Why?"
There's no good way to do this, he thought. But you have to. "I think you need to come home."
"Why?" She said something muffled, like someone asked her a question and she covered the mouthpiece of her phone to answer. "Is something wrong?" she went on, her voice now clear.
For an unknown time that day, Barnaby took a deep breath, readying himself for...well, he had no idea what to expect; as the minutes went on, his own mind was confused, almost torn apart. "It's Aunt Alice—"
"Did something happen?" Now it wasn't muffled, but her voice was distant; perhaps her face was turned away. "Sorry, Gavin, it's Dad—"
"Cully, please come home." She had to know, but he couldn't just...tell her, like this, a voice over the phone. Words—not a person, not a mother and father—destroying a part of her family...he couldn't.
"Dad—" She stopped speaking, that same catch in her throat he heard from his wife. Just like her mother.
"Please, Cully," he said quietly, tightening his fingers around the phone receiver, sweatier as each second passed. "We need you here."
* Yes, this is clearly channeling their conversation from "Written In Blood". Not ashamed to revisit it, I think this gives insight into their relationship.
** I did do some research on notifying first of kin in the UK, but I acknowledge there are probably some errors. My knowledge of this sort of thing comes from a very different part of the world.
A/N: As a US citizen, I am appalled and horrified by my government's response to what are peaceful protests and expressions of anger against centuries of oppression and exploitation, and disgusted at so many people refusing to acknowledge their inevitable complicity in this system, because it is so deeply ingrained. Stay safe, stay informed, racism is evil, love your neighbor whomever that is, closets are where people die, acknowledge your privilege if you have it (I definitely do), BLACK LIVES MATTER.