Chapter 55: Rubbernecking

As the kettle boiled on the counter behind him, Barnaby flipped to the next page of the newspaper, ignoring the hissing. Halfway in, the stories were rapidly shortening, with even the opening of the new Scottish Parliament venue the prior day hardly earning a few paragraphs*. A few minutes after nine, breakfast was being laid at a leisurely pace, though not quite the usual English breakfast of a Sunday morning. Peering over the top edge of the Causton Echo, Barnaby let out a quiet sigh, just catching sight of one of Joyce's jam jars, purple peeking out from beneath the white parchment tied over top, behind the hand scrawled label. He'd hoped they had been shoved to the back of the cupboard, half forgotten. "Well, I suppose we can't have everything in life."

"Did you say something, Tom?"

"Uh, no," he muttered, turning to the next page. Ceramic or china clattered a few feet from where he sat at the kitchen table, probably his wife removing the lid of the tea pot and popping a few tea bags in ahead of a rolling boil.

"Anything much of interest?"

The paper crinkled in his hands as he turned to the next page. "In life, always."

"You know what I meant," Joyce said, touching his shoulder.

Barnaby laughed quietly. "Anything that will have me hauled into the office with Troy this afternoon, you mean?"

"More or less."

"Doesn't look like it," he said, his gaze drifting to the small headline over the next column. "A nice quiet few days."

"Sounds a good change of pace, after all that mess at Devington School."

"Yeah." Another turn of the page. "A hit and run in Midsomer Deverell, a boating accident down south, and..." As the hissing grew even louder, Barnaby had to read the next headline twice.

"What is it?"

"Out in Ferne Basset," he said quietly. "One of the local Catholic parishioners discovered Mother Teresa's face burnt into a slice of toast."

"I thought it was too early for something like that."

Closing the Echo and folding it before tucking it onto the far corner of the table, he added, "Apparently God works in mysterious ways."

"So it would seem," she said as the kettle clicked off.

As the tea sat to steep, Barnaby helped his wife finish setting out the breakfast items: milk and sugar, toast and butter to pair with the medlar jelly, small glasses for the new carton of orange juice and fruit salad from Tesco. He checked his watch again. "Odd, Cully's usually about by now."

"I don't know." Joyce settled the small teapot in the middle of the table, checking the temperature of the flowered china with her palm. "I know she was studying yesterday evening."

"I thought she was ready to go with that."

"She said she's thinking about changing— Oh." She looked toward the front room, the tattoo of footsteps echoing from the stairs that cut through it. "You should probably just ask her yourself."

Their daughter ducked into the kitchen, her hair rumpled like she had only taken a brief second to drag a comb through it, yawning behind her hand. "Sorry," Cully said quietly, still tugging at the bottom hem of her blue jumper.

"Not at all," Barnaby said, passing the first two teacups over to his daughter. "It's hardly oversleeping ahead of the workday."

"I suppose," she agreed, still scrubbing at her eyes.

"You might want to remind Troy about that one the next time you talk with—"

"Tom."

"How was the cinema last night, Mum?" One of the teacup's handles clinked against a plate as she turned away from him, speaking louder. His eyes narrowed as she straightened it, twisting one of the other ones round as well.

"Nothing much to write home about," Joyce said, pouring the first cup from the teapot as Barnaby set the final rosy patterned cup by his own plate.

"You're being very polite, Joyce."

"Oh?" Cully asked, opening the refrigerator and reaching for the unopened liter of juice, twisting the tiny plastic lid from the spout.

"One coincidence after another, all chained together into a plot."

His daughter laughed quietly, pouring the first glass. "So just what you like?"

With each of their cups filled with tea, Joyce returned the pot to the center of the table. "I think it's more that your father wasn't interested in the plot."

"I wouldn't go that far—"

"Then who was the protagonist, Dad?"

He scowled. "Don't you start."

The table laid, the half-emptied carton of juice and clamshell of cut fruit returned to the refrigerator, the Barnaby household sat down to their laid-back Sunday morning breakfast. As Joyce recalled some of the silliest moments of the previous evening's film ("For someone in love, he didn't seem to remember her very much." "That doesn't sound pleasant, Mum."), Barnaby held his tongue, his gaze lingering on his daughter, trying to pin down...something.

Though he hadn't said anything, even to Joyce, a new gloominess was bubbling in Cully's mind, Barnaby was certain. She'd hardly said a word to him the other day, her nose buried in a book, perhaps finally the Playhouse selection she'd been so eagerly awaiting to put on an audition. More than that, though, was the unhappiness clinging to her. When they passed one another in the corridor yesterday afternoon, her few short words had been flat and quiet, and her hug listless. Nothing like...a week ago, even a few days ago, if he was honest.

Now as she asked Joyce how the film compared with the Shakespeare play buried long in its written past ("Didn't they say it was already remade from something French?") whilst taking a first sip of her milky tea, her gaze occasionally wandered, staring at nothing in particular. As it had been doing more and more for the past few days, like she was caught up in her own thoughts that she wasn't quite ready to share. And—perhaps it was his imagination, perhaps it was the time and the morning's first cup of tea—she looked rather tired, the bluish tint still painted beneath her eyes. Then her eyes: even across the table, Barnaby could observe they were slightly puffy. And after so many years of watching rehearsals, the wearing week before every opening, and the long hours during the run, he had grown used to seeing her quite tired. But somehow, this reminded him a different time and moment he rarely saw in her, even if that the moodiness of adolescence and secondary school had faded into a general trend toward sharpness. Rather like when she had broken up with the first boyfriend they had ever been privy to. But—no, it was almost as though she had been crying, surely not much, yet...she cleared her throat, turning away for a second.

The more he thought and considered and remembered, Barnaby had to wonder. There had been a happiness in her demeanor a week or so before that had faded over the past few days for some reason he couldn't quite know. She was clearly awaiting a decision by the committee—but had been doing so for some time and just as her mother, was wont to fill her spare time with activities around Causton, like her volunteering for the library over the last few months, whenever her rehearsals and shows had allowed for it. What, then, is different? Barnaby asked himself, gritting his teeth as he already knew the answer. I did try to warn you, Cully.

"Oh, Cully, how was...Gemma, you said?" Joyce asked, spooning a scoop of the fruit salad from its ceramic dish.

Cully looked up from her tea. "Hmm?"

"You said you were going to call her last night, didn't you?"

Gemma? Barnaby thought. "Who?" he muttered to his wife.

Cully answered instead. "Just...a friend from university, Dad, from when I was studying art history."

"That's a while back." He finally took a bite of his own breakfast, an acidic streak running through the jelly.

"I told you, I saw her last week."

"Right," he said quietly. It had slipped his mind, he had to admit. "And?"

"And what?"

"How was she?"

He didn't miss Cully's eyes shifting away from him, or the moment she took before answering. "I didn't realize, until...I don't have her number anymore."

"Sorry to hear that," he said.

Cully shook her head, taking another small sip of tea as she settled back in her chair. Barnaby had to squint in the sharp sunshine, still rather low in the sky as it gleamed through the windows. "I spent—most of the evening studying lines instead."

"That new play you've been looking at?" Joyce asked, spooning a mound of the glistening medlar jelly onto her own toast.

She looked down again, wrapping both of her hands around the warm cup. "Well, it's not new, but yes."

The new play, eh? Barnaby thought. "Hmm?"

"The Murder Room, Tom. We saw it years and years ago."

He let out a quite snort, taking a bite of the fruit salad, clearing the flavor the medlar. "Sounds a bit on the nose for the Playhouse to select in Midsomer."

"It's not that, Dad," Cully said quietly. "I still don't think they've decided."

"Oh?"

"Or at least I haven't heard, yet...It's a new monologue."

The gaps between her words were growing, Barnaby noted: she wanted to keep something to herself. As good an actress as she was on the stage—and she could be quite impressive—he had long ago noted that, sometimes, her attempts at niceties and spurious words that smoothed things over without a full falsehood sometimes failed, at least in day to day life. Perhaps it was not knowing how to hold back her own opinions? "Didn't you already have that other one in hand?" he asked, finally choosing a gulp of juice rather than another mouthful of the acrid jelly. He still appreciated his wife's attempts and adventures in the kitchen, yet so often...well, it hardly mattered, did it, after learning to live with it for so many years. "The one on wishing?"

"Yes, but..." There it was again, the hesitation giving way to silence as she chose another mouthful of tea rather than finishing her thought.

"Is something wrong?" Joyce asked.

"No, I just—don't think it would be right, for a comedy."

A comedy? Barnaby thought. All she's said is that it might be Salomé. Hardly a comedy. "They're going with something lighter than the rumors would have it?"

Another pause before she cleared her throat again. "I know only mentioned it the once, but there's that production of Noises Off, coming up in Cambridge."

Barnaby dug through his memory, just recalling her mention of it, hardly more than a blip in a conversation over dinner. Beyond her thoughts on it, he didn't remember if she'd said much more. He reached for his tea, just letting the two women at the table talk.

"I remember. You said the auditions were starting shortly."

"The weekend after next—on Saturday."

"That's quite quick, Cully," Joyce said, resting her elbow just on the table's curved edge, propping her chin onto her hand. "Weren't you going to wait to see what the committee chose?"

"I thought so, but..."

"Yes?"

Cully took another bite of toast, dropping the final corner back onto her plate, lingering instead over her tea. "I can't wait forever, can I?" she finally said, tapping her fingers along the handle of the cup. "When I could be doing something else."

"I suppose not," Barnaby said.

No, Barnaby was certain now even as she began to outline the plot and characters, their dual roles and natures: this wasn't the wait for the committee to at last make a decision. She had rested longer between productions in London and Cambridge and Perth and...cities he couldn't remember any longer. No, it was something far different and now something else was nagging in his memory. That night so soon after Aunt Alice died—it couldn't have even been two weeks—as he finally sat in his study reading over all the reports and notes Troy had dutifully compiled, when her unhappiness was still raw...It wasn't just Aunt Alice, that much had been clear. Before, she had always stepped between Troy and him, ready to protect the younger man from his words and worries over her—his own daughter. In that second, she had lobbed her own frustrated words and barbs when, if anything, his sergeant was deserving of thanks. And then, her quiet question, remembering her great aunt's advice...What was it she had said? He couldn't remember precisely, but really it had been on balance, honesty against nicety, sounding just like she did now, considering what she said against something—someone?—completely different.

Between them, Joyce and Barnaby asked their daughter a couple more questions about the new audition she was choosing—pleased to hear she still had a friend or two in Cambridge who might let her stay the night—before the conversation turned back to him and a week without many cases to occupy his mind. And, letting Troy take the lead on their current mess, when their rare peaceful week in southeastern England was accounted for, he'd had few immediately pressing matters on his desk, instead digging through a pile of cold cases, murders from a few years ago. Barnaby left it at that, not wanting to bring the gruesome details into what was still a pleasant family meal; after all, it was polite company.

In the pleasant aftermath of breakfast—through the remaining conversation and increasingly tepid tea—Barnaby volunteered himself and Cully for the washing up. ("Only fair," he said, kissing his wife.) The jam jar was still there in its prime spot on the table as they cleared the first of the dishes, the jellied fruit undecided if it was actually a brownish purple rather than the shade of a black currant sweet.

Medlar...Meddler...Sliding the plates beneath the trickle of water as it warmed to rinse the worst of the rubbish down the drain, that pair of words still echoed in his mind. Those medlars Joyce had pitted over an afternoon—plucked from the branches young and unblemished—kept still and safe, under wraps until the rot had set in. A blossom on a tree—probably as lovely as any other they kept in the back garden, he mused—transformed by time into something soft and marked, before...What had Joyce said, it had to go rotten before anything came of it? And the meddler, the one constantly fiddling, bruising it at every turn rather than allowing it to run its own course?

"Dad?" He shook his head as the words vanished. "Dad?"

"Yes?"

"You've rinsed that plate three times."

The water was steaming as it poured from the tap and she was correct: that one single plate was clean, the others in the small stack still waiting. "Yes," he muttered, finally plugging the drain, adding a few drops of soap as the basin began to fill.

For a few minutes, the conversation fell to nothing, the silence only broken by the clatter of dishes and cutlery against each other, Barnaby handing the clean dishes to his daughter as she wiped them with an increasingly damp tea towel. "Are you still thinking about them?" she asked, tucking the first stack of plates onto the pile in the cupboard.

"Hmm?"

"Those old cases you were looking over while...Gavin was working on all those burglaries."

"What about them?"

"Just, they sounded rather horrible." She paused, glancing down at the forks and knives she was now drying. "And I know there must have been more than what you said."

It was something he had grown inured to over the years, the violence meted out over the years. "There've been worse on my desk," he said, moving on to the teacups. These were always handled with care in the Barnaby home, inherited long ago from Joyce's grandmother.

"Even so..."

"Time helps with some of the ugliness." He handed her the first cup, and Cully took it with a cautious hand. Many years ago—maybe even before she had been tasked with the chore of drying plates and cutlery—one had slipped out from her small fingers, crashing and shattering before anyone had a chance to notice. Even after a thorough sweeping, the shards had reappeared for weeks.

"I suppose." She gently set that first dry teacup on the cleared table before taking the next he handed her. She had tried to handle things with care since.

"It does dull things."

"Even in a murder case?" she asked, glancing at him.

Barnaby nodded. "Even in a murder case." Those photographs—old and worn, the edges nothing like he quality he expected today—and reports—clinical and flat, a list of facts that hardly belied the death of a young woman—had stirred a sadness within him, but nothing like looking at a fresh case with a devastated family worn through with new grief and sorrow. "Gives everything time to settle. Good for the pain, if not for the case."

"That's the one advantage, isn't it?"

It was something rough, perhaps harsh to hear. "Perhaps," he said quietly, the last of the teacups finally clean and ready to be dried. "So your new monologue, you said it's going well?"

Her eyes fell to that final cup, wiping the edges a little too carefully. "Yes..."

"You don't sound too certain."

"I've only started on it, if I'm honest."

As he pulled the plug from the drain and the soapy water began to swirl away, Barnaby said, "I just didn't know you'd chosen something else. I thought you were happy with—that other one."

"It was only a couple days ago."

Quite, he thought, drying his hands on another tea towel. It was, perhaps, one of many new things running through her mind, something under deepest consideration, still waiting to be fully elucidated. As for the others—indicated with the tiny words and gestures, the little pauses he suspected his daughter didn't notice—well, Barnaby couldn't quite put his finger on them, precisely pin them down, even if he had his thoughts that wouldn't go away. But the suspicions still nagged at him as if Troy— He shook his head again, trying not to think about…

"Everything all right, Cully?" he finally asked, slipping his arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer, as much for himself, if he was honest. He doubted he would get much out of her, not if it was something she would prefer to hold to herself.

"Nah," she said quietly. "Just...trying to get things in hand, that's all."

"Shall I go through it with you?" he asked, loosening his grasp on her shoulder.

Cully smiled. "Later this afternoon?"

"I will hold you to that."

As the hours wore over to the afternoon, Barnaby passed the time doing some of the final work of the year in the back garden. The final blossoms were plucked, the wildest shrubs beaten back, and, along with the browning leaves from the trees dangling their limbs into the lawn, raked into a mound to deal with at a later moment. At first sweating beneath his windbreaker, he'd tossed that onto one of the chairs on the patio, finishing the rest in his long sleeve shirt. The sun had crested in the sky when he returned the rake and shears to their homes before checking his watch: a few minutes past one.

Heading back inside, quietly to not disturb either Cully or Joyce in the front room, he retreated to the kitchen, washing his hands before reaching into the cupboard for a glass. After his spell outside, his throat was parched. At least it had been a welcome time to think on other things, even if Cully's answer to his wife's question ("I can't wait forever.") had really left him with even more to ask, not more answers.

He heard a couple gentle taps on the door frame from the front room, glancing up at them. "I hardly heard you come in, Dad," Cully said, leaning against the wall with her script clutched beneath her crossed arms and her mobile in her right hand.

"You both looked a little busy," he said after swallowing the final gulp of cool water, soothing his throat.

"It's never stopped you before."

Barnaby smiled: one of her little barbs he had been missing the past few days. "How's your reading going?"

She left the wall, taking a few steps closer. "Fine, really. But do you have a while now, Dad?"

"Oh yes, of course," he said, setting the glass by the sink, just spotting a few dark smudges from his fingers. "Coffee while we do?"

"Sure," she said, just a small smile breaking.

After refilling the kettle with fresh water and setting it to boil, then adding a couple scoops of ground coffee to the cafetière, they sat around the table again. She handed the short script to him after setting her mobile in front of her place—before grabbing it again, slipping it into a back pocket. An odd thing, Barnaby thought as he flipped the script to its title page, then cast and setting, taking a quick glance at the names and places and times. Unlike Troy and himself—or at least, usually unlike Troy—Cully often did not have her mobile to hand. When she was out, always, but around the house? Most often not.** And then to tuck it away, out of sight? Odd indeed.

He just heard the kettle click off and the scrape of his daughter's chair legs on the floor. "I'll get it," she said, standing and taking the few short steps to the counter. He tried not to watch her, but even beneath her bulky jumper, her shoulders were low and...What?

Flipping to the pages she had marked, Barnaby muttered, "Thank you," although his mind was still on that question as the water bubbled through the spout: why have it, and why hide it away?

"So Mum said you've seen it?"

"I'd take her word for that."

"She did say it was a long time ago. I suppose you're to be forgiven if you don't know the plot anymore."

He laughed for a second. "I never did, Cully." She placed the cafetière in the center between them, rather where the pot of tea had sat a few hours before, his eyes still racing over the words at the top of the page. "So she shoots her husband three times, does she?"

Cully shrugged, opening one of the cabinets for two mugs. "Apparently she wanted to do a thorough job."

"She wouldn't be the first," he said, turning the page back to the start of the text his daughter had selected.

"I'm sure not," she said quietly.

* I don't know if this was the reaction, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was and it amused me.

** Or at least that's how I remember it being in 2004.

A/N: For shits and giggles after a horrified reaction from my aunt that I'd written something 190,000+ words long that isn't done, I looked some things up...Assuming no one has skipped ahead, y'all have read something about as long as The Goblet of Fire that's neither done nor as good (J.K. Rowling's apparent deterioration as a human being aside). I'm so sorry! I'm sure it wouldn't be this long if I'd had a set plot from the beginning...