"No idea we'd found a body, or no idea there was a body to find?" asked McLoughlin.

She digested the implications of this for a moment. "No idea there was one, of course," she snapped, eyeing him with dislike. She calmed her breathing with a conscious effort and tightened her lips into their customary thin lines. She addressed herself to Walsh. "I now understand your interest in Daniel's shoes," she told him. A small tic had started above her lip. "You are a.s.suming they are connected in some way with this body you've found."

"Perhaps," he said guardedly.

A gleam of triumph showed in her eyes. "Yet this tramp you've found has proved they can't be. You say he spent the night of the twenty-seventh in the-what did you call it?"

"Ice house."

"In the ice house. I a.s.sume he wouldn't have stayed if the dead body had been there, too, so he must have abandoned the shoes before the body ever got there." She seemed to relax slightly. "I cannot see a connection, merely a bizarre coincidence."

"You're absolutely right," agreed Walsh. "In that sense, there is no connection."

"Then why have you been asking me questions?"

"The bizarre coincidence led us to the tramp, Mrs. Thompson, and to some interesting facts about you and your husband. We can prove he was alive in this house two days after you reported him missing and well outside the time for which you'd provided yourself with an alibi. Mr. Thompson has not been seen since, and a week ago we were presented with an unidentifiable body, corresponding to his description and less than four miles away. Frankly, we can make out an excellent case against you for the murder of your husband on or after the twenty-eighth of May."

The tic came faster. "It can't be Daniel's body."

"Why not?" demanded McLoughlin.

She was silent, gathering her thoughts.

"Why not?" he pressed.

"Because I had a letter from him about two weeks ago." Her shoulders slumped and she started to weep again. "It was a beastly letter, telling me how much he hated me and what a bad wife I'd-"

McLoughlin cut her short. "Will you show us the letter, please?"

"I can't," she sobbed. "I burnt it. He'd written such vile things."

There was a knock on the door and one of the uniformed policemen came in. "We've been through the house and garden, sir." He shook his head at Walsh's questioning look. "Nothing yet. There's still this room to do and Mrs. Thompson's cases. They're locked. We'll need the keys."

The little woman grabbed her handbag and held it to her middle. "I will not give you the keys. You will not search my cases. They contain my underwear."

"Fetch me a WPC," instructed the Inspector. He leaned towards Mrs. Thompson. "I'm sorry, but you've no choice in the matter. If you prefer it, I will ask the WPC to bring the cases in here and you may watch while she examines the contents." He held out his hand. "The keys, please."

"Oh, very well," she said crossly, delving into her handbag and producing two small keys tied together with a white ribbon. "Personally, I think the whole thing's outrageous. I intend to make a strong complaint to the Chief Constable."

Walsh wasn't surprised she objected to having her underwear scrutinised. Pieces of filmy black lacework, more at home in a brothel, he would have thought, than in the luggage of this drab, boring woman, were held up for inspection. But a truth he had discovered during his career was that some of the unlikeliest women possessed attractive lingerie. His own wife was a case in point. She had come to bed every night of their married lives in silks or soft satins, with only him to appreciate the effect. And for a long time he had appreciated it and done his best to show it, before years of indignant rejection had taught him that Mrs. Walsh did not don her lingerie for his benefit but for some private delight of her own. And he had long since given up trying to discover what that was.

The WPC shook her head as she re-locked the cases. "Nothing there, sir."

"I did tell you," said Mrs. Thompson. "Heaven knows what you think you're looking for."

"Your handbag, please."

She relinquished it with a moue of disgust. The constable emptied the contents carefully on to the coffee table, felt the soft leather bag for anything hidden in the lining, then sorted through the various objects. She glanced enquiringly at Walsh. "Seems OK, sir."

He gestured to her to return everything to the bag. "Would you rather wait outside while we search this room?" he asked Mrs. Thompson.

She settled herself deeply into her chair, gripping the cushion beneath her as if she expected to be wrestled from it. "I would not, Inspector."

As the search got underway, Walsh returned to the questioning. "You say you've had a letter from your husband. Why haven't you mentioned this before?"

She cringed away from him, tucking herself sideways into a tight ball in the chair. "Because I have only my pride left. I didn't want anyone to know how shamefully he's treated me." She dabbed at her dry eyes.

"What was the postmark?" asked McLoughlin.

" London, I think."

"Presumably the letter was handwritten," he mused. "He wouldn't have access to a typewriter."

She nodded. "It was."

"What sort of envelope?"

"She thought for a moment. "White," she told him.

McLoughlin laughed. "It won't wash, you know. You can't just keep pulling lies out of the hat and expect us to applaud your ingenuity. We'll check with your postman. In a place like this you'll have had the same postman for years, it's probably the chap who runs the little shop-c.u.m-post-office near the church. Your letters will have been a source of great interest to him in the last couple of months. He's probably scrutinised every one carefully in the hopes of being first with news of the errant Daniel. You won't persuade us your husband's still alive by dreaming up letters, Mrs. Thompson."

She glanced beyond him to where the woman constable was going through the sideboard. "Ask the postman, Sergeant. You'll find I'm telling you the truth." She spoke with sincerity, but the look in her eyes was as level and calculating as any he'd seen. "If only I'd known what was in your mind, I'd have told you about the letter the first time you came."

McLoughlin stood up and leaned over her, resting his hands on the arms of her chair. "Why were you so shocked to hear about the body at the ice house? If you know your husband's alive, it couldn't mean anything to you."

"This man's threatening me," she snapped at Walsh. "I don't like it." She cringed deep into the chair.

"Back off, Andy."

"With pleasure." Without warning, he hooked his hand under her arm and stepped back sharply. She popped out of the chair like a champagne cork, then wriggled and spat with ferocity. He clung on to a flailing arm, dodged a swipe from the other and felt warm spittle smear his cheek. "The chair, sir," he called. "She's hiding something."

"Got it."

McLoughlin took a grip on both her arms, arching his body away to avoid the kicking points of her shoes., "Come on, you sods," he shouted angrily at the two constables. "She's pulverising me. Who's got the handcuffs, for G.o.d's sake?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she screamed. "b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" She rolled another ball of spittle into her mouth and launched it at him. To his immense disgust, it caught his lip and dibbled inside.

The constables, galvanised out of frozen inactivity, snapped on the handcuffs and pushed the woman onto the sofa. She looked at McLoughlin's vain attempts to get rid of the venom and laughed. "Serves you b.l.o.o.d.y right. I hope you catch something."

"Looks like I've caught you," he said grimly. He turned to Walsh. "What is it?"

Walsh handed him a thin envelope. "She must have slipped it out of her bag when we were gawping at her blasted knickers." He chuckled good-humouredly. "Waste of time, dear lady. We'd have found it eventually."

McLoughlin opened the envelope. Inside were two aeroplane tickets, made out to Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, for a flight to Marbella that evening. "Where's he been hiding all this time?" he asked her.

"Go to h.e.l.l!"

"Mrs. Thompson! Mrs. Thompson!" exclaimed a shocked voice from the doorway. "Some control, I beg you."

She laughed. "Go and play with yourself, you silly little man."

"Is she mad?" asked the horrified Vicar.

"In a manner of speaking," said Inspector Walsh cheerfully.

21.

Anne laughed as McLoughlin told the story. Colour had returned to her face and lively enjoyment sparkled in her eyes. The only visible reminder that she'd been attacked was the brilliant red and white spotted scarf that she had tied, bandit-style, over her bandage. Against medical advice, she had discharged herself the day before, maintaining that five days in hospital was the absolute maximum that a sentient drug addict could tolerate. Bowing to the inevitable, Phoebe had brought her home after extracting a promise that she would do precisely as she was told. Anne gave the promise readily. "Just lead me to a cigarette," she said, "and I'll do anything you say."

What she didn't know was that Phoebe had also a.s.sumed responsibility for her safety. "If she leaves hospital, Mrs. Maybury, we won't be able to protect her," Walsh had pointed out, "any more than we can protect you. We simply haven't enough men to patrol Streech Grange. I shall be advising her to stay put in hospital, just as I've advised you to move out."

"Don't waste your breath, Inspector," Phoebe told him contemptuously. "Streech is our home. If we had to rely on you to protect us it wouldn't be worth living in."

Walsh shrugged. "You're a very foolish woman, Mrs. Maybury."

Diana, who was in the room with them, was incensed. "My G.o.d, you really are the pits," she snapped. "Two days ago you didn't believe a word Phoebe told you. Now, because Sergeant McLoughlin took the trouble to find some evidence, you tell her she's a fool for not running away on your b.l.o.o.d.y say-so. Well, let me tell you this, the only thing that's changed in the last two days is your mind." She stamped her foot in exasperation. "Why the h.e.l.l should we run away today when we didn't run away yesterday or the day before that? The danger's the same for G.o.d's sake. And who do you imagine has been protecting us all this time?"

"Who, Mrs. Goode?"

She turned her back on him.

"We've been protecting ourselves of course," said Phoebe coolly, "and we'll go on doing it. The dogs are the best safeguard we've got."

Anne was propped on pillows in her favourite armchair, her feet resting on Phoebe's tapestry stool, an old donkey jacket which pa.s.sed for a dressing-gown round her shoulders, a pencil stuck behind one ear. She was, McLoughlin thought, completely careless of other people's opinions. The message was simple: I am what you see; take it or leave it. He wondered if it came from supreme self-confidence or total indifference. Whatever it was, he wished he shared it. For his own part, he still felt the need of others' approval.

"So where is Mr. Thompson hiding?" she asked him.

"She wouldn't tell us, but it wasn't very difficult to find him. He turned up like a lamb, for the seven-thirty flight to Marbella."

"Skedaddling with the loot?"

McLoughlin nodded. Once caught and identified by Wally as the man in the shed, Daniel Thompson had offered to co-operate. The idea had come to them, he said, when they had found a book in the library describing the life of luxury enjoyed by British embezzlers on the Spanish riviera. Thompson's engineering business was on the decline and he had complained to his wife about the injustice of having to work his b.a.l.l.s off to keep it alive when other men, faced with the same problem, simply absconded with the capital and lived it up in the sun. The answer was simple, announced Mrs. T., they too would follow the sun. They had no dependants, she had never liked England, positively loathed East Deller where the community was worthy and stultifying, and she had no intention of spending the next ten years scrimping and saving to keep Daniel's business from going broke. "The most extraordinary thing," said Thompson reminiscently, "was how easy it was to persuade people to invest in transparent radiators. It just proved to me how much money and how little sense there is floating around in the South." He reminded McLoughlin of Arthur Daley.

"What do you make transparent radiators from?" he'd asked him curiously.

"Toughened, heatproof gla.s.s," said Thompson, "the same sort of stuff they use for those saucepans. The idea was to add dyes to the water in the expansion tank and watch them flow through the system."

"Mrs. Goode said it could have revolutionised interior design."

The saintly Daniel sighed. "That was the terrible irony of it all. I think she may have been right. I opted for the idea because while it was feasible te make the things, it was also absurd enough to make bankruptcy a likely possibility. Imagine my surprise when, without any publicity, it started to take off. By that time, of course, it was too late. To turn the business into a success then would have presented enormous difficulties. On top of which, Maisie-the wife"-he explained hopefully-"had set her heart on the Costa del Sol. Sad, really," he mused with a faraway look in his eyes. "They might well have made my fortune and we could have retired to the sun anyway."

"Why did you bother with the disappearing act? Why not simply pack up, both of you, and go?"

Mr. Thompson beamed. "Moonlight flits worry people," he said, "make them suspicious, and we didn't want the Spanish to take against us. They're not as easy-going as they used to be. While Maisie remained, everyone merely felt sorry for her for having married so weak and inept a man."

"So where have you been for the last two months?"

"East Deller," he said, as if surprised by the question, "until two nights ago when I went to a B & B so Maisie could pack up. Your visits were becoming a little too frequent for comfort."

"You were hiding in your own house?"

He nodded. "It was quite safe. Maisie phoned me at my hotel in London after the police had searched the house and garden the first time. I came home during the night of the twenty-sixth and lay low in the attic. We reckoned that was safer than my being on the loose with my description floating about."

"Wally saw you in the shed," McLoughlin pointed out.

"That was a mistake," he admitted. "We thought the shed would be the best hiding place because it would be easier to escape from if the police turned up unexpectedly. Of course it was also the easiest place for someone to walk into. Not that any normal person walking in would have mattered," he said without rancour. "Maisie had hidden me behind a stack of old boxes, no way I'd have been seen by a casual visitor." He tapped two pudgy forefingers together. "But the silly old fool was looking for a place to hide himself. I don't know who got the worse shock when he pulled the boxes aside, him or me."

"The police made two searches," McLoughlin said. "How did they miss you the second time?"

"Because we were expecting it. We worked out if the police made a surprise search and found nothing, they'd conclude I really had run away because of my business problems and abandoned Maisie to fend for herself. So Maisie made an anonymous phone call to stimulate another search. It was a nerve-racking two days waiting for it, but we were ready when it came. I simply hopped over the fence at the bottom of the garden and crouched in a bush in our neighbours' orchard until Maisie gave me the all-clear." He smiled amiably. He was, as Diana had described him, built like a tank. The smile split his chubby face into two half moons, the lower half pendulous with double chins. "After that we had no more trouble till you turned up with those shoes. Until then my disappearance had been a nine-day wonder."

McLoughlin acknowledged he was right. "You were taking a gamble, though. Neighbours must have been popping in all the time."

"Not after Maisie developed her wonderfully outrageous s.e.x mania," said Thompson. "The women kept coming for a few days out of kindness, but it's amazing how rapidly embarra.s.sment alienates people. Maisie should have gone on the stage, I've always said it. We got the idea of the attic from Anne Frank's diary," he volunteered.

"And she really didn't know about the body in the ice house? I find that extraordinary."

"It was a d.a.m.n nuisance," said Thompson, showing annoyance for the first time. "She couldn't be seen to change her habits. If she had rented a telly or started buying papers, people might have thought she was taking an interest again. Wrong image, do you see?"

McLoughlin nodded. "And no one told her because they were afraid the body was yours."

Daniel sighed. "Hoist with our own petard."

"Why did you leave it so long to fly out? You could have gone weeks ago."

"We were greedy," confessed Thompson. "We wanted the money from selling the house. You're talking over a quarter of a million pounds for a property like that. It was the icing on the gingerbread. The plan was for Maisie to become more and more depressed until the obvious solution was to sell the house and move somewhere smaller which had no memories for her. No one would have questioned it. If the truth be told, they'd have been relieved to see the back of her. Then, with the money safely under our belts, we were off on a ferry to France and from there to sunny Spain."

"And you were intending to use your own pa.s.sports?"

The other man nodded.

"You'd been reported missing, Mr. Thompson. You'd have been stopped."

"Oh, I don't think so, Sergeant," he said comfortably. "Six months on, brouhaha died down, hundreds of people on day trips, a middle-aged couple with a common name. What would they have against me anyway? My wife could testify I was no longer missing. And it's not as though there's a warrant out for my arrest, is there?" He c.o.c.ked his head on one side and considered the Sergeant with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"No," McLoughlin admitted.

"I was incompetent," said Thompson. "I admit it freely. But no one person lost very much money through my failure." He folded his hands across his plump stomach. "My employees have all found other jobs and the Inland Revenue has agreed to honour their National Insurance contributions which I so rashly-how shall I put it-'borrowed' to keep the business afloat." He winked outrageously. "I give credit to my number two for that. He's done all the negotiations on their behalf, or so Maisie tells me. Splendid chap, great organisational flair, full of integrity. He's sorted out the mess I made and wound up the business. Mind you, he's said some harsh words to Maisie on the phone, called me an amateurish bungler, but I don't hold it against him." He flicked a speck of dust from his jumper. "My investors took a gamble on me which was sadly misplaced, but they have cheerfully cut their losses and moved on to more lucrative ventures. I'm delighted. It saddened me to have failed them."

"Hang on," said McLoughlin sharply. "You didn't fail them, Mr. Thompson. You embezzled their money."