The Killings at Badger's Drift Read Online Free PDF

Black Boy pub, a phone box and a very large and beautiful Georgian house. This was painted a pale apricot colour and almost smothered on one side by a vast magnolia. Behind the house were several farm buildings and two huge silos. The post office was a two-up two-down, no doubt suitably fortified, called Izercummin, which doubled as the village shop.
    Barnaby turned into the main leg of the T. Church Lane was not as long as the Street and ran very quickly into open country - miles and miles of wheat and barley bisected at one point by a rectangular blaze of rape. The church was thirteenth-century stone and flint, the church hall twentieth-century brick and corrugated iron.
    As Barnaby strolled along he felt more and more strongly that he was being watched. A stranger in a small community is always an object of keen interest and he had seen more than one curtain twitch as he passed by. Now, although the lane behind him appeared to be deserted, he felt a spot of tension develop at the base of his neck. He turned. No one. Then he saw a rainbow of light bobbing near his feet and looked up. In the loft window of an opulent bungalow close to the Black Boy a prism of light flashed and a face turned quickly away.
    Miss Bellringer lived in a small modern house at the end of the lane. Barnaby walked up the narrow path of pea shingle encroached by a tangle of luxurious vegetation. Rhododendrons, laurel, hypericum, roses all running amok in all directions. On the front door was an iron bull’s head and a notice in a clear plastic envelope which read KNOCK LOUDLY. He knocked loudly.
    Immediately a voice yelled: ‘Don’t do that!’ There was a heavy bang as if a piece of furniture had fallen over, a shuffling sound, and Miss Bellringer opened the door. She said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s Wellington. Do come in.’
    She led the way into a cluttered sitting room and started to pick up a pile of books from the floor. The chief inspector crouched to help. All the books were very heavy. ‘They will climb, you see. I don’t know who first put the idea about that cats are sure footed. They can never have owned one. He’s always knocking stuff about.’
    Barnaby spotted Wellington, a solid cat the colour of iron filings, with four white socks, on top of a grand piano. The name seemed apt. He had a face like an old boot, squashed in, tuckered and rumpled. He watched them re-stacking the books. He looked secretive and ironical. A cat who was biding his time.
    ‘Please’ - Miss Bellringer waved an arm, just missing a group of photographs - ‘sit down.’
    Barnaby removed a pile of sheet music, a painted terracotta duck and a tin of toffees from a wing chair and sat down.
    ‘Well, Chief Inspector . . .’ She sat opposite him on a Victorian love seat and clasped her knees (she was wearing copper-coloured knickerbockers), ‘What’ve you found out?’
    ‘Well,’ echoed Barnaby, ‘there was certainly something troubling your friend.’
    ‘I knew it!’ She slapped a brocaded thigh, sending up a little puff of dust. ‘What did I tell you?’
    ‘Unfortunately there seems to be no way of discovering what it was.’
    ‘Tell me what happened.’
    As Barnaby described his meeting with Terry Bazely he glanced around the room. It was large and crammed from floor to ceiling with books and ornaments, dried flowers and plants. Three of the shelves held old Penguin crime classics with the green and white covers. There was a huge primitive stone head in the fireplace, magnificent Quad and Linn high-fidelity equipment, and a Ben Nicholson, festooned with cobwebs, hanging near the french windows.
    ‘And what do we do now?’ She gazed at him, clear-eyed and expectant, sitting forward on the very edge of her seat, ready for anything.
    Barnaby found he was resenting her confidence. She seemed to regard him in the light of a conjuror. But his feelings about the case (if case there proved to be) were vague and nebulous. He had no rabbit to produce. He was