A Guilty Thing Surprised Part 16

'Sorry. It was just an idea.'

'And a very poor one. You may be a good teacher of English, Lionel, but you're a rotten detective.' Wexford smiled ruefully. 'Even worse than me,'he said, and he got up, wondering what Burden had found out in his absence.

Marriott remained sitting at the table for a moment but he caught Wexford up just as the chief inspector was crossing the bridge.

'I've remembered something,' he said, out of breath. 'Elizabeth used to send a h.e.l.l of a lot of parcels. Smallish brown-paper parcels. Often, when I've been up there in the daytime, I've seen a parcel on the hall table, but there was always a letter or two waiting for the post on top of it. Any use to you?'

'I don't know, but thanks all the sarne.'

'You're welcome, my dear,' said Marriott, turning to leave him. He looked back over his shoulder and added rather wistfully, 'Don't drop me, Reg, now you've squeezed me dry.'

'Even a copper needs friends,' said Wexford, and then he walked back up the High Street to the police station.

Burden was sitting at the rosewood desk eating a sandwich lunch.

'Clear out of it,' said Wexford crossly. 'You're making crumbs on my blotter.'

'You always make crumbs.'

'Maybe, but it's my blotter and, incidentally, my office.'

'Sorry, sir,' said Burden virtuously. 'I thought you'd gone on a pub crawl.'

Wexford gave an ill-tempered snort. He blew away the crumbs and sat down with dignity. 'Any news?'

'Not yet. No dice from either of the Newcastles. I've been on to Dublin.'

'You're wrong about one thing, Mike. Twohey didn't meet Mrs Nightingale in any forest. She sent his money to him in parcels. I don't know to what address but we could try asking Katje.'

Burden compressed his lips into a thin line.

'You've had your lunch,' said Wexford, 'so I suggest you get over there now.'

Burden groaned. 'Do I have to?' he said in an almost schoolboy voice, in the voice of his son.

'Are you joking?' Wexford roared. 'Are you out of your mind? She won't eat you.'

'It's not being eaten that I'm scared of,' said Burden. He screwed up his lunch paper, dropped it in the basket and went out, giving Wexford a glance of mock dismay.

There was nothing more for him to do now, Wexford reflected, but wait. He sent Bryant to the canteen to fetch him some lunch and after he had eaten it a great weariness overcame him. He decided to read to keep himself awake and, since the only reading matter he had to hand apart from a heap of reports he knew by heart was the book Denys Villiers had given him, he read that. Or, to put it more accurately, he read the first three paragraphs, only to nod off and nearly jump out of his skin when the phone bell shrilled.

'Try hardware shops,' he told his caller tiredly. 'Especially those which have changed hands in the past four years. He may have changed his name.'

With a spark of inspiration, he added, 'I'd be interested in any iron-

monger's shop called Nightingale's or, say, the Manor Stores.'

He returned to page one of Wordsworth in Love, flicked on to a family tree.

There, in strong black type, was the name, George Gordon Wordsworth. He had been, Wexford noted, the poet's own grandson. And this piece of information, already recorded in his newly published book, was what Villiers had led him to believe he had sought from the school library. The man had a weakness, then, the weakness of underrating his opponent.

It was nearly six before Burden got back.

'My G.o.d, you've been long enough.'

'She and Nightingale were out. Picnicking, I gather. I waited till they got back.'

'Could she remember the address on the parcels?'

'She says she only posted parcels of stuff Mrs Nightingale sent to Holland, except for last Tuesday, the day Mrs N. got killed. Then she posted two, one to her mother in Holland and another one. She never even looked at the address.'

Wexford shrugged. 'Well, it was worth a try, Mike. Sorry about your Sunday afternoon. I don't suppose you met with a fate worse than death, though, did you?'

'Nightingale was there all the time.'

'You make him sound,' said Wexford, 'like a nurse in a doctor's consulting room. Well, I'm going to Myfleet myself now just for another scout round that forest and maybe a talk with Mrs Cantrip. I'd advise you to go home.

They can put through any calls that come in.'

It might take days, it might take weeks, but eventually Twohey would be found. And then, Wexford thought as he drove past the King's School, he would talk. He would sit in Wexford's office, staring at the expanse of pale blue sky through the picture window as hundreds of unscrupulous villains had sat and stared before him, but, unlike most of them, he would have no reason to hold his tongue. A long term of imprisonment awaited him whether he spoke or kept silent. Probably he would be glad to talk to revenge himself on the dead woman and all her family, for no more money would come his way from that source.

And what would he say? That Villiers' love for his brother-in-law was of a kind that their narrow society couldn't condone? That Elizabeth had had a series of lovers young enough to be her own children? Or that, long ago, Villiers and Elizabeth had been concerned together in a criminal conspiracy?

Suddenly Wexford remembered the bombed house in which their parents had died. They were only children then, but children had been known to commit murder ... Two people buried under rubble but still alive, parents who were perhaps a stumbling block in the way of their children's ambition.

Certainly Villiers had benefited greatly from their deaths. His sister hadn't. Did the clue lie there?

Twohey would know. It was terribly frustrating to Wexford to think that perhaps Twohey was'the only person now alive who did know and that he was hidden away comfortably with his secret. And it might be days, it might be weeks ....

On to Myfleet. The church bells of Cl.u.s.terwell were ringing for Evensong and, as soon as their chimes died away behind him, he heard those of Myfleet ahead, eight bells ringing great brazen changes through the evening air.

There was a note pinned to Mrs Cantrip's front door: Gone to church. Back 7.30.

An invitation to burglars, Wexford thought, only he couldn't remember any burglary taking place in Myfleet for ten years. Its trees shrouded crimes of greater moment. He turned away, and the ginger cat, locked out among the flowers, rubbed itself against his legs.

Breathing in the scent of the pines that all day had been bathed in suns.h.i.+ne. Wexford entered the forest. The path he took was the path Elizabeth Nightingale had taken that night, and he followed it until he came to the clearing where Burden believed she had met Twohey and he believed-what?

Perhaps Burden was right again, after all. Those parcels might never have been posted but delivered by hand. She would hardly have carried such large sums of money loose in her handbag. Anyway, she hadn't had a handbag, only a coat and a torch ... He stared at the lichened log where she had sat. The sc.r.a.pe marks of four shoes were still apparent on the dry sandy ground and in the whorls of pine needles four s.h.i.+fting feet had made.

If her companion was Twohey-observed perhaps by Sean who misunderstood the purpose of their meetinghow had Twohey come? Over the black wooded hill from Pomfret? Or by the path that skirted the Myfleet cottage gardens and came out eventually-where? Wexford decided to explore it.

The church bells had stopped and the place was utterly silent. He walked between the straight narrow pine trunks, looking up sometimes at the patches of pale silvery sky, and sometimes from side to side of him into the forest itself which was so dark and, up to head height, so sterile, that no birds sang there and the only visible life was that of the midges which danced in swarms.

It was on account of the midges that he was glad when the trees to the left of him petered out and he found himself walking against the cottage fences. Presently, ahead of him, he heard a whisper of music. It was a sentimental treacly melody that he soon defined as belonging to the pop or dance-music order, and it reminded Wexford of those soft and faintly erotic tunes which had floated down to him from Katje Doorn's transistor.

just as he was thinking how pleasant and undemanding it sounded on this peaceful summer evening, it ceased and was succeeded by an appalling cacophony, the furious result of several saxophones, organs, drums and electric guitars all being played at once.

Wexford put his head over the fence and stared into the square plot of land, part wilderness and part rubbish dump, which was the Lovells'back garden. From the open kitchen window some fifty feet of electric lead stretched to the shed from which the noise emanated. Wexford backed a little, covering his a.s.saulted ears.

Then he took his hands down.

Inside the shed someone was speaking. The tone and timbre of the voice were unmistakable, its accent deliberately cultivated. Mid-Atlantic, Wexford decided.

With mounting curiosity, he listened.

Addressing his unseen, indeed non-existent, audience as guys and dolls', Scan Lovell, with smooth professional patter, made a short dismissive comment on the last piece of music and then, more enthusiastically, announced his next record. This time it was the effusion of a big band and it was even more discordant than the composition which had made Wexford cover his ears.

It stopped, Sean spoke again and, as he took in the full implication of his words, a shaft of intense pity pierced Wexford. Perhaps, he thought, there are few things so sad as eavesdropping on a man alone with his daydreams, a man indulging his solitary, private and ridiculous vice.

'And now,' said the disembodied voice, 'what you've all been waiting for. You've come a long way tonight and I can promise you you're not going to be disappointed. Here he is, boys and girls. Let's have a big hand for your own Scan Lovell!'

Unaccompanied, he began to sing. Wexford walked away, very delicately and softly for such a big man, his feet scarcely causing a crackle on the needled forest floor.

He knew now what Sean had been doing that night, what he did every night and would perhaps do for years until some girl caught him and showed him how daydreams die and that life is digging a rich man's garden.

15.

WEXFORD was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as his head was on the pillow. Like most people approaching that phase of life which succeeds middle age but is not yet old age, he was finding it more and more difficult to get a good night's sleep. Years ago, when he was still young, he had acquired the sensible habit of emptying his mind at night of all the speculations and worries which troubled him during the day, and of turning his thoughts to future domestic plans or back to pleasant memories. But his subconscious was outside his control and it often a.s.serted itself in dreams of those daytime anxieties.

So it was that night. In his dream he was down by the Kingsbrook, the scene of many of his favourite walks, when he saw a boy fis.h.i.+ng upstream. The boy was fair and thin with a strong-boned Anglo-Saxon face. Wexford went nearer to him, keeping in the shadow of the trees, for some inexplicable dream reason not wis.h.i.+ng to be observed. It was pleasant and warm down by the river, a summer evening that, he felt, had succeeded a long hot day.

Presently he heard someone calling and he saw a girl come running over the brow of the hill. Her light, almost yellow, hair and the cast of her face told him she was the boy's sister, older than he, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She had come to fetch him away, and he heard them break into bitter argument because the boy wanted to remain and go on fis.h.i.+ng.

He knew he had to follow them across the meadows. They ran ahead of him, the girl's hair flying. Above him a plane zoomed over, and he saw the bombs dropping like heavy black feathers.

Something of the house still remained standing, bare windowless walls enclosing a smoking ma.s.s from which came the cries of those buried alive.

The children were neither shocked nor frightened, for this was a nightmare where natural emotions are suspended. He watched, a detached observer, as the girl groped her way into the black inferno the boy at her heels. Now he could see a long pale arm protrude from the rubble and hear a voice calling for help, for mercy. The children began shovelling with their bare hands and he came closer to help them. Then he saw that they were not uncovering the screaming faces but burying them deeper, laughing like demons as they worked furiously to finish what the bomb had begun, and he jerked awake as he shouted to them to stop.

Conscious now, he found himself sitting up, his shouts coming as half-choked snores. His wife, lying beside him, hadn't stirred. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the luminous hands of his watch. I ' t was five past two.

If he awoke at that hour he knew he would never get to sleep again and his usual habit was to go downstairs, sit in an armchair and find something to read. The dream stayed with him, vivid and haunting, as he put on his dressing gown and made for the stairs. In the morning he would set in motion the research necessary to discover exactly what had happened that day the Villiers' home was destroyed. Now for something to read ...

As a young man,whe-n he had had more spare time and less responsibility, he had been a great reader, and literary criticism and writers' biographies had been among his favourite reading matter. Mrs Wexford couldn't understand this and he remembered how she had asked him why he wanted to read what someone else said about a book. Why not just read the book itself? And he hadn't quite known how to answer her, how in this field he couldn't trust his own judgment because he was only a policeman and he hadn't a university degree. Nor could he have told her that he needed instruction and knowledge because the purpose of education is to turn the soul's eye towards the light.

Thinking of this and of the pleasure he had had from such works, he turned his physical eye to Wordsworth in Love which he had left lying on the coffee table. After only four hours' sleep he was no longer tired and far more alert than when he had formerly tried to apply himself to this book. He might as well have another go at it. Pity it was about Wordsworth, though. Rather a dull poet, he thought. All that communing with nature and walking about in the Lake District. A bit tedious really.

Now if only it had been about Lord Byron, say, that would have been a different matter, something to get his teeth into. There was an interesting character for you, a romantic larger-than-life man with his sizzling love affairs, his disastrous marriage, the scandal over Augusta Leigh. Still, it wasn't; it was about Wordsworth. Well, he would read it and maybe, even if it bored him, he would get some idea of the nature of the fascination the Lake poet had for Villiers, the obsession almost that had made him write G.o.d knew how many books about him.

He began to read and this time he found it easy and pleasant to follow.

After a while he began to wish he had read more of Wordsworth's poetry.

He had no idea the man had been in love with a French girl, had been involved in the Revolution and had narrowly missed losing his head. It was good, bracing stuff and Villiers wrote well.

At six he made himself a large pot of tea. He read on, utterly absorbed, and by now considerably excited. The room began to fill with light, and slowly, with the same gradual dawning, Wexford's mind was illuminated. He finished the last chapter and closed the book.

Sighing, he addressed himself coldly, 'You ignorant old fool!' Then he rubbed his stiff hands and said aloud, 'If only it had been Byron! My G.o.d, if only it had. I would have known the answer long ago.'

'The first Monday morning of term,' said John Burden, finis.h.i.+ng his t.hird slice of toast and marmalade, 'is worse than the first day of term.' And he added gloomily: 'Things really start getting serious.' He prodded his sister with a sticky finger. 'Isn't it time you started being sick?'

'I'm not going to be sick, you beast.'