Guilty Thing Surprised (13 page)

‘Oh? Why would she? Just what would she get out
of being an accessory to the murder of her employer’s wife?’

Burden stared at him. Really, the old man was almost simple at times.

‘Get out of it? Marriage with Nightingale, of course.’

‘Don’t keep saying “of course”. It’s far from of course. And leave that blind alone. Sometimes I think you’ve got a compulsion complex, always tidying everything up. Listen to me, Mike. You’ve got to bring your ideas up to date a bit. You may be only thirty-six but you’re so dead old-fashioned it isn’t true. First of all I want you to know that I believe Nightingale. I believe his story because some instinct in me recognises the truth when I hear it. I don’t believe he’s capable of violence. If he thought his wife had a lover—if he cared, which is more to the point—he’d divorce her. Secondly, Katje Doorn isn’t a kind of Lady Macbeth. She’s a very contemporary young woman who is enjoying life enormously and not the least of what she enjoys is plenty of anxiety-free sex.’

Burden went pink at that and blinked his eyes. He tried to put on a sophisticated expression and failed.

‘What reason have we to suppose she wants to marry Nightingale?’ Wexford went on. ‘He’s an old man to her,’ he said urbanely. ‘She said as much. And for all her immorality, as you’d put it, she’s a nice normal girl who’d recoil in horror from the thought of taking into her bed a man fresh from murdering his wife. Mike, we’ve got to change our whole pattern of thinking in these domestic murder cases. Times have changed. Young women don’t look on marriage as the be-all and end-all of existence any more. Girls like Katje won’t help kill a man’s wife just so that he can make an honest woman of them. They don’t think
they’re
dishonest
women just because they’re not virgins. And as for Katje wanting him for his money, I don’t think she’s given much thought to money yet. That may come later. At present she’s out for a good time without any worry.’

‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Burden like an old man, ‘what the world is coming to.’

‘Let the world look after itself. We’ll concentrate on our own small corner of it. We made a pattern, Mike, and now we’ve destroyed it. What next? There are two lines to pursue, it seems to me. Who was Mrs Nightingale’s lover? Who had access to that torch?’

‘You’ve had a lab report on it?’

Wexford nodded. ‘There were traces of blood in the threads of the base screw and the lamp screw, and under the switch. The blood was of the same group as Mrs Nightingale’s and it’s a rare group, AB Negative. There’s no doubt the torch was the weapon.’

‘Well, who did have access to it? Who could have replaced it this morning?’

Wexford counted them off on his fingers. ‘Nightingale, Katje, Mrs Cantrip, Will Palmer, Sean Lovell, Georgina Villiers—oh, and Lionel Marriott. Quite a list. We might also include Villiers, as Georgina could have replaced it for him. Now what about Sean? He’s confessed to an admiration for Mrs Nightingale. He’s young and hotheaded, therefore jealous. It may not have been he she went to meet but he could have seen her with that person. His alibi is hopeless. He had access to the torch; his garden gives directly on to the forest.’

‘She was old enough to be his mother,’ said Burden.

Wexford laughed, a raucous bray. ‘My God, Mike, you don’t know what life’s about, do you? It’s because
he was twenty and she forty that he
would
have an affair with her. Like …’ He paused, then went on with apparent detachment, ‘Like middle-aged men and young girls. It happens all the time. Didn’t you ever fancy any of your mother’s friends?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Burden, outraged. ‘My mother’s friends were like aunts to me. I called them all auntie. Still do, come to that. What’s so funny?’

‘You,’ said Wexford, ‘and if I didn’t laugh I’d go round the twist.’

Burden was used to this but still he was very offended. It seemed unfair to him, a sad sign of the times, that a man should be laughed at because he had high principles and a decent concept of what life should be. He gave a thin dry cough and said:

‘I shall go and have another talk with your favourite suspect, young Lovell.’

‘You do that.’ Wexford looked at his watch. ‘I have a date at four.’ He grinned. ‘A date with someone who is going to enlighten me further as to certain past histories.’

Wexford parked a hundred yards up the road from the school gates, well behind the cars of parents waiting for eleven-year-olds. A crocodile of cricketers in green-stained white came across from the playing fields as the clock on the school tower struck four. If they were punctual in nothing else, King’s pupils were punctual in getting out of school. As the last chime died away, they poured through the gates, laughing, shoving each other, paying no attention to the kerb drill with which Wexford had used to believe they were thoroughly indoctrinated by the road safety officer. Only the supercilious sixth-formers walked sedately, lighting cigarettes when they reached the shadow of the overhanging trees.

Denys Villiers came out in his dark blue Anglia. He sounded his horn repetitively to clear boys out of the road, then, putting his head out of the window, shouted something Wexford couldn’t catch. The tone of his voice was enough. Wexford had the notion that if the man had a whip he would have used it. He turned his head and saw Marriott trotting out of the main gate. When the little man had passed the car he wound down the window and hissed:

‘ “A frightful fiend doth close behind your tread!” ’

Marriott jumped, collected himself and smiled.

‘A very overrated poem, I’ve always thought,’ he said.

‘I daresay. I didn’t come here to discuss poetry. You were going to give me the slip, weren’t you?’

Marriott came round the bonnet and got into the car.

‘I must admit I was. I thought you’d give me a lecture for going up to the Manor this morning. Now please don’t, there’s a dear. I’ve had a most exhausting afternoon introducing
Paradise Lost
to the Lower Fifth and I really can’t stand any more.’

‘ “The mind,” ’ quoted Wexford, ‘ “is in its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ’

‘Yes, very clever. I’m different. Mine makes a tell of hell. Do let’s rush, ducky, and get ourselves huge drinks. I suppose you’ll want me to go on with the next installment on the way.’

‘I can’t wait,’ said Wexford, starting the car and moving out into the stream.

‘Where had I got to?’

‘Villiers’ first wife.’

‘June,’ said Marriott. ‘She didn’t like me. Oh dear, no. She said I’d be more use teaching in a Borstal institution. The first time she went to the Manor d’you
know what she said to Quentin? “I call it scandalous,” she said, “two people living by themselves in this barrack. It ought to be converted into a mental hospital.” Poor Quen didn’t like that at all. His beloved house! But that was little June all over. She had a sociology degree and she’d been some kind of probation officer.

‘She and Denys had a dreadful flat over the pet foods shop in Queen Street. You know the place I mean. I only went there once and that was enough. The stink of putrefying horseflesh, my dear, and June’s funny friends all over the place. Crowds of them there every evening, all very earnest and wanting to put the world right. Banning the Bomb was the thing in those days, you know, and June used to hold meetings about it in their flat, that and famine relief before famine relief was even fashionable. She was the original demonstrator, was June. Whenever there’s a rumpus in Grosvenor Square I look very closely at the pictures, I can tell you, because I’m positive I’m going to see her face there one of these days.’

‘She’s not dead, then?’ Wexford said as they emerged into the High Street.

‘Good God, no. Denys divorced her or she divorced him. I forget which. Heaven knows why they got married in the first place. They had nothing in common. She didn’t like Quen and Elizabeth and she took a very dim view of Denys going up to the Manor so much. Associating with reactionary elements, she called it.’

‘If he didn’t care for his sister why did he go so much?’

‘Well, you see, he and Quen got on together like a house on fire from the word go,’ said Marriott as Wexford pulled into the centre of the road to take the
right-hand turn. ‘Quen was thrilled to bits finding he’s got an up-and-coming writer for a brother-in-law and I suppose he saw himself in the light of Denys’s patron.’ The car moved slowly down the alley and Wexford pulled up in front of the white flower-decked house. ‘Anyway, Denys must have complained to him about how impossible it was to work in his home atmosphere, and Quen offered him the Old House to write in. Don’t let’s sit out here, Reg, I’m dying of thirst.’

The rooms where the party had been held still smelt strongly of cigar smoke. Someone had tidied up and washed all the dishes. Hypatia, probably, Wexford thought, as Marriott flung open all the windows.

‘Now then, Reg, the cocktail hour, as they say. A little early perhaps, but everything’s early in the country, don’t you find? What’s it to be? Whisky? Gin?’

‘I’d rather have a cup of tea,’ said Wexford.

‘Would you? How odd. All right, I’ll put the kettle on. I must say, Hypatia has left everything very nice. I must remember to say a word when next I see her.’

Wexford followed him into the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t live here, then?’

‘Oh, no. I shouldn’t care for that at all.’ Marriott wrinkled his nose distastefully. ‘Once have them permanently in and you can’t call your soul your own.’ He gave Wexford a sidelong very sly look. ‘Besides, there’s safety in numbers.’

Wexford laughed. ‘Quite a devil with the ladies, aren’t you, Lionel?’

‘I have my successes,’ said Marriott modestly. He put three spoonfuls of Earl Grey into the teapot and poured the boiling water on daintily. ‘Shall I go on with the story?’

‘Please.’

‘Well, as I said, June didn’t at all care for Denys working at the Manor. He was up there most evenings nattering with Quen, you see, and every day in the holidays to work. She thought he ought to be out with her, waving banners and writing things on walls. So finally she walked out on him.’

‘Leaving him to his
ménage à trois?’

‘What a funny way of putting it. Still, no doubt, there was a triangular element there, but not an isosceles triangle. Poor Elizabeth was definitely the unequal angle. It always used to fascinate me when I went up there to see Denys and Quen utterly immersed in each other, books, books, books, my dear, and a positively ringing exchange of Wordsworth quotes, the two of them groaning that they had thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears. And all the time poor Elizabeth sat there reading
Vogue
and not a word to say for herself.’

‘I daresay you found something to chat to her about,’ said Wexford, drinking his tea. ‘I never met anyone who knew so much about—what shall I say?—current trivia?’

‘Really, Reg, you
are
unkind. I’ll have you know, Elizabeth wasn’t at all an empty-headed woman. Just as intelligent as Denys in her way.’

‘That’s not what he says, but let it pass.’

‘Why are we sitting out here, anyway? I never could abide kitchens and I’m pining for my gin. Good, the cigar smoke’s cleared.’

Marriott fetched his drink and pulled two chairs up to the open french windows. His small walled garden was full of butterflies, drinking from the buddleia flowers and sunning themselves with spread wings on the stones. Wexford sat where he could feel the warmth of the precious September sun that would
soon be gone. It made him feel lazy and he told himself sternly to keep his mind alert.

‘So Villiers spent a good deal of his time at the Manor, did he?’ he said.

‘Believe me, you couldn’t set foot in the place without finding him there. And as if that wasn’t enough to make him and Quen heartily sick of each other, he used to go away on holiday with them too.’

‘That must have been hard on Mrs Nightingale, especially as they excluded her from their conversations. Just what were her interests, Lionel?’

Marriott bit his lip and seemed to cogitate. ‘Let me see,’ he said with the air of someone dredging in the depths. ‘Well, she took an active part in county life, you know, organising things and sitting on committees. And she spent hours every day making herself look lovely. She did the flowers and a bit of gardening …”

‘Is that so?’ Wexford interrupted. ‘In the hothouse maybe with young Sean Lovell?’

‘What can you mean, dear old boy?’

‘As one of Wordsworth’s contemporaries put it:

Marriott smiled, opening his eyes wide. ‘So that’s the way the wind’s blowing, is it?’

‘Well, she wasn’t having secret meetings in the forest with old Sir George Larkin-Smith, was she? Or the rector of Myfleet or Will Palmer? Unless it was you, Lionel.’

‘I wondered when you were going to ask me that.’ Marriott stretched languorously in the sunshine and
laughed. ‘But no, it wasn’t. And if you’re serious about this, Reg, Hypatia will tell you where I was. Mind you, I’m not saying I didn’t wish I’d had the opportunity …’

‘Maybe you even tried your chances?’

‘Maybe I did.’

This time it was Wexford’s turn to laugh. ‘So we come back to Sean Lovell, don’t we?’

‘She was fond of Sean,’ said Marriott. ‘I met her once coming out of the record shop here in the High Street. She’d been buying the number one pop single in the charts. “I must keep up with my little songbird,” she said. “Really, he’s the only true Nightingale in Myfleet.” Quite witty, I thought. Elizabeth was no fool.’

‘An extraordinary remark to make,’ said Wexford.

‘Oh, I don’t know. You read too much into things, my dear. All you policemen are terribly salacious. Sean used to stand under Elizabeth’s windows and serenade her. I suppose she was flattered and it made her feel young. It was a case of heroine worship on one side and a sort of flattered acceptance on the other.’

‘Let’s get back to Villiers,’ said Wexford. ‘But first how about another cup of tea for a poor old salacious policeman?’