Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (35 page)

"There were no first cousins. Professor Flory and his wife were both only children. They were not a prolific family. Professor Flory might well have expected to have eighteen or twenty grandchildren. In fact, he had six, one of those being Naomi Jones. Only one of Miss Flory's siblings had more than one child and of those two the elder died in infancy. Among Miss Flory's four surviving nieces and nephews ten years ago, three were not much younger than she herself and the fourth was Only two years younger than she. That niece, Mrs Louise Merritt, died in the South of France in February."

& "And their children?" Wexfbrd asked. "The ^eat-nieces and nephews."

Great-nieces and nephews don't inherit under

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an intestacy or, if a will exists as in this case, unless they are specifically named in that will. There are only four, the children of Mrs Merritt, both living in France, and the son and daughter of an elder nephew and niece. But as I've told you, there was no question of their inheriting. Under the terms of the will, as I believe you already know, everything was left to Miss Davina Jones with the proviso that Mr Copeland have a life interest in Tancred House and be allowed to live there for life, and the same in the case of Mrs Naomi Jones, who was to be allowed to live there until her own death. I believe you also know that in addition to the house and grounds and the extremely valuable furniture and the jewellery, alas lost, a fortune of just under a million pounds had accumulated, not I'm afraid a vast sum in these days. There are also the royalties from Miss Flory's books, what I believe is called a 'backlist', amounting to some fifteen thousand pounds per annum."

It seemed big enough to Wexford. It justified his description to Joyce Virson of Daisy as 'rich'. He was paying this belated visit to Davina Flory's solicitors because it was only now that he had come fully to believe that the Tancred murders were in a sense an 'inside job'. Gradually, he had come to see that robbery, at least actual on-the-spot robbery of jewels, had little to do with these deaths. The motive was closer to home. It lay somewhere in this web of relationships, yet where? Was there somewhere somehow a relative who had slipped through Barrowby's net?

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"If a blood relation of Davina Flory wouldn't have inherited," he said, "I mean a great-niece or nephew, I don't quite see why George Jones would have done. By all accounts, Miss Flory hated Jones and he hated her and he's not named in the will."

"You could say it had nothing to do with Miss Flory," said Barrowby, "and everything to do with Miss Jones. I'm sure you know how the order of deaths is presumed to be when several people who are related to each other are killed. We assume that the youngest survives longest."

"Yes, I know that."

"Therefore, in this case, though it hasn't come to that, the assumption would be that Davina Flory died first, then her husband, then Mrs Jones. In fact, we know that it wasn't so from the testimony of Miss Jones. We know that Mr Copeland died first. But let us say that the perpetrator was successful and Miss Jones had died. Then assumptions of this kind would have had to be made, since there would be no surviving witness to help us. We would assume, in the absence of precise medical evidence of the time of death, in this case obviously not forthcoming, that Davina Flory died first, her granddaughter immediately inheriting under the will with the proviso that Mr Copeland and Mrs fones have a life interest in the house. t "Then, in order of age, we suppose Mr Copeland to die, then Mrs Jones, thus by leath forfeiting their life interest. The property,

those few crucial moments, perhaps seconds

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only, is Miss Davina Jones's alone in its entirety. Therefore, if and when she should die, her natural heirs would inherit under an intestacy, regardless of whether they were of Miss Flory's blood or anyone else's. Davina Jones's only natural heir, after her mother's death, is her father George Godwin Jones.

"If she had died, as she might well have done, the entire property would have passed to Air Jones. I cannot see that there would be any dispute about it. Who would contest such a thing?"

"He's never seen her since she was a baby," Wexford said. "He hasn't seen or spoken to her for over seventeen years."

"No matter. He is her father. That is, he most probably is her father and certainly he is in the law. He was married to her mother at the time of her birth and his paternity has never been disputed. He is her natural heir as much as, in the event of his death, if he died without making testamentary disposition, she would be his."

* * *

The engagement would be announced any day, Wexford had begun to believe. Nicholas, only son of Airs Joyce Virson and the late whatever it-was Virson, and Davina, only daughter of George Godwin Jones and the late Mrs Naomi Jones . . . Virson's car was outside Tancred House even earlier the next day, soon after three. He must be taking time off work, perhaps, with acute opportunism, part of his annual holiday.

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But Wexford really had no doubt that neither opportunism nor luck was needed. Daisy had been persuaded, Daisy would be Airs Virson.

He found himself very much disliking the idea. Not only was Virson a pompous ass with absurd notions of his own importance and status, but Daisy was too young. Daisy was only just eighteen. His own daughter Sylvia had been married at that age, rather against his and Dora's wishes at the time, but she had gone ahead in spite of them and the wedding had taken place. She and Neil were still together but, Wexford sometimes suspected, only for the children's sake. It was an uneasy marriage, full of tensions and incompatibilities. Of course Daisy had turned to Nicholas Virson to console her in her grief. And he had consoled her. The change in her had been remarkable, she was as nearly happy as anyone in her situation could be. The only explanation for that happiness had been a declaration of love on Virson's part and of acceptance on hers.

He was one of the few young people she appeared to know, apart from those schoolfellows who may have invited her to stay but were certainly conspicuous by their absence from Tancred House. Well, there was Jason Sebright, if you could count him. Her family had approved of Nicholas Virson. At any rate, they had permitted him to accompany them to Edinburgh last year as Daisy's acknowledged tescort. It might have been true that Davina jplory would have smiled more graciously on a >lan for the two of them to live together rather

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than marry, but that was itself approval. He was a good-looking man, of suitable age, with a satisfactory job, who would make a good, dull, and very likely faithful husband. But for Daisy, at eighteen?

It seemed to him a great waste. The kind of life Davina Flory had mapped out for her, though perhaps imperiously conceived, was surely the life that would just have suited her with its potential for adventure, for study, for meeting people, for travel. Instead, she would marry, bring her husband to live at Tancred and, Wexford had little doubt, after a few years divorce him when it was growing too late for the education and the self-discovery.

He was reflecting on all this as he had himself driven from the solicitors to the Caenbrook Retirement Home. He had not yet met Mrs Chowney, though he had spent an unproductive half-hour with her daughter Shirley. Mrs Shirley Rodgers was the mother of four teenagers, her excuse for seldom visiting her mother. She seldom visited her sister Joanne either and seemed to know very little about her life. At her age? was her immediate rejoinder when Wexford asked her if her sister had men friends. But he hadn't been able to forget the wardrobe of clothes, the cosmetic aids to beauty and the gym full of fitness equipment.

Edith Chowney was in her own room but not alone there. A woman on the staff, receptionist or nurse, took him up to the room and knocked on the door. It was opened a crack by a woman who might have been Shirley Rodgers's twin.

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She admitted him, he was expected, and Mrs Chowney in a bright red wool dress, red ribbed tights covering her bandy legs and pink bedsocks on her feet, was all smiles.

"Are you the head one?" she said.

He thought he might reasonably say he was. "That's right, Mrs Chowney."

"They've sent the head one this time," she said to the woman she then proceeded to introduce as her daughter Pamela, the good daughter who came most often, though she didn't say this. "My daughter Pam. Mrs Pamela Burns."

"I'm glad you're here, Mrs Burns," he said with some diplomacy, "because I think you too may be able to help us. It's now more than three weeks since Mrs Garland went away. Have either of you heard from her?"

"She's not gone away. I told the others -- didn't they tell you? She's not gone away, she wouldn't go away and not say a word to me. She's never done such a thing."

Wexford baulked at telling this old woman they were by now seriously worried not simply for Mrs Garland's whereabouts but for her life. He was expecting any day another one of those calls that announced a gruesome discovery. At the same time he wondered if Mrs Chowney might not take it all in her stride. What a life hers must have been! The eleven children and all the consequent worries and stresses and even tragedies. Unwelcome marriages, even less acceptable divorces, partings, deaths. And yet he hesitated.

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"Wouldn't you have expected her to have been in to see you by now. Airs Chowney?"

"What I expect," she retorted sharply, "and what they do are two different things altogether. She's been gone three weeks before without showing her face in here. Pam's the only one you can rely on. The only one in the whole lot of them isn't for self, self, self morning, noon and night."

Pamela Burns looked a little smug. A small modest smile appeared on her lips. Mrs Chowney said shrewdly, "This is about that Naomi, isn't it? It's got something to do with what happened up there. Joanne was worried about her. She used to talk to me about it, when she wasn't talking about herself."

"Worried in what way, Mrs Chowney?"

"Said she had no life, ought to find a man. Said her life was empty. Empty, I thought to myself, and her living in that house, never known money worries, playing at selling china animals, never had to fend for herself. That's not an empty life, I said, that's a sheltered life. Still, she's gone and it's all water under the bridge."

"Your daughter had a man in her own life, did she?"

"Joanne," said Mrs Chowney. He remembered too late that with so many it was necessary to specify. "My daughter Joanne. She's had two, you know, two husbands." She spoke as if some kind of rationing scheme existed in this area of life and her daughter had already used up the best part of her allocation. "There might

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be someone, she wouldn't tell me, not if he wasn't loaded. What she'd do is show me the things he'd given her and there was nothing of that, was there, Pam?"

"I don't know, Mother. I wasn't told and I wouldn't ask."

Wexford came to the question that was the point of his visit. He trembled on the brink of it. So much depended on a guilty or defensive or indignant response.

"Did she know Naomi's ex-husband, Mr George Godwin Jones?"

They both looked at him as if such sublime ignorance was only to be pitied. Pamela Burns even leant a little towards him as if to encourage him to repeat what he had said, as if she had not, could not, have heard aright.

"Gunner?" said Mrs Chowney at last.

"Well, yes. Mr Gunner Jones. Did she know him?"

"Of course she knew him," said Pamela Burns. "Of course she did." She made a gesture of locking her forefingers. "They were like that, thick as thick, her and Brian and Naomi and Gunner, weren't they? Used to do everything together."

"Joanne had just got married for the second time," put in Mrs Chowney, "oh, it'll be getting on for twenty years ago."

a They were still incredulous that all this might ta&t be widely known. It was as if he had to be Indignantly reminded of the facts, not be told Jlifini for the first time. jP^'It was through Brian Joanne got to know

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Naomi. He was a pal of Gunner's. I remember her saying what a coincidence it was Gunner marrying a girl from round here and I thought, not just a girl from round here, come on, a girl from that background! Still, Joanne had got a leg-up in the world. Brian used to say he was just a poor millionaire, but that was him trying to be funny."

"They were that close," said Mrs Chowney, "I said to Pam, I wonder Gunner and Naomi don't take those two on their honeymoon with them."

"And the closeness persisted after the two divorces?"

"Pardon?"

"I mean, did these four people continue to know each other after their marriages ended. Of course I know Mrs Garland and Airs Jones remained friends."

"Brian went to Australia, didn't he?" Mrs Chowney asked the question in the tone she might have used to ask Wexford if the sun had risen in the east that morning. "They couldn't be hobnobbing with him even if they'd wanted to. Anyway, Gunner and Naomi'd split up long before. That marriage was doomed from the

start."

"Joanne took Naomi's part," said Pamela Burns eagerly. "Well, you would, wouldn't you? A close friend like that. She lined herself up with Naomi. She and Brian were together then and even Brian took against Gunner." She added sententiously, "You don't give up on a marriage just because you can't get on with your wife's

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mother, especially when you've got a baby. That baby was only six months old."

* * *

The caterer's van, as was its daily habit, was drawn up on the courtyard between Tancred House and the stables. It was fragrant with curry and the scent of Mexican spices.

"Freebee would have a word to say about that too, if he did but know about it," said Wexford to Burden.

"We have to eat."

"Yes, and it's a cut above the station canteen or any of our cheaper haunts in town." Wexford was eating chicken pilaf and Burden an individual ham and mushroom quiche.

"Funny to think of that girl, only a few yards away from us really, being waited on by a servant, her meals cooked for her, just as a matter of course."