Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then (23 page)

   “The sea?” She had been an actress, if not a very successful one, and she put all the loneliness and depth and vastness of the sea into those two words. He wondered why she had shivered. Then she said, “I don’t mind if you’d like to. But not to a big resort where you might see - well, families, people with - with children.”

   “I thought of Eastover. It’s November, so there won’t be children.”

   “All right.” She didn’t point out to him that he had asked her to decide. “We’ll go to Eastover.” Her lips trembled. “It’ll be fun,” she said.

   “Everyone will think I’ve gone to Eastbourne with Grace and the children. I’d rather it was that way.”

   “So that they can’t get hold of you?” She nodded with a kind of sage innocence. “I see. You remind me of Leonie. She always tells people she’s going to one place when really she’s going somewhere else so that she won’t be badgered with letters and phone calls.”

   “It wasn’t that,” Burden said. “It’s just - well, I don’t want anyone . . . Not until we’re married, Gemma.”

   She smiled, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. He saw that she really didn’t understand him at all, his need to be respectable, to put a good face on things. They didn’t speak the same language.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Mitchell, that creature of routine, was cleaning her landing window. While she talked she clutched a pink duster in one hand and a bottle of pink cleaning fluid in the other and, because she refused to sit down, Wexford couldn’t either.

   “Of course I should have known if it was Mr. Rushworth,” she said. “Why, his own little boy, his Andrew, was playing there with the others. Besides, Mr. Rushworth’s quite a big man and the man I saw was little, very small-made. I told, the other officer what little hands he had. Mr. Rushworth wouldn’t pick leaves.”

   “How many children has he?”

   "Four. There’s Paul - he’s fifteen - and two little girls and Andrew. I’m not saying they’re my idea of good parents, mind. Those children are allowed to do just what they please, and Mrs. Rushworth didn’t take a blind bit of notice when I warned her about that man, but do a thing like that . . .! No, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there.”

   Perhaps he had. Wexford left Mrs. Mitchell to her window-cleaning and crossed the swings field. The year was far too advanced now for any children to play there and there would be no more freak summers. The roundabout looked as if it had never spun on its scarlet axis and mould had begun to grow on the seesaw. Hardly a leaf remained on the trees, oak and ash and sycamore, which grew between the field and Mill Lane. He touched the lower branches and fancied that here and there he could see where a twig had been snapped off. Then, in a more ungainly fashion, he was sure, than the leaf-picker and his young companion, he scrambled down the bank.

   Briskly he walked the length of the lane, telling himself it was as much for his health’s sake as for duty. He hadn’t expected to find anyone at home in the rented cottage but Harry Wild’s friend was off work with a cold. Leaving again after a quarter of an hour, Wexford was afraid his visit had only served to raise the man’s temperature, so heated had he been on the subject of Rushworth, a far from ideal landlord. Unless the tenant’s account was exaggerated, it appeared that the whole Rushworth family was in the habit of entering the cottage, helping themselves to garden produce and occasionally removing small pieces of furniture for which they substituted pencilled notes of explanation. They had retained a key of their own and the tenant paid so low a rent that he was afraid to expostulate. At any rate, Wexford now knew the identity of the boy who had been seen leaving the cottage that February afternoon. Beyond a doubt, it had been Paul Rushworth.

   The day had been dull and overcast and now evening was closing in, although it was scarcely five, Wexford felt a first few drops of rain. On just such a day and at much this time Stella had followed the road he was taking, quickening her steps perhaps, wishing she had more to protect her than a thin riding jacket. Or had she even come so far back towards Stowerton? Had her journey - and her life - taken her no further than the cottage he had just left?

   He had immersed himself so much in Stella, mentally transmuting his own elderly, male and stout body into the slight form of a twelve-year-old girl, that when he heard the sounds ahead of him he stepped back on to the grass verge and listened with a kind of hope.

   The sounds were of horse’s hooves. A horse was coming round the bend in the lane.

   He was Stella, not old Reg Wexford. He was alone and a bit frightened and it was beginning to rain, but Swan was coming . . . On a horse? One horse for two people? Why not in a car?

   The horse and its rider came into sight. Wexford shook himself back into himself and called out. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fenn.”

   The riding instructress reined in the big grey. “Isn’t he lovely?” she said. “I wish he was mine, but I’ve got to take him back to Miss Williams at Equita. We’ve had such a nice afternoon out, haven’t we, Silver?” She patted the animal’s neck. “You haven’t – er -  caught anyone yet? The man who killed poor Stella Swan?”

   Wexford shook his head.

   “Stella Rivers, I should say. I don’t know why I find it so confusing. After all, I’ve got two names myself and half my friends call me Margaret and half by my second name. I ought not to get mixed up. Must be getting old.”

   Wexford felt no inclination for gallantry and simply asked if she had ever seen Rushworth in the grounds of Saltram House.

   “Bob Rushworth? Now you come to mention it, he and his wife were up here a lot last winter and she actually asked me if I thought it would be all right for them to take one of the statues away with them. The one that was lying down in the grass, you know.”

   “You said nothing about this before.”

   “Well, of course not,” said Mrs. Fenn, bending over to coo into the horse’s ear. “I know the Rushworths, I’ve known them for years. Paul calls me auntie. I suppose they wanted the statue for their garden. It’s not my place to say whether you can have it or you can’t, I said, and they didn’t take it, did they?” She edged herself more comfortably into the saddle. “If you’ll excuse me I must be on my way. Silver’s very highly bred and he gets nervous when it’s dark.” The horse lifted its head and emitted a loud whinny of agreement. “Never mind, darling,” said Mrs. Fenn. “Soon be home with Mother,”

   Wexford went on. The rain was falling thinly but steadily. He passed Saltram Lodge and entered that part of the lane which was most thickly overshadowed by trees. They thinned out after two or three hundred yards to disclose the celebrated view of the great house.

   The parkland looked grey and the house itself, looming through mist, a black skeleton with empty eye-sockets. Wexford was glad he had never known the place or been in the habit of visiting it. To him it had become a graveyard.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to book a double room for Mr. and Mrs. Burden. One day Gemma would be Mrs. Burden and then it would be different. In the meantime the name was Jean’s. Jean held the title like a champion whose honours cannot be taken from her by death.

   Their hotel was Eastover village pub which had been extended since the war to accommodate half a dozen guests, and they had been given rooms side by side, both overlooking the wide grey sea. It was too cold for bathing, but there are always children on beaches. While Gemma unpacked, Burden watched the children, five of them, brought down there to play by their parents. The tide was far out and the beach a silvery ochre, the sand packed too tight and flattened too firmly by the sea to show footprints from this distance. The man and the woman walked far apart from each other, seeming entirely detached. Married for many years, Burden supposed - the eldest girl looked at least twelve - they had no need of contact or of reassurance. The children, running from one to the other, then wheeling towards the sea, were evidence enough of love. He saw the parents, separated now by a wide drift of shells and pebbles, glance casually at each other and in that glance he read a secret language of mutual trust and hope and profound understanding.

   One day it would be like that for him and Gemma. They would bring their children, his and theirs, to such a beach as this and walk with them between the water and the sky and remember their nights and days and look forward to the night. He turned quickly to tell her what he was thinking but suddenly it came to him that he mustn’t tell her, he couldn’t because to do so would be to draw her attention to the children.

   “What is it, Mike?”

   “Nothing, I only wanted to say that I love you.”

   He closed the window and drew the curtains, but in the half-dark he could still see the children. He took her in his arms and closed his eyes and still he could see them. Then he made love to her violently and passionately to exorcise the children and, in particular, the little fair-haired boy whom he had never seen but who was more real to him than those he had watched on the seashore.

The weekenders’ cottage was very ancient, built before the Civil War, before the departure of the Mayflower, perhaps even before the last of the Tudors. Rushworth’s was newer, though still old, belonging, Wexford decided, to the same period as that of Saltram House and its lodge, about 1750. In Burden’s absence he was spending much of his time in Mill Lane, viewing the three little houses, sometimes entering their gardens and walking thoughtfully around them.

   Once he walked from Rushworth’s cottage to the fountains at Saltram House and back again, timing himself. It took him half an hour. Then he did it again, pausing this time to play-act the lifting of the cistern slab and the insertion of a body. Forty minutes.

   He drove to Sewingbury and saw the woman who had a date to meet Rushworth on that October afternoon and heard from her that she had been unable to keep the appointment. What of that other afternoon in Feburary?

   One evening he made his way to Fontaine Road in search of the Crantocks and on an impulse knocked first at number 61. He had nothing to say to Mrs. Lawrence, no good news, but he was curious to see this forlorn woman people said was beautiful and he knew from past experience that his very presence, stolid and fatherly, could sometimes be a comfort. No one answered his knock and this time he sensed quite a different atmosphere from that he had felt outside Bishop’s door. Nobody answered because there was nobody there to hear.

   For some moments he stood thoughtfully in the quiet street, and then, discomfited now for personal reasons, he went next door to the Crantocks.

   “If you wanted Gemma,” said Mrs. Crantock, “she’s away, gone down to the South Coast for the weekend.”

   “I really want to talk to you and your husband. About a man called Rushworth and your daughter.”

   “Oh, that? Your inspector kindly saw her home. We were grateful. Mind you, there was nothing in it. I know they say Mr. Rushworth chases the girls, but I expect that’s just gossip, and they don’t mean little girls. My daughter’s only fourteen.”

   Crantock came into the hall to see who had called. He recognised Wexford immediately and shook hands. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Rushworth came round the next day to apologise. He said he’d only called out to Janet because he’d heard we’d got a piano we wanted to get rid of.” Crantock grinned and turned up his eyes. “I told him sell, not get rid of, so, of course, he wasn’t interested.”

   “Silly of Janet, really,” said his wife, “to have got so worked up.”

   “I don’t know.” Crantock had stopped smiling. “We’re all on edge, especially kids who are old enough to understand.” He looked deep into Wexford’s eyes. “And people with kids,” he added.

   Wexford walked into Chiltern Avenue by way of the shrub-shadowed alley. There he had to use his torch and as he went he thought, not by any means for the first time, on his great good fortune in having been born a man, and a big man at that, instead of a woman. Only in daylight and fine weather could a woman have walked there without fear, without turning her head and feeling her heart-beats quicken. No wonder Janet Crantock had been frightened. And then he thought of John Lawrence whose youth had given him a woman’s vulnerability and who would never grow up to be a man.

In the evenings when the tide was far out they walked along the sands in the dark or sat on the rocks at the entrance to a cave they had found. The rain held off, but it was November and cold at night. The first time they went there they wore thick coats but the heavy clothing separated and isolated them, so after that Burden brought the car rug. They cocooned themselves in it, their bodies pressed together, their hands tightly clasped, the thick woollen folds enclosing them and keeping out the salty sea wind. When he was alone with her in the darkness on the seashore he was very happy.

   Even at this time of the year Eastbourne would be crowded and she was afraid of people. So they avoided the big resort and even the next village, Chine Warren. Gemma had visited the place before and wanted to walk there, but Burden prevented her. It was from there, he believed, that the children came. He tried all the time to keep children out of her sight. Sometimes, pitying her for her sorrow yet jealous of the cause of it, he found himself wishing a modern Pied Piper would come and whistle away all the little children of Sussex so that they might not be there to laugh and play and torment her and deprive him of joy.

   “Would it be a quick death, the sea?” she said.

   He shivered, watching the running tide. “I don’t know. Nobody who has died in it has ever been able to tell us.”

   “I think it would be quick.” Her voice was a child’s, gravely considering. “Cold and clean and quick?’

   In the afternoons Burden made love to her - he had never been more conscious of and more satisfied with his manhood than when he saw how his love comforted her - and afterwards, while she slept, be walked down to the shore or over the cliff to Chine Warren. There was still a little warmth left in the sunshine and the children came to build sandcastles. He had discovered that they were not a family, the couple not husband and wife, but that four of the children belonged to the man and the other one to the woman. How teasing and deceptive were first impressions! He looked back now with self-disgust on his romancing, his sentimental notion that this pair, known to each other perhaps only by sight, had an idyllic marriage. Illusion and disillusion, he reflected, what life is and what we think it is. Why, from this distance he couldn’t even tell if the solitary child were a boy or a girl, for it was capped and trousered and booted like all the children.