Guilty Thing Surprised (17 page)

‘We’ve got more important things to worry about,’ Burden said impatiently. ‘What’s more to the point is, are we going to be able to find a witness to corroborate that he didn’t go out again after he got home?’

‘Or that she didn’t.’

‘Pity the place is so isolated.’

‘Yes. We need to find someone who passed the place in a car. That can wait till the morning. You get that scarf sent over to the lab and then you can get off home to your painting. Manual work often helps the brain, Mike, and you can have a good thing while you’re wielding the brush.’

With a sigh of relief, Burden started the car. ‘Which of those two have you in mind, anyway?’

‘Mike, you’ll say I’m jumping to conclusions, but
I’m as near as dammit certain she did it. She’s a strong healthy woman, physically capable of felling another woman with a torch. It is she and not her husband who inherits. She was at the Manor when the torch was replaced. She knew the layout of the Manor grounds and she could have noticed the bonfire earlier in the evening. If she got blood on her clothes, she knew she could have burnt her outer clothes—say a sweater—on the fire.’

‘All this,’ said Burden, ‘argues premeditation, that she deliberately chose a torch of all things for her weapon.’

‘Think about it. Try and see what you can make of it all. I’m going to pick up Lionel Marriott and take him to the Olive for a drink.’

12

T
he new cocktail bar at the Olive and Dove was almost deserted, for by now most of its patrons had deserted it for the dining room, while the serious drinkers were in the public or the saloon. Wexford shepherded Marriott into a secluded comer and placed a large whisky in front of him. The bar communicated with the dining room by means of double glass doors, but Wexford had made sure the diners were out of Marriott’s line of vision. He wanted their talk to be uninterrupted and Marriott removed from the temptation of waving to friends or sending smiling dumb-show messages to pretty women.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want to hear about this holiday on the Costa Brava.’

‘Holiday!’ said Marriott, momentarily closing his eyes. ‘Really, I’d rather spend a fortnight in a labour camp. The spotty devils are bad enough when you have to cart them up to London to the V. and A., but imagine two weeks cooped up with them in some
torrid slum. They go mad, you know. None of the local girls is safe. They’re all in an advanced state of satyriasis at the best of times, and once get them in the sun …! And as for appalling infringement of the exchange regulations, you wouldn’t believe the diabolical ingenuity of some of them. Every one an accomplished smuggler and his mother’s milk scarce out of him.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Wexford, laughing. ‘What about Villiers?’

‘God knows how he found the time to go courting. You’d have thought every minute would have been taken up, what with having to be a Customs officer and a male nurse and a watch committee all rolled into one. Anyway, he met Georgina.’

‘She was holidaying there too?’

‘Only in the same sense that he was,’ said Marriott, waving enthusiastically as a satin-gowned brunette swept past their table. Wistfully, he watched her disappear into the dining room. ‘Georgina had gone with her own school party,’ he said, ‘a bunch of teenage nymphomaniacs, from what I heard. Denys and she encountered each other on one of their nightly rounds of the local taverns, picking their charges up off the floor, you know.’

‘It really can’t have been as bad as that, Lionel.’

‘Perhaps I exaggerate a little,’ said Marriott airily. ‘Not that I heard any of this from Denys. He didn’t even bother to send me a card. No, the first hint I got was on the day before he was due back. Elizabeth and Quen dropped in one evening. “We’ve got some good news for you,” said Quen. “Denys has met a girl and they’re going to be married.” “Fast worker,” I said, and then of course I had to say I was pleased, although
I was thinking she must be out of her mind, poor thing. Let me get you another drink, Reg.’

‘Tonight,’ said Wexford firmly, ‘I’m the host.’ Once let Marriott get to the bar and he would be within range of the allurements of his friends. He asked for two more whiskies and, while he waited for them, he cast his eyes speculatively over the waiters in the dining room, wondering which of them was Quentin Nightingale’s rival. The tall one with acne? The thin youth with slicked-back black hair?

‘They were married,’ Marriott went on, ‘from Georgina’s home in Dorset. Quen went down for the wedding but Elizabeth couldn’t. She had a migraine. Of course, even Denys couldn’t very well bring a second bride home to a horsemeat shop, so Elizabeth asked them to stay at the Manor while they were looking for a house.

‘The Nightingales gave a dinner party for the bride. Everybody who was anybody was there. Old Priscilla and Sir George, the Rogerses from Pomfret, the Primeros from Forby and, of course, your humble servant.’ Looking anything but humble, Marriott lowered his voice to a suspenseful whisper. ‘Georgina was staying in the house but she was the last to arrive. Ah ha! I thought, making an entrance, the clever little thing. None of us had seen her, so naturally we sat with bated breath. All the women were got up to the nines. Elizabeth looked wonderful. White velvet, you know. It always does something for a woman. Believe it or not, I even saw Denys looking at her with a sort of grudging admiration.

‘Then, just when we can contain our impatience no longer, in comes Georgina in Woolworth’s pearls and a—well, we used to call them tub frocks, and this one had been in the tub a good many times, I can tell you.
Did those women stare! Georgina wasn’t a bit shy. In fact, she dominated the conversation at the table. We heard all about her little housewifely plans and how she was going to make a real home for Denys and how they were going to have six children. And possessive! My dear, she actually grumbled to Elizabeth because she hadn’t been placed next to him.

‘I must say Elizabeth was charming to her. She even complimented her on her dress and really tried to keep her the centre of attention. She was bubbling over with gaiety and she didn’t look a day over twenty-five.’

‘Georgina,’ said Wexford, ‘did she seem envious?’

‘Of the
wise en scene?
If denigrating everything around one and trying to assume an ascendancy on the grounds of one’s middle-class ideas is only a mask for envy, yes, I suppose she was envious. Of course, I’ve seen her dozens of times since then and all she can talk about is what a marvellous marriage she and Denys have and how they’re all in all to each other.’

‘And are they?’

‘He’s everything she wants,’ said Marriott, ‘although we see no sign of these six children, do we? As for him, I think he’s as bored with his second marriage as he was with his first, but there’s only one thing that interests Denys Villiers and that’s his work. Once he and Georgina were settled in their bungalow, he was buzzing round the Manor again just like the old days.’

Wexford said slyly, ‘You must have been buzzing too to have seen him there.’

For a moment Marriott looked a little foolish. Then he jumped up smartly. ‘You’ll excuse me one second while I pop into the dining room and have a word with …’

Wexford laughed. ‘I’ll excuse you altogether,’ he said, ‘for tonight.’

*  *  *

‘You’ve been thinking,’ said Dr Crocker on the following morning, ‘that she was wearing that scarf when the deed was done. Well, she wasn’t. It would have been saturated with blood if she had.’

‘Perhaps it was round her neck or she was holding it in her hand.’

The doctor gave a derisive snort. ‘And after she was dead she took it off and wiped her head with it? That’s what it looks as if it was used for, to wipe blood off someone or something.’

Wexford folded the report and put it down on his blotter. ‘You said you were out delivering a baby on Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose your route took you through Myfleet via Clusterwell?’

‘Sure it did. Why?’

‘You know Villiers’ bungalow?’

‘Of course I do. He’s a patient of mine. I passed it at about eleven.’

‘Did you notice the bungalow at all?’ Wexford said more urgently. ‘Were any lights on? Were the cars on the drive?’

The doctor’s face fell. ‘I didn’t look. I was thinking about my patient and the possibility of the child being a breech presentation. Now, if I’d known …’

‘That,’ said Wexford irritably, ‘is what they all say. Here’s Mike now.’

Burden came in wearily. ‘Three of us have done a house-to-house in Myfleet,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon any of them go out in the evenings. The whole place shuts up about nine and those that aren’t in bed are in the pub. Nobody passed that way bar Katje Doorn. I’ve talked to her again and all she did was simper and tell me about a disgusting Swedish film. Though I did have the feeling she didn’t want to discuss her drive.’

Wexford gave a slight embarrassed cough. ‘Rubbish,’ he said, listening to the bluster in his voice and trying to quell it. ‘I tell you, that girl had nothing to do with Mrs Nightingale’s death.’

‘Perhaps not. But it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? She’ll talk very freely about her goings-on with Nightingale and that waiter, but she shuts up like a clam when I try to get her to describe her drive home. And another thing, Nightingale’s Mini was standing out by those stables and young Lovell was cleaning it, doing his best to get a scratch off the front bumper.’

‘I don’t know where all this is getting us, Mike. We aren’t looking for a damaged car but for a witness who saw something when he passed Villiers’ bungalow.’

‘I like all the ends tidied,’ said Burden. ‘Anyway, I checked downstairs and no accident was reported on Tuesday night.’

‘Then let’s leave it, shall we?’ said Wexford crossly. ‘Get Martin to go over to Clusterwell and find out if anyone does any regular nightly dog walking. I may as well go myself,’ he added. ‘Spy out the land a bit. It’s not possible
no one
used that road.’

The cottages of Clusterwell were scattered over a spider-shaped network of lanes. Sergeant Martin took the body of the spider, Wexford its legs. Recalling the painstaking routine work of his youth, he knocked on every door. But the inhabitants of Clusterwell took a perverse pride in their own peculiar brand of respectability. Like those of Myfleet, they stayed in at night. Virtue lay in bolting one’s doors, drawing one’s curtains and gathering round the television by nine o’clock. And, judging by the number of mongrels Wexford encountered in the lanes, their dogs exercised themselves.

A large black one, patrolling what looked like a
field of allotments, growled at him as he approached the hedge. He decided to venture no nearer the caravan—in any case clearly deserted—which stood behind runner-bean vines and stacked chicken coops. Instead he stepped back to read the words on a shabby board mounted on poles:
A. Tawney. New-laid eggs, roasting chickens, veg.

‘Myfleet,’ he said tersely to his driver.

Mrs Cantrip was in her rocking chair, engrossed in her paper, a little flustered because he had caught her in idleness. Katje, who had shown him in, disappeared in the direction of the study.

‘Alf Tawney, sir? If he’s not on his rounds, you’ll likely find him over at Mrs Lovell’s.’

‘How does he travel to and fro?’

‘On his bike, sir. He’s got one of them big baskets on the handlebars of his bike.’

Wexford nodded. ‘Does he stay at Mrs Lovell’s all night?’

It was easy to shock Mrs Cantrip, who adhered to that school of thought which holds that fornication can only be committed between midnight and dawn. ‘Oh no, sir,’ she said, flushing and looking down. ‘He’s always gone by eleven. I reckon even Mrs Lovell’s got some idea of what’s right.’

The lovers were in the middle of their evening meal. A saucepan of baked beans stood in the middle of the clothless table.

Mrs Lovell re-seated herself. ‘His lordship been up to something?’ she asked, carving more bread and resting her gigantic bosom among the crumbs.

‘My visit has nothing to do with Sean.’ It was clear to Wexford that he was to be offered no tea, but a glance at the cracked cups and the scum-ringed milk
bottle told him he wasn’t missing anything. ‘I hoped to have the pleasure of a little talk with Mr Tawney.’