‘You’d agree with my wife, then, that it’s an improvement on Kenbourne?’
Wexford smiled, sighing a little to himself, for he had been so piercingly reminded of the country. He was suddenly conscious of the peace and the silence. Not even in Howard’s house had he been able to escape from the ceaseless sound of traffic, but there was nothing more to be heard than a faint throbbing, what Londoners call the ‘hum’, ever present in the city and its suburbs but sometimes so remote as to seem like a sound in one’s own head.
‘My wife’s upstairs with our daughter,’ Dearborn said. ‘She wouldn’t go to sleep and it’s no good my staying with her. I just want to cuddle her and play with her all the time.’
It was warm inside but airy, enough heat turned on to take off the March chill without making one gasp. The house was very obviously the residence of a rich man, but Wexford couldn’t see any sign of pretentiousness or evidence that money had been spent with an eye to impress. It wasn’t even very tidy. There was a scattering of crumbs under a tea-table and an ivory teething ring lay on a blanket in the middle of the carpet.
‘What will you drink?’
Wexford was getting tired of drawing attention to his illness and his diet. ‘Have you any beer?’ he asked.
‘Sure we have. I couldn’t get through the weekend without it after all those shorts I have to consume the rest of the time. I drink it from the can, as a matter of fact.’ Dearborn gave a sudden boyish smile. ‘We’d better have glasses or my wife will kill me after you’ve gone.’
The beer was kept in a refrigerator with a wood veneered door which Wexford had at first glance taken for a glass cabinet. ‘My favourite toy,’ said Dearborn. ‘When Alexandra gets a bit older I shall always keep it full of ice cream and cans of coke.’ Still smiling, he filled their glasses. ‘I’ve come to fatherhood rather late in life, Mr Wexford – I was forty-three last Tuesday – and my wife says it’s made me soppy. I’d like to get the moon and stars for my daughter, but, as this is impossible, she shall have all the good things of this world instead.’
‘You’re not afraid of spoiling her?’
‘I’m afraid of many things, Mr Wexford.’ The smile died away and he became intensely serious. ‘Of being too indulgent and too possessive among other things, I tell myself that she’s not mine, that she belongs to herself. It’s not easy being a parent.’
‘No, it’s not easy. And it’s as well people don’t know it, for if they did, maybe they wouldn’t dare have children.’
Dearborn shook his head. ‘I could never feel like that. I’m a fortunate man. I’ve been lucky in marriage. And you know what they say, happy is the man who can make a living from his hobby. But, for all that, I didn’t know what real happiness was till I got Alexandra. If I lost her I’d – I’d kill myself.’
‘Oh, come, you mustn’t say that.’
‘It’s true. I mean it. You don’t believe me?’
But Wexford, who had many times heard men make similar threats without taking them very seriously, did believe him. There was a kind of earnest desperation in the man’s whole manner, and he was relieved when the tension was slackened by the entry of Mrs Dearborn.
She told him she was glad to see him. ‘As long as you don’t encourage Stephen to cart us all off to some slum,’ she said. ‘He gets tired of places he can’t improve.’
‘It would be hard to improve on Laysbrook House,’ said Wexford politely.
She was not at all beautiful and she had made no attempt to look younger than her forty years. Her walnut-brown hair was threaded with grey, her neck ringed with lines. He wondered what constituted her appeal. Was it the willowy ease with which she moved – for she was very slim – or the play of her long fine hands or her extreme femininity? The last, he thought. Her nails were varnished, her skirt short, she was even now taking a cigarette from a cedarwood box, but for all that she had all the old-fashioned womanly grace of a lady out of one of Trollope’s novels, a squire’s lady, a chatelaine.
That Dearborn was in love with her was immediately apparent from the way his eyes followed her to her chair and lingered on her, watching her settle herself and smooth her skirt over her crossed legs. It was almost as if those briefly caressing hands had for a moment become his own and, vicariously, he felt under them the smoothness of silk and flesh.
Wexford was wondering how to broach the subject of Kenbourne cemetery when Dearborn announced that it was time to get the maps out.
‘Dull for you, darling,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard it all so many times before.’
‘I can bear it. I shall knit.’
‘Yes, do. I like to see you knitting. It’s a funny thing, Mr Wexford, the qualities women think will attract us and the qualities which really do. I could watch Miss World doing a striptease and it would leave me cold, but let me see a woman in a clean white apron rolling pastry and I’d be in love with her before she could close the kitchen door.’
Mrs Dearborn laughed. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘You were.’
So that’s the way they came together, Wexford thought. It really happened and not too long ago either. It must have been like a Dutch interior, the man visiting the house as a guest for the first time, the kitchen door half open and behind it this brown-haired woman with the sweet face looking up, startled from her cooking, shy at being caught in her apron and with flour on her arms.
Mrs Dearborn seemed to sense what was going on in his mind, for her eyes met his fleetingly and she pursed her lips, suppressing a smile. Then she lifted from a bag a mass of wool and half-completed work, as white and fluffy as flour, and began to knit.
To watch her was curiously soothing. Every harassed businessman, he thought, should have a tank of tropical fish at one end of his office and a woman knitting at the other. Tired now, he could have watched her all the evening, but he had to turn his attention to the maps, photographs and the old deeds which Dearborn had brought into the room and spread in front of them.
The enthusiasm of the crusader had taken hold of Dearborn and as he talked a light came into his eyes. This was Kenbourne as it had been in the time of the fourth George; here had stood the manor house which a royal duke had rented for his actress mistress; on the south side of Lammas Grove had stood a row of magnificent elms. Why shouldn’t the land be cleared and fresh trees planted? Why not make all this waste stretch here into playing fields? There was no need for Wexford to ask about the cemetery. Before he could interrupt he was told its acreage, the history of every interesting person buried there, and informed that the state of the walls on the eastern side was so bad that soon vandals would be able to enter and plunder at will.
A point to Baker. Wexford tried to relax and make himself receptive, but he felt overwhelmed. He was experiencing a sensation he had often had before when lectured by someone with an obsession. Itis all too much. It should be done in easy stages, but the obsessed cannot see this. Night and day he has lived with his passion and when he comes to enlighten the tyro, he is unable, because he has not been trained in teaching, to sketch in a simple background, awaken interest and postpone the complex details until another occasion. Unrelated facts, historical anecdotes, instances of iconoclasm came tumbling from Dearborn’s lips. He found maps to confirm this, deeds to verify that, until Wexford’s head began to spin.
It was a relief when the time came for his glass to be refilled and he could lean back briefly to exchange a smile with Mrs Dearborn. But when he looked in her direction, expecting to be calmed by the sight of those rhythmically moving fingers, he saw that her work lay in her lap, her eyes were fixed in a dead stare on a distant part of the room, and she was compulsively picking at the piping on the arm of her chair.
The piping had been so badly frayed that the cord beneath was fully exposed on both arms. This was not the result of one evening of nervous tension but surely of many. And when he glanced at the other five or six chairs in the room and at the sofa, he saw that all, though otherwise immaculate, were in the same state. Loops of cord showed on every arm, protruding from feathery rags.
The sight upset him, for it seemed to destroy the picture he had of this couple’s serene happiness. He felt a sudden tension. At the drinks tray Dearborn stood watching his wife, his face compassionate yet very slightly exasperated.
No one spoke. Into the silence the telephone rang shatteringly, making them jump but none of them as violently as Mrs Dearborn. She was out of her chair on the second ring, her sharp ‘I’ll get it!’ almost a cry. Her grace had gone. She was like a medium who, awakened from a strange and transcending communion, must gather together the threads that hold her to reality and, in gathering them, suffers intolerable mental stress.
The telephone was at the far end of the room, on a table under the point on which Mrs Dearborn’s eyes had long been fixed. She took the receiver and said hallo, clearing her throat so that she could repeat the word in a voice above a whisper. That she wanted the call and was not afraid of it was apparent; that the wrong person had called showed in the sudden sagging of her shoulders.
‘That’s all right,’ she said into the mouthpiece, and then to her husband, ‘Only a wrong number.’
‘We get so many,’ Dearborn said, as if apologizing for a fault of his own. ‘You’re tired, Melanie. Let me give you a drink.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, thanks.’ She pushed a lock of hair from her forehead and Wexford saw how thin her wrists were. ‘It’s my daughter,’ she said, the good hostess who knows that there must be no subterfuge before guests. ‘I get so worried about her. Children are an anxiety these days, aren’t they? You never know what trouble they may be in. But I won’t bore you.’ She took the whisky her husband handed her. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She sighed.
Husband and wife stood facing each other, hands briefly locked. Wexford was even more in the dark than before. What had she meant about her daughter, about not knowing what trouble she might be in? Ababy young enough to use a teething ring, a baby its mother had left upstairs an hour before, was surely peacefully sleeping in its cot. Unless she was expecting a doctor to phone her because the child had been ill . . .
He drank his second glass of beer with a feeling of guilt. The unfamiliar alcohol made him feel lethargic and light-headed and he was glad when Dear born packed up his papers and said that was enough for one night.
‘You must come again. Or, better than that, I’ll take you on a tour round some of the places we’ve talked about. I take Alexandra to Kenbourne Vale.’ He spoke quite seriously. ‘She’s not really old enough yet to understand, but you can see in her eyes she’s beginning to take an interest. She’s a very intelligent child. Are you in London for long?’
‘Only till next Saturday, I’m afraid. Then it’s back to Sussex and work.’
‘What sort of work?’ Mrs Dearborn asked.
‘I’m a policeman.’
‘How interesting. Not an ordinary policeman, I’m sure.’
‘A detective chief inspector.’
Her face sharpened. She looked at her husband, then away. Dearborn might have been expected to refer to the murder, but he didn’t. ‘That puts paid to our tour,’ he said. ‘You’re going home and I’ve got an architects’ convention in Yorkshire at the end of next week. Next time you come to London, maybe?’
Wexford nodded, but all further conversation was cut short by a wailing cry from upstairs. The adored, troublesome, precocious, super-intelligent infant was once more awake.
Melanie Dearborn, who had been so electrified by the telephone bell, behaved now like a woman who had reared six children. With a ‘That’s Alexandra off again,’ she rose casually from her chair. It was Dearborn who made the fuss. Was the child ill? Should they call a doctor? He hadn’t liked the rash on her face, although his wife had said it was only teething.
Wexford took advantage of this small crisis to leave them, furnishing them with Howard’s telephone number and thanking them for a pleasant evening. Mrs Dearborn saw him out. Her husband was already upstairs, calling to the baby that Daddywas coming, that Daddy would make everything all right.
10
For as love is oftentimes won with beauty, so it is not kept, preserved and continued but by virtue and obedience.
While Wexford was with the Dearborns and Howard at home playing bridge a burglary took place in Kenbourne Vale. It was one a of a series, all break-ins involving the theft of silver or jewellery and cashand all occurring on Friday or Saturday nights.
‘Your friend’s answerable for some of this,’ said Howard on Monday morning.
‘Dearborn?’ Wexford queried.
‘Kenbourne’s coming up, you see, Reg. I’m all for improving the place, converting some of these old slums and so on, but there’s no doubt that when you bring money in you bring crime too. Ten years ago there was scarcely a Kenbournite, excepting the shopkeepers, with anything worth pinching. Now, in the better parts, we’ve got company directors with heirlooms and safes a child could open. None of the break-ins have been in places owned by Notbourne properties yet, but unless I’m much mistaken they’ll go for Vale Park next.’
‘Any idea who “they” are?’
‘One always has. You know that,’ Howard said bitterly. ‘I spent most of yesterday questioning a man called Winter who has, of course, a beautiful unbreakable alibi. And who do you think is supplying it for him? None other than our old friend Harry Slade.’
Wexford looked puzzled. ‘Not an old friend of mine.’
‘Sorry, Reg. Haven’t we put you in the picture? Harry Slade is one of the men who says Gregson was with him in the Psyche club on the night of Friday, February 25th. He hasn’t got a record but I’m beginning to think he’s a professional alibi provider.’
‘But surely . . . ?’
‘Surely his word counts for nothing? Not to a judge, Reg. Here’s a blameless citizen, a milkman of all things, pure as the goods he purveys, who says Winter spent Saturday night with himself, his dear old mother and his typist fiancée, playing Monopoly – again of all things – in mother’s flat.’