He got on with it, beginning in her bedroom. Perhaps it was the smell of these souvenirs, merely musty to him but evocative to her of the occasions they commemorated, which made her face go strange and dreamy, though not unhappy, her hand shake a little as she touched the cards and photographs he lifted from the drawers. He fetched the old brass bedlamp and put it on the tallboy to give him light, and in its yellow radiance, moted with dust, he explored the archives of Mrs Lyle’s long life.
She had been a great correspondent and she had kept every letter, every birthday and Christmas card she had ever received. Some male relative had been a philatelist so she had kept the envelopes too, but the collector had never come for his stamps which had accumulated in their thousands on envelopes and scraps torn from envelopes. The late policeman’s love letters were there, bound in ribbon from a wedding cake, pieces of ancient and petrified icing still adhering to it. Every year he had sent her a Valentine. He found five in the tallboy, and then he began on the workboxes, seven more in there.
‘I never throw anything away,’ said Mrs Lyle happily.
He didn’t say the cruel thing aloud, but he asked it of himself. Why didn’t she? Why did she keep these cards, these cake boxes, these locks of babies’ hair, these greetings telegrams and these reams of newspaper cuttings? She was blind; she would never be able to see any of them again. But he knew she kept them for another reason. What matter if she never again read the policeman’s writing or looked at his picture and those of her posterity? They were the bricks of her identity, the fabric of the walls which kept it safe and the windows through which, though sightless, it could still look out upon its world. His own identity had been too precariously shaken in recent weeks for him to reproach someone who hoarded and harvested and stored to preserve her own.
And he could see. His eye didn’t hurt him at all. Even in this dull and dusty light he could read the spidery writing and distinguish the faces in the cloudy sepia photographs. By now he felt that he could have written Mrs Lyle’s biography. It was all here, every day of her life, keeping her alive and a unique personality, waiting to be burned by a grandson when she needed it no longer.
They moved on into the next room. Wexford didn’t know what time it was; he was afraid to look at his watch. There must be easier ways of finding Rebecca Foster. If only he could remember where it was that he had seen her for the first time . . .
He wished he had begun in the smallest bedroom, for it was there that he found it. He unstrapped a suitcase, unlocked it, opened it. The case contained only letters, some still in their envelopes, some loose, their sheets scattered and mixed with others. And here it was at last. ’36, Biretta St., SW10. June 26th,1954. Dear May, Sorry to hear you are having trouble with your eyes . . .’
‘Well, that didn’t take too long, did it?’ said Mrs Lyle. ‘I hope you’ve put all my things back right, not mixed up. I like to know where they are. If you’ve done, I’ll see you off the premises and then I think I’ll get to bed.’
21
He made the proverb true, which saith: he that shooteth oft, at last shall hit the mark.
His last day. He didn’t think of it as the last day of his holiday but as his last opportunity to solve this case. And it was the first time he had really known what it is to be set a deadline. In the past, of course, at Kingsmarkham, the chief constable had pressed him and there had sometimes been threats of calling in the Yard, but no one had ever said, You have twenty-four hours. After that time has elapsed, the case will be taken out of your hands. No one was saying it now except himself.
Howard had ceased to regard him as being involved in it. Come to that, he had never said, This is your case. Solve it for me. How could he, in his position? All he had asked for were his uncle’s ideas and his uncle’s advice, and with Wexford’s failure he had given up asking even that. Not that he gave any sign of being disappointed, but he pinned his faith now to Baker and it was of Baker that he had talked the night before.
Wexford had been too tired to take much of it in, gathering only that Gregson had been remanded in custody on a charge of assaulting a police officer. Baker still thought of him as his prime suspect, but just the same he was pursuing other lines. The scarf was interesting him at the moment and he was much concerned about an interview he had had with one of the tenants of Garmisch Terrace. Wexford couldn’t summon up energy to ask questions, and Howard too was tired, his foot paining him, and he let his uncle go off to bed, wishing him good night with the optimistic assurance that the case might well be solved before the Wexfords left on the Saturday.
It might well, Wexford reflected on the morning of his last day, but not by Baker.
The women had long given up waiting at the foot of the stairs for him and with regard to breakfast he took pot luck. He felt perfectly well. Yesterday’s exercise had taken off more weight while the meals had added none, and even doubtful solicitous Dora had to admit that his holiday had done its good work. It was hard for him to realize that this Friday was just the last day of their holiday for her, a time for packing and going out to buy last-minute gifts. Her only concern was whether or not she had remembered the order for milk to be left on Saturday, and would their little corner shop keep a loaf of bread for her?
‘What did you say?’ said her husband.
‘The bread, Reg. I said I hoped Dixons would keep me a loaf of bread.’
‘You said the corner shop . . .’ That was where he had seen her! Not, of course, at Dixons down the road from him in Kingsmarkham, but at a little place that might have been its twin opposite a rose-pink house in Fulham. All those hours wasted, rummaging through the store place of a life! ‘Pity you didn’t mention it before,’ he said abruptly.
They looked at him as if he were mad, but Denise often did that. ‘How are you going to amuse yourself today, Uncle Reg?’
‘I shall be all right.’
‘Going to see St Thomas for the last time?’
‘
Sir
Thomas.’ He smiled at her, liking her scented prettiness, glad that he would soon be away from her speckless housekeeping and her dangerous plants. ‘Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got things to do. Howard got off all right?’
‘Someone came to drive him.’
He waited until they had left the house to buy toys for his grandchildren, and then he walked down past the back way into St Mark and St John, catching sight of a red head by the gates that probably belonged to Verity Bate. She reminded him of his previous failure. He wouldn’t fail again, not this time. Everything was falling beautifully into place. He even knew just why Loveday had picked on Belgrade Road and that colourful house opposite the shop as an address to give Peggy Pope. It was straight there that he was going. Why bother with Biretta Street which lay far off his course in the river-bound peninsula that is Chelsea but looks like Wilman Park or Kenbourne Vale?
The shop was ahead of him now, price reductions scrawled on its window, vegetables outside in boxes, a mongrel dog tied up to a lamp standard. He went inside. The shop was full of people, a long queue of women with long shopping lists. Two assistants were serving, a young girl and a woman with a pink wen pushing her nose slightly askew.
There was nothing for it but to wait until the place emptied, if it ever did on a Friday when shoppers stocked up with weekend provisions. He paced up and down the street, time passing with maddening slowness. Years and years ago, when he was young, he had felt like this, arriving too early for a date with a girl, killing time. The cold mist made him shiver and his fingers felt numb. Pity he hadn’t thought of putting gloves on. Gloves . . . In all these enquiries of his he mustn’t forget the girl with the gloves.
When he went back for the fourth time to the shop door, all but one of the queue had gone and this last one was being served by the girl. His woman, his longed-for date, had gone to the window and was stacking soap packets in a pyramid.
‘Mrs Foster?’ he said, his throat dry.
She stepped back, surprised, and nodded. The mole, which might once have marred a pretty face, was now only an ugly feature among general worn ugliness. She looked about fifty. Ah, the orchard walls are high and hard to climb . . .
‘I’m a police officer. I should like to talk to you.’
When she spoke he heard the voice of a Child of the Revelation, accentless, dull, economical.
‘What about?’ she said.
‘Your niece,’ said Wexford. ‘Your brother’s daughter.’
She didn’t argue or expostulate but told the girl to see to the shop and led him into a small room at the rear.
‘I’ve been talking to Mrs Lyle,’ he said.
The blood poured into her face and she pressed her ill-kept hands together. It was impossible to imagine her as the young girl, the Juliet, who had climbed down a ladder into her lover’s arms. ‘Mrs Lyle . . . Does she still live down there? Next door to my brother?’
‘She’s blind now. She knew nothing, only your address.’
‘Blind,’ said Mrs Foster. ‘Blind. And I’m a widow and Rachel . . .’ To his horror she began to cry. She cried as if she were ashamed of her tears, scrubbing them away as they fell. ‘The world’s all wrong,’ she said. ‘It ought to be changed.’
‘Maybe. Tell me about Rachel.’
‘I promised her . . .’
‘Your promises mean nothing now, Mrs Foster. Rachel is dead.’ He had broken it without preamble but he regretted nothing, for he could tell that her niece had very little to do with her grief. She had been crying for herself, perhaps a little for Mrs Lyle. Who had ever shed a tear for Loveday Morgan?
‘Dead,’ she said as she had said ‘blind’. ‘How, dead?’
He explained and all the time he was speaking her face was stony. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said.
‘She came to my house in July, last July.’ The voice grated on him. It was even, monotonous, without rise or fall. ‘My brother turned her out when he found she was expecting. She was small and she didn’t eat much and she didn’t show till nearly the end. My brother told her to get out.’
He had guessed but he could hardly believe it. In these days? In London in the nineteen seventies? Although she had emancipated herself from her upbringing, Mrs Foster had about her something Victorian, and it was a Victorian situation, chronicled in a thousand novels, that she was describing.
‘You can’t credit it?’ she said. ‘You don’t know what the Children are. She came to me because there was no one else. She’d never heard of people, societies, that look after girls like her. I’d have thought she was simple if I hadn’t been like that myself once.’
‘The baby?’
‘She hadn’t seen a doctor. I told her to go and see one. She wouldn’t. She’d never been to a doctor in her life. The Children don’t have doctors. She wouldn’t go to the Assistance. I kept her. I had this job and two jobs cleaning. What else could I do? One day I got home from work and she’d had the baby all by herself in my bedroom.’
‘
Without any assistance
?’
Mrs Foster nodded. ‘I made her have a doctor then. I sent for my own. He was very angry with me but what could I do? He sent in the midwife every day and I registered the baby in Chelsea, up in the King’s Road.’
‘Morgan was the father?’
‘Yes. She said she was his wife and when he came out of prison they’d be married properly. I know that wasn’t true. He had a wife living. We looked after the baby between us and when she got work, cleaning work, sometimes I’d take it with me or she’d take it with her.’
‘And then?’
Mrs Foster hesitated. The girl in the shop called her and she said, ‘I’m coming. I’m coming in a minute.’ She turned tiredly to Wexford. ‘It was adopted. Rachel loved it, but she agreed. She knew it wasn’t possible for us to keep it all on our own. We had to work, both of us, and women don’t like it if you take a baby with you. But Rachel was no worker, anyway. She wasn’t used to it. She was crazy about television. It was new to her, you see. All she wanted was to sit about all day, watching the television with the baby on her lap. She said she’d like to be somewhere where she could watch it all day long. Then the baby went and being in my house without it got her down, so she left and got a room. I never heard from her. I thought maybe my brother had taken her back. All she’d been through hadn’t stopped her wanting to be one of the Children . . .’ Mrs Foster’s voice tailed forlornly away.
‘Who adopted the baby? Was it done through a society?’
‘I can’t tell you that. I promised. Rachel never knew. We thought it best she shouldn’t know.’
‘I must know.’
‘Not through me. I promised.’
‘Then I must go to the Children’s Department,’ said Wexford.
The phone book told him he would find it in Holland Park and he waited for a taxi to take him there. But he knew the answer already, the whole answer, and as he stood at the kerb he began carefully arranging mentally the complete sequence of events from Rachel Vickers’ arrival in Biretta Street to her death as Loveday Morgan in Kenbourne Vale cemetery.
Poor Baker. Just for once he was to be cheated of his triumph, forestalled by the old fuddy-duddy from the country. Wexford felt gently amused to think of them all there in Kenbourne, pursuing lines which would lead to dead ends, running off at tangents, clinging obstinately to their need to pin it on a boy van driver. All there at the police station – except Sergeant Clements. And he would be in court, getting his order. Or perhaps, even at this moment, failing to get it?
Howard and Baker were at the yard. Everyone knew Clements was taking the day off and why he was. Pamela told Wexford she didn’t expect the superintendent to put in a further appearance that day.
The snapshot Pamela had found on Howard’s desk was no longer there. Someone had taken it or put it away. Instead, Mrs Dearborn’s blue scarf lay there, enclosed but not concealed by a case of clear plastic. It had the look of a pre-wrapped Christmas gift but for the neat official label stuck to the side of the case.