Guilty Thing Surprised (10 page)

‘Oh, Mike,’ said Jean Burden, ‘ought we send for Dr Crocker? Sometimes I even think about sending her to a psychiatrist.’

‘When you know she’ll be as right as rain as soon as she sets foot in the classroom? Keep a sense of proportion, love.’

‘I just wish I could help her. We’ve never been
nervy. I never thought we’d have a child who was a mass of nerves’

‘I’m not nervy,’ said John, coming in with satchel and shining morning face. ‘If I ever have kids and they go on like her I’ll give them a right walloping.’

Burden looked at his son with distaste. His children, though only two years apart in age, brought up by loving and happily married parents in a solid middle-class background, had never got on. From quarrelling ever since John was a toddler and Pat able only to scream at him from her pram they had progressed through physical fights to their current daily flipping.

He said severely: ‘You’re to stop speaking about your sister like that. I’m sick of telling you. Suppose,’ he said, a thought coming to him from the case he was engaged on, ‘suppose you and Pat were to be separated now and you knew you wouldn’t see each other again till you were grown up, how would you feel then? You’d be very sorry you were so unkind to her. You don’t know how much you’d miss her.’

‘I wouldn’t miss her,’ said John. ‘I wish I was only a child.’

‘I can’t understand this dislike,’ Burden said helplessly. ‘It’s not natural.’ He put out his hand as his daughter, white-faced and with hanging head, came in under the shelter of her mother’s arm. ‘I’ll drive you to school, sweetheart. I’ll come right inside with you.’

‘You never drive me to school,’ said John. ‘And I’ve got further to go, a dirty great mile to walk.’

‘Don’t say “dirty great”,’ said Burden mechanically, and then: ‘I’ll drive you both. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t quarrel in the car.’

The forecourt of the King’s School was thronged with boys. Burden edged the car up the drive, sending
the littlest ones, John’s contemporaries, scuttling out of the way, squealing and whooping at the top of their voices. Sixth-formers, draped against the wall in languid groups, their ignominious caps folded and tucked into their pockets, stared at turn with lofty insolence. John jumped out of the car while it was still moving and was immediately absorbed by the whooping mob.

‘You see, John isn’t a bit worried,’ Burden said encouragingly. ‘You know you were both bored stiff being at home so long and he’s glad to be back with his friends.’

‘I hate him,’ said Pat.

‘That’s no way to talk about your brother.’ Burden reversed carefully and, making a three-point turn just inside the gates, came face to face with Denys Villiers. He nodded courteously, just raising his hand. Villiers looked through him, thrust his hands into his pockets, and marched in the direction of the new wing.

‘Stop the car, Daddy,’ Pat said as soon as the reached the open road. ‘I’m going to be sick again.’

His children deposited, Burden drove down to the police station through the morning rush. He had been surprised to see Villiers, whom, he thought, tact if not grief would have kept from work for at least this week. A strange man, one who seemed to care nothing for public opinion. His behaviour in ignoring Burden, a policeman who had been in his house the day before and was, in any case, the parent of the King’s pupil, had been—well, outrageous, Burden thought.

Aware that he was twenty minutes late, he leapt into the lift and arrived breathless in Wexford’s office. The chief inspector, in an even more disgracefully shabby
suit than usual, sat at his rosewood desk, leafing through stacks of papers. Standing behind him at the window was the doctor, breathing on the glass and drawing with one finger something that looked disturbingly like a plan of the alimentary canal. Burden had had enough of alimentary canals for one morning.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘My girl Pat’s always sick on the first day of term, so I hung about and drove her to school.’ He nodded to the doctor. ‘Jean wanted you called in.’

‘But you wouldn’t bother a busy man?’ said Crocker with a lazy grin. ‘Pat’ll grow out of it, you know. It’s all part of the human predicament from which your kids aren’t going to be absolved, hard cheese though that may be.’

Wexford looked up with a scowl. ‘Spare us the philosophy, will you? I’ve got some lab reports here, Mike. The ash from the Manor bonfire shows distinctly that woollen cloth was burnt on it. No weapon has come to light, although our people went on combing the forest until it got dark last night and they’re at it again now.’

‘It could be anywhere,’ Burden said hopelessly. ‘In the river, chucked in someone’s garden. We don’t even know what it is.’

‘No, but we’re all going to have a hard think about that. First of all we have to decide if Mrs Nightingale’s assailant planned this murder or if it was unpremeditated.’

Dr Crocker rubbed at his drawing with the heel of his hand. He sat down on one of Wexford’s flimsy chairs. The chief inspector’s was the only solid one in the room, a dark wood and leather throne, strong and
ample enough to bear Wexford’s weight. It creaked as Wexford leaned back, spreading his arms.

‘Premeditated,’ said the doctor, concentrating. ‘Otherwise she wouldn’t have been killed in that way in that place. This kind of thing she was killed with isn’t the kind that people carry with them on country walks. Right?’

‘You mean that if it was unpremeditated she could have been killed by strangling, for instance?’

‘Roughly speaking, yes. You don’t have to bring the weapon with you in a planned murder if you know the means are going to be available. For example, Y intends to kill X in X’s drawing room, but he doesn’t take a weapon because he knows the poker will be where it always is, on the hearth. But in an open space there aren’t going to be any means, so he arms himself before he starts. That’s what your man did.’

‘Does it have to be a man?’ Wexford asked.

‘A man or a very strong woman.’

‘I agree with you. My own view is that it was planned, and that can simply apply in a jealousy murder. The killer followed her, expecting to see what he did in fact see. He took the weapon with him, guessing what he was going to see and only waited for confirmation. What do you think, Mike?’

‘Unpremeditated,’ said Burden coolly. ‘Our murderer was carrying with him something that could be used as a murder weapon but had some other primary purpose. As in the case of a woman cutting bread. Her husband says something to her which drives her over the edge of reason and she makes for him with the bread knife. But the original purpose of having the knife in her hand was to cut bread.’

*  *  *

‘I’m all for pre-cut loaves myself,’ said the doctor facetiously.

A deepening frown was the only sign Wexford gave of having heard this. ‘Well, if we play along for the moment with Mike’s theory, what could he (or the very strong she) have been carrying? What do people carry when they go into a wood at night?’

‘A walking stick,’ said Burden promptly, ‘with a metal tip.’

Crocker shook his head. ‘Too thin. Not the kind of thing at all. A
shooting
stick possibly, but it seems farfetched. A golf-club?’

Wexford glared at him derisively. ‘Going to have a few drives among the trees, was he? Trying to get his handicap down? Oh, give me strength!’

‘Well, it was moonlight,’ said the doctor. ‘Or it was till the wind came up. Metal heel of a shoe?’

‘Then where’s the dirt in the wound?’

‘You’re right. There wasn’t any.’

Wexford shrugged and fell into moody silence. Equally silently, Burden eased the papers from under his hand and began reading them without expression. Suddenly Wexford swivelled the groaning chair round.

‘You said something just now, something about light.’

‘I did?’

Burden said in his prim official voice: ‘Dr Crocker said that it had been moonlight until the wind came up.’ He gave a barrister-like inclination of his neat head in the doctor’s direction. Crocker raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh, yes, I remember because I was out at Flagford, delivering a baby There was a bright moon but the
clouds were already coming up by eleven and by half past the moon had gone.’

A slow grin that had nothing to do with humour and a great deal to do with triumph spread across Wexford’s face. ‘So what would anyone take with him into the wood?.’

‘An umbrella,’ said the doctor, but Burden said, his gravity giving way to excitement, ‘A torch!’

‘A torch?’ said Quentin Nightingale. ‘Those we have are kept in the garden room.’ The skin under his eyes looked brown and crêpey, the result perhaps of a second sleepless night. His hands trembled nervously as he touched his forehead, fidgeted with his tie, finally putting them behind his back and clasping them lightly together. ‘If you think …’ he muttered. ‘If you’re hoping … Your people searched the house throughout yesterday. What can …?’ He seemed incapable of ending his sentences, but let them trail away on a note of despair.

‘I’m pursuing a new line,’ Wexford said briskly. ‘Where is this garden room?’

‘I’ll take you there.’

As they re-entered the hall the front-door bell rang. Quentin stared at the door as if Nemesis itself awaited him on the other side of it, but he made no move, only nodding limply when Mrs Cantrip marched out from the kitchen.

‘Whoever’s that now?’ she said with some exasperation. ‘Are you at home to visitors, sir?’ His apathy aroused her sympathy rather than impatience. ‘Pot two pins I’d send them away with a flea in their ear.’

‘You’d better see who it is,’ said Quentin.

It was Georgina Villiers and Lionel Marriott. They made a strange couple, the tall raw-boned young
woman incongruously bedizened with costume jewellery, and the little sharp-eyed man. Georgina’s face registered a mixture of assorted emotions, hope, shyness, and intense curiosity. She carried a canvas holdall with plastic straps and handles, more suitable for a hiker than a woman paying a morning call, and as she stepped over the threshold she broke into a disjointed stream of apology and explanation.

‘I felt I had to come and see how you were bearing up, Quen. It’s all so dreadful for you … I’ve brought my own lunch so that Mrs Cantrip won’t have to be bothered cooking for me. How are you? You do look bad. Well, of course it’s the strain and everything. Oh dear, perhaps I shouldn’t have come.’

Quentin’s face, contorted in an effort to hide his anxiety, showed plainly that he agreed with her, but courtesy forbade his saying so. ‘No, no. It was nice of you to take the trouble. Won’t you come into the morning room?’ He swallowed hard and half-turned to Wexford. ‘Perhaps Mrs Cantrip can take you to where the torches are kept?’ The hand he put up to his sister-in-law’s shoulder to shepherd her along shook now with violent jerks that were painful to see. They moved slowly towards the room where Elizabeth Nightingale had sat in the mornings, Georgina still muttering apologies.

‘One moment,’ said Wexford, putting out an arm to prevent Marriott from following them. The morning-room door closed. ‘What the hell are you doing here anyway?’ the chief inspector said wrathfully. ‘I thought you were supposed to be at school?’

‘I had a free period, my dear, and how use it better than by popping up here to console poor Quen?’

‘Perhaps you can tell me how someone without a
car “pops”, as you put it, up to Myfleet from Kingsmarkham and back again in forty minutes?’

‘Georgina,’ said Marriott, unable to restrain a grin of triumph, ‘gave me a lift. I was standing at the school gates lost in thought, wondering in fact how I was going to accomplish my popping, the Myfleet bus having just gone, when along she came, Manor-bound. Such a relief! We had a nice little chat, planning the things we were going to say to cheer Quen up.’

‘Then you’d better go in and say them,’ said Wexford, giving the little man a small shove. ‘Say them and go. I’m just about to start another massive search of this place and I don’t want a lot of cheerful nosy people interfering with my men. And don’t forget,’ he added, ‘that we have a date at four o’clock.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘Now, Mrs Cantrip, for the garden room.’

‘Just down the passage, sir, and mind the step. I’m sure you’ll say it was wrong of me to listen but I couldn’t help hearing what you said to that Mr Marriott. Just what he needs, I thought, always up here snooping. And as far that Mrs Villiers … Did you hear her say she’d brought her own lunch? A nasty packet of sandwiches, I daresay. As if I wouldn’t have given her a nice lunch. She’d only got to ask like a lady’

‘Is this the place, Mrs Cantrip? It’s very dark down here.’

‘You can’t tell me, sir. I’m always telling Mr Nightingale to have a tight fixed up. There was quite a nasty accident five or six years back when that Twohey fell down the step and thought his leg was broken but it was only a sprained ankle. He’d been too free
helping himself from Mr Nightingale’s whisky bottle and that’s a fact.’

‘Who was Twohey?’ asked Wexford, stepping back for Mrs Cantrip to open the door. ‘A friend of the family?’

‘Oh, no, sir, just a servant. Him and his wife used to work here, if you can call it work. It didn’t lighten my load, I can tell you. I was never so relieved in all my life as when Mr Nightingale sacked them. This is the garden room, sir, and there’s a bit more light, you’ll be glad to see.’

The light came from a glazed door leading into the garden. His face impassive, Wexford looked slowly around the small uncarpeted room. Its walls were white-washed and on one of them hung a couple of shotguns, while beneath golf clubs and walking sticks lay in a long rack. There were two tennis rackets in presses, a string bag of tennis balls and a chip basket and scissors for cutting flowers. His glance went up to a shelf above the rack on which stood an array of torches: a lantern with a red cone on its top of the kind that is used to warn motorists of the presence of a broken-down car, a bigger storm lantern, a pencil torch and a bicycle lamp.

‘That’s funny,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘There should be another one, a great big silver-coloured one.’ Suddenly she had become rather pale. ‘A torch with a big head,’ she said, ‘a big head and a sort of long thick tube thing to hold it with. I reckon it’d be nine or ten inches long.’