Means Of Evil And Other Stories (15 page)

   Wexford hadn't spoken for some minutes. Now he said, "When Leilie Somers was charged with this baby-battering thing, did she plead guilty or not guilty?"

   Rather surprised by the apparent irrelevance of this question, Burden said, "Guilty. There wasn't much evidence offered apart from the doctor's. Leilie pleaded guilty and said something about being tired and strained and not being able to stand it when the baby cried. Damned disgraceful nonsense."

   "Yes, it was damned disgraceful nonsense," said Wexford quietly, and then he said, "The walls in those flats are very thin, aren't they? So thin that from one side you can hear a pin drop on the other." He was silent and meditative for a moment. "What was Leilie Somers's mother's maiden name?"

   "
What
?" said Burden. "How on earth do you expect me to know a thing like that?"

   "I just thought you might. I thought it might be an Irish name, you see. Because Leilie is probably short for Eileen, which is an Irish name. I expect she called herself Leilie when she was too young to pronounce her name properly."

   Burden said with an edge of impatience to his voice, "Look, do I get to know what all this is leading up to?"

   "Sure you do. The arrest of Paddy and Tony Jasper and Johnny Farrow. You can get down to Roland Road and see to it as soon as you like."

   "For God's sake, you know as well as I do we'll never make it stick. We couldn't break Monkton and he'll alibi the lot of them."

   "That'll be OK," said Wexford laconically. "Trust me. Believe me, there is no alibi. And now, Polly, you and I will turn our attention to the matter of young Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle."

Wexford left Polly sitting outside in the car. It was eight o'clock and still light. He rang the bell that had fetched Leilie down that afternoon, and when she didn't come he rang the other. Julie Lang appeared.

   "She's upset. I've got her in with me having a cup of tea."

   "I'd like to see her, Mrs. Lang, and I'll need to see her alone. I'll go and sit in my car for five minutes and then if she'll . . ."

   Leilie Somers's voice from the top of the stairs cut off the end of his sentence. "You can come up. I'm OK now."

   Wexford climbed the stairs towards her, Julie Lang following him. Leilie stood back to let him pass. She seemed smaller than ever, thinner, meeker, her hennaed hair showing a paler red at the roots, her face white and deeply sad. Julie Lang put her hand on her arm, squeezed it, went off quickly into her own flat. Leilie put the key into the lock of her front door and opened the door and stood looking at the empty neat place, the passage, the open doors into the other rooms, now all made more melancholy by the encroaching twilight. Tears stood in her eyes and she turned her face so that Wexford should not see them fall.

   "He's not worth it, Leilie," said Wexford.

   "I know
that
, I know what he's worth. But you won't get me being disloyal to him, Mr. Wexford, I shan't say a word."

   "Let's go in and sit down." He made his way to the table where it was lightest and sat down in the chair Tony Jasper had sat in. "Where's the baby?"

   "With my mum."

   "Rather much for someone who's just come out of hospital, isn't it?" Wexford looked at his watch. "You're going to be late for work. What time is it you start? Eight-thirty?"

   "Eight," she said. "I'm not going. I couldn't, not after what's happened to Paddy. Mr. Wexford, you might as well go. I'm not going to say anything. If I was Paddy's wife you couldn't make me say anything, and I'm as good as his wife, I've been more to him than most wives'd have been."

   "I know that, Leilie," said Wexford, "I know all about that," and his voice was so loaded with meaning that she stared at him with frightened eyes whose whites shone in the dusk. "Leilie," he said, "when they drew the chalk circle and put the child in it the girl who had brought him up refused to pull him out because she knew she would hurt him. Rather than hurt him she preferred that someone else should have him."

   "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

   "I think you do. It's not so different from Solomon's judgement of cutting the baby in half. The child's mother wouldn't have that happen, better let the other woman have him. You pleaded guilty in court to crimes against your first son you had never committed. It was Jasper who injured that child, and it was Jasper who got you to take the blame because he knew you would get a light sentence whereas he would get a heavy one. And afterwards you had the baby adopted——not because you didn't love him but because like the chalk circle woman you would rather lose him than have him hurt again. Isn't it true?"

   She stared at him. Her head moved, a tiny affirmative bob. Wexford leaned across to the window and opened it. He waved his hand out of the window, withdrew it and closed the casement again. Leilie was crying, making no attempt to dry her tears.

   "Were you brought up as a Catholic?" he said.

   "I was baptized," she said in a voice not much above a whisper. "Mum's a Catholic. Her and Dad, they got married in Galway where Mum comes from, and Dad had to promise to bring the kids up Catholic." A sob caught her throat. "I haven't been to mass for years. Mr. Wexford, please go away now and leave me alone. I just want to be left alone."

   He said, "I'm sorry to hear you say that because I've got a visitor for you, and he'll certainly be staying the night." He switched on lights, the living-room light, the light in the hall and one over the top of the door, and then he opened the door and Polly Davies walked in with young Ginger in her arms.

   Leilie blinked at the light. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and then she lifted it and opened her eyes and made a sort of bound for Polly, nearly knocking Wexford over. But she didn't snatch Ginger. She stood trembling, looking at Polly, her hands moving slowly forward until, with an extreme gentle tenderness, they closed over and caressed the baby's downy red-gold head.

   "Matthew," she said. "Matthew."

The baby lay in Leilie's lap. He had whimpered a little at first, but now he lay quiet and relaxed, gripping one of her fingers, and for the first time in their acquaintance Wexford saw him smile. It was a beautiful spontaneous smile of happiness at being home again with Mother.

   "You're going to tell me all about it, aren't you, Leilie?" said Wexford.

   She was transformed. He had never seen her so animated, so high-spirited. She was giggly with joy so that Matthew, sensing her mood, gurgled in response, and she hugged him again, calling him her lovely lovely sweetheart, her precious boy.

   "Come on now, Leilie," said Wexford, "you've got him back without the least trouble to yourself which is more than you damn' well deserve. Now you can give an account of yourself."

   "I don't know where to start," said Leilie, giggling.

   "At the beginning, whenever that is."

   "Well, the beginning," said Leilie, "I reckon when Patrick, my first boy, was adopted." She had stopped laughing and a little of the old melancholy had come back into her face. "That was four years ago. Paddy went off up north and after a bit he wrote and said would I join him, and I don't know why I said yes, I reckon I always do say yes to Paddy, and there didn't seem anything else, there didn't seem any future. It was all right with Paddy for a bit, and then a couple of years back he got this other girl. I sort of pretended I didn't know about it, I thought he'd get tired of her, but he didn't and I was lonely, I was so lonely. I didn't know a soul up there but Paddy, not like I could talk to, and he'd go away for weeks on end. I sort of took to going out with other fellas, anyone, I didn't care, just for the company." She paused, shifted Matthew on her knees. "When I knew I was pregnant I told Paddy I wasn't having the baby up there, I was going home to Mum. But he said to stay and he wouldn't see the other girl, and I did stay till after Matthew was born, and then I knew he was carrying on again so I came back here and Mum got me this flat. I know what you're going to say, Mr. Wexford!"

   "I wasn't going to say a word."

   "You were thinking it. So what? It's true. I couldn't tell you who Matthew's father is, I don't know. It might be Paddy, it might be one of half a dozen." Her expression had grown fierce. She almost glared at him. "And I'm glad I don't know. I'm glad. It makes him more mine. I never went out with any other fella but Paddy till he drove me to it."

   "All right," said Wexford, "all right. So you lived here with Matthew and you had your job at the Andromeda and then Paddy wrote to say he was coming down, and on Saturday he did come. And you took Monday evening off work to be with him and exchanged your Tuesday turn with another girl——and so we come to Wednesday, yesterday."

   Leilie sighed. She didn't seem unhappy, only rueful. "Paddy said he'd babysit. He said he'd asked Tony over and Johnny and a fella called Pip Monkton, and they'd be in all evening. I said he wasn't to bother, I could take Matthew next door into Julie's, and Paddy got mad at me and said Julie was an interfering bitch and didn't I trust him to look after his own child? Well, that was it, I didn't, I kept remembering what he'd done to Patrick, and that was because Patrick cried. Paddy used to go crazy when he cried, I used to think he'd kill him, and when I tried to stop him he nearly killed me. And, you see, Mr. Wexford, Matthew'd got into this way of crying in the evenings. They said at the clinic some babies cry at night and some in the evenings and it's hard to know why, but they all grow out of it. I knew Matthew'd start screaming about eight and I thought, my God, what'll Paddy do? He gets in a rage, he doesn't know what he's doing, and Tony wouldn't stop him, he's scared of him like they all are, Paddy's so big. Well, I got in a real state. Mum'd come out of hospital that morning, she'd had a major op, so I couldn't take him there and go back there myself and hide from Paddy, and I couldn't take him to work. I did once and they made a hell of a fuss. I just couldn't see any way out of it.

   "Paddy went out about eleven. He never said where he was going and I didn't ask. Anyway, I went out too, carrying Matthew in the baby carrier, and I just walked about thinking. I reckon I must have walked miles, worrying about it and wondering what to do and imagining all sorts of things, you know how you do. I'd been feeding Matthew myself and I'm still giving him one feed a day, so I took him into a field and fed him under a hedge, and after that I walked a bit more.

   "Well, I was coming back along the Stowerton Road. I knew I'd have to go home on account of Matthew was wet and he'd soon be hungry again, and then I saw this pram. I knew who it belonged to, I'd seen it there before and I'd seen this girl lift her baby out of it. I mean, I didn't know her name or anything but I'd talked to her once queueing for the check-out in the Tesco, and we'd got talking about our babies and she said hers never cried except sometimes for a feed in the night. She was such a good baby, they never got a peep out of her all day and all evening. She was a bit younger than Matthew but it was funny, they looked a bit alike and they'd got just the same colour hair.

   "That was what gave me the idea, them having the same colour hair. I know I was mad, Mr. Wexford, I know that now. I was crazy, but you don't know how scared of Paddy I was. I went over to that pram and I bent over it. I unhooked the cat net and took the other baby out and put Matthew in."

   Until now quite silent in her corner, Polly Davies gave a suppressed exclamation. Wexford drew in his breath, shaking his head.

   "It's interesting," he said, and his voice was frosty, "how I supposed at first that whoever had taken Karen Bond wanted her and wished to be rid of her own child. Now it looks as if the reverse was true. It looks as if she didn't at all mind sacrificing Karen for her own child's safety."

   Leilie said passionately, "That's not true!"

   "No, perhaps it isn't, I believe you did have second thoughts. Go on."

   "I put Matthew in the pram. I knew he'd be all right. I knew no one'd hurt him, but it went to my heart when he started to cry."