Means Of Evil And Other Stories (24 page)

   "I suppose," he said, accepting a glass of Moselle, "that we can dispense with the fiction that you wanted me to read this book to check on police methods and court procedure? Not to put too fine a point on it, you were apprehensive Gandolph might have been up to his old tricks again?"

   "Oh, well now, come," said Ireland. He seemed thinner than ever. He looked about him, he looked at Wexford, made a face wrinkling up nose and mouth. "Well, if you must put it like that——yes."

   "There may not have been any tricks, though, may there? Paxton couldn't have murdered James Conyngford, but that doesn't mean he didn't tell Gandolph he did murder him. Certainly the people who give Gandolph information seem to die very conveniently soon afterwards. He picks on the dying, first Paxton, then Lina Hurst. I suppose you've seen this diary?"

   "Oh, yes. We shall be using prints of the two relevant pages among the illustrations."

   "No possibility of forgery?"

   Ireland looked unhappy. "Ada Hurst wrote a very stylised hand, what's called a
ronde
hand, which she had obviously taught herself. It would be easy to forge. I can't submit it to handwriting experts, can I? I'm not a policeman. I'm just a poor publisher who very much wants to publish this reappraisal of the Winchurch case if it's genuine——and shun it like the plague if it's not."

   "I think it's genuine." Wexford smiled at the slight lightening in Ireland's face. "I take it that it was usual for Ada Hurst to leave blanks as she did for March 2nd and March 5th?"

   Ireland nodded. "Quite usual. Every month there'd have been half a dozen days on which she made no entries." A waiter came up to them with two large menus. "I'll have the
bouillabaisse
and the lamb
en croûte
and the
médaillon
potatoes and french beans."

   "Consommé and then the parma ham," said Wexford austerely. When the waiter had gone he grinned at Ireland. "Pity they don't do
Filets de hareng marinés à la Rosette
. It might have provided us with the authentic atmosphere." He was silent for a moment, savouring the delicate tangy wine. "I'm assuming you've checked that 1900 genuinely was a Leap Year?"

   "All first years of a century are."

   Wexford thought about it. "Yes, of course, all years divisible by four are Leap Years."

   "I must say it's a great relief to me you're so happy about it."

   "I wouldn't quite say that," said Wexford.

   They went into the dining room and were shown, at Ireland's request, to a sheltered corner table. A waiter brought a bottle of Château de Portets 1973. Wexford looked at the basket of rolls, croissants, little plump brioches, miniature wholemeal loaves, Italian sticks, swallowed his desire and refused with an abrupt shake of the head. Ireland took two croissants.

   "What exactly do you mean?" he said.

   "It strikes me as being odd," said the chief inspector, "that in the entry for February 29th Ada Hurst says that her brother destroyed twenty rats with strychnine, yet in the entry for March 1st that Compton, whom I take to be the gardener, is still complaining about the rats. Why wasn't he told how effective the strychnine had been? Hadn't he been taken into Fenton's confidence about the poisoning? Or was twenty only a very small percentage of the hordes of rats which infested the place?"

   "Right. It is odd. What else?"

   "I don't know why, on March 6th, she mentions Fenton's returning for the cigar case. It wasn't interesting and she was limited for space. She doesn't record the name of a single guest at the dinner party, doesn't say what any of the women wore, but she carefully notes that her brother had left his cigar case in the Paraleash House dining room and had to go back for it. Why does she?"

   "Oh, surely because by now she's nervous whenever Frank is alone with Florence."

   "But he wouldn't have been alone with Florence, Winchurch would have been there."

   They discussed the script throughout the meal, and later pored over it, Ireland with his brandy, Wexford with coffee. Dora had been wise not to come. But the outcome was that the new facts were really new and sound and that Carlyon Brent could safely publish the book in the spring. Wexford got home to find Dora sitting with a wobbly looking half-finished coil pot beside her and deep in the
Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars
.

   "Reg, did you know that for the Greeks the year began on Midsummer Day? And that the Chinese and Jewish calendars have twelve months in some years and thirteen in others?"

   "I can't say I did."

   "We avoid that, you see, by using the Gregorian Calendar and correct the error by making every fourth year a Leap Year. You really must read this book, it's fascinating."

   But Wexford's preference was for the Vassili Vandrian and the farming trilogy, though with little time to read he hadn't completed a single one of these works by the time Burden returned on the following Monday week. Burden had a fine even tan but for his nose which had peeled.

   "Have a good time?" asked Wexford with automatic politeness.

   "What a question," said the inspector, "to ask a man who has just come back from his honeymoon. Of course I had a good time." He cautiously scratched his nose. "What have you been up to?"

   "Seeing something of your brother-in-law. He got me to read a manuscript."

   "Ha!" said Burden. "I know what that was. He said something about it but he knew Gandolph'd get short shrift from me. A devious liar if ever there was one. It beats me what sort of satisfaction a man can get out of the kind of fame that comes from foisting on the public stories he
knows
aren't true. All that about Paxton was a pack of lies, and I've no doubt he bases this new version of the Winchurch case on another pack of lies. He's not interested in the truth. He's only interested in being known as the great criminologist and the man who shows the police up for fools."

   "Come on, Mike, that's a bit sweeping. I told Ireland I thought it would be OK to go ahead and publish."

   Burden's face wore an expression that was almost a caricature of sophisticated scathing knowingness. "Well, of course, I haven't seen it, I can't say. I'm basing my objection to Gandolph on the Paxton affair. Paxton never confessed to any murder and Gandolph knows it."

   "You can't say that for sure."

   Burden sat down. He tapped his fist lightly on the comer of the desk. "I
can
say. I knew Paxton, I knew him well."

   "I didn't know that."

   "No, it was years back, before I came here. In Eastbourne, it was, when Paxton was with the Garfield gang. In the force down there we knew it was useless ever trying to get Paxton to talk. He
never
talked. I don't mean he just didn't give away any info, I mean he didn't answer when you spoke to him. Various times we tried to interrogate him he just maintained this total silence. A mate of his told me he'd made it a rule not to talk to policemen or social workers or lawyers or any what you might call establishment people, and he never had. He talked to his wife and his kids and his mates all right. But I remember once he was in the dock at Lewes Assizes and the judge addressed him. He just didn't answer——he wouldn't——and the judge, it was old Clydesdale, sent him down for contempt. So don't tell me Paxton made any sort of confession to Kenneth Gandolph, not
Paxton
."

   The effect of this was to reawaken all Wexford's former doubts. He trusted Burden, he had a high opinion of his opinion. He began to wish he had advised Ireland to have tests made to determine the age of the ink used in the 29 February and 6 March entries, or to have the writing examined by a handwriting expert. Yet if Ada Hurst had had a stylised hand self-taught in adulthood . . . What good were handwriting experts anyway? Not much, in his experience. And of course Ireland couldn't suggest to Gandolph that the ink should be tested without offending the man to such an extent that he would refuse publication of
Poison at Paraleash
to Carlyon Brent. But Wexford was suddenly certain that those entries were false and that Gandolph had forged them. Very subtly and cunningly he had forged them, having judged that the addition to the diary of just thirty-four words would alter the whole balance of the Winchurch case and shift the culpability from Florence to her lover.

   Thirty-four words. Wexford had made a copy of the diary entries and now he looked at them again. 29 February:
F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief!
6 March:
F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home. I hope and pray there is no harm
. There were no anachronisms——men certainly used cigar cases in 1900——no divergence from Ada's usual style. The word "twenty" was written in letters instead of two figures. The writer, on 6 March, had written not about that day but about the day before. Did that amount to anything? Wexford thought not, though he pondered on it for most of the day.

   That evening he was well into the last chapter of
Put Money in Thy Purse
when the phone rang. It was Jenny Burden. Would he and Dora come to dinner on Saturday? Her parents would be there and her brother.

   Wexford said Dora was out at her pottery class, but yes, they would love to, and had she had a nice time in Crete?

   "How sweet of you to ask," said the bride. "No one else has. Thank you, we had a lovely time."

   He had meant it when he said they would love to, but still he didn't feel very happy about meeting Amyas Ireland again. He had a notion that once the book was published some as yet unimagined Warren or Burden would turn up and denounce it, deride it, laugh at the glaring giveaway he and Ireland couldn't see. When he saw Ireland again he ought to say, don't do it, don't take the risk, publish and be damned can have another meaning than the popular one. But how to give such a warning with no sound reason for giving it, with nothing but one of those vague feelings, this time of foreboding, which had so assisted him yet run him into so much trouble in the past? No, there was nothing he could do. He sighed, finished his chapter and moved on to the farmer's Fictionalised memoirs.

   Afterwards Wexford was in the habit of saying that he got more reading done during that week than he had in years. Perhaps it had been a way of escape from fretful thought. But certainly he had passed a freakishly slack week, getting home most nights by six. He even read Miss Camilla Barnet's
The Golden Reticule
, and by Friday night there was nothing left but the
Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars
.

It was a large party, Mr. and Mrs. Ireland and their son, Burden's daughter Pat, Grace and her husband and, of course, the Burdens themselves. Jenny's face glowed with happiness and Aegean sunshine. She welcomed the Wexfords with kisses and brought them drinks served in their own wedding present to her.

   The meeting with Amyas Ireland wasn't the embarrassment Wexford had feared it would be——had feared, that is, up till a few minutes before he and Dora had left home. And now he knew that he couldn't contain himself till after dinner, till the morning, or perhaps worse than that——a phone call on Monday morning. He asked his hostess if she would think him very rude if he spoke to her brother alone for five minutes.

   She laughed. "Not rude at all. I think you must have got the world's most wonderful idea for a crime novel and Ammy's going to publish it. But I don't know where to put you unless it's the kitchen. And you," she said to her brother, "are not to eat anything, mind."

   "I couldn't wait," Wexford said as they found themselves stowed away into the kitchen where every surface was necessarily loaded with the constituents of dinner for ten people. "I only found out this evening at the last minute before we were due to come out."

   "It's something about the Winchurch book?"

   Wexford said eagerly, "It's not too late, is it? I was worried I might be too late."

   "Good God, no. We hadn't planned to start printing before the autumn." Ireland, who had seemed about to disobey his sister and help himself to a macaroon from a silver dish, suddenly lost his appetite. "This is serious?"