Put on by Cunning (6 page)

She was one of the few people he had ever come across who did not apologize for crying. She wiped her face, scrubbing at her eyes. ‘I’ve lost the best employer,’ she said, ‘and the best friend anyone could have. And I’ve taken it hard, I can tell you.’

‘Yes, it was a sad business.’

‘If you’ll look out of that window you’ll see a house over to the left. That’s ours. Really ours, I mean – he
gave
it to us. God knows what it’s worth now. D’you know what he said? I’m not having you and Ted living in a tied cottage, he said. If you’re good enough to come and work for me you deserve to have a house of your own to live in.’

It was a largish Victorian cottage and it has its own narrow driveway out into Ploughman’s Lane. Sheila wouldn’t have wanted it, he supposed, its not going with Sterries would make no difference to her. He put up a show for Mrs Hicks’s benefit of scrutinizing the spot where Natalie Arno said the van had been.

‘There weren’t many like him,’ said Muriel Hicks, closing the door behind Wexford as they left. It was a fitting epitaph, perhaps the best and surely the simplest Camargue would have.

Along the corridor, back through the music room, across the drawing room, now deserted, and into the other wind. Here was a large room full of books, a study or a library, and three bedrooms, all with bathrooms
en suite
. Their doors were all open but in one of them, standing in front of a long glass and studying the effect of various ways of fastening the collar of a very old Persian lamb coat, was Jane Zoffany. She rushed, at the sight of Wexford, into a spate of apologies – very nearly saying sorry for existing at all – and scuttled from the room. Muriel Hicks’s glassy stare followed her out.

‘There’s nothing missing from here,’ she said in a depressed tone. ‘Anyway, those people would have heard something.’ There was a chance, he thought, that she might lose another kind of control and break into a tirade against Camargue’s daughter and her friends. But she didn’t. She took him silently into the second room and the third.

Why had Natalie Arno chosen to occupy her father’s bedroom, austere, utilitarian and moreover the room of a lately dead man and a parent, rather than one of these luxurious rooms with fur rugs on the carpets and duck-down duvets on the beds? Was it to be removed from the Zoffanys? But they were her friends whom she had presumably invited. To revel in the triumph of possessing the place and all that went with it at last? To appreciate this to the full by sleeping in the inner sanctum, the very holy of holies? It occurred to him that by so doing she must have caused great pain to Mrs Hicks, and then he reminded himself that this sort of speculation was pointless, he wasn’t investigating any crime more serious than petty larceny. And his true reason for being here was to make a preliminary survey for a possible buyer.

‘Is anything much kept in that chest?’ he asked Mrs Hicks. It was a big teak affair with brass handles, standing in the passage.

‘Only blankets.’

‘And that cupboard?’

She opened it. ‘There’s nothing missing.’

He went downstairs. Morgan and his van had gone. In the hall were Burden, Natalie Arno and the Zoffanys, the man who had been sweeping the path, and a woman in a dark brown fox fur who had evidently just arrived.

Everyone was dressed for the outdoors and for bitterly cold weather. It struck Wexford forcefully, as he descended the stairs towards them, that Natalie and her friends looked thoroughly disreputable compared with the other three. Burden was always well turned-out and in his new sheepskin he was more than that. The newcomer was smart, even elegant, creamy cashmere showing above the neckline of the fur, her hands in sleek gloves, and even Ted Hicks, in aran and anorak, had the look of a gentleman farmer. Beside them Natalie and the Zoffanys were a rag-bag crew, Zoffany’s old overcoat as shabby as Wexford’s own, his wife with layers of dipping skirts hanging out beneath the hem of the Persian lamb. Nothing could make Natalie less than striking. In a coat that appeared to be made from an old blanket and platform-soled boots so out of date and so worn that Wexford guessed she must have bought them in a secondhand shop, she looked raffish and down on her luck. They were hardly the kind of people, he said to himself with an inward chuckle, that one (or the neighbours) would expect to see issuing from a house in Ploughman’s Lane.

That the woman in the fur was one of these neighbours Burden immediately explained. Mrs Murray-Burgess. She had seen the police cars and then she had encountered Mr Hicks in the lane. Yes, she lived next door, if next door it could be called when something like an acre separated Kingsfield House from Sterries, and she thought she might have some useful information.

They all trooped into the dining room where Hicks resumed his task of boarding up the broken window. Wexford asked Mrs Murray-Burgess the nature of her information.

She had seen a man in the Sterries grounds. No, not last night, a few days before. In fact, she had mentioned it to Mrs Hicks, not being acquainted with Mrs Arno. She gave Natalie a brief glance that seemed to indicate her desire for a continuation of this state of affairs. No, she couldn’t recall precisely when it had been. Last night she had happened to be awake at five-thirty – she always awoke early – and had seen the lights of a vehicle turning out from Sterries into the lane. Wexford nodded. Could she identify this man were she to see him again?

‘I’m sure I could,’ said Mrs Murray-Burgess emphatically. ‘And what’s more, I
would.
All this sort of thing has got to be stopped before the country goes completely to the dogs. If I’ve got to get up in court and say that’s the man! – well, I’ve got to and no two ways about it. It’s time someone gave a lead.’

Natalie’s face was impassive but in the depths of her eyes Wexford saw a spark of laughter. Almost anyone else in her position would now have addressed this wealthy and majestic neighbour, thanking her perhaps for her concern and public spirit. Most people would have suggested a meeting on more social terms, on do-bring-your-husband-in-for-a-drink lines. Many would have spoken of the dead and have mentioned the coming memorial service. Natalie behaved exactly as if Mrs Murray-Burgess were not there. She shook hands with Wexford, thanking him warmly while increasing the pressure of her fingers. Burden was as prettily thanked and given an alluring smile. They were ushered to the door, the Zoffanys following, everyone coming out into the crisp cold air and the bright sunlight. Mrs Murray-Burgess, left stranded in the dinning room with Ted Hicks, emerged in offended bewilderment a moment or two later.

Wexford, no doubt impressing everyone with his frown and preoccupied air, was observing the extent of the double glazing and making rough calculations as to the size of the grounds. Getting at last into their car, he remarked to Burden – apropos of what the inspector had no idea – that sometimes these cogitations still amazed the troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

The owner of the van was quickly traced through its registration number. He was a television engineer called Robert Clifford who said he had lent the van to a fellow-tenant of his in Finsbury Park, north London, a man of thirty-six called John Cooper. Cooper, who was unemployed, admitted the break-in after the spoons had been found in his possession. He said he had read in the papers about the death of Camargue and accounts of the arrangements at Sterries.

‘It was an invite to do the place,’ he said impudently. ‘All that stuff about valuable paintings and china, and then that the housekeeper didn’t sleep in the house. She didn’t either, the first time I went.’

When had that been?

‘Tuesday night,’ said Cooper. He meant Tuesday the 29th, two days after Camargue’s death. When he returned to break in. ‘I didn’t know which was the old man’s room,’ he said. ‘How would I? The papers don’t give you a plan of the bloody place.’ He had parked the van outside that window simply because it seemed the most convenient spot and couldn’t be seen from the road. ‘It gave me a shock when the light came on.’ He sounded aggrieved, as if he had been wantonly interrupted while about some legitimate task. His was a middle-class accent. Perhaps, like Burden’s little villain, he was a pathological kleptomaniac with personality-scarring. Cooper appeared before the Kingsmarkham magistrates and was remanded in custody until the case could be heard at Myringham Crown Court.

Wexford was able to give Sheila a favourable report on Camargue’s house, but she seemed to have lost interest in the place. (One’s children had a way of behaving like this, he had noticed.) Andrew’s house in Keats Grove was really very nice, and he did have the cottage in Dorset. If they lived in Sussex they would have to keep a flat in town as well. She couldn’t go all the way back to Kingsmarkham after an evening performance, could she? The estate agents had found a buyer for her own flat in St John’s Wood and they were getting an amazing price for it. Had Mother been to hear her banns called for the second time? Mother had.

The day of the memorial service was bright and sunny. Alpine weather, Wexford called it, the frozen snow sparkling, melting a little in the sun, only to freeze glass-hard again when the sun went down. Returning from his visit to Sewingbury Comprehensive School – where there was an alarming incidence of glue-sniffing among fourteen-year-olds – he passed St Peter’s churchas the mourners were leaving. The uniform men wear disguises them. Inside black overcoat and black Homburg might breathe equally Sir Manuel’s accompanist or Sir Manuel’s wine merchant. But he was pretty sure he had spotted James Galway, and he stood to gaze like any lion-hunting sightseer.

Sheila, making her escape with Dinah Sternhold to a hire car, was attracting as much attention as anyone – a warning, her father thought, of what they might expect in a fortnight’s time. The Zoffanys were nowhere to be seen but Natalie Arno, holding the arm of an elderly wisp of a man, a man so frail-looking that it seemed wonderful the wind did not blow him about like a feather, was standing on the steps shaking hands with departing visitors. She wore a black coat and a large black hat, new clothes they appeared to be and suited to the occasion, and she stood erectly, her thin ankles pressed together. By the time Wexford was driven away by the cold, though several dozen people had shaken hands with her and passed on, four or five of the men as well as the elderly wisp remained with her. He smiled to himself, amused to see his prediction fulfilled.

By the end of the week Sheila had received confirmation from the estate agents that her flat was sold, or that negotiations to buy it had begun. This threw her into a dilemma. Should she sign the contract and then go merrily off on her Bermuda honeymoon, leaving the flat full of furniture? Or should she arrange to have the flat cleared and the furniture stored before she left? Persuaded by her prudent mother, she fixed on the Wednesday before her wedding for the removal and Wexford, who had the day off, promised to go with her to St John’s Wood.

‘We could go to Bermuda too,’ said Dora to herhusband. ‘I know it was the custom for Victorian brides to take a friend with them on their honeymoon,’ said Wexford, ‘but surely even they didn’t take their parents.’

‘Darling, I don’t mean at the same time. I mean we could go to Bermuda later on. When you get your holiday. We can afford it now we aren’t paying for this wedding.’

‘How about my new car? How about the new hall carpet? And I thought you’d decided life was insupportable without a freezer.’

‘We couldn’t have all those things anyway.’

‘That’s for sure,’ said Wexford.

A wonderful holiday or a new car? A thousand pounds’ worth of sunshine and warmth took priority now, he reflected as he was driven over to Myringham and the crown court. The snow was still lying and the bright weather had given place to freezing fog. But would he still feel like this when it was sunny here and spring again? Then the freezer and the carpet would seem the wiser option.

John Cooper was found guilty of breaking into and entering Sterries and of stealing six silver spoons, and, since he had previous convictions, sent to prison for six months. Wexford was rather surprised to hear that one of these convictions, though long in the past, was for robbery with violence. Mrs Murray-Burgess was in court and she flushed brick-red with satisfaction when the sentence was pronounced. Throughout the proceedings she had been eyeing the dark, rather handsome, slouching Cooper in the awed and fascinated way one looks at a bull or a caged tiger.

It occurred to Wexford to call in at Sterries on his way back and impact the news to Natalie Arno. He had promised to let her know the outcome. She would very likely be as delighted as her neighbour, and she could have her spoons back now.

A man who tried to be honest with himself, he wondered if this could be his sole motive for a visit to Ploughman’s Lane. After all, it was a task Sergeant Martin or even Constable Loring could more properly have done. Was he, in common with those encircling men, attracted by Natalie? Could she have said of him too, like Cleopatra with her fishing rod, ‘Aha, you’re caught’? Honestly he asked himself – and said an honest, almost unqualified no. She amused him, she intrigued him, he suspected she would be entertaining to watch at certain manipulating ploys, but he was not attracted. There remained with him a nagging little memory of how, in the music room at Sterries, before he had ever spoken to her, he had sensed her presence behind him as unpleasing. She was good to look at, she was undoubtedly clever, she was full of charm, yet wasn’t there about her something snake-like? And although this image might dissolve when confronted by the real Natalie, out of her company he must think of her sinuous movements as reptilian and her marvellous eyes when cast down as hooded.

So in going to Sterries he knew he was in little danger. No one need tie him to the mast. He would simply be calling on Natalie Arno for an obligatory talk, perhaps a cup of tea, and the opportunity to watch a powerful personality at work with the weak. If the Zoffanys were still there, of course. He would soon know.