The Speaker of Mandarin (26 page)

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of October the second. But he was nervous about coming to us because he'd been poaching. So to please us he makes his story as near to what he thinks we want as he can. Knighton is tall and has grey or silver hair. He either knows Knighton by sight or has seen his picture in the paper. Therefore he describes the man he saw as tall and with grey hair. But when I show him photographs that's a different matter. He is reminded then of what the man in the wood really looked like. Of the figures in the pictures he's shown he doesn't pick out Knighton who resembles Silver Perry more than any of them. He picks out Gordon Vinald who doesn't resemble him at all but is youngish, dark, rather short and slightly built.'

Burden's porch light was on. The bungalow itself was in darkness. Wexford got out of the car and walked up the path towards the light and something soft and slinky came out of the shadows and rubbed itself against his trouser leg. He jumped because he was weary and it had been a long day. Burden unlocked the front door and Wexford followed him into the house, holding the cat in his arms.

'Bingley couldn't pick out the man who killed Adela Knighton from the photographs because he wasn't in them. So he picked out the man most nearly like him. He chose the only man in the group who was also young, dark, short and slight.'

The centre light in the living room came on but the bulb in the table lamp flashed, fizzled and went dark. The bright glare from the middle of the ceiling made Wexford wince and blink. Burden switched it off.

'I'll get another bulb. I'll just have to think where it is Jenny keeps them. And then what? Scotch?'

'I shouldn't,' said Wexford in much the same way Milborough Ingram had, though he was thinking more of his health than his face and figure. 'But I will.'

He sat in the dark, a little light coming in from the hall. The back door slammed as Burden went out to the garage.

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The cat began doing that uncanny things cats do, staring at nothing, following nothing round the room with its eyes. It slid off Wexford's lap and sat with its tail faintly moving, gazing towards the doorway and the light.

An old Chinese woman with bound feet, in dark trousers and a quilted jacket, walking with small mincing steps, came out of the light - out of nowhere, it seemed - and stood on the threshold. His heart simply stopped. It felt as if it had stopped and the restarting, the thuds of its beat, were almost painful.

'Why are you sitting in the dark?' Jenny Burden said. 'Where's Mike?'

He managed to speak in his normal voice. 'Gone to find a light bulb.'

She retreated into the kitchen, the high wooden-soled sandals she wore restricting her walk, and came back at once with a bulb. The table lamp came on and showed him Burden's wife, made up to look Chinese but not to look old, a black wig covering her fair hair. The cat rubbed itself against her, winding in and out between her ankles.

'The Good Woman of Setzuan, I presume?'

'It was our dress rehearsal. It was dark so I thought I might as well come home just as I was.' She kissed Burden who came in with their drinks. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll go and take all this lot off.'

'My God,' said Burden. 'I wonder you didn't think you were hallucinating again.'

Wexford said nothing. He took his whisky with a steady hand.

'So it was Angus Norris that Bingley saw?' Burden said.

'Of course. Having let himself into Thatto Hall Farm with his wife's key, got his mother-in-law out of bed, brought her downstairs and shot her, he made his way home again along that footpath, thus enabling Bingley tO see him at three o'clock.

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'I suppose he told her,' said Burden, 'that his wife had been taken ill or gone into early labour or some such thing and they hadn't been able to get through on the phone. He shot her through the back of the head because, like the gentleman he is, he let a lady precede him into a room. And that wife of his is having a baby any minute. . .'

'I hope it may be a consolation to her,' Wexford said sombrely. 'Mother, father and now this. Norris was shattered by Knighton's suicide. Did you see his face? He hadn't expected that. I daresay he thought he was doing Knighton a favour, killing Adela. Mind you, I don't think he planned it, or not very far in advance. He didn't go up to London and Warrington Weapons and buy the gun with that in mind. He bought the gun because he collects firearms. Then - maybe not till the very day of October the first - his wife told him her father would be going to London for the night.

'Jennifer slept soundly because she was sedated. She would have been unaware of it if he was absent for an hour. I think he was desperate. He had married someone who expected to be kept in the style of her mother, of her older brothers and their wives, but he couldn't make the grade. He had only what he earned as an assistant solicitor with Symonds, O'Brien and Ames. I'm guessing here but I hardly think it can be otherwise, that he bought that house on a mortgage far above what he could afford. The cost of living went on rising and mortgage interest rates edged up too. It's apparent the house isn't even adequately furnished. We've seen enough of his financial affairs today to know that he was substantially in debt. And now there was a baby on the way which probably meant Jennifer would demand some sort of living-in help.

'He was frantic with money worries. He took his gun and walked to Thatto Hall Farm and killed Jennifer's mother, believing it would be thought she had come down and admitted some stranger who had knocked at the door. Norris, you see, is tarred with the same brush as his wife's

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family - he thinks he belongs to an elite that is above suspicion of criminality.'

Burden said, 'His firm were Mrs Knighton's solicitors, they drew up her will for her, so he knew what was in it - fifty thousand pounds for his wife.'

'That was a contributory motive only. That was a bonus. His motive was Mrs Knighton's holiday fund.'

'We didn't find a single record of that, not a word referring to it.'

'I daresay Norris felt it was safer that way. I daresay he even had a bold dream that if ever it came to the crunch he could deny that his mother-in-law had entrusted him with a large sum to invest. But to do that would have meant cutting himself and his wife off from her family entirely and certainly losing that future inheritance. Anyway, he didn't have the nerve. He only had nerve enough to kill her.'

'I suppose he had drawn on the fund for his own use and was hoping against hope that by some means or other he could make up the deficit before Adela demanded a really large sum.'

Wexford nodded. 'After all, last April he had had to provide her with four thousand pounds to go to China, a substantial amount for one holiday.'

'But that was more than six months ago. Why kill her now?'

'Because she asked for more. She wanted to go to India and Nepal in February. What would that have cost for the

two of them? At least as much as the China trip. Very

likely he didn't even have that much remaining in the fund. With Jennifer's inheritance he could pay his debts. He could make good what he had helped himself to out of the fund and present the money intact as soon as Knighton or a brother-in-law started asking questions.'

'Strange, isn't it, that a man would rather do murder and thereby shut himself up for fifteen years, not to men- lion losing his wife and child- for I'm sure he will- he'd

2t3 - rather do that than stand up and confess to having lost a sum of money?'

Wexford shrugged. 'We're all cowards one way or another.' He looked up and smiled as Jenny came back dressed as herself.