Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then (16 page)

   His conscience troubled him for about five minutes. It had long ceased to do so before he reached the outskirts of Stowerton. Burden had yet to learn that the anticipation of sexual pleasure is the most powerful of all the crushers of conscience. He wondered why he felt so little guilt, why Grace’s reproach had only momentarily stung him. Her words - or what he could recall of them - had become like the meaningless and automatic admonition of some schoolteacher spoken years ago. Grace was no longer anything to him but an impediment, an irritating force which conspired with work, and other useless time-wasters to keep him from Gemma.

   Tonight she came to the door to meet him. He was prepared for her to speak of the child and her anxieties and her loneliness, and he was ready with the gentle words and the tenderness which would come so easily to him after an hour in bed with her but which now his excitement must make strained and abrupt. She said nothing. He kissed her experimentally, unable to guess her mood from those large blank eyes.

   She took his hands and put them against her waist which was naked when she lifted the shirt she wore. Her skin was hot and dry, quivering against his own trembling hands. Then he knew that the need she had spoken of on the phone was not for words or re assurance or searching of the heart but the same need as his own.

If Mr. Casaubon had been capable of inspiring the slightest sentimentality, Wexford reflected, it would have been impossible to witness Monkey’s extravagant care of him without disgust. But the old man - his real name would have to be ferreted out from some file or other - was so obviously a villain and a parasite who took every advantage of his age and an infirmity that was probably assumed that Wexford could only chuckle sardonically to himself as he watched Monkey settle him into one of Ruby Branch’s armchairs and place a cushion behind his head. No doubt it was obvious to the receiver of these attentions as it was to the chief inspector that Monkey was merely cosseting the goose that would lay a golden egg. Presumably Mr. Casaubon had already come to some financial agreement with his partner of impresario and knew there was no question of affection or reverence for old age in all this fussing with cushions. Humming with contentment in the fashion of an aged purring cat, he allowed Monkey to pour him a treble whisky, but when the water jug appeared the hum rose a semitone and a gnarled purple hand was placed over the glass.

   Monkey drew the curtains and placed a table lamp on the end of the mantelpiece so that its radiance fell like a spotlight on the bunchy rag-bag figure of Mr. Casaubon, and Wexford was aware of the dramatic effect It was almost as if Monkey’s protégé was one of those character actors who delight to appear solo on the London stage and for two hours or more entertain an audience to a monologue or to readings from some great novelist or diarist. And Mr. Casaubon’s repetitive nodding and humming rather enhanced this impression. Wexford felt that at any moment the play would begin, a witticism would issue from those claret-coloured lips or the humming would give place to a speech from Our Mutual Friend. But because he knew that this was all fantasy, deliberately achieved by that crafty little con-man Monkey Matthews, he said sharply: “Get on with it, can’t you?”

   Mr. Casaubon broke the silence he had maintained since leaving the Piebald Pony. “Monk can do the talking,” he said. “He’s got more the gift of the gab than me.”

   Monkey smiled appreciatively at this flattery and lit a cigarette. “Me and Mr. Casaubon,” he began, “made each other’s acquaintance up north about twelve months back.” In Walton jail, Wexford thought, but he didn’t say it aloud. “So when Mr. Casaubon was glancing through his morning paper the other day and saw about Mr. Ivor Swan and him living in Kingsmarkham and all that, his thoughts naturally flew to me.”

   “Yes, yes, I get all that. In plain English he saw the chance to make a little packet and thought you could help him to it. God knows why he didn’t come straight to us instead of getting involved with a shark like you. Your gift of the gab, I suppose.” A thought struck Wexford. “Knowing you, I wonder you didn’t try putting the black on Swan first.” 

   “If you’re going to insult me,” said Monkey, snorting out smoke indignantly, “we may as well have done, and me and my friend’ll go to Mr. Griswold. I’m doing this as a favour to you, like to advance you in your profession.”

   Mr. Casaubon nodded sagely and made a noise like a bluebottle drowsing over a joint of beef. But Monkey was seriously put out. Temporarily forgetting the respect due to age and golden geese, he snapped in the tone usually reserved for Mrs. Branch, “Give over that buzzing, will you? You’re getting senile. Now you can see,” he said to Wexford, “why the silly old git needs me to prop him up.”

   “Go on, Monkey. I won’t interrupt again.”

   “To get to the guts of the business,” said Monkey, “Mr. Casaubon told me - and showed me his paper to prove it - that fourteen years back your Ivor Bloody Swan - listening, are you? Ready for a shock? - your Ivor Swan killed a kid. Or, to put it more accurate, caused her death by drowning her in a lake. There, I thought that’d make you sit up.”

   Rather than sitting up, Wexford had slumped into his chair. “Sorry, Monkey,” he said, “but that’s not possible. Mr. Swan hasn’t a stain on his character.”

   “Hasn’t paid the penalty, you mean. I’m telling you, this is fact, it’s gospel. Mr. Casaubon’s own niece, his sister’s girl, was a witness. Swan drowned the kid and he was up in court, but the judge acquitted him for lack of evidence.”

   “He can’t have been more than nineteen or twenty,” Wexford said ruminatively. “Look here, I’ll have to know more than that. What’s this paper you keep on about?”

   “Give it here, mate,” said Monkey.

   Mr. Casaubon fumbled among his layers of clothing, finally bringing out from some deep recess beneath mackintosh, coat and matted wool a very dirty envelope inside which was a single sheet of paper. He held it lovingly for a moment and then handed it to his go-between who passed it on to Wexford.

   The paper was a letter with neither address nor date.

“Before you read it,” said Monkey, “you’d best know that this young lady as wrote it was chambermaid in this hotel in the Lake District. She had a very good position, lot of girls under her. I don’t know exactly what she was but she was the head one.”

   “You make her sound like the madame in a brothel,” said Wexford nastily, and cut short Monkey’s expostulation with a quick, “Shut up and let me read.”

   The letter had been written by a semi-literate person. It was ill-spelt, almost totally lacking in punctuation. While Mr. Casaubon hummed with the complacency of a man showing off to an acquaintance the prize-winning essay of some young relative, Wexford read the following.

   “Dear Uncle Charley.

   “We have had a fine old fuss up hear that you will want to know of there is a young Colledge feller staying in the Hotel and what do you think he as done he as drowned a little girl swimmin in the Lake in the morning befor her Mum and Dad was up and they have had him up in Court for it Lily that you have herd me speak of had to go to the Court and tell what she new and she tell me the Judge give it to him hot and strong but could not put him away on account of Nobody saw him do the deed the young fellers name is IVOR LIONEL FAIRFAX SWAN i got it down on paper when Lily said it gettin it from the Judge on account i new you would wish to know it in ful.

   “Well Uncle that it all for now i will keep in touch as ever hoping the news may be of use and that your Leg is better Your Affect Niece

   “Elsie”

   The pair of them were staring eagerly at him now. Wexford read the letter again - the lack of commas and stops made it difficult to follow - and then he said to Mr. Casaubon, “What made you keep this for fourteen years? You didn’t know Swan, did you? Why keep this letter in particular?”

   Mr. Casaubon made no reply. He smiled vaguely as people do when addressed in a foreign language and then he held out his glass to Monkey, who promptly refilled it and, once more taking on the task of interpreter, said, “He kept all her letters. Very devoted to Elsie is Mr. Casaubon, being as he never had no kiddies of his own,”

   “I see,” said Wexford, and suddenly he did. He felt his features mould themselves into a scowl of rage as the whole racket worked by Mr. Casaubon and his niece grew clear to him. Without looking again at the letter he recalled certain significant phrases. “A fine old fuss that you will want to know or and “hoping the news may be of use” sprang to mind. A chambermaid, be thought, a chiel among us taking notes . . . How many adulterous wives had Elsie spotted? Into how many bedrooms had she blundered by the merest chance? How many homosexual intrigues had she discovered when homosexual practice was still a crime? Not to mention the other secrets to which she would have had access, the papers and letters left in drawers, the whispered confidences between women, freely given at night after one gin too many. The information about Swan, Wexford was sure, was just one of many such pieces of news retailed to Uncle Charley in the knowledge that he would use them for the extortion of money of which Elsie, in due course, would claim her share. A clever racket, though one which, to look at him now, had not finally worked to Mr. Casaubon’s advantage.

   “Where was this Elsie working at the timer he snapped.

   “He don’t remember that,” said Monkey. “Some where up in the Lakes. She had a lot of jobs one way and another.”

   “Oh, no. It was all one way and a dirty way at that. Where is she now?”

   “South Africa,” mumbled Mr. Casaubon, showing his first sign of nervousness. “Married a rich yid and went out to the Cape.”

   “You can hang on to the letter.” Monkey smiled ingratiatingly. “You’ll want to do a bit of checking up. I mean, when all’s said and done, we’re only a couple of ignorant fellers, let’s face it, and we wouldn’t know how to go about getting hold of this judge and all that.” He edged his chair towards Wexford’s. “All we want is our rightful dues for setting you on the track. We don’t ask for no more than the reward, we don’t want no thanks ‘nor nothing . . .” His voice faltered and Wexford’s baleful face finally silenced him. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and appeared to decide that at last it was time to offer hospitality to his other guest. ‘Have a drop of Scotch before you go?”

   “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wexford said pleasantly. He eyed Mr. Casaubon. “When I drink I’m choosey about my company.”

Nervous bliss, Wexford decided, best described Inspector Burden’s current state of mind. He was preoccupied, often to be found idle and staring distantly into space, jumping out of his skin over nothing, but at least it was a change from that bleak irritable misery everyone had come to associate with him. Very likely the cause of the change was a woman, and Wexford, encountering his friend and assistant in the lift on the following morning, remembered Dr. Crocker’s words.

   “How’s Miss Woodville these days?”

   He was rewarded, and somewhat gratified, by the uneven burning blush that spread across Burden’s face. It confirmed his suspicion that recently there had been something going on between those two and something a good deal more exciting than discussions about whether young Pat ought to have a new blazer for the autumn term.

   “My wife,” he went on, pressing his point home, “was only saying yesterday what a tower of strength Miss Woodville has been to you.” When this evoked no response, he added, “All the better when the tower of strength has an uncommonly pretty face, eh

   Burden looked through him so intensely that Wexford suddenly felt quite transparent. The lift halted.

   “I’ll be in my office if you want me.”

   Wexford shrugged. Two can play at that game, he thought. You won’t get any more friendly overtures from me, my lad. Stiff-necked prude. What did he care about Burden’s dreary love life, anyway? He had other things on his mind and because of them he hadn’t slept much. Most of the night he had lain awake thinking about that letter and Monkey Matthews and the old villain who was Monkey’s guest, and he had pondered on what it all meant.

   Elsie was as sharp as a needle but bone ignorant. To a woman like her any J.P. was a judge and she wouldn’t know the difference between assizes and a magistrates’ court. Was it possible that all those years ago the young Swan had appeared before a magistrate, charged with murder or manslaughter, and the case been dismissed? And if that was so had the facts of that hearing somehow escaped being included in Wexford’s dossier of Swan?

   Night is a time for conjecture, dreams, mad conclusions; morning a time for action. The hotel had been somewhere in the Lake District and as soon as he was inside his office Wexford put through calls to the Cumberland and Westmorland police. Next he did a little research into the antecedents of Mr. Casaubon, working on the assumption that he had been in Walton at the same time as Monkey, and this conclusion and the investigations it led to proved fruitful.

   His name was Charles Albert Catch and he had been born in Limehouse in 1897. Pleased to discover that all his guesswork had been correct, He learned that Catch had served three terms of imprisonment for demanding money with menaces but since reaching the age of sixty-five had fallen on evil days. His last conviction was for throwing a brick through the window of a police station, a ploy to secure - as it had done - a bed and shelter for the blackmailer who had be come an impoverished vagrant.

   Wexford wasted no sympathy on Charley Catch but he did wonder why Elsie’s information had led her uncle to take no steps against Swan at the time. Because there really was no evidence? Because Swan had been innocent with nothing to hide or be ashamed of? Time would show. There was no point in further conjecture, no point in taking any steps in the matter until something came in from the Lakes.

   With Martin and Bryant to keep watch from a discreet distance, he sent Polly Davis, red-wigged, off to her assignation at Saltram House. It was raining again and Polly got soaked to the skin, but nobody brought John Lawrence to the park of Saltram House or to the Italian garden. Determined not to speculate any further on the subject of Swan, Wexford racked his brains instead about the caller with the shrill voice but still he was unable to identify that voice or to re member any more about it but that he had heard it somewhere before,