A Guilty Thing Surprised

12

THE new cocktail bar at the Olive and Dove was almost deserted, for by now most of its patrons had deserted it for the dining room, while the serious drinkers were in the public or the saloon. Wexford shepherded Marriott into a secluded corner and placed a large whisky in front of him. The bar communicated with the dining room by means of double glass doors, but Wexford had made sure the diners were out of Marriott’s line of vision. He wanted their talk to be uninterrupted and Marriott removed from the temptation of waving to friends or sending smiling dumb-show messages to pretty women.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want to hear about this holiday on the Costa Brava.’

‘Holiday!’ said Marriott, momentarily closing his eyes. ‘Really, I’d rather spend a fortnight in a labour camp. The spotty devils are bad enough when you have to cart them up to London to the V. and A., but imagine two weeks cooped up with them in some torrid slum. They go mad, you know. None of the local girls is safe. They’re all in an advanced state of satyriasis at the best of times, and once get them in the sun ... ! And as for appalling infringement of the exchange regulations, you wouldn’t believe the diabolical ingenuity of some of them. Every one an accomplished smuggler and his mother’s milk scarce out of him.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Wexford, laughing. ‘What about Villiers?’

‘God knows how he found the time to go courting. You’d have thought every minute would have been taken up, what with having to be a Customs officer and a male nurse and a watch committee all rolled into one. Anyway, he met Georgina.’

‘She was holidaying there too?’

‘Only in the same sense that he was,’ said Marriott, waving enthusiastically as a satin-gowned brunette swept past their table.

Wistfully, he watched her disappear into the dining room. ‘Georgina had gone with her own school party,’he said, ‘a bunch of teenage nymphomaniacs, from what I heard. Denys and she encountered each other on one of their nightly rounds of the local taverns, picking their charges up off the floor, you know.’

‘It really can’t have been as bad as that, Lionel.’

‘Perhaps I exaggerate a little,’ said Marriott airily. ‘Not that I heard any of this from Denys. He didn’t even bother to send me a card. No, the first hint I got was on the day before he was due back. Elizabeth and Quen dropped in one evening. “We’ve got some good news for you,” said Quen.

“Denys has met a girl and they’re going to be married.” “Fast worker,” I said, and then of course I had to say I was pleased, although I was thinking she must be out of her mind, poor thing. Let me get you another drink, Reg.’

‘Tonight,’ said Wexford firmly, ‘I’m the host.’ Once let Marriott get to the bar and he would be within range of the allurements of his friends. He asked for two more whiskies and, while he waited for them, he cast his eyes speculatively over the waiters in the dining room, wondering which of them was Quentin Nightingale’s rival.

The tall one with acne? The thin youth with slicked-back black hair?

‘They were married,’ Marriott went on, ‘from Georgina’s home in Dorset. Quen went down for the wedding but Elizabeth couldn’t. She had a migraine, Of course, even Denys couldn’t very well bring a second bride home to a horsemeat shop, so Elizabeth asked them to stay at the Manor while they were looking for a house.’

‘The Nightingales gave a dinner party for the bride. Everybody who was anybody was there. Old Priscilla and Sir George, the Rogerses; from Pomfret, the Primeros from Forby and, of course, your humble servant.’

Looking anything but humble, Marriott lowered his voice to a suspenseful whisper. ‘Georgina was staying in the house but she was the last to arrive. Ah ha! I thought, making an entrance, the clever little thing. None of us had seen her, so naturally we sat with bated breath. All the women were got up to the nines. Elizabeth looked wonderful. White velvet, you know. It always does something foi a woman. Believe it or not, I even saw Denys looking at her with a sort of grudging admiration.

‘Then, just when we can contain our impatience no longer, in comes Georgina in Woolworth’s pearls and awell, we used to call them tub frocks, and this one had been in the tub a good many times, I can tell you. Did those women stare! Georgina wasn’t a bit shy. In fact, she dominated the conversation at the table. We heard all about her little housewifely plans and how she was going to make a real home for Denys and how they were going to have six children. And possessive! My dear, she actually grumbled to Elizabeth because she hadn’t been placed next to him.

‘I must say Elizabeth was charming to her. She even complimented her on her dress and really tried to keep her the centre of attention. She was bubbling over with gaiety and she didn’t look a day over twenty-five.’

‘Georgina,’ said Wexford, ‘did she seem envious?’

‘Of the mise en scene? If denigrating everything around one and trying to assume an ascendancy on the grounds of one’s middle-class ideas is only a mask for envy, yes, I suppose she was envious. Of course, Fve seen her dozens of times since then and all she can talk about is what a marvellous marriage she and Denys have and how they’re all in all to each other.’

‘And are they?’

‘He’s everything she wants,’ said Marriott, ‘although we see no sign of these six children, do we? As for him I think he’s as bored with his second marriage as he was with his first, but there’s only one thing that interests Denys Villiers and that’s his work. Once he and Georgina were settled in their bungalow, he was buzzing round the Manor again just likethe old days.’

Wexford said slyly, ‘You must have been buzzing too to have seen him there.’

For a moment Marriott looked a little foolish. Then he jumped up smartly.

‘You’ll excuse me one second while I pop into the dining room and have a word with ...’

Wexford laughed. ‘I’ll excuse you altogether,’ he said, ‘for tonight.’

‘You’ve been thinking,’ said Dr Crocker on the following morning, ‘that she was wearing that scarf when the deed was done. Well, she wasn’t. It would have been saturated with blood if she had.’

‘Perhaps it was round her neck or she was holding it in her hand.’

The doctor gave a derisive snort. ‘And after she was dead she took it off and wiped her head with it? That’s what it looks as if it was used for, to wipe blood off someone or something.’

Wexford folded the report and put it down on his blotter. ‘You said you were out delivering a baby on Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose your route took you through Myfleet via Clusterwell

‘Sure it did. Why?’

‘You know Villiers’ bungalow?’

‘Of course I do. He’s a patient of mine. I passed it at about eleven.’

‘Did you notice the bungalow at all?’ Wexford said more urgently. ‘Were any lights on? Were the cars on the drive?’

The doctor’s face fell. ‘I didn’t look. I was thinking about my patient and the possibility of the child being a breech presentation. Now, if I’d known

...’

‘That,’ said Wexford irritably, ‘is what they all say. Here’s Mike now.’

Burden came in wearily. ‘Three of us have done a house-to-house in Myfleet,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon any of them go out in the evenings. The whole place shuts up about nine and those that aren’t in bed are in the pub. Nobody passed that way bar Katje Doorn. I’ve talked to her again and all she did was simper and tell me about a disgusting Swedish film. Though I did have the feeling she didn’t want to discuss her drive.’

Wexford gave a slight embarrassed cough. ‘Rubbish,’ he said, listening to the bluster in his voice and trying to quell it. ‘I tell you, that girl had nothing to do with Mrs Nightingale’s death.’

‘Perhaps not. But it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? She’ll talk very freely about her goings-on with Nightingale and that waiter, but she shuts up like a clam when I try to get her to describe her drive home. And another thing, Nightingale’s Mini was standing out by those stables and young Lovell was cleaning it, doing his best to get a scratch off the front bumper.’

‘I don’t know where all this is getting us, Mike. We aren’t looking for a damaged car but for a witness who saw something when he passed Villiers’ bungalow.’

‘I like all the ends tidied,’ said Burden. ‘Anyway, I checked downstairs and no accident was reported on Tuesday night.’

‘Then let’s leave it, shall we?’ said Wexford crossly. ‘Get Martin to go over to Clusterwell and find out if anyone does any regular nightly dog walking. I may as well go myself,’ he added. ‘Spy out the land a bit. It’s not possible no one used that road.’

The cottages of Clusterwell were scattered over a spider-shaped network of lanes. Sergeant Martin took the body of the spider, Wexford its legs.

Recalling the painstaking routine work of his youth, he knocked on every door. But the inhabitants of Clusterwell took a perverse pride in their own peculiar brand of respectability. Like those of Myfleet, they stayed in at night. Virtue lay in bolting one’s doors, drawing one’s curtains and gathering round the television by nine o’clock. And, judging by the number of mongrels Wexford encountered in the lanes, their dogs exercised themselves.

A large black one, patrolling what looked like a field of allotments, growled at him as he approached the hedge. He decided to venture no nearer the caravan-in any case clearly deserted-which stood behind runner-bean vines and stacked chicken coops. Instead he stepped back to read the words on a shabby board mounted on poles: A. Tawney. New-laid eggs, roasting chickens, veg.

‘Myfleet,’ he said tersely to his driver.

Mrs Cantrip was in her rocking chair, engrossed in her paper, a little flustered because he had caught her in idleness. Katje, who had shown him in, disappeared in the direction of the study.

‘Alf Tawney, sir? If he’s not out on his rounds, you’ll likely find him over at Mrs Lovell’s.’

‘How does he travel to and fro?’

‘On his bike, sir. He’s got one of them big baskets on the handlebars of his bike.’

Wexford nodded. ‘Does he stay at Mrs Lovell’s all night?’

It was easy to shock Mrs Cant ‘ rip, who adhered to that school of thought which holds that fornication can only be committed between midnight and dawn. ‘Oh no, sir,’ she said, flushing and looking down. ‘He’s always gone by eleven. I reckon even Mrs Lovell’s got some idea of what’s right.'

The lovers were in the middle of their evening meal. A saucepan of baked beans stood in the middle of the clothless table.

Mrs Lovell re-seated herself. ‘His lordship been up to something?’ she asked, carving more bread and resting her gigantic bosom among the crumbs.

‘My visit has nothing to do with Sean.’ It was clear to Wexford that he was to be offered no tea, but a glance at the cracked cups and the scum-ringed milk bottle told him he wasn’t missing anything. ‘I hoped to have the pleasure of a little talk with Mr Tawney.’

‘With Alf? What d’you want with Alf?'

Wexford eyed the purveyor of eggs and vegetables, wondering how to interrogate a man who apparently never opened his mouth. The small black eyes in the swarthy hatchet face stared expressionlessly back at him.

At last he said, ‘Spend a good deal of time here with your friends, do you, Mr Tawney?’

Mrs Lovell gave a full-throated giggle. ‘My Sean’s no friend of his,’ she said. ‘It’s me you come to see, don’t you, Alf?'

‘Um,’said Tawney lugubriously.

‘And very nice too,’ said Wexford. ‘A man needs a little feminine company after a hard day’s work.’

‘And his hot meals. Wasting away Alf was till I got him coming here. You fancy a cream horn, Alf?’

‘Um.'

‘What time,’said Wexford, ‘do you reckon on leaving Mrs Lovell’s to go home?’

‘Alf has to be up betimes,’said Mrs Lovell, looking more gypsy-ish than ever. ‘He’s always gone by a quarter to eleven.’ She sighed and Wexford guessed that this early retreat had been a bone of contention between them in the past. With surprising intelligence, she said, ‘You want to know if he saw anything the night her up at the Manor got killed?’

‘Precisely. I want to know if Mr Tawney took a look at Mr Villiers’ bungalow -you know the one I mean? as he was cycling back to Clusterwell.’

‘Don’t know about look. He tried to knock them up, didn’t you, Alf?’

‘Um,’ said Tawney. Very alert now, Wexford waited.

‘Go on, Alf. The gentleman asked you a question.’ A tremor disturbed Tawney’s body as if, by unprecedented effort, he was trying to summon speech from the depths of his stomach. ‘He was mad enough about it at the time,’ said Mrs Lovell. ‘Quite talkative for him. Go on, Alf.’

Tawney spoke.

‘ ‘Twere no good,’ he said. ‘They was out and the place locked up.’

‘Now let’s get this straight’ said Wexford, guessing for all he was worth and mentally apologising to Burden. ‘Mr Tawney was riding home when a car passed him and nearly knocked him off his bicycle.’ Mrs Lovell’s admiring grin told him he was guessing right. ‘And he took the number of this car, intending to give it to the police so that the driver might be prosecuted.’

‘He never took the number.’ Mrs Lovell dipped into a paper bag for the last cream horn. ‘He knew who it was. That foreign girl fromthe Manor.’

‘Mr Tawney knocked at the bungalow because he wanted to use their phone?’

Incredible to imagine Tawney explaining, apologising, dialling, explaining again.

‘The place was all dark,’ said Mrs Lovell with relish, the gypsy scaring children with her stories round the camp fire. ‘Alf banged and banged, but no one come, did they?’

‘Nope,’said Tawney.

Talk about hearsay evidence, thought Wexford. ‘What time was it?’

‘Alf left here half past ten. He’d been knocking a long time when the clock struck eleven, Clusterwell church clock. Go on, Alf, you tell him. You was there.’

Tawney swigged his last drop of tea, perhaps to lubricate his rarely used vocal cords. ‘I banged and no one come.’ He coughed horribly and Wexford looked away. ‘He’s out and she’s out, I said to myself.’

‘That’s right, Alf.’ Mrs Lovell beamed encouragement.

‘Might have known. The garage doors was open.’

‘And both cars was gone! So Alf give it up, and next morning-well, you cool off, don’t you? You think to yourself, Why bother when there’s no bones broken? Mind you, I’ll let that little foreign bitch know what I know if I see her about the village.’

Poor Katje. Wexford wondered if he should drop her a gentle word of warning, closeted with her, calling her by her Christian name, even though that privilege had only been accorded him because he reminded her of some old uncle. Talk to her like an old Dutch uncle ...? He laughed to himself. Better forget it’. st ay securely tied to the mast while the siren sang for others.

In September even the best-kept gardens usually have a ripe wild look. This one was a barren island among the fields, a sterile characterless plot in which every unruly branch and every straggling stem had been docked. The grass was brown and closely shorn and there was nothing to provide shade.

Denys and Georgina Villiers sat in a pair of deckchairs, the uncomfortable cheap kind which have thin metal frames and economically small wooden arm-rests. Wexford observed them for a moment before making his presence known. The man who said he never read newspapers was reading one now, apparently oblivious of his wife. With neither book nor sewing to occupy her, she stared at him with the rapt attention of a cinema fanatic gazing at the screen.

Wexford coughed and immediately Georgina sprang to her feet. Villiers looked up and said with the icy unpleasantness he seemed always able to muster, ‘Control yourself. Don’t be so silly.’ , Wexford walked up to them. Over Villiers’ shoulder he looked at the newspaper and saw what he had been reading: a review of his own latest published work which occupied half a page. ‘Mr Villiers,’ he said roughly, ‘why did you tell me you came straight home from the Manor on Tuesday night and went to bed? This house was empty and in darkness at eleven. Why didn’t you tell me you went out again?’

‘I forgot,’said Villiers calmly.

‘You forgot? When I asked you most pointedly?’

‘Nevertheless, I forgot.’ Villiers’ cold face showed neither fear nor embarrassment. The man had a curious strength, an iron self-control; he seemed unbreakable. Why then have this strange sensation that he had been irrevocably broken long ago and that his strength had never been quite strong enough?

‘Come now, sir. You forgot you went out. Very well. Have you also forgotten where you went?’

‘I went,’ said Villiers, ‘where I said I was going, to the school library to look up a reference.’

‘What reference?’

With cool contempt, Villiers said, ‘Would it mean anything to you if I told you?’ He shrugged. ‘All right. I was looking up the precise relationship of George Gordon Wordsworth to William Wordsworth.’

Somewhat to his own humiliation, Wexford found that it did indeed mean nothing. He swung round on Georgina who crouched in her deckchair, gooseflesh on her arms and tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip. For once she wore no jewellery. Did the cheap gaudy stuff no longer please her now that she would be able to adorn herself with real gems? Or had she ferreted out of Nightingale the scornful words in which her sister-in-law’s bequest was couched?

‘Did you accompany your husband to the school, Mrs Villiers?’ He noted the faint shake of her head. ‘Had you done so you would hardly have gone in two separate cars. But you went out. Where?’

Her voice came in a shrill squeak. ‘I drove-I drove around the lanes.’

‘May I ask why?’

Villiers answered for her. ‘My wife,’ he said silkily, ‘was annoyed with me for going out. She did what she often does on such occasions, took her own car and went for a country drive.’ He gave a waspish smile. ‘To cool her temper,’ he said.

‘I’m not convinced of any of this,’ said Wexford slowly. He glanced around the bare garden. ‘I think we could all talk more frankly down at the police station.’

Georgina gave a wild cry and threw herself into her husband’s arms.

Wexford expected him to repudiate her but instead he held her with almost a lover’s tenderness. Standing up now, he stroked her dry rough hair. ‘As you like,’he said indifferently.

‘No, no, no,’ she sobbed into his shoulder. ‘You must tell him. You tell him.’

He was going to lie again. Wexford was sure of it.

‘What my wife wants me to tell you,’ said Villiers, ‘is that you’ve been a complete bloody fooP He patted Georgina as one pats a dog and then he pushed her away. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Chief Inspector.

Next time you suspect anyone of murder for gain, you had better check up on the value of what they’re gaining. I’m a good liar,’he said urbanely, ‘but I’m not lying now. My sister’s pieces of jewellery are all fakes.

I’d be surprised if the whole lot would fetch more than fifty pounds. You had better look elsewhere, Mr Wexford. You know as well as I do that your absurd trumped-up case against my wife has nothing but motive to make it stand up, and where is your motive now?’

Gone with the sun, thought Wexford, watching it sink behind the misty fields. He was suddenly quite sure that this time Villiers hadn’t been lying.