A Guilty Thing Surprised

6

It was a great piece of luck, Wexford thought as he strolled down Kingsmarkham High Street at sunset, that by serendipity he had lighted on one of Quentin Nightingale’s cronies and that the crony was Lionel Marriott.

Indeed, had he been allowed to select from all his vast acquaintance in the town one single person to enlighten him on the Nightingales’ affairs, Marriott would have been that one. But it had never crossed his mind to connect Marriott with the Manor, although perhaps it should have done, for what great house in the whole neighbourhood was closed to him? What person with any pretension to culture or taste wasn’t on hob-nobbing terms with him? Who but a recluse could deny familiarity with Kingsmarkham’s most hospitable citizen and most fluent gossip?

Wexford had met him half a dozen times and this was enough for Marriott to count him one of his intimates and to avail himself of a rare privilege.

Few people in Kingsmarkham knew the chief inspector’s Christian name and still fewer used it. Marriott had done so since their first meeting and required in exchange that Wexford should call him Lionel.

His own life was an open book. You might not want to turn its pages, but if you hung back, Marriott himself turned them for you, as anxious to enlighten you as to his own affairs as to those of his huge circle of friends.

He was about Wexford’s own age, but spry and wiry, and he had been married once to a dull little woman who had conveniently died just as Marriott’s boredom with matrimony was reaching its zenith. Marriott always spoke of her as ‘my poor wife’ and told stories about her that were in very bad taste but at which you couldn’t help laughing, for his narrative gift and art of skilful digression was such as to reveal the funny side of every aspect of the human predicament. Afterwards you salved your conscience with the thought that the lady was better dead than married to Marriott, who could never for long be attached to just one person and ‘all the rest’, as Shelley puts it, ‘though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion’.

For ‘cold oblivion’ or, at any rate, loneliness, seemed to be Marriott’s great dread. Why else did he fill his house with people every night? Why else teach English literature at the King’s School by day when he had a private income, sufficient even for his needs, his generosity and his hospitality?

Since his wife’s death he hadn’t been celibate and each time Wexford had encountered him it had been in the company of one of a succession of attractive well-dressed women in their forties. Very probably, he thought, as he entered the High Street alley that led down to Marriott’s house, the current companion would be there now, arranging Marriott’s flowers, listening to his anecdotes, preparing canapes for the inevitable ensuing cocktail party.

His house was at the end of a Georgian terrace of which all but this first one had been converted into shops or flats or storeplaces. By contrast to their sad and dilapidated appearance, his looked positively over-decorated with its brilliant white paint, renewed every two years, its jolly little window boxes on each sill, and the six curly balconies which sprouted on its façade.

Those not in the know would have supposed it to be owned by a spinster of independent means and a fussy inclination towards horticulture. Smiling to himself, Wexford climbed the steps to the front door, ducking his head to avoid catching it on a hanging basket full of Technicolor lobelias and fire-engine geraniums. For once the alley wasn’t chock-a-block with the cars of Marriott’s visitors. But it was early still, not yet seven o’clock.

It was Marriott himself who came to the door, natty in a red-velvet jacket and bootlace tie, a can of asparagus tips in one hand.

‘Dear old boy, what a lovely surprise! I was only saying five minutes ago how miserable I was because you’d utterly deserted me, and here you are.

The answer to a sinner’s prayer. Wouldn’t it be lovely, I was saying, if dear old Reg Wexford were to turn up tonight?’

Wexford belonged to the generation and social stratum that feels almost faint to hear Christian names on the lips of mere acquaintances and he winced, but even he couldn’t deny that whatever Marriott’s faults, no one could make you feel as welcome as he did.

‘I was passing,’ he said, ‘and anyway I want to talk to you.,

‘And I’ve been longing to talk to you, so that makes two of us. Come in, come in. Don’t stand there. You’ll stay for my party, won’t you? just a little celebration, a few old friends who are dying to meet the great chief inspector after all the lovely things I’ve told them about you., Wexford found himself swept into the hall, propelled towards Marriott’s drawing room. ‘What are you celebrating?’ He took a deep breath and brought out the first name. ‘What is there to celebrate, Lionel?’

‘Perhaps “celebrate” was the wrong word, dear old boy. This part is more in the nature of an “l, who am about to die, salute you” gathering, if you take my meaning.’ He peered up into Wexford’s face. ‘I see you don’t. Well, no, a busy man like you would hardly realise that this is the last night of the holidays and it’s back to the spotty devils tomorrow.’

‘Of course,’ Wexford said. He remembered now that Marriott always gave an end-of-the-holidays party and that he always referred to his pupils at the King’s School as the ‘spotty devils’. ‘I won’t stay, though. I’m afraid I’m being a nuisance, interrupting you when you’re preparing for a party.’

‘Not a bit! You don’t know how overjoyed I am to see you, but I see from your icy looks that you disapprove.’ Marriott threw out his short arms dramatically. ‘Tell me, what have I done? What have I said?’

Entering the drawing room, Wexford saw a bar improvised in one corner, and through the arch that led into the dining room, a table loaded with food, roast fowls, cold joints, a whole salmon, arranged among carelessly scattered white roses. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that I was wrong in supposing you to have been a close friend of Elizabeth Nightingale.’

Marriott’s mobile face fell, becoming suddenly but perhaps not sincerely, lugubrious. ‘I know, I know. I should be in mourning, sackcloth and ashes, no less. Believe me, Reg, I wear the ashes in my heart. But suppose I were to put all these dear people off and fling the baked meats to the Pomfret broiler-pig farm, what good would it do? Would it bring her back? Would it wipe one tear from Quentin’s cheek?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Dear Reg, I can’t bear your censure. Let me give you a drink. A whisky, a pernod, a champagne cocktail? And a little slice of cold duck to go with it?’

Overwhelmed as usual, Wexford sat down. ‘Just a small whisky, then, but nothing to eat.’

‘I’m an outcast, I suppose. You won’t eat my salt.’ Marriott trotted towards the bar, shaking his head. He began pouring huge measures of Vat 69 into cut-glass tumblers. Wexford knew it would be useless to demur. He eyed the room with an inward grin. Although he knew many of the antiques were almost priceless, the chandeliers unique and the d6cor the envy of every person of taste in the town, Marriott’s drawing room always suggested to him a mixture of the Wallace Collection and an Italian restaurant in the Old Brompton Road. The walls were covered by bottle-green paper embossed with emerald fur and hung with gilt-framed brothel mirrors. On every table stood an assortment of carriage clocks, snuff-boxes and useless little bits of Crown Derby. You would be afraid to move except that you knew that whatever damage you did Marriott would only smile and tell you it didn’t matter at all, so much more precious was your company, including your clumsiness, than any inanimate object.

The clatter of heels from the kitchen region told him there was a third person in the house, and as he took his triple whisky, the woman appeared carrying a tray loaded with more food. She was a tall blonde of about forty-five with charm bracelets on both wrists which rang like bells as she moved.

‘This is Hypatia, my amanuensis,’ said Marriott, seizing her arm. ‘You’ve no idea the funny looks I get when I introduce her like that. But then people are so illiterate, aren’t they? This is Chief Inspector Wexford, my dear, the guardian of our peace.’

Unmoved by Marriott’s remarks, Hypatia extended a large calm hand.

‘She won’t interfere with us,’ said Marriott as if she wasn’t there. ‘She’s just going to have a bath and make herself more beautiful than ever. Run along, Patty, darling.’

‘If you’re sure that’s enough nosh,’ said Hypatia.

‘Quite sure. We don’t want any bilious attacks like last time, do we? Now then, Reg, do your grand inquisitor stuff. I’m desolated that this isn’t a social call, but I don’t delude myself.’ Marriott raised his glass. ‘Here’s to kindness!’

‘Er-cheers,’ said Wexford. He waited until the woman had gone and sounds had reached him of water gurgling through the pipes. ‘rhen he said, ‘I want to know about the Nightingales, anything you can tell me.’ He grinned. ‘I know you won’t let yourself be inhibited by any foolish scruples like good taste or not speaking ill of the dead.’

‘I was very fond of Elizabeth,’said Marriott in a slightly offended tone.

‘We’d known each other all our lives. We were infants together, in a manner of speaking.’

‘A manner of stretching, more like,’ said Wexford nastily. ‘She could have given you a good fifteen years, so don’t kid yourself.’

Marriott sniffed. ‘It’s easy to see you got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’

‘I don’t know about the wrong side. I got out of it a damn’ sight too early. So you’ve known her since she was born, have you? Where was that?’

‘Here, of course. Didn’t you know she and Denys were born here?’

‘I hardly know a thing about them.’

‘Oh, that’s what I like. Total ignorance. As I say to the spotty devils, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after enlightenment, for they shall be filled, even if I have to knock it into ‘em with a slipper. Well, they were born here all right, in a nasty little damp house down by Kingsbrook Lock. Their mother came from London, quite a good family, but their father was Kingsmarkharn born and bred. He was a clerk in the council offices.’

‘Not well-off, then?’

‘Poor as church mice, my dear. Elizabeth and Denys went to the council school, as it then was, and no doubt he would have gone on wasting his sweetness on the desert air but for the bomb.’

‘What bomb?’enquired Wexford as the bathroom door slammed and something went glug in the water tank far above their heads.

‘One of that stick of bombs a German plane let fly over here on its way to the coast. It was a direct hit and it took Villiers père and rnère to Kingdom Come in one fell swoop:

‘Where were the children?’

‘Denys was out fishing and Elizabeth had been sent to fetch him home. It was early evening, about seven. The Villiers children, Elizabeth and Denys, were fourteen and eleven respectively.’

‘What became of them?’

‘A rather peculiar and most unfair arrangement was made for them,’ said Marriott. ‘Denys went to his mother’s brother and did very well for himself. This uncle was a barrister in a good way of doing and he sent Denys to some public school and then to Oxford. Poor Elizabeth was left behind with her aunt, her father’s sister, who took her away from the High School here when she was fifteen and sent her to work at Moran’s, the draper’s.’

Wexford’s face registered the astonishment Marriott had hoped for. ‘Mrs Nightingale a draper’s assistant?’

‘I thought that would shake you. That old bitch Priscilla Larkin-Smith still goes about telling her mates about the days when Elizabeth Villiers used to fit her for her corsets.’

‘How did she meet Nightingale?’

‘Oh, that was a long time later,’ said Marriott. ‘Elizabeth wasn’t at Moran’s for long. She ran away to London and got a job, the clever little thing. Have some more Scotch, ducky?'

‘No, really. You know, Lionel, if it wasn’t for What’sher-name upstairs and her predecessors, one would suspect you of—how shall I put it?-a certain ambivalence. Sometimes you’re too epicene for words.’

Marriott smirked at that, not displeased. ‘I do camp it up rather, don’t I? People are always telling me about it. just a pose, I assure you. Do let me fill your glass.’

Oh, all right.’ The water was running out of the bath now and Hypatia’s feet could be heard tapping on the upper floor. ‘Did the brother and sister meet in London?’

Marriott lit a Russian cigarette and blew elegant smoke rings. ‘That I wouldn’t know.’ He looked crestfallen. Wexford knew he hated to admit ignorance of any detail of a friend’s private life. ‘I didn’t see either of them again until I heard Quentin had bought the Manor.’ He recharged their glasses and came back to his chair. ‘When we heard the Manor had new people in I naturally got my wife to call. You can imagine my joy when I heard who this Mrs Nightingale was.’

‘I’m not sure that I can,’ said Wexford, seeing she was a kid of fifteen and you around thirty when you last met.’

‘How you do throw cold water on all one’s impulsive little expressions!

I mean, of course, that it was lovely to see someone I used to know, and anyway it was always a pleasure to be with Elizabeth. An absolute beauty, you see, and what style! I love those classic English blondes.’

‘You ought to get married again,’ said Wexford.

Marriott cast a shifty glance upwards and said cpigrammatically, ‘A man who marries again doesn’t deserve to lose his first wife.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Wexford, ‘you shock me. Talking of marriage, how did the Nightingales get on?’

‘They were a very happy couple. If you and your wife never discuss anything but the weather, are waited on hand and foot, arc childless and equally cold sexually, what is there to quarrel about?’

‘It was like that, was it? And may I ask how you know they were sexually cold?’

Marriott shifted a little in his seat. ‘Well, you’ve only got to look at Quentin and ... You must allow for a little guesswork, Reg.’

‘I’ll do the guessing. Let’s get back to those early days, fifteen, sixteen years ago. Was Villiers living here then?’

‘No, he turned up a couple of years later. First day of the autumn term it was, and that makes it fourteen years ago almost to the day. We had a couple of newcomers to the staff, a science man and a second-string classics bloke. That was Denys. The Head introduced us veterans and, of course, I was thrilled to see Denys.’

‘But naturally,’ said Wexford.

Marriott gave him an injured look. ‘I thought his behaviour very odd, most peculiar. But then Denys is odd, the complete misanthropist. “What a stroke of luck for you,” I said, “knowing me. I can take you around and introduce you to anyone who is anyone.” You’d have thought he’d have been overjoyed, but not a bit of it. He just gave me one of his sick looks, but I thought I’d better make allowances.’

‘Allowances for what?’

‘Well, he’s a poet, as you know, and poets are curious creatures. There’s no getting away from it. I see you didn’t know. Oh, dear me, yes. Several very charming little verses of his had appeared in the New Statesman by that time, and I’d just read his collection of essays on the Lake Poets.

Most scholarly. So, as I say, I made allowances. “Perhaps you’re relying on your sister to give you the entr6e,” I said. “Don’t forget she’s new here herself.” “My sister here?” he said, going quite white. “You don’t mean you didn’t know?” I said. “Christ,” he said, “I thought this was the last place she’d want to show her face in.” ‘

‘But you made sure they got together?’ said Wexford.

‘Naturally, my dear. I had Denys and his wife up there the same evening.’

‘His wife?’ Wexford almost shouted. ‘But he’s only been married a year.’

‘No need to blow your cool, dear old boy. His first wife. You weren’t joking when you said you didn’t know anything about these people, were you? His first wife, June, a most ...’

‘Look, don’t let’s get on to her yet,’ groaned Wexford. ‘Why was Villiers so upset when you said his sister was here?'

‘I asked myself the same thing at the time, but we were all together quite a lot after that and it was plain they couldn’t stand each other.

Odd when you think how sweet Elizabeth was to everyone else. Frankly, Reg, she acted towards him as if he’d done her some injury, and as for him ... The man’s rudeness to her was beyond belief. But you mustn’t lay too much stress on that. Denys is foul to everyone except Quentin. He’s quite different with Quen and, of course, Quen adores him. But Elizabeth and Denys were never friends. As children they were always quarrelling. Even now I can remember Mrs Villiers and my poor wife discussing it, how trying it was, you know, and how helpless it made Mrs Villiers feel. But if you want to know why they carried on with this feud of theirs, I can’t help you. Elizabeth never discussed her brother if she could help it, and if she didn’t confide in me, whom did she confide in? We were very close friends, intimate, you might say.’

‘Might I?’ said Wexford thoughtfully. ‘Might I indeed?' He fixed Marriott with a searching look and would have pursued this further but for the entry of Hypatia, bathed, perfumed and dressed in gold trousers and a black and gold tunic.

She had a cool smile for Wexford, a maternal one for Marriott. ‘Still nattering? Pam and Ian are here, Leo. I’ve just seen their car turn into the alley.’ She said pointedly to Wexford,’Must you go?’

Wexford got up, shaking off Marriott’s restraining hand. ‘Will you be having another party tomorrow night, Lionel?’

‘Really, Reg, I’m not a complete sybarite. Tomorrow night I’ll be utterly prostrate after my tussles with the sons of yeomen, burgesses and those of the better sort. Spots before the eyes, no less.’

‘In that case,’ said Wexford, grinning, ‘I’ll pick you up from school and give you a lift home.’

‘Lovely,’ said Marriott, showing for the first time a vague uneasiness. He escorted Wexford to the door, let him out and admitted two bright elderly people. ‘How marvellous to see you, my dears. You’re looking good enough to eat, Pam darling. Now do let me ..

Wexford slipped quietly away.