From Doon With Death

Chapter 11

Drury came back, smiling cautiously. He had rolled up his sleeves and his hands were pink. When he saw the book Wexford was holding the smile faded and he said aggressively:

‘I think you’re taking a liberty.’

‘Where did you get this book, Mr Drury?’

Drury peered at the printing, looked at Wexford and blushed. The tic returned, pumping his chin.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘she gave it me. I’d forgotten I’d got it.’

Wexford had become stern. His thick lower lip stood out, giving him a prognathous look.

‘Look here, she gave me that book when I was taking her out. It says July here and that’s when it must have been. July, that’s right.’ The blush faded and he went white. He sat down heavily. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? My wife’ll tell you. It’s been there ever since we got married.’

‘Why did Mrs Parsons give it to you, Mr Drury?’

‘I’d been taking her out for a few weeks.’ He stared at Wexford with eyes like a hare’s caught in the beam of head lights. ‘It was the summer of - I don’t know. What does it say there? Fifty-one. We were in her aunt’s house. A parcel came for Margaret and she opened it. She looked sort of mad and she just chucked it down, chucked it on the floor, you see, but I picked it up. I’d heard of it and I thought . . . well, I thought it was a smutty book if you must know, and I wanted to read it. She said, “Here, you can have it, if you like.” Something like that. I can’t remember the details of what she said. It was a long time ago. Minna had got fed up with this Doon and I thought she was sort of ashamed of him . . .’

‘Minna?’

‘I started calling her Minna then because of the name in the book. What have I said? For God’s sake, don’t look at me like that!’

Wexford stuck the book in his pocket.

‘When did you last see her?’

Drury picked at the cord that bound the seat of his chair. He began pulling out little shreds of red cotton. At last he said:

‘She went away in the August. Her uncle had died . . .’

‘No, no. I mean recently’

‘I saw her last week. That isn’t a crime, is it, seeing some body you used to know? I was in the car and I recognized her. She was in the High Street, in Kingsmarkham. I stopped for a minute and asked her how she was, that sort of thing . . .’

‘Go on. I want all the details.’

‘She said she was married and I said so was I. She said she’d come to live in Tabard Road and I said we must get together sometime with her husband and Kathleen. Kathleen’s my wife. Anyway, I said I’d give her a ring, and that was all.’

‘She told you her married name?’

‘Of course she did. Why shouldn’t she?’

‘Mr Drury, you said you recognized her photograph. Didn’t you recognize her name?’

‘Her name, her face, what’s the odds? I’m not in court. I can’t watch every word I say.’

‘Just tell the truth and you won’t have to watch your words. Did you telephone her?’

‘Of course I didn’t. I was going to, but then I read she was dead.’

‘Where were you on Tuesday between twelve-thirty and seven?’

‘I was at work. I work in my uncle’s hardware shop in Pomfret. Ask him, he’ll tell you I was there all day.’

‘What time does the shop close?’

‘Half past five, but I always try to get away early on Tuesdays. Look, you won’t believe me.’

‘Try me, Mr Drury.’

‘I know you won’t believe me, but my wife’ll tell you, my uncle’ll tell you. I always go to Flagford on Tuesdays to collect my wife’s vegetable order. There’s a nursery there, see, on the Clusterwell Road. You have to get there by half five otherwise they’re closed. Well, we were busy last Tuesday and I was late. I try to get away by five, but it was all of a quarter past. When I got to Spellman’s there wasn’t anybody about. I went round the back of the greenhouses and I called out, but they’d gone.’

‘So you went home without the vegetables?’

‘No, I didn’t. Well, I did, but not straight away. I’d had a hard day and I was fed up about the place being closed, so I went into The Swan and had a drink. A girl served me, I’ve never seen her before. Look, does my wife have to know about that? I’m a Methodist, see? I’m a member of the chapel. I’m not supposed to drink.’

Burden drew in his breath. A murder enquiry and he was worrying about his clandestine pint

‘You drove to Flagford along the main Pomfret Road?’

‘Yes, I did. I drove right past that wood where they found her.’ Drury got up and fumbled in vain along the mantelpiece for cigarettes. ‘But I never stopped. I drove straight to Flagford. I was in a hurry to get the order . . . Look, Chief Inspector, I wouldn’t have done anything to Minna. She was a nice kid. I was fond of her. I wouldn’t do a thing like that, kill someone!’

‘Who else called her Minna apart from you?’

‘Only this Doon fellow as far as I know. She never told me his real name. I got the impression she was sort of ashamed of him. Goodness knows why. He was rich and he was clever too. She said he was clever. He drew himself up and looked at them belligerently. ‘She preferred me,’ he said.

He got up suddenly and stared at the chair he had mutilated. Among the dirty plates was a milk bottle, half full, with yellow curds sticking to its rim. He tipped the bottle into an empty tea-cup and drank from it, slopping a puddle into the saucer.

‘I should sit down if I were you,’ Wexford said.

He went into the hall and beckoned to Burden. They stood close together in the narrow passage. The carpet was frayed by the kitchen door and one of Drury’s children had scribbled on the wallpaper with a blue crayon.

‘Get on to The Swan, Mike,’ he said. He thought he heard Drury’s chair shift and, remembering the open french windows, turned swiftly. But Drury was still sitting at the table, his head buried in his hands.

The walls were thin and he could hear Burden’s voice in the front room, then a faint trill as the receiver went back into its rest. Burden’s feet thumped across the floor, entered the hall and stopped. There was utter silence and Wexford edged out of the door, keeping his eye on Drury through the crack.

Burden was standing by the front door. On the wall at the foot of the narrow staircase was a coat-rack, a zig-zag metal affair with gaudily coloured knobs instead of hooks. A man’s sports jacket and a child’s plastic mac hung on two of the knobs and on the one nearest to the stairs was a transparent pink nylon hood.

‘It won’t take prints,’ Wexford said. ‘Get back on that phone, Mike. I shall want some help. Bryant and Gates should be coming on about now.’

He unhooked the hood, covered the diminutive hall in three strides, and showed his find to Drury.

‘Where did you get this, Mr Drury?’

‘It must be my wife’s,’ Drury said. Suddenly assertive, he added pugnaciously, ‘It’s no business of yours!’

‘Mrs Parsons bought a hood like this one on Tuesday morning.’ Wexford watched him crumple once more in sick despair. ‘I want your permission to search this house, Drury. Make no mistake about it, I can get a warrant, but it’ll take a little longer.’

Drury looked as if he was going to cry.

‘Oh, do what you like,’ he said. ‘Only, can I have a cigarette? I’ve left mine in the kitchen.’

‘Inspector Burden will get them when he comes off the phone,’ Wexford said.

They began to search, and within half an hour were joined by Gates and Bryant. Then Wexford told Burden to contact Drury’s uncle at Pomfret, Spellman’s nursery and the manager of the supermarket.

‘The girl at The Swan isn’t on tonight,’ Burden said, ‘but she lives in Flagford at 3 Cross Roads Cottages. No phone. Her name’s Janet Tipping.’

‘We’ll get Martin over there straight away. Try and get a phone number out of Drury where we can get hold of his wife. If she’s not gone far away - Brighton or Eastbourne - you can get down there tonight. When I’ve turned the place over I’m going to have another word with Mrs Quadrant. She admits she was “friendly” with Mrs Parsons and she’s practically the only person who does, apart from our friend in the next room.’

Burden stretched the pink scarf taut, testing its strength.

‘You really think he’s Doon?’ he asked incredulously.

Wexford went on opening drawers, feeling among a mêlée of coloured pencils, Snap cards, reels of cotton, scraps of paper covered with children’s scribble. Mrs Drury wasn’t a tidy housewife and all the cupboards and drawers were in a mess.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘At the moment it looks like it, but it leaves an awful lot of loose ends. It doesn’t fit in with my fancies, Mike, and since we can’t afford to go by fancies . . .’

He looked through every book in the house - there were not more than two or three dozen - but he found no more from Doon to Minna. There was no Victorian poetry and the only novels apart from The Picture of Dorian Gray were paperback thrillers.

On a hook in the kitchen cabinet Bryant found a bunch of keys. One fitted the front door lock, another the strong box in Drury’s bedroom, two more the dining-room and front-room doors, and a fifth the garage. The ignition keys to Drury’s car were in his jacket on the coat-rack and the key to the back door was in the lock. Wexford, looking for purses, found only one, a green and white plastic thing in the shape of a cat’s face. It was empty and labelled on the inside: Susan Mary Drury. Drury’s daughter had taken her savings with her to the seaside.

The loft was approached by a hatch in the landing ceiling. Wexford told Bryant to get Drury’s steps from the garage and investigate this loft. He left Gates downstairs with Drury and went out to his car. On the way he scraped some dust from the tires of the blue Ford.

A thin drizzle was falling. It was ten o’clock and dark for a midsummer evening. If Drury had killed her at half past five, he thought, it would still have been broad daylight, much too early to need the light of a match flame. It would have to be a match they had found. Of all the things to leave behind a matchstick was surely the least incriminating! And why hadn’t she paid for her papers, what had she done with herself during the long hours between the time she left the house and the time she met Doon? But Drury was terribly frightened . . . Wexford too had observed the resemblance between him and Ronald Parsons. It was reasonable to suppose, he argued, that this type of personality attracted Margaret Parsons and that she had chosen her husband because he reminded her of her old lover.

He switched on his headlights, pulled the windscreen wiper button, and started back towards Kingsmarkham.