From Doon With Death

Chapter 13

Margaret Godfrey was one of five girls on the stone seat and she sat in the middle of the row. Those who stood behind rested their hands on the shoulders of the seated. Wexford counted twelve faces. The snapshot Diana Stevens had taken was very sharp and clear and the likenesses, even after so long, were good. He re-created in his mind the face he had seen on the damp ground, then stared with awakened curiosity at the face in the sun.

The others were all smiling, all but Margaret Godfrey, and her face was in repose. The white forehead was very high, the eyes wide and expressionless; her lips were folded, the corners tilted very slightly upwards, and she was looking at the camera very much as the Gioconda had looked at Leonardo. Secrecy vied with something else in those serene features. This girl, Wexford thought, looked as if she had undergone an experience most of her fellows could never have fathomed, and it had marked her not with suffering or sham but simply with smug tranquillity.

The gym tunic was an incongruity. She could have worn a high-necked dress with puffy sleeves. Her hair, soft then, not crimped and waved as it had been later, skimmed her cheek-bones and lay across her temples in two shining arcs.

Wexford glanced across to the silent Drury, now sitting some five yards from him. Then, screening it once more with his hands, he looked long at the photograph. When Burden came in he was still gazing and his tea had grown cold.

It was almost three o’clock.

‘Miss Tipping is here,’ Burden said.

Wexford came out of the sunny garden, covered the snapshot with a file and said:

‘Let’s have her in, then.’

Janet Tipping was a plump healthy-looking girl with a cone of lacquered hair above a stupid suspicious face. When she saw Drury her expression, vacuous and uncomprehending, was unaltered.

‘Well, I can’t say,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was a long time ago.’

Not twelve years, Burden thought, only four days.

‘I could have served him. I mean, I serve hundreds of fellows with bitter . . .’ Drury stared at her, round-eyed, as if he was trying to drive recognition into her dim, tired consciousness. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to get anybody hung.’

She came closer, peering, in the manner of one attracted by a monstrosity in a museum. Then she retreated, shaking her head.

‘You must remember me,’ Drury shouted. ‘You’ve got to remember. I’ll do anything, I’ll give you anything if you’ll only remember. You don’t realize, this means everything to me . . .’

‘Oh, do me a favour,’ the girl said, frightened now. ‘I’ve racked my brains and I don’t remember.’ She looked at Wexford and said, ‘Can I go now?’

The telephone rang as Burden showed her out. He lifted the receiver and handed it to Wexford.

‘Yes . . . yes, of course I want her brought back,’ Wexford said. ‘That was Martin,’ he said to Burden outside. ‘Mrs Drury said she bought that rain-hood on Monday afternoon.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean - ’ Burden began.

‘No, and Drury got in after six-thirty on Tuesday. She remembers because she was waiting for the tomatoes. She wanted to put them in a salad for their tea. If he wasn’t killing Mrs Parsons, Mike, that was a hell of a long drink he had. For an innocent man he’s practically crazy with terror.’

Again Burden said, ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean - ’

‘I know, I know. Mrs Parsons liked them green and goosey, didn’t she?’

‘I suppose there wasn’t anything in the garden, was there, sir?’

‘Five nails, about a hundredweight of broken bricks and a Dinky Toy Rolls-Royce,’ Wexford said. ‘He ought to thank us. It won’t need digging in the autumn.’ He paused and added, ‘If he’s still here in the autumn.’

They went back into the office. Drury was sitting utterly immobile, his face lard-coloured like a peeled nut.

‘That was a mighty long drink, Drury,’ Wexford said. ‘You didn’t get home till after six-thirty.’

Drury mumbled, his lips scarcely moving: ‘I wanted the order. I hung about. There’s a lot of traffic about at six. I’m not used to drink and I didn’t dare to drive for a bit. I wanted to find Mr Spellman.’

Half a pint, Burden thought, and he didn’t dare to drive? ‘When did you first resume your relationship with Mrs Parsons?’

‘I tell you there wasn’t a relationship. I never saw her for twelve years. Then I was driving through the High Street and I stopped and spoke to her . . .’

‘You were jealous of Mr Parsons, weren’t you?’

‘I never met Parsons.’

‘You would have been jealous of anyone Mrs Parsons had married. You didn’t have to see him. I suggest you’d been meeting Mrs Parsons, taking her out in your car. She got tired of it and threatened to tell your wife.’

‘Ask my wife, ask her. She’ll tell you I’ve never been unfaithful to her. I’m happily married.’

‘Your wife’s on her way here, Drury. We’ll ask her.

Drury had jumped each time the telephone rang. Now as it sounded again after a long lull, a great shudder passed through him and he gave a little moan. Wexford, for hours on tenterhooks, only nodded to Burden.

‘I’ll take it outside,’ he said.

Bryant’s shorthand covered the sheet of paper in swift spidery hieroglyphics. Wexford had spoken to the Colorado police chief, but now as he stood behind Bryant he could hear nothing of that thick drawl through the headphones, only watch the words fall on to paper in a tangled code.

By four it had been transcribed. His face still phlegmatic, but to Burden vital with latent excitement, Wexford read the letter again. The dead words, now coldly typed on official paper, seemed still to have the force of life, a busy bustling life led by a woman in a country backwater. Here in the depths of the night, among the office furniture and the green steel filing cabinets, Mrs Parsons was for a moment - one of the few moments in the whole case - resurrected and become a real person. There was no drama in her words and only the whisper of a small tragedy, but because of her fate the letter was a dreadful document, the only existing recorded fragment of her inner life.

Dear Nan (Wexford read),

I can picture your surprise when you read my new address. Yes, we have come back here and are living a stone’s throw from school and only a few miles from the dear old cottage. We had to sell auntie’s house and lost quite a bit on it, so when Ron got the chance of a job out here we thought this might be the answer. It is supposed to be cheaper living in the country, but we have not noticed it yet, I can tell you.

In spite of what you all thought, I quite liked living in Flagford. It was only you-know-what that turned me off it. Believe me, Nan, I was really scared over that Doon business, so you can imagine I wasn’t too pleased to run slap bang up against Doon again a couple of weeks after we moved in. Although I’m a lot older I still feel frightened and a bit revolted. I said it was better to let things rest but Doon will not have this. I must say it is quite pleasant to get a few rides in a nice comfortable car and get taken out for meals in hotels.

Believe me, Nan, it is as it has always been, just friendship. When Doon and I were younger I really don’t think we knew it could be anything else. At least, I didn’t. Of course the very thought disgusts me. Doon only wants companionship but it is a bit creepy.

So you are going to get another new car. I wish we could afford one but at present it is beyond our wildest dreams. I was sorry to hear about Kim having chicken pox so soon after measles. I suppose having a family has its drawbacks and its worries as well as its advantages. It does not look as Ron and I will have the anxiety or the happiness now as I have not even had a false alarm for two years.

Still, I always say if you have a really happy marriage as we have, you should not need children to keep it together. Perhaps this is just sour grapes. Anyway, we are happy, and Ron seems much more relaxed now we are away from town. I never will understand, Nan, why people like Doon can’t be content with what they have and not keep crying for the moon.

Well, I must close now. This is quite a big house really and not exactly filled with mod. cons.! Remember me to Wil and your offspring. Regards from Ron.

Love from Meg

A happy marriage? Could a marriage be happy, rocking uneasily on a sea of deceit and subterfuge? Burden put the letter down, then picked it up and read it again. Wexford told him of his conversation with the police chief and his face cleared a little.

‘We’ll never prove it,’ Burden said.

‘One thing, you can go and tell Drury that Gates’ll take him home now. If he wants to sue us I daresay Dougie Quadrant will be nothing loth to lend a hand. Only don’t tell him that and don’t let me see him. He’s upsetting my liver.’

It was beginning to grow light. The sky was grey and misty and the streets were drying. Wexford, stiff and cramped with sitting, decided to leave his car and walk home.

He liked the dawn without usually being sufficiently strong-minded to seek it unless he must. It helped him to think. No one was about. The market place seemed much larger than it did by day and a shallow puddle lay in the gutter where the buses pulled in. On the bridge he met a dog, going purposefully about its mysterious business, trotting quickly, head high, as if making for some definite goal. Wexford stopped for a second and looked down into the water. The big grey figure stared back at him until the wind disturbed the surface and broke up the reflection.

Past Mrs Missal’s house, past the cottages . . . He was nearly home. On the Methodist church notice-board he could just make out the red-painted letters in the increasing light: ‘God needs you for his friend.’ Wexford came closer and read the words on another notice pinned beneath it. ‘Mr R. Parsons invites all church members and friends to a service in memory of his wife, Margaret, who died so tragically this week, to be held here on Sunday at ten a.m.’

So today, for the first time since she had died, the house in Tabard Road would be empty. . . . No, Wexford thought, Parsons was at the inquest. But, then . . . His thoughts returned to certain events of the afternoon, to laughter shut off in full spate, to a book, a fierce transposition of emotion, to a woman dressed for an assignation.

‘We’ll never prove it,’ Burden had said.

But they could go to Tabard Road in the morning, and they could try.