Murder Being Once Done

7

THEY had emerged into a windswept clearing, and now that he examined him more closely, Wexford saw that his new acquaintance was a man of substance. Dearborn's suit had come from a price range to which Wexford could never aspire, his shoes looked hand-made, and the strap of his watch was a broad band of gold links.'

'You're a stranger here, are you?' Dearborn asked hirn.

'I'm on holiday.'

'And you thought you'd like to visit the scene of a recent crime?'

Dearborn's voice was still friendly and pleasant, but Wexford thought he detected in it that note of distaste that was sometimes present in his own when he spoke to ghoulish sightseers. 'I know about the murder, of course,' he said, 'but the cemetery is fascinating enough in itself.'

'You wouldn't agree with those people who are in favour of Reconsecrating the place and using it for building land?'

'I didn't know there was any such move on foot.' Wexford saw that now the other man was frowning. 'You're opposed to building?' he asked. 'To renovating the place?'

'Not at all,' Dearborn said energetically. 'I've been largely responsible for improving Kenbourne Vale. I don't know how much of the district you've seen, but the conversions in Copeland Square, for instance, they're my work. And the old Montfort house. My company's aim is to retrieve as much as possible of the Georgian and early Victorian from the wanton demolition that goes on. What I don't want to see is every place of interest like this cemetery levelled to make . . .' He spread out his arms and went on more hotly, '. . . characterless concrete jungles!'

'You live in Kenbourne Vale?' Wexford asked as together they followed the path to St Peter's and the main gates.

'I was born here. I love every inch of the place, but I live in Chelsea. Laysbrook Place. Kenbourne Vale wouldn't suit my wife. It will one day when I've done with it. I want to make this the new Hampstead, the successor to fashionable Chelsea. And I can, I can!' Again Dearborn swept out an arm, striking an flex branch and sending dust-filled raindrops flying. 'I want to show people what's really here, hidden under the muck of a century, the beautiful facades, the grand squares. I'd show you over the cemetery now, only I don't suppose you've got the time and well, it rather . . . I don't feel . . .'

'The murder,' said Wexford intuitively, 'has temporarily spoiled it for you?'

'In a way, yes. Yes, it has.' He gave Wexford a look of approval. 'Clever of you to guess that. You see, the odd thing is that that very girl came to me for a job. I interviewed her myself. Putting her body in that tomb seers a sort of desecration to me.' He shrugged. 'Let's not talk about it. What d'you think of this building, now?' he went on, pointing towards the sandstone dome. 'Eighteen-fifty-five and not a trace of the Gothic, but by then they had lost the art of emulating the Classical and were experimenting with Byzantine. Look at the length of those columns . . .' Laying a large hand on Wexford's arin, he plunged into a lecture on architectural styles, laced with obscure terms and words which to Wexford were almost meaningless. His listener's faint bewilderment communicated itself to him and he stopped suddenly, saying, 'I'm boring you.'

'No, you're not. It's just that I'm afraid I'm rather ignorant. I find the district fascinating.'

'Do you?' The chairman of Notbourne Properties was evidently unused to an appreciative audience. 'I'll tell you what,' he said eagerly. 'Why don't you drop round and see us one night? Laysbrook House. I could show you maps of this place as it was a hundred and fifty years ago. I've got deeds of some of these old houses that would really interest you. What do you think?'

'I'd like that very much.'

'Let's see. It's Thursday now. Why not Saturday night? Come about half-past eight and we'll have a drink and go over the maps together. Now, can I give you a lift anywhere?'

But Wexford refused this invitation. The man had been kind and expansive to him. To confess now that he was a policeman, bound for Kenbourne Vale police station, might make Dearborn see him in the guise of a spy.

Instead of returning to the station, however, he turned eastwards along Lammas Grove in search of Sytansound. The police car parked outside told him where it was before he could read the shop sign. Sergeant Clements was at the wheel. He welcomed the chief inspector with a cheery, 'Had your lunch yet, sir?'

'I thought I might try your canteen,' Wexford said, getting in beside him. 'Would you recommend it?'

'I usually pop home if I can. I only live round the corner. I like to see the boy when I get the chance. He's in bed by the time I get home at night.'

'Your son?'

Clement's didn't reply at once. He was watching a boy unload something from a Sytansound van, but it seemed to Wexford that this was a simulated preoccupation, and he repeated his question. The sergeant turned back to face him. The strong colour in his cheeks had deepened to crimson and he cleared his throat.

'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'we're adopting him. We've got him on three months probation, but the mother's signed the consent and we're due to get the order next week, a week tomorrow.' He slid his hands slowly around the wheel. 'If the mother changed her mind now I reckon it'd about kill my wife.'

Embarrassment and uncertainty had been transferred from one to the other, but there was nothing that Wexford could do about it now. 'Surely, if she's consented . . . ?'

'Well, sir, yes. That's what I keep telling my wife. We're ninety-nine per cent there. It's all been done through the proper channels, but natural mothers have been known to change their minds at the last minute and the court will always go with the mother even if she's given her consent in writing.'

'Do you know the mother?'

'No, sir. And she doesn't know us. We're just a serial number to her. It's done through what's called a guardian ad [item, she's a probation officer really. When the time comes the wife and I will go along to the court and the wife'll sit there with the boy on her lap nice touch that, isn't it? and the ordertll be made and then then he'll be ours for ever. Just as if he was our own.' Clements' voice grew thick and his lips trembled. 'But you can't help having just that one per cent chance in mind that something may go wrong.'

Wexford was beginning to feel sorry that he had ever opened the subject. The steering wheel which Clements' hands had gripped was wet with sweat and he could see a pulse drumming in his left temple. When he had spoken those last words he had looked near to actual l-ears.

'I take it Mr Fortune's inside the shop?' he said in an effort to change the subject. 'Who's the boy with the van?'

'That's Brian Gregson, sir. You've heard of him, I daresay. The one with the good friends all burning to give him an alibi.' Clements was calmer now as his attention was diverted from his personal problems back to the case. 'He's one of Sytansound's engineers, the only young unmarried one.'

Wexford remembered now that Howard had mentioned Gregson, but only in passing and not by name. 'What's this about an alibi?' he asked. 'And why should he need one?'

'Lie's just about the only man who ever associated with Loveday Morgan so-called. Tripper that's the cemetery bloke saw him giving her a lift home one night in his van. And one of the reps says Gregson used to chat her up in the shop sometimes.'

'A bit thin, isn't it?' Wexford objected.

'Well, his alibi for that Friday night is thin, too, sir. He says he was in the Psyche Club in Notting Hill that's a sort of drinking place, sir. God knows what else goes on there and four villains say he was with them there from seven till eleven. But three of them have got form. You couldn't trust them an inch. Look at him, sir. Wouldn't you reckon he'd got something to hide?'

He was a slight fair youth who seemed younger than the twenty-one years Howard had attributed to him and whose thin schoolboy arms looked too frail to support the boxes he was carrying from the van into the shop. Wexford thought he had the air of someone who believes that if he bustles away at his job, giving the impression of a rapt involvement, he may pass unnoticed and escape the interference of authority. Whether or not this was the hope that spurred him to trot in and out so busily with his loads, his work was destined to be interrupted.

As he again approached the rear of the van, determindedly keeping his eyes from wandering towards the police car, a ginger-headed, sharp-faced man came out of Sytansound. beckoned to him and called out:

'Gregson! Here a minute!'

'That's Inspector Baker, sir,' said Clements. 'He'll put him through the mill all right, tell him a thing or two like his father should have done years ago.'

Wexford sighed to himself, for he sensed what was coming and knew that, short of getting out of the car, he was powerless to stop it.

'Vicious, like all the young today,' said Clements. 'Take these girls that have illegits, they've got no more idea of their responsibilities than than rabbits.' He brought this last word out on a note of triumphant serendipity, perhaps believing that the chief inspector with his rustic background would be familiar with the behaviour of small mammals.

'They can't look after them,' he went on. 'You should have seen our boy when he first came to us, thin, white, his nose always running. I don't believe he'd been out in the fresh air since he was born. It isn't fair!' Clements' voice rose passionately. 'They don't want them, they'd have abortions only they leave it too late, while a decent, clean-living woman, a religious woman, like my wife has miscarriage after miscarriage and eats her heart out for years. I'd jail the lot of them, I'd . . .'

'Come now, Sergeant . . .' Wexford hardly knew what to say to calm him. He sought about in his mind for consoling platitudes, but before he could utter a single one the car door had opened and Howard was introducing him to Inspector Baker.

It was apparent from the moment that they sat down in the Grand Duke that Inspector Baker was one of those men who, like certain eager philosophers and scientists, form a theory and then force the facts to fit it. Anything which disturbs the pattern, however relevant, must be rejected, while insignificant data are grossly magnified. Wexford reflected on this in silence, saying nothing, for the inspector's conclusions had not been addressed to him. After the obligatory handshake and the mutterings of a few insincere words, Baker had done his best to exclude him from the discussion, adroitly managing to seat him at the foot of their table while he and Howard faced each other at the opposite end.

Clearly Gregson was Baker's candidate for the Morgan murder, an assumption he based on the man's record a single conviction for robbery the man's friends, and what he called the man's friendship with Loveday.

'He hung around her in the shop, sir. He gave her lifts in that van of his.'

'We know he gave her a lift,' said Howard.

Baker had a harsh unpleasant voice, the bad grammar of his childhood's cockney all vanished now, but the intonation remaining. He made everything he said sound bitter. 'We can't expect to find witnesses to every time they were together. They were the only young people in that shop. You can't tell me a girl like Morgan wouldn't have encouraged his attentions.'

Wexford looked down at his plate. He never liked to hear women referred to by their surnames without Christian name or style, not even when they were prostitutes, not even when they were criminals. Loveday had been neither. He glanced up as Howard said, 'What about the motive?'

Baker shrugged. 'Morgan encouraged him and then gave him the cold shoulder.'

Wexford hadn't meant to interrupt, but he couldn't help himself. 'In a cemetery?'

The inspector acted exactly like a Victorian parent whose discourse at the luncheon table had been interrupted by a child, one of those beings who were to be seen but not heard. But he looked as if he would have preferred not to see Wexford as well. He turned on him a reproving and penetrating stare, and asked him to repeat what he had said.

Wexford did so. 'Do people want to make love in cemeteries?'

For a moment it seemed as if Baker was going to do a Clements and say that 'they' would do anything anywhere. He appeared displeased by Wexford's mention of love-making, but he didn't refer to it directly. 'No doubt you have a better suggestion,' he said.

'Well, I have some questions,' Wexford said tentatively. 'I understand that the cemetery closes at six. What was Gregson doing all the afternoon?'

Howard, who seemed distressed by Baker's attitude, making up for it by a particularly delicate courtesy to his uncle, attending to his wants at the table and refilling his glass from the bottle of apple juice, said quickly, 'He was with Mrs Kirby in Copeiand Road until about one-thirty, then back at Sytansound. After that he went to a house in Monmouth Street that's near Vale Park, Reg and then he had a long repair job in Queen's Lane that took him until five-thirty, after which he went home to his parents' house in Shepherd's Bush.'

'Then I don't quite see . . .'

Baker had been crumbling a roll of bread into pellets with the air of a man preoccupied by his own thoughts. He raised his head and said in a way that is usually described as patient but in fact is a scarcely disguised exasperation, 'That the cemetery closes at six doesn't mean that no one can get in or out. There are breaches in the walls, quite a bad one at the end of Lammas Road, and vandals are always making them worse. The whole damned place ought to be ploughed up and built on.' Having given vent to his statement, utterly in opposition to Stephen Dearborn's views, he sipped his gin and gave a little cough. 'But that's by the way. You must admit, Mr Wexford, that you don't know this district like we do, and a morning's sightseeing isn't going to teach it to you.'

'Come. Michael,' Howard said uneasily. 'Mr. Wexford's anxious to learn. That's why he asked.'

Wexford was distressed to hear that his new acquaintance his antagonist rather shared Burden's Christian name. It reminded him bitterly how different his own inspector's response would have been. But he said nothing. Baker hardly seemed to have noticed Howard's mild reproof beyond giving a faint shrug. 'Gregson could have got in and out of the cemetery,' he said, 'as easily as you can swallow whatever that stuff is in your glass there.'

Wexford took a sip of the 'stuff' and tried again, determined not to let Howard see him show signs of offense.. 'Have you a medical report yet?'

'We'll come to that in a minute. Gregson met her in Queen's Lane at half past five and they went to a secluded spot in the cemetery. She became frightened, screamed perhaps, and he strangled her to silence her.'

Why hadn't they gone to her room? Wexford asked himself. Why not to her room in that house where no questions were asked? And why had she taken the afternoon off if she didn't intend to meet Gregson until after work? These were questions he might ask Howard when they were alone together but not now. He saw that Baker was a man whose idea of a dis- cussion was that he should be invited to state his views while the other so-called participants admired, agreed and encour. aged him. Having given his own limited reconstruction of the case, he had turned to Howard once more and was attempting to discuss with him in an almost inaudible tone the findings of the medical report.

But Howard was determined not to exclude his uncle. Aware that Wexford had a small reputation as an investigator into quirks of character, he pressed Wexford to tell them about his morning's work.

'She was a very innocent girl,' Wexford began. He felt he was on safe ground here, for Baker could hardly claim to be as conversant with the personality of the dead girl as he was with the geography of Kenbourne Vale. 'She was very shy,' he said, 'afraid to go to parties, and very likely she'd only once in her life been into a public house.' He was pleased to see a smile of what might have been approval on Baker's face. It encouraged him to be bolder, to ask a question which might seem to reflect on the inspector's theory. 'Would a girl like that lead a man on, go alone with a comparative stranger into a lonely place? She'd be too frightened.'

Baker went on smiling tightly.

'There was another point that struck me . . .'

'Let's have it, Reg. It may be helpful.'

'Tuesday was February the 29th. I've been wondering if he put her in the Montfort vault because he knew it was only visited on the last Tuesday of the month and that Tuesday, he thought, had already gone by.'

Baker looked incredulous, but Howard's eyes narrowed. 'You mean he forgot that this year, Leap Year, there was an extra Tuesday in the month?'

'It's a possibility, isn't it? I don't think a boy like Gregson would know about the vault and the trust. I was thinking that the man who killed her did know and that he might have put her in there because Loveday knew something he didn't want revealed before a few weeks had passed by.'

'Interesting,' said Howard. 'How does that strike you, Michael?'

The man who was not Burden, who shared with Burden only a Christian name and a certain sharp-featured fairness, raised his eyebrows and drawled, 'To your er, uncle's other point, sir?' It was clever the hesitation he managed before saying 'uncle's', just sufficiently emphasising the nepotism. But he had gone a little too far. His remark brought a frown to Howard's usually gentle face and set him tapping his fingers against his wineglass. And Baker understood that he was admonished. He shrugged, smiled and spoke with cool courtesy.

'You called Morgan innocent and shy, Mr Wexford, but I'm sure you know how deceptive appearances can be. Post- mortem findings, on the other hand, aren't deceptive. Would it surprise you to hear that, according to the medical report, she gave birth to a child during the past year?'