Murder Being Once Done

11

WEXFORD sat quite still. He knew that her observant eyes would detect any unease that he might show. He could hear a clock ticking in the room, a sound he had not previously noticed Mrs Dearborn's fingers made a rending noise as they tore another half-inch of piping out of the chair. Picking feverishly, she went on talking.

'Isa sounded tremendously happy. There was a note in her voice I hadn't heard there since she was a little girl. She actually asked me how I was and how Alexandra was. Then she said she thought she'd soon have some news that would please me. Of course I asked her what news and she said she thought that could wait for a week or two, but she'd phone me again in a few days. Well, I couldn't bear to leave things like that, and I was begging her to tell me when the pips went on the phone. I said to give me her number and I'd call her back, but before she could they'd cut us off.'

It all fitted. It fitted horribly. 'She didn't phone you again?' he said, knowing what the answer would be.

'No, it was a terrible let-down. I went almost mad with well, curiosity, I suppose you'd call it and I forgot all about not chasing her and I tried to phone Stephen to get him to find her again if he could.... But he was out all that afternoon and when he did come home I'd cooled off and I thought I'd just wait until she phoned again. But she hasn't phoned since.'

'What are you afraid of?'

'Of her happiness.' She laughed a little shrilly. 'Doesn't that sound absurd? I keep asking myself if happiness hasn't made her do something reckless, take some awful risk.' With a shiver, she said. 'What shall I do? Tell me what to do.'

Come to Kenbourne Vale with me and identify a body. He couldn't say that. If this had been Kingsmarkham and he in charge of the Morgan case, he would have said something like that but in the gentlest possible, the most roundabout way. He wasn't in Kingsmarkham and before he did anything he would have to talk to Howard, perhaps find out more before he did even that.

Melanie Dearborn had suffered a lot in her forty years. If his present assumption was correct, all the pain she had ever been through would be nothing compared with the anguish she was going to have to bear. He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. And this woman wasn't that. He liked her, he liked her femininity and her concern and her good manners.

What harm would it do to comfort her and let things slide for a bit? He had no duty here. He was on holiday.

'It's only just over a week, Mrs Dearborn,' he said. 'Remember there was a time when you didn't hear from Isa for months.'

'That's true.'

'If I may, I'll call on you again on Wednesday and if you still haven't heard by then, we'll report your daughter as a missing person.'

'You really think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill?'

'I do,' he lied. So what? He could be wrong, couldn't he? Isa what was her other name? could be alive and well and junketing about Europe with some boy for all he knew. Something like this had happened to him once before. He had known the girl was dead, all the evidence had pointed to it, and then she had turned up, all tanned and smiling from a holiday in Italy with a poet.'

'What's your daughter's surname?' he asked.

'Sampson,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'Louise Sampson, or Isa or Lulu or whatever she's calling herself at present.'

Or Loveday? Don't, he wanted to cry he who had always rejoiced at positive identifications don't make the thing worse for me, more definite.

'I must go.'

'How?' she asked. 'Taxi? Bus?'

'One of those,' he smiled.

'Let me drive you. You've been so kind, giving up your holiday time to me, and I've got to go shopping.'

They argued. Mrs Dearborn won. She went upstairs to fetch the baby and when she reappeared at the head of the stairs, Wexford went up to help her with the carry cot. Her head resting on a pale pink pillow, the child Alexandra stared up at him with large, calm blue eyes. She was rather a fat baby, exquisitely clean and dressed in an expensive-looking, onepiece garment of pink angora.

Mrs Dearborn tucked a white fur rug round her. 'My husband's latest extravagance,' she said. 'He buys presents for this child practically every day. She's got far more clothes than I have.'

'Hello,' said Wexford to the baby. 'Hello, Alexandra.' She behaved after the manner of her kind by first wrinkling her face threateningly, then allowing it to dissolve into a delightful smile of friendliness and trust. 'She's beautiful,' he said sin- cerely.

Mrs Dearborn made no reply to this. She was groping under coats on the hallstand. 'I'm looking for a scarf,' she said half to him, half to herself, 'a blue silk one I'm rather fond of. Heaven knows where it's got to. Come to think of it, I haven't seen it for weeks. I wonder if Stephen could have given it to the cleaning woman I had before this one? When she left he insisted on giving her masses of clothes. He's such an impulsive man.' The baby began to whimper. 'Oh, Alexandra, don't start. She's like a dog,' said Mrs Dearborn rather crossly, 'Once she knows she's going out she won't let you rest till you're up and away. I may as well borrow Stephen's coat. My fur's at the cleaners and it s so cold, isn't it?'

She enveloped herself in Dearborn's sheepskin jacket which was much too big for her and they ran to the car through a sudden downpour. Child and cot were dumped on the back seat as if they were luggage to be safely stowed and then forgotten. Wexford was rather surprised. He had judged Mrs Dearborn as a strongly maternal woman, wrapped up in her husband and her daughters. She wasn't too old to have a baby, but perhaps she was too old to enjoy caring for one. And yet she was no older than the sergeant's wife who even enjoyed playing with her baby when he woke her in the night. It must be her worry over Louise which all-consuming, withdrew her from the rest of her family.

'Tell me the name of the friend Isa shared a flat with,' he said.

'Verity Bate. They were at school together and Verity went to train as a teacher at St Mark and St John.'

'I take it that that's in London?'

'We're not half a mile from it now,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'It's quite near where you're staying, in King's Road. I'll show you. She'll be in her last year now, but I don't know if she's still in the flat. It's near Holland Park and I did try ringing the number, but I didn't get any reply,'

By now they had crossed the King's Road and were going nothwards. On the back seat Alexandra was making soft gurgling sounds. Wexford looked over his shoulder and saw that she was watching the rain slapping against the window, reaching out a fat hand as if she thought she could catch the bright glittering drops. They came into the Fulham Road by way of Sydney Street, and when they had passed the cinema and entered that part of the road which is as narrow as a country lane, Mrs Dearborn asked him if he would mind a few minutes delay.

'I always buy my bread and cakes here,' she said. 'Could you bear if if I left you with Alexandra?'

Wexford said he could bear it very happily. She parked the car by a meter in Gilston Road, exclaiming with satisfaction because its last occupant had left ten minutes still to run, and walked off to the cake shop without a parting word to the baby. Wexford turned to talk to her. She didn't seem at all put out at being left alone with a stranger, but put up her hands to explore his face. The rain drummed on the car roof and Alexandra laughed, kicking off the white rug.

Playing with the baby passed the time so pleasantly that Wexford almost forgot Mrs Dearborn and he was surprised when he saw that ten minutes had gone by. Alexandra had temporarily lost interest in him and was chewing her rug. He looked out of the window and saw Mrs Dearborn, deep in conversation with another woman under whose umbrella they were both sheltering. She caught his eye, mouthed, Just coming,' and then the two women approached the car.

Mrs Dearborn seemed to be pointing out the baby to her friend, if friend she was. From what he could see of her through the streaming rain as she pressed her face against the rear window, Wexford thought her an unlikely sort of acquaintance for a company chairman's wife. Her umbrella was a man's, of cheap uncompromising black, her shabby coat black, and underneath it she wore what looked like an overall. An old felt hat, jammed hard down on her head, partly hid her face but couldn't conceal the disfiguring mole between cheek and left nostril. He fancied he had seen her somewhere before.

Just as he was wondering how long they could bear standing there and gossiping in a downpour which had become a tempest, the woman in black moved off and Mrs Dearborn jumped into the car, slicking back her wet hair with her wet hands.

'I'm so sorry to have kept you. You must be wishing you'd taken that taxi. But you know how it is when you run into people and there's a very . . .' She stopped quite suddenly. 'Now, let's get you home,' she said.

'You were going to show me St Mark and St John.'

'Oh, yes. Can you see that sort of round building right down there to the left? Just before you get to Stamford Bridge? That's St Mark's library. The college grounds go right through to the King's Road. Are you going to tank to Verity?'

'I expect so,' Wexford said. 'At any rate, she can tell me where Isa went after she left her.'

'I can do that,' Melanie Dearborn said quickly. 'Don't forget that's where Stephen found her. It's in Earls Court. I'll write down the phone number. I'd phone it myself, I'd try to talk to Verity, only . . .' She hesitated and added rather sadly, 'None of her friends would tell me anything.'

Outside the house in Theresa Street they stopped and Mrs Dearborn wrote the number down for him. For half an hour her thoughts had been distracted from her daughter, but now he noticed that the hand which held the pen was shaking. She looked up at him, nervous again, her brow furrowed with anxiety.

'Are you really going to try and trace her for me? I'm a bit I remember what happened when Stephen . . .'

'I'll be discreet,' Wexford promised, and then he said goodbye, adding that he would see her without fail on Wednesday.

The house was empty. Denise had left him a note, propped against a crystal vase of freesias, to say that they had gone out to buy a blackberry poncho. He wasn't sure whether this was something to wear or something to eat.

He phoned the Holland Park number, but no one answered. Now for girl number two, the witness perhaps to Dearborn's clumsy and tactless trapping.

A young man's voice said hello.

'Who occupied the flat before you?' Wexford asked when he had explained who he was.

'Don't know. I've been here four years.'

'Four years? Louise Sampson was living there a couple of years ago.'

'That's right. With me. Lulu and I lived here together for Oh, four or five months.'

'I see.' This little piece of information was doubtless one which Dearborn had thought it wise to keep from his wife. 'Can I come and see you, Mr. . . ?'

'Adams. You can come if you like. Not today, though. Say tomorrow, about seven?'

Wexford put the phone down and looked at his watch. Just gone five. The rain had dwindled to drizzle. What time did these college classes end for the day? With any luck, Verity Bate might just be leaving now or, better still, living in hall for her final year.

He found the big gates of the college its students call Marjohn's without difficulty. There were a few boys and girls about on the forecourt, embryo teachers, who gave him the kind of glances his generation but not he reserved for them, the looks which ask, Why are you wearing those curious clothes, that hairstyle, that outlandish air? He was convinced that no one in the King's Road wore his kind of clothes or was as old as he. He went rather tentatively into the porter's lodge and asked where he could find Miss Verity Bate.

'You've just missed her. She came in to see if there were any letters for her and then she went off home. Are you her dad?'

Wexford felt rather flattered. Suppose he had been asked if he were the girl's grandfather? 'I'll leave a note for her,' he said.

Before he went any further he really ought to tell Howard. His nephew had a force at his command, a force who could trace Louise Sampson in a matter of hours, match her with Loveday Morgan, or else show the two girls to be two girls. But how much more satisfying it would be if he on his own could present Howard with a fait accompli, the checking and tracing all done....