Murder Being Once Done

14

IT was half past six before Wexford got away. Howard was still closeted with a certain Mr de Traynor who smoothly and sympathetically referred to Gregson as 'my youthful client here.' Gregson had picked him out of the phone book because he liked the sound of his name.

There was more than a name to Mr de Traynor. His silky eyebrows almost disappeared into his silky hair when he heard that as yet no charges had been made against Gregson, that, in fact, no one was quite ready to charge him, and he settled down to teach Howard about the law.

'Am I to understand that my youthful client here has actually been detained for no less than three hours . . . ?'

Avoiding Baker, Wexford slipped out by a back way he had discovered which led him into a paved alley. On one side of it was a building that looked like a section house, on the other rows of newly-built garages used for housing police cars and vans. It was all on a much grander scale than anything in Kingsmarkham, and a few days before it would have had an oppressive, even deterrent, effect on him. But now neither the size of the place nor Baker's unjust attitude troubled him much.

Human nature was the same here as in the country, and it was by studying human nature and patterns of behaviour rather than relying solely on circumstantial evidence that he had had his successes in the past. He told himself as he walked briskly in the direction of Kenbourne Lane that he had the edge on Baker, for he had never and would never compose a solution to a mystery and then manipulate facts and human nature to fit it. Pity, though, that he had missed his chance of going to Somerset House.

Rather than rely on finding a bus that would take him to Earls Court, Wexford made for a tube station he had seen from the police car. It wasn't called Kenbourne Vale but Elm Green. Something to do with those famous, long-felled trees about which Dearborn had discoursed? There were no elms now, only a wide grey pavement full of people scurrying towards the station under fluorescent lights, and inside a maze of long tiled passages.

When he came to change at Notting Hill Gate he got into the wrong train. Half an hour had passed before he finally alighted at Earls Court and by then he was fighting claustrophobia, the blood pounding in his head. How did Londoners stick it?

Nevern Gardens turned out to be another of those huge squares, tall houses glaring at each other across rows of parking meters and plane trees with branches like waving threads. He found Lewis Adams on the third floor of one of these houses, in an absurdly narrow, absurdly long, room with a tiny kitchen opening out of it, and he wondered why it was this curious shape until he realised it was a walled-off segment of a huge room, perhaps now divided into five or six shoe boxes like this one.

Adams was eating his evening meal, a Chinese concoction of beansprouts and bamboo shoots and little red bones heaped on a soup plate and balanced on his knees. On the table in front of him was a glass of water, a bottle of soy sauce and a plate of pancakes which resembled chunks of pink foam rubber.

But if his eating arrangements were Bohemian, the room he had shared with Louise Sampson was not. A well-vacuumed red carpet covered the floor, cared-for paperbacks filled the bookshelves, a large television set faced the twin armchairs and the window overlooked the tops of plane trees.

'You'd better ask me questions,' said Adams. 'I don't know what it is you want.' He spoke economically. His voice was cultured and controlled with the tone of a budding barrister or a medical student preparing to sit for triumphant finals. But he looked too young for that, as young as Gregson and not unlike him. Smallish and neat, he had fair-brown hair which stopped short at the lobes of his ears. He would tell exactly what he wanted to tell, no more and no less, Wexford thought. There would be no reiteration here of grandiloquent principles, no juvenile drama.

'Where did you meet her?' he asked.

'She came into the restaurant where I was a waiter.' Adams didn't give a deprecating smile or apologise for his past (perhaps present) humble calling. He finished his beansprouts and set the plate to one side. 'We talked. She said she was sharing with a girl in Battersea, but she wasn't comfortable because they only had one room and the girl had her boy friend there at nights. I asked if she'd like to share with me.' Still without smiling, he added, 'I was finding the rent a bit much.'

'She agreed?'

'The same day. She collected her stuff and moved in that night.'

Wexford was rather shocked. Did they really go on like that these days? 'A bit cold-blooded, wasn't it?'

'Cold-blooded?' Adams hadn't understood and when he did he was more shocked than Wexford had been. His face went cold with disgust. 'You're not suggesting she slept with me, are you? Are you?' He shook his head, tapping one finger against his brow. 'I don't understand your generation. You accuse us of being promiscuous and casual and so on, but you're the ones with the unclean minds. I honestly don't care if you believe this or not, but Lulu lived here with me for four months and we were never lovers. Never. I suppose you're going to ask why not. The answer is that these days, whatever happened in your time, you can sleep in the same room as a girl and not want to make love to her because you're not frustrated. No one any longer has the power to force you into an unnatural celibacy, you're free to have the girls you do want. We didn't attract each other, that's all, and we weren't in the position of having to make do with any port in a storm.' He held up one hand. 'I'm not queer. I had girl friends. I went to their places. No doubt Lulu saw her boy friends at theirs.'

'I believe you, Mr Adams.'

At last he smiled. Wexford saw that delivering his little lecture had relaxed him and he wasn't surprised when he said, 'Don't call me that. My name's Lewis. People used to call us Lew and Lulu.'

'Did Lulu work?'

'She had some money of her own, but she worked sometimes. She used to go out cleaning. Why not? You are con- ventional. It's well paid around here and what you get you keep. No cards, no stamps, no tax.'

'What was she like, what sort of a girl?'

'I was fond of her,' said Adams. 'She was quiet and sensible and reserved. I like that. You get sick of the sound and the fury, you know. Her stepfather,' he added, 'was a great guy for sound and fury.'

'He came here?'

'She'd been here four months.' Adams took a drink from the glass of water on his dinner tray. 'She opened the door and when she let him in I heard her give a sort of cry I was out in the kitchen through there and say, "Stephen, darling Stephen, I knew you'd come for me one day".' He shook his head disapprovingly both, Wexford thought, at the hysterical utterance itself and at hearing it on his own lips. 'It wasn't like her, losing control. I was shattered.'

'But he'd only come to find out where she was?'

'He explained that. You know all those endless explanations people go in for. I didn't care for him, a big showy man, an extrovert. Lulu didn't say much. She told me afterwards that when she saw him she really believed he wanted her at last and the shock of knowing he didn't for~the second time was too much for her. He thought what you thought, that I was her lover. He made a fuss about that. I didn't deny anything or defend myself. Why should I? Then there was a very nasty scene which is best forgotten and he went.'

'What was the scene about?'

Adams had now adopted a manner rather at odds with his youthful appearance. It was as if the young barrister had become an elderly and successful counsel who, conducting an unsavoury case, reveals because he must for his dient's sake the bare facts, while taking pains to omit and make it clear that he is omitting all the nauseating details.

'How can knowing that possibly help you?'

'Anything about Louise might help. I can't make you tell me, but I think you should.'

Adams shrugged. 'I suppose you know your own business best. This stepfather I don't know his name, I'm afraid, Stephen Something was telling Lulu in a very tactless way how happy he and her mother were when Lulu said, "You're very fond of children, aren't you, Stephen?" And he said he was and he hoped to have some of his own. Lulu suddenly became rather like a powerhouse. I don't want to dramatise things, but she gave the impression of very strong pressure holding down an irrepressible force.'

Powerhouses, Wexford thought, cauldrons . . . A frightening sort of girl, intimidating as are all those passionate and turbulent creatures with no outlet for their fevers. 'She said something to him?'

'Oh, yes. I said it was nasty. She said, "Not with my mother you won't, Stephen. Surely she didn't forget to tell you she had a hysterectomy when I was fifteen?" ' Adams' face creased with distaste. 'I left them then and went out into the kitchen. The stepfather screamed and shouted at her and Lulu did some screaming too. She didn't tell me what they-said and a week later she left.'

'Where did she go?'

'She wouldn't tell me. We weren't on very good terms when we parted. Pity, because we'd always trusted each other. Lulu didn't trust me any more. I'd told her off for shouting at this Stephen. She thought I was sympathising with her parents and that I'd tell them where she was if she told me.'

'You must have some idea,' Wexford protested.

'From various things she said, I think she went to Notting Hill. Possibly to a boy friend.'

'His name?'

'There was someone who used to phone her. Somebody called John. He used to ask for her and say, This is John.'

In the morning he asked to see everything Loveday Morgan had worn on the day of her death, and they showed him bra and tights from a chain store, black shoes, black plastic handbag, lemon acrilan sweater and sage green trouser suit. He saw too the contents of that handbag and every personal article found in her room.

'No cheque book?'

'She wouldn't have had one, sir,' said Sergeant Clements, putting on the indulgent look he kept for this naive old copper who thought every female corpse had been of the landed gentry. 'She hadn't any money, bar her wages.'

'I wonder what's become of the child's birth certificate?'

'With Grandma,' said Clements firmly. 'Grandma's blind or in the laughing house or she'd have come forward by now. Any thing else you want to see, sir?'

'The scarf she was killed with.'

Clements brought it in on a kind of tray.

'She's supposed to have been wearing this?' Wexford queried. 'It's a very expensive scarf. Not for a girl earning twelve pounds a week.'

'They have their funny extravagances, sir. She'd go without her dinners three or four days and then blue a pound on a scarf.'

Slowly Wexford handled the square of silk, exposing the label. 'This is a Gucci scarf, Sergeant. It didn't cost a pound. It cost eight or nine times that.'

Clements' mouth fell open. Who connected with this case, Wexford thought, but Mrs Dearborn would have an expensive silk scarf? Hadn't she been hunting for this very scarf before she went out on Monday afternoon? She hadn't been able to find it because her daughter had borrowed it, without saying anything in the way daughters do, on her last visit to Laysbrook House.