Murder Being Once Done

15

HOWARD was taking part in a top-level conference at Scottland Yard, discussing no doubt what the next move should be now that Gregson had made his escape under the protection of the ingenious Mr de Traynor. No matter how omnipotent Howard might appear to be, Wexford knew he was in fact answerable always to the head of his Divisional Crime Squad, a commander who very likely knew nothing of a country chief inspector's arrival on the scene.

The gasworks toured at him through a veil of drizzle. He paced up and down, fretting, waiting for Pamela to phone through and say when Howard would be back. He had to talk to Howard before going to Laysbrook House, and he half hoped he wouldn't have to go at all. His wishes in the matter of Louise Sampson were curiously divided. He liked Mrs Dearborn and the humane man in him wanted to see her come out of the mortuary weeping with relief instead of white with shock. But he was a policeman too, whose pride in his abilities had recently suffered blows. Considerable experience and hard work had gone into matching the missing girl with the dead. He knew his desire was base, but he admitted to himself that he would feel a thrill of pride if he vindicated himself in Baker's view and saw Howard's eyes narrow with admiration. And she had, after all, to be someone's daughter . . .

He jumped the way Melanie Dearborn jumped when the phone rang, but instead of Pamela's, the voice was a man's and one couldn't remember having heard before.

'It's Philip Chell.'

Wexford took a few seconds to remember who this was. 'Oh, yes, Mr Chell?'

'Ivan said to tell you he's got something for you.'

That bloody Utopia, Wexford thought. But it wasn't.

'It's something he's found out. He says, d'you want him to come to you or will you come here?'

'What's it about?' Wexford asked impatiently.

'Don't know. He wouldn't say.' The voice- became aggrieved. 'He never tells me anything.'

'Will tomorrow morning do? About ten at your place?'

'Make it eleven,' said Chell. 'If he knows we've got a visitor he'll have me up at the crack of dawn.'

Pamela put her head round the door. 'Mr Fortune will be free at twelve, sir.'

An hour to wait. Why shouldn't he go to Garmisch Terrace during that hour instead of waiting until tomorrow? Whatever Teal had to tell him might provide another link between Loveday and Louise. He took his hand from the mouthpiece and said, 'How about if I were to . . . ?' but Chell had rang off.

The front door was open and he walked straight in. For once the hall was crowded. Chell, in fetching denim and kneeboots, was leaning against the banisters reading a picture postcard and giggling with pleasure. Peggy sat on one corner of the large hall table among newspapers and milk bottles, holding forth shrilly to the Indian and the party-giving girl, while Lamont, the baby in his arms, stood disconsolately by.

Wexford gave them a general good morning and went up to Chell, who, when he saw who it was, switched off his preoccupied smile like someone snapping off a light.

'Ivan's gone out for the day,' he said. He gave the postcard a last fond look and slipped it into his pocket. 'I can't tell you anything. All I know is Ivan was going through his cuttings when he suddenly said, "My God," and he must get hold of you.'

'What cuttings?'

'He's a designer, isn't he? I thought you knew. Well, people write about him in the papers and when they do he cuts the bit out and pastes it in his book.'

Aware that Peggy had fallen silent and that by now everyone was listening avidly, Wexford said in a lower tone, 'Could we go up and have a look at this book?'

'No, we could not. Really, whatever next? Ivan would kin me. He was perfectly horrid to me before he went out just because I'd left last night's washing up. I can't help it if I have these frighful migraines, can I?'

The party girl giggled.

'I feel very depressed,' said Chell. 'I'm going to draw out my whole month's allowance and buy some clothes to cheer myself up.' He stuck up his chin and marched out, banging the front door resoundingly behind him.

'All right for some,' said Peggy, passing a dirty hand across her face and leaving black streaks on her beautiful brow. 'Nice to be a kept man, isn't it, Johnny?'

'I look after her, don't I?' Lamont muttered, giving the baby a squeeze to indicate to whom he was referring. 'I've done everything for her practically since she was born.'

'Except when you're down the pub.'

'Three bloody hours at lunchtime! And you go out leaving me stuck with her every evening. I'm going back to bed.' He hoisted the baby on to his shoulder and made for the basement stairs, giving Peggy a backward glance which, it seemed to Wexford, contained more of hurt love than resentment.

'Look, Mr What's-your-name,' said Peggy, 'when are you lot going to open up Loveday's room so as we can re-let it? The landlords have lost fourteen quid already and it's keeping them awake at nights.'

'Is there someone wanting to rent it?'

'Yeah, her.' Peggy pointed to the party girl who nodded. 'Funny, isn't it? Big laugh. A guy like you would pay seven quid a week not to live in it.'

'It's two pounds a week less than what I'm paying,' said the other girl.

'Well, I'm not discussing the landlords' business in public,' said Peggy huffily. She jumped down from the table and tucked a milk bottle under each arm. 'You'd better come with me down to the hole in the ground.'

Wexford followed her, murmuring vainly that the matter wasn't in his hands. In the basement room Lamont was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Peggy took no notice of him. She began to rummage among letters on the mantelpiece.

'I'm looking for a bit of paper,' she said, 'so you can write down who they have to contact about getting the room back.'

'Will this do?' 'This' was a sheet of paper he had picked up from the top of an untidy pile on the foot of the bed. As he held it out to her he saw that it was an estate agent's specification of a house in Brixton, offered for sale at four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds.

'No, it won't do!' said Lamont, rousing himself and seizing the paper which he screwed up and hurled into a sooty cavern behind the electric fire.

Peggy laughed unpleasantly at him. 'You said you were going to chuck that out God, it must be the weekend before last. Why don't you clear up the place instead of slopping about on the bed all day? It's time you got up, anyway, if that guy's going to phone you about that TV work. Did you give him the number of the Grand Duke?'

Lamont nodded. He slid off the bed, sidled up to Peggy and put his arm round her.

'Oh, you're hopeless,' she said, but she didn't push him away. 'Here,' she said to Wexford, 'you can write the number down on the back of this envelope.'

Wexford wrote down the number of the police station and of Howard's extension and, glancing at his watch, saw that the hour was up.

The superintendent had spread before him photographs of the carefully restored and made-up face of Loveday Morgan, taken after death. The eyes were blue, the hair light blonde, the mouth and cheeks pink. But to anyone who has seen the dead, this was the modern version of a death mask, a soulless painted shell.

' "Life and these lips have long been separated",' Wexford quoted 'You wouldn't show these to her mother?'

'We haven't found a mother to show them to.'

'I have,' said Wexford and he explained.

Howard listened, nodding in slightly hesitant agreement. 'She'd better be brought here,' he said. 'We'll need her to identify the body. It'll be best if you go for her and take Clements and maybe a W.P.C. with you. I think you should go now, Reg.'

'I?' Wexford stared at him. 'You don't expect me to go there and . . . ?'

He felt like Hassan who can just bear the idea of the lovers being tortured to death out of his sight, but revolts in horror when Haroun Al Raschid tells him they must be tortured in his house with him as an onlooker.

Howard was no oriental sadist. He looked distressed, his thin face rather wan. 'Of course, I can't give you orders. You're just my uncle, but. . .'

'But me no buts,' said Wexford, 'and uncle me no uncles.

I'll go.'

He phoned her first. He had promised to phone her. A thin hope, a thin dread, made him ask, 'You haven't heard from Louise?' He looked at his watch. Just after one, the time she would hear if she was going to.

'Not a word,' she said.

Break it gently, prepare the ground. 'I think I may . . .' Made cowardly by her anxious gasp, he said, 'There are some people I'd like you to talk to. May I come over straight away?'

'Baker said we'd never identify her,' said Howard. 'This'll shake him. Don't look so miserable, Reg. She has to be someone's child.'

Clements drove. They went through Hyde Park where the daffodils were coming out.

'Bit early, isn't it?' Wexford asked out of a dry throat.

'They do things to the bulbs, sir. Treat 'em so that they blown before their natural time.' Clements always knew everything, Wexford thought crossly, and made all the facts he im- parted sound unpleasant. 'I don't know why they can't leave things alone instead of all this going against nature. The next thing they'll be treating cuckoos and importing them in December.'

In the King's Road all the traffic lights turned red as the car approached them. It made the going slow and by the time Clements turned in under the arch to Laysbrook Place, Wexford felt as sick as he had done thirty years before on the day he took his inspector's exams. The brickwork of Laysbrook House was a pale amber in the sun, it's trees still silver-gray and untouched by the greening mist of spring. But the forsythia was a dazzling gold and the little silvery clusters he had noticed among the snowdrops now showed themselves as bushes of daphne, rose pink bouquets dotted all over the lawn. It was all very quiet, very still. The house basked in the thin diffident sunlight and the air had a fresh scent, free from the fumes of diesel to which Wexford had grown accustomed.

A young, rather smart, cleaning woman let him in and said, 'She told me you were coming. You're to go in and make yourself at home. She's upstairs with the baby, but she'll be down in a tick.' Was this the new char who stole things, who might have but had not made off with a Gucci scarf? The police car caught her eye and she gaped. 'What about them?'

'They'll stay there,' said Wexford, and he went into the room where Dearborn had shown him the maps and his wife had opened her heart.