Murder Being Once Done

5

'AUNT DORA,' said Denise icily, 'is lying down. When her headache is better we're going over to my brother's to play bridge.'

Wexford made a further attempt to placate her. 'I'm very sorry about all this, my dear. I didn't mean to upset you, but it went right out of my head.'

'Please don't worry about me. It's Aunt Dora who's upset.'

'Men must work and women must weep,' said Howard rather unkindly. 'Now, where's my dinner and his snack?'

'I'm afraid I didn't prepare anything special for Uncle Reg. You see, we thought that since he seems to be disregarding all his doctor's warnings . . .'

'You'd punish him by giving him a proper meal? Poor old Reg. It looks as if we shall have to deal with you as More dealt with the children in Utopia, by letting them stand and be fed from the master's plate.'

Dora's manner, when she came down, was injured and distrait, but the chief inspector had been married for thirty years and had seldom permitted petticoat government.

Observing the determined gleam in his eye, she contented herself with a piteous, 'Oh, darling, how could you?' before sallying forth to her bridge game.

'Let's go into my study,' Howard said when they had finished their pilaf. 'I want to talk to you about that phone call.'

The study was a lot pleasanter than Howard's office in Kenbourne Vale and its appointments less vulnerable than those in the feminine-dominated part of the house. Wexford took his seat by a window through which could be seen. by way of a narrow opening between house backs, the flash of lights pass- ing eternally down the King's Road. He was not yet used to living in a place where it never grew dark and where all night the sky held a plum-red glow.

'You look much better, Reg.' Howard said, smiling. 'May I say that ten years have fallen away from you in the space of one afternoon?'

'I daresay. One doesn't like to take a back seat, to live vicariously.' Wexford sighed. 'The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.'

'I've always thought Dorzan Gray a very silly book and that epigram one of its few redeeming features. And it comes nearly on the last page.'

'Literary chit-chat, Howard?'

His nephew laughed. 'Not another word,' he said. 'Now that phone call Loveday made from Garmisch Terrace . . .'

'It was to Sytansound, wasn't it? You said she phoned Sytansound to say she was sick.'

'So she did, but that call was made at two o'clock and the one from Garmisch Terrace at one-fifteen. Whom did she phone?'

'Her mother? An old aunt? A girl friend? Perhaps she was replying to one of those advertisements.' when Howard shook his head at that, Wexford said, 'You're sure the call to Sytan- sound wasn't made earlier?'

'The manager took it, a man called Gold, and he's positive Loveday didn't phone before two. She was due back at two and he was beginning to wonder where she was when the phone rang.'

'She made one call from home but the other from a call box outside? Why?'

'Oh, surely because she had no more change. Don't you remember the Pope woman said Loveday asked her for change but all she had was one two-pence piece? Loveday must have got change outside, bought some cigarettes or a bar of chocolate and then gone into a phone box.'

'Yes, the first call was the decisive one, the important one On the outcome of that depended whether she returned to work or not. It was made to her killer.' Wexford rubbed his eye, caught himself doing it and relaxed. It was easy to relax now that he was being admitted to the secret sanctum of Howard's house and, better than that, the sanctum of his thoughts. 'Tell me about the Sytansound people,' he said.

Believing that the passing lights troubled his uncle, Howard drew the curtains and began. 'Gold is a man of sixty,' he said. 'He has a flat over the shop and he was in the shop all Friday afternoon. At five-thirty he switched the phone over to the answering service and went upstairs where he remained all the evening. That's well corroborated. Also at Sytansound are two reps and two engineers. The two reps and one of the engineers are married and live out of Kenbourne. The other is a boy of twenty-one. Their movements are being checked, but, if we're assuming that whoever received that phone call is Loveday's killer, it wasn't any of the older ones. They were all in the Lammas Arms from one till ten to two and none left the table to take a phone call. The twenty-one-year-old was putting a new valve in a television set at a house in Copeland Road. It may be worth checking as to whether anyone phoned that house while he was there, although it seems un- likely. As far as we know, Loveday had hardly ever spoken to the reps and the engineers. Listen, this is from Gold's statement.'

Howard had brought his briefcase into the study with him. He opened it and sorted out one sheet of paper from a small stack. '"She was very quiet and polite. She was popular with the customers because she was always polite and patient. You would not call her the kind of girl who would ever stick up for herself. She was old-fashioned. When she first came she wore no make-up and I had to ask her to." Apparently, he also asked her to turn her skirts up a bit and not to wear the same clothes every day.'

'What wages did he pay her?'

'Twelve pounds a week. Not much, was it, when you remember she was paying seven for her room? But the job was quite unskilled. All she had to do was show people two or three types of television set and ask for their names and addresses. The reps deal with the rental forms and take the money.'

Wexford bit his lip. It troubled him to think of this quiet polite girl, a child to him, living among the Peggy Popes of this world and paying more than half her wages for a room in Garmisch Terrace. He wondered how she had filled her evenings when, after walking from work through the gloomy defiles of the cemetery, she let herself into a cell perhaps twelve feet by twelve, a private vault for the living. No friends, no money to spend, no kind lover, no race clothes . . .

'What was in her room?' he asked.

'Very little. A couple of sweaters, a pair of jeans, one dress, a topcoat. I don't think I've ever been in a room occupied by a girl and found so little evidence that a girl had ever occupied it. What little sticks of make-up she had were in her handbag. There was a cake of soap in the room, a bottle of shampoo, two or three women's magazines and a Bible.'

'A Bible?'

Howard shrugged. 'It may not have been hers, Reg. There was no name in it and the room was furnished so-called, as Clements would say. It's possible the Bible was left behind by a previous tenant or that it just drifted there from some hoard of old books. There was a bookcase in the basement, if you noticed. Peggy Pope didn't know if it was hers or whose it was.'

'Will you try to find her parents?'

'We are trying. Of course, we haven't a proper photograph but all the newspapers have carried detailed descriptions. They must show themselves in the next couple of days if they're still alive, and why shouldn't they be? They wouldn't have to be more than in their forties.'

Wexford said carefully, 'Would you mind if tomorrow I sort of poke about a bit at Garmisch Terrace, talk to people and so on?'

'Poke about all you like,' Howard said affectionately. 'I need your help, Reg.'

Wexford was up by seven-thirty, bent on leaving by car with Howard, and this defiance sent both women into a flurry. Dora had only just come downstairs and there had been no time to prepare a special breakfast for him.

'Just boil me an egg, my dear,' he said airily to Denise, 'and I'll have a cup of coffee.'

'If you hadn't worried us nearly to death yesterday, we'd have gone out and bought you some of that Austrian cereal with the dried fruit and the extra vitimins.'

Wexford shuddered and helped himself surreptitiously to a slice of white bread.

'Your pills,' said his wife, trying to sound cold. 'Oh, Reg.' she wailed suddenly, 'carry them with you and please, please, don't forget to take them!'

'I won't,' said Wexford, pocketing the bottle.

The rush-hour traffic was heavy and nearly forty minutes elapsed before Howard dropped him outside 22 Garmisch Terrace. The pavements were wet and darkly glittering. As he slammed the car door, he saw a black-caped figure come out of the church and scurry off towards the shops.

The only living creature visible, apart from a cat peering through a grating into sewer depths, was a young man who sat on the top step of number 22, reading a copy of The Stage.

'The entry phone doesn't work,' he said as Wexford approached.

'I know.'

'I'll let you in if you like,' said the young man with the lazy indifference of the Frog Footman. He looked, if no means of entering had been available, capable of sitting there until tomorrow. But he had a key, or said he had, and he pro- ceeded to search for it through the pockets of a smelly Afghan jacket. In fashionable usage, Wexford decided, he would be termed one of the Beautiful People, and if like went to like, this must be Johnny.

'I believe you were friendly with the dead girl,' he said.

'Don't know about friendly. I sort of knew her. You the police?'

Wexford nodded. 'You're called Johnny. What's your other name?'

'Lamont.' Johnny wasn't disposed to be talkative. He found his key and let them into the hall where he stood gazing rather moodily at the chief inspector, a lock of dark chestnut hair falling over his brow. He was certainly very handsome with the look of an unkempt and undernourished Byron.

'Who was she friendly with in this house?'

'Don't know,' said Johnny. 'She said she hadn't any friends.' He seemed even more gloomy and indifferent than Peggy Pope and a good deal less communicative. 'She never spoke to anyone here but Peggy and me.' With a kind of lugubrious satisfaction he added: 'No one here can tell you anything. Besides, they'll all be at work by now.' He shrugged heavily, stuffed his magazine into his pocket and shambled off towards the basement stairs.

Wexford took the upward flight. Johnny had been correct in his assumption that most of the tenants would be out at work. He had expected the door of Loveday's room to be sealed up, but it stood ajar. Two plain-clothes men and one in uniform stood by the small sash window talking in low voices. Wexford paused and looked curiously into the room. It was very small and very bare, containing only a narrow bed, a chest of drawers and a bentwood chair. One corner, curtained off with a strip of thin yellow cretonne, provided storage space for clothes. The view from the window was of a plain and uncompromising brick wall, the side evidently of a deep well between this house and the one next door. The well acted as a sounding box, and the cooing of a pigeon perched somewhere higher up came to Wexford's ears as a raucous and hollow bray.

One of the men, seeing him and taking him for a sightseer, stepped briskly over and slammed the door. He went on up. On the third floor he found two tenants at home, an Indian whose room smelt of curry and jogs-sticks and a girl who said she worked in a nightclub. Neither had ever spoken to Loveday Morgan but they remembered her as self-effacing, quiet and sad. Somewhat breathless by now, he reached the top of the fourth flight, where he encountered Peggy Pope, a pile of bedlinen in her arms, talking to a girl with a plain but vivacious face.

'Oh, it's you,' said Peggy. 'Who let you in?'

'Your friend Johnny.'

'Oh God, he's supposed to be down the Labour. He'll just lie about in bed now till the pubs open. I don't know what's got into him lately, he's going to pieces.'

The other girl giggled.

'Did you know Loveday Morgan?' Wexford asked her sharply.

'I said hello to her once or twice. She wasn't my sort. The only time I really talked to her was to ask her to a park I was giving. That's right, isn't it, Peggy''

'I reckon.' Peggy turned dourly to Wexford. 'She has a party every Saturday night and a bloody awful row they make. Sets my kid off screaming half the night.'

'Come off it, Peggy. You know you and Johnny have a great time at my parties.'

'Did Loveday accept your invitation?' Wexford asked.

'Of course not. She looked quite shocked like as if I'd asked her to an orgy. Mind you, she was very nice about it. She said not to worry about the noise. She liked to hear people enjoying themselves, but I thought, well, you're more like an old aunt than a kid of twenty.'

'She'd got no life in her at all,' said Peggy with a heavy sigh.

At the top of the last flight Wexford had much the same sensation as he had received when coming from the dingy wastes of Kenbourne into the light and space which surrounded the Montfort house. The arch at the head of the stairs had been filled in with a glass door set in a frame of polished wood and from this frame, hooked to white trellis, hung a display of house plants. These were so well arranged and well tended as to have satisfied even Denise.

The air smelt cleaner, fresher. Wexford stood still for a moment, getting his breath back, and then he put his finger to the bell above a small plaque which read: 'Chez Teal.'