No More Dying Then

Chapter 12

“Not bad news?” said Dr. Crocker. “About the Lawrence boy, I mean?”

Morosely eyeing the pile of papers on his desk,

Wexford said, “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“You haven’t got a lead, then? I was sure there must be something when I passed Mike driving out of Chiltern Avenue at seven-thirty this morning.” He breathed heavily on one of Wexford’s window-panes and began drawing one of his recurrent diagrams. “I wonder what he was doing?” he said thoughtfully.

“Why ask me? I’m not his keeper.” Wexford glared at the doctor and at his drawing of a human pancreas. “I might ask you what you were doing, come to that.”

“A patient. Doctors always have an excuse.”

“So do policemen,” Wexford retorted.

“I doubt if Mike was ministering to a fellow who’d been struck down with stroke. Worst case I’ve come across since they called me out to that poor old boy who collapsed on Stowerton station platform back in February. Did I ever tell you about that? Chap had been staying here on holiday, got to the station and then found he’d left one of his cases behind in this hotel or whatever it was. Went back for it, got in a bit of a flutter and the next thing . . .”

Wexford let out an angry bellow. “So what? Why tell me? I thought you were supposed to treat your patients in confidence. I’ll have a stroke myself if you go on like that.”

“It was just that possibility,” said Crocker sweetly, “that inspired my little narrative.” He dotted in the Islets of Langerhans with his little finger. “Want a fresh prescription for those tablets of yours?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve got hundreds of the damned things left.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have,” said Crocker, pointing a damp finger at him. “You can’t have been taking them regularly.”

“Go away. Get lost. Haven’t you anything better to do than deface my windows with your nasty anatomical studies?”

“Just going.” The doctor made a dancing exit, pausing in the doorway to favour the chief inspector with what seemed to Wexford a meaningless wink.

“Silly fool,” Wexford remarked to the empty room. But Crocker’s visit had left him with an uneasy feeling. To rid himself of it, he began to read the reports the Metropolitan Police had sent him on Gemma Lawrence’s friends.

For the most part they appeared to be in the theatrical profession or on its fringes, but hardly a name was familiar to him. His younger daughter had just left drama school and through her Wexford had heard of many actors and actresses whose names had never been in lights or the print of the Radio Times. None of them appeared in this list and he was aware of what they did only because “actor” or “assistant stage manager” or “model” was written after almost every name.

They were an itinerant crowd, mostly - in Wexford’s own official terminology - of no fixed abode. Half a dozen had been convicted on charges of possessing drugs or of allowing cannabis to be smoked on their premises; a further two or three fined for conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Demonstrating or taking their clothes off in the Albert Hall, Wexford supposed. None were harbouring John Lawrence; none showed by their past histories or their present tendencies a propensity to violence or perverted inclination. From reading between the lines, he gathered that, rather than desire the company of a child, they would go to almost any lengths to avoid having one.

Only two names on the list meant anything to him. One was a ballet dancer, her name at one time a household word, the other a television character actor whose face appeared so monotonously on Wexford’s screen that he was sick of the sight of him. He was called Gregory Devaux and he had been a friend of Gemma Lawrence’s parents. Particular interest had been taken in him because once, five years ago, he had attempted to smuggle out of the country, and the care of his estranged wife, their six-year-old son. The report promised that a watch would be kept on Gregory Devaux.

According to the porter of the Kensington block where she had a flat, Leonie West, the dancer, had been in the South of France since August.

Nothing there. No hint of any of them taking more than a casual friendly interest in Mrs. Lawrence and her son; no hint of a connection between any of them and Ivor Swan.

At ten Martin came in with Policewoman Polly Davies whom Wexford scarcely recognised under the red wig she wore.

“You look terrible,” he said. “Where in God’s name did you dig that up? A jumble sale?”

"Woolworth’s, sir,” said Martin rather offended. “You’re always telling us to go easy on expenses.”

“No doubt it would look better if Polly hadn’t got black eyes and such a - well, Welsh complexion. Never mind. You’ll have to cover it, anyway. It’s pouring with rain.”

Sergeant Martin always took an old-womanish interest in the weather and its vagaries. Having first wiped off the doctor’s pancreas diagram, he opened the window and stuck out one hand. “I think it’ll stop, sir. I see a gleam of light.”

“I only wish you did,” said Wexford. “Pray cover your dismay as best you can. I’ve decided to come with you. I get sick of all this vicarious living.”

They went down the corridor in single file, to be stopped by Burden who opened the door of his own office. Wexford looked him up and down, looked him all over, hard.

“What’s got into you? Your Ernie bonds come up?”

Burden smiled.

“I am glad,” said Wexford sarcastically, “that some one sees fit to spread a little sunshine in this deluge, in this – er - town of terror. What d’you want, any way?”

“I thought you might not have seen today’s paper. There’s an interesting story on the front page.”

Wexford took the paper from him and read the story as he went down in the lift. Under the headline, Landowner Offers £2,000 reward. New Move in Stella Hunt, he read: “Group Captain Percival Swan, wealthy landowner and uncle of Mr. Ivor Swan, Stella Rivers’ stepfather, told me last night that he was offering a reward of £2,000 for information leading to the discovery of Stella’s killer. ‘This is a devilish thing,’ he said as we chatted in the drawing room of his centuries-old mansion near Tunbridge Wells. ‘I was fond of Stella, though I had seen little of her. Two thousand pounds is a large sum, but not too large to sacrifice for the sake of seeing justice done.”

There was a good deal more in the same vein. Not so very interesting, Wexford thought, as he got into his car.

True to Sergeant Martin’s prediction, the rain soon left off. Cheriton Forest was shrouded in thick white mist.

“You may as well take that thing off,” said Wexford to Polly Davies. “He won’t be able to see you if he does come.”

But nobody came. No car passed along the road and no one came down the Myfleet Ride which joined it. Only the mist moved sluggishly and the water which dripped from the boughs of the closely planted fir trees. Wexford sat on a damp log among the trees, thinking of Ivor Swan who rode in this forest and knew it well, who had ridden here on the day his step daughter died. Did he really suppose Swan would appear, walking on the wet sandy ride or mounted on the chestnut horse? With the child perched beside him or holding his hand? A hoax, a hoax, a cruel nonsense, he kept saying to himself, and at one, when the appointed time was an hour behind him and he was shivering with cold, he came out of his biding place and whistled up the other two.

If Burden remained in his early mood he would, at any rate, have a cheerful lunch companion. There was no one behind the desk in the police-station foyer, an unheard-of dereliction of duty. With mounting rage Wexford stared at the empty stool on which Sergeant Camb should have been perched and was about to press a bell that had never, in all its years of existence, needed to be pressed before, when the Sergeant appeared, scuttling from the lift, the inevitable teacup in his hand.

“Sorry, sir. We’re so short-handed what with all these crazy calls coming in that I had to fetch my own tea. I’ve only been away half a tick. You know me, sir, I perish without my tea.”

“Next time,” said Wexford, “you perish. Remember, Sergeant, that the guard dies but it never surrenders.”

He went upstairs and looked for Burden.

“Mr. Burden went to lunch ten minutes ago, sir,” said Loring.

Wexford cursed. He badly wanted to engage with Burden in one of those acrimonious but rewarding conferences which both cemented their friendship and contributed to their work. Lunch alone at the Carousel would be a dismal affair. He opened the door of his own office and stopped dead on the threshold.

Seated in the chief inspector’s swivel chair at the chief inspector’s rosewood desk, the cigarette in his fingers scattering ash all over the lemon-coloured carpet, was Monkey Matthews.

“They might have told me,” said Wexford distantly, “that I’d been deposed. This kind of thing smacks of goings-on behind the Iron Curtain. What am I to do? Manage a power station?”

Monkey grinned. He had the grace to get up out of Wexford’s chair. “I’d never have believed,” he said, “it was so easy to get into a nick. I reckon that old geezer Camb must have dropped dead at last and they’ve all gone off to bury him. Got in without a soul the wiser, I did. Bloody sight easier,” he added, “to get in this nick than get out of it.”

“You won’t find it hard today. You can get out now. And fast, before I do you for being found on enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose.”

“Ah, but my purpose is lawful.” Monkey stubbed out his cigarette in Wexford’s inkwell and surveyed the room with a pleased expression. “This is the first time I’ve ever been in a nick of what you might call my own accord.” A dreamy smile spread across his face and was abruptly quenched by a fit of coughing.

Wexford stood half in the office, half in the corridor, waiting unsympathetically.

“You may as well shut the door,” said Monkey when he had recovered. “We don’t want the whole place to hear, do we? I’ve got some info. The Lawrence case.”

Wexford closed the door but gave no other sign that Monkey’s remark had interested him. “You have?” he said.

“Friend of mine has.”

“I didn’t know you had any friends, Monkey, bar poor old Ruby.”

“You don’t want to judge everybody by yourself,” said Monkey, stung. He coughed and stubbed out his cigarette, immediately lighting another and regarding the discarded stub with resentment, as if some peculiarity of its construction or fault in its make-up were responsible for his choking attack, rather than the tobacco it contained. “I’ve got a lot of friends, picked up in me travels.”

“Picked up in cells, you mean,” said Wexford,

Monkey had long ago forgotten how to blush, but the wary look which crossed his face told Wexford the shot had gone home. “My friend,” he said, “come down here yesterday for a bit of a holiday with me and Rube. A bit of a rest, like. He’s an old feller and his health’s not what it was.”

“All those damp exercise yards, I daresay.”

“Oh, give over, will you? My friend has got some info as’ll open your eyes all right, re the antecedents of Mr. Ivor Bloody Swan.”

If Wexford was surprised, he didn’t show it. “He has no antecedents,” he said coldly, “or not what you mean by the term.”

“Not wrote down, I daresay. Not all our misdemeanours is recorded, Mr. Wexford, not by a long chalk. I’ve heard it said there’s more murderers walking the streets free as ever got topped on account of them as they murdered being thought to have died natural.”

Wexford rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully at Monkey. “Let’s see your friend,” he said, “and hear what he’s got to say. It might be worth a few bob.”

“He would want paying.”

“I’m sure he would.”

“He made a point of that,” said Monkey conversationally.

Wexford got up and opened a window to let some of the smoke out. “I’m a busy man, Monkey. I can’t hang about fencing with you all day. How much?”

“A monkey,” said Monkey succinctly.

In a pleasant but distant voice, tinged with incredulous outrage, Wexford said, “You must be off your nut if you seriously think the government is going to pay five hundred pounds to a clapped-out old lag for information it can get for nothing out of a file.”

“Five hundred,” Monkey repeated, “and if it all works out nice, the two thou reward the uncle’s putting up.” He coughed thickly but with no sign of distress. “If you don’t want nothing to do with it,” he said sweetly, “my friend can always go to the chief constable. He’s called Griswold, isn’t he?”

“Don’t you bloody threaten me!” said Wexford.

“Threaten? Who’s threatening? This info’s in the public interest, that’s what it is.”

Wexford said firmly, “You can bring your friend along here and then we’ll see. Might be worth a couple of nicker.”

“He won’t come here. He wouldn’t go voluntary like into a fuzz box. Different to me, he is. But him and me, we’ll be in the Pony six sharp tonight and I dare say he’d accept a friendly overture in the form of liquor.”

Was it possible that there was something in this story? Wexford wondered after Monkey had gone. And immediately he recalled Rivers’ hints as to the death of Swan’s aunt. Suppose, after all, that Swan had hastened the old lady’s departure? Poison, maybe. That would be in Swan’s line, a lazy, slow way of killing. And suppose this friend of Monkey’s had been in service in the house, an odd-job man or even a butler? He might have seen something, extracted something, kept it hidden for years in his bosom . . .

Wexford came down to earth and, laughing, quoted to himself a favourite passage from Jane Austen:

“Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known in a country like this where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”

Long ago he had learned these lines by heart. They had been of constant service to him and, when inclined to sail away on flights of fancy, kept his feet firmly on the ground.

It was much too late now to go out for lunch. The staff of the Carousel looked askance at you if you arrived for your midday meal after one-thirty. Wexford sent to the canteen for sandwiches and had eaten the first half-round when the report on the lock of hair came in from the lab. The hair, Wexford read, was a child’s but not John Lawrence’s. Comparison had been made with the strands taken from John’s hairbrush. Understanding only about twenty-five per cent of the technical jargon, Wexford did his best to follow just how they could be so certain the hairs in the brush differed from the hairs in the cut lock, and finally had to be content to know that they did differ.

His phone rang. It was Loring from the room where all the calls connected with the Lawrence and Rivers cases were received and checked.

“I think you’ll want to take this one, sir.”

Immediately Wexford thought of Monkey Matthews and just as quickly dismissed the thought. Monkey had never been known to use a telephone.

“Record it, Loring,” he said, and then, “Is it from a call box?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We can’t trace it.”

“Put him on,” said Wexford.

As soon as he heard the voice he knew an attempt was being made to disguise it. A couple of pebbles in the man’s mouth, he decided. But some quality, the pitch perhaps, couldn’t be disguised. Wexford recognised the voice. Not its owner, nor could he recall where he had seen the speaker, what he had said or anything about him. But he was sure he recognised the voice.

“I’m not prepared to give my name,” it said. “I’ve written to you twice.”

“Your letters were received.” Wexford had stood up to take the call and from where he stood he could see the High Street and see a woman tenderly lifting a baby from a pram to take it with her into a shop. His anger was immense and he could feel the dangerous blood pounding in his head.

“You played around with me this morning. That’s not going to happen tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Wexford said evenly.

“I shall be in the grounds of Saltram House tomorrow by the fountains. I’ll be there at six p.m. with John. And I want the mother to come for him. Alone.”

“Where are you speaking from?”

“My farm,” said the voice, growing squeaky. “I’ve got a three-hundred-acre farm not so far from here. It’s a fur farm, mink, rabbits, chinchillas, the lot. John doesn’t know I keep them for their fur. That would only upset him, wouldn’t it?”

Wexford caught the authentic note of derangement He didn’t know whether this comforted or distressed him. He was thinking about the voice which he had heard before, a thin high voice, its possessor quick to take offence, looking for insult where none existed.

“You haven’t got John,” he said. “That hair you sent me wasn’t John’s.” Scorn and rage made him forget caution. “You are an ignorant man. Hair can be as precisely identified as blood these days.”

Heavy breathing at the other end of the line succeeded this statement. Wexford felt that he had scored. He drew breath to let loose vituperation, but before he could speak the voice said coldly:

“D’you think I don’t know that? I cut that hair from Stella Rivers.”