No More Dying Then

Chapter 21

“Our last day,” said Burden. “Where would you like to go? Shall we have a quiet drive somewhere and lunch in a pub?”

“I don’t mind. Anything you say?’ She took his hand, held it against her face for a moment, and burst out, as if she had kept the words inside her, burning and corroding for many hours, “I’ve got a dreadful feeling, a sort of premonition, that when we get back we’ll hear that they’ve found him.”

“John?”

“And - and the man who killed him,” she whispered.

“They’d let us know.”

“They don’t know where we are, Mike. No one knows.”

Slowly and evenly he said, “It will be better for you when you know it for sure. Terrible pain is better than terrible anxiety.” But was it? Was it better for him to know that Jean was dead than to fear she would die? Terrible anxiety always contains terrible hope. “Better for you,” he said firmly. “And then, when it’s behind you, you can start your new life?’

“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go out.”

It was Saturday and still no one had been charged.

“There’s an uneasy sort of lull about this place,” said, Harry Wild to Camb. “Quite a contrast to all the activity of yore.”

“My what?” said Camb.

“Your nothing. Yore. Days gone by.”

“No good asking me. Nobody ever tells me any thing.”

“Life,” said Wild, “is passing us by, old man. Trouble with us is we’ve not been ambitious. We’ve been content to sport with Amaryllis in the shade.”

Camb looked shocked. “Speak for yourself,” he said, and then, softening, “Shall I see if there’s any tea going?”

Late in the afternoon Dr. Crocker breezed into Wexford’s office. “Very quiet, aren’t we? I hope that means you’ll be free for golf in the morning.”

“Don’t feel like golf,” said Wexford. “Can’t, anyway.”

“Surely you’re not going to Colchester again?”

“I’ve been. I went this morning. Scott’s dead.”

The doctor pranced over to the window and opened it. “You need some fresh air in here. Who’s Scott?”

“You ought to know. He was your patient. He had a stroke and now he’s had another. Want to hear about it?”

“Why would I? People are always having strokes. I’ve just come from an old boy down in Charteris Road who’s had one. Why would I want to know about this Scott?” He came closer to Wexford and bent critically over him. “Reg?” he said. “Are you all right? My God, I’m more concerned that you shouldn’t have one. You look rotten.”

“It is rotten. But not for me. For me it’s just a problem.” Wexford got up suddenly. “Let’s go down to the Olive.”

There was no one else in the lush, rather over-decorated cocktail bar.

“I’d like a double Scotch.”

“And you shall have one,” said Crocker. “For once I’ll go so far as to prescribe it.”

Briefly Wexford thought of that other humbler hostelry where Monkey and Mr. Casaubon had both disgusted him and whetted his appetite He pushed them from his mind as the doctor returned with their drinks.

“Thanks. I wish your tablets came in such a palatable form. Cheers.”

“Good health,” said Crocker meaningfully.

Wexford leaned back against the red-velvet upholstery of the settle. “All the time,” he began, “I thought it must be Swan, although there didn’t seem to be any motive. And then, when I got all that stuff from Monkey and Mr. Casaubon and the more accurate stuff about the inquest, I thought I could see a motive, simply that Swan got rid of people who got in his way. That would imply madness, of course. So what? The world is full of ordinary people with lunacy underlying their ordinariness. Look at Bishop.”

“What inquest?” Crocker asked.

Wexford explained. “But I was looking at it from the wrong way round,” he said, “and it took me a long time to look at it the right way.”

“Let’s have the right way, then.”

“First things first. When a child disappears one of the first things we consider is that he or she was picked up by a car. Another disservice done to the world by the inventor of the internal-combustion engine, or did kids once get abducted in carriages? But I mustn’t digress. Now we knew it was very unlikely Stella accepted a lift in a car because she had already refused the lift we knew had been offered to her. Therefore it was probable that she was either met and taken somewhere by someone she knew, such as her mother, her stepfather or Mrs. Fenn, or that she went into one of the houses in Mill Lane.”

The doctor sipped his sherry austerely. “There are only three,” he said.

“Four, if you count Saltram House. Swan had no real alibi. He could have ridden to Mill Lane, taken Stella into the grounds of Saltram House on some pretext, and killed her. Mrs. Swan had no alibi. Contrary to my former belief, she can drive. She could have driven to Mill Lane. Monstrous as it is to think of a woman killing her own child, I had to consider Rosalind Swan. She worships her husband obsessively. Was it possible, in her mind, that Stella, who also worshipped Swan - little girls seem to - would in a few years’ time grow into a rival?”

“And Mrs. Fenn?”

“Tidying up at Equita, she said. We had only her word for it. But even my inventive mind, twisted mind, if you like, couldn’t see a motive there. Finally, I dismissed all those theories and considered the four houses.” Wexford lowered his voice slightly as a man and a girl entered the bar. “Stella left Equita at twenty-five minutes to five. The first house she passed was the weekenders’ cottage, but it was a Thursday and the cottage was empty. Besides, it dated from about 1550.”

Crocker looked astonished. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“You’ll see in a minute. She went on and it began to rain. At twenty to five the Forby bank manager stopped and offered her a lift. She refused. For once it would have been wise for a child to have accepted a lift from a strange man.” The newcomers had found seats by a far window and Wexford resumed his normal voice. “The next cottage she came to is owned, though not occupied, by a man called Robert Rushworth who lives in Chiltern Avenue. Now Rushworth interested me very much. He knew John Lawrence, he wears a duffel coat, he has been suspected, perhaps with foundation, perhaps not, of molesting a child. His wife, though warned by Mrs. Mitchell that a man had been seen observing the children in the swings field, did not inform the police. On the afternoon of February 25th he could have been in Mill Lane. His wife and his eldest son certainly were. All the family were in the habit of going into their cottage just when it pleased them - and Mrs. Rushworth’s Christian name is Eileen.”

The doctor stared blankly. “I don’t follow any of this. So what if her name is Eileen?”

“Last Sunday,” Wexford went on, “I went down to Colchester to see Mr. and Mr. Scott, the parents of Bridget Scott. At that time I had no suspicion at all of Rushworth. I simply had a forlorn hope that one or both of the Scotts might be able to give me a little more insight into the character of Ivor Swan. But Scott, as you know, is - was, I should say - a very sick man.”

“I should know?”

“Of course you should know,” said Wexford severely. “Really, you’re very slow.” Having for once the whip hand over his friend was cheering Wexford up. It was a pleasant change to see Crocker at a disadvantage. “I was afraid to question Scott. I was uncertain what might be the effect of alarming him. Besides, for my purposes, it seemed adequate to work on his wife. She told me nothing which increased my knowledge of Swan, but unwittingly, she gave me four pieces of information that helped me solve this case” He cleared his throat. “Firstly, she told me that she and her husband had been in the habit of staying for holidays with a relative who lived near Kingsmarkham and that they had stayed there for the last time last winter; secondly, that the relative lived in an eighteenth-century house; thirdly, that in March, a fortnight after he had been taken ill, her husband was a very sick man indeed; fourthly, that the relative’s name was Eileen. Now, sometime in March might well be a fortnight after February 25th.” He paused significantly for all this to sink in.

The doctor put his head on one side. At last he said, ‘I’m beginning to get this clear. My God, you’d hardly believe it, but people are a funny lot. It was with the Rushworths that the Scotts were staying, Eileen Rushworth was the relative. Scott somehow induced Rushworth to make away with Stella in revenge for what Swan had done to his own child. Offered him money, maybe. What a ghastly thing!”

Wexford sighed. It was at times like this that he most missed Burden, or Burden as he used to be. “I think we’ll have another drink,” he said. “My round.”

“You don’t have to act as if I was a complete fool,” said the doctor huffily. “I’m not trained to make this sort of diagnosis.” As Wexford got up, he snapped vindictively, “Orange juice for you, that’s an order.”

With a glass of lager, not orange juice, before him, Wexford said, “You’re worse than Dr. Watson, you are. And while we’re on the subject, though I’ve the utmost respect for Sir Arthur, life isn’t much like Sherlock Holmes stories and I don’t believe it ever was. People don’t nurse revenge for years and years nor do they find it possible to bribe more or less respectable estate agents, fathers of families, into doing murder for them.”

“But you said,” Crocker retorted, “that the Scotts were staying with the Rushworths in their cottage.”

“No, I didn’t. Use your head. How could they have been staying in a house that was let to another tenant? All that made me consider that house was that it dated from about 1750. I had forgotten all about the Scotts’ relative being called Eileen - it was only mentioned in passing - but when I heard Rushworth call his wife Eileen, then I knew. After that I only had to do some simple checking.”

“I am so entirely in the dark,” said Crocker, “that I don’t know what to say.”

For a moment Wexford savoured the experience of seeing the doctor at a loss. Then he said, “Eileen is a fairly common name. Why should Mrs. Rushworth be its only possessor in the district? At that point I remembered that someone else had told me she had two Christian names, was called by the first by half the people she knew and by the second by the rest. I didn’t care to enquire of her personally. I checked with Somerset House. And there I found that Mrs. Margaret Eileen Fenn was the daughter of one James Collins and his wife Eileen Collins, nee Scott.”

“Beyond a doubt, it was with Mrs. Fenn that the Scotts had been staying in February, at Saltram Lodge which is also an eighteenth-century house. They stayed with her, and on February 25th, after saying good-bye to Mrs. Fenn before she left for work at Equita, they too left by taxi to catch the three forty-five train from Stowerton to Victoria.”

Crocker held up his hand to halt Wexford, “I remember now. Of course I do. It was poor old Scott who had that stroke on the platform. I happened to be in the station, booking a seat, and they sent for me. But it wasn’t at a quarter to four, Reg. More like six o’clock”

“Exactly. Mr. and Mrs. Scott didn’t catch the three forty-five. When they got to the station Scott realised they had left one of their suitcases behind at Mrs. Fenn’s. You ought to know that. It was you who told me.”

“So I did.”

“Scott was a strong, hale man at that time. Or so he thought. There wasn’t a taxi about - mind you I’m guessing this bit - and be decided to walk back to Mill Lane. It took him about three quarters of an hour. But that wouldn’t have worried him. There wasn’t another train that stopped at Stowerton till six-twenty-six. He had no difficulty in getting into the house, for Mrs. Fenn always leaves her back door unlocked. Perhaps he made himself a cup of tea, perhaps be merely rested. We shall never know. We must now go back to Stella Rivers.”

“She called at Saltram Lodge?”

“Of course. It was the obvious place. She too knew about the unlocked back door and that Mrs. Fenn, her friend and teacher, had a phone. It was raining, it was growing dark She went into the kitchen and immediately encountered Scott.”

“And Scott recognised her?”

“As Stella Rivers. Not knowing what her correct name was, Mrs. Fenn spoke of her sometimes as Rivers, sometimes as Swan. And she would have spoken of her to Scott, her uncle, and pointed her out, for she was proud of Stella.”

“As soon as she had got over her surprise at finding someone in the house, Stella must have asked to use the phone. What words did she use? Something like this, I fancy: “I’d like to phone my father” - she referred to Swan as her father – “Mr. Swan of Hill Farm. When he comes, we’ll drive you back to Stowerton” Now Scott hated the very name of Swan. He had never forgotten and he had always dreaded a chance meeting with him. He must then have checked with Stella that it was Ivor Swan to whom she referred and then he realised that here he was face to face with the daughter - or so he thought – of the man who had left his own child to die when she was at the same age as this child.”