Vault

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SO MUCH OF what occurs to us as gospel in the small hours appears absurd in the light of day. That wasn’t true here. Dr Francine Hill, Wexford thought, who is a partner in a medical practice in Crouch End or Muswell Hill. He wasn’t sure which, but he knew he could find it again.

Tom was sceptical. ‘Yes, well, how d’you know it’s not par for the course? Just another Francine. She’ll either say no she’s not, or she’ll be like the last one, wasting our time.’

‘I don’t think so. She’s not just another Francine. She’s Francine Hill.’

‘I suppose it’ll do no harm to phone her.’

‘Will you see her if I can get her to come in?’

‘Well, I will or failing me, Lucy.’

Medical practitioners may not advertise but their names may appear in phone directories. After some searching Wexford found Hill, Dr F., The Group Practice, Hornsey Lane, N8. After he had held on while Eine kleine Nachtmusik played, a receptionist said that Dr Hill took calls only from private patients on this line. She became less curt when Wexford said this was the Metropolitan Police and to ask Dr Hill to call him on this number. It was the first time he had had to say, ‘The name is Wexford’ with his Christian name, but without his rank – the rank he no longer held.

He was sitting in the small office where Tom had put the false Francine and from which she had run away when things became uncomfortable. No doubt Dr Hill had a surgery – did they still call it that? – for much of the morning. It might be lunchtime before she phoned, if she phoned. Would she think this was about some driving offence? It was unlikely she would know it concerned a boyfriend she had or might have had twelve years ago. On the landline in the office, so as not to occupy his cellphone, he called Owen Clary at Chilvers Clary.

Clary was out but the receptionist put him through to Robyn Chilvers.

She greeted him enthusiastically as if he were an old friend whose call she had been waiting for. ‘I’m so glad to hear from you. I’ve lost your number – yes, do give it to me again.’ He did so. ‘Yes, you remember that builder, plumber, whatever he is, you were asking about? Well, by an extraordinary coincidence he rang up, wanted to know if we’d any work for him. Poor chap, he sounded desperate. Of course I took his name and phone number, but I’d lost yours – how stupid can one get?’

‘Had you any work for him, Ms Chilvers?’

‘We’ve barely any for ourselves. I said I’d keep him in mind.’

Wexford wrote down the name Rodney Horndon and a mobile number. ‘Thank you very much. Ms Chilvers, I don’t suppose you know anything about your husband’s visit to Orcadia Cottage? It was in the late summer of 2006. You may not even have been married then.’

She laughed. ‘No, we weren’t. We were together, though. We were engaged, but I broke it off in the spring and we got together again in ’97. But you don’t want to know that.’

Did he? Probably not. But it reminded him of someone else: Damian Keyworth, whose engagement was also broken off at much the same time. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

The landline receiver was scarcely in its rest when his mobile rang. As soon as he heard his caller, he thought of Cordelia – ‘her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman’.

‘My name is Francine Hill. You left a message for me to call you.’

‘Yes, Dr Hill. I wanted to ask you …’

‘Oh, I know what you want. I’ve been expecting you – I mean the police. I think I ought to have got in touch with you, but I kept asking myself what, in fact, I could tell you. I kept thinking I knew nothing of any importance, but then I don’t really know what is important. Shall I come and see you?’

For a moment he was taken aback. Her willingness! Her enthusiasm! ‘Yes, please. If you would. First tell me, you are the Francine Hill who was at Orcadia Cottage, St John’s Wood, during the late summer or early autumn of 1997?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I was.’

‘And with Keith Hill, who drove a big yellow American car?’

‘That was my then boyfriend’s car. His name was Teddy Brex.’

He wasn’t going to tell Tom how utterly unlike his conception of Francine – the Francine of the credit-card swindle, of La Punaise – she had sounded. That would be enough to make him doubt and for Wexford there was no doubt. She had agreed – indeed, had offered – to come to the police headquarters in Cricklewood in her free time at four in the afternoon. She would have no more patients until six.

Wexford occupied the time by accompanying Lucy to Rokeby’s flat in Maida Vale. A thin drizzle was falling out of a leaden sky. The flyover looked leaden too, elephantine because of its weight and the heavy uprights which supported it. Someone had chained a bicycle to the railings outside the house where Rokeby’s flat was. Up against the broken steps someone else had parked a pram which looked unfit ever again to transport a baby. Once again, forewarned of their coming, Rokeby was outside his front door.

‘I can’t stop you coming,’ he said, ‘but I’ve nothing more to tell you. I can’t help that. There’s nothing more.’

‘Mr Rokeby,’ Wexford said when they were inside among the fluted columns, ‘people often say what you’ve just said, but the fact often is that they remember more events than they think they do, and those can be awakened if the right questions are asked.’ Wexford glanced around the big room, thinking to himself that no interior can be uglier than that which was designed to be grand and sumptuous but is rendered mean by cheap carpeting and chain-store chairs and tables. ‘Now the right question here my colleague Detective Sergeant Blanch would like to ask you.’

But her first question or inquiry was not that. ‘Do you think we could have a light on, Mr Rokeby? The rain is making it very dark in here.’

A central light, suspended too low down, suddenly blazed, making Wexford blink. ‘Thank you,’ Lucy said. ‘Now Mr Clary – you remember him?’

Rokeby nodded.

‘Mr Clary, the architect of Chilvers Clary, came to see you in the summer of 2006 and a while later he returned, bringing with him a plumber called Rodney Horndon? Is that right?’

‘He was a plumber and Clary said his name was Rod. I don’t know if he was Rodney Horndon.’

‘Apparently he was,’ Wexford said. ‘Now, he came to Orcadia Cottage when Mr Clary came the second time?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Now, it was summer. Did you and your wife’ – Wexford glanced at Anne Rokeby, who turned a stony face to him – ‘go on holiday that year? You did? And would that have been before or after the visit of Mr Clary and Mr Horndon?’

Anne Rokeby spoke in a voice as cold as her face. ‘Of course it must have been after. We could only go in the school holidays and they, as I suppose you know, start at the end of July.’

Undeterred by her manner, Lucy turned to her. ‘How easy would it have been to get into your patio from the mews while you were away?’

‘Very easy, as my husband never bothered to lock the door in the wall. I’d lock it and the very next time my husband went out that way he’d leave it unlocked. As far as I know,’ Anne Rokeby gave her husband a bitter look, ‘the key is lost.’

Rokeby ignored this. He burst out like a child pleading for a promised treat that has been long postponed: ‘Please, when can we go back to Orcadia Cottage? Please don’t make us stay here any longer.’

‘You can go back whenever you like, Mr Rokeby,’ Lucy said, ‘so long as you’ll put up with people standing outside the house and staring in and put up with us poking about the patio from time to time.’

‘Thank God.’

Rokeby came out with them, pulling the door almost closed behind him. ‘Going back will save my marriage. I somehow feel it will save my life.’

‘It’s nice,’ said Lucy on the stairs, ‘to feel we’re pleasing some of the people some of the time.’

*

When Wexford was a child the ‘lady doctor’ had been a formidable woman. It was often only her vast bosom which distinguished her from the male of the species. Her grey hair was clipped short, her reddened face innocent of make-up and her feet splayed in brown leather lace-ups. Of course, he knew very well Francine Hill wouldn’t be like that. He knew that doctors were as likely to be young and beautiful as women in any other profession, but it was only after he had heard her voice on the phone that he pictured her as such. His imagination came far short of the reality.

If he had only seen her in the street he would have placed her as a dancer, a member of some corps de ballet. She was very slim. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, parted in the centre and drawn back into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her mouth was full and red, her eyes large and dark blue and her skin dazzlingly white; like the ‘lady doctor’ of his youth (though different in all other respects) she wore no make-up. She had on a knee-length black skirt and jacket with a dark blue and red scarf, flat pumps instead of high heels, no jewellery.

Rita Debach brought her into the office.

‘Please sit down, Dr Hill,’ Tom said.

Wexford guessed she would be the kind of doctor who asked her patients to call her by her first name.

‘Now my colleague here, Mr Wexford, tells me you were familiar with Orcadia Cottage in 1997. You went there, I think, with a friend of yours?’

‘I was eighteen,’ she began, ‘living with my father and my stepmother in Ealing. I’d just left school. Teddy Brex was my – well, I suppose he was my boyfriend.’ She paused to consider. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course he was.’

‘And he owned a pale yellow Ford Edsel car?’

‘I don’t know if he owned it.’ She spoke diffidently and Wexford could tell she was doing her best to be as accurate as possible. ‘He used it. He drove it. He told me it had been his uncle’s, but his uncle had gone to live somewhere in Hampshire or Sussex, I can’t remember where.’

‘Was it Liphook, Dr Hill?’

‘Oh, yes, it was. Of course it was.’

‘Where did you meet Mr Brex?’

‘It was at a show – an exhibition, I mean. I went with a friend. Teddy was at this college and the art department had a show of students’ degree work. He’d made a mirror and won a prize for it.’ She looked up and her face suddenly glowed with life. ‘It was the most beautiful mirror. It had a frame made of different kinds of wood, inlaid, you know – he was very gifted. He did wonderful work. He gave me the mirror but I couldn’t take it home. There were – well, reasons why I couldn’t. I left it in the house. I don’t know what happened to it.’ I do, thought Wexford, it’s in Anthea Gardner’s house. Francine Hill had been carried away by memories and now she shook herself. ‘But you don’t want to hear this. We got to know each other, Teddy and I, and we started going out. He was twenty-one. I went to his house …’

Tom interrupted, ‘He was twenty-one and he owned a house?’

‘He said it was his,’ Francine Hill said. ‘I know he wasn’t always truthful. It was in Neasden. I don’t remember the address, but I think I could take you there. His parents were dead but he had a grandmother. I never met her. He took me to Orcadia Cottage.’

‘He didn’t own that house as well?’

She looked at Tom steadily. It was a look which said, I am telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me perhaps we should terminate this interview because I am wasting my time. Tom nodded rather uncomfortably.

‘He took me there,’ she went on. ‘Of course he didn’t own the place. It obviously belonged to someone quite rich. He said that a friend he was working for had lent it to him. You have to remember I was only eighteen and I’d led a very sheltered life, exceptionally sheltered, I think, for someone of my age. I’ve thought about it since and I’ve thought he couldn’t have had friends who owned a place like that but I believed it then. I couldn’t have placed people – do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Wexford, earning an interrogatory stare from Tom.

‘It was most beautifully furnished. Lovely old furniture and oriental rugs and very fine porcelain. I looked in one of the wardrobes and it was full of expensive clothes, dresses and suits, women’s clothes, and there were some men’s, too, in another wardrobe. The drawers were full of jewellery, it looked valuable. Is this the kind of thing you want to hear?’

‘We want to hear anything you can tell us about Mr Brex,’ said Wexford. ‘Was he employed? What did he live on? Oh, and what time of year was this?’

‘It was autumn. The leaves were falling. You ask if Teddy was employed. Well, he was self-employed. He was a joiner.’

Tom asked – spuriously, Wexford thought, ‘Why did he take you to Orcadia Cottage?’

Francine Hill looked at him again, another long look but incredulous this time. ‘We were boyfriend and girlfriend. We wanted somewhere we could be alone.’

‘You had been learning French at school,’ Tom said. ‘Teddy Brex asked you to translate a French word. La Punaise.’ He pronounced it ‘punish.’

Francine shrugged slightly, holding out her hands. It was the test, Wexford thought. Tom was putting her to the test. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘We could show Dr Hill the piece of paper on which it was written down.’

Tom nodded, called Rita Debach to fetch the relevant evidence, as well as the jewellery which had been found in the vault. She took a long time. Meanwhile, Francine talked about her experiences in Orcadia Cottage. No, she had never been into the cellar, she had never been outside at the back, never seen the patio with the manhole. There was no staircase down to a cellar that she saw.

‘Do you think,’ Wexford asked, ‘that Teddy Brex would have been capable of bricking up a doorway, plastering over the brickwork and painting the new area of wall?’

‘Yes, I think so. I don’t know why he would. It wasn’t his house. But if you’re asking me if he could have done it, yes, he could and he would have made a wonderful job of it. He was a perfectionist.’

The scrap of paper arrived, protected between two sheets of plastic. As soon as she saw it she recognised the writing. ‘Oh, yes. Teddy wrote that. I remember now.’

‘Would you have anything in your possession,’ Tom said, reverting to policeman-speak, ‘which might have on it Brex’s fingerprints?’

‘After twelve years?’

‘What happened to Teddy Brex, Dr Hill? You split up? One of you broke it off?’

Wexford could tell at once that this was a question she didn’t want to answer. Tom sat stolid, the picture of the unimaginative cop, the kind that has given the sobriquet ‘plod’ to the whole genus. Yet Tom wasn’t really like that. He would hardly have reached the rank he had if he had been. Could it be, Wexford speculated to himself, that he was the kind of man who, if he finds a woman attractive yet knows she must be unattainable, is made brutishly angry by his frustrations?

‘Or you just drifted apart?’ This time the sarcasm was barely veiled. ‘It was just one of those things?’

The blood rushed into her white face, suffusing it with colour. ‘I got ill. I was ill for weeks and couldn’t meet him. I had troubles at home – my stepmother died. After that I never heard from him again.’ Wexford sensed that this was something she didn’t want to tell them. ‘Once I was better I did try to get in touch, but I couldn’t find him.’

She looked at the jewellery, the two strings of pearls, the diamond and sapphire necklace, the ring, the bracelets and the gold collar. ‘I think this may be some of the jewellery in the drawer, but I can’t really say. I don’t remember.’

Silence. Tom called for Rita to come and remove the exhibits. Wexford turned to Francine Hill and asked her if she would show them where Teddy Brex’s house was.

‘I couldn’t today.’

‘Sometime on Thursday?’ Friday was impossible. On Friday he would be in Kingsmarkham, at the inquest on Jason Wardle. ‘Perhaps Thursday afternoon?’

‘Would two on Thursday afternoon be all right?’

It would be fine, Wexford said, and thank you very much, Dr Hill, you’ve been very helpful. Rita Debach showed her out. The door had scarcely closed when Tom said, ‘Snooty little piece, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t know what use you think seeing this fellow’s house is going to be, but you can go with Lucy if you like.’

And if PC Debach were sent, Wexford would no doubt be going with her. A policeman’s aide’s lot is not a happy one, he paraphrased to himself, which led the increasingly cross Tom to ask what he thought he was laughing at.

‘Nothing,’ said Wexford. ‘Sorry.’