A New Lease of Death (2 page)

‘Who’s Painter?’

‘Villain who got the chop about fifteen or sixteen years ago,’ said Wexford laconically.’ Let’s see what the parson has to say, shall we?’

Burden looked over his shoulder. The letter was headed St Columba’s Vicarage, Thringford, Essex. The Greek e’s awakened in him a small hostility. Wexford read it aloud.

‘“Dear sir, I hope you will forgive me for taking up your valuable time…” Don’t have much choice, do I? “… but I regard this matter as being of some urgency. Col. Griswold, the Chief Constable of blah blah and so on, has very kindly told me you
are
the gentleman who may be able to assist me in this problem so I am taking the liberty, having first consulted him, of writing to You.”’ He cleared his throat and loosened his crumpled grey tie. ‘Takes a hell of a time coming to the point, I must say. Ah, here we go. “You will remember the case of Herbert Arthur Painter …” I
will
. “I understand you were in charge of it. I therefore supposed I should come to you before pursuing certain enquiries which, much against my will, I am compelled to make.”’

‘Compelled?’

‘That’s what the man says. Doesn’t say why. The rest’s a load of compliments and can he come and see me tomorrow – no, today. He’s going to phone this morning, but he “anticipates my willingness to meet him.”’ He glanced at the window to where the sun was coming up over York Street and with one of his distorted quotations, said, ‘I suppose he’s sleeping in Elysium at this moment, crammed with distressful cold mutton or whatever parsons go to bed on.’

‘What’s it all about?’

‘Oh God, Mike, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t want to take any notice of this “being compelled” and “against his will” stuff. I don’t suppose his stipend amounts to much. He probably writes true crime stories in between early Communion and the Mothers’ Meeting. He must be getting desperate if he reckons on titillating the mass appetite by resurrecting Painter.’

Burden said thoughtfully, ‘I seem to remember the case. I’d just left school …’

‘And it inspired your choice of a career, did it?’
Wexford
mocked. ‘“What are you going to be, son?” “I’m going to be a detective, Dad.”’

In his five years as Wexford’s right-hand man, Burden had grown immune to his teasing. He knew he was a kind of safety valve, the stooge perhaps on whom Wexford could vent his violent and sometimes shocking sense of humour. The people of this little town, indiscriminately referred to by Wexford as ‘our customers’ had, unless suspected of felony, to be spared. Burden was there to take the overflow of his chief’s rage, ridicule and satire. Now he was cast as the sponge to soak up the scorn that was rightly the due of Griswold and Griswold’s friend.

He looked shrewdly at Wexford. After a trying, frustrating day and night, this letter was the last straw. Wexford was suddenly tense with irritation, his skin more deeply wrinkled than usual, his whole body flexed with the anger that would not suffer fools gladly. That tension must find release.

‘This Painter thing,’ Burden said slyly, slipping into his role of therapist, ‘a bit run of the mill, wasn’t it? I followed it in the papers because it was the big local sensation. I don’t remember it was remarkable in any other way.’

Wexford slipped the letter back into its envelope and put it in a drawer. His movements were precise and under a tight control. One wrong word, Burden thought, and he’d have torn it up, chucked the pieces on the floor and left them to the mercy of the cleaner. His words had apparently been as right as possible under the circumstances for Wexford said in a sharp cool voice, ‘It was remarkable to me.’

‘Because you handled it?’

‘Because it was the first murder case I ever handled on my own. It was remarkable to Painter because it hanged him and to his widow, I daresay. I suppose it shook her a bit as far as anything could shake that girl.’

Rather nervously Burden watched him observe the cigarette burn one of the men they had been interviewing had made in the lemon-coloured leather of a chair seat. He waited for the explosion. Instead Wexford said indifferently:

‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’

‘Too late now,’ said Burden, stifling a yawn that threatened. ‘Besides, my wife’s away at the seaside.’

A strongly uxorious man, he found his bungalow like a morgue when Jean and the children were absent. This was a side of his character that afforded Wexford many opportunities for quips and snide remarks, this coupled with his comparative youth, his stolid stick-in-the-mud nature and a certain primness of outlook. But all Wexford said was, ‘I forgot.’

He was good at his job. The big ugly man respected him for that. Although he might deride, Wexford appreciated the advantage of having a deputy whose grave good looks were attractive to women. Seated opposite that ascetic face, warmed by a compassion Wexford called ‘softness’, they were more inclined to open their hearts than to a majestic fifty-five-year-old heavyweight. His personality, however, was not strong and his superior effaced him. Now, in order to channel off that sharp-edged vitality, he was going to have to risk a rebuke for stupidity.

He risked it. ‘If you’re going to have to argue the toss with this Archery, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we had a re-cap of the facts?’

‘We?’

‘Well, you then, sir. You must be a bit rusty yourself on the case after so long.’

The outburst came with an undercurrent of laughter. ‘God Almighty! D’you think I can’t see your brain working? When I want a psychiatrist I’ll hire a professional.’ He paused and the laughter became a wry grin. ‘O.K. it might help me. …’ But Burden had made the mistake of relaxing too soon. ‘To get the facts straight for Mr Bloody Archery, I mean,’ Wexford snapped. ‘But there’s no mystery, you know, no cunning little red herrings. Painter did it all right.’ He pointed eastwards out of the window. The broad Sussex sky was becoming suffused with rose and gold, bands of soft creamy pink like strokes from a water-colour brush. ‘That’s as sure as the sun’s rising now,’ he said. ‘There never was any doubt. Herbert Arthur Painter killed his ninety-year-old employer by hitting her over the head with an axe and he did it for two hundred pounds. He was a brutal savage moron. I read in the paper the other day that the Russians call anti-social people “unpersons” and that just about describes him. Funny sort of character for a parson to champion.’

‘If he’s championing him.’

‘We shall see,’ said Wexford.

They stood in front of the map that was attached to the yellow ‘cracked ice’ wallpaper.

‘She was killed in her own home, wasn’t she?’ Burden asked. ‘One of those big houses off the Stowerton road?’

The map showed the whole of this rather sleepy country district. Kingsmarkham, a market town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, lay in the centre, its streets coloured in brown and white, its pastoral environs green with the blotches of dark veridian that denoted woodland. Roads ran from it as from the meshy heart of a spider’s web, one leading to Pomfret in the South, another to Sewingbury in the North-east. The scattered villages, Flagford, Clusterwell and Forby, were tiny flies on this web.

‘The house is called Victor’s Piece,’ said Wexford. ‘Funny sort of name. Some general built it for himself after the Ashanti Wars.’

‘And it’s just about here.’ Burden put his finger on a vertical strand of the web that led from Kingsmarkham to Stowerton, lying due north. He pondered and light dawned. ‘I think I know it,’ he said. ‘Hideous dump with a lot of green woodwork all over it. It was an old people’s home up until last year. I suppose they’ll pull it down.’

‘I daresay. There are a couple of acres of land to it. If you’ve got the picture we may as well sit down.’

Burden had moved his chair to the window. There was something consoling and at the same time rejuvenating in watching the unfolding of what was going to be a lovely day. On the fields tree shadows lay long and densely blue and bright new light glinted on the slate roofs of ancient houses. Pity he hadn’t been able to get away with Jean. The sunlight
and
the fresh heady air turned his thoughts towards holidays and prevented him from recalling details of this case that had long ago shocked Kingsmarkham. He searched his memory and found to his shame that he could not even remember the murdered woman’s name.

‘What was she called?’ he asked Wexford. ‘A foreign name, wasn’t it? Porto or Primo something?’

‘Primero. Rose Isabel Primero. That was her married name. Far from being foreign, she’d been brought up at Forby Hall. Her people were by way of being squires of Forby.’

Burden knew Forby well. What tourists there were in this agricultural country with neither seaside nor downs, castles nor cathedrals, made a point of going to Forby. The guide books listed it absurdly as the fifth prettiest village in England. Every local newsagent’s contained postcards of its church. Burden himself regarded it with certain affection because its inhabitants had shown themselves almost totally devoid of criminal tendencies.

‘This Archery could be a relative,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe he wants some gen for his family archives.’

‘I doubt it,’ Wexford said, basking in the sun like a huge grey cat. ‘The only relatives she had were her three grandchildren. Roger Primero, the grandson, lives at Forby Hall now. Didn’t inherit it, had to buy it. I don’t know the details.’

‘There used to be a family called Kynaston at Forby Hall, or so Jean’s mother says. Mind you, that was years and years ago.’

‘That’s right,’ Wexford said with a hint of impatience in his rumbling bass voice. ‘Mrs Primero was born a Kynaston and she was going on for forty when she married Dr Ralph Primero. I imagine her people looked on it a bit askance – this was at the turn of the century, remember.’

‘What was he, a G.P.?’

‘Some sort of specialist, I think. It was when he retired that they came to live at Victor’s Piece. They weren’t all that well-off, you know. When the doctor died in the thirties Mrs Primero was left with about ten thousand pounds to live on. There was one child of the marriage, a son, but he’d died soon after his father.’

‘D’you mean she was living alone in that great place? At her age?’

Wexford pursed his lips, reminiscing. Burden knew his chief’s almost supernatural memory. When he was sufficiently interested he had the nearest thing to total recall. ‘She had one maid,’ Wexford said. ‘Her name was – is, she’s still alive – her name was Alice Flower. She was a good bit younger than her employer, seventy odd, and she’d been with Mrs Primero for about fifty years. A real ancient retainer of the old school. Living like that, you might think they’d have become friends rather than mistress and servant, but Alice kept to her place and they were “Madam” and “Alice” to each other till the day Mrs Primero died. I knew Alice by sight. She was quite a local character when she came into town to do their shopping, particularly when Painter started bringing her in Mrs Primero’s Daimler. D’you
remember
how nursemaids used to look? No, you wouldn’t. You’re too young. Well, Alice always wore a long navy coat and what’s called a “decent” navy felt hat. She and Painter were both servants, but Alice put herself miles above him. She’d pull her rank on him and give him his orders just like Mrs Primero herself. He was Bert to his wife and his cronies but Alice called him “Beast”. Not to his face, mind. She wouldn’t have quite dared that.’

‘You mean she was frightened of him?’

‘In a way. She hated him and resented his being there. I wonder if I’ve still got that cutting.’ Wexford opened the bottom drawer of his desk, the one where he kept personal, semi-official things, grotesqueries that had interested him. He hadn’t much hope of finding what he sought. At the time of Mrs Primero’s murder Kingsmarkham police had been housed in an old yellow brick building in the center of the town. That had been pulled down four or five years ago and replaced by this block of startling modernity in the outskirts. The cutting had very probably got lost in the move from the high pitch pine desk to this one of lacquered rosewood. He leafed through notes, letters, odd little souvenirs, finally surfacing with a grin of triumph.

‘There you are, the “unperson” himself. Good-looking if you like the type. Herbert Arthur Painter, late of the Fourteenth Army in Burma. Twenty-five years old, engaged by Mrs Primero as chauffeur, gardener and odd-job man.’

The cutting was from the
Sunday Planet
, several
columns
of type surrounding a double-column block. It was a clear photograph and Painter’s eyes were staring straight at the camera.

‘Funny, that,’ said Wexford. ‘He always looked you straight in the eye. Supposed to denote honesty, if you’ve ever heard such a load of rubbish.’

Burden must have seen the picture before, but he had entirely forgotten it. It was a large well-made face with a straight though fleshy nose, spread at the nostrils. Painter had the thick curved lips that on a man are a coarse parody of a woman’s mouth, a flat high brow and short tightly waving hair. The waves were so tightly crimped that they looked as if they must have pulled the skin and pained the scalp.

‘He was tall and well-built,’ Wexford went on. ‘Face like a handsome overgrown pug, don’t you think? He’d been in the Far East during the war, but if the heat and the privation had taken it out of him it didn’t show by then. He had a sort of glistening good health about him like a shire horse. Sorry to use all these animal metaphors, but Painter was like an animal.’

‘How did Mrs Primero come to take him on?’

Wexford took the cutting from him, looked at it for a moment and folded it up.

‘From the time the doctor died,’ he said, ‘until 1947 Mrs Primero and Alice Flower struggled to keep the place going, pulling up a few weeds here and there, getting a man in when they wanted a shelf fixed. You can imagine the kind of thing. They had a succession of women up from Kingsmarkham to
help
with the housework but sooner or later they all left to go into the factories. The place started going to rack and ruin. Not surprising when you think that by the end of the war Mrs Primero was in her middle eighties and Alice nearly seventy. Besides, leaving her age out of it, Mrs Primero never touched the place as far as housework went. She hadn’t been brought up to it and she wouldn’t have known a duster from an antimacassar.’