A New Lease of Death (21 page)

‘Thanks.’ Tess turned and just touched Kershaw’s shoulder. He rose at once. Wexford closed the door after them.

Charles took a deep breath, and making a brave attempt to lounge casually in his chair, said, ‘All right, then. What about this alibi that for some mysterious reason was never investigated?’

‘The reason,’ said Wexford, ‘was not mysterious. Mrs Primero was killed between six-twenty-five and seven o’clock on the evening of Sunday, September 24th, 1950.’ He paused to allow Charles’s inevitable interruption of ‘Yes, yes’, uttered with fierce impatience. ‘She was killed in Kingsmarkham and at six-thirty Roger Primero was seen in Sewingbury five miles away.’

‘Oh, he was seen, was he?’ Charles scoffed, crossing his legs. ‘What do you think, Father? Doesn’t it seem
remotely
possible to you that he could have fixed it beforehand that he’d be “seen”? There’s always some shifty mate who’ll perjure himself and say he’s seen you for twenty quid.’

‘Some shifty mate, eh?’ Wexford was now hardly bothering to conceal his amusement.

‘Somebody saw him. All right. Who saw him?’

Wexford sighed and the smile was erased.

‘I saw him,’ he said.

It was a blow in the face. Archery’s love for his son, dormant over the past days, rose within his breast in a hot tide. Charles said nothing, and Archery who had been doing this sort of thing rather a lot lately, tried hard not to hate Wexford. He had taken an unconscionable time coming to the point, but this, of course, was his revenge.

The big elbows rested on the desk, the fingers meeting and pressing together in an implacable pyramid of flesh. The law incarnate. If Wexford had seen Primero that night, there was no gainsaying it, for here was incorruptibility. It was almost as if God had seen him. Horrified, Archery pulled himself up in his chair and gave a dry painful cough.

‘You?’ said Charles at last.

‘I,’ said Wexford, ‘with my little eye.’

‘You might have told us before!’

‘I would have,’ said Wexford mildly and, oddly enough, believably, ‘if I’d had the remotest idea you suspected him. Chatting up Primero about his grandmother was one thing, pinning murder on him quite another.’

Polite now, stiff and very formal, Charles asked, ‘Would you mind telling us the details?’

Wexford’s courtesy matched his. ‘Not at all. I intend to. Before I do, however, I’d better say that there was no question of hindsight. I knew Primero. I’d seen him in court with his chief on a good many occasions. He used to go along with him to learn the ropes.’ Charles nodded, his face set. Archery thought he knew what was going on in his mind. Loss was something he knew about, too.

‘I was in Sewingbury on a job,’ Wexford continued, ‘and I’d got a date to meet a man who sometimes gave us a bit of information. What you might call a shifty mate, but we never got twenty quidsworth out of him. The appointment was for six at a pub called the Black Swan. Well, I had a word with my – my friend, and I was due back in Kingsmarkham at seven. I walked out of the public bar at just on half past six and ran slap bang into Primero.

‘“Good evening, Inspector,” he said, and I thought he looked a bit lost. As well he might. I found out afterwards that he’d been going to meet some pals, but he’d got the wrong pub. They were waiting for him at the Black Bull. “Are you on duty?” he said. “Or can I buy you a short snort?”’

Archery nearly smiled. Wexford had given a very fair imitation of the absurd slang Primero still affected after sixteen years of affluence.

‘“Thanks all the same,” I said, “but I’m late as it is.” “Good night to you, then,” he said and he went up to the bar. I’d only been in Kingsmarkham ten minutes when I got called out to Victor’s Piece.’

Charles got up slowly and extended a stiff, mechanical hand.

‘Thank you very much, Chief Inspector. I think that’s all anyone can say on the subject, don’t you?’ Wexford leaned across the desk and took his hand. A faint flash of compassion softened his features, weakened them, and was gone. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t very polite just now,’ Charles said.

‘That’s all right,’ said Wexford. ‘This is a police station, not a clerical garden party.’ He hesitated and added, ‘I’m sorry, too.’ And Archery knew that the apology had nothing to do with Charles’s ill manners.

Tess and Charles began to argue even before they had all got into the car. Certain that they had said it all or something very like it before, Archery listened to them indifferently. He had kept silent for half an hour and still there was nothing he could say.

‘We have to be realistic about it,’ Charles was saying. ‘If I don’t mind and Mother and Father don’t mind, why can’t we just get married and forget you ever had a father?’

‘Who says they don’t mind? That’s not being realistic, anyway. I’m being realistic. One way and another I’ve had a lot of luck …’ Tess flashed a quick watery smile at Kershaw. ‘I’ve had more than anyone would have thought possible, but this is one bit I have to dip out on.’

‘And what does that mean exactly?’

‘Just that – well, it was ridiculous ever to imagine we could be married, you and I.’

‘You and I? What about all the others who’ll come along and fancy you? Are you going to go through the same melodrama with them or d’you think you’ll weaken when the thirties rear their ugly heads?’

She winced at that. Archery thought Charles had almost forgotten they were not alone. He pushed her into the back seat of the car and banged the door.

‘I’m curious, you see,’ Charles went on, bitterly sarcastic. ‘I’d just like to know if you’ve taken a vow of perpetual chastity. Oh God, it’s like a feature in the
Sunday Planet
– Condemned to lonely spinsterhood for father’s crime! Just for the record, since I’m supposed to be so far above you morally, I’d like to know the qualifications the lucky man has to have. Give me a specification, will you?’

Her mother had built up her faith, but the Archery family with their doubts had knocked it down; still it had lived until Wexford had killed it. Her eyes were fixed on Kershaw who had given her reality. Archery was not surprised when she said hysterically:

‘I suppose he’d have to have a murderer for a father.’ She gasped, for she was admitting it to herself for the first time. ‘Like me!’

Charles tapped Archery’s back. ‘Just nip out and knock someone off,’ he said outrageously.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Kershaw. ‘Give it a rest, Charlie, will you?’

Archery touched his arm. ‘I think I’ll get out, if you don’t mind. I need some air.’

‘Me too,’ said Tess. ‘I can’t stand being boxed up in here any longer and I’ve got a ghastly head. I
want
some aspirins.’

‘Can’t park here.’

‘We’ll walk back to the hotel, Daddy. If I don’t get out I’ll pass out.’

Then they were all three on the pavement, Charles’s face as black as thunder. Tess swayed a little and Archery caught her arm to steady her. Several passers-by gave them curious looks.

‘You said you wanted aspirins,’ said Charles.

It was only a few yards to the nearest chemist’s, but Tess was shivering in her thin clothes. The air was heavy and cloying. Archery noticed that all the shopkeepers had furled their sunblinds.

Charles seemed about to begin again but she gave him a pleading look, ‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more. We’ve said it all. I needn’t see you again till October, not then if we’re careful …’

He frowned silently, made a little gesture of repudiation. Archery held the shop door open for Tess to pass through.

There was no one inside but the assistant and Elizabeth Crilling.

She did not appear to be buying anything, just waiting and gossiping with the shopgirl. It was the middle of a weekday afternoon and here she was shopping. What had become of the job in the ‘ladies’ wear establishment? Archery wondered if she would recognize him and how he could avoid this happening, for he did not want to have to introduce her to Tess. It gave him a little thrill of awe when he realized what was happening in this small town shop, a meeting after sixteen years of
the
child who was Painter’s daughter and the child who had discovered Painter’s crime.

While he hovered near the door, Tess went up to the counter. They were so close together that they were almost touching. Then Tess reached across in front of Liz Crilling to select one of the aspirin bottles, and in doing so brushed her sleeve.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘That’s O.K.’

Archery could see Tess had nothing smaller than a ten shilling note. His trepidation, his fears for the effect of illumination on Tess at this moment were so great, that he almost cried aloud, ‘Never mind. Leave it! Only, please God, let us all get away and hide ourselves!’

‘Haven’t you anything smaller?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll just go and see if we’ve got any change.’

The two young women stood side by side in silence. Tess stared straight in front of her, but Liz Crilling was playing nervously with two little scent bottles displayed on a glass shelf, moving them about as if they were chessmen.

Then the pharmacist in his white coat came out from the back.

‘Is there a Miss Crilling waiting for a prescription?’

Tess turned, her face flooded with colour.

‘This is a repeat prescription, but I’m afraid it’s no longer valid …’

‘What d’you mean, no longer valid?’

‘I mean that it can only be used six times. I can’t
let
you have any more of these tablets without a fresh prescription. If your mother …’

‘The old cow,’ said Liz Crilling slowly.

The swift animation on Tess’s face died as if she had been struck. Without opening her purse she tumbled the change loose into her handbag and hurried out of the shop.

The old cow. It was her fault, everything bad that had ever happened to you was her fault – beginning with the beautiful pink dress.

She was making it for you and she worked at the sewing machine all day that cold wet Sunday. When it was finished you put it on and Mummy brushed your hair and put a ribbon in it.

‘I’ll just pop over and show you off to Granny Rose,’ Mummy said and she popped over, but when she came back she was cross because Granny Rose was asleep and hadn’t heard when she’d tapped on the window.

‘Give it half an hour,’ Daddy said, ‘and maybe she’ll be awake then.’ He was half asleep himself, lying in bed, white and thin on the pillows. So Mummy had stayed upstairs with him, giving him his medicine and reading to him because he was too weak to hold a book.

‘You stay in the sitting room, Baby, and mind you don’t get that frock dirty.’

You had done as you were told but it made you cry just the same. Of course you didn’t care about not seeing Granny Rose, but you knew that while she was talking to Mummy you could have slipped
out
into the passage and down the garden to show it to Tessie, now, while it was brand-new.

Well, why not? Why not put on a coat and run across the road? Mummy wouldn’t come down for half an hour. But you would have to hurry, for Tessie always went to bed at half-past six. Auntie Rene was strict about that. ‘Respectable working class,’ Mummy said, whatever that meant, and although she might let you into Tessie’s bedroom she wouldn’t let you wake her up.

But why, why, why had you gone?

Elizabeth Crilling came out of the shop and walked blindly towards the Glebe Road turning, bumping into shoppers as she went. Such a long way to go, past the hateful little sand houses that were like desert tombs in this spectral form light, such a long long way … And there was only one thing left to do when you got to the end of the road.

14

It is lawful for Christian men … to wear weapons and serve in the wars.

The Thirty-nine Articles

THE LETTER WITH
the Kendal postmark was awaiting Archery on the hall table when they got back to The Olive and Dove. He glanced at it uncomprehendingly, then remembered. Colonel Cosmo Plashet, Painter’s commanding officer.

‘What now?’ he said to Charles when Tess had gone upstairs to lie down.

‘I don’t know. They’re going back to Purley tonight.’

‘Do we go back to Thringford tonight?’

‘I don’t know, Father. I tell you I don’t know.’ He paused, irritable, pink in the face, a lost child. ‘I’ll have to go and apologize to Primero,’ he said, the child remembering its manners. ‘It was a bloody awful way to behave to him.’

Archery said it instinctively, without thinking. ‘I’ll do that, if you like. I’ll ring them.’

‘Thanks. If he insists on seeing me I’ll go. You’ve talked to her before, haven’t you? I gathered from something Wexford said.’

‘Yes, I’ve talked to her, but I didn’t know who she was.’

‘That,’ said Charles, severe again, ‘is you all over.’

Was he really going to ring her up and apologize? And why should he have the vanity to suppose that she would even come to the phone? ‘In the course of your enquiries, Mr Archery, I hope you managed to combine pleasure with business.’ She was bound to have told her husband what she had meant by that. How the middle-aged clergyman had suddenly gone sentimental on her. He could hear Primero’s reply, his colloquialism, ‘Didn’t actually make the old pass, did he?’ and her light dismissive laughter. His soul cringed. He went into the empty lounge and ripped open Colonel Plashet’s letter.

It was handwritten on rough white vellum almost as thick as cartridge paper. By the occasional fading of the ink from deep black to pale grey Archery could tell that the writer had not used a fountain pen. An old man’s hand, he thought, a military man’s address, ‘Srinagar’, Church Street, Kendal …

Dear Mr Archery
, he read,

I was interested to receive your letter and will do my best to provide you with what information I can on Private Herbert Arthur Painter. You may be aware that I was
not
called to give evidence as to character at Painter’s trial, though I held myself in readiness to do so should it have been necessary. Fortunately I have retained in my possession certain notes I then made. I say fortunately, for you will appreciate that Private Painter’s war service covered a period of from twenty-three to twenty years ago, and my memory is no longer what I should like it to be. Lest you should be under the impression, however, that I am the possessor of information sympathetic to Painter’s relatives, I must reluctantly disabuse your mind. In deciding not to call me, Painter’s defending counsel must have been aware that any statements I could truthfully have made would, instead of assisting their cause, have merely made the task of prosecution easier
.