A New Lease of Death (6 page)

Wexford cast his mind back to the first of only three encounters with Mrs Painter. A quarter to eight it had been on that Sunday in September. He and the sergeant with him had knocked on the door at the foot of the coach house stairs and Mrs Painter had come down to let them in. Whatever might have been fashionable in London at that time, the young women of Kingsmarkham were still doing their hair in a big pile on the forehead with tight curls falling to the shoulders. Mrs Painter was no exception. Hers was naturally fair, her face was powdered and her mouth painted diffidently red. Respectable provincial matrons did not go in for eye make-up in 1950 and Mrs Painter was of all things respectable. There seemed to be very little else to her. On her dry fine skin lines had already begun to form, little indentations which marked a regular prudish pursing of the lips, a setting of the chin that accompanied an outraged flounce.

She had the same attitude to the police as others might have to bugs or mice. When they came upstairs she alternated her replies to their questions with reiterated remarks that it was a disgrace to have them in the house. She had the blankest, most obtuse blue eyes he had ever seen on anyone. At no time, even when they were about to take Painter away, did she show the least pity or the least horror, only this fixated dread of what people would think if they found the police had been questioning her husband.

Perhaps she had not been so stupid as he had
thought
. Somewhere in that pretty respectable mouse and the great hunk of sub-humanity, her husband, must have been the spring from which their daughter drew her intelligence. ‘Quite an intelligent girl,’ Archery had said casually. Good God, thought Wexford, remembering how he had boasted when his own daughter got eight O Level passes. Good God! What were Modern Greats, anyway? Were they the same as Mods and did that mean Modern Languages? He had a vague idea that this might be the esoteric and deliberately deceptive name given to philosophy and Political Economy. He wouldn’t show his ignorance to Archery. Philosophy! He almost whistled. Painter’s daughter reading – yes, that was the term, reading – philosophy! It made you think all right. Why, it made you doubt …

‘Mr Archery,’ he said, ‘you’re quirte sure this
is
Herbert Arthur Painter’s girl?’

‘Of course I’m sure, Chief Inspector. She told me.’ He looked almost defiantly at Wexford. Perhaps he thought the policeman would laugh at his next words. ‘She is as good as she is beautiful,’ he said. Wexford’s expression remained unaltered. ‘She came to stay with us at Whitsun. It was the first time we’d seen her, though naturally our son had written to us and told us about her. We took to her at once.

‘Chief Inspector, times have changed since I was at college. I had to face the possibility that my son would meet some girl at Oxford, perhaps want to marry her at an age when I’d thought of myself as still a boy and when Orders were a lifetime away. I’d see my friends’ children marry at twenty-one
and
I was prepared to try and manage something for him, give him something to start life on. All I hoped was that the girl would be someone we could like and understand.

‘Miss Kershaw – I’ll use the name if you don’t mind – is just what I would have chosen for him myself, beautiful, graceful, well-mannered, easy to talk to. Oh, she does her best to hide her looks in the uniform they all wear nowadays, long shaggy hair, trousers, great black duffel coat – you know the kind of thing. But they all dress like that. The point is she can’t hide them.

‘My wife is a little impulsive. She was hinting about the wedding before Theresa had been with us for twenty-four hours. I found it hard to understand why the young people were so diffident about it. Charles’s letters had been paeans of praise and I could see they were deeply in love. Then she told us. She came out with it quite baldly. She said – I remember the very words – “I think you ought to know something about me, Mrs Archery. My father’s name was Painter and he was hanged for killing an old woman.”

‘At first my wife didn’t believe it. She thought it was some sort of a game. Charles said, “It’s true. It doesn’t matter. People are what they are, not what their parents did.” Then Theresa – we call her Tess – said, “It would matter if he had done it, only he didn’t. I told you
why
he was hanged. I didn’t mean he’d done it.” Then she began to cry.’

‘Why does she call herself Kershaw?’

‘It’s her stepfather’s name. He must be a very
remarkable
man, Chief Inspector. He’s an electrical engineer, but …’ You needn’t come that rude mechanicals stuff with me, thought Wexford crossly. ‘… but he must be a most intelligent, perceptive and kind person. The Kershaws have two children of their own, but as far as I can gather, Mr Kershaw has treated Tess with no less affection than his own son and daughter. She says it was his love that helped her to bear – well, what I can only call the stigma of her father’s crime when she learnt about it at the age of twelve. He followed her progress at school, encouraged her in every way and fostered her wish to get a County Major Scholarship.’

‘You mentioned “the stigma of her father’s crime”. I thought you said she thinks he didn’t do it?’

‘My dear Chief Inspector, she
knows he didn’t do it
.’

Wexford said slowly, ‘Mr Archery, I’m sure I don’t have to tell a man like yourself that when we talk of somebody
knowing
something we mean that what they know is a fact, something that’s true beyond a reasonable doubt. We mean that the majority of other people
know
it too. In other words, it’s history, it’s written down in books, it’s common knowledge.’ He paused. ‘Now I and the Law Lords and the official records and what your son means when he talks about the Establishment, know beyond any reasonable doubt, that Painter did kill Mrs Rose Primero.’

‘Her mother told her so,’ said Archery. ‘She told her that she had absolute irrefutable personal knowledge that Tess’s father did not kill Mrs Primero.’

Wexford shrugged and smiled. ‘People believe what they want to believe. The mother thought it was the best thing for her daughter. If I’d been in her shoes I daresay I’d have said the same.’

‘I don’t think it was like that,’ Archery said stubbornly. ‘Tess says her mother is a very unemotional woman. She never talks about Painter, never discusses him at all. She just says quite calmly, “Your father never killed anybody” and beyond that she won’t say any more.’

‘Because she can’t say any more. Look, sir, I think you’re taking a rather romantic view of this. You’re visualizing the Painters as a devoted couple, kind of merry peasants, love in a cottage and all that. It wasn’t like that. Believe me, Painter was no loss to her. I’m certain in my own mind he was in the habit of striking her just when the fancy took him. As far as he was concerned, she was just his woman, someone to cook his meals, wash his clothes and – well,’ he added brutally, ‘someone to go to bed with.’

Archery said stiffly, ‘I don’t see that any of that’s material.’

‘Don’t you? You’re picturing some sort of declaration of innocence plus incontrovertible proof made to the one person he loved and whom he knew would believe in him. Forgive me, but that’s a load of rubbish. Apart from the few minutes when he came back to the coach house to wash his hands – and incidentally hide the money – he was never alone with her. And he couldn’t have told her then. He wasn’t supposed to know about it. D’you understand me? He could have told her he had done
it
, he couldn’t have told her he had
not
.

‘Then we came. We found blood flecks in the sink and faint blood marks on the kitchen wall where he’d stripped off that pullover. As soon as he came back he took the bandage off his hand to show us the cut and he handed the bandage to his wife. But he didn’t speak to her, didn’t even appeal to her for support. He made just one reference to her …’

‘Yes?’

‘We found the handbag with the money in it under the mattress in their double bed. Why hadn’t Painter told his wife if he’d been given that money in the morning? Here it is, find it in your transcript. “I knew the wife would want to get her hooks on it. She was always nagging me to buy things for the flat.” That’s all he said and he didn’t even look at her. We charged him and he said, “O.K., but you’re making a big mistake. It was a tramp done it.” He came straight down the stairs with us. He didn’t kiss his wife and he didn’t ask to go in and see his child.’

‘She must have seen him in prison?’

‘With a prison officer present. Look, sir, you appear to be satisfied and so do all the parties concerned. Surely that’s the main thing? You must forgive me if I can’t agree with you.’

Silently Archery took a snapshot from his wallet and laid it on the desk. Wexford picked it up. Presumably it had been taken in the vicarage garden. There was a great magnolia tree in the background, a tree as tall as the house it partly concealed. It was covered with waxen cup flowers. Under its branches
stood
a boy and a girl, their arms round each other. The boy was tall and fair. He was smiling and he was plainly Archery’s son. Wexford wasn’t particularly interested in him.

The girl’s face was in sad repose. She was looking into the camera with large steady eyes. Light-coloured hair fell over her forehead in a fringe and down to the shoulders of a typical undergraduate’s shirtwaister, faded, tightly belted and with a crumpled skirt. Her waist was tiny, her bust full. Wexford saw the mother again, only this girl was holding a boy’s hand instead of a bloody rag.

‘Very charming,’ he said dryly. ‘I hope she’ll make your son happy.’ He handed the photograph back. ‘No reason why she shouldn’t.’

A mixture of emotions, anger, pain, resentment, flared in the clergyman’s eyes. Interestedly, Wexford watched him.

‘I do not know what or whom to believe,’ Archery said unhappily, ‘and while I’m in this state of uncertainty, Chief Inspector, I’m not in favour of the marriage. No, that’s putting it too cooly.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘I’m bitterly, bitterly against it,’ he said.

‘And the girl, Painter’s daughter?’

‘She believed – perhaps accepts is the better word – in her father’s innocence, but she realizes others may not. When it comes to it, I don’t think she would marry my son while his mother and I feel as we do.’

‘What are you afraid of, Mr Archery?’

‘Heredity.’

‘A very chancy thing, heredity.’

‘Have you children, Chief Inspector?’

‘I’ve got two girls.’

‘Are they married?’

‘One is.’

‘And who is her father-in-law?’

For the first time Wexford felt superior to this clergyman. A kind of
schadenfreude
possessed him. ‘He’s an architect, as a matter of fact, Tory councillor for the North Ward here.’

‘I see.’ Archery bowed his head. ‘And do your grandchildren already build palaces with wooden bricks, Mr Wexford?’ Wexford said nothing. The only sign of his first grandchild’s existence was so far evinced in its mother’s morning sickness. ‘I shall watch mine from their cradle, waiting to see them drawn towards objects with sharp edges.’

‘You said if you objected she wouldn’t marry him.’

‘They’re in love with each other. I can’t …’

‘Who’s going to know? Palm Kershaw off as her father.’

‘I shall know,’ said Archery. ‘Already I can see Painter when I look at her. Instead of her mouth and her eyes I can see his thick lips and his bloodlust. It’s the same blood, Chief Inspector, the blood that mingled with Mrs Primero’s, on the floor, on the clothes, down the water pipes. That blood will be in my grandchild.’ He seemed to realize that he had allowed himself to be carried away, for he stopped suddenly, blushed, and shut his eyes briefly as if wincing at the sight he had described.

Wexford said gently, ‘I wish I could help you, Mr Archery, but the case is closed, over, finished. There is nothing more I can do.’

Archery shrugged and quoted softly, almost as if he could not stop himself, ‘“He took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person …”’ Then he jumped up, his expression suddenly contrite. ‘Forgive me, Chief Inspector. That was an appalling thing to say. May I tell you what I intend to do?’

‘Pontius Pilate, that’s me,’ said Wexford. ‘So see you show more respect in future.’

Burden grinned. ‘What exactly did he want, sir?’

‘Firstly to tell him Painter may have been unjustly executed, which I can’t. Damn it all, it would be tantamount to saying I didn’t know my job. It was my first murder case, Mike, and it was fortunate for me it was so straightforward. Archery’s going to do a spot of enquiry on his own. Hopeless after sixteen years but it’s useless telling him. Secondly, he wanted my permission to go around hunting up all the witnesses Wanted my support if they come round here, complaining and foaming at the mouth.’

‘And all he’s got to go on,’ said Burden thoughtfully, ‘is Mrs Painter’s sentimental belief in her husband’s innocence?’

‘Aah, that’s nothing! That’s a load of hooey. If you got the chop, wouldn’t Jean tell John and Pat you were innocent? Wouldn’t my wife tell the girls?
It’s
natural. Painter didn’t make any last-minute confessions – you know what the prison authorities are like for watching out for things like that. No, she dreamed it up and convinced herself.’

‘Has Archery ever met her?’

‘Not yet, but he’s making a day of it. She and her second husband live in Purley and he’s got himself an invite for tea.’

‘You say the girl told him at Whitsun. Why has he waited so long? It must be a couple of months.’

‘I asked him that. He said that for the first couple of weeks he and his wife just let it ride. They thought the son might see reason. But he wouldn’t. He got his father to get hold of a transcript of the trial, nagged him into working on Griswold. Of course he’s an only child and as spoilt as they come. The upshot was that Archery promised to start poking his nose into it as soon as he got his fortnight’s holiday.’

‘So he’ll be back?’

‘That will depend on Mrs Painter,’ said Wexford.