Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (22 page)

"Daisy didn't hear him if he did."

"She's forgotten. She's admitted herself she can't recall details of what happened. She says on that tape we made, 'I've tried hard to remember but something blocks it off.' Harvey threatened Andy, and X shot him. He fell backwards across the bottom stairs. Andy was now obviously terrified, more terrified, of being recognised. He heard a woman scream from the dining room. While X kicked open

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the dining-room door, Andy ran to the front * door and out.

"X shot the two women, he shot Daisy. From upstairs he heard someone racketing about. It was the cat but he didn't know that. Daisy was on the floor, he thought she was dead, he followed Andy out of the front door where the jeep had been brought round for him. Andy had fetched the jeep from where it was parked at the back ..."

"It won't work, Mike. This was the time Bib Mew was leaving. She was leaving on her bike from the back of the house. Daisy heard a car start up, not 'brought round'."

"It's a small point. Would she swear to that, &eg? Her mother and grandmother had been fehot before her eyes, she was shot, she's on the flaor wounded and bleeding -- just imagine the noise that Magnum would have made, for one ihing -- and she can differentiate between a car f^itarting up and one being driven?" i|*t5JI*ilrning his eyes from a nature programme l|PBie4ions killing and disembowelling wildebeests, j|Mark said happily, "Wounded and bleeding." nodded and pointed the whistle at his ilttiier.

God, I must get him to bed. Just let me

this, Mark. While Andy is round the back ung the jeep and X is making mayhem in dining room, Joanne Garland arrives in a Once again she is afraid to drive because lias had a drink or two ..."

lere? Who with?"

it remains to be seen. That remains to be

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discovered. She paid the driver and he left. Her intention was to phone for another taxi when she was through with her book-keeping with Naomi. The time is ten past eight. She isn't supposed to be there until eight thirty but we know she was one of these over-punctual people, always early.

"The front door is open. She steps inside, perhaps she calls out. She sees Harvey's body spreadeagled across the stairs, perhaps she hears the last shot. Does she turn and run? Perhaps. Andy has appeared by now with the jeep. He jumps out and seizes her. X comes out, kills Joanne, with the sixth and last cartridge in the chamber, and they put her body in the back.

"Fearing they might meet someone on the road, Gabbitas, us, some visitor, they take off through the wood, using paths, negotiable by a jeep but not by your average saloon car." Burden picked up his son, switched off the television. The little boy was still grasping his whistle. "Subject to a few minor amendments, I suggest that's the only way it could have happened."

Wexford said, "What did the Harrisons and the Griffins quarrel about?"

Indignation had briefly contorted Burden's face. Was that all? Was that the only reception his analysis was going to get? He shrugged. "Andy tried to rape her."

" What?"

"That's what she says. The Griffins say she made advances to him. Apparently, he tried a sort of blackmail on those grounds and Brenda

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told Davina Flory. Hence, if we were to be kept out of it, the Griffins had to go. "We'd better have him in, Mike." "We will," said Burden, and he carried his son away to bed, Mark firing the whistle over his shoulder and shouting, "Wounded and bleeding, wounded and bleeding", all the way upstairs.

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HAD they no friends but the Virsons and Joanne Garland, this family who were wealthy and distinguished, whose nucleus was a famous writer and an economist and former MP? Where were Daisy's school friends? Their local acquaintances?

These questions had interested Wexford from the first. But the nature of the crime was such as to preclude hitherto law-abiding members of the public from being involved, and his usual investigation in a murder case of everyone known to the victims had not been carried out. It had simply occurred to him, while talking to Daisy, and to a lesser extent to the Harrisons and Gabbitas, that there seemed to be a dearth of Flory family friends.

The funeral showed him how right he had been -- and how wrong. In spite of the fame of one of the dead and the distinction, by association with her, of the others, he had supposed those who mourned Davina Flory and her family would wait to attend the memorial service. Daisy, as well as Joyce Virson, had said a service would be held. St James's, Piccadilly, had been suggested, in two months' time. The service in Kingsmarkham parish church would surely have a small congregation, a few people only proceeding to the distant cemetery. As it turned out, they were queuing up.

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Jason Sebright from the Kingsmarkham Courier was taking names at the church gates when he arrived. Wexford quickly perceived that the queue was the press and he pushed past them producing his warrant card. St Peter's was very large, one of those English churches that would be called cathedrals anywhere else, with an enormous nave, ten side chapels and a chancel as big as a village church. It was nearly full, r Only the front pews on the right-hand side awaited occupants, and a few scattered seats among the congregation. Wexford made his way t0v one of these, a vacant space next to the aisle on the left. The last time he was there had been tfrgive Sheila away when she married Andrew Ifoorverton, the last time he had sat like this, in the body of the church, was to hear her banns palled. A marriage come to grief, a love affair or jlttib, and now Augustine Casey . . . He pushed Iftejout of mind and eyed the congregation. A P&iuntary was playing, Bach probably.

iThe first person he recognised was someone had met at a book launch, taken there Amyas Ireland. The book, he recalled, id been a family saga with a policeman every generation since Victorian times, its tor's editor this man three rows in front _ham. All the others in the pew looked like >lishers to him, though he couldn't have said ? He identified (again without much to go a plump yellow-haired woman in a large -k hat as Davina Flory's agent, preponderance of elderly women, some of scholarly-looking, in groups or sitting

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alone, led him to believe these were old cronies of Davina, perhaps from as far back as Oxford days. From photographs he had seen in the newspapers, he recognised a distinguished woman novelist now in her seventies. Wasn't that the Minister for the Arts in the pew next to her? His name escaped Wexford for the moment, but that was who it was. A man with a red rose in his buttonhole -- in questionable taste? -- he had seen on television on the Opposition benches. An old parliamentary friend of Harvey Copeland's? Joyce Virson had secured herself a place very near the front. Of her son there was no sign. And there wasn't a young girl in sight.

Just as he was wondering who would take the empty seat next to him, Jason Sebright hurried in to sit in it.

"Hordes of glitterati here," he said happily, barely able to conceal his enjoyment of the occasion. "I'm going to do a piece called 'The Friends of a Great Woman'. Even if I get nine refusals out of ten I should get at least four exclusive interviews."

"I'd rather have my job than yours," said Wexford.

"I've learned my technique from US TV. I'm half American, I spend my vacations there visiting with my mom." This he said in a horrible parody of a midwest accent. "We've a lot to learn in this country. At the Courier they're dead scared all the time of treading on people's toes, everyone's got to be handled with gloves on and what I ..."

"Sshh, will you? It's going to start."

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*

1*4' SIR

The music had stopped. A hush fell. There was no whispering. It was as if the congregation had even ceased to breathe. Sebright shrugged and put one finger up to his lips. The silence was of a kind that only ever prevails in a church, oppressive, cold, but for some transcendent. Everyone was waiting, expectant and gradually enclosed by awe.

The first chords from the organ broke the silence with a heavy and terrible multiplication of decibels. Wexford could hardly believe his ears. Not the Dead March in Saul, no one ever had the Dead March in Saul any more. But that was what it was. Dum-dum-deboomdum-dedumdedumdum-boom, he murmured under his breath. The three coffins were borne up the aisle with ineffable slowness in time to that wonderful and dreadful music. The men who s. supported them on their shoulders moved in the steps of a stately pavane. Someone with a sense of the dramatic had arranged for that, someone young and intense and steeped in tragedy. r Daisy.

c She followed the three coffins and she was talone. Or, rather, Wexford thought she was lialone until he saw Nicholas Virson, who must iiave escorted her in, searching for an empty seat. She was in deepest mourning, or perhaps only in e clothes every girl her age had in abundance her wardrobe, funereal garments habitually lorn to discos and parties. Daisy's dress was narrow black tube, reaching to her black ted ankles. Vague black draperies covered , among them something that could almost

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be discerned as a coat of roughly coat shape. Her face was paper-white, her mouth painted crimson, and she stared ahead of her, moving at last alone into that empty front pew.

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ..."

Her sense of the dramatic -- and of the fitting? -- had prompted her also to make sure the Prayer Book of 1662 was used. Was he attributing too much to her and was that Mrs Virson's work or even the parson's good taste? She was a remarkable girl. He was aware of a sense of warning, of alarm, whose source he couldn't trace.

"Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live ..."

* * *

The wind had not been noticeable in the town. Perhaps, on the other hand, it had only got up in the past half-hour. Wexford remembered some sort of gale warning in the forecast of the night before. The wind had a knife edge feel to it as it whistled across this place of burial that a few years ago had been a meadow on a hillside.

Why burial and not cremation? More of Daisy's dramatic ideas, perhaps, or else a wish expressed in wills. There was to be no will-reading after this, the solicitor had told him, no anything after this, none of that gathering together for sherry and cake. "In the

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circumstances," said the solicitor, "it would be wholly inappropriate."

No flowers. Daisy, it appeared, had asked for donations instead to a number of causes, none of them likely to meet with a sympathetic response from many of these people, charities for Bangladesh, a fund to counter famine in Ethiopia, the Labour Party and the Cats' Protection League.

A single grave had been prepared for the married couple. The one beside it was for Naomi Jones. Each was lined with sheets of artificial turf of a sicklier green than the grass. The coffins went down and one of those aged scholars stepped forward to cast a handful of earth upon the last of Davina Flory. v "Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the Jteginning of the world ..." � It was over, the drama past. The most psignificant thing now for all was the biting �� the wind. Collars were turned up, arms Augged shivering bodies inside inadequate plothes. Undeterred, Jason Sebright was going fprom person to person, boldly putting his request, tead of the notebook of former times, he d a receiver and recording device. Wexford n't altogether surprised to see how many pie responded favourably. Some of them likely thought they were going out live on o.

He had not spoken to Daisy. He watched mourner after another approach her and her lips move in monosyllabic response.

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One old woman pressed a kiss on her white cheek.

"Oh, my dear, and poor Davina wasn't even a believer, was she?"

Another said, "That lovely service, it does send shivers down one's spine."

An elderly man, speaking in what Wexford called an Ivy League voice, embraced her and, and with an impulsive gesture, apparently an expression of sudden emotion, pressed her face into his neck. When she lifted her head Wexford saw her lips had left a crimson imprint on his white collar. He was a tall man, paper-thin, with a small grey moustache and a bow tie. Preston Littlebury, the erstwhile employer of Andy Griffin?

"You have my deepest sympathy, my dear, you know that."

Wexford saw that he had been wrong about the young girls. One at any rate had braved the grimness of the day and the bad weather, a thin pale teenager in black trousers and a raincoat. The elderly woman with her was saying, "I'm Ishbel Macsamphire, my dear. Last year in Edinburgh? Remember? With poor Davina. And then I met you with your young man. This is my granddaughter ..."

Daisy behaved beautifully to all of them. Her sadness gave her an enormous dignity. She managed the difficult feat he had seen her achieve before, of responding with courtesy yet without a smile. One by one they moved away from her and for a moment she was alone. She stood, surveying the people as they

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moved towards their cars, as if searching for someone, her eyes wide, her lips a little parted. It was as if she was looking for a mourner whose presence she expected but who had not come, who had failed her. The wind snatched the long black scarf she wore and pulled it out in a fluttering streamer. She shivered, hunched herself for a moment before coming up to Wexford.

"That's over. Thank goodness. I thought I might burst out crying, or faint, but I didn't, did I?"

"Not you. Were you looking for someone who hasn't come?"

"Oh, no. Whatever gave you that idea?" Nicholas Virson was approaching them. In spite of her denial, it must have been he she was looking for, her 'young man', for she gave a little dip of the head as if bowing to some fuecessity, as if resigned. She took his arm and |iet him lead her to his car. His mother was Unready seated inside it, peering through the tsteamy glass.