Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (8 page)

The Win Carver interview told him about these woods, when they had been planted, which parts dated from the thirties and which were older but augmented with planting from that time. Ancient oaks, and here and there a horse chestnut with looped boughs and glutinous leaf buds, towered above ranks of smaller neater trees, vase-shaped as if by a natural process of topiary. Wexford thought they might be hornbeams. Then he noticed a metal label secured to the trunk of one of them. Yes, common hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. The taller graceful specimens a little way along the path were the mountain ash, he read, Sorbus aucuparia. Identifying trees when bare of leaves must be a test for the expert.

The groves gave place to a plantation of

KGD6

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Norway maples (Acer platanoides} with trunks like crocodile skin. No conifers were here, not a single pine or fir to provide a dark green shape among the shining leafless branches. This was the finest part of the deciduous woodland, manmade but a copy of nature, pristinely ordered but with nature's own neatness. Fallen logs had been left when they fell and were overgrown with bright fungus, frills and ruffs and knobbed stalks in yellow or bronze. Dead trees still stood, their rotting trunks weathered to silver, a habitation for owls or a feeding ground for woodpeckers.

Wexford walked on, expecting each twist in the narrow road to bring him out to face the east wing of the house. But every new curve only afforded another vista of standing trees and fallen trees, saplings and underbrush. A squirrel, blue and silvery brown, snaked up the trunk of an oak, sprang from twig to twig, took a flying leap to the branch of a nearby beech. The road made a final ellipse, broadened and cleared and there was the house before him, dream-like in the veils of mist.

The east wing rose majestically. From here the terrace could be seen and the gardens at the rear. Instead of the daffodils, which filled the public gardens in Kingsmarkham and the council flowerbeds, tiny scillas sparkling like blue jewels clustered under the trees. But the gardens of Tancred House had not yet wakened from their winter sleep. Herbaceous borders, rosebeds, paths, hedges, pleached walks, lawns, all still had the look of having been trimmed and manicured, coiffed and in some cases packaged, and put

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away for hibernation. High hedges of yew and cypress made walls to conceal all outbuildings from sight of the house, dark screens cunningly planted for a privileged privacy.

He stood looking for a moment or two, then made his way to where he could see the parked police vehicles. The incident room had been set up in what was apparently a stable block, though a stables that no horse had lived in for half a century. It was too smart for that and there were blinds at the windows. A blue-faced gilt-handed clock under a central pediment told him the time was twenty to eleven.

His car was parked on the flagstones, so were Burden's and two vans. Inside the stable block a technician was setting up the computers and Karen Malahyde was arranging a dais, lectern, microphone and half-circle of chairs for his press conference. They had scheduled it for eleven.

Wexford sat down behind the desk provided for him. He was rather touched by the care Karen had taken -- he was sure it must be Karen's work. There were three new ballpoint pens, a brass paperknife he couldn't imagine he would ever use, two phones, as if he hadn't got Was Vodaphone, a computer and printer he had ao idea how to work, and in a blue and brown Siazed pot a cactus. The cactus, large, spherical, ferey, covered in fur, was more like an animal *&an a plant, a cuddly animal, except that when he poked it a sharp thorn went into his finger.

Wexford shook his finger, cursing mildly. He could see he was honoured. These things fWemingly went by rank and though there was

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another cactus m the desk evidently designated Burden's, it had nowhere near the dimension of his, nor was it so hirsute. All Barry Vine got was an African violet, not even in bloom.

WPG Lennox had phoned in soon after she took over hospital duty. There was nothing to report. All was well. What did that mean? What was it to him if the girl lived or died? Young girls were dying all over the world, from starvation, in wars and insurrections, from cruel practices and clinical neglect. Why should this one matter?

He punched out Anne Lennox's number on his phone.

"She seems fine, sir."

He must have misheard. "She wftat?"

"She seems fine -- well, heaps better. Would you like to talk to Dr Leigh, sir?"

There was silence at the other end. That is, there was no voice. He could hear hospital noise, footsteps and metallic sounds and swishing sounds. A woman came on.

"I believe that's Kingsmarkham Police?"

"Chief Inspector Wexford."

"Dr Leigh. How can I help you?"

The voice sounded lugubrious to him. He detected in it the gravity which these people were perhaps taught to assume for some while after a tragedy had taken place. Such a death would affect the whole hospital. He simply gave the name, knowing that would be enough without enquiry.

"Miss Flory. Daisy Flory."

Suddenly all the gloom was gone. Perhaps he

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had imagined it. "Daisy? Yes, she's fine, she's doing very well."

"What? What did you say?"

"I said she's doing well, she's fine."

"She's fine? We are talking about the same person? The young woman who was brought in last night with gunshot wounds?"

"Her condition is quite satisfactory, Chief Inspector. She will be coming out of intensive care sometime today. I expect you'll want to see her, won't you? There's no reason why you shouldn't talk to her this afternoon. For a short while only, of course. We'll say ten minutes."

"Would four o'clock be a good time!

"Four p.m., yes. Ask to see me first, will you? It's Dr Leigh."

The press came early. Wexford supposed he should really call them the 'media' as, approaching the dais, he saw from the window a television van arriving with a camera crew.

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6

* 1 1 STATE' sounded like a hundred semi

pH detached houses crowded into a few

1 J acres. 'Grounds' expressed land only, not

the buildings on it. Burden, unusually fanciful

for him, thought 'demesne' might be the only

word. This was the demesne of Tancred, a little

world, or more realistically a hamlet: the great

house, its stables, coachhouses, outbuildings,

dwellings for servants past and present. Its

gardens, lawns, hedges, pinetum, plantations

and woods.

All of it -- perhaps not the woods themselves

-- would have to be searched. They needed to know what they were dealing with, what this place was. The stables where the centre had been set up was only a small part of it. From where he stood, on the terrace which ran the length of the back of the house, scarcely anything of these outbuildings could be seen. Cunning hedge-planting, the careful provision of trees to hide the humble or the utilitarian, concealed everything from view but the top of a slate roof, the point of a weather vane. After all, it was winter still. The leaves of summertime would shield these gardens, this view, in serried screens of green.

As it was, the long formal lawn stretched away between herbaceous borders, broke into a rose garden, a clockface of beds, opened again to dip

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over a ha-ha into the meadow beyond. Perhaps. It was a possibility, though too far away to see from here. Things had been so arranged as to have the gardens blend gently into the vista beyond, the parklands with its occasional giant tree, the bluish lip of woods. All the woods looked blue in the soft, misty late-winter light. Except the pinetum to the west with its mingled colours of yellow and smoky black, marble green and reptile green, slate and pearl and a bright copper.

Even in daylight, even from here, the pair of houses where the Harrisons and Gabbitas lived were invisible. Burden walked down the stone steps and along the path and through a gate in the hedge to the stables and coachhouses area where the search had begun. He came upon a row of cottages, dilapidated and shabby but not derelict, that had once no doubt housed some of the many servants the Victorians needed to maintain outdoor comfort and order.

The front door of one of them stood open. Two constables from the uniformed branch were inside, opening cupboards, investigating a hole of a scullery. Burden thought about housing and how there were never supposed Tto be enough houses, and he thought about afdl the homeless people, even on the streets of Kingsmarkham these days. His wife who had a social conscience had taught him to think ithis way. He never would have done before :�fce married her. As it was, he could see that Wu surplus of accommodation at Tancred, at the undreds and hundreds of houses like this there

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must be all over England, solved no problems. Not really. He couldn't see how you could make the Florys and Copelands of this world give up their unused servants' cottage to the bag lady who slept in St Peter's porch, even if the bag lady would want it, so he stopped this line of thought and walked once more round the back of the house to the kitchen regions where he was due to meet Brenda Harrison for a tour.

Archbold and Milsom were examining the flagged areas here, looking no doubt for tyre marks. They had been working on the broad space at the front when he first arrived that morning. It had been a dry spring, the last heavy rain weeks ago. A car could come up here and leave no trace of its passage behind.

In the still waters of the pool, when he bent over to look, he had seen a pair of large goldfish, white with scarlet heads, swimming serenely in slow circles.

* * *

White and scarlet . . . The blood was still there, though the tablecloth, along with a host of other items, had gone off in bags to the forensics laboratory at Myringham. Later on in the night the room had been filled with sealed plastic bags containing lamps and ornaments, cushions and table napkins, plates and cutlery.

With no qualms about what she might see in the hall, for sheets covered the foot of the stairs and the corner where the phone was, he had been steering Brenda clear of the dining room,

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when she side-stepped and opened the door. She was such a quick mover, it was a risk taking his eyes off her for an instant.

She was a small thin woman with the skinny figure of a young girl. Her trousers scarcely showed the outline of buttock and thigh. But her face was as deeply lined as if by knife cuts, her lips sucked in by a constant nervous pursing. Dry reddish hair was already thin enough to make it likely Mrs Harrison would need a wig in ten years' time. She was never still. All night long she probably fidgeted in her fretful sleep. Outside the bow window, gaping in, stood her husband. The night before they had sealed up the broken pane but not drawn the curtains. Brenda gave him a swift look, then surveyed the room, swivelling her head. Her eyes rested briefly on the worst spattered area of wall, for a longer time on a patch of carpet beside the chair where Naomi Jones had been sitting. Archbold had scraped off a bloodstained section of the pile here and it had gone to the lab with the other items and the four cartridges which had

4>een recovered. Burden thought she was going to comment, to make some remark on the lines of police destroying a good carpet which cleaning Would have restored to pristine condition, but sfee said nothing.

r It was Ken Harrison who made -- or mouthed, for inside the room it was nearly inaudible -- the

fBxpected censure. Burden opened the window. I didn't quite catch that, Mr Harrison." I said that was eight-ounce glass, that was." *� "No doubt it can be replaced."

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"I �i

"At a cost."

Burden shrugged.

"And the back door wasn't even locked!" exclaimed Harrison in the tone a respectable householder uses to refer to an act of vandalism.

Brenda, left to herself to examine this room for the first time, had turned very pale. That frozen look, that increasing pallor, might be the prelude to a faint. Her glazed eyes met his.

"Come along, Airs Harrison, there's no point in remaining here. Are you all right?"

"I'm not going to pass out, if that's what you

mean."

But there had been a danger of it, he was sure of that, for she sat down on a chair in the hall and hung her head forward, trembling. Burden could smell blood. He was hoping she wouldn't know what the stench was, a mixture of fishiness and iron filings, when she jumped up, said she was quite all right and should they go upstairs? She bounded quite jauntily over the sheet that covered the steps where Harvey Copeland had lain.

Upstairs, she showed him the top floor, a place of attics that were perhaps never used. On the first floor were the rooms he had already seen, those of Daisy and Naomi Jones. Three-quarters of the way along the passage to the west wing, she opened a door and announced that this was where Copeland had slept.

Burden was surprised. He had assumed that Davina Flory and her husband shared a bedroom. Though he didn't say this, Brenda followed this thought. She gave him a look

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in which prudery was curiously mixed with lubriciousness.

"She was sixteen years older than him, you know. She was a very old woman. Of course you wouldn't have said that of her, if you know what I mean, she sort of didn't seem to have much to do with age. She was just herself."

Burden knew what she meant. Her sensitivity was unexpected. He gave the room a quick glance. No one had been in there, nothing was disturbed. Copeland had slept in a single bed. The furniture was dark mahogany but in spite of its warm rich colour, the room had an austere look with plain cream curtains, a cream carpet and the only pictures prints of old county maps.

The state of Davina Flory's bedroom seemed to upset Brenda more than the dining room had. At least it stimulated her to an outburst of feeling.

"What a mess! Look at the bed! Look at all that stuff out of the drawers!"

She ran about, picking things up. Burden made no attempt to stop her. Photographs would provide a permanent record of how the room had been.