Put on by Cunning (21 page)

‘An enormous removal van,’ she had said, ‘a real pantechnicon, and polluting what’s left of our country air with clouds of the filthiest black diesel fumes. Of course I can tell you the name of the firm. I sat down and wrote to their managing director at once to complain. William Dorset and Company. I expect you’ve seen that slogan of theirs, “Dorset Stores It”, it’s on all their vans.’

The company had branches in north and south London, in Brighton, Guildford, and in Kingsmarkham, which was no doubt why both Sheila and Natalie Arno had employed them. Kingsmarkham people moving house or storing furniture mostly did use Dorset’s.

Here and there along the road was the occasional factory as well as the kind of long, low, virtually windowless building whose possible nature or use it is hard for the passerby to guess at. Perhaps all such buildings, Wexford though as they turned into the entrance drive to one of them, served the same purpose as this one.

It was built of grey brick and roofed with red sheet iron. What windows it had were high up under the roof. In the concrete bays in front of the iron double doors stood two monster vans, dark red and lettered ‘Dorset Stores It’ in yellow.

‘They’re expecting us,’ Wexford said. ‘I reckon that’s the office over there, don’t you?’

It was an annexe built out on the far side. Someone came out before they reached the door. Wexford recognized him as the younger of the two men who had moved Sheila’s furniture, the one whose wife had not missed a single episode of
Runway
. He looked at Wexford as if he thought he had seen him somewhere before but knew just the same that he was mistaken.

‘Come in, will you, please? Mr Rochford’s here, our deputy managing director. He reckoned he ought to be here himself.’

Wexford’s heart did not exactly sink but it floundered a little. He would so much rather have been alone, without even Burden. Of course he could have stopped all these people coming with him, he had the power to do that, but he wouldn’t. Besides, two witnesses would be better than one and four better than two. He followed the man who said his name was George Prince into the office. Rochford, a man of Prince’s age and in the kind of suit which, while perfectly clean and respectable, looks as if it has been worn in the past for emergency manual labour and could be put to such use again if the need arose, sat in a small armchair with an unopened folder on his knees. He jumped up and the folder fell on the floor. Wexford shook hands with him and showed him the warrant.

Although he already knew the purpose of the visit, he turned white and looked nauseous.

‘This is a serious matter,’ he said miserably, ‘a very serious matter.’

‘It is.’

‘I find it hard to believe. I imagine there’s a chance you’re wrong.’

‘A very good chance, sir.’

‘Because,’ said Rochford hopefully and extremely elliptically, ‘in summertime and after – well, I mean, there’s been nothing of that sort, has there, George?’

Not yet, thought Wexford. ‘Perhaps we might terminate this suspense,’ he said, attempting a smile, ‘by going and having a look?’

‘Oh yes, yes, by all means. This way, through here. Perhaps you’ll lead the way, George. I hope you’re wrong, Mr Wexford, I only hope you’re wrong.’

The interior of the warehouse was cavernous and dim. The roof, supported by girders of red iron, was some thirty feet high. Up there sparrows flitted about and perched on these man-made branches. The sunlight was greenish, filtering through the tinted panes of high, metal-framed windows. George Prince pressed a switch and strip lighting came on, setting the sparrows in flight again. It was chilly inside the warehouse, though the outdoor temperature had that morning edged just into the seventies.

The place had the air of a soulless and shabby township erected on a grid plan. A town of caravans, placed symmetrically a yard or two apart and with streets crossing each other at right angles to give access to them. It might have been a camp for refugees or the rejected spill-over of some newly constituted state, or the idea of such a place in grim fiction or cinema, a settlement in a northern desert without a tree or a blade of grass. Wexford felt the fantasy and shook it off, for there were no people, no inhabitants of this container camp but himself and Burden and George Prince and Rochford padding softly up the broadest aisle.

Of these rectangular houses, these metal cuboids ranked in rows, iron red, factory green, camouflage khaki, the one they were making for stood at the end of the topmost lane to debouch from the main aisle. It stood up against the cream-washed wall under a window. Prince produced a key and was about to insert it into the lock on the container door when Rochford put out a hand to restrain him and asked to see the warrant again. Patiently, Wexford handed it to him. They stood there, waiting while he read it once more. Wexford had fancied for minutes now that he could smell something sweetish and foetid but this became marked the nearer he got to Rochford and it was only the stuff the man put on his hair or his underarms. Rochford said:

‘Mrs N. Arno, 27a De Beauvoir Place, London, N1. We didn’t move it from there, did we, George? Somewhere in Sussex, didn’t you say?’

‘Kingsmarkham, sir. It was our Kingsmarkham branch done it.’

‘Ah, yes. And it was put into store indefinitely at the rate of £5.50 per week starting from 15 July?’

Wexford said gently, ‘Can we open up now, sir, please?’

‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Get it over, eh?’

Get it over . . . George Prince unlocked the door and Wexford braced himself for the shock of the foul air that must escape. But there was nothing, only a curious staleness. The door swung silently open on oiled hinges. The place might be sinister and evocative of all manner of disagreeable things, but it was well-kept and well-run for all that.

The inside of rthe container presented a microcosm of Sterries, a drop of the essence of Sir Manuel Camargue. His desk was there and the austere furnishings from the bedroom and sitting room in his private wing, the record player too and the lyre-backed chairs from the music room and the piano. If you closed your eyes you could fancy hearing the first movement from the Flute and Harp Concerto. You could smell and hear Camargue and nothing else. Wexford turned away to face the furniture from the spare bedrooms, a green velvet ottoman in a holland cover, two embroidered footstools, sheathed in plastic, a pair of golden Afghan rugs rolled up in hessian, and under a bag full of quilts and cushions, the carved teak chest, banded now with to stout leather straps.

The four men looked at it. Burden humped the quilt bag off on to the ottoman and knelt down to undo the buckles on the straps. There was a rattly intake of breath from Rochford. The straps fell away and Burden tried the iron clasps. They were locked. He looked inquiringly at Prince who hesitated and then muttered something about having to go back to the office to check in his book where the keys were.

Wexford lost his temper. ‘You knew what we’d come for. Couldn’t you have checked where the keys were before we came all the way down here? If they can’t be found I’ll have to have it broken open.’

‘Look here . . .’ Rochford was almost choking. ‘Your warrant doesn’t say anything about breaking. What’s Mrs Arno going to say when she finds her property’s been damaged? I can’t take the responsibility for that sort of . . .’

‘Then you’d better find the keys.’

Prince scratched his head. ‘I reckon she said they were in that desk. In one of the pigeonholes in that desk.’

They opened the desk. It was entirely empty. Burden unrolled both rugs, emptied the quilt bag, pulled out he drawers of the bedside cabinet from Camargue’s bedroom.

‘You say you’ve got a note of where they are in some book of yours?’ said Wexford.

‘The note says there in the desk,’ said Prince.

‘Right. We break the chest open.’

‘They’re down here,’ said Burden. He pulledout his hand from the cleft between the ottoman’s arm and seat cushion and waved at them a pair of identical keys on a ring.

Wexford fitted one key into the lock on the right-hand side, turned it, and then unlocked the left-hand side. The clasps opened and he raised the lid. ‘The chest seemed to be full of black heavy-duty polythenesheeting. He grasped a fold of it and pulled.

The heavy thing that was contained in this cold glossy slippery shroud lurched against the wooden wall and seemed to roll over. Wexford began to unwrap the black stuff and then a horrible thing happened. Slowly, languidly, as if it still retained life, a yellowish-white waxen arm and thin handrose from the chest and loomed trembling over it. It hung in the air for a moment before it subsided. Wexford stepped back with a grunt. The icy thing had brushed his cheek with fingers of marble.

Rochford let out a cry and stumbled out of the container. There was a sound of retching. But George Prince was made of tougher stuff and he came nearer to the chest with awe. With Burden’s help, Wexford lifted the body on to the floor and stripped away its covering. Its throat had been cut and the wound wadded with a bloody towel, but this had not kept blood off the yellow dress, which was splashed and stained with red all over like some bizarre map of islands.

Wexford looked into the face, knowing he had been wrong, feeling as much surprise as the others, and then he looked at Burden.

Burden shook his head, appalled and mystified, and together they turned slowly back to gaze into the black dead eyes of Natalie Arno.

‘
Cui bono
?’ said Kenneth Ames. ‘Who benefits?’ he made a church steeple of his fingers and looked out at St Peter’s spire. ‘Well, my dear chap, the same lady who would have benefited had you been right in your preposterous assumption that poor Mrs Arno was not Mrs Arno. Or to cut a tall story short, Sir Manuel’s niece in France.’

‘You never did tell me her name,’ said Wexford.

He did not then. ‘It’s an extraordinary thing. Poor Mrs Arno simply followed in her father’s footmarks. It’s no more than a week ago she asked me if she should make a will and I naturally advised her to do so. But, as was true in the case of Sir Manuel, she died before a will was drawn up. she too had been going to get married, you know, but she changed her mind.’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

Ames made his doggy face. ‘So, as I say, the beneficiary will be this French lady, there being no other living relatives whatsoever. I’ve got her name somewhere.’ He hunted in a drawer full of folders. ‘Ah, yes. A Mademoiselle Thérèse Lerèmy. Do you want her precise address?’

The transformation of Moidore Lodge was apparent long before the house was reached. The drive was swept, the signboard bearing the name of the house had been re-painted black and white, and Wexford could have sworn the bronze wolves (or Alsatians) had received a polish.

Blaise Cory’s Porsche was parked up in front of the house and it was he, not Muriel Hicks, who opened the door. They send for him like other people might send for their solicitor, thought Wexford. He stepped into a hall from which all dust and clutter had been removed, which even seemed lighter and airier. Blaise confided, looking once or twice over his shoulder:

‘Having these good people has made all the difference to the dear old dad. I do hope you’re not here to do anything which might – well, in short, which might put a spanner in the works.’

‘I hardly think so, Mr Cory. I have a question or two to ask Mrs Hicks, that’s all.’

‘Ah, that’s what you people always say.’ He gave the short, breathy, fruity laugh with which, on his show, he was in the habit of receiving the more outrageous of the statements made by his interviewees. ‘I believe she’s about the house, plying her highly useful equipment.’

The sound of a vacuum cleaner immediately began overhead as if on cue, and Wexford would havechosen to go straight upstairs but he found himself instead ushered into Philip Cory’s living room.

Ted Hicks was cleaning the huge Victorian French windows, the old man, once more attired in his boy’s jeans and guernsey watching him with fascinated approval. Hicks stopped work the moment Wexford came in and took up his semi-attention stance.

‘Good morning, sir!’

‘Welcome, Chief Inspector, welcome.’ Cory spreadout his meagre hands expansively. ‘A pleasure tosee you, I’m sure. It’s so delightful for me to have visitors and not be ashamed of the old place, not to mention being able to find things. Now, for instance, if you or Blaise were to require a drink I shouldn’t have to poke about looking for bottles. Hicks here would bring them in a jiffy, wouldn’tyou, Hicks?’

‘I certainly would, sir.’

‘So you have only to say the word.’

It being not yet ten in the morning, Wexford was not inclined to utter any drink-summoning wordbut asked if he might have a talk in private with Mrs Hicks.

‘I saw in the newspaper about poor little Natalie,’ said Cory. ‘Blaise thought it would upset me. Blaise was always a very
sensitive
boy. But I said to him, how can I be upset when I don’t know if she was Natalie or not?’

Wexford went upstairs, Hicks leading the way. Moidore Lodge was a very large house. Several rooms had been set aside to make a dwelling for the Hickses without noticeably depleting the Cory living space. Muriel Hicks, who had been cleaning Cory’s own bedroom with its vast four-poster, came into her own rooms, drying her newly washed hands on a towel. She had put on weight since last he saw her and her pale red hair had grown longer and bushier. But her brusque and taciturn manner was unchanged.

‘Mrs Arno was going away on her holidays. Shesays to me to see to the moving when the men came next day. It wasn’t convenient, we were leavingourselves and I’d got things to do, but that was all the same to her, I daresay.’ Her husband flashed her an admonitory look, implying that respect should be accorded to
all
employers, or else perhaps that she must in no way hint at ill of the dead. Her pink face flushed rosily. ‘Well, she said that was the only day Dorset’s could do it, so it was no use arguing. She’d had a chap there staying the weekend . . .’