Put on by Cunning (9 page)

Burden gave one of his thin, rather complacent little smiles. In his domestic circle he behaved, much as he had during his first marriage, as if nobody but he had ever quite discovered the heights of marital felicity. Today he was wearing a new suit of smooth matt cloth the colour of a ginger nut. When happy he always seemed to grow thinner and he was very thin now. The smile was still on his mouth as he spoke. ‘It’s a funny old business altogether, isn’t it? But I wouldn’t say I don’t believe it. It’s fertile ground for that sort of con trick, after all. A nineteen-year absence, an old man on his own with poor sight, an old man who has a great deal of money . . . By the way, how do you know this woman looks like the young Natalie?’

‘Dinah Sternhold sent me this.’ Wexford handed him a snapshot. ‘Camargue was showing her a family photograph album, apparently, and he left it behind in her house.’

The picture showed a dark, Spanish-looking girl, rather plump, full-faced and smiling. She was wearing a summer dress in the style known at the time when the photograph was taken as ‘the sack’ on account of its shapelessness and lack of a defined waist. Her black hair was short and she had a fringe.

‘That could be her. Why not?’

‘A whitely wanton with a velvet brown’ said Wexford, ‘and two pitchballs stuck in her face for eyes. Camargue said the eyes of the woman he saw were different from his daughter’s and Dinah told him that eyes fade. I’ve never heard of eyes or anything else fading to black, have you?’

Burden refilled their glasses. ‘If Camargue’s sight was poor I think you can simply discount that sort of thing. I mean, you can’t work on the premise that she’s not Natalie Camargue because she looks different or he thought she did. The pronouncing of that name wrong, that’s something else again, that’s really weird.’

Wexford, hesitating for his figure’s sake between potato crisps, peanuts or nothing at all, looked up in surprise. ‘You think so?’

The thin smile came again. ‘Oh, I know you reckon on me being a real philistine but I’ve got kids, remember. I’ve watched them getting an education if I’ve never had much myself. Now my Pat, she had a Frenchwoman teaching them French from when she was eleven, and when she speaks a French word she pronounces the R like the French, sort of rolls it in her throat. The point I’m making is, it happens naturally now, Pat couldn’t pronounce a French word with an R in it any other way and
she never will
.’

‘Mm hmm.’ While pondering Wexford had absentmindedly sneaked two crisps. He held his hands firmly together in his lap. ‘There’s always the possibility Camargue
heard
the name incorrectly because of defective hearing while it was, in fact, pronounced in the proper way. What I’m sure of is that Dinah is telling the truth. I tested her and she told the same story almost word for word the second time as she has the first, dates, times, everything.’

‘Pass over those crisp things, will you? I don’t see what motive she’d have for inventing it, anyway. Even if Natalie were out of the way she wouldn’t inherit.’

‘No. Incidentally, we must find out who would. Dinah could have had spite for a motive, you know. If Natalie is the real Natalie no one of course could hope to prove she is not, and no doubt she could very quickly prove she
is
, but an inquiry would look bad for her, the mud would stick. If there were publicity about it and there very likely would be, there would be some people who would always believe her to be an impostor and many others who would feel a doubt.’

Burden nodded. ‘And there must inevitably be an inquiry now, don’t you think?’

‘Tomorrow I shall have to pass on what I know to Symonds, O’Brien and Ames,’ said Wexford, and he went on thoughtfully, ‘It would be deception under the ’68 Theft Act. Section Fifteen, I believe.’ And he quoted with some small hesitations, ‘Aperson who by any deception dishonestly obtains property belonging to another, with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it, shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.’

‘No one’s obtained anything yet. It’ll take a bit of time for the will to be proved.’ Burden gave his friend and superior officer a dubious and somewhat wary look. ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn and no offence meant,’ he said, ‘but this could be the kind of thing you get – well, you get obsessional about.’

Wexford’s indignant retort was cut off in mid-sentence by the entry of Jenny and Dora to announce lunch.

Kingsmarkham’s principal firm of solicitors had moved their offices when the new Kingsbrook shopping precinct was built, deserting the medieval caverns they had occupied for fifty years for the top floor above the British Home Stores. Here all was light, space and purity of line. The offices had that rather disconcerting quality, to be constantly met with nowadays, of looking cold and feeling warm. It was much the same in the police station.

Wexford knew Kenneth Ames well by sight, though he couldn’t recall ever having spoken to him before. He was a thin, spare man with a boyish face. That is, his face like his figure had kept its youthful contours, though it was by now seamed all over with fine lines as if a web had been laid upon the skin. He wore a pale grey suit that seemed too lightweight for the time of year. His manner was both chatty and distant which gave the impression, perhaps a false one, that his mind was not on what he was saying or listening to.

This made repeating Dinah Sternhold’s account a rather uneasy task. Mr Ames sat with his elbows on the arms of an uncomfortable-looking metal chair and the tips of his fingers pressed together. He stared out of the window at St Peter’s spire. As the story progressed he pushed his lips and gradually his whole jaw forward until the lower part of his face grew muzzle-like. This doggy expression he held for a moment or two after Wexford had finished. Then he said:

‘I don’t think I’d place too much credence on all that, Mr Wexford. I don’t think I would. It sounds to me as if Sir Manuel rather got a bee in his belfry, you know, and this young lady, Mrs – er, Steinhalt, is it? – Mrs Steinhall maybe gilded the gingerbread.’ Mr Ames paused and coughed slightly after delivering these confused metaphors. He studied his short clean fingernails with interest. ‘Once Sir Manuel was married he’d have had to make a new will. there was nothing out of the way in that. We have no reason to believe he meant to disinherit Mrs Arno.’ The muzzle face returned as Mr Ames glared at his fingernails and enclosed them suddenly in his fists as if they offended him. ‘In point of fact,’ he said briskly, ‘Sir Manuel invited me to lunch to discuss a new will and to meet his bride, Mrs – er, Sternhill, but unfortunately his death intervened. You know, Mr Wexford, if Sir Manuel had really believed he’d been visited by an impostor, don’t you think he’d have said something to us? There was over a week between the visit and his death and during that week he wrote to me and phoned me. No, if this extraordinary tale were true I fancy he’d have said something to his solicitors.’

‘He seems to have said nothing to anyone except Mrs Sternhold.’

An elastic smile replaced the muzzle look. ‘Ah, yes. People like to make trouble. I can’t imagine why. You may have noticed?’

‘Yes,’ said Wexford. ‘By the way, in the event of Mrs Arno not inheriting, who would?’

‘Oh dear, oh dear, I don’t think there’s much risk of Mrs Arno not inheriting, do you, really?’

Wexford shrugged. ‘Just the same, who would?’

‘Sir Manuel had – has, I suppose I should say if one may use the present tense in connection with the dead – Sir Manuel has a niece in France, his dead sister’s daughter. A Mademoiselle Thérèse Something. Latour? Lacroix? No doubt I can find the name for you if you really want it.’

‘As you say, there may be no chance of her inheriting. Am I to take it then that Symonds, O’Brien and Ames intend to do nothing about this story of Mrs Sternhold’s?’

‘I don’t follow you, Mr Wexford.’ Mr Ames was once more contemplating the church spire which was now veiled in fine driving rain.

‘You intend to accept Mrs Arno as Sir Manuel’s heir without investigation?’

The solicitor turned round. ‘Good heavens, no, Mr Wexford. What can have given you that idea?’ He became almost animated, almost involved. ‘Naturally, in view of what you’ve told us we shall make the most thorough and exhaustive inquiries. No doubt, you will too?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘A certain pooling of our findings would be desirable, don’t you agree? It’s quite unthinkable that a considerable property such as Sir Manuel left could pass to an heir about whose provenance there might be the faintest doubt.’ Mr Ames half closed his eyes. He seemed to gather himself together in order to drift once more into remoteness. ‘It’s only,’ he said with an air of extreme preoccupation, ‘that it doesn’t really do, you know, to place too much credence on these things.’

As the receiver was lifted the deep baying of a dog was the first sound he heard. Then the soft gentle voice gave the Forby number.

‘Mrs Sternhold, do you happen to know if Sir Manuel had kept any samples of Mrs Arno’s handwriting from
before
she went away to America?’

‘I don’t know. I don‘t think so.’ Her tone sounded dubious, cautious, as if she regretted having told him so much. Perhaps she did, but it was too late now. ‘They’d be inside Sterries, anyway.’ She didn’t add what Wexford was thinking, that if Camaguehad kept them and if Natalie was an impostor, they would by now have been destroyed.

‘Then perhaps you can help me in another way. I gather Sir Manuel had no relatives in this country. Who is there I can call on who knew Mrs Arno when she was Natalie Camargue?’

Burden’s Burberry was already hanging on the palm tree hatstand when Wexford walked into the Pearl of Africa. And Burden was already seated under the plastic fronds, about to start on his antipasto Ankole.

‘I don’t believe they have shrimps in Uganda,’ said Wexford, sitting down opposite him.

‘Mr Haq says they come out of Lake Victoria. What are you going to have?’

‘Oh, God. Avocado with Victorian shrimps, Isuppose, and maybe an omelette. Mike, I’ve been on to the California police through Interpol, asking them to give us whatever they can about the background of Natalie Arno, but if she’s never been in trouble, and we’ve no reason to think she has, it won’t be much. And I’ve had another talk with Dinah. The first – well, the only really – Mrs Camargue had a sister who’s still alive and in London. Ever heard of a composer called Philip Cory? He was an old pal of Camargue’s. Either or both of them ought to be able to tell us if this is the real Natalie.’

Burden said thoughtfully, ‘All this raises something else, doesn’t it? Or, rather, what we’ve been told about Camargue’s will does. And in that area it makes no difference whether Natalie is Natalie or someone else.’

‘What does it raise?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Wexford did. That Burden too had seen it scarcely surprised him. A year or two before the inspector had often seemed obtuse. But happiness makes so much difference to a person, Wexford thought. It doesn’t just make them happy, it makes them more intelligent, more aware, more alert, while unhappiness deadens, dulls and stupefies. Burden had seen what he had seen because he was happy, and happiness was making a better policeman of him.

‘Oh, I know what you mean. Perhaps it was rather too readily assumed that Camargue died a natural death.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that then there was no reason to suspect foul play, nothing and no one suspicious seen in the neighbourhood, no known enemies, no unusual bruising on the body. A highly distinguished but rather frail old man happened to go too near a lake on a cold night in deep snow.’

‘And if we had known what we know now? We can take it for granted that Natalie’s aim – whether she is Camargue’s daughter or an impostor – her aim in coming to her father was to secure his property or the major part of it for herself. She came to him and, whether he actually saw through her and denounced her or thought he saw through her and dreamed he denounced her, he at any rate apparently wrote to her and told her she was to be disinherited.’

‘She could either attempt to dissuade him,’ said Burden, ‘or take steps of another sort.’

‘Her loss wouldn’t have been immediate. Camargue was getting married and had therefore to make a new will after his marriage. She might count on his not wishing to make a new will at once and then another after his marriage. She had two weeks in which to act.’

‘There’s a point too that, whereas she might have dissuaded him from cutting her out, she couldn’t have dissuaded him from leaving Sterries to Dinah. But there don’t seem to have been any efforts at dissuasion, do there? Dinah doesn’t know of any or she’d have told you, nor did Natalie come to Sterries again.’

‘Except perhaps,’ said Wexford, ‘on the night of Sunday, 27 January.’

Burden’s answer was checked by the arrival of Mr Haq, bowing over the table.

‘How are you doing, my dear?’

‘Fine, thanks.’ Any less hearty reply would have summoned forth a stream of abject apology and the cook from the kitchen as well as causing very real pain to Mr Haq.

‘I can recommend the mousse Maherere.’

Mr Haq, if his advice was rejected, was capable of going off into an explanation of how this dish was composed of coffee beans freshly plucked in the plantations of Toro and of cream from the milk of the taper-horned Sanga cattle. To prevent this, and though knowing its actual provenance to be Sainsbury’s instant dessert, Burden ordered it. Wexford always had the excuse of his shaky and occasional diet. A bowl of pale brown froth appeared, served by Mr Haq’s own hands.

Quietly Wexford repeated his last remark.

‘The night of 27 January?’ echoed Burden. ‘The night of Camargue’s death? If he was murdered, and I reckon we both think he was, if he was pushed into that water and left to drown, Natalie didn’t do it.’

‘How d’you know that?’