Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods (12 page)

   Burden had been over to Framhurst where the floods were disappearing fast. ‘As if someone had pulled the plug out,’ he said. ‘By this time tomorrow you’ll be able to see the fields again.’

   Wexford thought this a bit over-optimistic ‘What do we make of the sanctimonious Yvonne Moody? If it’s true what she says, why would abducting the Dade kids help Joanna? Surely it would be more likely to put the Dades against her for ever, both of them. Or is every thing Ms Moody says a lie?’

   ‘Who knows? You have to admit there are some funny aspects about this case. I mean, what on earth did Katrina have in common with a highly educated single woman fourteen or fifteen years younger than herself? Katrina may have admired her greatly, which one can imagine, but Joanna? What this Moody woman says does provide a reason for Joanna’s friendship with Katrina, it would account for her going over there to look after the children. But there’s so much about the lot of them we don’t know. For instance, that weekend seems to have been the first time she’d stayed in the house...’

   ‘No, I asked. Back last April or May, they couldn’t remember which, she stayed overnight while the Dades went off to some estate agents’ bunfight in London. Roger didn’t want to drive back in case he was over the limit.’

   Burden nodded. ‘OK. The other occasions she’d only have been there for the evening, but there may have been times when she sat in so that Katrina could go out while Roger was working late. Only he got home earlier than he expected or earlier than he’d told Katrina. Other times she may have deliberately come without her car so that he had to drive her home.’

   ‘I’d never have suspected you were such an expert on seduction, not to say adultery.’

   The once-widowed, twice-married Burden said frankly, ‘Well, as you know, I’ve committed what they used to call fornication but never adultery. Still, you pick up this stuff in our line of business.’

   ‘True. Your solution is ingenious but it doesn’t help with why she took the kids, if she did. Stealing a twenty-pound note is hardly a rehearsal for stealing two people. However, when your weather forecast comes true tomorrow or whenever and we know for sure the car and those three were never down there, we can proceed to find out more.’

   ‘Better start by asking all the dentists in the United Kingdom to be on the watch for a young woman coming to them with a missing tooth crown. Or asking them if any young woman has already come to them.’

   ‘We can try said Wexford, ‘but if she’s as intelligent as you say, and I dare say she is, though that website could have fooled me, she’d guess wed check up on dentists and instead of getting the crown professionally fixed she’ll have been back to the pharmacist and bought another pack of that adhesive stuff.’

As the floods subsided, among the detritus left behind were a bicycle, two supermarket trolleys, an umbrella with spokes but no cover, the usual crisp packets, Coke cans, condoms, single trainers, miscellaneous clothes as well as a wicker chair, a prototype video recorder and a Turkey carpet.

   Wexford expected a further directive from Freeborn but none came. He phoned headquarters and was told the Assistant Chief Constable had started on a week of his annual leave. ‘We proceed, I think, don’t you?’ he said to Burden.

   ‘Is there any point in checking on where all these sweatshirts and jeans come from? Some of them are barely recognisahle, they’re in shreds.’

   ‘Get Lynn on it. It can’t do any harm. Our priorities are the parents and a further investigation of Joanna Troy’s background.’

Early that morning, as soon as it began to be light, he had carried out a survey of his garden. A depressing business. It wasn’t that he was much of a gardener himself. He didn’t know the names of many plants, knew nothing of their Latin or Linnaean names, had never understood what needs sunshine, what shade, what plenty of water, what very little. But he liked to look at it. He liked to sit in it of a summer evening, enjoying the scents and the quiet and the beauty as pale flowers closed their petals for the night. Although Browning’s poem itself revolted him, the awful adjectives like ‘lovesome’ - God walks in gardens indeed! - he agreed with the sentiment. His garden was the veriest seat of peace. Now it looked like a swamp and worse, the kind of marsh that has been irresponsibly drained and abandoned as a waste land. Things which had grown there and which he had known as ‘that lovely red thing’ or ‘the one with the wonderful scent’ had either disappeared entirely or survived as a bunch of wet sticks. It was Dora he felt sorrier for than himself. She had done it, chosen the plants and shrubs, tended them, loved the place. Only the lawn seemed to have come out of the water unscathed, a brilliant, yellowish, evil green.

   He went indoors, took off his boots and searched for the shoes he’d left somewhere. Dora was on the phone. She said, ‘That’s for you to decide, isn’t it?’ and he knew it must be something unpleasant, something he wouldn’t want to know.

   She said goodbye and put the receiver down. Only one person apart from Burden ever phoned at eight in the morning, and she’d never speak in that crushing tone to Mike.

   ‘You’d better tell me what Sylvia’s up to now.’

   ‘Cal’s moving in with her. Apparently, it’s been suggested before but Neil made a fuss. On account of the boys, I suppose.’

   ‘I’m not surprised. So would I.’

   ‘He seems to have withdrawn his objections now he’s got someone of his own.’

   He thought about these things now as he had him self driven to Forest Road. Had he and Dora been exceptionally lucky in that their marriage had endured? Or was it rather that in their day people worked harder at marriage, divorce if not actually disgraceful was a distant last resort, you married and you stayed married? If his first wife had lived would Burden’s marriage have endured? He couldn’t recall any child in his class at his own school whose natural mother and father weren’t together. Among his parents’ friends and neighbours no one was divorced. So were half those marriages deeply and secretly unhappy? Did their homes ring with frequent bitter quarrels conducted in the presence of their children, his classmates? No one would ever know. He disliked even thinking of the feelings of his son-in-law Neil, whom he was fond of and who loved his children. Now he would see these boys in the care of what amounted to a new father of whom they would perhaps grow fonder. Would he also give them a new step mother? And all because he bored Sylvia and hadn’t talked to her much. Maybe that was unfair but wasn’t this Cal the most awful crashing bore? With time his looks would fade and his sexual prowess, if that was also part of the attraction, would wane...

   Banish it from your mind, he told himself as he and Vine made their way to the last street in Kingsmarkham. This would be his first meeting with George and Effie Troy, though Vine had met and talked to them before. He noted the girth of George, fatter than he, Wexford, had been at the worst of his overeating, and a lot less tall. His wife had an interesting face and manner, a woman of character. These little Gothic houses, of which there were a number scattered around Kingsmarkham and Pomfret, looked quaint but were poky and dark, comfort, even when they were first built, sacrificed to some mistaken idea - the Oxford Movement and then Ruskin, he thought vaguely - that England would be a better place if mediaevalised. He seated himself in a chair far too small for him.

   Already, after having only exchanged a few words with the Troys, he knew that Effie would speak for them both. Effie would be the coherent one, the less emotional one, and the question he had to ask was highly emotive.

   ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you about this and I wouldn’t if I didn’t think it necessary.’ The dark-browed face, the dark eyes, were turned on him inscrutably. ‘I’ve learned that your daughter gave up teaching because she was accused of stealing money from one of the students.’

   ‘Who told you such a thing?’ It was the father who asked, not the stepmother.

   ‘That I’m not at liberty to tell you. Is it true?’

   Effie Troy spoke slowly, in measured tones. Wexford suddenly thought that if you had to have a stepmother, the way his grandsons would, this might not be such a bad one to have. ‘It’s true that Joanna was accused by a boy of sixteen of taking a twenty-pound note out of his back pack. He later, er, recanted. This is some few years ago. You’re right when you say she “gave up” teaching because of this. She did, of her own volition. She wasn’t sacked or asked to resign. She was never charged with stealing.’

   This last Wexford already knew. He was about to ask why she gave up when she had apparently been exonerated when the father, unable to contain himself any longer, burst into a harangue. Joanna was victimised, the boy was a psychopath, he accused her purely to make trouble and make himself the centre of attention, he hated her because she expected him to do too much homework. Effie listened to all this with an indulgent smile, finally patting her husband’s hand and whispering to him as to a child, ‘All right, darling. Don’t get in a state.’

   Obedient but still looking mutinous, George Troy fell silent. Vine said, ‘Do you know the boy’s name?’

   ‘Damian or Damon, one of those fashionable names. I don’t remember the surname.’

   ‘Mr Troy?’

   ‘Don’t ask me. All I wanted was to put it out of my head. The monstrous behaviour of the modern child is beyond my comprehension. I don’t understand and I don’t want to. Joanna may have told us his surname but I don’t recall. I don’t want to. No one has surnames any more, do they? She brought one of her pupils here once - I’m not calling them students, students are in colleges - I forget why, she called in and this pupil was with her. Called me George if you please. Because my wife did. No, they don’t have surnames any more. They all of them called my daughter Joanna at that school. When I was a child we called our teachers “sir” or “miss”, we were respectful. . .‘

   ‘Tell me about your daughter,’ Wexford said. ‘What sort of a person is she? What’s she like.’ He seemed to address both of them but he looked at Effie.

   She said, to his astonishment, because he thought her husband about to ask this of her, ‘Would you like to make us all a cup of coffee, darling?’

   He went. He seemed not to suspect Effie wanted him briefly out of the way. But did she?

   ‘Her mother died when she was sixteen,’ Effie began. ‘I married her father three years later. It wasn’t difficult for me, being her stepmother, I’d known her all her life. She was never rebellious, she was never resentful. She’s very bright, you know, won all the scholarships, went to Warwick University and Birmingham. I expect she worked hard but she managed to give the impression she never worked at all. This is the kind of thing you want to know?’

   Wexford nodded. The old man was slow and he was thankful for it.

   ‘I was surprised when she went in for teaching. That sort of teaching, anyway. But she loved it. It was her life, she said.’

   ‘She got married?’

   ‘She met her husband when they were both in graduate school in Birmingham and lived together for a while. Ralph’s some sort of computer buff. His father died and left him quite a lot of money, enough to buy a house. Joanna wanted to live around here and Ralph bought quite a big house. She got her job at Haldon Finch School, a very good job for someone so young, but of course her qualifications were marvellous. She and Ralph seemed to be a case of two people who got on fine while they lived together but just couldn’t handle being married. They split up after a year, he sold the place and she bought that little house of hers with her share.’

   Effie smiled sweetly at her husband as he lumbered in with a tray on the surface of which coffee had slopped. Their drinks were in mugs, milk in whether desired or not, no spoons, no sugar. ‘Thank you, George, darling.’

   She hadn’t said a word her husband might not hear, Wexford thought. Perhaps she would have if he had taken longer. Since he had heard her last words, George launched into criticism of the Kingbridge Mews house. It was too small, badly planned, the windows too narrow, the staircase perilous. A psychiatrist would call this projection, thought Wexford, who had noticed the stairs in this house, as steep and narrow as a ladder. He addressed the father.

   ‘Your daughter uses your car, I understand.’

   Wexford guessed this question might result in a long and intricate explanation from George as to why he bought a new car and passed it on to his daughter instead of driving it himself, so he wasn’t surprised by the fresh flow of words. Effie interrupted smoothly when he paused to take a sip of coffee.

   ‘My husband wasn’t confident at the wheel any longer, I’m afraid. He’d suddenly become rather nervous of causing an accident.’ Or you had, Wexford thought. ‘His eyesight was letting him down. Of course, I ought to have taken over the driving but the fact is I can’t drive. I never learned. Absurd, isn’t it? Joanna said she was thinking of buying a car and George said, don’t do that, you can have mine on permanent loan.’

   Far from being offended at his wife’s taking over the conversation, George Troy looked pleased and proud. He patted her hand in a congratulatory way. Effie went on, ‘Joanna set up as a freelance translator and editor. And of course she did private teaching - coaching, I suppose you’d call it. French and German. The students, er, pupils mostly came to her house but sometimes she went to them. Then she landed this job writing French lessons for the Internet. I’m sure I haven’t put that well but perhaps you know what I mean. The company had a website and she put these lessons on it, first of all an elementary course, now an intermediate one, and she’s doing a third for advanced students. I don’t really know what more I can tell you.’

   What a pity the old man had come back! ‘Boyfriends since the break-up of her marriage, Mrs Troy?’

   ‘There haven’t been any,’ said George. ‘She was too busy for that sort of thing. She had a new career to establish, didn’t she? No room for men and any of that nonsense.’

   The stepmother said, ‘Joanna wasn’t fond of children, she told me that. Not small children, that is. Of course she liked them when they were old enough for her to teach them. She liked bright children. She wouldn’t have wanted to marry again for the sake of having children.’