Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then (4 page)

   They had thought he was going to have a break down. Back in February it had been when the first shock of Jean’s death had abated, leaving grief and panic and the horror of his situation to pour in. He had lain in bed, sleeping when Dr. Crocker drugged him, shouting out when he was conscious that it was only the flu he had, that he must get up and go back to work. But he had been off work for three weeks and when at last he was better he had lost nearly two stone. Still, he had been alive, while Stella Rivers was dead or vanished from the face of her small earth.

   “She also lived with her mother,” said Wexford, “and her stepfather. On Thursday, February the twenty-fifth, she had a riding lesson at Equita, the riding school in Mill Lane near Forby. She had her regular lessons on Saturdays, but this was an extra one, arranged to take advantage of her half-term holiday. The stepfather, Ivor Swan, drove her to Equita from their home at Hall Farm in Kingsmarkham, but there was some doubt as to how she was to get home again.”

   “What d’you mean, doubt?”

   “After she disappeared both Ivor and Rosalind Swan said Stella had told them she would get a lift home in a friend’s car, as she sometimes did as far as Kingsmarkham, but it appeared that Stella had had no such idea and expected Swan to pick her up. When it got to six o’clock - the lesson ended at four-fifteen - Rosalind Swan, having checked with the friend, phoned us.”

   “We went first to Equita, saw Miss Williams who runs the school and her assistant, a Mrs. Fenn, and were told that Stella had left alone at four-thirty. By now it was raining hard and the rain had begun at about four-forty. Eventually we made contact with a man who had passed Stella at four-forty and offered her a lift to Stowerton. At this time she was walking along Mill Lane towards Stowerton. She refused his offer which made us think she was a sensible girl who wouldn’t take lifts from strangers.”

   “She was twelve, wasn’t she?” Burden put in,

   “Twelve, slight and fair-haired. The man who offered her the lift is called Walter Hill and he’s the manager of that little branch of the Midland Bank in Forby. If misguided, he’s perfectly respectable and had nothing to do with her disappearance. We checked and double-checked him. No one else ever came forward to say he had seen Stella. She walked out of Equita, apparently believing she would meet her stepfather, and vanished into thin air.”

   “I can’t go into all the details now, but of course we investigated Ivor Swan with the utmost care. Apart from the fact that he no real alibi for that afternoon, we had no real reason to believe he wished harm to Stella. She liked Swan, she even seemed to have had a sort of crush on him. Not one relative or friend of the Swans could tell of any trouble whatsoever in their household. And yet . . .”

   “And yet what?”

   Wexford hesitated. “You know those feelings I get, Mike, those almost supernatural sensations that some thing isn’t, well - well, quite right?”

   Burden nodded. He did.

   “I felt it there. But it was only a feeling. People boast of their intuition because they only care to remember the times they’ve been proved right. I never let myself forget the numberless times my premonitions have been wrong. We never found the least thing to pin on Swan. We shall have to resurrect the case tomorrow. Where are you going?”

   “Back to Mrs. Lawrence,” said Burden.

An anxious-looking Mrs. Crantock admitted him to the house.

   “I don’t think I’ve been much help,” she whispered to him in the hall. “We aren’t very close, you see, just neighbours whose children play with each other. I didn’t know what to say to her. I mean, normally we’d discuss our little boys, but now - well, I didn’t feel . . .” She gave a helpless shrug. “And you can’t talk to her about ordinary things, you know. You never can. Not about the house or what goes on in the neighbourhood.” Her forehead wrinkled as she made a mammoth effort to explain the inexplicable. “Perhaps if I could talk about books or - or something. She just isn’t like any one else I know.”

   “I’m sure you’ve done very well,” said Burden. He thought he knew very well what Mrs. Lawrence would like to talk about. Her idea of conversation would be an endless analysis of the emotions.

   “Well, I tried,” Mrs. Crantock raised her voice. ‘I’m going now, Gemma, but I’ll come back later if you want me.”

   Gemma. A curious name. He didn’t think he had ever come across it before. She would have an outlandish name, either because her equally eccentric parents had labelled her with it or - more likely - she had adopted it herself on the grounds of its originality. Suddenly impatient with himself, he wondered why he kept speculating about her in this irritating way, why every new piece of knowledge of her he acquired gave immediate rise to enquiry. Be cause she is, or soon will be, involved in a murder case, he told himself. He pushed open the living-room door, his mind full of the flamboyant, wild and outrageous image he had made, and stopped, taken aback at what he saw. Yet it was only what he had left behind, a white-faced frightened girl, crouched in a chair, waiting, waiting . . .

   She had switched on an electric fire, but it had done little to warm the room and she had wrapped herself in one of the shawls he had seen, a heavy black-and-gold thing with a long fringe. He found he couldn’t picture her with a child or imagine her reading bedtime stories or pouring out cornflakes. Sitting in some club, yes, singing and playing a guitar.

   “Would you like some tea?” she said, turning to him. “Some sandwiches? I can easily make sandwiches.”

   “Don’t bother for me.”

   “Will your wife have something for you when you get home?”

   “My sister-in-law,” he said. “My wife’s dead.”

   He didn’t like having to say it. People immediately became embarrassed, blushing or even recoiling slightly as if he had some infectious disease. Then came the rush of awkward insincere sympathy, meaningless words to be gabbled through and then as soon forgotten. No one ever looked as if they really cared, or no one had until now.

   Gemma Lawrence said quietly and slowly, “I’m so sorry. She must have been quite young. That was a great tragedy for you. Now I can see what has taught you to be kind to other people who are in trouble.”

   He felt ashamed of himself and shame made him stammer. “I - well . . . I think I would like those sandwiches if it isn’t any trouble.”

   “How could it be?” she asked wonderingly, as if the polite conventional phrase was new to her. “Naturally I want to do something in return for all you’re doing for me.”

   She brought the sandwiches in a very short time. It was evident they hadn’t taken long to make. Ham had been roughly placed between two doorsteps of bread and the tea was in mugs without saucers.

   Women had been spoiling Burden all his life, serving him food on dainty china from trays covered with lace cloths, and he took a sandwich without much enthusiasm, but when he bit into it he found that the ham was tasty and not too salty and the bread fresh.

   She sat on the floor and rested her back against the armchair opposite to him. He had told Wexford there were many more questions he wanted to ask her and he hazarded a few of them, routine enquiries as to John’s adult acquaintances, the parents of his school friends, her own friends. She responded calmly and intelligently and the policeman’s part of his mind registered her answers automatically. But something strange had happened to him. He was absorbing with a curious unease a fact which the average man would have observed as soon as he laid eyes on her. She was beautiful. Thinking the word made him look away, yet carry with him, as if imprinted on his retina, a brilliant impression of that white face with its good bones and, more disturbingly, her long legs and full firm breasts.

   Her hair was vermilion in the red firelight, her eyes the clear water-washed green of jewels that are found under the sea. The shawl gave her an exotic look as if she were set within the frame of a Pre-Raphaelite portrait, posed, unreal, unfitted for any ordinary daily task. And yet there was about her something entirely natural and impulsive. Too natural, he thought, suddenly alarmed, too real. She is more real and more aware and more natural than any woman has a right to be.

   Quickly be said, “Mrs. Lawrence, I’m sure you told John never to speak to strange men.”

   The face whitened. “Oh, yes.”

   “But did he ever tell you that a man had spoken to him?”

   “No, never. I take him to school and fetch him home. He’s only alone when he goes out to play and then the other boys are with him.” She lifted her face and now there was no guard on it. “What do you mean?”

   Why did she have to ask so directly? “No one has told me they saw any stranger speak to John” he said truthfully, “but I have to check.”

   She said in the same uncompromising level vice, “Mrs. Dean told me a child was lost in Kingsmarkham last February and never found. She came in to tell me while Mrs. Crantock was here.”

   Burden forgot that he had ever allied himself with Mrs. Dean. In savage, unpoliceman-like tones he burst out before he could stop himself, “Why the hell don’t these busybodies keep their mouths shut?” He bit his lip, wondering why what she had said brought out so much violence in him and the desire to go next door and strike the Dean woman. “That child was a girl,” he said, “and much older. The kind of – er - pervert who needs to attack girls isn’t likely to be interested in a small boy.” But was that true? Who could yet understand the mysteries of a sane mind, let alone a diseased one?

   She drew the shawl more closely about her and said, “How shall I get through the night?”

   “I shall get you a doctor.” Burden finished his tea and got up. “Didn’t I see a doctor’s plate in Chiltern Avenue?”

   “Yes. Dr. Lomax.”

   “Well, we’ll get some sleeping pills out of this Lomax, and a woman to stay the night with you. I’ll see you’re not left alone.”

   “I don’t know how to thank you.” She bowed her head and he saw that at last she began to cry. “You’ll say it’s only your job and your duty, but it’s more than that. I - I do thank you. When I look at you I think, Nothing can happen to John while he’s there.”

   She was looking at him as a child should look at its father but as he could never remember his own children looking at him. Such trust was a terrible responsibility and he knew he shouldn’t foster it. There was more than a fifty-fifty chance now that the child was dead and he wasn’t God to bring the dead to life. He ought to say that she mustn’t worry, mustn’t think about it - how cruel and stupid and insensitive! - but all he could say in the face of those eyes was, “I’ll go for the doctor now and he’ll see you get a good night.” There was no need to add anything but he added, “Don’t sleep too long. I’ll be back with you by nine.”

   Then he said good night. He didn’t mean to look back. ‘Something impelled him. She was standing in the doorway, framed in yellow light, a curious outlandish figure in that gypsy gilded shawl, her hair so bright that it seemed on fire. She waved to him tentatively, rather shyly, her other hand smoothing away the tears from under her eyes. He had seen pictures of women like her but never known them, never spoken to them. Briefly he wondered if he wanted the child found, wanted it so passionately, because that would mean he need never see her again. He turned sharply towards the street and went to summon Dr. Lomax.

A great moon drifted above the fields, pale and misty as if it drifted in a pool of water. Burden waited until the searchers got back at midnight. They had found nothing.

   Grace had left a note for him: “John waited up till eleven for you to help him with his maths. Could you just glance at it? He was in quite a state. G.”

   It took Burden a couple of seconds to adjust to the fact that his own son was also called John. He glanced at the homework and, as far as he could see, the algebra was correct. A lot of fuss about nothing. These little nagging notes of Grace’s were getting a bit much. He opened the door of his son’s room and saw that he was fast asleep. Grace and Pat slept in the room that had been his and Jean’s - impossible as his bedroom after her death - and he couldn’t very well open that door. In his own room, once Pat’s, a little room with ballet dancers cavorting on the walls as appropriate for an eleven-year-old, he sat on the bed and felt the tiredness ebb away, leaving him as alert as at eight in the morning. He could be weary to the point of collapse, but let him come in here, be alone with himself, and immediately he would be filled with this frightful, degrading urgency.

   He put his head in his hands. They all thought he missed Jean as a companion, as someone to talk to and share trouble with. And so he did, terribly. But what assailed him most every day and every night, without respite, was sexual desire, which, because it had had no release in ten months, had become sealed-up, tormented sexual madness.

   He knew very well how they all thought of him. To them he was a cold fish, stern when confronted by licence, mourning Jean only because he had become used to marriage and was what Wexford called uxorious. Probably, if they had ever thought of it, they imagined him and Jean making love once a fortnight with the light out. It was the way people did think about you if you were the sort of man who shied away from dirty jokes and found this permissive society foul.

   They never seemed to dream that you could hate promiscuity and adultery because you knew what marriage could be and had experienced it to such a degree of excellence that anything else was a mockery, a poor imitation. You were lucky but . . . Ah, God, you were unlucky too! - cast adrift and sick when it was over. Jean had been a virgin when he married her and so had he. People said - stupid people and the stupid things they said - that it made it hard when you married, but it hadn’t for him and Jean. They had been patient and giving and full of love and they had been so fulsomely rewarded that, looking back as from a desert, Burden could hardly believe it had been so good almost from the start, with no failures, no disappointments. But he could believe it because he knew and remembered and suffered.