An Unkindness of Ravens (22 page)

‘Because I’ve seen them together,’ she said.

 Relief ran over him like sweat. He felt cool and lightheaded with it. She was aware now that she had told him something revelatory, unguessed at, and her face, close to his, was full of alert inquiry.

‘Whom did you see together?’ he asked her.

‘Those two women. I saw them in the Precinct Cafe in Kingsmarkham having coffee together.’ ‘ ‘When? Can you remember when?’

If it were a week ago or even a month ago it meant nothing.

‘Last Christmas, I think. It must have been Christmas or Easter for me to have been home. The only weekend I’ve been home was when Wheatley gave me that lift.’ Edwina put infinite scorn into the pronunciation of his name. ‘It wasn’t then and it wasn’t Easter. I know it can’t have been because there was snow on the ground.’

‘Snow fell,’ said Miss Kaufmann, helpful now her niece was not directly threatened, ‘during the first week of January.’

‘It must have been then,’ said Edwina.

She smiled, as if pleased to have been of help at last. He knew she hadn’t lied.

16

 As Wexford opened the gate of 31 Alverbury Road the postman was coming down the path, a wad of mail fastened with a rubber band in his left hand. None of it apparently was for 29 and his next call was at Milvey’s, two doors down. Watching him, Wexford suddenly understood how Milvey came into the case. There was no coincidence at all, it was all simple and logical, only he had been putting the cart before the horse ...

He rang the bell. As he did so St Peter’s clock struck nine. It was Sara who opened the door and so quickly he knew she must have been standing directly behind it. She was holding a paper.

‘Two As and a B,’ she said, and smiled with gratification.

She had spoken as if the sole purpose of his call had been to hear about her A-level results. Before she closed the door she must have seen the police car outside with Donaldson at the wheel and Marion Bayliss in the back.

‘Congratulations,’ Wexford said. ‘Where’s your mother?’

She didn’t answer. She might not have heard for all the notice she took.

‘St Biddulph’s told me they’d take me with three Bs or two Bs and an A, so this is rather better.’

Frenetic excitement was in the girl’s eyes, an excitement that was manic and all the more disconcerting for being under such tight control. He had seen her as a Botticelli girl, mild-faced, tranquil, with a spring-like innocence. Primavera should not tremble with triumph nor Venus’s eyes glitter.

Tm going to phone my cousin Paulette, find out how $-.            she did.’

To crow a little? Or to be kind? Joy Williams came out from the kitchen, dressed as he had never seen her before. He hadn’t told her but perhaps she had guessed she would be meeting Wendy again. Or Wendy herself had told her the evening before? He was prepared for that. He rather hoped they realized he knew of their prior acquaintance. Joy wore a clean, tidy skirt and blouse. She had washed her hair and smudged lipstick on her mouth, in the uncertain slapdash way women do who seldom wear it and somehow feel ashamed to do so. Probably she always dresses up when she and Wendy meet, he thought. There would be rivalry there even if they were allied in a common hatred of Williams. Besides, an alliance would not mean they actually liked each other ...

I     Sara could be heard on the phone. ‘Have they come? Well?’

Not much of a bedside manner. He imagined her talking in that hectoring way to a patient. A hard, neurotic little go-getter, he thought her, without an atom of concern for the mother whom the police suspected of murdering her father.

‘That’s not bad though, is it?’ she was saying. ‘It’s nor as if you need As or even Bs.’

Patronizing. Somewhat lofty. The pharmacist, of course, was the poor man’s doctor, or the doctor for the fainthearted. Til ask the chemist to give me something for my throat.’ Or my head, back, cystitis, bleeding, lump in the breast ... He took Joy out and closed the front door behind them.

 Sergeant Martin and Polly Davies brought Wendy in. The evening before she had been in tears of vexation at missing a day’s work but that she could have refused to come that the police were still in a position only to ask and persuade—seemed no more to have occurred to her than to Joy. They were not blessed with lawyers for aunts. The senior wife—the Sultana Valideh—was already seated in the interview room when Wendy was brought in, the expressionless face averted, the dark brown animal eyes staring past her at the window.

Wendy wore a printed smock dress, Kate Greenaway like, in a Laura Ashley print, at the neck and wrists frills tied with bows. She had white tights on and white shoes. While the sergeant and Polly stood by (Polly told Wexford later) Wendy had taken her daughter Veronica in her arms and hugged her in a highly emotional way, bringing a fresh rush of tears. Veronica had looked very taken aback. But Wendy had pressed her close to her, stroking her hair, almost as if she expected never to see her again. And Polly, who was a reader of romantic period fiction, said it was like Marie Antoinette setting off in the tumbril.

‘Farewell, my children, for ever! I am going to your father.’

Now all that remained as evidence of this scene was the swollen pinkness of Wendy’s face. She gave Wexford a piteous look. She would have preferred Burden to interrogate her, she found him more sympathetic than this elderly, hard, sardonic man, but Burden wasn’t there. He was in Alverbury Road in conversation with Mrs Milvey.

Wexford said, and he seemed to be addressing either or both of them, ‘Which of you first found out the other existed?’

It was Wendy who answered. Her voice was even more fretful than usual. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

Til put it another way. When did you first discover Rodney Williams had a wife? And you, Mrs Williams, when did you find out your husband had “married” again?’ He put very audible inverted commas round that past principle. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I know you haven’t been truthful with me. I know you knew each other. The question is when did you first know?’

‘I never knew she existed till you told me.’ Joy spoke in her weary lifeless way. ‘When you told me my husband was a bigamist on top of all the rest.’

‘All what “rest”, Mrs Williams?’

‘Lying to me about his job for a start.’

Wendy murmured something.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Williams, I didn’t catch that.’

‘I said “having other women”. I meant that’s what the rest was, having other women.’

‘He never had other women,’ said Joy. She was responding to Wendy’s prompting but she wasn’t speaking to her. It was Wexford she was addressing. ‘He had her but he never had others.’

‘Let her delude herself if she wants,’ said Wendy to no one in particular, lifting her shoulders and smiling very faintly.

‘When did you first meet her, Mrs Williams?’ Wexford was finding it a shade awkward, their both sharing the name. He got up and came round the table to address the words specifically to Wendy. Joy burst out, ‘You’ve no business to call her that! She’s no right to that name. She’s Miss Whatever-she-used-to-be. You call her that!’

‘The manners of a fishwife,’ said Wendy. ‘She’s as common as dirt. No wonder he came to me.’

‘Nasty little bitch! Look at her, dressed up like a kid!’

They’re staging it, Wexford thought, they must be. It’s all set up for my benefit, rehearsed as like as not. He called the two women quietly to order.

 William Milvey was at home that day. The offices of Mid Sussex Waterways were in his house and he was awaiting the visit of the VAT inspector. That was who he thought Burden was and for some moments they talked at cross purposes, having one of those conversations so amusing to hearers and so frustrating to the participants. Their hearer in this case was Mrs Milvey, a big-built lady, very ready with her laughter. She laughed merrily at their discomfiture. But Burden’s troubles were quickly over. After that all went smoothly and it turned out to be as Wexford had supposed.

‘The wife’s a director of our company just as much as me,’ Milvey said importantly. ‘And naturally she knows the ins and outs of the business equally to what I do.’

‘I have to know where he’s going to be every day in case there’s phone calls,’ said Mrs Milvey, who was less pompous than her husband. ‘The fifteenth of April? I’ll have a look in the book, shall I, Bill?’

At this point the VAT inspector did arrive, a man in his early twenties by the look of him, carrying a briefcase. Milvey seemed reluctant to absent himself from the more interesting (and perhaps less alarming) examination but he was obliged to go. He took the VAT man into his office and closed the door. Mrs Milvey smiled comfortably at Burden.

‘From Easter right up till the end of April they was working up Myringham way,’ she said, referring to the ledger she was holding. ‘They never started on Green Pond till a month later.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. No doubt about it. It’s down here in black and white. Green Pond, May the thirty-first. Besides, I remember it all now. Bill had a job lined up for the end of May, a big drainage job over to Sewingbury, and the chap cancelled at the last minute. But as luck would have it, this trout farm chap at Green Pond had been given his name and he rung up and said could he drag the pond? Well, Bill happened to be free on account of the cancellation. Must have given the trout farm fella a bit of a surprise, him saying yes, I’ll start prompt on Monday.’

The office door opened again and Milvey put a hand out for his book. His wife gave it to him.

‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘I expect so. There was no secret about it, it was open and above board. You like to have a bit of news to tell folks, don’t you? Now you’re wanting to know if I told my neighbour Mrs Williams, aren’t you?’

‘Did you?’

‘I never knew a thing about her husband then, mind you. I met her going down to the shops. Bill was getting the van out. I said something like, Monday he’ll be doing a job at Green Pond Hall. There’s going to be a trout farm, did you know? Something like that.’

‘But you definitely told her your husband would be dragging the pond on Monday, May the thirty-first?’

‘I couldn’t see it would do any harm, could I?’

Had it? Wexford hadn’t been entirely correct in his supposition, which was that Mrs Milvey had told Joy the pond had already been dragged or was not to be dragged until a much later date. But this gave a different—and incomprehensible—look to things. If Joy had known Green Pond was to be dragged on the following Monday, the pond into which she had dumped her husband’s travelling bag, wouldn’t she have retrieved it during the weekend? The alternative possibility was that she had hidden it elsewhere and only put it in Green Pond when she knew it was to be immediately dragged. Why should she do such a thing, why behave so absurdly?

This was a hunch of Wexford’s that had gone awry. Burden was on his way to put the second one to the test. They seemed no nearer, as far as he could see and in spite of Edwina Klein’s revelation, to breaking the case. Next week he would probably start his paternity leave ...

Bald-headed James Ovington, the son, was alone in charge of Pomfret Office Equipment. His ingratiating smile was as broad as ever. Burden noticed a new mannerism, a nervous way he had of rubbing his hands together. At any rate, the dour and obstructive father was nowhere around.

‘Now can I help? Tell me what I can do.’

‘You have a method of labelling your machines here,’ said Burden. ‘Not exactly a code, a kind of speedwriting.

Last time we were here we noticed one labelled “E. Ten”. I wondered what that stood for. It wasn’t a Remington 315, of course, we’d have pounced on it if it had been. This is a kind of shot in the dark and I daresay I’m not making myself too clear.’

‘It’s clear enough you want to know what “E. Ten” stands for and that’s easy.’ Nevertheless, he hesitated and Burden wondered why a shade of unease seemed to cross his face.

‘Eric Tennyson,’ Ovington said. ‘That’s who it is, that’s who “E. Ten” stands for.’

Second time lucky ... ‘I don’t suppose you know if he has a daughter called Nicola?’

‘Well, I do know as a matter of fact. The answer’s yes.’

Veronica Williams’s friend, her home the house to which Veronica regularly went on Tuesdays. But the typewriter labelled ‘E. Ten’ wasn’t a Remington 315. Unless ...

‘An Olivetti,’ said Ovington. ‘They’ve got another machine. I don’t rightly remember what. She types stuff for people, I mean does it for a living.’ The uneasy look was back again. ‘I may as well tell you,’ he said as if about to make a confession of something that for a long while had weighed heavily on him. ‘They’re friends of mine. I knew I ought to tell you last time you were here.’

‘But why shouldn’t they be friends of yours, Mr Ovington?’

‘Well ... They’re friends of Mrs Williams too. I mean the Mrs Williams whose husband got killed, the one you’re making inquiries about. I mean that’s where I met her, in their house.’

‘Are you trying to tell me something, Mr Ovington?’

This fresh smile, a forced straining of the muscles, turned his face into a gargoyle. He rubbed his hands briskly, then clasped them behind his back to prevent a repetition of the gesture. Light from the shallow overhead lamps in the shed shone with a yellow gleam on the hairless head. Why were the heads of bald men compared to eggs?

Ovington’s head more than anything resembled a polished pebble.

‘What is it you’re saying, Mr Ovington?’

‘I’ve been getting friendly with her. With Mrs Williams. There was nothing wrong, I don’t mean that. I met her at Eric’s and we’d have a drink sometimes, go for a walk, that sort of thing. When it looked as if that husband of hers had finally—well, when it looked as if he’d gone for good, I—I hoped things could get more serious.’ He spoke jerkily, floundering, hopelessly unable to handle the situation he had got himself into. ‘There was nothing wrong. I’d like to repeat that.’

Burden thought irrelevantly that Wendy Williams must be attracted by bald men, first Rodney with his exaggerated forehead, naked as an apple, then this pebble-head.