Murder Being Once Done (20 page)

He smelt Pamela’s floral perfume and looked round to find her at his elbow.

‘Mr Fortune has gone to court, Mr Wexford, and he’s left a message to say he’s going straight on to St Biddulph’s Hospital to get his foot X-rayed.’

‘But you’ve brought the snapshot,’ Wexford said slowly.

‘It was on his desk, sir, and since you wanted it, I’m sure he wouldn’t . . .’

‘Thank you very much, Pamela,’ said Wexford.

His hand was trembling oddly as he took it from her and placed it beside the
Sunday Express
photograph of Morgan’s temple in Artois Road. Yes, it was as he had thought. The newspaper picture showed the whole church, the snapshot only a corner of it, but in both were the same dusty shrubs nudging a brickwall, the same ridge of coping, and what had seemed in the snapshot to be a wooden post was now revealed as a segment of a door.

There was no girl in the newspaper shot, Morgan, Wexford was sure, had posed the girl – his daughter? one of his ‘brides’? – in front of the temple and taken the photograph himself. He returned the snapshot to Pamela and left the library, deep in thought.

What now? Follow Pamela and leave a message for Howard, his reasonable self told him. Or see Baker. The inspector would soon be back from the court. Wexford revolted from the idea of confiding in him and seeing that sharp mouth curl in a will-nothing-teach-the-old-fuddy-duddy expression.

He had been wrong last time. This time he knew he couldn’t be. No one would have known of his folly if he hadn’t alerted Howard before he had proof. It wouldn’t matter if he failed this time, for no one would know except himself. They would think he had gone off on some sightseeing tour of his own, to Smithfield or Billingsgate perhaps, taking Baker’s advice.

He could be what retired policemen sometimes become, a private detective. That thought had a bitter taste about it and he put it from him. Not retired, not old, but free to pursue a line of his own, bound to no one. No driver to take him, no sergeant to accompany him, no chief to refer back to. And he wasn’t going to withhold vital information for long, for, if he had got nowhere by tonight, he would just tell Howard and leave it at that.

It was just eleven-thirty. The rain fell steadily. Obviously, it was going to be one of those days when the rain never lets up. He had left his umbrella in Theresa Street. With unusual extravagance he bought a new one and then he walked jauntily, like a young man, towards Elm Green tube station.

But if the inhabitants . . . will not dwell with them to be ordered by their laws, then they drive them out of those bounds which they have limited and appointed out for themselves.

It was a bit like Kenbourne Vale, the district of South London that was neither Camberwell nor Kennington but a dismal area lying between them called Wilman Park. The resemblance lay in the slummy greyness of the place, the absence of trees, rather than in the houses, for those in Wilman Park were small and tightly packed in streets standing at true right angles to each other. Wexford supposed that the third temple of the Children of the Revelation was probably situated in a similar district of some industrial city in the north of England. Strange sects do not abound among the rich who have their heaven here and need not rely on future bliss.

He found Artois Road which bisected Wilman Park and walked briskly along it between the puddles, passing women coming back from the shops before they shut for early closing. They were mothers and daughters mostly, with the daughter’s children shielded from the rain in hooded prams. He recognized it as the working-class pattern, mother and daughter going everywhere together, shopping together, not divided by the girl’s marriage. Somewhere here there might be a mother who walked alone because her daughter had been divided from her. Or were the Children excluded from such patterns, as they seemed to be excluded from everything, making their own customs and denying society?

The temple was so small and the rain so torrential that he almost went by without seeing it. He retraced his steps and contemplated it, glad of his umbrella. It was recognizable as the sister, if not the twin, of the one in Garmisch Terrace. The circle of red glass was smaller, the gable shallower, the garden-shed door painted a sticky green, but an identical plaque, signifying the nature of the place, had been cemented into the brickwork which in this case was a plain dull red. The shrubs, against which Loveday had posed, were now a leafless tangle, dripping water on to the pavement.

As in Garmisch Terrace, the temple was the connecting link between two rows of houses, squat mean houses here of yellow brick with stone bays. In one of its immediate neighbours Morgan had been a lodger. In which? Newspapers give the names of streets where defendants and witnesses live, not their house numbers. But it wasn’t difficult to guess. One of the houses had daffodils coming into bud in a window box, a television aerial on its roof, red and yellow curtains: the other squatted, its windows blanked out with dark green blinds, behind a tiny front garden whose soil was hidden beneath a layer of concrete.

One of the blinds lifted an inch when he banged on the door – there was no bell, no knocker, only a letter box – but it fell again instantly. The activities of private detectives are limited. They cannot demand entrance or get warrants. He knocked again, and this time there was no movement at the window. He could hear nothing from inside the house, but he sensed hostility as if the people within were ill-wishing him. Strange. Even if they had something to hide, they couldn’t know who he was. He might be the gasman, he might be delivering something. A voice behind him made him turn round. A postman with parcels coming out of a red van.

‘You won’t get in there, mate. They never let no one in.’

‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

‘That’s it,’ said the postman, grinning. ‘For God’s sake. They’re too religious, see, to talk to the likes of you or me. They call themselves Children of the Revelation. A lot of them live around here, and they won’t none of them let no one into their houses.’

‘What, not even open their doors?’

‘Some do that,’ the postman admitted, ‘but you can’t get inside.’

‘Can you tell me where the others live?’

‘One lot at 56 and another lot at 92. The 56 lot, they’ll
speak
to you, I’ll give them that.’

So the refusal to admit him on the part of the occupants of the house next to the temple held no particularly sinister implication. He went to number 56, another grim little house with weeds instead of concrete in its front garden, and the door was answered rather reluctantly by an elderly man in a shiny black suit.

‘I’m sorry. I know it’s raining, but I can’t let you in. What do you want?’ His was a flat, cold voice, almost mechanical. Words were necessary for the business of living, Wexford thought, not to grace life, not to be chosen with care for smoothing the path, expressing feelings, pleasing the listener. He remembered what Teal had said.

‘I’m writing a book on Christian sects,’ he lied unblushingly. ‘I wondered if you could give me . . . ?’

In the same dull monotone the man reeled off a list of dates, named the three temples and told Wexford that there were five hundred of the elect on the face of the earth.

‘And your Shepherd?’ Wexford interrupted him.

‘He has a room in the house next to the temple, but they won’t open the door to you there.’ He gave a sigh as of one who had striven in vain against the temptations of the world. ‘They have kept to a purer and straighter way than I. I married
out
.’

‘How about number 92?’ Wexford began. He got no further for the door was firmly closed in his face. There was nothing for it but to go to Ivy Street, and if that failed, begin a house-to-house in search of the ‘brides’.

He had a sandwich in a pub and, feeling almost as guilty as a Child of the Revelation who had opened the door to one of God’s rejects, a pint of bitter. Then he phoned Dora to stop her worrying, telling her he was off on a tour with Dearborn and didn’t know when he would be home. The rain had slackened slightly. He asked the barman the way to Ivy Street and set off into the back doubles of Artois Road.

The house was a little detached villa with gnomes and an overflowing birdbath in its front garden. It looked shut up. No one answered when he rang the bell and he turned away to come face to face once more with the helpful postman.

‘Mrs Morgan’s away. Her married daughter’s ill and she’s gone to look after the son-in-law. Half a tick, while I take this parcel next door.’

Having decided to pump him, Wexford waited impatiently for the postman to return. What he called ‘half a tick’ became ten minutes’ chat with the recipient of the parcel, but at last he came back, whistling cheerfully.

‘What about the other daughter?’

‘Got a day off from work. I saw her go out half an hour back.’

‘I see.’ Another disappointment, if you could call finding someone’s daughter alive instead of dead a disappointment. ‘Did you know Morgan?’

‘Not to say know,’ said the postman. ‘I know
of
him. I used to see him about.’

‘Did you ever see him about with a girl?’

The postman laughed. He didn’t seem to want to know who Wexford was or why he was asking. ‘Morgan was a dark horse,’ he said. ‘Most of Revelationers didn’t know what he was up to till it all came out. Except the girls, that is. One or two of them called themselves Mrs Morgan, had letters addressed to them as Mrs Morgan, as bold as brass.’

‘Can you remember which ones?’

‘I remember Hannah Peters all right. She was the one as he went through a form of marriage with. That’s how his little games came to light. Young Hannah got a letter addressed to Mrs Morgan, her dad got suspicious and then the bomb went up. Alot of other women started complaining. Mind you, his wife had chucked him out years ago but they’re not divorced. She says she’ll never divorce him. Avery vindictive woman is Mrs Morgan and you can’t blame her.’

‘Can you tell me where Miss Peters lives?’

‘Work on a paper, do you?’

‘Something like that,’ said Wexford.

‘I only ask,’ said the postman, ‘because it seems hard on a feller your age, especially in this weather. Wear the old ones out first, eh?’

Wexford swallowed his humiliation as best he could and managed an unmasked grin. The postman gave him the address. ‘I daresay she’ll be at work now?’ he said.

‘Not her. The Revelationers don’t let their daughters go to work, but I don’t reckon you’ll see her. They won’t let you in.’

But they might open the door. Hannah herself might do that. What he needed now was a piece of luck, one of those near-miracles that had sometimes come his way in the past, clearing and illuminating the path he must follow. And he thought it had happened when, turning into Stockholm Street, he saw the frizzy-haired girl of the newspaper photograph come out of the corner house where the Peters family lived.

She held a letter in her hand which she thrust into the pocket of her long dark raincoat to protect it from the rain, and she paused on the step, darting quick glances about her. Timidly, she came out into the street. It was only a shabby back street where she had probably lived all her life and but for him it was deserted, but she peered about and hesitated as if she were a schoolgirl, separated from her party and lost in a foreign city. Then she walked rapidly towards a pillar box, her head down, keeping custody of her eyes like a nun.

Wexford followed her, and suddenly he felt shy himself. He had an idea, although it was without foundation, that the letter was for Morgan. She started violently when he spoke to her, gasped and put her hand up to cover her mouth.

‘Miss Peters, I’m a policeman. I’m only talking to you in the street because I was afraid I wouldn’t be admitted to your home.’

Where did they go to school, these girls? Or did the Revelationers run special schools for their children? Did they never meet outsiders? He wondered if he was the first outsider she had spoken to since she had passed through the terror of the court, an experience which must have been torture to her, enough to shake her reason. Spoken? Was she going to speak now?

She had a plain, unformed face, half-covered still by her hand. No make-up, no rings on her hand. Her body was flat under the stiff heavy coat.

‘Miss Peters . . .’ Rapidly and rather awkwardly, for she gave him no help, he told her what he wanted and why he was there, accosting her in the rain. He didn’t think she was frightened of him, but perhaps she was frightened of God. She scanned the street, her hand now a fist tapping her chin, but before she spoke to him she looked down at her feet. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘Father would turn me out if he saw me. He was going to turn me out after . . . after . . . Mother made him let me stay.’

The strangest thing in all this strangeness, Wexford thought, was that she should have wanted to stay. But perhaps it wasn’t so strange. Hatch out a wild bird, rear it in a cage, and when you set it free it will perish or be destroyed by its fellows. Easing his umbrella over her so that they were both sheltered by it, he began talking to her soothingly, apologizing, explaining how important it was for him to know. But all the time he was thinking of the world which lay outside her experience, of the girls like Louise Sampson and Verity Bate who snapped their fingers at their parents, who lived where they liked and with whom they liked, to whom a tyrannical father, wielding real power, was a fictional monster they read about in books written in the distant past. It was almost unbelievable that such opposites as they and Hannah Peters could co-exist in the same city and the same century.

Without looking up, she said, ‘I never heard of a girl called Loveday.’ She shivered. ‘She didn’t have to go to the court. What was her real name?’

Wexford shook his head, feeling paralysed by her dull slow voice, her ox-like acceptance of oppression.