Murder Being Once Done (8 page)

‘She had no friends, no callers?’ Wexford asked.

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Teal eyed the door narrowly, then flung it open. ‘Come out of there, child! There’s no need to eavesdrop.’

‘I wasn’t eavesdropping, Ivan.’ In the interim the boy had dressed himself in a scarlet sweater and velvet trousers. He looked pretty and he smelt of toilet water. ‘I
do
live here,’ he said sulkily. ‘You shouldn’t shut me up.’

‘Perhaps Mr Chell can help us.’ Wexford did his best not to laugh.

‘As a matter of fact, maybe I can.’ Chell turned a coquettish shoulder in Teal’s direction and gave the chief inspector a winning smile. ‘I saw a girl looking for Loveday.’

‘When was that, Mr Chell?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Not very long ago. She was young. She came in a car, a red Mini. I was going out and this girl was standing on the step, looking at the bells. She said she’d rung at Flat Eight but the young lady seemed to be out. Funny thing for one girl to say about another, wasn’t it? The young lady? Then Loveday came along the street and said hallo to her and took her upstairs with her.’

Teal looked piqued. He seemed put out because Chell had told Wexford so much and he had told him so little. ‘Well, describe this girl, child,’ he said pettishly. ‘Describe her. You see, Mr Wexford, that here we have a close observer who looks quite through the deeds of men.’

Wexford ignored him. ‘What was she like?’

‘Not exactly “with it”, if you know what I mean.’ The boy giggled. ‘She’d got short hair and she was wearing a sort of dark blue coat. Oh, and
gloves
,’ he added as if these last were part of some almost unheard-of tribal paraphernalia.

‘A full and detailed portrait,’ sneered Teal. ‘Never mind what colour her eyes were or if she were five feet or six feet tall. She wore
gloves
. Now all you ave to do is find a conventional young lady who wears gloves and there’s your murderer. Hey presto! Run along, now, back to your mirror. Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever!’

It wasn’t until Wexford was out in the street that he realized he had left
Utopia
lying on Teal’s table. Let it stay there. He didn’t relish the thought of climbing all those stairs again to fetch it and perhaps intruding into the monumental row he guessed had broken out between the two men. Instead, he walked to the limit of the cul-de-sac where two stumpy stone posts sprouted out of the pavement and eyed the strange ugly church.

Like Peggy Pope’s clothes, every item which went to make up this unprepossessing whole seemed chosen with a deliberate eye to the hideous. What manner of man, or group of men, he asked himself, had designed this building and seen it as fit for the worship of their God? It was hard to say when it had been built. There was no trace of the Classical or the Gothic in its architecture, no analogy with any familiar style of construction. It was squat, shabby and mean. Perhaps in some seamy depths at its rear there were windows, but here at the front there was only a single circle of red glass not much bigger than a bicycle wheel, set under a rounded gable of port-coloured brick. Scattered over the whole façade was a noughts and crosses pattern of black and ochre bricks among the red.

The door was small and such as might have been attached to a garden shed. Wexford tried it but it was locked. He stooped down to read the granite tablet by this door:
Temple of the Revelations. The Elect shall be Saved.

The hand which descended with a sharp blow on his shoulder made him wheel round.

‘Go away,’ said the bearded man in black. ‘No trespassers here.’

‘Kindly take your hand off my coat,’ Wexford snapped.

Perhaps unused to any kind of challenge, the man did as he was told. He glared at Wexford, his eyes pale and fanatical. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘That doesn’t give you the right to assault me. I know you. You’re the minister of this lot.’

‘The Shepherd. What do you want?’

‘I’m a police officer investigating the murder of Miss Loveday Morgan.’

The Shepherd thrust his hands inside his black cloak. ‘Murder? I know nothing of murder. We don’t read newspapers. We keep ourselves apart.’

‘Very Christian, I’m sure,’ said Wexford. ‘This girl came to your church. You knew her.’

‘No.’ The Shepherd shook his head vehemently. He looked angry and affronted. ‘I have been away ill and someone else was in charge of my flock. Maybe she slipped in past him. Maybe, in his ignorance, he took her for one of the five hundred.’

‘The five hundred?’

‘Such is our number, the number of the elect on the face of the Earth. We make no converts. To be one of the Children you must be born to parents who are both Children, and thus the number swells and with death declines. Five hundred,’ he said adding less loftily, ‘give or take a little.’ Gathering the heavy dull folds of his robe around him, he muttered, ‘I have work to do. Good day to you,’ and marched off towards Queen’s Lane.

Wexford made his way to the northern gate of the cemetery. The ground at this end was devoted to Catholic graves. A funeral had evidently taken place on the previous day and the flowers brought by mourners were wilting in the March wind. He took an unfamiliar path which led him between tombs whose occupants had been of the Greek Orthodox faith, and he noted an epitaph on a Russian princess. Her name and patronymic reminded him of Tolstoy’s novels with their lists of
dramatis personae
, and he was trying to decipher the Cyrillic script when a shadow fell across the tomb and a voice said:

‘Tatiana Alexandrovna Kratov.’

For the second time that day he had been surprised while reading an inscription. Who was it now? Another churlish priest, bent on correcting him and reproving his ignorance? This time he turned round slowly to meet the eyes of a big man in a sheepskin jacket who stood, smiling cheerfully at him, his hands in his pockets.

‘Do you know who she was?’ Wexford asked, ‘and how she came to be buried here?’

The man nodded. ‘There’s not much I don’t know about this cemetery,’ he said, ‘or Kenbourne itself, for that matter.’ A kind of boyish enthusiasm took the arrogance from his next words. ‘I’m an expert on Kenbourne Vale, a walking mine of information.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘There are unwritten history and geography books in here.’

‘Then you must be . . .’ What was the name Howard had given him? ‘You’re Not bourne Properties,’ he said absurdly.

‘The chairman.’ Wexford’s hand was taken in a strong grip. ‘Stephen Dearborn. How do you do?’

He thinketh himself so wise that he will not allow another man’s counsel.

They had emerged into a windswept clearing, and now that he examined him more closely, Wexfordsaw that his new acquaintance was a man of substance. Dearborn’s suit had come from a price range to which Wexford could never aspire, his shoes looked handmade, and the strap of his watch was a broad band of gold links.

‘You’re a stranger here, are you?’ Dearborn asked him.

‘I’m on holiday.’

‘And you thought you’d like to visit the scene of a recent crime?’

Dearborn’s voice was still friendly and pleasant, but Wexford thought he detected in it that note of distaste that was sometimes present in his own when he spoke to ghoulish sightseers. ‘I know about the murder, of course,’ he said, ‘but the cemetery is fascinating enough in itself.’

‘You wouldn’t agree with those people who are in favour of deconsecrating the place and using it for building land?’

‘I didn’t know there was any such move on foot.’ Wexford saw that now the other man was frowning. ‘You’re opposed to building?’ he asked. ‘To renovating the place?’

‘Not at all,’ Dearborn said energetically. ‘I’ve been largely responsible for improving Kenbourne Vale. I don’t know how much of the district you’ve seen, but the conversions in Copeland Square, for instance, they’re my work. And the old Montfort house. My company’s aim is to retrieve as much as possible of the Georgian and early Victorian from the wanton demolition that goes on. What I don’t want to see is every place of interest like this cemetery levelled to make . . .’ He spread out his arms and went on more hotly, ‘. . . characterless concrete jungles!’

‘You live in Kenbourne Vale?’ Wexford asked as together they followed the path to St Peter’s and the main gates.

‘I was born here. I love every inch of the place, but I live in Chelsea. Laysbrook Place. Kenbourne Vale wouldn’t suit my wife. It will one day when I’ve done with it. I want to make this the new Hampstead, the successor to fashionable Chelsea. And I can, I can!’ Again Dearborn swept out an arm, striking an ilex branch and sending dust-filled raindrops flying. ‘I want to show people what’s really here, hidden under the muck of a century, the beautiful façades, the grand squares. I’d show you over the cemetery now, only I don’t suppose you’ve got the time and – well, it rather . . . I don’t feel . . .’

‘The murder,’ said Wexford intuitively, ‘has temporarily spoiled it for you?’

‘In a way, yes. Yes, it has.’ He gave Wexford a look of approval. ‘Clever of you to guess that. You see, the odd thing is that that very girl came to me for a job. I interviewed her myself. Putting her body in that tomb seemed a sort of desecration to me.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s not talk about it. What d’you think of this building, now?’ he went on, pointing towards the sandstone dome. ‘Eighteen-fifty-five and not a trace of the Gothic, but by then they had lost the art of emulating the Classical and were experimenting with Byzantine. Look at the length of those columns . . .’ Laying a large hand on Wexford’s arm, he plunged into a lecture on architectural styles, laced with obscure terms and words which to Wexford were almost meaningless. His listener’s faint bewilderment communicated itself to him and he stopped suddenly, saying, ‘I’m boring you.’

‘No, you’re not. It’s just that I’m afraid I’m rather ignorant. I find the district fascinating.’

‘Do you?’ The chairman of Notbourne Properties was evidently unused to an appreciative audience. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said eagerly. ‘Why don’t you drop round and see us one night? Laysbrook House. I could show you maps of this place as it was a hundred and fifty years ago. I’ve got deeds of some of these old houses that would really interest you. What do you think?’

‘I’d like that very much.’

‘Let’s see. It’s Thursday now. Why not Saturday night? Come about half-past eight and we’ll have a drink and go over the maps together. Now, can I give you a lift anywhere?’

But Wexford refused this invitation. The man had been kind and expansive to him. To confess now that he was a policeman, bound for Kenbourne Vale police station, might make Dearborn see him in the guise of a spy.

Instead of returning to the station, however, he turned eastwards along Lammas Grove in search of Sytansound. The police car parked outside told him where it was before he could read the shop sign. Sergeant Clements was at the wheel. He welcomed the chief inspector with a cheery, ‘Had your lunch yet, sir?’

‘I thought I might try your canteen,’ Wexford said, getting in beside him. ‘Would you recommend it?’

‘I usually pop home if I can. I only live round the corner. I like to see the boy when I get the chance. He’s in bed by the time I get home at night.’

‘Your son?’

Clements didn’t reply at once. He was watching a boy unload something from a Sytansound van, but it seemed to Wexford that this was a simulated preoccupation, and he repeated his question. The sergeant turned back to face him. The strong colour in his cheeks had deepened to crimson and he cleared his throat.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘we’re adopting him. We’ve got him on three months probation, but the mother’s signed the consent and we’re due to get the order next week, a week tomorrow.’ He slid his hands slowly around the wheel. ‘If the mother changed her mind now I reckon it’d about kill my wife.’

Embarrassment and uncertainty had been transferred from one to the other, but there was nothing that Wexford could do about it now. ‘Surely, if she’s consented . . . ?’

‘Well, sir, yes. That’s what I keep telling my wife. We’re ninety-nine per cent there. It’s all been done through the proper channels, but natural mothers have been known to change their minds at the last minute and the court will always go with the mother even if she’s given her consent in writing.’

‘Do you know the mother?’

‘No, sir. And she doesn’t know us. We’re just a serial number to her. It’s done through what’s called a guardian
ad litem
, she’s a probation officer really. When the time comes the wife and I will go along to the court and the wife’ll sit there with the boy on her lap – nice touch that, isn’t it? – and the order’ll be made and then – then he’ll be ours for ever. Just as if he was our own.’ Clements’ voice grew thick and his lips trembled. ‘But you can’t help having just that one per cent chance in mind that something may go wrong.’

Wexford was beginning to feel sorry that he had ever opened the subject. The steering wheel which Clements’ hands had gripped was wet with sweat and he could see a pulse drumming in his left temple. When he had spoken those last words he had looked near to actual tears.

‘I take it Mr Fortune’s inside the shop?’ he said in an effort to change the subject. ‘Who’s the boy with the van?’

‘That’s Brian Gregson, sir. You’ve heard of him, I daresay. The one with the good friends all burning to give him an alibi.’ Clements was calmer now as his attention was diverted from his personal problems back to the case. ‘He’s one of Sytansound’s engineers, the only young unmarried one.’

Wexford remembered now that Howard had mentioned Gregson, but only in passing and not by name. ‘What’s this about an alibi?’ he asked. ‘And why should he need one?’

‘He’s just about the only man who ever associated with Loveday Morgan so-called. Tripper – that’s the cemetery block – saw him giving her a lift home one night in his van. And one of the reps says Gregson used to chat her up in the shop sometimes.’