Murder Being Once Done (9 page)

‘A bit thin, isn’t it?’ Wexford objected.

‘Well, his alibi for that Friday night is thin, too, sir. He
says
he was in the Psyche Club in Notting Hill – that’s a sort of drinking place, sir. God knows what else goes on there – and four villains say he was with them there from seven till eleven. But three of them have got form. You couldn’t trust them an inch. Look at him, sir. Wouldn’t you reckon he’d got something to hide?’

He was a slight fair youth who seemed younger than the twenty-one years Howard had attributed to him and whose thin schoolboy arms looked too frail to support the boxes he was carrying from the van into the shop. Wexford thought he had the air of someone who believes that if he bustles away at his job, giving the impression of a rapt involvement, he may pass unnoticed and escape the interference of authority. Whether or not this was the hope that spurred him to trot in and out so busily with his loads, his work was destined to be interrupted. As he again approached the rear of the van, determinedly keeping his eyes from wandering towards the police car, a ginger-headed, sharp-faced man came out of Sytansound, beckoned to him and called out:

‘Gregson! Here a minute!’

‘That’s Inspector Baker, sir,’ said Clements. ‘He’ll put him through the mill all right, tell him a thing or two like his father should have done years ago.’

Wexford sighed to himself, for he sensed what was coming and knew that, short of getting out of the car, he was powerless to stop it.

‘Vicious, like all the young today,’ said Clements. ‘Take these girls that have illegits, they’ve got no more idea of their responsibilities than – than rabbits.’ He brought this last word out on a note of triumphant serendipity, perhaps believing that the chief inspector with his rustic background would be familiar with the behaviour of small mammals.

‘They can’t look after them,’ he went on. ‘You should have seen our boy when he first came to us, thin, white, his nose always running. I don’t believe he’d been out in the fresh air since he was born. It isn’t fair!’ Clements’ voice rose passionately. ‘They don’t want them, they’d have abortions only they leave it too late, while a decent, clean-living woman, a religious woman, like my wife has miscarriage after miscarriage and eats her heart out for years. I’d jail the lot of them, I’d . . .’

‘Come now, Sergeant . . .’ Wexford hardly knew what to say to calm him. He sought about in his mind for consoling platitudes, but before he could utter a single one the car door had opened and Howard was introducing him to Inspector Baker.

It was apparent from the moment that they sat down in the Grand Duke that Inspector Baker was one of those men who, like certain eager philosophers and scientists, form a theory and then force the facts to fit it. Anything which disturbs the pattern, however relevant, must be rejected, while insignificant data are grossly magnified. Wexford reflected on this in silence, saying nothing, for the inspector’s conclusions had not been addressed to him. After the obligatory handshake and the mutterings of a few insincere words, Baker had done his best to exclude him from the discussion, adroitly managing to seat him at the foot of their table while he and Howard faced each other at the opposite end.

Clearly Gregson was Baker’s candidate for the Morgan murder, an assumption he based on the man’s record – a single conviction for robbery – the man’s friends, and what he called the man’s friendship with Loveday.

‘He hung around her in the shop, sir. He gave her lifts in that van of his.’

‘We know he gave her
a
lift,’ said Howard.

Baker had a harsh unpleasant voice, the bad grammar of his childhood’s cockney all vanished now, but the intonation remaining. He made everything he said sound bitter. ‘We can’t expect to find witnesses to every time they were together. They were the only young people in that shop. You can’t tell me a girl like Morgan wouldn’t have encouraged his attentions.’

Wexford looked down at his plate. He never liked to hear women referred to by their surnames without Christian name or style, not even when they were prostitutes, not even when they were criminals. Loveday had been neither. He glanced up as Howard said, ‘What about the motive?’

Baker shrugged. ‘Morgan encouraged him and then gave him the cold shoulder.’

Wexford hadn’t meant to interrupt, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘In a
cemetery
?’

The inspector acted exactly like a Victorian parent whose discourse at the luncheon table had been interrupted by a child, one of those beings who were to be seen but not heard. But he looked as if he would have preferred not to see Wexford as well. He turned on him a reproving and penetrating stare, and asked him to repeat what he had said.

Wexford did so. ‘Do people want to make love in cemeteries?’

For a moment it seemed as if Baker was going to do a Clements and say that ‘they’ would do anything anywhere. He appeared displeased by Wexford’s mention of lovemaking, but he didn’t refer to it directly. ‘No doubt you have a better suggestion,’ he said.

‘Well, I have some questions,’ Wexford said tentatively. ‘I understand that the cemetery closes at six. What was Gregson doing all the afternoon?’

Howard, who seemed distressed by Baker’s attitude, making up for it by a particularly delicate courtesy to his uncle, attending to his wants at the table and refilling his glass from the bottle of apple juice, said quickly, ‘He was with Mrs Kirby in Copeland Road until about one-thirty, then back at Sytansound. After that he went to a house in Monmouth Street – that’s near Vale Park, Reg – and then he had a long repair job in Queen’s Lane that took him until five-thirty, after which he went home to his parents’ house in Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘Then I don’t quite see . . .’

Baker had been crumbling a roll of bread into pellets with the air of a man preoccupied by his own thoughts. He raised his head and said in a way that is usually described as patient but in fact is a scarcely disguised exasperation, ‘That the cemetery closes at six doesn’t mean that no one can get in or out. There are breaches in the walls, quite a bad one at the end of Lammas Road, and vandals are always making them worse. The whole damned place ought to be ploughed up and built on.’ Having given vent to his statement, utterly in opposition to Stephen Dearborn’s views, he sipped his gin and gave a little cough. ‘But that’s by the way. You must admit, Mr Wexford, that you don’t know this district like we do, and a morning’s sightseeing isn’t going to teach it to you.’

‘Come, Michael,’ Howard said uneasily. ‘Mr Wexford’s anxious to learn. That’s why he asked.’

Wexford was distressed to hear that his new acquaintance – his antagonist rather – shared Burden’s Christian name. It reminded him bitterly how different his own inspector’s response would have been. But he said nothing. Baker hardly seemed to have noticed Howard’s mild reproof beyond giving a faint shrug. ‘Gregson could have got in and out of the cemetery,’ he said, ‘as easily as you can swallow whatever that stuff is in your glass there.’

Wexford took a sip of the ‘stuff’ and tried again, determined not to let Howard see him show signs of offence. ‘Have you a medical report yet?’

‘We’ll come to that in a minute. Gregson met her in Queen’s Lane at half past five and they went to a secluded spot in the cemetery. She became frightened, screamed perhaps, and he strangled her to silence her.’

Why hadn’t they gone to her room? Wexford asked himself. Why not to her room in that house where no questions were asked? And way had she taken the afternoon off if she didn’t intend to meet Gregson until after work? These were questions he might ask Howard when they were alone together but not now. He saw that Baker was a man whose idea of a discussion was that he should be invited to state his views while the other so-called participants admired, agreed and encouraged him. Having given his own limited reconstruction of the case, he had turned to Howard once more and was attempting to discuss with him in an almost inaudible tone the findings of the medical report.

But Howard was determined not to exclude his uncle. Aware that Wexford had a small reputation as an investigator into quirks of character, he pressed Wexford to tell them about his morning’s work.

‘She was a very innocent girl,’ Wexford began. He felt he was on safe ground here, for Baker could hardly claim to be as conversant with the personality of the dead girl as he was with the geography of Kenbourne Vale. ‘She was very shy,’ he said, ‘afraid to go to parties, and very likely she’d only once in her life been into a public house.’ He was pleased to see a smile of what might have been approval on Baker’s face. It encouraged him to be bolder, to ask a question which might seem to reflect on the inspector’s theory. ‘Would a girl like that lead a man on, go alone with a comparative stranger into a lonely place? She’d be too frightened.’

Baker went on smiling tightly.

‘There was another point that struck me . . .’

‘Let’s have it, Reg. It may be helpful.’

‘Tuesday was February the 29th. I’ve been wondering if he put her in the Montfort vault because he knew it was only visited on the last Tuesday of the month and that Tuesday, he thought, had already gone by.’

Baker looked incredulous, but Howard’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean he
forgot
that this year, Leap Year, there was an extra Tuesday in the month?’

‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? I don’t think a boy like Gregson would know about the vault and the trust. I was thinking that the man who killed her did know and that he might have put her in there because Loveday knew something he didn’t want revealed before a few weeks had passed by.’

‘Interesting,’ said Howard. ‘How does that strike you, Michael?’

The man who was not Burden, who shared with Burden only a Christian name and a certain sharp-featured fairness, raised his eyebrows and drawled, ‘To your – er, uncle’s other point, sir?’ It was clever the hesitation he managed before saying ‘uncle’s’, just sufficiently emphasizing the nepotism. But he had gone a little too far. His remark brought a frown to Howard’s usually gentle face and set him tapping his fingers against his wineglass. And Baker understood that he was admonished. He shrugged, smiled and spoke with cool courtesy.

‘You called Morgan innocent and shy, Mr Wexford, but I’m sure you know how deceptive appearances can be. Post-mortem findings, on the other hand, aren’t deceptive. Would it surprise you to hear that, according to the medical report, she gave birth to a child during the past year?’

Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in.

After Howard’s kindness and the cheerful, matter-off act welcome he had received from other members of Howard’s force, Wexford felt Baker’s antagonism almost painfully. He was curiously disheartened. His first day here – his first day anywhere, come to that – as a private investigator had begun so promisingly. Baker’s intervention had been like a dark cloud putting out the sun.

He knew that if he had been fit and quite well, if his confidence hadn’t been shaken by his tough old body suddenly betraying him, he would have taken this small reverse in his stride. He wasn’t, after all, a child to be put off playing his favourite game because another stronger and healthier child had come along and tried to show him how the bricks ought to be stacked. But now writhing himself he felt almost childlike, his bold adult identity once more disturbed. And when he looked back on his morning’s work, it seemed amateurish. The appalling thought that Howard had sent him off on a little hunt of his own simply to occupy him and keep him happy couldn’t be resisted.

Nor was he much comforted by the private office which Howard had set aside for his use and to which Detective Constable Dinehart had just conducted him. Like all the rooms Wexford had seen in this police station, it was dark, gloomy and with an enormously high ceiling. This one had a bit of greyish carpet, chairs covered in slippery brown leather, and the view from the window was a full frontal one of Kenbourne gasworks. He couldn’t help thinking nostalgically of his own office in Kingsmarkham which was bright and modern, and, looking at the pitch pine, pitted monstrosity in front of him, of his beloved rosewood desk, damson-red and always laden with his own particular clutter.

Sitting down, he asked himself sharply what was the matter with him. Howard’s house was too grand for him, this place too shabby. What did he expect? That London would be a Utopian Kingsmarkham and that all these London coppers were going to roll out the red carpet for him?

He stared at the gasometer, wondering how he was going to pass the afternoon. ‘Poke about all you like,’ Howard had said, but where was he to poke about and how much authority had he got? He was considering whether it would be pushing or against protocol for him to seek Howard out when his nephew tapped on the door and came in.

Howard looked tired. His was a face which easily showed wear and tear. The grey eyes had lost their brightness and the skin under them was puffy.

‘How d’you like your office?’

‘It’s fine, thanks.’

‘Horrible outlook, I’m afraid, but it’s either that or the brewery or the bus station. I want to apologize for Baker.’

‘Come off it, Howard,’ said Wexford.

‘No. His treatment of you was rude but not indefensible. One has to make allowances for Baker. He’s been under a good deal of strain lately. He married a girl half his age. She became pregnant, which made him very happy until she told him the child was another man’s and she was leaving him for that other man. Since then he’s lost his confidence, distrusts people and is chronically afraid of not being up to the job.’

‘I see. It’s a nasty story.’

They were both silent for a moment. Wexford found himself hoping desperately that Howard wouldn’t go away again, leaving him alone with the gasworks and his depressing thoughts. To keep him there a little longer, he said, ‘About this child of Loveday Morgan’s . . .’