Guilty Thing Surprised (3 page)

‘You can do the front door, John,’ he said, knowing that he was conferring a special favour. All painters, particularly amateurs, long for the moment when the top coat, an excitingly contrasting colour, is due to be applied to the front door.

‘Blimey, can I?’ said John.

‘Don’t say blimey. It means God blind me, and you know I don’t like to hear you swear.’

John, who normally would have argued the point, trotted off to fetch from the garage a virgin pot of flamingo-pink paint. There he encountered his sister Pat, feeding lime leaves to a hawk-moth caterpillar imprisoned in a shoe box. He was about to say something calculated to aggravate, something on the lines of the folly of encouraging garden pests, when his mother called to him from the back door.

‘John, tell Daddy he’s wanted on the phone, will you?’

‘Who wants him?’

Mrs Burden said in a voice of resigned despair, ‘Can’t you guess?’

John guessed. Carrying the tin of paint, he returned to his father, who had just put the first stroke of top coat on the picture-window frame.

‘Cop shop on the phone for you,’ he said.

Burden never swore, in front of his children or in their absence. Carefully he placed his brush in a jam jar of synthetic turps and entered the house.

His bungalow had seldom looked so attractive to him as it did this morning. Poole pottery vases filled with red dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff, very choice) graced the hall and living room; the new curtains were up; from the kitchen came the rich aroma of a steak-and-kidney pudding boiling for lunch. Burden sighed, then lifted the spotless polished receiver of the white telephone.

The voice of Detective Chief Inspector Wexford said nastily, ‘You took your bloody time.’

‘Sorry. I was painting.’

‘Hard cheese, Picasso. You’ll have to complete the masterpiece some other time. Duty calls.’

Burden knew better than to say it was his day off. ‘What’s up, sir?’

‘Do you know a Mrs Elizabeth Nightingale?’

‘By sight. Everyone knows her. Husband’s a Lloyd’s underwriter. Pots of money. What’s she done?’

‘Got herself murdered, that’s what she’s done.’

Burden broke his rule. ‘Good God!’ he said.

‘I’m at Myfleet Manor. Get over here as soon as you can, Mike.’

‘And I’ve made this great enormous pudding,’ said Jean Burden, ‘Try and get back for lunch.’

‘Not a hope.’ Burden changed his clothes, grabbed his car key. John was sitting on the garden wall, waiting for starter’s orders. ‘Better leave the front door for a day or two, John. Sorry about that.’

‘I’d be O.K. on my own.’

‘Don’t argue, there’s a good lad.’ He fished in his pocket for a half-crown. ‘You were saying something about a new transistor battery … Get yourself some sweets too.’ He got into the car. ‘Here, John—isn’t a Mr Villiers that’s brother to Mrs Nightingale a teacher at your school?’

‘Old Roman Villa?’ said John. ‘I don’t know whose brother he is. He teaches Latin and Greek. What d’you want to know for?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Burden.

It was a red-brick house, built during the reign of Queen Anne, and it had an air of crouching close above the road, its windows Argus eyes that gazed down over the village, its footings embowered in thick green shrubs which rustled in the wind. Burden parked his car behind the bigger official one Wexford had arrived in, pushed open the wyvern gates and mounted
the steps to the front door. Detective Sergeant Martin opened it before he had a chance to ring the bell.

‘Chief Inspector’s in the—er, what they call the morning room, sir.’

The house was full of people and yet a thick breathless hush seemed to hang over it, the silence of the incredible, the silence of shock. Burden tapped on the morning-room door and went in.

It was a small elegant room, its panelling painted in cream and blue. A broad shelf followed the line of the picture rail on which stood floral plates in blue Delft. There were watercolours too, delicate pictures of pastoral scenes—Myfleet Mill, Forby Church, the river bridge at Flagford.

Squeezed into a small chair upholstered in cream satin, Wexford looked even more mountainous than usual. His heavy face was grave but his eyes were alert and watchful, fixed on the woman who sat on the opposite side of the fireplace. Glancing at the neat white hair, the homely red face furrowed by tears and the trim blue nylon overall, Burden summed her up as a faithful servant, and old and devoted retainer.

‘Come in,’ said Wexford. ‘Sit down. This is Mrs Cantrip. She has kept house for Mr and Mrs Nightingale since they were married sixteen years ago.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, putting a handkerchief up to her swollen eyes. ‘And a lovelier person than Mrs Nightingale you couldn’t wish to meet. Good as gold she was and the best I ever worked for. I often used to think, though it don’t sound respectful, pity it’s me and not her who might be wanting a reference one of these days. I could have painted it in glowing colours and that’s a fact.’

Burden sat down gingerly on another satin chair. All the furnishings were spotless and exquisite from
the gleaming china to the lady’s firescreens, painted oval discs on long stems.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you must think of us, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, misinterpreting his expression. ‘The place in the state it is, but nothing’s been done this morning. Me and Catcher, we haven’t felt up to lifting a duster. When they told me the news I felt so bad I don’t know why I didn’t pass clean out.’ She turned to Wexford and sniffed back her tears. ‘Well, sir, you said as you wanted to see everyone in the house, so I mustn’t keep you now the other gentleman’s come.’ Counting on work-worn fingers, she said, ‘There’s old Will Palmer, him that found her poor dead body, and Sean Lovell and Catcher …’

‘Who’s Catcher?’

‘The foreign girl, what they call an
au pair
, sir. You’ll find her up in her room on the top floor. And then there’s poor Mr Nightingale himself, locked in his study and won’t open the door to no one.’

‘I will see Mr Palmer first,’ said Wexford.

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Burden. The sepulchral silence of the place made him feel that whispering was in order.

‘Since seven-thirty,’ said Wexford, keeping his own voice low as they followed Mrs Cantrip down a long passage and into the garden via the kitchen. ‘Thank you, Mrs Cantrip. I think I can see Mr Palmer coming up to meet us.’

The grounds were being searched by men in uniform and men in plain clothes. Will Palmer, emerging from behind a macrocarpa hedge, stopped in the middle of the lawn, looking surly, as Constable Gates grubbed among the flower-pots in one of the greenhouses, and Constable Bryant, his shirt-sleeves
rolled up, thrust his arms into the green depths of the lily pond.

‘The body has been photographed and removed,’ said Wexford. ‘Someone hit her on the head. God knows what with. They’re looking for the weapon now. There was a hell of a lot of blood.’ He raised his voice. ‘Mr Palmer! Will you come over here, please?’

He was a tall lean old man with hard fleshless features that the wind and weather had polished to the tint of rosewood. Dark red, too, was the bald spot on his crown, a daisy centre and white petals.

‘I reckoned you’d want a word with me,’ he said with lugubrious importance. ‘What’s all this poking about in my garden in aid of?’

‘We are searching,’ said Wexford frankly, ‘for the weapon that killed Mrs Nightingale.’

‘Don’t reckon you’ll find it among my fuchsias.’

‘That remains to be seen.’ Wexford pointed in the direction of a thin column of smoke. ‘How long has that bonfire been burning?’

‘Since yesterday afternoon, governor.’

‘I see. Where can we go and talk, Mr Palmer? How about the kitchen, or will Mrs Cantrip be there?’

‘Like enough she will, governor, and she’s got mighty long ears when she wants. We could go in the Italian garden, being as it’s sheltered from the wind.’

They sat down on a long seat of metal scrollwork beside a formal pool whose waters were still muddy from the investigations of its bottom by Wexford’s men. At the far end of this pool was an elaborate baroque structure with a niche in which stood a bronze boy pouring water from a flagon into a bowl. The whole garden measured perhaps thirty feet by twenty and it was surrounded by cypress trees which shivered in the wind.

‘Well, it was like this,’ said Palmer. ‘That old wind come up in the night, making such a racket it was, it woke me up. Near enough about four-thirty. First thing I thought of was Mr Nightingale’s chrysanths, them as we’re getting ready for the flower show. They was standing out in the open in their pots, see, and I thought, That wind’ll have them over, sure as Fate. So I got on my bike and I come up here, quick as I could.’

‘What time did you get here, Mr Palmer?’

‘ ’Bout five.’ Palmer spoke slowly and with relish. It was evident he was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Them chrysanths was all standing up well to the wind but I put them in the greenhouse to be on the safe side. Then I saw something was up. I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of them french windows was wide open. Burglars, I thought. They’ve had burglars. I didn’t rightly know what to do for the best. Maybe it’s just that old wind, I thought, and they’ve forgot to lock up. Still, I reckoned it was my duty to wake Mr Nightingale, so in I went and up the stairs and banged and banged on his bedroom door. Must be a real heavy sleeper, I thought to myself, and I took the liberty of going in to have a look.’

‘He was there?’

‘No, he weren’t. His bed was empty. “Mr Nightingale,” I said, “are you there, sir?” thinking he might be in his bathroom, the door being shut …’

‘But you didn’t look?’ Wexford interrupted as he paused for breath.

‘I hope I know my place, sir. Besides …’ Palmer looked down at his darned and shiny trouser knees. ‘Besides, for all they slept separate like, they was married and …’

‘You thought quite reasonably that he might have spent the night in Mrs Nightingale’s room?’

‘Well, governor, I did at that. I always have said the gentry have their funny ways as the likes of us don’t understand.’ Giving no sign of embarrassment at his perhaps inadvertent inclusion of Wexford and Burden among the hoi-polloi, Palmer went on, ‘So, not getting no answer from Mr Nightingale, I took it upon myself to knock on Madam’s door. Nobody come and I was beginning to get the wind up, I can tell you. A proper state I was in. Nothing else would have got me barging into a lady’s bedroom, and me just a servant like and in me working things. Well, she wasn’t there either and the bed not touched.’

‘You didn’t think of calling the
au pair
girl?’

‘Never crossed my mind, governor. What could that Catcher do I couldn’t do myself? I went round the grounds then and found the wall gate open. Best get on the phone to the police yourself, Will, I thought, but when I got back to the house Mr Nightingale was up and about. Been having a bath, he said, and when he’d dried himself and come out I was gone.’

‘What happened next?’ asked Burden.

Palmer scratched his head. ‘Mr Nightingale said Madam must have met with an accident while she was out in the grounds, but I said I’d searched the grounds. Then,’ he said, building up suspense like an experienced narrator, ‘I thought of that open gate and that dark old forest and my heart turned over. “I reckon she went into the forest and come over bad,” I said to poor Mr Nightingale, so we went into the forest, our hearts in our mouths like, and I went first and then I found her. Lying face down she was with blood all over her lovely golden hair. But you saw her, governor. You know.’

‘Thank you, Mr Palmer. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘I always try to do my duty, sir. Mr Nightingale’s
been real good to me and Madam too. There’s some I could name as would take advantage, but not me. I reckon I belong to what they call the old school.’

Wexford glanced up and saw through the cypresses a figure leaning on a spade. ‘Did Sean What’s-his-name take advantage?’ he asked softly.

‘Lovell, governor, Sean Lovell. Well now, he did, in a manner of speaking. Folks don’t know their place like what they did when I was young, and that Lovell—common as dirt he is. His mother’s no better than she should be and I don’t reckon he never had no father. Turn you up, it would, to see the inside of their cottage. But he fancied himself Madam’s equal, if you’ve ever heard the like. Elizabeth this and Elizabeth that, he says to me behind her back. Don’t you let me hear you refer to Madam like that, I said, snubbing him proper.’

Burden said impatiently, ‘How did he take advantage?’

‘Fancies himself singing in one of them pop groups, he does. Madam was soft, you see, and she’d smile and listen ever so patient when he’d start his singing. Sang to her, he did …’ Palmer mouthed disgustedly, showing foul broken teeth. ‘When she’d got a window open he’d come up underneath and sing one of them rubbishy songs he’d got off the telly. Familiar, you wouldn’t believe! I come on him one day standing with Madam down by the pond here, nattering to her nineteen to the dozen and his dirty paw on her arm. I could tell Madam didn’t like it. She jumped proper and went all red when I shouted at him. “A diabolical liberty,” I said to him when we was alone. “Elizabeth and me, we understand each other,” he says. The nerve of it!’ Palmer’s old bones cracked as he got to his feet and scowled in Lovell’s direction. ‘All I can
say is,’ he said, ‘I hope I’m gone before all this equality gets any worse than what it is.’

Skilful conversion and the use of room dividers had transformed the largest attic into an open-plan flat for the
au pair
girl. Sleek shelves of polished beech on which stood books and house plants divided the sitting room from the sleeping area. All the furniture was modern. Vermilion tweed covered the sofa and the two armchairs; the carpet was a sour smart green; the curtains red corded velvet.

‘Speak good English, do you, Miss Doorn?’ Wexford asked as she admitted them.

‘Oh, no, I am very bad,’ said the Dutch girl, giggling. ‘Everybody tell me I am very very bad.’ She smiled without shame.

She belonged, Wexford thought admiringly, to the classic Dutch type which, photographed in clogs and peasant dress among windmills and tulips, advertises the attractions of Holland on holiday posters. Her hair was pale gold and long, her eyes a bright frank blue and her skin as dazzling as any ivory tulip in the Keukenhof Gardens. When she laughed, and she seemed to be always laughing, her face lit up and glowed. She looked, Wexford thought, about twenty.