Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (7 page)

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the redemption of the gardens of his home, Tancred House, Kingsmarkham, and had begun the planting of the famous woods.

Burden read the rest, put the light out, lay looking into the dark, thinking of what he had read. Desmond Flory had been killed in France in 1944, eight months before his daughter Naomi was born. Two years later Davina Flory began her travels in Europe and the Middle East, re-marrying in 1951. He had forgotten the rest of it, the new husband's name, the titles of all the works.

None of this would matter. That Davina Flory had been who she was would turn out to be no more important than if she had been what Burden called 'an ordinary person'. It was possible that the men who had killed her had no idea of her identity. A good many of the kind of people Burden came across in his work were, in any case, unable to read. To the gunman or gunmen at Tancred House she had been only a woman who possessed jewellery and lived in an isolated place. She and her husband and daughter and granddaughter were vulnerable and unprotected and that was enough for them.

* * *

The first thing Wexford saw when he woke up was the phone. Usually the first thing he saw was the little black Marks and Spencer alarm clock, the arch-shaped clock that was either braying away or about to go off. He couldn't remember

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the phone number of Stowerton Royal Infirmary. WPG Mountjoy would have phoned if anything had happened.

In the post, on the doormat, was a card from Sheila. It had been posted in Venice four days before, while she was there with that man. The picture was of a gloomy baroque interior, a pulpit and drapery over it, marble probably but cunningly contrived to look like cloth. Sheila had written, 'We have just been to see the Gesuiti, which is Gus's favourite joke-church in all the world and not to be confused, he says, with the Gesuati. Stone Wilton is a bit cold on the feet and it is freezing here. Much love, S.'

He would make her as pretentious as himself. Wexford wondered what on earth the card meant. What was a joke-church, and come to that what was Stone Wilton? It sounded like a village in the Cotswolds.

The Independent on Sunday review section in his pocket, he drove himself to work. The removal of furnishings and equipment had already begun for the setting up of an incident room at Tancred House. The investigation would be conducted from there. DC Hinde told him as he came in that a Kingsmarkham systems manufacturer on the industrial estate was offering them, free of charge as a gesture of good will, computers, word processors with laser printers, printer ancillaries, workstations, software and faxes.

"The managing director's chairman of the local Tories," Hinde said. "Chap called Pagett, Graham Pagett. He's been on the blower.

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He says this is his way of implementing the Government's policy that fighting crime is up to the private individual."

Wexford grunted.

"We can do with that kind of support, sir."

"Yes, it's very good of him," Wexford said absently. He wouldn't go up there yet but waste no time, take Barry Vine with him and find the woman called Bib.

It had to be straightforward, this business. It had to be murder for robbery or murder in the course of robbery. Two villains in a stolen car after Davina Flory's jewellery. Maybe they'd been reading the Independent on Sunday, except that this newspaper hadn't mentioned jewellery other than Win Carver's comment that Davina wore a wedding ring, and they'd be more likely anyway to read the People. If they could read. Two villains certainly, but not strangers to the place. One who knew all about it, one who didn't, his mate, his pal, met perhaps in prison ...

Someone connected with those servants, the Harrisons? With this Bib? She lived at Pomfret Monachorum, which probably meant she had gone home by the by-road. Wexford fancied the by-road as an exit for the gunman and his companion. That was their most likely way out, especially as one of them must have known the 1J>lace. He could almost hear one saying to the other that this was the way to avoid the Plod

Coming in.

f?"

i?; * * *

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The forest separated Pomfret Monachorum from Tancred and Kingsmarkham and almost from the rest of the world. Behind it the road ran to Cheriton and to Pomfret. The ruined walls of an abbey still stood, the church was pretty outside, wrecked inside by Henry VIII and later Cromwell, and the rest of the place consisted of the vicarage, a cluster of cottages and a small council estate. Out on the Pomfret road was a row of three shingle-and-slate cottages.

It was in one of these that Bib lived, though neither Wexford nor Vine knew which one. All the Harrisons and Gabbitas knew was that it was in the row called Edith Cottages.

A plaque bearing this name and the date 1882 was embedded in the shingles above the upper windows of the middle one. All the cottages needed painting, none looked prosperous. Each one had a television aerial on its roof and the one on the left a dish sticking out from the side of a bedroom window. A bicycle leant up against the wall by the front door of the cottage on the right and a Ford Transit van was parked half on the grass verge outside its gate. A wheelie-bin stood in the garden of the middle cottage, on a piece of concrete with a manhole cover in it. There were daffodils in bloom in this garden but no flowers in either of the others, and the one with the bicycle was overgrown with weeds.

Because Brenda Harrison had told him Bib rode a bicycle, Wexford decided to try the house on the right. A young man came to the door. He was rather tall but very slight, dressed in blue jeans and an American college sweatshirt

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so worn and washed and faded that only the U of University and a capital S and T were discernible on the greyish background. His was a girlish face, the face of a pretty tomboy. The youths who played heroines in sixteenth-century drama must have looked like him.

He said, 'Hi', but in a dazed way and rather slowly. Seeming considerably taken aback, he looked past Wexford at the car outside, then back warily at his face.

"Kingsmarkham CID. We're looking for someone called Bib. Does she live here?"

He was studying Wexford's warrant card with great interest. Or even anxiety. A lazy grin transformed his face, suddenly making him appear more masculine. He shook back the long lock of black hair that fell over his forehead.

"Bib? No. No, she doesn't. Next door. The one in the middle." He hesitated, said, "Is this about the Davina Flory killings?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Breakfast TV," he said, and added, as if Wexford was likely to be interested, "We studied one of her books at college. I minored in English Literature."

"I see. Well, thank you very much, sir." Kingsmarkham Police called everyone 'sir' or cmadam' or by their name and style until they were actually charged. It was for politeness's sake and one of Wexford's rules. "We won't trouble you any further," he said.

If the young American had the look of a girl cross-dressing, Bib might have been a man, so few concessions had she or nature made to her

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gender. Her age was equally an enigma. She might have been thirty-five or fifty-five. Her dark hair was cropped short, her face was reddish and shiny as if scrubbed with soap, her fingernails square cut. In one ear lobe she wore a small gold ring.

When Vine had explained what they had come for, she nodded and said, "I saw it on telly. Couldn't believe it." Her voice was gruff, flat, curiously expressionless.

"May we come in?"

In her estimation the question was no mere formality. She seemed to be considering it from several possible angles before giving a slow nod.

Her bicycle she kept in the hall, resting against a wall papered in sweet peas faded to beige. The living room was furnished like the abode of a very old lady and it had that sort of smell, a combination of camphor and carefully preserved not very clean clothes, closed windows and boiled sweets. Wexford expected to encounter an ancient mother in an armchair but the room was empty.

"For a start, could we have your full name, please," Vine said.

If she had been in court on a murder charge, brought there peremptorily and without counsel to defend her, Bib could not have behaved with greater caution. Every word must be weighed. She brought out her name with slow reluctance and a hesitation before each word.

"Er, Beryl -- er Agnes -- er, Mew."

'Beryl Agnes Mew. I believe you work on

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"i

a part-time basis at Tancred House and were there yesterday afternoon. Miss Mew?"

"Mrs. Missus." She looked from Vine to Wexford and said it again, very deliberately. "Mrs Mew."

"I'm sorry. You were there yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

It might be shock that affected her like this. Or a general distrust and suspicion of humanity. She seemed stunned by Vine's question and looked at him stonily before lifting her heavy shoulders in a shrug.

"What do you do there, Mrs Mew?"

Again she considered. She was still but her eyes moved rather more than most people's. Now they moved quite wildly.

She said, incomprehensibly to Vine, "They call it the rough."

"You do the rough work, Mrs Mew," Wexford said. "Yes, I see. Scrubbing floors, washing paint and so on?" He got a ponderous nod. "You were cleaning the freezer, I think."

"The freezers. They've got three." Her head swayed slowly from side to side. "I saw it on telly. Couldn't believe it. They was all right yesterday."

As if, Wexford thought, the inhabitants of Tancred House had succumbed to a visitation of plague. He said, "What time did you leave for home?"

If the imparting of her own name had caused such inner searching, a question such as this

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might be expected to give rise to whole minutes of pondering, but Bib answered fairly quickly. "They'd started on their meal."

"Air and Mrs Copeland and Mis Jones and Miss Jones had gone into the dining room, do you mean?"

"I heard them talking and the door shut. I put me bits back in the freezer and switched it on. My hands was froze, so I put them under the hot tap for a bit." The effort of saying so much silenced her for a moment. She seemed to be recouping unseen forces. "I got me coat and then I went to fetch me bike as was in that bit round the back with hedges like round."

Wexford wondered if she ever talked to the man next door, the American, and if she talked like this, would he understand a word? "Did you lock the back door after you?"

"Me? No. It's not my job to lock doors."

"So this would have been -- what? Ten to eight?"

A long hesitation. "I reckon."

"How did you get home?" said Vine.

"On my bike." She was made indignant by his stupidity. He should have known. Everyone knew.

"Which route did you take, Mrs Mew? Which road?"

"The byroad."

"I want you to think very carefully before you answer." But she always did. That was why this was taking so long. "Did you see a car on your way home? Did you meet one or did one overtake you? On the by-road." More

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explanation was doubtless called for. "A car or a van or a -- a vehicle like the one next door."

For a moment Wexford feared he had made her think her American neighbour might be involved in this crime. She got up and looked out of the window in the direction of the Ford Transit. Her expression was confused and she bit her lip.

At last she said, "That one?"

"No, no. Any one. Any vehicle at all. Did you meet any vehicle on your way home last evening?"

She thought. She nodded, shook her head, finally said, "No."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yes."

"How long does it take to get home?"

"It's downhill going home."

"Yes. So how long did it take you last evening?"

"About twenty minutes."

"And, you met no one? Not even John Gabbitas in the Land Rover."

The first flash of any sort of animation showed. It came in her restless eyes. "Does he say I did?"

"No, no. It's unlikely you would have if you were home here by, say, eight fifteen. Thank you very much, Mrs Mew. Would you like to show us the road you take from here to the byroad?" * A long pause and then, "I don't mind."

The road where the cottages were fell steeply tiown the side of the little river valley. Bib

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Mew pointed their way down this road and gave some vague instructions, her eyes straying to the Ford Transit. Wexford thought he must have ineradicably planted in her mind the notion that she should have met this van last night. As they drove off down the hill, she could be seen leaning over the gate, following their progress with those darting eyes.

At the foot of the hill the stream was not bridged but forded. A wooden footbridge spanned it for the use of foot passengers and cyclists. Vine drove through the water which was perhaps six inches deep and flowing very fast over flat brown stones. On the other side they came to what he insisted on calling a T-junction, though the extreme rusticity of the place, steep hedge banks, overhanging trees, deep meadows with cattle glimpsed beyond, made this a misnomer. Bib's instructions, if such they could be called, were to turn left here and then take the first right. This was the Pomfret Monachorum way in to the byroad.

There came a sudden sight of forest. The hedge trees parted and there it was, a dark, bluish canopy hanging high above them. Half a mile up the road it appeared again, was quickly all round them, as the deep tunnel of lane running between high banks plunged into the start of the by-road where a sign said: tancred

HOUSE ONLY. TWO MILES. NO THROUGH-ROAD.

Wexford said, "When we think it's only one mile I'm going to get out and walk the rest of the way."

"Right. They'd have had to know the place if

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^

they came this way, sir."

"They knew it. Or one of them did."

He left the car at an auspicious moment, when he saw the sun come out. The woods would not begin to grow green for another month. There was not even a green haze to mist the trees which flanked this sandy path. All was bright brown, a sparkling vigorous colour that gilded the branches and turned the leaf buds to a glowing shade of copper. It was cold and dry. Late on the previous night, when the sky had cleared, a frost had come. The frost was gone now, not a silver streak of it remaining, but a chill hung in the clear still air. Above the dense or feathery treetops, through spaces in the groves, the sky was a light delicate blue, so pale as to be almost white.