No Man's Nightingale (21 page)

He thought she might resent his presence but she seemed glad of his company. It rather surprised him that she had shed the faded ragged jeans for a wool dress under a thick winter coat. In his honour? Or out of some kind of respect for the house and the memory of her mother? He asked her, sure she wouldn’t mind, if she had any relatives she knew of, any aunts and uncles – he knew she hadn’t – any distant cousins. But no, she hadn’t. She was alone in the world and she smiled ruefully when she said that. She unlocked the front door and they went inside. It was very cold. The heating had been off for nearly three months. A dull sour smell pervaded the place and cobwebs had appeared, a cluster of them linking the brass chandelier in the hall to a Gothic beam.

‘I may as well tell you I’m looking for a letter,’ Clarissa said, lifting the lid of the desk in the living room. ‘There might not be one – it would be in an envelope addressed to me – but I have to find out.’ All that was inside the desk were receipted bills and a couple of notices from the local authority. She opened two drawers in a chest but if they had once held papers these had been cleared out. ‘There’s a desk in Mum’s bedroom. She told me there was a copy of her will in there but it wasn’t important because the will itself was with her solicitors. But we could look in there.’ On the way upstairs she said that probate had been granted and some two thousand pounds which amounted to her mother’s savings had come to her as well as a few pieces of jewellery. ‘It’s not very valuable but it has a lot of sentimental value.’ Clarissa’s voice broke. ‘Her wedding ring and engagement ring. She sometimes wore them, you know, but like only when she was alone. I once saw them on her finger.’ On the top stairs she sat down and sobbed.

If she had been his granddaughter he could have taken her in his arms and hugged her but she wasn’t and he couldn’t. All he could do was hand her his snowy, beautifully folded handkerchief. Thanking him as she took it from him, she looked at it in wonder. In a world of tissues it was probably the first time she had seen such a thing.

‘It doesn’t seem right to spoil it with my tears,’ she said as she dabbed her face.

It seemed that no one had been in to clear the place. Perhaps the Church of England waited until just before the new incumbent arrived. The bedroom was unchanged. There were the portraits and still on the bedside table Newman’s
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
from which he had taken the letter that had brought him so much anxiety and stress. Thinking of it prompted him to ask if she ever heard from her godmother Thora Kilmartin.

‘I had a Christmas card.’

Wexford guessed that a strict talking-to from Tony Kilmartin had warned Thora to back off. Any contact with Clarissa might lead to some fresh farrago (Burden’s favoured word) of myths being imparted to her. The bedside-table drawer open, Clarissa had found the copy of the will she discarded as unimportant and a blank envelope stuffed full. But they were postcards from long ago, sent by school friends from seaside resorts. ‘There’s one more place to look,’ Clarissa said.

It was a safe. As in a hotel bedroom, it was in the bottom of the wardrobe, hidden under the hem of a long black skirt. Clarissa knew the combination. Presumably, no one else did, which was why the safe had never been opened. Inside was a packet of letters, all in their envelopes, the lot rather grimly tied with black ribbon.

‘They’re not for me,’ Clarissa said and the tears began again, silently flowing down her cheeks. ‘They’re from her husband. You know he was a landscape architect and when he had to go away he wrote to her every day. She kept them all.’ A tear splashed on to the ribbon. ‘I don’t want to leave them here. What shall I do?’

‘Take them with you,’ said Wexford rashly. This time he would tell Burden at once. ‘They’re no use to anyone else. You take them.’

But no letter addressed to Clarissa could be found. It was less cold outside than in, a mild sun shining out of a watery sky. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and have coffee in that little place round the corner.’

‘Tallulah’s, it’s called,’ said Clarissa. ‘My friend’s waitressing there.’

The friend, Maeve, was as pretty as Clarissa but a dazzling blonde. They sat down at a table in the window and ordered black coffee for Wexford and an elaborate variety of cappuccino for Clarissa. While they waited for it to come, she said, ‘You haven’t asked me what would be in the letter that never was.’

‘I didn’t think it was my business.’

‘I’ll tell you anyway.’ He thought she was going to cry again but she made a big effort to control herself. ‘My mother said she was going to tell me about my – well, she didn’t say “my father” but what my parentage was. She’d tell me when I was eighteen. She can’t do that now because she’s dead.’ In a harsh voice she repeated her last words. ‘She’s dead.’ She took a little time, a second or two, before going on. ‘But I thought she might have written it down. I mean, written it in a letter to me and put it in the safe. But why would she? She didn’t know she was going to die.’

She put her head in her hands. The coffee came and she lifted her tear-stained face. ‘Will I ever get over it?’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. His black coffee tasted more like gravy. Probably it would be improved by milk and sugar but there was none and he didn’t feel like asking for it. ‘So she didn’t give you a hint as to who your father was?’

‘Not really. She was like very strict about a lot of things but I don’t think she would have found much wrong with having a relationship with someone. Well, provided he wasn’t married. I suppose I think she was going to tell me about this lover she had and maybe he
was
married and he was my father and his wife found out – and well, I don’t know but something like that.’

He walked back with her to Sylvia’s house but as Sylvia was at work he didn’t go in. Robin was there, she said. Robin would comfort her, he always did, he was so wonderful. Wexford heard her call out to him as she opened the front door and a distant voice answering. At any rate, the course of true love seemed to be running smooth. Was there no family member to be found that he could talk to? She had said no but might there not be a family connection? His mind went back to the memorial service, the car with the surly-faced driver at the wheel, the old woman in the fur coat walking into the church with her son. She had known Sarah and known her well while she was married to her other long-dead son. Sarah had stayed with her after the death of their husbands and she had cared for her enough to come to her memorial service. She was no relation to Clarissa but no one was related to Clarissa. Now if I knew her name, he started to say to himself, and then he remembered that he did. Steyner, she was called, and the driver of the Jaguar had called her Victoria. There couldn’t be many Victoria Steyners about.

‘There are three,’ Dora told him, coming from the computer. He was always lost in admiration for her when she found something or accomplished something online. Never mind that children of seven did as much and more every day. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said.

Pleased, she gave him a lovely smile. ‘One’s in Fort William, one’s in Mexborough and the third’s in London W8. Where’s W8?’

‘Kensington, I think. That’s the most likely. Now for the phone book. Have we got a London directory?’

‘I think so, an old one, but Victoria Steyner, if she’s the one, is very old too.’

She found a directory for west London dated 1996. It was under a pile of directories and catalogues in the cupboard under the stairs, the sort one never throws away. A V. B. Steyner was listed at a different address from the one Dora had found in the online electoral register. That looked like a flat while the address in the phone book was probably a house. She moved, Wexford thought, when she grew old and the house was too much for her. It meant the phone number might have changed too. He hesitated. Wait, he thought, think about it, sleep on it. For one thing, she could be the Mexborough Victoria Steyner. He didn’t even know where Mexborough was but it might be a select seaside resort full of comfortably off elderly ladies. Fort William was less likely. At least try Kensington first, he told himself, and think about what you’re comtemplating doing first. He phoned Burden and told him he’d given Clarissa permission to take her mother’s love letters.

‘Love letters?’

‘Well, letters from her husband. They were in the safe.’

‘Oh, right.’ Burden’s voice was heavy with boredom. ‘That’s OK. We saw them when we searched. Did you think I’d mind?’

Alone, Wexford shook his head for no one’s benefit but his own. Still, you never could tell with Mike and he must be careful. If he was going to set in train an investigation of his own he must consider what tactics he was going to employ. No deception, that was certain. In talking to people, Mrs Steyner, her son (obviously not the one who had called her by her given name), the other man, friends of Clarissa’s, even the pretty blonde waitress, he wouldn’t even think of giving a false name or inventing a false role in this murder case. He had once been a police officer, a detective chief inspector, but he was one no longer. They were not obliged to tell him anything, even to talk to him. They could say no and show him the door, always supposing he got past the door in the first place. This he must make clear to them, and when he looked at it from that angle, he couldn’t see why anyone would agree to talk to him. If they had anything to say, if they weren’t bored by the whole thing and incredulous. At this point he nearly gave up. It wasn’t his business, no one else would understand why he was doing it. Why not wake up tomorrow morning a free man, with nothing to do but relax and enjoy himself? It wasn’t an inviting prospect.

Dora was watching television. He sat beside her on the sofa, wondering why characters in British television dramas never looked as if they had really punched their adversary in the jaw but that their fist had landed in the air, and why they looked as if they never really smoked a cigarette but reluctantly took the smoke into their mouth and quickly expelled it. It was probably a matter of cost, it always was. And then, as the activity on the screen became wilder and even less convincing, a revelation took shape in front of his eyes: he must do this talking, he must find out more, and before 20 January. That date was less than three weeks away. Something would happen on that date. Sarah Hussain could no longer confess or admit or simply tell her daughter about her origin but someone else might. Someone, and he had no idea who, might honour a promise they had made to Sarah that, in her absence for whatever reason, they would on that day, her eighteenth birthday, enlighten Sarah’s daughter.

Ridiculous, he told himself. Like some nineteenth-century novel. Wilkie Collins maybe. But if it was an illusion it was one he couldn’t get out of his head.

WHEN FOR YEARS
you have had authority it is very hard to lose it, suddenly to find that powers you took for granted have disappeared overnight and, perhaps more to the point, stay disappeared. Once he was like the centurion – he
was
the centurion – who says to one come and he cometh, to another go and he goeth and to a third do this and he doeth it. Once he could have picked up the phone, dialled this woman’s number and told her his name and rank. She would have been overawed – most were – or frightened or, if she were legitimately in trouble, pleased. This one, this V. B. Steyner, was likely to be puzzled by his wanting to speak to her without authority. If she agreed to a talk she would question him more than he questioned her. Why? Why ask this, do that, be interested at all? He couldn’t say, as he often had in the past, ‘I ask the questions.’ The call hadn’t yet been made, he was still thinking, being indecisive, taking himself out of the house by walking down Queen Street to Kingsmarkham’s only remaining bookshop in quest of a new novel that had had good reviews.

The turn into the high street is a sharp one, rather less than a right angle, and you can’t tell whom you may meet or bump into as you negotiate the corner. Wexford walked round without thinking and almost crashed into Maxine Sams. He put out his hands to avoid their faces actually colliding. She leapt away with a shriek. ‘Take your hands off me!’

‘Maxine,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that business with Jason too. But I had no choice.’

‘Don’t you call us by our first names. We’re Mr and Mrs Sams to you.’

‘All right. If you like. How is – er, Mr Sams?’

‘Thanks to you he’s lost his job. He’s waiting to come up in court. Unlawful killing, it’s going to be, on January the twentieth. Pleased with yourself, are you? Oh, you make me sick.’

There was no point in lingering. Wexford walked off towards the bookshop, a stream of abuse following him and attracting a small crowd of onlookers. One thing, he thought, being a policeman for all those years, coming up through the ranks, inures you to insult, foul language, accusation and threat. The fear and ongoing disgust such abuse causes in others, and stays with them sometimes for weeks, passes over your head and leaves you to do no more than reflect on the unpleasantness of so many people. Anyway, that idiot Jason was going to get away with unlawful killing instead of manslaughter and he wouldn’t be separated from his beloved daughter for as long as he might have been. Wexford bought his book, walked home and picked up the phone.

An answering service told him that this was Victoria Steyner’s phone and asked him to leave a message after the tone. He couldn’t do that. What could he say? He would have to try again. But at least he knew it was the right number. Already he was forming in his mind a picture of what she would be like, this Victoria Steyner. Strong, perhaps domineering, used to having her own way, sharp and clever, mentally young for her age. There he stopped himself. He had never even spoken to her or heard her speak. At her age, the chances were that she would be at home in the evening and therefore likely to answer her phone, but not too late in the evening. Old people tended to go to bed early.

A few years ago, when he was still the centurion, he never had time for anything. He was always occupied. Now he hardly knew how to pass the time apart from reading and even he couldn’t read for hours on end. He thought of phoning Burden and telling him what he intended to do but he knew how that would go down. Crisp was on remand, Crisp had done it, there was no need to look further. The tart impatient note in Burden’s voice he could imagine and his attempt to hide it. At six when Dora had just come home they watched the BBC news. Appositely, an item on it was about people on remand having a worse time while in custody than convicted prisoners. Poor old Crisp, but perhaps he was treated better because of his age. Wexford didn’t hold out much hope. At seven he and Dora had a glass of wine and then the fish pie she had made because he liked it so much. He went to the phone again at eight and she answered.