Put on by Cunning (20 page)

Had her voice on the phone achieved this? Or had she been to Griswold in person, in the yellow dress, holding him with her glowing black eyes, moving her long pretty hands in feigned distress? For the second time he promised to persecute Natalie Arno no more, in fact to act as if he had never heard her name.

What changed the chief constable’s mind must have been the systematic searching of the Zodiac. Two neighbours of Ivan Zoffany went independently to the police, one to complain that Zoffany had been lighting bonfires in his garden by night, the other to state that she had actually seen Jane in the vicinity of De Beauvoir Place on the night of Sunday, 29 June.

The house and the shop were searched without result. Zoffany admitted to the bonfires, saying that he intended to move away and take up some other line of work, and it was his stock of science-fiction paperbacks he had been burning. Wexford applied for a warrant to search the inside of Sterries and secured one three days after the dragging of the lake.

The house was empty. Not only deserted by its owner but half-emptied of its furnishings. Wexford remembered that Natalie Arno had said she would be going away on holiday and also that she intended having some of the furniture put in store. Mrs Murray-Burgess, that inveterate observer of unusual vehicles, told Burden when he called at Kingsfield House that she had seen a removal van turn out of the Sterries drive into Ploughman’s Lane at about three on Tuesday afternoon. It was now Thursday, 17 July.

With Wexford and Burden were a couple of men, detective constables, called Archbold and Bennett. They were prepared not only to search but to dismantle parts of the house if need be. They began in the double garage, examining the cupboards at the end of it and the outhouse tacked on to its rear. Since Sterries Cottage was also empty and had been since the previous day, Wexford intended it to be searched as well. Archbold, who had had considerable practice at this sort of thing, picked the locks on both front doors.

The cottage was bare of furniture and carpets. Like most English houses, old or new, it was provided with inadequate cupboard space. Its walls were of brick but were not cavity walls, and at some recent period, perhaps when Sir Manuel and the Hickses had first come, the floors at ground level had been relaid with tiles on a concrete base. No possibility of hiding a body there and nowhere upstairs either. They turned their attention to the bigger house.

Here, at first, there seemed even less likelihood of being able safely to conceal the body of a full-grown woman. It was for no more than form’s sake that they cleared out the cloaks cupboard inside the front door, the kitchen broom cupboard and the small room off the kitchen which housed the central-heating boiler and a stock of soap powders and other cleansers. From the first floor a great many pieces had gone, including the pale green settee and armchairs, the piano and all the furniture from Camargue’s bedroom and sitting room. ‘Everywhere there seemed to be blank spaces or marks of discolouration on the walls where this or that piece had stood. ‘The Chinese vase of Peace roses, wilted now, had been stuck on the floor up against a window.

Bennett, tapping walls, discovered a hollow space between the right-hand side of the hanging cupboard and the outside wall in Camargue’s bedroom. And outside there were signs that it had been the intention on someone’s part to use this space as a cupboard for garden tools or perhaps to contain a dustbin, for an arch had been built into which to fit a door and this arch subsequently filled in with bricks of a slightly lighter colour.

From the inside of the hanging cupboard Bennett set about unscrewing the panel at its right-hand end. Wexford wondered if he were getting squeamish in his old age. It was with something amounting to nausea that he stood there anticipating the body falling slowly forward as the panel came away, crumpling into Bennett’s arms, the tall thin body of Jane Zoffany with a gauzy scarf and a red and yellow dress of Jane Zoffany with a gauzy scarf and a red and yellow dress of Indian cotton for a winding sheet. Burden sat on the bed, rubbing away fastidiously at a small powder or plaster mark that had appeared on the hem of his light fawn trousers.

The last screw was out and the panel fell, Bennett catching it and resting it against the wall. There was nothing inside the cavity but a spider which swung across its webs. A little bright light and fresh air came in by way of a ventilator brick. Wexford let out his breath in a sigh. It was time to take a break for lunch.

Mr Haq, all smiles and gratified to see Wexford back, remarked that he was happy to be living in a country where they paid policemen salaries on which they could afford to have holidays in California. With perfect sincerity, he said this made him feel more secure. Burden ordered for both of them, steak Soroti, an innocuous beef stew with carrots and onions. When Mr Haq and his son were out of earshot he said he often suspected that the Pearl of Africa’s cook hailed from Bradford. Wexford said nothing.

‘It’s no good,’ said Burden, ‘we aren’t going to find anything in that place. You may as well resign yourself. You’re too much of an optimist sometimes for your own good.’

‘D’you think I want the poor woman to be dead?’ Wexford retorted. ‘Optimist, indeed.’ And he quoted rather crossly, ‘The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true.’

‘You want Natalie Arno to be guilty of something and you don’t much care what,’ said Burden. ‘Why should she murder her?’

‘Because Jane Zoffany knew who she really is. Either that or she found out how the murder of Camargue was done and who did it. There’s a conspiracy here, Mike, involving a number of conspirators and Jane Zoffany was one of them. But there’s no more honour among conspirators than there is among thieves, and when she discovered how Natalie had betrayed her she saw no reason to be discreet any longer.’ He told Burden what had happened when he encountered Jane Zoffany in Ploughman’s Lane on 27 June. ‘She had something to tell me, she would have told me then only I didn’t realize, I didn’t give her a word of encouragement. Instead she went back to Sterries and no doubt had the temerity to threaten Natalie. It was a silly thing to do. But she was a silly woman, hysterical and unstable.’

The steak Soroti came. Wexford ate in silence. It was true enough that he wanted Natalie Arno to have done something, or rather that he now saw that charging her with something was almost within his grasp. Who would know where she had gone on holiday? Zoffany? Philip Cory? Would anyone know? They had the ice cream eau-de-Nil to follow but Wexford left half of his.

‘Let’s get back there,’ he said.

It had begun to rain. The white walls of Sterries were streaked with water. Under a lowering sky of grey and purple cloud the house had the shabby faded look which belongs particularly to English houses built to a design intended for the Mediterranean. There were lights on in the upper rooms.

Archbold and Bennett were working on the drawing room, Bennett having so thoroughly investigated the chimney as to clamber half-way up inside it. Should they take up the floor? Wexford said no, he didn’t think so. No one could hope to conceal a body for long by burying it under the floor in a house which was about to change hands. Though, as Wexford now told himself, it wasn’t necessarily or exclusively a body they were looking for. By six o’clock they were by no means finished but Wexford told them to leave the rest of the house till next day. It was still raining, though slightly now, little more than a drizzle. Wexford made his way down the path between the conifers to check that they had closed and locked the door of Sterries Cottage.

In the wet gloom the Alsatian’s face looking out of a ground-floor window and almost on a level with his own made him jump. It evoked strange ideas, that there had been a time shift and it was six months ago and Camargue still lived. Then again, from the way some kind of white cloth seemed to surround the dog’s head . . .

‘Now I know how Red Riding Hood felt,’ said Wexford to Dinah Sternhold.

She was wearing a white raincoat with its collar turned up and she had been standing behind the dog, surveying the empty room. A damp cotton scarf was tied under her chin. She smiled. The sadness that had seemed characteristic of her had left her face now. It seemed fuller, the cheeks pink with rain and perhaps with running.

‘They’ve gone,’ she said, ‘and the door was open. It was a bit of a shock.’

‘They’re working for Philip Cory now.’

She shrugged. ‘Oh well, I suppose there was no reason they should bother to tell me. I’d got into the habit of bringing Nancy over every few weeks just for them to see her. Ted loves Nancy.’ She took her hand from the dog’s collar and Nancy bounded up to Wexford as if they were old friends. ‘Sheila said you’d been to California.’

‘For our summer holiday.’

‘Not entirely, Mr Wexford, was it? You went to find out if what Manuel thought was true. But you haven’t found out, have you?’

He said nothing, and she went on quickly, perhaps thinking she had gone too far or been indiscreet. ‘I often think how strange it is she could get the solicitors to believe in her and Manuel’s old friends to believe in her and the police and people who’d known the Camargues for years, yet Manuel who wanted to believe, who was pretty well geared up to believe anything, saw her on that one occasion and didn’t believe in her for more than half an hour.’ She shrugged her shoulders again and gave a short little laugh. Then she said politely as was her way, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m keeping you. Did you want to lock up?’ She took hold of the dog again and walked her out into the rain. ‘Has she sold the house?’ Her voice suddenly sounded thin and strained.

Wexford nodded. ‘So she says.’

‘I shall never come here again.’

He watched her walk away down the narrow lane which led from the cottage to the road. Raindrops glistened on the Alsatian’s fur. Water slid off the flat branches of the conifers and dripped on to the grass. Uncut for more than a week, it was already shaggy, giving the place an unkempt look. Wexford walked back to the car.

Burden was watching Dinah Sternhold shoving Nancy on to the rear seat of the Volkswagen. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said. ‘Jenny’s got a friend, a Frenchwoman, comes from Alsace. But you can’t call her an Alsatian, can you? That word always means a dog.’

‘You couldn’t call anyone a Dalmatian either,’ said Wexford.

Burden laughed. ‘Americans call Alsatians German Shepherds.’

‘We ought to. That’s their proper name and I believe the Kennel Club have brought it in again. When they were brought here from Germany after the First World War there was a lot of anti-German feeling – hence we used the euphemism “Alsatian”. About as daft as refusing to play Beethoven and Bach at concerts because they were German.’

‘Jenny and I are going to German classes,’ said Burden rather awkwardly.

‘What on earth for?’

‘Jenny says education should go on all one’s life.’

Next morning it was heavy and sultry, the sun covered by a thick yellow mist. Sterries awaited them, full of secrets. Before he left news had come in for Wexford through Interpol that the woman who drowned in Santa Xavierita in July1976 was Theresa of Tessa Lanchester, aged thirty, unmarried, a paralegal secretary from Boston, Massacusetts. The body had been recovered after having been in the sea some five days and identified a further four days later by Theresa Lanchester’s aunt, her parents both being dead. Driving up to Sterries, Wexford thought about being sent back to California. He wouldn’t mind a few days in Boston, come to that.

Archbold and Bennett got to work on the spare bedrooms but without positive result and after lunch they set about the study and the two bathrooms.

In the yellow bathroom they took up the honey-coloured carpet, leaving exposed the white vinyl tiles beneath. It was obvious that none of these tiles had been disturbed since they were first laid. The carpet was replaced and then the same procedure gone through in the blue bathroom. Here there was a shower cabinet as well as a bath. Archbold unhooked and spread out the blue and green striped shower curtain. This was made of semi-transparent nylon with a narrow machine-made hem at the bottom. Archbold, who was young and had excellent sight, noticed that the machine stitches for most of the seam’s length were pale blue but in the extreme right-hand corner, for about an inch, they were not blue but brown. He told Wexford.

Wexford, who had been sitting on a window-sill in the study, thinking, watching the cloud shadows move across the meadows, went into the blue bathroom and looked at the curtain and knelt down. And about a quarter of an inch from the floor, on the panelled side of the bath, which had been covered for nearly half an inch by the carpet pile, were two minute reddish-brown spots.

‘Take up the floor tiles,’ said Wexford.

Would they find enough blood to make a test feasible? It appeared so after two of the tiles had been lifted and the edge of the one which had been alongside the bath panelling showed a thick dark encrustation.

‘You might tell me where we’re going.’

‘Why? You’re a real ignoramus when it comes to London.’ Wexford spoke irritably. He was nervous because he might be wrong. The chief constable had said he was and had frowned and shaken his head and talked about infringements of rights and intrusions of privacy. If he was wrong he was gong to look such a fool. He said to Burden, ‘If I said we were going to Thornton Heath, would that mean anything to you?’

Burden said nothing. He looked huffily out of the window. ‘the car was passing through Croydon, through industrial complexes, estates of small red terraced houses, shopping centres, big spreadeagled roundabouts with many exits. Soon after Thornton Heath station Wexford’s driver turned down a long bleak road that was bounded by a tall wire fence on one side and a row of sad thin poplars on the other. Thank God there were such neighbours about as Mrs Murray-Burgess, thought Wexford. A woman endowed with a memory and a gimlet eye as well as a social conscience.