Sins of the Fathers

by Ruth Rendell

  "I suppose it's changed hands several times since then?"

  "Once or twice before the old folks moved in. Thanks," he said to the waiter. "No we don't want any wine. Two halves of bitter." He spread his napkin over his capacious lap and to Burden's controlled distaste sprinkled wing and orange sauce liberally with pepper.

  "Was Roger Primero the heir?"

  "One of the heirs. Mrs. Primero died intestate. Remember I told you she'd only got ten thousand to leave and that was divided equally between Roger and his two younger sisters. He's a rich man now, but however he got his money it wasn't from his grandmother. All kinds of pies he's got his finger in—oil, property development, shipping—he's a real tycoon."

  "I've seen him around, I think."

  "You must have. He's very conscious of his status as a landowner since he bought Forby Hall. Goes out with the Pomfret hounds and all that."

  "How old is he?" Burden asked.

  "Well, he was twenty-two when his grandmother was killed. That makes him about thirty-eight now. The sisters were much younger. Angela was ten and Isabel nine."

  "I seem to remember he gave evidence at the trial."

  Wexford pushed his plate away, signalled rather imperiously to the waiter and ordered two portions of apple pie. Burden knew that his chief's notion of gracious living was somewhat limited.

  "Roger Primero had been visiting his grandmother that Sunday," Wexford said. "He was working in a solicitor's office in Sewingbury at the time and he used to make quite a habit of having Sunday tea at Victor's Piece. Maybe he had his eye on a share of the loot when Mrs. Primero went—God knows he hadn't a bean in those days—but he seemed genuinely fond of her. It's certainly a fact that after we'd seen the body and sent for him from Sewingbury as next of kin, we had to restrain him forcibly from going over to the coach house and laying violent hands on Painter. I daresay his grandmother and Alice made a lot of him, you know, buttered him up and waited on him. I told you Mrs. Primero had her affections. There'd been a family quarrel but apparently it didn't extend to the grandchildren. Once or twice Roger had taken his little sisters down to Victor's Piece and they'd all got on very well together."

  "Old people usually do get on well with kids," said Burden.

  "They had to be the right kind of children, Mike. Angela and Isabel, yes, and she had a very soft spot for young Liz Crilling."

  Burden put down his spoon and stared at the Chief Inspector.

  "I thought you said you'd read all this up at the time?" Wexford said suspiciously. "Don't say it was a long time ago. My customers are always saying that to me and it makes me see red. If you read the account of that trial you must remember that Elizabeth Crilling, aged precisely five at the time, found Mrs. Primero's body."

  "I assure you I can't remember, sir." That must have been the day he'd missed, the day he hadn't bothered with the papers because he'd been nervous about an interview. "She didn't appear at the trial, surely?"

  "Not at that age—there are limits. Besides, although she was actually the first to go into the drawing room and come upon the body, her mother was with her."

  "Digressing a hide," Burden said, "I don't quite get this stuff about the right kind of children. Mrs. Crilling lives over there in Glebe Road." He turned to the window and waved his hand in the direction of the least attractive part of Kingsmarkham where long streets of small terraced brown houses had sprung up between the wars, "She and the girl live in half a house, they haven't a penny to bless themselves with..."

  "They've come down a lot," said Wexford. "In September 1950 Crilling himself was still alive—he died of T.B. soon after—and they lived opposite Victor's Piece."

  "In one of those white semi-detached places?"

  That's right. A Mrs. White and her son lived next door. Mrs. Crilling was about thirty at the time, little bit over thirty."

  "You're joking," said Burden derisively. "That makes her only in her late forties now."

  "Look, Mike, people can say what they like about hard work and childbearing and all that. I tell you there's nothing like mental illness to make a woman look old before her time. And you know as well as I do Mrs. Crilling's been in and out of mental hospitals for years." He paused as their coffee came and pursed his lips censoriously at the anaemic brown liquid.

  "You did say black, sir?" the waiter asked.

  Wexford gave a sort of grunt. The church clock struck the last quarter. As the reverberation died away, he said to Burden: "Shall I keep the parson waiting ten minutes?"

  Burden said neutrally, "That's up to you, sir. You were going to tell me how Mrs. Primero and the Crilling woman became friends. I suppose they were friends?"

  "Not a doubt of it. Mrs. Crilling was ladylike enough in those days and she had a way with her, sycophantic, sucking up, you know. Besides, Crilling had been an accountant or something, just enough of a professional man, anyway, in Mrs. Primero's eyes to make his wife a lady. Mrs. Crilling was always popping over to Victor's Piece and she always took the child with her. God knows, they must have been pretty close. Elizabeth called Mrs. Primero "Granny Rose" just as Roger and his sisters did."

  "So she 'popped over' that Sunday night and found Granny Rose dead?" Burden hazarded.

  "It wasn't as simple as that. Mrs. Crilling had been making the kid a party frock. She finished it by about six, dressed Elizabeth up and wanted to take her over and show her off to Mrs. Primero. Mind you, she and Alice Flower were always at loggerheads. There was a good bit of jealousy there, spheres of influence and so on. So Mrs. Crilling waited until Alice had gone off to church and went over alone, intending to go back and fetch the child if Mrs. Primero was awake. She dozed a good bit, you see, being so old.

  "That first time—it was about twenty past six—Mrs. Primero was asleep and Mrs. Crilling didn't go in. She just tapped on the drawing room window. When the old woman didn't stir she went back and returned again later. By the way, she saw the empty scuttle through the window so she knew Painter hadn't yet been in with the coal."

  "You mean that Painter came in and did the deed between Mrs. Crilling's visits?" Burden said.

  "She didn't go back again till seven. The back door had to be left unlocked for Painter, so she and the child went in, called out 'yoo-hoo' or some damn thing, and marched into the drawing room when they didn't get an answer. Elizabeth went first—more's the pity—and Bob's your uncle!"

  "Blimey," said Burden, "that poor kid!"

  "Yes," Wexford murmured, "yes ... Well, much as I should like to while away the rest of the afternoon, reminiscing over the coffee cups, I do have to see this clerical bloke."

  They both got up. Wexford paid the bill, leaving a rather obviously exact ten per cent for a tip.

  "I can't see where the parson comes into it at all," Burden said when they were in the car.

  "He can't be an abolitionist because they've done away with the death penalty. As I say, he's writing a book, expects to make a big thing out of it and that's why he's laid out good money on a transcript."

  "Or he's a prospective buyer of Victor's Piece. He's a haunted house merchant and he thinks he's got another Borley Rectory."

  An unfamiliar car stood on the forecourt of the police station. The numberplate was not local and beside it was a little metal label that bore the name Essex with the county coat of arms of three scimitars on a red field.

  "We shall soon know," said Wexford.

  *3*

  There are false witnesses risen up against me and such as speak wrong. —Psalm 27, appointed for the Fifth Day

  In general Wexford disliked the clergy. To him the dog collar was like a slipped halo, indicating a false saintliness, probably hypocrisy and massive self-regard. As he saw it vicars were not vicarious enough. Most of them expected you to worship God in them.

  He did not associate them with good looks and charm. Henry Archery, therefore, caused him slight surprise. He was possibly not much younger than Wexford himself, but he was still slim and exceedingly good-looking, and
he was wearing an ordinary rather light-coloured suit and an ordinary collar and tie. His hair was thick enough and fair enough for the grey not to show much, his skin was tanned and his features had a pure evenly cut regularity.

  During the first preliminary small-talk remarks Wexford had noticed the beauty of his voice. You felt it would be a pleasure to hear him read aloud. As he showed him to a chair and sat down opposite him, Wexford chuckled to himself. He was picturing a group of tired ageing female parishioners working their fingers to the bone for the pitiful reward of this man's smile. Archery was not smiling now and he looked anything but relaxed.

  "I'm familiar with the case, Chief Inspector," he began. "I've read the official transcript of the trial and I've discussed the whole thing with Colonel Griswold."

  "What exactly do you want to know, then?" Wexford asked in his blunt way.

  Archery took a deep breath and said rather too quickly: "I want you to tell me that somewhere in your mind there is just the faintest doubt, the shadow of a doubt, of Painter's guilt."

  So that was it, or part of it. Burden with his theories that the parson was a Primero relative or seeking to buy the Primero house couldn't have been more wrong. This man, whatever axe he might be grinding, was bent on whitewashing Painter.

  Wexford frowned and after a moment said, "Can't be done. Painter did it all right." He set his jaw stubbornly, "If you want to quote me in your book you're quite welcome. You can say that after sixteen years Wexford still maintains that Painter was guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt."

  "What book is this?" Archery inclined his handsome head courteously. His eyes were brown and now they looked bewildered. Then he laughed. It was a nice laugh and it was the first time Wexford had heard it. "I don't write books," he said. "Well, I did once contribute a chapter to a work on Abyssinian cats but that hardly..."

  Abyssinian cats. Bloody great red cats, thought Wexford. Whatever next? "Why are you interested in Painter, Mr. Archery?"

  Archery hesitated. The sun showed up lines on his face that Wexford had not realised were there. Funny, he thought ruefully, how dark women age slower than fair ones but the reverse was true of men.

  "My reasons are very personal, Chief Inspector. I can't suppose that they would interest you. But I can assure you that there's no possibility of my publishing anything you tell me."

  Well, he had promised Griswold—as to that, he didn't have much choice. Hadn't he, in any case, already resigned himself to giving up most of the afternoon to this clergyman? Weariness was at last beginning to gain a hold on him. He might be equal to reminiscing, going over past familiar words and scenes; on this hot afternoon he was quite unequal to anything more exacting. Probably the personal reasons—and he confessed mentally to an almost childish curiosity about them—would emerge in due course. There was something frank and boyish in his visitor's face which made Wexford think he would not be particularly discreet.

  "What d'you want me to tell you?" he asked.

  "Why you are so determined Painter was guilty. Of course I don't know any more about this sort of thing than the average layman, but it seems to me there were a good many gaps in the evidence. There were other people involved, people who had quite definite interests in Mrs. Primero's death."

  Wexford said coldly, "I'm fully prepared to go over any points with you, sir."

  "Now?"

  "Certainly now. Have you got that transcript with you?"

  Archery produced it from a very battered leather briefcase. His hands were long and thin but not womanish. They reminded Wexford of saints' hands in what he called "churchy" paintings. For five minutes or so he scanned the papers in silence, refreshing his memory on tiny points. Then he put them down and raised his eyes to Archery's face.

  "We have to go back to Saturday, September 23rd," he said, "the day before the murder. Painter didn't appear with the coal at all that evening. The two old women waited until nearly eight o'clock when the fire was almost out, and Mrs. Primero said she would go to bed. Alice Flower was incensed at this and went out to get what she called 'a few lumps'."

  "That was when she hurt her leg," Archery said eagerly.

  "It wasn't a serious injury but it made Mrs. Primero angry and she blamed Painter. At about ten on the following morning she sent Alice down to the coach house to tell Painter she wanted to see him at eleven thirty sharp. He came up ten minutes late, Alice showed him into the drawing room and afterwards she heard him and Mrs. Primero quarrelling."

  "This brings me to the first point I want to raise," Archery said. He flipped through the transcript and, putting his finger at the beginning of a paragraph, passed it to Wexford. "This, as you know, is part of Painter's own evidence. He doesn't deny the quarrel. He admits that Mrs. Primero threatened him with dismissal. He also says here that Mrs. Primero finally came round to see his point of view. She refused to give him a rise because she said that would put ideas into his head and he would only ask for another increase in a few months' time. Instead she'd give him what she understood was called a bonus."

  "I remember all that well," Wexford said impatiently. "He said she told him to go upstairs and into her bedroom where he'd find a handbag in her wardrobe. He was to bring that handbag down to her and this, he said, he did. There was about two hundred pounds in the handbag and this he could have, take it away in the handbag and look upon it as a bonus on condition he was absolutely circumspect about bringing the coal at the required times." He coughed. "I never believed a word of it and neither did the jury."

  "Why not?" Archery asked quietly.

  God, thought Wexford, this was going to be a long session.

  "Firstly, because the stairs at Victor's Piece run up between the drawing room and the kitchen. Alice Flower was in the kitchen cooking the lunch. She had remarkably good hearing for her age, but she never heard Painter go up those stairs. And, believe me, he was a big heavy lout if ever there was one." Archery winced faintly at this but Wexford went on, "Secondly, Mrs. Primero would never have sent the gardener upstairs to poke about in her bedroom. Not unless I'm very mistaken in her character. She would have got Alice to have fetched the money on some pretext or other."

  "She might not have wanted Alice to know about it."

  "That's for sure," Wexford retorted sharply. "She wouldn't have. I said on some pretext or other." That made the parson draw in his horns. Wexford said very confidently, "In the third place Mrs. Primero had a reputation for being rather mean. Alice had been with her for half a century but she'd never given Alice anything bar her wages and an extra pound at Christmas." He jabbed at the page. "Look, she says so here in black and white. We know Painter wanted money. The night before when he hadn't brought the coal he'd been drinking up at the Dragon with a pal of his from Stowerton. The pal had a motorbike to sell and he'd offered it to Painter for a bit less than two hundred pounds. Apparently Painter hadn't a hope of getting the money but he asked his friend to hold on to the bike for a couple of days and he'd contact him the minute anything came up. You're saying he got the money before noon on Sunday. I say he stole it after he brutally murdered his employer in the evening. If you're right, why didn't he get in touch with his friend on Sunday afternoon? There's a phone box at the bottom of the lane. We checked with the pal, he didn't move out of his house all day and the phone never rang."

  It was a very tempest of fact and Archery yielded, or appeared to yield, before it. He said only: "You're saying, I think, that Painter went to the wardrobe after he'd killed Mrs. Primero in the evening. There was no blood on the inside of the wardrobe."

  "For one thing he wore rubber gloves to do the deed. Anyway, the prosecution's case was that he stunned her with the flat side of the axe blade, took the money, and when he came downstairs, finished her off in a panic."

  Archery gave a slight shiver. "Doesn't it strike you as odd," he then said, "that if Painter did it he should have been so transparent about it?"

  "Some are. They're stupid, you see." Wexford said it derisively, h
is mouth curling. He still had no notion what Archery's interest in Painter might be, but that he was pro-Painter was apparent. "Stupid," he said again, intent on flicking the clergyman on the raw. Another wince from Archery rewarded him. "They think you'll believe them. All they've got to say is it must have been a tramp or a burglar and you'll go away satisfied. Painter was one of those. That old tramp thing," he said. "When did you last see a tramp? More than sixteen years ago, I'll bet."

  "Let's come to the murder itself," Archery said quietly.

  "By all means." Again Wexford took the transcript, gathering with a quick glance the information he needed. "Now, then," he began, "Painter said he went over to fetch the coal at half six. He remembered the time—twenty-five past six when he left the coach house—because his wife said five minutes to go before the child's bedtime. The time's not all that important, anyway. We know it was between twenty past six and seven o'clock that she was killed. Painter went over, chopped some wood and cut his finger. Or so he said. He certainly did cut his finger—cut it deliberately."

  Archery ignored this last. "He and Mrs. Primero belonged to the same blood group," he said.

  "They were both Group O. They weren't quite so accurate about the minute grouping of blood sixteen years ago as they are now. It was handy for Painter, that. But it didn't do him any real good."

  The clergyman crossed his legs and leaned back. Wexford could see he was trying to appear relaxed and making a poor job of it. "I believe you personally went to interview Painter after the crime was discovered?"

  "We were round at the coach house by a quarter to eight. Painter was out. I asked Mrs. Painter where he was and she said he'd come back from the big house some time after six-thirty, washed his hands and gone straight out again. He'd told her he was going to Stowerton to see his friend. We'd only been there about ten minutes when he came in. His story didn't stand up, there was far too much blood around to have come from a cut finger and—well, you know the rest. It's all down there. I charged him on the spot."

  The transcript fluttered a little in Archery's hand. He could not keep his fingers quite steady. "In evidence," he said, speaking slowly and evenly, "Painter said he hadn't been to Stowerton. 'I waited at the bus stop at the end of the lane, but the bus never came. I saw the police cars turn into the lane and I wondered what was up. Presently I felt a bit faint on account of my finger bleeding a lot. I came back to my flat. I thought my wife might know what it was all about.' " After a pause, he added with a kind of pleading eagerness, "That doesn't sound like the evidence of the complete moron you make him out to be."