by Ruth Rendell
Wexford opened the passenger door. ‘I must go back for a moment. There’s something I didn’t ask. He won’t like it, but that can’t be helped.’
‘Francine,’ said Miles.
‘Francine.’ Wexford went quickly up the path. It was Sophie who answered his ring, still smiling from her recent success.
‘Have I ever heard the name Francine? I was at school with someone called that. Francine Jameson. That’s the only one I’ve ever known.’
‘How old would she be now?’
Sophie pulled a face. ‘Oh, dear, she was my age. She’d be thirty-seven.’
‘Where can I find her?’
She gave him an address in Hampstead. ‘We all met up at a school reunion about two years ago and she was there then. Is that what you want? Oh, good. I am doing well today, aren’t I?’ She spoke as if getting anything right was a rarity with her or perhaps that it would be rare for anything she did to be acclaimed.
He hardly knew what it was about her that made him feel he would want to talk to her again or she would want to talk to him. He had already turned away, was already halfway down the path when, for the second time he went back. ‘In case you need to talk to me,’ he said and gave her his card.
Returning to the car, he noticed that Crowhurst had parked it between two vans, one removal size, the other large enough to carry perhaps eight people. He wondered how well Scott-McGregor’s manner went down with his clients who were having their double beds and refrigerators moved.
Go home before you go to Gayton Road, he told himself. Go home and see Sylvia. Francine has been living there for at least two years and probably much longer. She won’t run away in the next few hours or even by tomorrow morning. There’s nothing to stop me going to find her on a Saturday. Miles drove him as far as Pattison Road and he said he would walk the rest of the way. Here, at this very point, where the Finchley Road runs up towards Golders Green, he had calculated was where Walter Hartright had met the Woman in White for the first time.
That was a novel he had loved since he was a teenager. Do young people ever read it now? Does anyone read it? Asking himself these questions was depressing. Round here was all countryside when Wilkie Collins wrote it, the Heath and pastureland extending nearly all the way down to what was then called the New Road. Tomorrow, after he had seen Francine Jameson, he would walk along the Spaniards Road to Highgate, go down the hill and find where Dick Whittington, as the sun came up, had turned and seen the streets of London paved with gold. When he was at school they had sung the round
Turn again, Whittington,
Thou worthy citizen,
Lord Mayor of London.
He let himself in to the coachhouse and Sylvia, pale-faced and shaky but well, came down the stairs and threw herself into his arms.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEY PASSED THE evening at Sheila and Paul’s with the three children there. Sylvia had little to say about Jason Wardle’s attack – his name wasn’t mentioned – and her parents were careful to avoid the subject altogether. No doubt the sisters had thrashed it out when they were alone, but Wexford didn’t want to know. If it could never be forgotten perhaps it could be put behind them. When Wardle was found things would, of course, be different; if he was ever found, if he hadn’t disappeared abroad somewhere.
Wexford expected to sleep soundly that night and did so until the small hours. Then, when he awoke, it was to a realisation that was more a nuisance than an anxiety, but trivial things become anxieties at three in the morning. He couldn’t talk to Francine Jameson because he was no longer a policeman. He no longer had a warrant card and he baulked at calling Tom on a Saturday and asking for Lucy or Miles to come with him – correction: ask Lucy or Miles to go to Gayton Road and take him with them. Could he instead present himself as a friend of Sophie Baird enquiring after her old friend? Hardly. She would simply phone.
It took him an absurdly long time, well into daylight, to decide on the simplest solution. Tell the truth. Tell her his name, what he had been and what he now was, adding that if she didn’t want to talk to him or even speak the word ‘no’ to him, all she had to do was shut the door in his face. He got up at five and looked up her number in the phone book. She was there. Later on, at nine, he phoned the number and was asked to leave a message. Instead of that, he would go there, he thought. It was only a short walk away.
Before leaving he called Subearth Structures and asked Kevin Oswin for his brother’s address and phone number. Kevin was strangely cagey about giving Trevor’s address, but was eager enough to provide the phone number. It was no longer as easy as it had once been to discover the district in which someone lived from the three digits of an exchange. Wexford decided it wasn’t important. Mobiles were gradually taking over from landlines and young people he knew relied entirely on their cellphones. He tried Trevor’s number. After a dozen rings a woman answered and sounded as cautious as Kevin. But she gave Wexford Trevor’s mobile number and when he called it the phone was answered at once.
‘Don’t remember much about it,’ he said discouragingly. ‘I only went along with Kev in the Merc because I’d nothing better to do. I never went in the house. The owner – don’t recall his name – he and Kev were talking, arguing the toss; they come outside and went in again. I hung about in the lane and had a fag. Had a couple, they was so long about it.’
Wexford heard the unmistakable click of a cigarette lighter and Trevor’s indrawn breath. He coughed, said, ‘Kev never done the job. The place would have fell down if he had, he said. That was it. Then we went home.’
‘Where’s home, Mr Oswin?’
‘Never you mind. All I’ll say is, somewhere in West Hampstead. An Englishman’s home is his castle – maybe you’ve never heard that. It means that’s my business.’ Trevor was overcome by coughing and the phone went down.
Dora was taking all three children on the London Eye, a downhill walk to Finchley Road, then on the Jubilee Line to Westminster. His own walk was shorter and by the time he reached the house whose number Sophie Baird had given him, he had convinced himself she wouldn’t be in. He rang the bell and rang it again. The sound of footsteps from inside surprised him.
‘Ms Jameson,’ he said, ‘My name is Wexford, Reginald Wexford, and I’m a former detective chief inspector. I’d like to ask you some questions, but before I do have to explain to you that I have no official standing and no right to ask you anything.’
‘Do you have any identification?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’ There on the doorstep he produced his driving licence, senior railcard and, although he had forgotten it was in his pocket, his passport.
She smiled, perhaps because she had seen that the passport still described him as a police officer. ‘Come in. It’s a bit of a mess.’
Almost everyone who invited you in said that. The ones who didn’t were those who were in most need of saying it, the squalor-mongers and the compulsive rubbish hoarders. Francine Jameson’s little house was clean and as tidy as most people’s. In the living room a little boy of about two was sitting on the floor building an elaborate structure from Lego. At sight of Wexford he got up and went to his mother, clutching her round the knees. She picked him up.
‘I’m afraid William is rather shy.’
He said, ‘Hallo, William,’ in that enthusiastic tone he had long ago learnt that children love, and sat down in the chair Francine Jameson indicated. She was a rather tall, slim woman with dark hair tightly drawn back and tied in a ponytail.
‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘You will have heard about the – er, discoveries at Orcadia Cottage in St John’s Wood.’ She looked a little bewildered. ‘The place where’ – he didn’t want to say too much in front of the child – ‘there were some unpleasant discoveries made under a manhole in the patio.’
William said, ‘Patio’, and then, ‘patio, patio, catio, matio’.
‘Yes, darling, you are clever,’ said his mother and to Wexford. ‘I re
ad about it in the paper. What has it to do with me?’
‘Have you ever been to Orcadia Cottage?’ She shook her head, mystified. ‘Do the names Franklin and Harriet Merton mean anything to you?’
‘I’ve never heard of them.’
‘La punaise?’
‘It’s French. It means a pin.’
‘Yes, but it’s quite an unusual word. Would you mind telling me how you come to know what it means?’
‘I wouldn’t mind at all.’ She laughed. ‘I teach French. That’s what I do. I teach French at Francis Holland.’
It must be a school, he thought. He got up, thanked her. ‘Do you happen to know anyone else with your first name?’
‘Francine? I don’t think so. Only my mother.’
‘And preferably your sort of age.’
‘I’ve got it because my mother’s French and it’s her name. She’s called Francine Seguin and when she and my father were divorced she reverted to her maiden name. But you don’t want to hear this. You’re looking for a young woman and my mother’s nearly seventy.’
‘Does she live in this country?’
‘In Highgate,’ said Francine Jameson, ‘but I can’t see how she’d be any help to you.’
Wexford, walking up the hill again, was inclined to agree with her. She lived in Highgate, though, where he was going. Abruptly, he turned back and struck out across the Heath past Hampstead Ponds. Not that he would look for Francine Seguin. There was no point. Unless there was in existence a society composed of women called Francine – a most unlikely contingency – and if there was Tom Ede would know about it by now. It might be that finding their Francine, the Orcadia Cottage Francine, wasn’t necessary. Better by far to get back to finding the builder who had put to use the knowledge he had picked up of the patio’s subterranean layout.
Walking, he had decided when he first took it up in a serious way, was the best occupation for thinking. Better than sitting in an armchair where your thoughts tended to send you to sleep, better than in bed at night when the post-midnight madness distorted your mindset. He assembled his thoughts as he walked briskly across the open heath, forced to the unwelcome conclusion that so far, after innumerable interviews, Internet incursions and repeated assessments of information, they had really discovered nothing about the occupants of the tomb except what had been almost obvious from the start, that the older woman in there had been Harriet Merton. From the start, too, they had known – or DNA had revealed – that there was some sort of blood relationship between the two men. Was that all?
Well, they also knew that three of the bodies had been there for twelve years and one for only about two. Lucy had said that Clary had a good many questions to answer, but so did the Underland company. Would they have records of workmen they had employed, even casual labour? That didn’t matter, he thought. Clary would know, Clary and perhaps that unknown quantity his wife Robyn Chilvers. They must make in-depth interviewing of those two their priority, he thought. Monday morning’s task. If only Tom Ede would agree …
*
‘I can’t talk to Mother,’ Sylvia said. ‘Well, I mean she won’t talk to me about what happened and if I mention Jason she clams up or changes the subject in a very obvious sort of way.’
‘Do you want to talk to her about it?’ Wexford asked.
‘I want to feel I can, not that I have to pretend I was attacked by someone I didn’t know, which is how it is now. Or pretend I wasn’t attacked at all. Mother is horrified that I had a relationship with someone seventeen years younger than myself, but she wouldn’t be if I was the man and Jason the woman. And she thinks I was – well, exposing Mary to some sort of corruption but I wasn’t, I was very careful with Mary. Every time Jason and I – well, when we met – Mary was with Mary Beaumont; she’s always spent a lot of time with her, she loves her a lot. That’s why, when we were in the car and I could tell a row was about to happen, I let Mary out of the car and watched her run into Mary Beaumont’s. I saw her jump into Mary’s arms. Mother thinks I sort of pushed her out of the car and left her in the road, which isn’t so at all.’
‘I think you have to ask yourself whether you wouldn’t rather have a mother with strict principles than an amoral one.’
‘To tell you the truth, I sometimes wonder.’
‘Where do you think Jason is now, Sylvia?’
‘If I knew I’d have told Mike. I wouldn’t shelter him.’ Sylvia reached for her glass of wine. ‘He wanted to marry me, you know.’
‘Yes, I gathered that.’
‘The thing was – and you’ll have heard this from countless men in this sort of situation – the thing was when I said no, I didn’t want to be married, he said that if he couldn’t have me no one should. He said it over and over and I took no notice, and the last time he said it he stabbed me.’ She gave a little nervous laugh and put her hand up to where the dressing on her scar pushed out the fabric of her sweater. ‘He said he wasn’t aiming for my heart because I had no heart. I’d like to have told Mother all that, but it’s impossible to say things to someone who won’t receive them.’
‘I shall take you home myself next week,’ Wexford said. ‘I want to have a talk with Mike.’
‘Not about me?’ Sylvia looked alarmed. ‘I’ve told him everything.’
‘Not about you. About this case I’m supposed to be helping with up here, though there’s no sign I’ve done any good so far. Talking to Mike may help me.’
But first must come another talk with Owen Clary and his wife. Tom Ede agreed, but rather grudgingly, Wexford thought. He could tell that Tom was already finding his methods eccentric. There was, Tom suggested, too much imagination involved in this constructed scenario of Clary and ‘Rod’ at Orcadia Cottage. What evidence did Wexford have for what he alleged Rod had done while Clary was inside the house?
‘I don’t have any evidence. If I did I wouldn’t need to talk to Clary or Rod because this business would be nearly solved. You say I’m acting on my imagination and you may be right, but I see it as acting from my knowledge of human nature. I just don’t think we should let it go without at least talking to this Rod.’
‘Well, as I say, you do that small thing. I’ll get Lucy to go along to Clary’s home and you go with her if you want.’ It was a subtly different form of words from what had been said to him before. This time he was accompanying her, not she him. But that was the way it was bound to be, Wexford told himself.
‘I said at the time that I didn’t believe a word of what Clary said,’ Lucy said when they set off for the tall block of Maida Vale flats where Clary and his wife lived. It was she, Robyn Chilvers, who had told them on the phone that she would be glad to see them. Her husband would be there too, of course. It so happened that both would be working from home that day while the heating was being serviced in their Finchley Road offices.
Handsome men don’t always marry good-looking women. Indeed, it is a phenomenon Wexford had often noticed that tall, elegant men with hawk’s profiles like Clary commonly pair up with dumpy women with fat cheeks and small eyes and ‘difficult’ hair like Robyn Chilvers. It was even stranger that while he seemed a subtle and devious person, she immediately gave the impression of frank and open straightforwardness.
Their home was a black and chrome and ivory-white minimalist penthouse, a huge picture window affording a view across north London to the distant Harrow-on-the-Hill. Wexford and Lucy sat down on a very uncomfortable armless black sofa. Clary stood looking at them while his wife bustled in with double espressos in black cups on a white tray.
‘I’ve told you everything I remember about that visit to whatever that so-called cottage is called,’ Clary was saying rather sourly. ‘You should be asking Underland for the name of their plumber, not me.’
‘Except that they have gone out of business,’ said Lucy, trying not to make a face at the first taste of the coffee. She said to Wexford afterwards that she thought it was taking the roof of her mouth off. ‘They know nothing about a plum
ber called Rod who worked for them three years ago.’
‘Well, I’m sorry but I can’t help you.’
‘But you can, darling,’ said Robyn Chilvers. ‘Rod, you said? He didn’t just work for Underland, he did a job for us. Don’t you remember when the dishwasher leaked? It can’t have been more than a year ago. He’d done a job for us before and I had his phone number and I called him and he came within the hour. He was very efficient.’
‘You mean that’s the same man? I suppose I do remember, Robyn. I just didn’t connect the two.’
‘Do you still have that number, Ms Chilvers?’
‘I’m sure I do. I’ll get it.’
She was rather a long time. While she was away Clary paced up and down the room. Like a panther, Wexford said to Lucy afterwards. They sat there on the rock-hard seat, staring out at London’s houses and church spires and blocks and trees and green spaces while Clary walked up and down in silence. Robyn Chilvers returned at last with a yellow Post-it on which she had written Rod Horndon and a mobile number. Clary turned round and instead of looking displeased, which was what Wexford expected, bestowed on his wife a smile of approval and patted her affectionately on the shoulder. Once they had said they were leaving, he became warmer and more expansive, apologising for not being able to give any more help.
‘I am beginning to think,’ Wexford said later, ‘that whatever happened the first time, the second visit Clary with Rod paid to Orcadia Cottage was quite different from the way Clary says it was. Why were there two visits anyway? Clary must have had some idea of what he was going to be looking at. Why not take a plumber with him the first time? The second time Rokeby and his wife were out. I’m wondering if this was very much to Clary’s advantage. If maybe Rokeby named several days on which Clary could come, but said that on one of them he and his wife would have to go out – and that was the one Clary picked. Will you call that number, Lucy? It’s a bit dodgy for me to do it.’
