He could hardly say to her that the murdered man had been identified and that he had come round to satisfy himself whether it was possible that Marion Manning could have been his wife, but that was, of course, why he had come.
“I just wanted to have a word with Dr. Manning,” he said.
He set himself to soothe Joyo. But as he did so he became aware of an antagonism that puzzled him. This woman had a chip on her shoulder. While he talked he tried to remember if the local police had had any sort of brush with her, but they had hardly mentioned her, had scarcely seen her. He put the thought away for reference.
It was just as well he had something put away to think about because with a sudden movement Joyo shut the door in his face.
Too many doors had been shut in Coffin’s face for this to anger him. He thought he would play a trick on Joyo. He had already noticed that the backs of this group of houses could be seen from the corner of Little Clarendon Street. He went into the hardware shop on the corner and asked if he could watch from one of their back windows. This was behaviour which would not perhaps win him the thanks of his colleagues but he hoped they would never need to know of it.
He sat down on a box in a room used for the storage of oil stoves, lamps and cookers. It contained also more old chests of drawers than he had ever before seen in one room; these were used as receptacles for nails and screws and bolts. Coffin looked out of the window. Unlike the Major, he had no binoculars with him, but he had an excellent pair of eyes of his own. And to a certain extent he knew what he was watching for; he had recognised the smell which had come through the door of Marion’s house. It had been the smell of burning.
Now his interested and observant eyes saw that in that garden where nobody ever did any gardening, someone, presumably the strange Mrs. Beaufort, and how ill the name suited her, was having a bonfire. A nice quiet domestic bonfire.
He wondered what she was burning. Not, he trusted, her employer.
Even as he watched he saw Joyo stagger forward to the fire with a great armful of weeds.
The Major was waiting for Coffin as he reappeared. The binoculars had spotted more than the behaviour of Joyo, and he had seen the detective disappear into the shop. He raised his hat politely (the Major was perhaps the last man in Oxford to wear a hat) as he stopped Coffin. “Decent sort,” he was thinking, “make a good N.C.O. In a war probably end up a Brigadier. Not old enough for the last one though.”
“Good morning,” said Coffin. “Saw you at the window, didn’t I?”
“I dare say,” said the Major, in no way discomfited. “Good observation post, you know. Now I take it you were wanting Dr. Manning?”
“I was wanting anyone I could get.”
“I don’t usually interfere in my neighbours’ affairs,” said the Major, which was completely untrue, as it was as natural as breathing for him to interfere with and dominate whoever came within his orbit.
“But I could see you trying to get in next door. As you saw, I live next door to Dr. Manning.”
“Oh, yes,” Coffin was rapidly recalling all he had been told of the eccentric next door who had befriended the murdered man. “The woman shut the door in my face.”
“I detest that woman,” said the Major sharply. “I’m a plain man and I’ve said it! I detest her. It was bad enough when we only saw her occasionally, but now she’s there all the time. She’s come to stay if you ask me. I knew there was trouble when Dr. Manning started refusing to go out. I could always tell in the old days with the horses (I was a cavalry man, of course) when you got a horse who kept its head down, wouldn’t look you in the eye and stayed in its stall, then you knew you were in for it.” The Major spoke in the voice of the confirmed animal lover.
“Mrs. Beaufort is it?” Coffin was considering the possibility that perhaps the detestable Mrs. Beaufort was his girl of the golden ways who had come out of the blue to love, to disappear, and then reappear only with a knife. “Is it Mrs. Beaufort?”
“She calls herself Mrs. Beaufort, does she?” The Major was adding up his thoughts and what they added up to was that he didn’t believe in Mrs. Beaufort. “An undesirable woman. I should follow her up.”
“I shall if I can. Know where she lives when she isn’t here?”
The Major shrugged. He thoroughly disbelieved in Mrs. Beaufort. “It’s Box and Cox if you ask me, my dear fellow, Box and Cox. But I don’t pretend to know. I’m not a friend of Dr. Manning’s.”
“I could do with meeting a friend of Dr. Manning’s,” said Coffin, who found the Major quite as remarkable as Mrs. Beaufort. “Or even just getting a good look at Dr. Manning.”
“I suggest you get hold of Mr. Ezra Barton. He knows more about her than I do. Close friends. I can give you his address.” And the Major consulted his diary.
“You’d be useful to me on my job,” said Coffin admiringly. “Talk about well-informed.”
“12A Landover Road, just behind the University Park,” said the Major, passing over what Coffin had to say.
Ezra, however, was wondering if he was a close friend of Marion’s. Marion seemed to have withdrawn herself. He reproached himself for having been so sunk in his own affairs lately that he had not noticed Marion. Looking back he wondered whether, as his star had declined, so another star was in the ascendant. There was some influence on Marion that he could not account for. The word withdrawn was not used by mistake: she had gone away.
Just for a moment at the inquest, at which she had appeared most extraordinarily dressed even for Marion, who chose her clothes as eclectically as her conversation, he had got contact with a Marion he understood. He had pressed her arm and said something about thank goodness it was over, these last days must have been difficult for her, and she had looked surprised and said “But I’ve been working,” as if nothing and no-one in the world could really impinge upon that.
Perhaps he was wrong: Marion hadn’t changed; he had.
All the same it was getting more and more difficult actually to find Marion. He hadn’t seen her for days. And he missed her. She was good company and he had been used to find her welcoming whenever he called. There was a thrust and parry in conversation with Marion that stimulated. Of course, you could say he got that with Rachel, but with Rachel at the moment there was more cut than parry, and if Marion was stimulating, life with Rachel was apt to be like wearing a hair shirt. They had had a good resounding, heartening quarrel over Rachel’s attitude to Marion and although officially it was over, they were still rather tentative with each other as a result. It had shaken them up and neither of them was quite sure yet where the pieces had come down. One thing was clear, they did not stand quite where they had before. Whether Ezra had gone back a move or forward he was not clear. How maddening to have to think of a love affair like a game of chess, that came of Rachel being so tiresomely cerebral: although lately he had been having encouraging signs that she was not entirely mind. He wondered whether Marion, who after all had a mind, too, was being remote with him on purpose. But all his knowledge of Marion, her warmth, generosity, even her good sense, told him this was nonsense. Whatever was happening to Marion, it was not calculation.
“I’m worried,” he said to Rachel over coffee in the dark little coffee shop smelling of soup and fish in Oxford Market. “Where is Marion?”
“You could ask her pupils.”
“She’s not teaching this term. You know that. Working on that book.”
“Ask around. At college.”
“But I don’t want to seem to be inquiring about Marion. Things are tricky enough as it is without me adding to it.”
Rachel nodded and stirred her coffee. Her own conscience was not quite easy on that count. How much had she added to whatever burden Marion was carrying?
“I just want that one of us should see her. Reliably, actually see her so that we know she’s there and not dead or ill or something.” Ezra’s voice tailed away.
“I have seen her, though,” said Rachel slowly.
; “What!”
“Yes, don’t look so surprised. I’ve thought all along you were getting over-imaginative about this disappearance of Marion’s. I just went round. I wasn’t invited or anything. I called. The door was open and I went in. That’s Marion exactly. Every door always wide open. No wonder people wander in and get murdered.”
“She was there?”
Rachel nodded. “Of course. I’ve told you all along that’s not the worry, Marion disappearing. All the same she wasn’t herself. I saw what you meant. She acted almost as if she didn’t know me. Or care much either. I suppose she could see I was watching her. ‘Don’t stare,’ she said. Sharply, too. And she wasn’t pleased I’d called, either. I’m afraid she hasn’t forgiven me for trying to get you out of Oxford.”
… Or for as good as telling her you thought she was a murderer, was what was at the back of both their minds.
“All the same she was kind. You know Marion, she’d be kind to you even if she was hating your eyes. She gave me some coffee. She makes rotten coffee, too.”
“So everything was all right?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Rachel. She was puzzled. “Marion looked ill. And thin. She’s very thin, I wonder if she bothers to eat? No, there was something odd. I wish I could put my finger on it.”
She brooded into her coffee which she had not drunk, no one ever saw Rachel actually finish a cup of coffee. She started it, stirred it, looked at it, treasured it apparently, but never finished a cup.
“We’re not Marion’s only friends,” she said suddenly. “Nor her oldest. There’s Lloyd Farmiloe. They were on the expedition together. I believe they didn’t speak to each other for years after it, but he knows her.”
Ezra got up. “Bus or taxi?” he said, knowing how far into North Oxford was the home of the Professor of Morphology.
“Oh, walk,” said Rachel. “I always walk everywhere in Oxford.”
“You’re too good to be true, my girl.”
To Ezra it was delicious to be walking into the green shadowy streets of North Oxford with Rachel. This side of the city, far away from the industry and factories of Cowley, was more attractive than people allowed. He liked the large shabby houses, the green lawns and the trees which were at their best in early summer.
They had no difficulty in finding the home of the Professor of Morphology; they heard it even before they saw it.
“Do you think he keeps a zoo?” Ezra turned to Rachel. “I’m sure I’ve heard noises like that in the Lion House in Regent’s Park.”
“I think it’s only children,” but she sounded doubtful.
They stood on their toes and peered over the shaggy, sweet-smelling hedge.
Rachel giggled. “I think they are children.”
In the garden a procession of strange, grubby figures staggered round chanting and beating a dustbin lid. The sizes varied, the leader was quite tall and, if a child, was probably aged about ten. The last in the line could hardly walk and seemed to be crying. No faces were to be seen, as each head was covered with either a fur mask or a paper mask or dust and feathers. Everyone was very dirty. On another dustbin lid there were the remains of a picnic meal: a pot of jam, a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of very dark stone-ground-no-artificial-fertiliser health-bread, and the chewed remains of a tin of corned beef.
Crouched in one corner by a rose bush was a dark, cross boy of about thirteen, who was reading and trying to type on a small machine placed on the ground beside him. In another corner was a pram, the occupant of which was wailing fiercely. No one took any notice.
The leader of the procession, who was wearing a fur and what was clearly his mother’s best flowered hat, stopped in front of the boy who was reading and screamed.
Rather nervously, Rachel and Ezra entered the garden.
“Is your father at home?” Ezra asked the reading boy politely.
The reader stood up and shook his head. He also was polite. The rest of the children stood around in a large and vaguely hostile circle. “No, he and my mother are both out.”
“Is anyone home?”
“There’s us,” pointed out the leader of the procession. “We’re home all right.”
At this point, the youngest marcher in the procession sat down and wailed desolately that it wanted its lunch. The baby in the pram abruptly fell silent, unconscious probably.
Rachel and Ezra looked round them helplessly, anxious for retreat but unwilling to abandon the situation without doing anything about it.
“It’s not lunch time yet, is it?” asked Rachel. “Surely it can’t be.”
“It is for us,” said the leader of the marchers. “We had breakfast at six so Mum and Dad could get off.”
“Perhaps I could cut you a piece of bread,” said Rachel, going towards the dustbin lid.
“You can’t, we’ve lost the knife.”
From across the low garden fence they had been watched by a pretty blonde woman with big blue eyes.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “Imagine how I feel living next door. I itch to tidy up and organise.”
By now the marchers were standing around the bin tearing lumps off the bread and spooning out the jam. The boy had gone back to his book and the baby was crying again. Rachel found this a relief; she had been so frightened it was dead.
“They do have an Italian,” murmured the woman. “Fred,” and she called to the boy with the book. “Where’s Maria?”
The boy shrugged. “She got in a temper because Jackson left the bath tap running all night, and she’s gone off.”
The pretty blonde muttered under her breath.
“But what are their parents thinking of,” cried Rachel, scandalised, “leaving all this lot with just one Italian?”
“Oh, it’s not their fault,” said the pretty woman regretfully and earnestly, “I don’t believe I’d get so angry if I thought it was. They try, they really do. They just can’t help it. They’re just natural born muddlers.” She called to the biggest boy. “Fred, that’s your telephone ringing, do go and answer it.” When he had gone she said, “He’s only home for a few days, he’s in his first term at Eton. He can’t stand the others. I think he’s ashamed of them.”
“Humourless boy,” said Ezra, looking at the dirty, messy, tired, but good-looking and attractive faces before him.
“Yes, they are rather sweet, aren’t they? But don’t be hard on him, he just wants to be ordinary.”
“Yes, I can see this family is different. It must take real intellect to get in a muddle of this dimension.”
“Do you know,” said the pretty blonde girl, whom they could now see to be pregnant, “every single one of these children is named after a different historical figure. Fred, who’s just gone in, is Frederic Barbarossa, the girl is Bloody Mary, the baby is called Alaric. Would you believe it? And every single one of them brilliantly clever.” She sighed. “I’m so afraid I’ll have a dull little pudding.”
The toddler was wailing again, a high desolate cry that made both Rachel and the woman look at each other in alarm.
“I’m afraid that child is an arrant exhibitionist, damn him,” said Bloody Mary in what was clearly an exact reproduction of her mother’s tones and speech.
The adults looked at each other again.
“I’m going to be obstinately, terribly, relentlessly sweet and polite to my children,” said the pretty woman. “So that they can never repeat anything dreadful I say.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have much difficulty,” said Ezra; he admired her.
The child wailed again so Rachel went over and picked him up. He was fiercely hot and his hands were dry, he was trembling.
“He ought to go to bed.”
“I don’t think I can climb over,” said the pretty woman apologetically, “not as things are.”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Well, I can take the baby,” and she put a pink arm over and lifted the wailing infant from its pram. “Practice for me,” she s
aid with a wink, and departed.
Rachel lifted the toddler over the stream of water which still lay on the doorstep and disappeared. Ezra sat in the sun and waited.
When she came back she looked worried, and quiet.
“We needn’t have come,” said Ezra getting up. “Shouldn’t have probably.”
“I’m glad we did. That child needed attention.” She walked out of the gate and Ezra followed her. “Besides, it wasn’t entirely wasted.” She walked on ahead without saying anything, indeed she walked until Ezra touched her arm. “You were saying?” he inquired.
“When I had to put the child to bed, and what a mess, it must take real brain power to create disorder of that calibre, I saw an empty photograph frame in the hall. It had contained a group photograph of that miserable expedition to Central America. It said so underneath. I asked the eldest boy where it was. He told me the police had taken it.”
“The police?”
“Yes, the police, just think that one over. And whose face were they looking for? The husband’s or Marion’s? You can take your pick.”
Suddenly Rachel shivered.
“You don’t look too good yourself.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, I have a bit of a headache.” But she looked pale. Ezra said so.
“Oh, be quiet.”
“You’re very irritable anyway.” Ezra now was genuinely concerned; he had also a feeling of grievance, not only was Rachel being irritable but he was also certain she was keeping something from him.
“I’m not in the least cross,” and as if to prove this Rachel switched at once to a subject which never failed to make both of them cross: Ezra the perpetual scholar. Why wasn’t Ezra doing something about it?
Death Lives Next Door Page 12
