Vault

Up Pattison Road to the West Heath in the sunshine. Someone had told him that the ex-King of Greece lived up here and he looked with a sightseer’s interest at the house he thought must be the one. But there was no sign of royalty and Wexford felt a certain disappointment as he had never seen a king. He paused to sniff at a branch of white blossom, but was disappointed. Still, the tree on which it grew was so elegant that for it to have a scent as well was evidently too much to expect.

In the early evening, the sun still high in the sky and dusk a long way off, he went back to Orcadia Place, this time with Dora. She refused to walk, telling him that he was getting ‘one of your obsessions’ about going everywhere on foot. She had spent an hour and a half in the gym she had joined and that was enough exercise for one day. Wexford looked at his new figure in the mirror and realised that he was acquiring something worse than a straightforward exercise obsession: he was worrying that he would immediately put on pounds if he took a bus or a taxi. They took a taxi.

A small crowd remained outside the gate. It wasn’t quite the same crowd. The young woman with the child had gone, but the man in the big sunglasses was still there or, more likely, had come back. His companion, also wearing sunglasses, was probably his wife. The gum-chewing boy in a hood was also a newcomer. Perhaps the sunglasses man kept an eye on the house each time he passed it on his way to work and his way back. Wexford and Dora walked round the corner into the mews. There, no one was about.

‘I find it hard to believe,’ Wexford said, glancing at the block of flats called Orcadia Court, ‘that no one in those flats or the houses in the streets round here has any information to give us – I mean, give the Met – about Harriet Merton.’ When he had been a policeman he had been careful to keep his work apart from his family, but it was different now. He had described the events of the morning to Dora. ‘Tom says neighbours in London don’t know each other. That may be true up to a point, but they’re people like people anywhere else. They must be gregarious, they must enjoy gossip.’

She nodded. ‘They may do, but all this is supposed to have happened twelve years ago and I expect you’ll find that those flats have changed hands a few times.’

‘I wish I could go in and talk to them. Like one of those amateur detectives in fiction.’

She said nothing, but she lightly squeezed the hand she was holding.

‘You don’t have so many of them nowadays,’ said Wexford, suddenly aware that ‘nowadays’ was an obsolete word. ‘These days, I mean. Every detective story writer had an amateur detective who was cleverer than the police. Sherlock Holmes, of course. Poirot. Lord Peter Wimsey …’

‘Albert Campion.’

‘Roderick Alleyn.’

‘Alan Grant.’

‘Who on earth was he?’

‘Josephine Tey’s detective. But no, Reg, I forgot. He was a bona fide policeman.’

‘The point I’m making is that all these people were enormously respected by the police. They went everywhere with police officers, questioned suspects, were privy to secrets, read forensic reports and ultimately were the first to come up with answers. And they were celebrities. Everyone had not only heard of them but they were famous.’

‘I don’t suppose it was really like that.’

‘Probably not. The thing is I’m an amateur detective now, but I haven’t got Lord Peter’s right of entry into a suspect’s home or a right to question him or her.’

She looked at him, but he was smiling and sounded cheerful. He went up to a door in the high brick wall and turned the handle. To his surprise the door opened. ‘We were here this morning,’ he said, ‘and when we went someone left the door unlocked. Not my responsibility, though, and that’s rather a good feeling.’

There was nothing to see. The cover was back on the manhole. Paulson and Grieve, Ironsmiths of Stoke. The fronds of the lavender swayed a little in the evening breeze. A blackbird was singing its going-to-roost song in one of the gardens. Wexford thought of Auden’s poem, the one called ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’, about life going quietly on regardless of terrible happenings. ‘The torturer’s horse,’ he remembered, ‘scratches its innocent behind on a tree.’

‘The bodies were in there?’ Dora pointed to Paulson and Grieve’s iron lid. ‘In a hole under that?’

‘In a hole under that,’ Wexford echoed. ‘And an ill-assorted bunch they were. Two men, two women. Two young, two older. Let’s go. There’s nothing to see.’

They walked up to West Hampstead. It was Wednesday and Tom would call him tomorrow. He had the coachhouse landline number and Wexford’s mobile number. Tom had asked him to be his adviser and he would call him tomorrow. A taxi came and they got into it. He was constantly surprised by the amount taxis cost and had learnt that they were more expensive after eight in the evening. Ten pounds to go from one side of Hampstead to the other even before eight …

It was starting to get dark. Sheila’s cat, a British Blue called Bettina, was sitting on their doorstep when they got back. ‘Back’ not ‘home’. He hadn’t reached that stage yet and perhaps he never would. The cat let out a loud piercing mew and ran inside when Dora unlocked the front door.

‘Shall I give her a saucer of milk?’

Dora looked shocked. ‘Oh, no, you mustn’t. Milk’s very bad for cats, apparently. They can’t digest it.’

Wexford did some digesting himself, then said, ‘Are you telling me that for centuries man has been giving cats milk in life and in literature? Every book or story with a cat in it has it drinking milk. Milk is what cats drink, live on, like, enjoy. If you were doing one of those tests where you’re given a word and have to say the first other word that comes into your head, if you were given “cat” you’d probably say “milk”. And now you tell me milk is bad for cats.’

‘I can’t help all that, Reg. That’s what Sheila said. Her vet told her.’

‘The next thing will be bones are bad for dogs.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, a lot of people say they are. Bones can splinter, you see.’