‘I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential.’
Rory sat back in his chair. ‘Just as you didn’t tell me you live in Rawling? Was that confidential too?’
‘Don’t take it the wrong way, Mr Wentwood. It just wasn’t relevant. No point in muddying the waters, eh? Did anything else come up?’
‘There was one thing.’
‘Yes?’ A spasm like pain passed over Narton’s face. ‘What?’
‘Something the Vicar said as I was leaving. He mentioned that Serridge and Miss Penhow had bought Morthams Farm from Captain Ingleby-Lewis. It must be the chap at Bleeding Heart Square.’
‘It is.’
‘You knew that too? Why didn’t you say?’
Narton stared coldly at him. ‘Police officers try not to tell members of the public everything they know in the professional way, Mr Wentwood. It wouldn’t be very sensible, would it? It’s perfectly true, though. The Rawling Hall estate used to belong to a family called Alforde. When the old man died a few years back, they had to sell up. The widow had a heart attack while they were sorting out the sale. They reckon the shock killed her. Most of what was left of the money went to Mr Alforde’s heir, his brother’s son. But there was one farm, Morthams, that was outside the entail, because Mr Alforde had bought it in the nineties to round off the estate. Mrs Alforde had added a codicil to her will. She left Morthams to her own nephew.’
‘Ingleby-Lewis.’
Narton nodded. ‘The place was heavily mortgaged, they say. He had a devil of a job trying to sell it. Then Serridge came along and suddenly the thing was done.’ Narton tapped the side of his nose. ‘I can guess whose money went to buy it. Ten to one Miss Penhow paid over the odds and Serridge and Ingleby-Lewis split the proceeds.’ He held up his hand like a traffic policeman. ‘Maybe. Who knows?’
‘And now Ingleby-Lewis is living in Serridge’s London house?’
‘Which used to belong to Miss Penhow. Something fishy, eh? Serridge has got a tame lawyer, a man called Shires, and he handled the purchase of the farm and probably a lot of other business for Miss Penhow and Serridge. You can bet most of it was on a cash basis.’ Narton rubbed his eyes as though trying to erase his tiredness. ‘But proving it? That’s another thing. And that’s the trouble with this case. Nothing to get your teeth into. You can’t point at anything and say, there’s the body, there’s the robbery, there’s the crime.’
‘Can’t you question Ingleby-Lewis?’
‘Of course I bloody can’t,’ Narton said.
‘Why not?’
‘It would give the game away. Besides, he may be on his uppers but he’s not the sort of man whose arm you can easily twist. He’s got friends.’
‘Serridge?’ Rory thought that behind Serridge was Shires and the might and trickery of the law.
‘Not just him. Do you know who Ingleby-Lewis’s ex-wife is? That young lady’s mother? She’s Lady Cassington now. She’s got a house in Mayfair and an estate somewhere in the West Country. Don’t let anyone tell you we are all equal before the law, young man. Because we are not. And the gentry are the worst of all. Say the wrong thing to one of them, and you find the whole world comes down on you like a ton of bricks. They’re all bloody related. They’re all looking out for each other.’ He swallowed the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What this country needed was the guillotine. That’s where we went wrong. Those Frenchies knew what was what.’
Rory was conscious of a twinge of disappointment. Lydia Langstone wasn’t just married — she was one of those upper-class women whose lives his sisters read about in magazines. She would have been presented at Court and had her wedding pictures in the
Narton coughed, hackingly, continuously. He took a cigarette from a packet and tapped it on the table. ‘If Ingleby-Lewis would talk, he could tell us a thing or two, I’m sure of that. But he won’t talk to me, of course. He knows who I am.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘In the course of the investigation. He knows I’m a police officer and that I was concerned in the Penhow case. But who knows? Maybe he said something to his daughter. Maybe, if you and her get talking, you could slip in a question here or there, see if she knows anything about Morthams Farm or Miss Penhow.’
‘I don’t know. It seems a bit unsporting.’
Narton lit the cigarette and tossed the dead match into the ashtray. ‘Murder isn’t a sport, Mr Wentwood. It’s a matter of life or death. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Rory said nothing.
‘Anyway, can’t stay here chatting.’ Narton pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, Mr Wentwood. It’s not gone unnoticed by the powers that be.’
‘There’s the small matter of my expenses,’ Rory said, his uneasiness finding another outlet. ‘The train fare today, mainly. I don’t know whether you’d run to lunch as well.’
‘Keep a record, Mr Wentwood, and give me a list with receipts. It will be easier if I put in a single claim for you at the end of all this. But your money is as safe as houses, you can be sure of that. One advantage of dealing with the police.’
‘I don’t want to carry on with this.’
Narton wrapped his muffler carefully round his neck. ‘Let’s have a chat in a day or two. I need to see one or two people, think about one or two things. Believe me, Mr Wentwood, if I can find an alternative I will.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Now you can oblige me by keeping your eyes open. And don’t do anything foolish. Serridge is dangerous. I don’t want another death on my conscience.’
‘What do you mean? Who’s died already?’
Narton looked blankly at him. Then his lips turned down at the corners. ‘Why, Miss Penhow, of course. You surely don’t believe the poor lady can still be alive?’
He turned up the collar of his overcoat and pulled his hat down low so all that was visible of his face were his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and slipped out of the pub.
Rory stared at the broken cigarette in the ashtray, along with the other butts. He had watched how Narton smoked. The man either smoked his cigarettes until the ends grew so hot he could no longer hold them or kept what was left unsmoked for later.
So something had rattled him. There had been a false note in what he had been saying. Where, exactly? What if Narton hadn’t meant Miss Penhow’s death but someone else’s? Who else had died?
Herbert Narton knew he had taken a terrible risk in encouraging young Wentwood to go to Rawling. True, the scheme had worked after a fashion, but there was no saying that it would not eventually backfire. Nor had the results been what he had hoped for. Still, Wentwood was living at Bleeding Heart Square and there was always the chance of progress in that direction.
At Liverpool Street he caught the train. He tried to doze during the journey. He knew he should eat but he found the consumption of food more and more of an effort. He seemed to be living on air. Perhaps because of that he felt literally less heavy and less substantial than usual, as though he were fading away. All that was left of substance was the hard, irreducible core of his anger. Anger? Not quite the right word. Sorrow was almost as good. Fear was somewhere in the mixture, and even a form of love. But none of the words fitted, and none of them ever would.
Nobody noticed him leaving the train at Mavering. It was a small station and the evening rush was long since over. Only one man was on duty and he was dealing with Hinks from the sorting office at the mail van. He walked down to the church and took the field path to Rawling. It was a clear night, and the moon was up, though slipping in and out of clouds. He had a torch in his pocket but did not use it. He had walked this way so often he could have followed the path blindfolded. When he came to the fork, he took the left-hand path. This was narrower than the one on the right that led to Rawling Hall before it reached the village. He walked more slowly, more cautiously. The going was muddier underfoot. The world seemed darker too, as though this tiny part of Essex had less light in it than the rest.
He came at last to where there was a gap in the hedgerow and he could look up the slope of the meadow to the house itself, with the huddle of farm buildings on the right. There was the soft glow of lamplight in two of the first-floor windows. Morthams Farm. He imagined he was an owl flying over Morthams towards Rawling, and his
