‘Don’t snap at me like that, you saucy devil,’ said the doctor, immensely pleased with himself. ‘I set traps, as the Psalmist says, I catch men.’
‘What did Cullam buy?’
‘He didn’t exactly buy anything, but he’s after a refrigerator.’
‘Getting it on the H.P. is he?’
‘Money wasn’t mentioned. They had a bit of a ding-dong, Mr and Mrs, and one of the kids knocked a Pyrex dish off a cooker. That brute Cullam fetched him a four-penny one, poor little devil. They’re all dead keen on getting this fridge, I can tell you.’
‘Well, what about these traps you laid?’
‘That was just a figure of speech,’ said the doctor. ‘Didn’t I do all right? I bought the bulb like you said. One and nine if you don’t mind. I’m not in this for my health.’
Chapter 10
‘They call themselves McCloy Ltd.,’ Burden said wearily, ‘but the last member of the firm of that name died twenty years ago. It’s an old established set-up, but I reckon it’s on its last legs now. In this so-called affluent society of ours folks buy new stuff, they don’t want this reconditioned rubbish.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Wexford, thinking of Cullam.
‘The Yard put me on to six other McCloys all more or less in the hardware business or on its fringes. Not a smell of anything fishy about one of them. Stamford have given me a list of local McCloys and there again not a sniff as far as they know. But I’ll be off to Stamford in the morning to have a scent round. The local force have promised me all the help I need.’
Wexford lounged back in his swivel chair and the dying sun played on his face. ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘I wonder if we haven’t been starting from the wrong end. We’ve been looking for McCloy to lead us to his hired assassin. We might do better to find the hired assassin and let him lead us to McCloy.’
‘Cullam?’
‘Maybe. I want Martin to be Cullam’s shadow and if he goes and pays cash for that refrigerator we’re really getting somewhere. Meanwhile I’m going to make Hatton’s log book and Mrs Hatton’s engagement book my homework for tonight. But first, how about a quick one at the Olive and Dove?’
‘Not for me thanks, sir. I haven’t had an evening in for a week now. Divorce is against my wife’s principles but she might get ideas as to a legal separation.’
Wexford laughed and they went down in the lift together. The evening was warm and clear, the light and the long soft shadows more flattering to this market town High Street than the noonday sun. The old houses were at their best in it, their shabbiness, the cracks in their fabric veiled, as an ageing face is veiled and smoothed by candlelight. By day the alleys that ran into a scruffy hinterland were rat-hole rubbish traps but now they seemed romantic lanes where lovers might meet under the bracket lamps and as the sun departed, watch the moon ride over a Grimms’ fairy tale huddle of pinnacled rooftops.
As yet it was only eight o’clock and the sun reluctant to leave without treating its worshippers to a pyrotechnic display of rose and gold flames that burnt up the whole western sky. Wexford stood on the south side of the bridge and listened to the river chuckling. Such an innocent river, for all that it knew a secret, for all that one of its stones had put a man out of sight of the sunset!
All the Street windows of the Olive and Dove were open, the curtains fanning out gently over window boxes and over fuchsias that dripped red flowers. On the forecourt a band of Morris dancers had assembled. They wore the motley coat of jesters and one of them was hopping around on a hobby horse. To his amusement Wexford picked out George Carter among the company.
‘Lovely night, Mr Carter,’ he said jovially. Rather shame facedly Carter waved at him a stick with ribbons and bells on. Wexford went into the saloon bar.
At a table in the alcove on the dining-room wall sat the girl Camb had brought to him earlier in the day, an elderly woman and a man. Wexford brought his beer and as he passed them the man got up as if to take his leave.
‘Good evening,’ Wexford said. ‘Have you decided to stay at the Olive?’
The girl was sparing with her smiles. She nodded sharply to him and said, naming his rank precisely, ‘I’d like you to meet my father’s solicitor, Mr Updike. Uncle John, this is Detective Chief Inspector Wexford.’
‘How do you do?’
‘And I don’t think you’ve met my aunt, Mrs Browne?’
Wexford looked from one to the other. Marvellous the way he always had to do Camb’s work for him! The aunt was looking pale but excited, the solicitor gratified. ‘I’m quite prepared to accept that you’re Miss Fanshawe now, Miss Fanshawe,’ Wexford said.
‘I’ve known Nora since she was so high,’ said Updike. ‘You need have no doubt that this is Nora.’ And he gave Wexford a card naming a London firm, Updike, Updike and Sanger of Ava Maria Lane. The chief inspector looked at it, then again at Mrs Browne who was Nora Fanshawe grown old. ‘I’m satisfied.’ He passed on to an empty table.
The solicitor went to catch his train and presently Wexford heard the aunt say:
‘I’ve had a long day, Nora. I think I’ll just give the hospital a ring and then I’ll go up to bed.’
Wexford sat by the window, watching the Morris dancers. The music was amateurish and the performers self- conscious, but the evening was so beautiful that if you shut your eyes to the cars and the new shop blocks you might imagine yourself briefly in Shakespeare’s England. Someone carried out to the nine men a tray of bottled beer and the spell broke.
‘Come into the lounge,’ said a voice behind him.
Nora Fanshawe had removed the jacket of her suit and in the thin coffee-coloured blouse she looked more feminine. But she was still a creature of strong straight lines and planes and angles and she was still not smiling.
‘May I get you a drink, Miss Fanshawe?’ Wexford said, rising.
‘Better not.’ Her voice was abrupt and she didn’t thank him for the offer. ‘I’ve had too much already.’ And she added with a dead laugh, ‘We’ve been what my aunt calls celebrating. The resurrection of the dead, you see.’
They went into the lounge, sat down in deep cretonne covered armchairs and Nora Fanshawe said:
‘Mr Updike wouldn’t tell me the details of the accident. He wanted to spare me.’ She beckoned to the waiter and said without asking Wexford first, ‘Bring two coffees.’ Then she lit a king-size cigarette and slipped it into an amber holder. ‘You tell me about it,’ she said.
‘You don’t want to be spared?’
‘Of course not. I’m not a child and I didn’t like my father.’ Wexford gave a slight cough. ‘At about ten o’clock on May 20th,’ he began, ‘a man driving a petrol tanker on the north to south highway of Stowerton by-pass saw a car overturned and in flames on the fast lane of the south to north track. He reported it at once and when the police and ambulance got there they found the bodies of a man and a girl lying on the road and partially burned. A woman – your mother – had been flung clear on to the soft shoulder. She had multiple injuries and a fractured skull.’
‘Go on.’
‘What remained of the car was examined but, as far as could be told, there was nothing wrong with the brakes or the steering and the tires were nearly new.’
Nora Fanshawe nodded.
‘The inquest was adjourned until your mother regained consciousness. The road was wet and your mother has suggested that your father may have been driving exceptionally fast.’
‘He always drove too fast.’ She took the coffee that the waiter had brought and handed a cup to Wexford. He sensed that she would take it black and sugarless and he was right. ‘Since the dead girl wasn’t I,’ she said with repellently fault less grammar, ‘who was she?’
‘I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell us that.’
She shrugged, ‘How should I know?’
Wexford glanced at the curled lip, the hard direct eyes. ‘Miss Fanshawe,’ he said sharply, ‘I’ve answered your
