navy were the predominating colours. The dresses and coats were aimed at a comfortably-off middle-aged market. They were ‘smart’ – a word he knew would never be used by his daughters or by anyone under forty-five. And among them, trailing from an open sleeve to a scent bottle, suspended from a vase to the neck of a crimson sweater, were strings of glass beads.
A woman of about thirty came up to attend to them. She said her name was Mrs Moss and she was in charge while Rose Farriner was away. Her manner astonished, suspicious, cautious – all to be expected in the circumstances. Again the photograph was studied and again doubt was expressed. She had worked for Mrs Farriner for only six months and knew her only in her business capacity.
‘Do you know what part of the country Mrs Farriner originally came from?’ Burden asked her.
‘Mrs Farriner’s never discussed private things with me.’
‘Would you say she’s a secretive person?’
Mrs Moss tossed her head. ‘I really don’t know. We aren’t always gossiping to each other, if that’s what you mean. She doesn’t know any more about me than I know about her.’
Wexford said suddenly, ‘Has she ever had appendicitis?’
‘Has she what?'
‘Has she had her appendix out? It’s the kind of thing one often does know about people.’
Mrs Moss looked as if she were about to retort that she really couldn’t say, but something in Wexford’s serious and ponderous gaze seemed to inhibit her. ‘I oughtn’t to tell you things like that. It’s a breach of confidence.’
‘You’re aware as to whom we think Mrs Farriner really is or was. I think you’re being obstructive.’
‘But she can’t be that woman! She’s in the Lake District. She’ll be back in the shop on Monday.’
‘Will she? Have you had a card from her? A phone call?’
‘Of course I haven’t. Why should I? I know she’s coming home on Saturday.’
‘I’ll be as frank with you,’ Wexford said, ‘as I hope you’ll be with me. If Mrs Rose Farriner has had her appendix removed she cannot be Miss Rhoda Comfrey. There was no scar from an appendicectomy on Miss Comfrey’s body. On the other hand, if she has not, the chances of her having been Miss Comfrey are very strong. We have to know.’
‘All right,’ said Mrs Moss, ‘I’ll tell you. It must have been about six months ago, about February or March. Mrs Farriner took a few days off work. It was food poisoning, but when she came back she did say she’d thought at first it was a grumbling appendix because – well, because she’d had trouble like that before.’
Chapter 10
The heat danced in waving mirages on the white roadway.
Traffic kept up a ceaseless swirl round Montfort Circus, and there was headache-provoking noise, a blinding glare from sunlight flashing off chrome and glass. Wexford and Baker took refuge in the car which Clements had imperiously parked on a double yellow band.
‘We’ll have to get into that house, Michael.’
Baker said thoughtfully, ‘Of course we do have a key…’ His eye caught Wexford’s. He looked away. ‘No, that’s out of the question. It’ll have to be done on a warrant. Leave it to me, Reg, I’ll see what can be done.’
Burden and Clements stood out on the pavement, deep in conversation. Well aware of Burden’s prudishness and also of Clements’ deep-rooted disapproval of pretty well all persons under twenty-five – which augured ill for James and Angela in the future – Wexford had nevertheless supposed that they would have little in common. He had been wrong. They were discussing, like old duennas, the indecent appearance of the young housewife who had opened the door of number two Princevale Road dressed only in a bikini. Wexford gave the inspector a discourteous and peremptory tap on the shoulder.
‘Come on, John Knox. I want to catch the four-thirty-five back to Sussex, home and beauty.’
Burden looked injured, and when they had said goodbye and were crossing the Circus to Parish Oak station, remarked that Clements was a very nice chap. ‘Very true,’ sneered Wexford 'with Miss Austen and this is a very nice day and we are taking a very nice walk.’
Having no notion of what he meant but suspecting he was being got at, Burden ignored this and said they would never get a warrant on that evidence.
‘What d’you mean, on that evidence? To my mind, its conclusive. You didn’t expect one of those women to come out with the whole story, did you? Oh, yes, Rose told me in confidence her real name’s Comfrey. Look at the facts. A woman of fifty goes to a doctor with what she thinks may be appendicitis. She gives the name of Comfrey and her address as 6 Princevale Road, Parish Oak. The only occupant of that house is a woman of around fifty called Rose Farriner. Six months later Rose Farriner is again talking of a possible appendicitis. Rhoda Comfrey is dead, Rose Farriner has disappeared. Rhoda Comfrey was comfortably-off, probably had her own business. According to Mrs Parker, she was interested in dress. Rose Farriner is well-off, has her own dress shop. Rose Farriner has a sick old mother living in a nursing home in the country. Rhoda Comfrey had a sick old father in a hospital in the country. Isn’t that conclusive?’
Burden walked up and down the platform, looking gloomily at posters for pale blue movies. ‘I don’t know. I just think we’ll have trouble getting a warrant.’
‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?’
‘Yes there is. It’s a way-out thing. Look, it’s the sort of thing that usually troubles you, not me. It’s the sort of thing I usually scoff at, to tell you the truth.’
‘Well, what the hell is it? You might as well tell me.’
Burden banged the palm of his hand with his fist. His expression was that of a man who, sceptical, practical, down-to-earth, hesitates from a fear of being laughed at to confess that he has seen a ghost. 'It was when we were driving up Montford Hill and we passed those shops, and I thought it hadn’t really been worth getting a bus up that first time, it not being so far from the station to the doctor’s place. And then I sort of noticed the shops and the name of the street facing us and… Look, it’s stupid, Forget it. Frankly, the more I think about it the more I can see I was just reading something into nothing. Forget it.’
‘Forget it? After all that build-up? Are you crazy?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Burden very stiffly, ‘but I don’t approve of police work being based on silly conjectures and the sort of rubbish women call intuition. As you say, we have some very firm and conclusive facts to go on. No doubt, I was being unduly pessimistic about that warrant. Of course we’ll get one.’
An explosion of wrath rose in Wexford with a fresh eruption of sweat. ‘You’re a real pain in the arse,’ he snapped, but the rattle of the incoming train drowned his words.
His temper was not improved by Friday morning’s newspaper.
‘Police Chief Flummoxed by Comfrey Case’ said a headline running across four columns at the foot of page one. And there, amid the text, was a photograph of himself, the block for which they had presumably had on file since the days when he had been a fat man. Piggy features glowered above three chins. He glowered at himself in the bathroom mirror and, thanks to Robin running in and out and shouting that grandad had got his picture in the paper, cut himself shaving the chicken skin where the three chins used to be.
He drove to Forest Road and let himself into the late James Comfrey’s house with Rhoda Comfrey’s key. There were two other keys on the ring, and one of them, he was almost sure, would open Rose Farriner’s front door. At the moment, though, he was keeping that to himself for comparison with the one in the possession of Kenbourne police only if the obtaining of the warrant were held up. For if they weren’t identical – and, in the light of Rhoda Comfrey’s extreme secrecy about her country life in town and her town life in the country, it was likely enough they wouldn’t be – he might as well say good-bye to the chance of that warrant here and now. But he did wonder about the third key. To the shop door perhaps? He walked into the living room, insufferably musty now, that Crocker had called a real tip, and flung open the window.
From the drawers which had been re-filled with their muddled and apparently useless assortment of string and pins and mothballs and coins he collected all the keys that lay amongst it. Fifteen, he counted. Three Yale keys, one Norlond, one stamped RST, one FGW Ltd., seven rusted or otherwise corroded implements for opening the locks of back doors or privy doors or garden gates, a car ignition key and a smaller one, the kind that is used for locking the boot of a car. On both of these last were stamped the Citroen double chevron. They had not been together in the
