almost wished we had.”
“That,” said Burden, ordering their drinks, “is sort of like Christmas in reverse. I mean the way we have fixed Father Christmas. It's probably Dad dressed up, but kids think it really is some old guy from Lapland. Or they do for a while.”
Mike could still surprise him with his occasional insights. He smiled. “That must have been quite a shock, finding those-er, remains in Grimble's cellar. I imagine your first thought was that here was the old man's lodger.”
“And my second and third thoughts.”
“It's a bit much, though, isn't it? This old man-how old was he, by the way? Eighty?-he murders his tenant and stuffs the corpse in the cellar. Or, because he's not strong enough to do that, lures him down into the cellar and there kills him. In six months' time the old man is dead and within weeks of his death the son is murdering another man and burying him in a trench some ten yards from where the other body is lying.”
“More than ten yards, Reg. More like twenty.”
“Ten or twenty, it doesn't make much difference. Does homicide run in the family? And if it does we have to suppose Grimble senior didn't wait until he was eighty and practically at death's door before he killed. So how many other unsolved killings are there along the way? And what are the motives in all this? Cui bono? ”
“We don't know who benefits, do we?” said Burden. “We don't yet know who either of these men are. We're not even near to finding out. The old man may have been dead before either of them died. We don't know what connection there was between them, if any.
“Isn't it rather odd that Mrs. McNeil should have written to you about this lodger? She didn't mention him before when Damon first interviewed her. And when you come to think of it, her story is pretty thin. I can understand she was bored and had nothing better to do than watch her neighbors' houses from morning till night, but why seize on that? Why jump to the conclusion that a man's disappeared-a man she didn't know but thinks was called Chapman, no first name-just because she hasn't actually seen him depart?”
“You think she knows more than she's telling?”
“Well, don't you? Another funny thing is the thousand pounds. The clothes were shabby, those jeans were on their last legs.” Burden realized what he had said and laughed. “Yet a thousand pounds was in the pocket?”
“And those notes had been in there for a decade.” Wexford shrugged. “I can't say I look forward to another session with John Grimble in the morning, and there'll be no wife there to ‘Oh, John’ him.”
“Don't be too sure,” said Burden. “What's the betting he brings her along? Do you want another couple of units of that red plonk?”
Wexford sat in his office at the rosewood desk (which was his own and not the property of the Mid-Sussex Police Force) contemplating the T-shirt that had been found in the kitchen of Grimble's bungalow. It had already been examined in the lab and put to rigorous testing.
On a white background was printed in black a scorpion, measuring twelve inches from head to curled-up forked tail. The lab gave its length in centimeters but Wexford refused to cope with that. Under the scorpion's tail was the name sam in block letters. The letters had been printed in red but had now faded to a dull pink. The only label inside the T-shirt was a tiny square of cotton bearing the letter “M” for medium.
He left it lying there when Grimble was announced. Burden would have won his bet if Wexford had done more than smile in response to the challenge, for Grimble had indeed brought his wife. She was without her knitting, and the devil finding no work for idle hands, hers wandered aimlessly about her lap, rubbed the surface of Wexford's desk, and occasionally scratched portions of her anatomy.
Grimble listened with apparent surprise and growing distaste to the story of the discovery, related by Burden, in his late father's house. His wife's mouth fell open and one of those fidgety hands came up to cover it as if the solecism of relating such a story had been hers, not Wexford's.
“What's that thing?” He pointed an accusing finger at the T-shirt. “What's that doing there?”
In a level voice, Wexford said, “It was in your late father's house. In the kitchen. Is it yours?”
“Of course it isn't bloody mine.” Wexford had never seen Grimble so angry. “Would I wear a thing like that?” He cocked his thumb in his wife's direction. “And it isn't hers. I told you time and again I never set foot in that place after they never gave me my permission.”
“Now, John,” said his wife, “you keep calm.”
Grimble took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. Unlikely as it seemed, it was apparent someone-probably Kathleen Grimble-had taught him a technique for dealing with rage. His face gradually lost the dark red color that had suffused it. He began shaking his head slowly.
“I don't get it,” he said. “What was that door doing shut?”
“Which door is that, Mr. Grimble?”
“Door to the cellar. He said he found it shut. That door was never shut. My old dad kept that open all the years he lived there. I was a boy there, I grew up there, didn't I, Kath, and I never saw that door shut, didn't know it could shut.”
Perhaps believing some response was required, Kathleen Grimble said, “There wasn't no need to shut that door.”
Grimble nodded. “I reckon whoever it was went down there snooping about”-his eyes wandered malevolently to Burden-“they got it wrong. That door was never shut.”
Unwilling to enter into an undignified argument, Burden nevertheless saw himself heading that way. “The door was shut,” he said as shortly and crisply as he could. “That you have to accept. I found it shut and opened it myself. I had some trouble in getting it to open.”
“It never was shut before, that's all I can say.” As with many people who make this remark, it was far from all he could say, but as he launched into a week-by-week, month-by-month account of the number of times he had been down the cellar steps and found the door open, Wexford briskly cut him short.
“All right. Thank you. Tell me about your father's tenant-a Mr. Chapman, was it?”
Grimble's face distorted into a moue of disgust that anyone could mistake this man's real name for Chapman. “Chadwick, Chadwick. Who told you he was called Chapman? They want their head tested. Chadwick, he was called.”
“Of course he was.” Kathleen was rubbing her fingertips together like someone crumbling bread. “Never Chapman. Where did you get that from?”
Instead of answering her, Wexford said, “Was his first name Sam?”
Uttering this innocuous three-letter word caused a similar explosion to that brought about by their mistake in Chadwick's surname. “Sam? You lot haven't done your homework, have you? Douglas was his name. My poor old dad called him Doug.”
“That's right,” said Kathleen with an approving smile for her husband. “He did. Friendly to everyone, John's dad was. Kindness itself.”
“But he evicted this Chadwick?”
“No, he never. He wanted his rent. Kept him waiting weeks for it, Chadwick did.”
“Don't forget the piano, John.”
“I won't. You can be sure of that. Chadwick played that piano at all hours. Midnight, six in the morning, it was all one to him. And that was only half of it. He left wet towels on the bathroom floor like he had a servant to pick them up for him. It was hard on my poor old dad, he was a sick man then, got the Big C, though he didn't know it, poor old devil. He wasn't going to evict him, was he? Not with all that rent owing. Chadwick did a moonlight flit, left his stuff behind. Dad was an honest man, he wasn't keeping nothing what wasn't his due, so he put all that junk outside the house and held on to the piano. It was his right, wasn't it? Chadwick's pal came back with a van and knocked at the door and asked for the piano and Dad said-”
Damon Coleman had come into the room and, speaking softly to Wexford, said, “Miss Laxton's sent a note over to you, sir. I've got it here. I think it's the DNA test result.”
“Okay. Thanks, Damon.” Wexford unfolded the sheet of paper and read the result. He looked up, said to Grimble, “No doubt, you'll be glad to hear the body in your trench isn't that of your second cousin Peter Darracott.”
Grimble said in a contemptuous tone that he had never thought it was. “That his DNA you've got there?”
“It's the result of comparing the body in your trench with Mark Page's DNA, yes.”
An electrifying change came over Grimble. It was as if he had literally seen the light and it had brought him not
