relatives, but so far there’s been nothing. We’ll find him, of course, but it’ll take time.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARY, AS DORA put it, seemed untouched by her ordeal. ‘What ordeal?’ Wexford said, his picture of the terrified child negated by the facts. ‘She wasn’t there when Sylvia was stabbed. She was having a happy time with her godmother. You’re imagining things.’
They had been back in London for twenty-four hours. Mary had chattered all the way and was now in Sheila’s nursery – Wexford remarked to Dora that he couldn’t remember ever previously having encountered the possessor of a nursery – with Sheila’s nanny, Amy, Anoushka and Bettina the cat. He had chickened out of Dora’s plans to take all the children to a matinee of
True to her undertaking, Dora had asked Sylvia’s permission to take Mary with them to London, and had asked it in her habitual kind and loving tone. It was only Wexford who could hear the underlying note which said, ‘Oh, Sylvia, how could you? Are you lost to all morality and decency?’ But it was only thought, not said. Would it ever be said?
Naturally, the first remark Tom Ede made to him was to ask about Sylvia, and he seemed delighted when Wexford said she was recovering and would be out of hospital in two days’ time. Nothing was said about prayers and Tom quickly reverted to the Orcadia Cottage case.
‘I’d like to ask you,’ he began, ‘how important you think the name “Francine” is. I mean, do we need to try and trace every Francine in the country? The trouble with that is that so many people who were young twelve years ago have left the country, just as others have come in. If she exists – and we don’t know that she does or ever did – she may be anywhere.’
‘Perhaps we have to ask ourselves why he would write the name Francine on a piece of paper on which “
‘He might have just asked her to translate “La Punaise” and not mentioned the number.’
‘True. But wouldn’t the meaning suggest a pin number to her? At least wouldn’t she question him?’
‘I don’t know, Reg. Maybe she did question him. Can we construct some sort of scenario out of what we do know?’
‘The way I see it, the young man who called himself Keith Hill somehow got into Orcadia Cottage and perhaps even lived there with a French girl called Francine. He found the address book with the pin number and “La Punaise” made to look like a restaurant, intending to use it to rob Harriet Merton’s account.’
‘If he was living there, where were Franklin Merton and Harriet? They can’t have been there, because it must have been at this time that the pseudonymous Keith Hill removed the door to the cellar, bricked up the doorway and plastered over it. Incidentally, why would he do that?’
‘It has to be because he’d killed Harriet and maybe that cousin of his or whoever it was and was sealing them up in a tomb.’
‘But he was in there, too,’ Tom objected.
‘I know there are holes in my scenario. I think we have to see Anthea Gardner again, see if we can find out where Franklin Merton may have been at that time, whenever that time was, and maybe see Mildred Jones first to try and settle this time question. So far all we know is that it was about twelve years ago.’
Mildred Jones was in a better frame of mind than when last seen. Some women are very much affected, Wexford thought, by whether they think they are looking good or are dissatisfied with their appearance or are having, for instance, a ‘bad hair day’, while men are influenced by the state of their car – he thought of that Edsel – or a bad back or a cold coming on. Mildred Jones’s hair had evidently just been done and silver streaks put among the iron grey. The red dress she wore suited her better than the trouser suit, which dwarfed her. Wexford supposed she was aware of these things, a feeling confirmed when she glanced with satisfaction into a mirror on their way to the chintzy living room.
‘You want me to tell you when I saw the so-called Mr Hill and his fancy car, do you? I’ll have to think.’ She was silent for a moment. Then she said. ‘When I try to remember when something or other happened I have to try and think of the weather. I mean, if it was summer or winter and raining or whatever.’
Tom was nodding encouragingly.
‘It’s no good nodding at me like that.’ A flash of the old acerbity was showing itself. ‘That won’t help me. I’m thinking. Ah,’ she said. ‘I know now. It must have been autumn. The whole place was covered with leaves – no, it wasn’t, not covered. That came a week or two later. The leaves from that Virginia creeper were beginning to fall. It must have been October, sometime in October. Does that help?’
‘Very much, Mrs Jones.’
‘It rained after that and made a thick wet mat of those leaves. I was glad when Clay – Mr Silverman, that is – cut it down. Ours hadn’t been planted then. Pity it ever was. That was Colin – he liked the colour.’
She waved to them as they left. Wexford imagined her going back into the house and pausing at the mirror to admire her reflection.
‘I don’t suppose Anthea Gardner will have silver streaks,’ he said.
An unobservant man, Tom looked puzzled. Wexford didn’t explain. Anthea Gardner was expecting them at midday and had coffee ready, the real thing made from beans which she had just ground herself. Tom, who had once told Wexford that he only liked the instant kind, sipped his rather gloomily. Mrs Gardner was dressed almost exactly as she had been on their previous visit, only this time instead of grey her skirt was brown and her blouse spotted instead of striped. Kildare had once more to be restrained and eventually shut in the kitchen.
‘You want to know where Franklin was in late October 1997?’
‘I know it’s difficult to remember these things from so far back, Mrs Gardner,’ Tom said. ‘Think about it. Take your time.’
