Vault

that now, pointless to speculate how Sylvia, one-time domestic goddess, had transmuted into this earth-motherly, sexually rampant, socially wild still youngish woman.

The coroner was new, someone Wexford had never seen before. Wexford gave his name as the private citizen he now was, and took the oath, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Listening with half an ear to the inquiry put to him – he knew by heart what it would be – he glanced at the people in the public seats to see if he recognised anyone. He didn’t, but one couple particularly caught his eye, a man and a woman in late middle age, sitting close together, holding hands tightly. It struck him that they dressed as no one of their age in London would dress, the woman wearing a felt hat and square scarf, the man a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, check shirt and knitted tie.

He began to tell the court what had happened that day. ‘My daughter had just come home from hospital. Because a set of her house keys was missing it seemed advisable to change the locks …’ The whole truth? The whole truth would be that he and she feared Jason Wardle had them and might use them to enter the house. He felt – he imagined surely – the eyes of the hand-holding couple on him. ‘A locksmith was needed. I went upstairs to look for the telephone directory which had been left in my grandson’s bedroom on the second floor.’ An enormous house, it must sound like, a rich woman’s house. ‘I opened the door. The body of a man was hanging from the light fitting in the ceiling.’ Cool, emotionless – nothing else was possible – he described how he went downstairs again and phoned Kingsmarkham police.

The coroner asked if he had recognised the hanged man and if he had touched the body, to both of which questions Wexford answered an unhesitating no. That was all. There was nothing more for him to do or say. He was thanked by the coroner and got down to find himself a seat in the back row of the public seats. A doctor he no more knew than he knew the coroner described Jason Wardle’s injuries and the cause of his death, and then there was some evidence from a psychiatrist as to Wardle’s mental state, this man’s opinion being that he was bipolar. A faint strangled cry came from the woman in the felt hat.

There was some discussion between the coroner, the clerk to the court and the doctor and then the verdict came: suicide while the balance of Jason Wardle’s mind was disturbed. It was over. He had been twenty-one years old.

Wexford intended to go home – that is, to go to his own house and see whoever might be in. But as he walked down the steps he saw the couple who had earlier caught his eye, waiting at the bottom. Surely waiting for him. He didn’t know them, he meant to pass them by but, as he approached them, the woman called out in a strident, upper-class voice, ‘Where’s your daughter? I suppose she didn’t have the face to come.’

‘Vivien,’ the man said. ‘There’s no point …’

‘Yes, there is. I want to tell him so that he can tell her. He can tell her that if she were a decent woman and not a whore my son would be alive today. My son would be starting a happy life …’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jason Wardle’s father said wretchedly. ‘It’s not your fault, I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Wexford. ‘I’m very sorry for you both.’

‘And what’s the use of that?’ Vivien Wardle was crying now, the tears running down her face. ‘There may be a bit of use in telling her what I said. You do that. You tell her she’s a disgrace to her sex and to her children. Those poor boys, that poor little girl. What must they think of their mother?’

Her husband succeeded in taking Vivien away. He almost had to lift her into their car, she was so convulsed with misery and grief. Wexford felt badly shaken. But still he turned in the direction of his house and began to walk up Queen Street. Dora had been right and he had been wrong, he thought. Keeping aloof from all this, taking no stand, avoiding judgement, that was all wrong. A parent should speak out, no matter what age his child was, no matter what reputation he had achieved as a tolerant and never moralistic arbiter. He had been too easy and too kind, too respectful. Perhaps to prove to himself that all that was changing, at least in this instance, he let himself into his house without ringing the bell first, without the prior phone call he would usually have made.

Sylvia was in the living room, lying on the sofa reading a magazine and drinking coffee. She sat up, said, ‘Dad! You might have let me know you were coming.’

He looked at the clock. He hadn’t meant to, but noticing she was still in her nightdress, a shawl round her shoulders, her long dark hair loose and in need of a wash, he looked and saw it was twenty minutes to midday.

‘There’s some coffee. Do you want some?’

‘No, thanks. I’m not staying. I’ve been to the inquest on Jason Wardle.’

‘Suicide, I suppose,’ she said.

Something inside his head snapped. But he remained cool, his voice slow and steady. ‘Sylvia, I have passed no judgement on you. I have purposely not taken a side against you. But now I have to speak out. Maybe it will make no difference. Mr and Mrs Wardle were there, Jason’s parents.’

She said nothing, cast up her eyes.

‘Don’t make that face, please. You are a fine example, aren’t you, a fine role model, for Mary?’ Sylvia drew back from him, put one hand up to press against her chest. ‘Mrs Wardle told me what she thinks of you. She holds you responsible for her son’s death. I don’t, but I will say that without your intervention in his life he’d be alive today. Damaged perhaps, mentally unstable, perhaps, but alive.’

‘What about him intervening in my life?’

Wexford said brutally, ‘Jason was twenty-one. You are a middle-aged woman with a son only two years younger. You are a social worker, quite a highly trained one, but you didn’t spot the signs of mental instability in him or if you did you didn’t care. You had what you wanted from him and then you dropped him. Mrs Wardle called you a whore – that wasn’t pleasant for a father to hear.’

Mrs Wardle had cried and now Sylvia’s defiance slid off her as the shawl slipped from her shoulders, and she too began to cry. He watched her for a moment, then he said, ‘Stop. Crying doesn’t help. Does it? It doesn’t make you feel better, whatever people say,’ and sitting down beside her he took her in his arms.

Hugging a large damp woman with greasy hair who smells of sweat is not a pleasant experience, even if she is your child. But thinking like that almost made Wexford laugh. That would never do.

‘Time you went back to work,’ he said. ‘Time you cleaned my house.’ He had noticed the dust. ‘And had Mary back with you. Your mother or I will bring her back on Monday.’