‘Oh, yes. It’s best for me to think of it by the year. We were away twice in 2007, that was Spain and Vienna, and then in 2008 to Thailand, Vietnam and China, Spain again in 2009 and Italy that year as well.’
‘That would have been a long trip in 2008. How long were you were away on the China holiday?’
‘Well, if it’s of any interest, we were away for a few days visiting Anne’s mother in Wales at the end of May,’ said Rokeby. ‘And a few days after we got back we went off on our long trip. The door was bolted – oh, it must have been from the end of May until halfway through July. The door was bolted all that time.’
Wexford felt a tingle of excitement which was to become a surge of adrenalin when Rokeby said, ‘And as a matter of fact we left it bolted for a couple of weeks after that. We forgot about it until the window cleaner was due and he couldn’t get in. He was hammering on that door till we unbolted it.’
Wexford decided that to walk all the way home was carrying fitness to extraordinary lengths. The 13 bus would take him part of the way. He was in Pattison Road, heading for the Heath, when a young woman he recognised came out of one of the houses and unlocked a car with a DOCTOR ON CALL sticker on its windscreen.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Hill.’
She, too, had a good memory. ‘It’s Mr Wexford, isn’t it? Are you still at work on the Orcadia Cottage case?’
Wexford said cryptically, ‘Let’s say work on it is still being done.’ Oh, the uses of the passive voice! ‘You are a long way from your Hornsey practice.’
‘I’ve been visiting a private patient.’ She opened the car door. ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you. There’s something I should have told you, I don’t know why I didn’t when I looked at that jewellery that was in the – the tomb.’
‘What would that be then, Dr Hill?’
‘I said I thought all of it had belonged to the poor woman who lived there. Was she called Mrs Merton? Well, I’ve thought about it since and there was one thing – item – I don’t think could have been hers. It wasn’t her kind of thing at all. A plain silver cross on a chain. I think that must have belonged to someone else. I should have got in touch and told you.’
‘You’ve told me now,’ said Wexford, ‘and that’s what matters.’
It was a cold day with a sharp wind, heralding autumn. The leaves were still green, though tired-looking. The beginning of a shower brought rain dashing against his face as he walked from Clapham North Station along the street where Colin Jones lived.
His home was one of a long terrace. It would have been considered small in the mid-nineteenth century when it was built, a white two-floor house with a basement. Wexford wondered if he was underestimating when he calculated its value as something over a million. We expect unpleasant people to have or have had unpleasant spouses, and Wexford was anticipating someone rude and brusque. But the man who opened the door seemed affable enough.
‘Good morning. I believe you want a chat about the goings-on in Orcadia Place. Come in. Bitterly cold, isn’t it?’
He was as tall as Wexford, younger than Mildred by perhaps five or six years. He had a fine head of greying fair hair and a ruddy face with eyes of that attractive greenish-blue that is almost turquoise. This was the man whose shirt Vladlena had burned, but today he was wearing along with his black jeans a sweatshirt of such a dark brown that no burn mark would have showed. The interior of his house was as unlike his former wife’s as was possible, its decoration minimalist, the colours predominantly white, black and beige, the only ornament in this living room a large black and red jar full of dried grasses and beech leaves.
‘Can I offer you anything? I suppose it’s too early for a drink.’
‘Too early for me, thanks, Mr Jones.’
‘And I’d better not. If my wife catches me at the Scotch before midday I shall get a lecture. She worries about my health, poor love. What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘I believe you recommended a company called Subearth to Mr Rokeby when he was thinking of having an underground room built.’
‘No, it was an oufit called Underland. And he had already been on to them and made an appointment. We got chatting over the garden wall – literally over the garden wall – and when he mentioned Underland I said I’d used them and they were OK. They went bust soon after.’ Colin Jones laughed. ‘I wasn’t to know that, though. The chap who came had an architect with him, but I don’t know anything about them. Sorry I can’t be of more help. You know, I think I will have that Scotch. Just a small one.’
He left the room and Wexford could hear him talking to someone and just catch the tone of a woman’s soft voice. The glass in his hand with, as he had said, a very small quantity of neat whisky in it, Jones came back, preceded by a slender young woman with long fair hair, wearing jeans and a pale grey sweater against which hung a silver cross on a chain. She too was carrying a drink, but hers looked like water.
‘Let me get you something,’ she said to Wexford. ‘You don’t have to have the – what do they call it? – the hard stuff. Have some sparkling water like me, why not?’
Jones laughed. ‘Let me introduce my wife Vladlena.’
CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN
IT WAS ON the tip of his tongue to respond by telling her they had been searching for her high and low, but he restrained himself, and said instead, ‘How do you do, Mrs Jones?’
‘Please, call me Lena.’
It was Colin Jones who began to explain. ‘I expect you know Lena used to work for my first wife, then luckily for her for a very nice guy called Goldberg. Do you know him?’
‘I’ve met him and he is very nice.’ Wexford turned to look at Vladlena. ‘And another friend of yours, Ms Sophie Baird.’
