[Wexford 01] From Doon & Death Read online

  Missal. No children, plenty of money, nothing to do all day but feed cream to a ranging cat. Did she mind his infidelity, did she even know about it? Wexford wondered curiously if the jealousy that had reddened Missal had blanched and aged Quadrant's wife.

  'And what can I do for you?' Quadrant asked. ‘I half expected a visit this morning. I gather from the newspapers that you aren't making a great deal of headway.' Lining himself up on the side of the law, he added, 'An elusive killer this time, am I right?'

  'Things are sorting themselves out’ Wexford said heavily. 'As a matter of fact it was your wife I wanted to speak to’

  To me?' Fabia Quadrant touched one of her platinum ear-rings and Wexford noticed that her wrists were thin and her arms already corded like a much older woman's. 'Oh, I see. Because I knew Margaret, you mean. We were never very close. Chief Inspector. There must be dozens of people who could tell you more about her than I can.'

  Possibly, Wexford thought, if I only knew where to find them.

  ‘I didn't see her at all after her family moved away from Flagford until just a few weeks ago. We met in the High Street and had coffee. We discovered we'd gone our separate ways and - well!'

  And that, Wexford said to himself, contrasting Tabard Road with the house he was in, must be the understatement of the case. For a second, building his impressions as he always did in a series of pictures, he glimpsed that meeting: Mrs Quadrant with her rings, her elaborately straight hair, and Margaret Parsons awkward in the cardigan and sandals that had seemed so comfortable until she came upon her old companion. What had they in common, what had they talked about?

  'What did she talk about, Mrs Quadrant?'

  'Oh, the changes in the place, people we'd known at school, that sort of thing.' The governess and the lady of the manor. Wexford sighed within himself.

  ‘Did you ever meet anyone called Anne Ives?'

  'You mean Margaret's cousin? No, I never met her. She wasn't at school with us. She was a typist or a clerk or something’

  Just another of the hoi-polloi, Wexford thought, the despised majority, the bottom seventy-five per cent.

  Quadrant sat listening, swinging one elegant leg. His wife's condescension seemed to amuse him. He finished his tea, crumpled his napkin and helped himself to a cigarette. Wexford watched him take a box of matches from his pocket and strike one. Matches! That was odd. Surely if he had behaved consistently Quadrant would have used a lighter, one of these table lighters that look like a Georgian teapot, Wexford thought, his imagination working. There had been a single matchstick beside Mrs Parsons' body, a single matchstick half burnt away...

  'Now, Margaret Godfrey's boy friends, Mrs Quadrant. Can you remember anyone at all?'

  He leant forward, trying to impress her with the urgency of his question. A tiny flash of something that might have been malice or simply recollection darted into her eyes and was gone. Quadrant exhaled deeply.

  There was a boy,' she said.

  Try to remember, Mrs Quadrant.'

  ‘I ought to remember’ she said, and Wexford was sure she could, certain she was only stalling for effect. It was like a theatre, a London theatre.'

  ‘Palladium, Globe, Haymarket?' Quadrant was enjoying himself. 'Prince of Wales?'

  Fabia Quadrant giggled softly. It was an unkind titter, sympathetic towards her husband, faintly hostile to the Chief Inspector. For all his infidelity Quadrant and his wife shared something, something stronger, Wexford guessed, than ordinary marital trust

  ‘I know, it was Drury. Dudley Drury. He used to live in Flagford’

  'Thank you, Mrs Quadrant It had just crossed my mind that your husband might have known her’

  ‘I?' As he spoke the monosyllable Quadrant's voice was almost hysterically incredulous. Then he began to rock with laughter. It was a soundless cruel mirth that seemed to send an evil wind through the room. He made no noise, but Wexford felt scorn leap out of the laughing man like a springing animal, scorn and contempt and the wrath that is one of the deadly sins. ‘I, know her? In that sort of way? I assure you, dear Chief Inspector, that I most emphatically knew her not'‘

  Sickened, Wexford turned away. Mrs Quadrant was looking down into her lap. It was as if she had withdrawn into a sort of shame.

  This Drury’ Wexford said, 'do you know if she ever called him Doon?'

  Was it his imagination or was it simply coincidence that at that moment Quadrant's laughter was switched off like a wrenched tap?

  ‘Doon?' his wife said. 'Oh, no, I never heard her call anyone Doon.'

  She didn't get up when Wexford rose to go, but gave him a dismissive nod and reached for the book she had been reading. Quadrant let him out briskly, closing the door before he reached the bottom of the steps as if he had been selling brushes or reading the meter. Dougie Q! If there was ever a fellow who could strangle one woman and then make love to another a dozen yards away ... But why? Deep in thought, he walked down the Kingsbrook Road, crossed to the opposite side of the road and would have passed Helen Missal's garage unseeing but for the voice that hailed him.

  ‘Did you see Douglas?' Her tone was wistful but she had cheered up since he had last seen her. The bikini had been changed for a printed silk dress, high-heeled shoes and a big hat.

  The question was beneath Wexford's dignity.

  'Mrs Quadrant was able to fill in a few gaps,' he said.

  ‘Fabia was? You amaze me. She's very discreet. Just as well, Douglas being what he is.' For a moment her pretty face was swollen with sensuality. He's magnificent, isn't he? He's splendid.' Shaking herself, she drew her hand across the face and when she withdrew it Wexford saw that the lust had been wiped away. 'My Christ’ she said, once more cheerful and outrageous, 'some people don't know when they're well off!’ She unlocked the garage doors, opened the boot of the red Dauphine and took out a pair of flatter shoes.

  ‘I had the impression’ Wexford said, 'that there was something else you wanted to tell me’ He paused. 'When your husband interrupted us’

  'Perhaps there was and perhaps mere wasn't. I don't think I will now.' The shoes changed, she danced up to the car and swung the door open.

  'Off to the cinema?' Wexford asked.

  She banged the door and switched on the ignition.

  'Damn you!' Wexford heard her shout above the roar of the engine.

  Chapter 10

  We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise. And the door stood open at our feast...

  Mary Coleridge, Unwelcome

  Nectarine Cottage lay in a damp hollow, a bramble-filled basin behind the Stowerton Road. The approach down a winding path was hazardous and Miss Clarke was taking no chances. Notices pencilled on lined paper greeted Burden.at intervals as he descended. The first on the gate had commanded Lift and push hard; the second, some ten feet down the path. Mind barbed wire. Presently the brambles gave place to faint traces of cultivation. This was of a strictly utilitarian kind, rows of sad cabbages among the weeds, a splendid marrow plant protected from the thistles by a home-made cloche. Someone had pinned a sheet of paper to its roof. Do not remove glass. Evidently Miss Clarke had clumsy friends or was the victim of trespassers. This Burden could understand, for there was nothing to indicate habitation but the vegetables and the notices, and the cottage only came into view when he was almost upon it at the end of the path.

  The door stood wide open and from within came rich gurgling giggles. For a moment he thought that, although there were no other houses in the lane, he had come to the wrong place. He rapped on the door, the giggles rose to a gale and someone called out

  Is that you. Dodo? We'd almost given you up’ Dodo might be a man or a woman, probably a woman. Burden gave a very masculine cough. 'Oh, gosh, it isn't,' said the voice. ‘I tell you what,

  Di. It must be old Fanny Fowler's cop, a coughing cop.'

  Burden felt uncommonly foolish. The voice seemed to come from behind a closed door at the end of the passage.

  He called loudly
. Inspector Burden, madam!'

  The door was immediately flung open and a woman came out dressed like a Tyrolean peasant Her fair hair was drawn tightly back and twisted round her head in plaits.

  'Oh, gosh,' she said again. ‘I didn't realize the front door was still open. ‘I was only kidding about you being Miss Fowler's cop. She rang up and said you might come’

  'Miss Clarke?'

  'Who else?' Burden thought she looked very odd, a grown woman dressed up as Humperdinck's Gretel. 'Come and pig it along with Di and me in the dungeon,' she said.

  Burden followed her into the kitchen. Mind the steps, said another notice pinned to the door and he saw it just in time to stop himself crashing down the three steep steps to the slate-flagged floor. The kitchen was even nastier than Mrs Parsons' and much less clean. But outside the window the sun was shining and a red rose pressed against the diamond panes.

  There was nothing odd about the woman Miss Clarke had called Di. It might have been Mrs Parsons' double sitting at the table eating toast, only this woman's hair was black and she wore glasses.

  ‘Di Plunkett, Inspector Burden’ Clare Clarke said. 'Sit down, Inspector - not that stool. It’s got fat on it -and have a cup of tea.'

  Burden refused the tea and sat on a wooden chair that looked fairly clean.

  'I've no objection if you talk while I eat’ said Miss Clarke, bursting once more into giggles. She peered at a tin of jam and said crossly to her companion: 'Confound it! South African. I know I shan't fancy it now.' She pouted and said dramatically, 'Ashes on my tongue!' But Burden noticed that she helped herself generously and spread the jam on to a doorstep of bread. With her mouth full she said to him: ‘Fire away. I'm all ears.'

  'All I really want to know is if you can tell me the names of any of Mrs Parsons' boy friends when she was Margaret Godfrey, when you knew her.'

  Miss Clarke smacked her lips.

  'You've come to the right shop’ she said. I've got a memory like an elephant.'

  ^You can say that again’ said Di Plunkett, 'and if s not only your memory.' They both laughed, Miss Clarke with great good humour.

  ‘I remember Margaret Godfrey perfectly’ she said. 'Second-class brain, anaemic looks, personality both prim and dim. Still, de mortuis and all that jazz, you know. (Prang that fly, Di. There's a squeegy-weegy sprayer thing on the shelf behind your great bonce.) Not a very social type, Margaret, no community spirit. Went around with a female called Bertram, vanished now into the mists of obscurity. (Got him, Di!) Chummed up with one Fabia Rogers for a while - Fabia, forsooth! not to mention Diana Stevens of sinister memory -'

  Miss or Mrs Plunkett broke in with a scream of laughter and waving the fly-killer made as if to fire a stream of liquid at Miss Clarke's head. Burden shifted his chair out of range.

  Ducking and giggling, Clare Clarke went on: '... Now notorious in the Stowerton rural district as Mrs William Plunkett, one of this one-eyed burg's most illustrious sons!'

  'You are a scream, Clare’ Mrs Plunkett gasped. 'Really, I envy those lucky members of the upper fourth. When I think of what we had to put up with-

  'What about boy friends. Miss Clarke?'

  'Cherchez l'homme, eh? I said you'd come to the right shop. D'you remember, Di, when she went out with him the first time and we sat behind them in the pictures? Oh, gosh, I'll never forget that to my dying day.'

  Talk about sloppy,' said Mis Plunkett '"Do you mind if I hold your hand, Margaret?" I thought you were going to burst a blood-vessel, Clare.'

  'What was his name?' Burden was bored and at the same time angry. He thought the years had toughened him, but now the picture of the green and white bundle in the wood swam before his eyes; that and Parsons' face. He realized that of all the people they had interviewed he hadn't liked a single one. Was there no pity in any of them, no common mercy?

  'What was his name?' he said again wearily. ‘Dudley Drury. On my sacred oath, Dudley Drury’

  'What a name to go to bed with,' Mrs Plunkett said.

  Clare Clarke whispered in her ear, but loud enough for Burden to hear: 'She never did! Not on your sweet life’

  Mrs Plunkett saw his face and looked a little ashamed. She said defensively in a belated effort to help:

  'He's still around if you want to trace him. He lives down by Stowerton Station. Surely you don't think he killed Meg Godfrey?'

  Clare Clarke said suddenly: 'She was quite pretty. He was very keen on her. She didn't look like that then, you know, not like that ghastly mockery in the paper. I think I've got a snap somewhere. All girls together.'

  Burden had got what he wanted. Now he wanted to go. It was a bit late in the day for snaps. If they could have seen one on Thursday it might have helped but that was all.

  Thank you. Miss Clarke,' he said, 'Mrs Plunkett. Good afternoon.'

  'Well, cheeri-bye. If s been nice meeting you.' She giggled. 'If s not often we see a man in here, is it, Di?'

  Half-way down the overgrown path he stopped in his tracks. A woman in jodhpurs and open-necked shirt was coming up towards the cottage, whistling. It was Dorothy Sweeting.

  Dodo, he thought. They'd mistaken him for someone called Dodo and Dodo was Dorothy Sweeting. From long experience Burden knew that whatever may happen in detective fiction, coincidence is more common than conspiracy in real life.

  'Good afternoon. Miss Sweeting.'

  She grinned at him with cheerful innocence.

  'Oh, hallo,' she said, 'fancy seeing you. I've just come from the farm. There's a blinking great crowd like a Cup Final in that wood. You ought to see them.'

  Still not inured to man's inhuman curiosity. Burden sighed.

  'You know that bush where they found her?' Dorothy Sweeting went on excitedly. 'Well, Jimmy

  Traynor's flogging twigs off it at a bob a time. I told Mr Prewett he ought to charge half a crown admittance’

  ‘I hope he's not thinking of taking your advice, miss’ Burden said in a repressive voice.

  There's nothing wrong in it I knew a fellow who had a plane crash on his land and he turned a whole field into a car park he had so many sightseers’'

  Burden flattened himself against the hedge to let her pass.

  'Your tea will be getting cold, Miss Sweeting,' he said.

  'Whatever next?' Wexford said. ‘If we don't look sharp they'll have every stick in that wood uprooted and taken home for souvenirs.'

  'Shall I have a couple of the lads go over there, sir?' Burden asked.

  'You do that, and go and get the street directory. Well go and see this Drury character together.'

  'You aren't going to wait to hear from Colorado, then?'

  'Drury's a big possibility, Mike. He could well be Doon. I can't help feeling that whatever Parsons says about his wife's chastity, when she came back here she met up with Doon again and succumbed to his charms. As to why he should have killed her - well, all I can say is, men do strangle women they're having affairs with, and Mrs P. may have accepted the car rides and the meals without being willing to pay for services rendered.

  The way I see it, Mike, Doon had been seeing Mrs P. and asked her out on Tuesday afternoon with a view to persuading her to become his mistress. They couldn't meet at her home because of the risks and Doon was going to pick her up on the Pomfret Road. She took the rain-hood with her because the weather had been wet and she didn't bank on being in the car all the time. Even if she didn't want Doon for her lover she wouldn't want him to see her with wet hair.'

  The time factor was bothering Burden and he said so.

  ‘If she was killed early in the afternoon, sir, why did Doon strike a match to look at her? And if she was killed later, why didn't she pay for her papers before she went out with him and why didn't she explain to Parsons that she was going to be late?'J

  Wexford shrugged. 'Search me,' he said. ‘Dougie Q. uses matches, carries them in his pocket So do most men. He's behaving in a very funny way, Mike. Sometimes he's co-operative, sometimes he's actively hostil
e. We haven't finished with him yet Mrs Missal knows more than she's saying -'

  Then there's Missal himself’ Burden interrupted.

  Wexford looked thoughtful. He rubbed his chin and said: ‘I don't think there's any mystery about what he was doing on Tuesday. He's as jealous as hell of that wife of his and not without reason as we know. I'm willing to take a bet that he keeps tabs on her when he can. He probably suspects Quadrant and when she told him she was going out on Tuesday afternoon he nipped back to Kingsmarkham on the off-chance, watched her go out, satisfied himself that she didn't go to Quadrant's office and went back to Stowerton. He'd know she'd dress herself up to the nines if she was meeting Dougie. When he saw her go off in the car along the Kingsbrook Road in the same clothes she was wearing that morning he'd bank on her going shopping in Pomfret - they don't close on Tuesdays - and he'd be able to set his mind at rest. I'm certain that's what happened’

  It sounds like him’ Burden agreed. It fits. Was Quadrant here twelve years ago, sir?'

  'Oh, yes, lived here all his life, apart from three years at Cambridge and, anyway, he came down in 1949. Still, Mrs P. was hardly his style. I asked him if he knew her and he just laughed, but it was the way he laughed. I'm not kidding, Mike, it made my blood run cold’

  Burden looked at his chief with respect It must have been quite a display, he thought, to chill Wexford.

  ‘I suppose the others could have been just - well, playthings as it were, and Mrs P. a life-long love’

  'Christ!' Wexford roared. ‘I should never have let you read that book. Playthings, life-long love! You make me puke. For pity's sake find out where Drury lives and we'll get over there.'

  According to the directory, Drury, Dudley J. and Drury, Kathleen lived at 14 Sparta Grove, Stowerton. Burden knew it as a street of tiny pre-war semidetached houses, not far from where Peter Missal had his garage. It was not the kind of background he had visualized for Doon. He and Wexford had a couple of rounds of sandwiches from the Carousel and got to Stowerton by seven.