An Unkindness of Ravens Read online

  Burden said nothing. He left the room, went out to the kitchen, and came back with two cans on a tray. Burden’s first wife would have said, and Jenny once would have said, that they must have glasses to drink the beer out of. Jenny, languidly sitting down, picking up book and knitting but looking at neither, said, “You can drink it out of the can, can’t you?”

  Wexford began to feel awkward. Some sort of powerful angry tension that existed between these two seemed to hang in the air like smoke, to get in his throat and give him a choky feeling.

  He snapped the top off his beer can. Jenny was holding the knitting needles in one clenched hand and staring at the wall. He had no intention of talking about Francis Wingrave Adams in her presence. On other occasions like this he and Burden would have gone into one of the other rooms. Burden sat on the settee, wearing his half-frown. He opened the beer can with a sharp, rough movement and a spurt of froth shot out across the carpet.

  Three months before Wexford had seen Jenny soothing and practical when her husband had dropped, not a spoonful of beer, but a bowl of strawberry mousse on the paler newer carpet of the dining room. She had laughed and told him to leave the clearing-up to her. Now she gave a cry of real distress and jumped up out of her chair.

  “All right,” said Burden. “All right. I’ll do it. It’s nothing anyway. I’ll get a cloth.”

  She burst into tears. She put one hand up to her face and ran out of the room. Burden followed her. That is, Wexford thought he had followed her but he came back almost immediately holding a floorcloth.

  “Sorry about that,” he said on his hands and knees. “Of course it’s not the beer. It’s just any little thing sets her off. Take no notice.” He lifted an angry face. “I’ve made up my mind I’m simply not going to take any notice any more.”

  “But if she’s not well, Mike …”

  “She is perfectly well.” Burden got up and dropped the cloth onto the tiled hearth of the fireplace. “She is having an ideal trouble-free pregnancy. Why, she wasn’t even sick. When I remember what Jean went through …” Wexford could hardly believe his ears. For a husband—and such a husband as Burden—to make that comparison! Burden seemed to realize what he had said and a dull flush crept across his face. “No, honestly, she’s perfectly fit, she says so herself. It’s simply neurotic behavior.”

  Wexford had sometimes thought in the past that if every instance diagnosed by Burden as neurotic were taken as sound, almost the entire population would have to be tranquilized, not to say confined in mental hospitals. He said, “The amniocentesis was all right, wasn’t it? They didn’t tell her something to worry her?”

  Burden hesitated. “Well, as a matter of fact they did.” He gave an ugly, humorless laugh. “That’s just what they did. They told her something to worry her. You’ve hit the nail bang on the head. It doesn’t worry me and I’m the child’s father. But it worries her like hell and I’m the one who has to bear the brunt of it.” He sat down and said very loudly, almost shouting, “I don’t want to talk about it anyway. I’ve said too much already and I’ve no intention of saying any more. I feel like learning a formula to explain my wife’s conduct and repeating it to people when they first come in the door.”

  Wexford said quietly, “You can do it extempore for it is nothing but roaring.”

  He got a glare for that. “I came to talk about Adams. Or are you too preoccupied with your domestic fracas to care?”

  “I told you, I’m simply not going to take any notice any more,” said Burden, and they talked about Adams not very profitably for the next half-hour.

  Dora was in bed when he got home, sitting up reading. While he undressed he told her about the Burdens.

  “They’re too old to have babies,” was all she would say.

  “Flying in the face of nature, would you call it?”

  “You’d be surprised, my lad. I might. And by the way, Rod Williams hasn’t come back. I saw Joy and she hasn’t heard a word.”

  “But I had the distinct impression she’d phoned Sevensmith Harding,” Wexford began.

  “You told her to, you mean. You told her to phone them and find out if they could tell her anything and she’s going to.”

  That wasn’t what he had meant. He got into bed, sure now that he hadn’t heard the last of the Williams affair.

  3

  FOR MORE THAN A COUPLE OF WEEKS NOW HE had been keeping his eye on the dark blue Ford Granada parked outside his house in Arnold Road, Myringham. It had appeared there for the first time soon after Easter. Graham Gee couldn’t see it from his front windows nor, because of the tall lonicera hedge, from his front garden. He saw it when he drove his own car out of the entrance to his garage each morning and when he drove it in each afternoon at 5:30.

  At first (he told the police) he thought it might have something to do with the boy opposite, the teenage son of the people in the bungalow. But it was too respectable a car for that. Well, it was then. Dismissing that theory, he wondered if it belonged to some commuter who was using Arnold Road as a station car park. Arnold Road wasn’t very near Myringham Southern Region Station, it was a good quarter of a mile away, but it was probably the nearest street to the station not clogged on both sides with commuters’ cars.

  Graham Gee began to see the presence of the Ford Granada outside his gate as the thin end of the wedge. Soon there would be a hundred rail travelers’ cars parked in Arnold Road. He was not a commuter himself but a partner in a firm of accountants in Pomfret.

  Arnold Road was known as a “nice neighborhood.” The houses were detached, standing in large gardens. There weren’t any rough elements, there wasn’t any trouble, except perhaps for the theft of dahlias from someone’s front garden the previous autumn. So Graham Gee was surprised to notice one morning that the Granada’s hub caps had gone. Perhaps they had always been gone though, he couldn’t remember. Still, he knew the wheels hadn’t always been gone. The car hadn’t always been propped up on bricks. Dirty now, streaked with rain, it sat on its brick supports, looking as if it might after all be the property of the teenager opposite.

  He still did nothing about it, though he knew by now that it was there all the time. It wasn’t driven there in the morning and taken away in the evening. For a week now it hadn’t been drivable. It took the smashing of a rear window to get him to do something.

  The rear window had been broken, the front doors opened, and the interior stripped. The radio had been removed, the headrests taken off the front seats, and something dug out of the dashboard, a clock perhaps. Though the boot was open, the thieves hadn’t thought it worth their while to help themselves to the snow shovel inside. Gee phoned the police.

  THERE WAS NO NEED FOR THE POLICE TO GO through the procedure of tracing the driver through the Vehicle Licensing Department in Swansea, for the vehicle registration document was in the Granada’s glove compartment along with a road map of southern England, a ballpoint pen, and a pair of sunglasses.

  Vehicle registration documents have named on them the “keeper” of the vehicle, not its owner, a fact which was also of assistance to the police. This one listed the keeper as Rodney John Williams of 31 Alverbury Road, Kingsmarkham.

  WHY HAD WILLIAMS DUMPED THE CAR IN ARNOLD Road when Sevensmith Harding’s own car park was less than a quarter of a mile away behind the company’s High Street offices? That car park was never locked. It had no gates, only an opening in the fence and on the fence a notice requesting “unauthorized personnel” not to park there.

  “I don’t understand it,” Miles Gardner said. “Frankly, we’ve been wondering what to do about recovering the car but we don’t know where Williams is. He didn’t mention the car in his letter of resignation. Apparently, wherever he was when he first left, he’s no longer with his wife, otherwise we would have tackled her. He’s disappeared into thin air. It’s a bit much really, isn’t it? I gather the car’s in a state, not much more than a shell?”

  “The engine’s still there,” said Wexford.


  Gardner made a face. They were in his rather gloomy though luxurious office, a room not so much paneled as lined with oak, the decor dating from those between-wars days when hardwood was plentiful. None of your Sevenstar matte emulsion here, Wexford thought to himself.

  There were more framed photographs than in the average elderly couple’s living room. On Gardner’s desk, placed to catch his eye every time he looked up, was a big one of tall Mrs. Gardner and her three girls, all affectionate nestling and entwined arms. The walls were reserved for various groups and gatherings of men at company functions or on sporting occasions. One was of a cricket match with a tall, gangling man going in to bat. Rodney Williams. The high forehead, slight concavity of features that would no doubt show more clearly in profile, the thin mouth stretched in a grin, were unmistakable.

  Gardner looked at it dolefully.

  “He was a lot younger then,” he said. “The company had a crack team in those days.” He made as if to take the photograph down, angered no doubt by the sight of the permanently grinning Williams, but seemed to change his mind. “The whole thing’s extraordinary. He was very keen on cars, you know, one of those car men. You don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you?”

  The euphemism that always signified death …

  “If you mean some sort of accident, I don’t know but I don’t think so. It’s more what has he been up to, isn’t it?”

  Gardner looked mystified.

  “It looks to me as if he may have been up to something he shouldn’t have been, he’s been on the fiddle. Either he decided he’d made enough out of it and was going to call it a day or else something happened to make him think discovery was imminent. Now the most likely place for him to have been cooking the books is here. Do you have any thoughts on that one?”

  “He wouldn’t have had the opportunity. He never went near any books, so to speak. Do you want me to have our chief accountant up? I mean, as far as I can see, any fiddle he was up to would have to be an expenses fiddle and Ken Risby would be the man to tell you about that.”

  Gardner made a call on the internal phone. While they waited for Risby, Wexford said, “There is nothing small, portable but of considerable value he could have stolen? No check coming into his hands he could have falsified? No forgery he could have perpetrated?”

  Gardner looked simply bewildered. “I don’t think so. I’m sure not. I mean, I should know by now. Good God, the man’s been gone over three weeks.” He jumped up. “Here’s Ken now. He’ll tell us.”

  But Risby was not able to tell them much. He was a thin, fair man in his thirties, with a nervous manner, and he seemed as shocked by Wexford’s suggestion as Gardner had been. You’d think the pair of them lived in a world where fraud had never been heard of, Wexford thought impatiently, and every businessman was a sea-green incorruptible.

  “He was a mite heavy on his expenses sometimes but that’s all, that’s positively all. He never had the handling of the firm’s money. What makes you think he’s done something like that?”

  “You think about it. Look at it for yourself. For five years the man’s been lying to his wife about his position with this firm. What salary was he getting, by the way?”

  “Twenty-five thousand,” said Gardner rather grudgingly.

  More than Wexford had expected, £5000 more. “And lying about that too. You can bet on it she thinks he was getting less than half that. One day he tells her he’s going to Ipswich, a place he doubtless hasn’t set foot in for five years, and off he goes, dumps his company car in the street, and disappears. Apart from getting the lady he’s in cahoots with to phone here and say he’s ill and apart from writing his resignation he’s never heard from again. And you ask me why I think he’s been up to something? Tell me about the man. If he’s not a man who’d steal or forge, is there some other disgraceful thing he might have done?”

  They looked at him. Having no imagination, they didn’t know and couldn’t hazard guesses.

  Wexford had plenty of imagination and very little knowledge of marketing.

  “For instance, he couldn’t have been selling this paint of yours at prices over the odds and pocketing the difference? Something like that?”

  Gardner, who had looked as if he would never smile again, burst out laughing.

  “He never actually sold anything, Reg. It doesn’t work like that. He never handled money. He never handled money in any shape or form.”

  “You make him sound like royalty,” said Wexford. “Anyway, will you, Mr. Risby, have a good look at your books for me, please? Do a supplementary audit or whatever.”

  “Really not necessary, I assure you, not necessary at all. I’d go into court at this moment and swear there’s not a squeak of a discrepancy in my books.”

  “I hope you’ll never have to go into court on this matter, but don’t count on it.” Risby’s eyes opened wide at that one. “And do as I ask and check the books, will you? And now,” Wexford said to Gardner, “I’d like to see that letter of resignation Williams wrote to you.”

  Gardner called his secretary in to find it. Wexford noticed he called her Susan, and, what was less expected, she called him Miles. The letter was typed and by someone not accustomed to frequent use of a typewriter.

  Dear Mr. Gardner,

  This is to give you notice of my resignation from Sevensmith Harding from today. I am afraid it is rather sudden but is due to circumstances beyond my control. I shall not be returning to the office and would prefer you not to attempt to get in touch with me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rodney J. Williams

  PS. I will contact the Accounts Dept. about my superannuation refund in due course.

  Wexford said, “Everyone in this office calls each other by their Christian names, but Rodney Williams called you Mr. Gardner? Is that right?”

  “No, of course not. He called me Miles.”

  “He doesn’t in this letter.”

  “I took that to be because he thought the occasion demanded something more formal.”

  “It’s a possibility. Don’t you find it odd when a man on three months’ notice gives you one day’s? Wouldn’t you have expected a more detailed explanation for common courtesy’s sake than ‘circumstances beyond my control’?”

  “Are you suggesting someone else might have written that letter?”

  Wexford didn’t answer directly. “I’ll take it with me if I may. Maybe have some experts look at that signature. Can you let me have a specimen of his signature? One we know is his?”

  NINE SEPARATE SETS OF FINGERPRINTS HAD been found on and in the car. These would presumably include the prints of whoever had vandalized it. The others would be Williams’s, Joy’s, Sara’s, Kevin’s. Early days yet to ask these people to let him check their own prints against those in the car. A lot of hairs, fair and gray, had been on the upholstery. No blood, of course, nothing dramatic. There was one odd thing, though. On the floor of the boot, along with the shovel, were some crumbs of plaster the lab had identified as either Tetrion or Sevensmith Harding’s Stopgap.

  It took a few more days to get a verdict on the letter.

  A manual portable machine, the Remington 315, had been used to type it. There was a chip out of the apex of the capital A on this machine, a similar flaw in the ascender of the lower-case t and a smudging of the head of the comma. As to the signature, it wasn’t Williams’s. The handwriting expert was far more categorical than such people are usually willing to be. He was almost scathing in his incredulity that anyone could for a moment have believed that the signature was made by Williams.

  When Joy had told Dora of her intention to phone Sevensmith Harding she had followed this up with a request to “send” Wexford round to her house once more. This time Dora had said in quite a sharp way that her husband wasn’t a private detective and Wexford, of course, hadn’t gone. But Williams’s disappearance had stopped being a private matter. At any rate, he thought, he wouldn’t be unwelcome at 31 Alverbury Road. The
answer to a prayer, in fact. He walked round there in the evening, at about eight.

  This time the girl Sara let him in. She spoke not a word but closed the front door after him, opened the living-room door, left him, and went back upstairs.

  Joy Williams was watching television. The program was one of those contests in which teams of people go through ridiculous or humiliating ordeals. Men in dress suits and top hats were trying to walk a tightrope over what looked like a lake of mashed potato. Just before the door was opened he had heard her laughing. She didn’t turn the set off, only the sound. He thought she looked anything but pleased to see him. Her expression had very quickly become sullen.

  Yes, she admitted, they had a joint bank account. Rod was away so much they had had to. Wexford asked her if he might see some recent bank statements.

  She hunched herself, arms wrapping her thin body, right hand on left shoulder, left hand with the ugly showy rings on right. It was a habitual gesture with her which a psychiatrist might have said began as a way of protecting herself from assault. She had the green trousers on and a knitted jumper, its shoulders sprinkled with fallen hairs and dandruff.

  “How often does your bank send you statements?”

  “It’s been once a month lately.” Her eyes strayed to the silent but tumultuous screen. A contestant had fallen into the mashed potato. “They made a mistake over something and Rod complained, so they started sending statements once a month.”

  Dr. Crocker had told Wexford of a recent visit to one of his patients, a woman ill with bronchitis. The television had been on in her bedroom, all her six children sitting there watching it. When he tried to examine her she had protested angrily at his request that the set be turned off.

  “I pull the plug out now without a by-your-leave,” said the doctor. “If the TV’s on or their video I don’t ask any more, I pull out the plug.”

  Wexford would have liked to do that. He would have done it if he had had just a fraction more evidence for disquiet over Rodney Williams. It was curious that Joy, who had come close to pestering Dora for his attention, was now making it plain she didn’t want him there.