Wolf to the Slaughter Page 3

  After they had gone, Burden said bitterly, 'Smith! I ask you, Smith!'

  'Some people really are called Smith, Mike,' Wexford said. He folded up the colour supplement with Margolis's photograph uppermost and tucked it carefully in a drawer of the rosewood desk.

  'If I could only find the matches,' Rupert Margolis said, 'I'd make you a cup of coffee.' He fumbled helplessly among dirty crockery, topless bottles of milk, crumpled frozen food cartons on the kitchen table. 'There were some here on Tuesday night. I came in about eleven and all the lights had fused. That's not unusual. There was an enormous pile of newspapers on here and I picked them up and chucked them outside the back door. Our dustbins are always full. However, I did find the matches then, about fifteen boxes where the papers had been.' He sighed heavily. 'God knows where they are now. I haven't been cooking much.'

  'Here,' said Burden and handed him one of the match books the Olive and Dove gave away with drinks. Margolis poured a percolator full of black liquid sprouting mould down the sink. Grounds clung to the sink side and to an aubergine floating in dirty dishwater. 'Now, let me get this straight.' It had taken him half an hour to get the salient facts out of Margolis and even now he was not sure if he had them sorted out. 'Your sister, whose name is Anita or Ann, was going to a party given by Mr and Mrs Cawthorne of Cawthorne's service station in Stowerton on Tuesday night. When you got home at eleven, having been out since three, she was gone and her car also, her white Alpine sports car which is usually parked outside in the lane. Right?'

  'Right,' said Margolis worriedly. The kitchen had no ceiling, only a roof of corrugated metal supported by ancient beams. He sat on the edge of the table staring at the cobwebs which hung from them and moving his head gently in time to the movement of those swinging grey ropes, agitated by the rising steam from the coffee pot.

  Burden went on firmly. 'You left the back door unlocked for her and went to bed but you were awakened soon afterwards by Mr Cawthorne telephoning to ask where your sister was.'

  'Yes. I was very annoyed. Cawthorne's a terrible old bore and I never talk to him unless I have to.' 'Weren't you at all concerned?'

  'No. Why should I be? I thought she'd changed her mind and gone off somewhere else.' The painter got down from his perch and ran the cold tap over two filthy tea cups.

  'At about one o'clock,' Burden said, 'you were awakened again by lights passing across your bedroom ceiling. These you assumed to be the lights of your sister's car, since no one else lives in Pump Lane

  , but you did not get up ...'

  'I went straight off to sleep again. I was tired, you see.'

  'Yes, I think you said you'd been in London.'

  The coffee was surprisingly good. Burden tried to ignore the incrustations on the cup rim and enjoy it. Someone had been dipping wet spoons in the sugar and at times it had apparently been in contact with a marmalade-covered knife.

  'I went out at three,' Margolis said, his face vague and dreamy. 'Ann was there then. She told me she'd be out when I got back and not to forget my key.'

  'And had you forgotten it, Mr Margolis?'

  'Of course I hadn't,' the painter said, suddenly sharp. 'I'm not crazy.' He drank his coffee at a gulp and a little colour came into his pale face. 'I left my car at Kingsmarkham station and went to see this man about a show I'm having.'

  'A show?' Burden said, bewildered. The word conjured up in his- mind visions of dancing girls and dinner-jacketed comedians.

  'An exhibition, then,' Margolis said impatiently. 'Of my work. Really, you are a bunch of philistines. I thought so yesterday when nobody seemed to know who I was.' He favoured Burden with a look of dark suspicion as if he doubted his efficiency. 'As I was saying, I went to see this man. He's the manager of the Morissot Gallery in Knightsbridge and when we'd had our talk he rather unexpectedly gave me dinner. But I was absolutely exhausted with all this travelling about. This gallery man's a fearful bore and it got very tedious just sitting there listening to him talking. That's why, when I saw Ann's car lights, I didn't bother to get up.'

  'But yesterday morning,' Burden said,'you found her car in the lane.'

  'All wet and revolting with the New Statesman plastered across its windscreen.' Margolis sighed. 'There were papers all over the garden. I don't suppose you could send someone to clear them up, could you? Or get the council to?'

  'No,' said Burden firmly. 'Didn't you go out at all on Wednesday?'

  ‘I was working,' said Margolis. 'And I sleep a lot.' He added vaguely, 'At odd times, you know. I thought Ann had come and gone. We go our own ways.' His voice rose suddenly to a shrill pitch. Burden began to wonder if he might be slightly mad. 'But I'm lost without her. She never leaves me like this without a word!' He got up abruptly, knocking a milk bottle on to the floor. The neck broke off and a stream of sour whey flowed across coconut matting. 'O God, let's go into the studio if you don't want any more coffee. I don't have a photograph of her, but I could show you my portrait if you think it would help,'

  There were probably twenty pictures in the studio, one of them so large that it filled an entire wall. Burden had only once in his life seen a larger and that was Rembrandt's 'Night Watch' viewed reluctantly on a day trip to Amsterdam. To its surface, giving a three-dimensional look to the wild cavorting figures, other substances apart from paint adhered, cotton wool, slivers of metal ana strips of tortured newspaper. Burden decided that he preferred the Night Watch. If the portrait was in the same style as this picture it would not be helpful for the purposes of identification. The girl would have one eye, a green mouth and a saucepan scourer sticking out of her ear.

  He sat down in a rocking chair, having first removed from its seat a tarnished silver toast rack, a squashed tube of paint and a woodwind instrument of vaguely Mediterranean origin. Newspapers, clothes, dirty cups and saucers, beer bottles, covered every surface and in places were massed on the floor. By the telephone dead narcissi stood in a glass vase half-full of green water, and one of them, its stem broken, had laid its wrinkled cup and bell against a large wedge of cheese.

  Presently Margolis came back with the portrait. Burden was agreeably surprised. It was conventionally painted rather in the style of John, although he did not know this, and it showed the head and shoulders of a girl. Her eyes were like her brother's, blue with a hint of jade, and her hair, as black as his, swept across her cheeks in two heavy crescents. The face was hawklike, if a hawk's face can also be soft and beautiful, the mouth fine yet full and the nose just verging on the aquiline. Margolis had caught, or had given her, a fierce intelligence. If she were not already dead in her youth, Burden thought, she would one day be a formidable old woman.

  He had an uneasy feeling that one ought always to praise a work when shown it by its creator, and he said awkwardly:

  'Very nice. Jolly good.'

  Instead of showing gratitude or gratification, Margolis said simply, 'Yes, it's marvellous. One of the best things I've ever done.' He put the painting on an empty easel and regarded it happily, his good humour restored.

  'Now, Mr Margolis,' Burden said severely, 'in a case like this it's normal practice for us to ask the relatives just where they think the missing person might be.' The painter nodded without turning round. 'Please concentrate, sir. Where do you personally think your sister is?'

  He realized that his tone had become more and more stern, more schoolmasterish, as the interview progressed, and suddenly he wondered if he was being presumptuous. Since his arrival at Quince. Cottage he had kept the newspaper feature in mind, but only as a guide, as information on the brother and sister that could only have been elicited from Margolis after hours of probing. Now he remembered why that feature had been written and what Margolis was. He was in the presence of genius, or if that was journalist's extravagance, of great talent. Margolis was not like other men. In his fingers and brain was something that set him apart, something that might not be fully recognized and appreciated until long after the painter was dead. Burden experienced a
sense of awe, a strange reverence he could not reconcile with the seamy disorder that surrounded him or with the pale-faced creature that looked like a beatnik and might be a latter-day Rembrandt. Who was he, a country policeman, to judge, to mock and put himself among the philistines? His voice softened as he repeated his question.

  'Where do you think she is, Mr Margolis?'

  'With one of her men friends. She's got dozens.' He turned round and his opalescent eyes seemed to go out of focus and into some dreamy distance. Did Rembrandt ever come into contact with whatever police they had in those days? Genius was more common then, Burden thought. There was more of it about and people knew how to deal with it. 'Or I would think so,' Margolis said, 'but for the note.'

  Burden started. Had he also received an anonymous letter? 'What note? A note about your sister?'

  'That's the point, there isn't one, and there should be. You see, she's often popped off like this before and she wouldn't disturb me if I was working or sleeping.' Margolis passed his fingers through the long spiky hair. 'And I don't seem to do much apart from working and sleeping,' he said. 'She always leaves a note in a very prominent position, by my bed or propped up somewhere.' Memories seemed to come to him of such former examples of his sister's solicitude. 'Quite a long detailed note usually, where she'd gone and who with, and what to do about cleaning the place and - and, well, little things for me to do, you know.' He gave a small doubtful smile which clouded into sourness as the telephone rang. 'That'll be dreary old Russell Cawthorne,' he said. 'He keeps bothering me, wanting to know where she is.'

  He reached for the receiver and rested his elbow against the chunk of mouldering cheese.

  'No, she isn't here. I don't know where she is.' Watching him, Burden wondered exactly what were the 'little things' his sister would recommend him to do. Even so small a thing as answering the telephone seemed to throw him into a state of surly misanthropy. 'I've got the police here, if you must know. Of course I'll tell you if she turns up. Yes, yes, yes. What d'you mean, you'll be seeing me? I shouldn't think you will for a moment. We never do see each other.'

  ‘Oh, yes, you will, Mr Margolis,' Burden said quietly. 'You and I are going to see Mr Cawthorne now.'

  4

  Thoughtfully Wexford compared the two sheets of paper, one piece with red ballpoint writing on it, the other new and clean. The texture, colour and watermark were identical.

  'It was from Braddon's, after all, sir,' said Sergeant Martin. He was a painstaking officer whose features were permanently set in an earnest frown. 'Grover's only sell pads and what they call drawing blocks. Braddon's get this paper specially from a place in London.'

  'D'you mean it's ordered?'

  'Yes, sir. Fortunately they only supply it to one customer, a Mrs Adeline Harper who lives in Waterford Avenue

  . Stowerton.'

  Wexford nodded. 'Good class residential,' he said. 'Big old-fashioned houses.'

  'Mrs Harper's, away, sir. Taking a long Easter holiday, according to the neighbours. She doesn't keep a manservant. In fact the only servant she does have is a char who goes in Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.'

  'Could she be my correspondent?'

  'They're big houses, sir, and a long way apart. Waterford Avenue

  's not like a council estate or a block of flats where everyone knows everyone else. They keep themselves to themselves. This char's been seen to go in and out, but no one knows her name.'

  'And if she has a way of snapping up unconsidered trifles like expensive writing paper, her employer and the neighbours don't know about it?'

  'All the neighbours know,' said Martin, a little discomfited by the paucity of his information, 'is that she's middle-aged, showily dressed and got ginger hair.'

  'Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays ... I take it she goes in while her employer's away?'

  'And today's Friday, sir. But, you see, she only goes in mornings and she was gone before I got there. "I've just seen her go by", the neighbour said. I nipped up the road smartish but she was out of sight.'

  Wexford turned his attention once more to the sheets of paper and to the lab report on that paper. No fingerprints had been found on the anonymous letter, no perfume clung to it; the pen with which it had been written was a cheap ballpoint such as could be bought in every stationers in the country. He had an inventive imagination but he could not visualize the concatenation of happenings that must have been the prerequisite to this letter. A ginger-haired charwoman, whose own conduct was apparently not above reproach, had seen something or heard something that had led her to write to the police. Such communication would necessarily be alien to a woman of her type, a woman found to be an occasional thief. And yet she, or someone closely associated with her, had written it. Fear or spite might have prompted her action.

  'I wonder if it could be blackmail,' Wexford said.

  'I don't quite follow you, sir.'

  'Because we always think of blackmail being successful, or, at any rate, successful for a time. Suppose it isn't successful at all. Suppose our ginger-haired woman tries to put the squeeze on Geoff Smith, but he won't play. Then, if she's vindictive, she carries out her threat.'

  'Blackmailers always are vindictive, sir,' Martin said sagely unctuous. 'A nasty spiteful thing, if ever there was one. Worse than murder, sir.'

  An excessive show of respect always grated on Wexford, especially as in this case when it was associated with the imparting of platitudes he had heard a thousand times before. 'Here endeth the first lesson,' he said sharply. 'Answer that, will you?'

  Martin leapt to the phone before the end of the second double peal. 'Inspector Burden for you, sir.'

  Wexford took the receiver without getting up; The stretched coil lead passed dangerously near his glass sculpture. 'Move that thing/ he said. The sergeant lifted it and stuck it on the narrow windowsill. 'Well?' Wexford said into the mouthpiece.

  Burden's voice sounded dazed. 'I'm off to have a word with Cawthorne. Can we spare someone to come down here and fetch Miss Margolis's car? Drayton, if he's not tied up. Oh, and the cottage'll have to be gone over.' Wexford heard his tone drop to a whisper. 'It's a proper shambles, sir. No wonder he wanted a char.'

  'We want one, too,' Wexford said crisply, 'a snappy dresser with ginger hair.' He explained. The phone made crackling sounds. 'What's going on?'

  'The cheese has fallen into a flower pot.'

  'My God,' said Wexford. 'I see what you mean.'

  Mark Drayton came down the police station steps and crossed the road. To reach Pump Lane

  he had to walk the whole length of the High Street and when he came to Grover's the newsagent he stopped for a moment to glance at its window. It seemed incredible to him that Martin had for a moment considered this place as the possible purveyor of handmade paper. It had the shady, almost sordid aspect, of a shop in the slum streets of some great city. A high brick wall towered above it and between it and the florist's next door a brown cobbled alley plunged deep into a dubious hinterland of dustbins and sheds and a pair of garages.

  In the shop window the displayed wares looked as if they had been arranged there some years before and since left utterly untended. Easter was not long past and the Easter cards were topical. But it seemed to them that their topicality must be an accident in the same way as a stopped clock must be correct twice a day, for there were Christmas cards there as well, some fallen on their sides and filmed with dust.

  Dying house plants stood among the cards. Perhaps they were for sale or perhaps misguidedly intended for decoration. The earth around their roots had shrunk through dehydration, leaving an empty space between soil and pot. A box containing a game of snakes and ladders had come open, so that the coloured board hung from a shelf. The counters lay on the floor among rusty nails, spilt confetti and shed leaves. Drayton thought he had seldom seen anything which could be regarded as an advertisement so repellant and so discouraging to those shoppers who passed this way.

  He was going to walk on with a
shrug of disgust when, through the dirty glass panel that separated this window from the interior of the shop, he caught sight of a girl behind the counter. He could only see her dimly, the shape of her, and her pale bright hair. But, as he hesitated, his interest faintly aroused, she approached the panel and opening it, reached for a pack of cards which lay to the left of the snakes and ladders box. That she made no attempt to retrieve the counters or blow the dust from the box lid, annoyed him. He was meticulous in his own work, tidy, attentive to the tools of his life and his trade.

  Because he felt distaste and a desire to make plain the disapproval of at least one potential customer, he raised his eyes coldly and met hers. At once he knew who she was. A face which had haunted him for four days and which was faintly familiar but not specifically identifiable was confronting him. He stared at her and felt die hot blood rush into his cheeks. She could not know that he had seen her before, or if she did know it, could not be aware of the thoughts, many of them dreamlike, searching, sensuous, which had accompanied his constant evoking of her image on to his mind's eye. She could not know it, but he felt that she must do so, that such vivid violent imaginings could not be contained within the brain that conceived them and must by some telepathic process be communicated to their object.