Burden, whose son had been admitted there one year before on passing a complex and subtle equivalent of the Eleven-plus, now said:
‘That’s where Villiers teaches.’
‘Latin and Greek are his subjects, aren’t they?'
Burden nodded. ‘He takes John for Latin. I reckon he teaches Greek to the older ones. John says he works there a lot after school hours, doing something in the library. That’s the library there in the new wing.’
‘Research for his books?’
‘Well, it’s a marvellous library. Not that I know much about these things, but I went round it on Open Day and it impressed me no end.’
‘John like him, does he?’
‘You know what these boys are, sir,’ said Burden. ‘Those little devils in John’s class call him Old Roman Villa. Good disciplinarian, I’d say.’ And the father who had that morning mollified his own son with a gratuitous half-crown added severely: ‘You have to be tough when you’re dealing with these young lads, if you ask me.’
Grinning to himself, Wexford changed the subject. ‘There are three main questions I’d like the answers to,’ he said. ‘Why was Quentin Nightingale taking a bath at five in the morning? Or, conversely, why does he pretend be was? Why did Sean Lovell tell me he was watching a programme on the television last night that was, in fact, cancelled at the last moment? Why did Elizabeth Nightingale get on well with everyone except her only brother?’
‘Why, for that matter, sir, did she have no intimate friends?’
‘Perhaps she did. We shall have to find out. Mike, we’re coming into Clusterwell. D’you happen to know which belongs to Villiers?’
Burden sat up straighter and turned his eyes to the window. ‘It’s outside the village, on the Myfleet side. Not yet, wait a minute .... Slow down, will you, Bryant? That’s it, sir, standing by itself.’
Frowning a little, Wexford scanned the isolated bungalow. It was a squat, double-fronted place with two low gables under which were bay windows.
‘Needs a coat of paint,’ said Burden, contrasting it unfavourably with his own attractive, soon to be completely redecorated home.
‘Shabby-looking dump. You’d think he could afford a decent garage.’
The front garden was a mass of Michaelmas daisies, all one colour. At one side a long drive of cracked and pitted concrete led to a prefabricated asbestos garage with a roof of tarred felt.
A black Morris Minor stood on this drive just in front of the asbestos doors and someone had very recently cleaned it, for there were damp patches on its bodywork and a small pool of water lay in a pothole under its rear bumper.
‘That’s odd,’ said Wexford. ‘Your sister is murdered, you pass out when you hear the news, and yet a couple of hours later you’re lively enough to give your car a wash and brush-up.’
‘It isn’t his car,’ Burden objected. ‘He drives an Anglia. That belongs to his wife.’
‘Where’s his, then?’
‘Still up at the Manor, I suppose, or in that revolting apology for a garage.’
‘I wouldn’t have said it was muddy in the forest last night, would you?’
‘Tacky,’ said Burden. ‘We had rain at the weekend if you remember.’
‘Drive on, Bryant. We!ll leave the Villiers in undisturbed domestic bliss a little longer.’
The first person they saw when they parked in Myfleet village was Katje Doorn, coming out of the general store with a bag of fruit and a bottle of shampoo. She giggled happily at them.
‘Do you happen to know which is the Lovells’ cottage, Miss Doorn?’Burden asked her stiffly.
‘Yes, look, it is that one.’ She pointed, clutching the cringing inspector’s arm and, as Wexford put it later, almost engulfing him in delectable curves. ‘The most dirty in all the village.’ As representative of perhaps the most house-proud nation on earth, she shuddered and, for the first time in their short acquaintance, lost her amiable expression. ‘They are living there like pigs, I think. His mother is a very nasty dirty woman, all fat.’ And, some six inches from her own rich contours, she described in the air a huge cello shape.
Wexford smiled at her. ‘Will the fat lady be at home, do you know?’
Katje ignored the smile. She was looking at Burden. ‘Maybe,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I know nothing of what these pig people do. You are liking a nice cup of tea? I think you are working very hard and would like some tea with me while your chief is in the nasty dirty cottage.’
‘Oh, no-no, thank you,’ said Burden, appalled.
‘Perhaps tomorrow, then,’ said Katje, sucking her hair. ‘All evenings I am free and tomorrow my friend must work late, serving drinks for the dance.
Mind you are not forgetting.’ She wagged her finger at him. ‘Now I say good-bye. Do not be catching anything nasty in that very dirty place.'
She tripped, straight-backed, yellow hair bobbing, across the road and up to the Manor gate. There she stopped and waved to them, her round breasts rising under the pink fluffy sweater.
Wexford waved back, turned away, laughing. ‘Odds my little life, I think she means to tangle your eyes too'
‘A ghastly young fernale,’ said Burden coldly.
‘I think she’s charming.’
'Good heavens, if I thought my daughter ...'
‘For God’s sake, Mike. I’m a married man, too, and a faithful husband.’ His grin dying now, Wexford patted his large belly. ‘Don’t have much chance to be otherwise, do I? But sometimes ...’He sighed. ‘God, what wouldn’t I give to be thirty again! Don’t look at me like that, you cold fish. Here we are at this very nasty dirty place and let’s hope we catch nothing more from our afternoon’s work than a nostalgie de boue.’
‘A what?' said Burden, trying to open the front gate without getting his hand stung by the nettles that thrust their leaves through it.
‘It is just,’ said Wexford with a rueful smile, ‘a long name for a kind of chronic plague.’ He laughed at Burden’s incredulous suspicious face. ‘Don’t worry, Mike, it’s not infectious and it only attacks the old.’
5
NOT only the front gate, but the front door too, was owergrown with nettles and their antidote, the dock. Before they had a chance to lift the knocker a grey lace curtain, re-perforated with larger holes, was lifted at a lattice window and a face appeared.
‘I don’t know what you want but you’ll have to go round the back.’
The side gate fell over as they pushed it. With a shrug, Wexford laid it down flat on a luxuriant bed of weeds. The back garden was a squalid blot on a fair landscape, the magnificence of the forest showing up, like a stain on black velvet, these twenty square yards of waist-high grass, dandelions, tumbled corrugated iron and broken chicken coops. A
reasonably shipshape shed filled one of the farthest corners, its footings hidden under heaps of rags, green glass bottles and a mattress which looked as if it had been used for bayonet practice. Among the weeds an enamel chamber-pot and several battered saucepans could be discerned.
Wexford noticed that a gate in the back fence led directly into the forest.
The back door opened suddenly and the woman who had spoken to them from the window put her head out.
‘What d’you want?’
‘Mrs Lovell?’
‘That’s right. What d’you want?’
‘A word with you, if you please,’ Wexford said smoothly.’We’re police officers.’