His children deposited, Burden drove down to the police station through the morning rush. He had been surprised to see Villiers, whom, he thought, tact if not grief would have kept from work for at least this week. A strange man, one who seemed to care nothing for public opinion.
His behaviour in ignoring Burden, a policeman who had been in his house the day before and was, in any case, the parent of a King’s pupil, had beenwell, outrageous, Burden thought.
Aware that he was twenty minutes late, he leapt into the lift and arrived breathless in Wexford’s office. The chief inspector, in an even more disgracefully shabby suit than usual, sat at his rosewood desk, leafing through stacks of papers. Standing behind him at the window was the doctor, breathing on the glass and drawing with one finger something that looked disturbingly like a plan of the alimentary canal. Burden had had enough of alimentary canals for one morning.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘My girl Pat’s always sick on the first day of term, so I hung about and drove her to school.’ He nodded to the doctor. ‘Jean wanted you called in.’
‘But you wouldn’t bother a busy man?’ said Crocker with a lazy grin. ‘Pat’ll grow out of it, you know. It’s all part of the human predicament from which your kids aren’t going to be absolved, hard cheese though that may be.’
Wexford looked up with a scowl, ‘Spare us the philosophy, will you? I’ve got some lab reports here, Mike. The ash from the Manor bonfire shows distinctly that woollen cloth was burnt on it. No weapon has come to light, although our people went on combing the forest until it got dark last night and they’re at it again now.’
‘It could be anywhere,’ Burden said hopelessly. ‘in the river, chucked in someone’s garden. We don’t even know what it is.’
‘No, but we’re all going to have a hard think about that. First of all we have to decide if Mrs Nightingale’s assailant planned this murder or if it was unpremeditated.’
Dr Crocker rubbed out his drawing with the heel of his hand. He sat down on one of Wexford’s flimsy chairs. The chief inspector’s was the only solid one in the room, a dark wood and leather throne, strong and ample enough to bear Wexford’s weight. It creaked as Wexford leaned back, spreading his arms.
‘Premeditated,’ said the doctor, concentrating. ‘Otherwise she wouldn’t have been killed in that way in that place. The kind of thing she was killed with isn’t the kind that people carry with them on country walks. Right?’
‘You mean that if it was unpremeditated she could only have been killed by strangling, for instance?'
‘Roughly speaking, yes. You don’t have to bring the weapon with you in a planned murder if you know the means are going to be available. For example, Y intends to kill X in X’s drawing room, but he doesn’t take a weapon becausc he knows the poker will be where it always is, on the hearth. But in an open space there aren’t going to be any means, so he arms himself before he starts. That’s what your man did.’
‘Does it have to be a man?’ Wexford asked.
‘A man or a very strong woman.’
‘I agree with you. My own view is that it was planned, and that can still apply in a jealousy murder. The killer followed her, expecting to see what he did in fact see. He took the weapon with him, guessing what he was going to see and only waiting for confirmation. What do you think, Mike?’
‘Unpremeditated,’ said Burden coolly. ‘Our murderer was carrying with him something that could be used as a murder weapon but had some other primary purpose. As in the case of a woman cutting bread. Her husband says something to her which drives her over the edge of reason and she makes for him with the bread knife. But the original purpose of having the knife in her hand was to cut bread.’
‘I’m all for pre-cut loaves myself,’ said the doctor facetiously.
A deepening frown was the only sign Wexford gave of having heard this.
‘Well, if we play along for the moment with Mike’s theory, what could he (or the very strong she) have been carrying? What do people carry when they go into a wood at night?'
‘A walking stick,’ said Burden promptly, ‘with a metal tip.’
Crocker shook his head. ‘Too thin. Not the kind of thing at all. A shooting stick possibly, but it seems farfetched. A golf club?’
Wexford glared at him derisively. ‘Going to have a few drives among the trees, was he? Trying to get his handicap down? Oh, give me strength!’
‘Well, it was moonlight,’ said the doctor. ‘Or it was till the wind came up. Metal heel of a shoe?’
‘Then where’s the dirt in the wound?’
‘You’re right. There wasn’t any.’
Wexford shrugged and fell into moody silence. Equally silently, Burden eased the papers from under his hand and began reading them without expression. Suddenly Wexford swivelled the groaning chair round.
‘You said something just now, something about light.’
‘I did?’
Burden said in his prim official voice: ‘Dr Crocker said that it had been moonlight until the wind came up.’ He gave a barrister-like inclination of his neat head in the doctor’s direction. Crocker raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh, yes. I remember because I was out at Flagford, delivering a baby.
There was a bright moon but the clouds were already coming up by eleven and by half past the moon had gone.’
A slow grin that had nothing to do with humour and a great deal to do with triumph spread across Wexford’s face. ‘So what would anyone take with him into the wood?’
‘An umbrella,’ said the doctor, but Burden said, his gravity giving way to excitement, ‘A torch!’
‘A torch?’ said Quentin Nightingale. ‘Those we have are kept in the garden room.’ The skin under his eyes looked brown and crèpey, the result perhaps of a second sleepless night. His hands trembled nervously as he touched his forehead, fidgeted with his tie, finally putting them behind his back and clasping them lightly together. ‘If you think ...’he muttered. ‘If you’re hoping... Your people searched the house throughout yesterday. What can ...?’
He seemed incapable of ending his sentences, but let them trail away on a note of despair.
‘I’m pursuing a new line,’Wexford said briskly.’Where is this garden room?’
‘I’ll take you there.’
As they re-entered the hall the front-door bell rang. Quentin stared at the door as if Nemesis itself awaited him on the other side of it, but he made no move, only nodding hmply when Mrs Cantrip marched out from the kitchen.
‘Whoever’s that now?’ she said with some exasperation. ‘Are you at home to visitors, sir?’His apathy aroused her sympathy rather than impatience.
‘For two pins I’d send them away with a flea in their ear.’
‘You’d better see who it is,’ said Quentin.
It was Georgina Villiers and Lionel Marriott. They made a strange couple, the tall raw-boned young woman incongruously bedizened with costume jewellery, and the little sharp-eyed man. Georgina’s face registered a mixture of assorted emotions, hope, shyness, an intense curiosity. She carried a canvas hold-all with plastic straps and handles, more suitable for a hiker than a woman paying a morning call, and as she stepped over the threshold she broke into a disjointed stream of apology and explanation.
‘I felt I had to come and see how you were bearing up, Quen. It’s all so dreadful for you .... I’ve brought my own lunch so that Mrs Cantrip won’t have to be bothered cooking for me. How are you? You do look bad. Well, of course it’s the strain and everything. Oh dear, perhaps I shouldn’t have corne.’
Quentin’s face, contorted in an effort to hide his anxiety, showed plainly that he agreed with her, but courtesy forbade his saying so. ‘No, no. It was nice of you to take the trouble. Won’t you come into the morning room?’ He swallowed hard and half-turned to Wexford. ‘Perhaps Mrs Cantrip can take you to where the torches are kept?’ The hand he put up to his sister-in-law’s shoulder to shepherd her along shook now with violent jerks that were painful to see. They moved slowly towards the room where Elizabeth Nightingale had sat in the mornings, Georgina still muttering apologies.