Mrs Cantrip turned her face up to him. Once more, as they approached ground she had decided must be forbidden, she looked guarded and resentful. ‘That Sean wouldn’t have dared think of Madam in that way,’ she said. ‘There are limits. Besides, Mrs Nightingale-well, she looked so young and lovely, sir. She didn’t like people knowing her age. It went to my heart sometimes the way she wanted Scan and Catcher to feel she was the same age as what they were. And when Sean said-it wasn’t respectful, sir, but he doesn’t know no better-when he said she wasn’t square and once when he said she was nicer to look at than any lady for miles round, she looked so pleased and happy.’
‘He is a very handsome young man,’ said Wexford.
‘I can’t see it myself, sir, but tastes differ. Well, here’s where I live, so I’ll say good night. And I hope you’ve taken no offence at the way them two went on, sir.’
They watched her go into the freshly painted white cottage whose patchwork-quilt garden was one of those Burden had earlier admired. She gathered into her arms a cushiony yellow cat which had strolled out to meet her, and closed the front door,
‘The poor neglected boy,’ said Wexford thoughtfully, ‘inherits three hundred pounds under Mrs Nightingale’s will. I wonder if he knows and if he thought it worth killing for? But we’ll leave that for the moment and call on the principal beneficiary.’
‘Sir?’Burden looked at him enquiringly.
‘I’ll tell you in the car.’ Wexford grinned broadly.
‘How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of him who bringeth good tidings!’
How would she receive the news? Wexford wondered. With surprised gratification? Or with fear that the will had been disclosed to official eyes? It might be that she was genuinely ignorant of its contents or even of its existence.
He told her baldly that Mrs Nightingale’s will was in her favour and watched her reactions. They were disappointing. She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘That’s a surprise. I had no idea.’ As usual she wore the necklace, bracelets and ear-rings which were as indispensable to her as stockings and lipstick might be to another woman, and not even the faintest flash of concupiscence crossed her face to show that she would be glad to replace them with real stones. Her expression was apathetic and indifferent, almost sleepy, as if she had recently passed through some ordeal, so tumultuous that it had left her drained of all feeling.
‘You didn’t know she had made a will? Or you don’t know what she’s left you?’
‘No to both,’ said Georgina. She sat down on the arm of a chair. Her blouse was sleeveless and Wexford noticed the strong sinews of her shoulders and upper arms. Only once before had he seen such sinews on a woman’s arms and that woman had been a female wrestler.
‘You inherit all Mrs Nightingale’s jewellery,’ he said.
‘I see. When you said the will was in my favour I thought it must be something like that. Elizabeth hadn’t any money of her own and she always got through her allowance before the next was due. She was awfully extravagant.’
‘Mrs Villiers, this puts a rather different complexion on the circumstances of your sister-in-law’s death.’
‘Does it? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’
‘Let me explain then.’ Wexford paused as the door opened and Denys Villiers came in, his recently published book open in his hand.
‘Oh, there you are, Denys,’his wife said, getting up. Her voice was still dull and toneless. as she said, ‘Fancy, Elizabeth made a will and left me all those rings and necklaces of hers.’
Villiers put his thumb between the pages of his book to mark the place and looked with dry amusement into the stern faces of the two policemen. Then, without warning, he burst into a roar of hysterical laughter.
11
HER husband’s laughter had a far more disturbing effect on Georgina than had Wexford’s tidings. Something had been slumbering under her veil of apathy. The laughter brought it to life and it showed in her eyes and her trembling lips as raw terror.
‘Don’t, Denys, don’t. Oh, stop!’ She clutched his arm and shook it.
‘May we share the joke, sir?’ asked Wexford blandly.
Villiers stopped laughing as people can when their laughter doesn’t stem from amusement but from some irony they have observed with admiration.
He shrugged and then, his face going blank, opened his book once more and began to read where he had left off.
‘Mrs Villiers,’ said Wexford, ‘I want to talk to you again about the events of Tuesday night.’
‘But, why?’ Her voice was barely under control. ‘I thought it was all over. I was just beginning to stop thinking about it and now .—. Oh God, what shall I do?’ She stood for a moment, staring wildly at them and then ran from the room.
Villiers smiled a little, apparently at something in his own book. Aware as he was of the huge vanity of writers, Wexford was nevertheless unable to understand how one of them could actually laugh at something he had written himself.
‘I can see I shall have to read this book of yours.’
Villiers lifted his eyes and, again closing his book, kept his fingers inside it to mark the place. He took a copy of Wordsworth in Love from a stack on the window-sill and handed it to the chief inspector. ‘You can have this if it interests you.’ The weary grey eyes met Wexford’s and held them.
‘Thank you. It will interest me. I’m always willing to be enlightened.
For one thing, I’m curious to discover why you’ve made yourself an authority on Wordsworth.’
‘A matter of taste, Mr Wexford.’
‘But there is always something to account for taste.’
Villiers shrugged impatiently. ‘Well, you’ve brought us the news and we’ve had our little bit of literary chit-chat. Is there anything else?’
‘Certainly there is. I am investigating a murder, Mr Villiers.’
‘But not very fruitfully, if I may say so.’ Villiers sat down astride a dining chair, his chest against its bars and his arms folded on the top of its back. The ashen face with its tracery of lines again gave Wexford the impression that this man was sick, was dying. ‘And what’s the point, anyway?’ he said. ‘Elizabeth is dead and cannot be resurrected, You find who killed her and put him in prison for twenty or thirty years. Who benefits? Who’s the happier for it?’
‘You’re in favour of capital punishment perhaps? I’m surprised your first wife didn’t convert you from that view.’
If Villiers was astonished that Wexford knew of his previous marriage he gave no sign of it. ‘Capital punishment?’ he said. ‘No, I’m not in favour of it. I don’t care much. I don’t care about people being kept in prison either except that my tax pays for their board.’
‘It seems to me, sir, that you don’t care much for anything.’
‘That’s so. So-called current affairs don’t interest me and nor does current opinion. I don’t like people and people don’t like me. They’re mostly fools,’ said the misanthropist with a kind of bitter relish. ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly. Progress bores me and so does noise.’ He added very quietly, ‘I want to be left in peace to live in the past.’
‘Then let’s discuss the past,’ said Wexford. ‘The recent past. Tuesday night, for instance.’
Sitting opposite Burden in the living room, Georgina said fretfully, ‘I
told you about Tuesday night last time you were here. If you’ve got a bad memory you ought to have written it down.’
‘Never mind my memory, Mrs Villiers. You just tell me again. You left the Manor at ten-thirty in your husband’s car. Who was driving?’
‘My husband was driving. He always drives when we’re out together. I think the man should always drive, don’t you?’ She set her mouth stubbornly. ‘The man should always be the dominant partner in a marriage so that his wife can look up to him. We,’ she said in a loud defiant voice, ‘are very happily married.’