‘I don’t know where all this is getting us, Mike. We aren’t looking for a damaged car but for a witness who saw something when he passed Villiers’ bungalow.’
‘I like all the ends tidied,’ said Burden. ‘Anyway, I checked downstairs and no accident was reported on Tuesday night.’
‘Then let’s leave it, shall we?’ said Wexford crossly. ‘Get Martin to go over to Clusterwell and find out if anyone does any regular nightly dog walking. I may as well go myself,’ he added. ‘Spy out the land a bit. It’s not possible no one used that road.’
The cottages of Clusterwell were scattered over a spider-shaped network of lanes. Sergeant Martin took the body of the spider, Wexford its legs.
Recalling the painstaking routine work of his youth, he knocked on every door. But the inhabitants of Clusterwell took a perverse pride in their own peculiar brand of respectability. Like those of Myfleet, they stayed in at night. Virtue lay in bolting one’s doors, drawing one’s curtains and gathering round the television by nine o’clock. And, judging by the number of mongrels Wexford encountered in the lanes, their dogs exercised themselves.
A large black one, patrolling what looked like a field of allotments, growled at him as he approached the hedge. He decided to venture no nearer the caravan-in any case clearly deserted-which stood behind runner-bean vines and stacked chicken coops. Instead he stepped back to read the words on a shabby board mounted on poles: A. Tawney. New-laid eggs, roasting chickens, veg.
‘Myfleet,’ he said tersely to his driver.
Mrs Cantrip was in her rocking chair, engrossed in her paper, a little flustered because he had caught her in idleness. Katje, who had shown him in, disappeared in the direction of the study.
‘Alf Tawney, sir? If he’s not out on his rounds, you’ll likely find him over at Mrs Lovell’s.’
‘How does he travel to and fro?’
‘On his bike, sir. He’s got one of them big baskets on the handlebars of his bike.’
Wexford nodded. ‘Does he stay at Mrs Lovell’s all night?’
It was easy to shock Mrs Cant ‘ rip, who adhered to that school of thought which holds that fornication can only be committed between midnight and dawn. ‘Oh no, sir,’ she said, flushing and looking down. ‘He’s always gone by eleven. I reckon even Mrs Lovell’s got some idea of what’s right.'
The lovers were in the middle of their evening meal. A saucepan of baked beans stood in the middle of the clothless table.
Mrs Lovell re-seated herself. ‘His lordship been up to something?’ she asked, carving more bread and resting her gigantic bosom among the crumbs.
‘My visit has nothing to do with Sean.’ It was clear to Wexford that he was to be offered no tea, but a glance at the cracked cups and the scum-ringed milk bottle told him he wasn’t missing anything. ‘I hoped to have the pleasure of a little talk with Mr Tawney.’
‘With Alf? What d’you want with Alf?'
Wexford eyed the purveyor of eggs and vegetables, wondering how to interrogate a man who apparently never opened his mouth. The small black eyes in the swarthy hatchet face stared expressionlessly back at him.
At last he said, ‘Spend a good deal of time here with your friends, do you, Mr Tawney?’
Mrs Lovell gave a full-throated giggle. ‘My Sean’s no friend of his,’ she said. ‘It’s me you come to see, don’t you, Alf?'
‘Um,’said Tawney lugubriously.
‘And very nice too,’ said Wexford. ‘A man needs a little feminine company after a hard day’s work.’
‘And his hot meals. Wasting away Alf was till I got him coming here. You fancy a cream horn, Alf?’
‘Um.'
‘What time,’said Wexford, ‘do you reckon on leaving Mrs Lovell’s to go home?’
‘Alf has to be up betimes,’said Mrs Lovell, looking more gypsy-ish than ever. ‘He’s always gone by a quarter to eleven.’ She sighed and Wexford guessed that this early retreat had been a bone of contention between them in the past. With surprising intelligence, she said, ‘You want to know if he saw anything the night her up at the Manor got killed?’
‘Precisely. I want to know if Mr Tawney took a look at Mr Villiers’ bungalow -you know the one I mean? as he was cycling back to Clusterwell.’
‘Don’t know about look. He tried to knock them up, didn’t you, Alf?’
‘Um,’ said Tawney. Very alert now, Wexford waited.
‘Go on, Alf. The gentleman asked you a question.’ A tremor disturbed Tawney’s body as if, by unprecedented effort, he was trying to summon speech from the depths of his stomach. ‘He was mad enough about it at the time,’ said Mrs Lovell. ‘Quite talkative for him. Go on, Alf.’
Tawney spoke.
‘ ‘Twere no good,’ he said. ‘They was out and the place locked up.’
‘Now let’s get this straight’ said Wexford, guessing for all he was worth and mentally apologising to Burden. ‘Mr Tawney was riding home when a car passed him and nearly knocked him off his bicycle.’ Mrs Lovell’s admiring grin told him he was guessing right. ‘And he took the number of this car, intending to give it to the police so that the driver might be prosecuted.’
‘He never took the number.’ Mrs Lovell dipped into a paper bag for the last cream horn. ‘He knew who it was. That foreign girl fromthe Manor.’
‘Mr Tawney knocked at the bungalow because he wanted to use their phone?’
Incredible to imagine Tawney explaining, apologising, dialling, explaining again.
‘The place was all dark,’ said Mrs Lovell with relish, the gypsy scaring children with her stories round the camp fire. ‘Alf banged and banged, but no one come, did they?’
‘Nope,’said Tawney.
Talk about hearsay evidence, thought Wexford. ‘What time was it?’
‘Alf left here half past ten. He’d been knocking a long time when the clock struck eleven, Clusterwell church clock. Go on, Alf, you tell him. You was there.’
Tawney swigged his last drop of tea, perhaps to lubricate his rarely used vocal cords. ‘I banged and no one come.’ He coughed horribly and Wexford looked away. ‘He’s out and she’s out, I said to myself.’
‘That’s right, Alf.’ Mrs Lovell beamed encouragement.
‘Might have known. The garage doors was open.’
‘And both cars was gone! So Alf give it up, and next morning-well, you cool off, don’t you? You think to yourself, Why bother when there’s no bones broken? Mind you, I’ll let that little foreign bitch know what I know if I see her about the village.’
Poor Katje. Wexford wondered if he should drop her a gentle word of warning, closeted with her, calling her by her Christian name, even though that privilege had only been accorded him because he reminded her of some old uncle. Talk to her like an old Dutch uncle ...? He laughed to himself. Better forget it’. st ay securely tied to the mast while the siren sang for others.
In September even the best-kept gardens usually have a ripe wild look. This one was a barren island among the fields, a sterile characterless plot in which every unruly branch and every straggling stem had been docked. The grass was brown and closely shorn and there was nothing to provide shade.
Denys and Georgina Villiers sat in a pair of deckchairs, the uncomfortable cheap kind which have thin metal frames and economically small wooden arm-rests. Wexford observed them for a moment before making his presence known. The man who said he never read newspapers was reading one now, apparently oblivious of his wife. With neither book nor sewing to occupy her, she stared at him with the rapt attention of a cinema fanatic gazing at the screen.
Wexford coughed and immediately Georgina sprang to her feet. Villiers looked up and said with the icy unpleasantness he seemed always able to muster, ‘Control yourself. Don’t be so silly.’ , Wexford walked up to them. Over Villiers’ shoulder he looked at the newspaper and saw what he had been reading: a review of his own latest published work which occupied half a page. ‘Mr Villiers,’ he said roughly, ‘why did you tell me you came straight home from the Manor on Tuesday night and went to bed? This house was empty and in darkness at eleven. Why didn’t you tell me you went out again?’