‘What, again?’ said Georgina.
‘I told you earlier, I’ve got a reference to look up.’
His wife gave him a mutinous glare.
‘Denys is dedicated to his work,’ said Quentin, the peacemaker. He smiled kindly at Georgina as the women left the room. ‘Talking of dedications,’ he said to his brother-in-law, ‘will you write in the book for me?’
Using a broken old ballpoint, Denys Villiers wrote on the flyleaf :
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction
Quentin read it and a faint flush of pleasure coloured his cheeks. He laid his hand on Villiers’ shoulder. ‘Now write your name,’he said.
So Villiers wrote beneath the quotation: Your brother, Denys Villiers.
‘It’s not like you to be inaccurate. It ought to be “brother-in-law”.’
‘There’s no need,’ said Villiers sharply, shaking off the hand, ‘for too much bloody accuracy.’
The women came back, Georgina fastening her large handbag.
‘Thanks very much for letting me have this, Elizabeth,’ said Georgina. ‘It’s awfully good of you.’
‘You’re more than welcome, my dear. I shall never use it again.’ And Elizabeth kissed her affectionately.
‘When you’ve finished billing and cooing,’ said Denys Villiers unpleasantly, ‘perhaps we can get a move on.’
‘I think I’ll go straight to bed,’ said Quentin. ‘I can’t wait to start the new book. Are you going to sit up a bit longer?’
‘It’s such a fine evening,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I may have a walk in the grounds before I go to bed.’
‘Wrap up warm, darling. I’ll say good night, then.’
‘Good night, darling.’
Elizabeth fetched herself a coat, a soft lightweight thing of deep green angora. In the moonlight it was the same colour as the cypresses that grew in the Italian garden. Late blooming roses, pink, apricot, lemon, all looked white tonight. She walked across the turf between the rosebeds, hexagonal, semicircular, rhomboid, then bè the paved path between yew hedges to a door in the red brick wall. The smoke from Will’s fire rose in a thin grey column.
Elizabeth unlocked the gate and let herself out on to the grass verge which, overhung by the Manor beeches, separated the wall from the Pomfret road. As car headlights flared, flowed past, she stepped back for a moment into the shadows of the garden. Katje in the Mini, coming home from Kingsmarkham. Once more the road was empty, lighted only by the moon. Elizabeth closed the gate behind her, crossed the road and began to walk away from it by a sandy path that led into Cheriton Forest.
When she was out of sight of the road she sat down on a log, waiting. Presently she lit a cigarette, the third of the five she would smoke that day.
The Nightingales slept in separate bedrooms on the first floor of Myfleet Manor and at the front of the house. Quentin undressed and got into bed quickly. He switched on his bedlamp and opened Wordsworth in Love.
First, as was his custom with Villiers’ books, he studied with pride and pleasure the publisher’s eulogy of the author and his works, and scrutinised his brother-in-law’s portrait on the back of the jacket. Next he looked at all the illustrations in turn, the photographed paintings of Wordsworth, of his sister Dorothy, and of the ‘mazy Forth’ as seen from Stirling Castle. Then, finally, he began to read.
Quentin read like a scholar, religiously looking up every bibliographical reference and reading each footnote. He had just come to the poet’s meeting with his French sweetheart when he heard footsteps on the stairs.
Elizabeth in from her walk? But no ...
The footsteps went on, up and up, until they sounded faintly above his head. Not Elizabeth, then, but Katje who slept on the top floor.
It was eleven-thirty and growing chilly. He had said earlier that there was a nip in the air. Elizabeth would be cold out there in the garden. The sashes in his own windows and the casements up above rattled as the wind rose. Quentin laid aside his book, got up and looked out of the window.
The moon had disappeared behind a bank of cloud. He put on his dressing gown, opened the bedroom door and stood for a moment in perplexity before making for the stairs.
2
It was Detective Inspector Michael Burden’s day off. He lay in bed till nine. Then he got up, bathed, and began on the task to which he intended to devote this free day, painting the outside of his bungalow.
A great wind, offshoot of a Caribbean hurricane the Americans called Caroline, had arisen during the night. Burden needed to use no ladders; the eaves of his bungalow were too near the ground for that, but today he didn’t even fancy ascending the steps. Certainly he wasn’t going to allow his eleven-year-old son John, home for the school holidays and an enthusiastic helper, to go up them.
‘You can do the front door, John,’ he said, knowing that he was conferring a special favour. All painters, particularly amateurs, long for the moment when the top coat, an excitingly contrasting colour, is due to be applied to the front door.
‘Blimey, can I?’ said John.
‘Don’t say blimey. It means God blind me, and you know I don’t like to hear you swear.’
John, who normally would have argued the point, trotted off to fetch from the garage a virgin pot of flamingo-pink paint. There he encountered his sister Pat, feeding lime leaves to a hawk-moth caterpillar imprisoned in a shoe box. He was about to say something calculated to aggravate, something on the lines of thQ folly of encouraging garden pests, when his mother called to him from the back door.
‘John, tell Daddy he’s wanted on the phone, will you?’
‘Who wants him?’
Mrs Burden said in a voice of resigned despair, ‘Can’t you guess?’
John guessed. Carrying the tin of paint, he returned to his father, who had just put the first stroke of top coat on the picture-window frame.
‘Cop shop on the phone for you,’he said.
Burden never swore, in front of his children or in their absence. Carefully he placed his brush in a jam jar of synthetic turps and entered the house.
His bungalow had seldom looked so attractive to him as it did this morning.
Poole pottery vases filled with red dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff, very choice) graced the hall and living room; the new curtains were up; from the kitchen came the rich aroma of a steak-and-kidney pudding boiling for lunch. Burden sighed, then lifted the spotless polished receiver of the white telephone.
The voice of Detective Chief Inspector Wexford said nastily,’You took your bloody time.’
‘Sorry. I was painting.’
‘Hard cheese, Picasso. You’ll have to complete the masterpiece some other time. Duty calls.’
Burden knew better than to say it was his day off. ‘What’s up, sir?’
‘Do you know a Mrs Elizabeth Nightingale?’
‘By sight. Everyone knows her. Husband’s a Lloyd’s underwriter. Pots of money. What’s she done?’
‘Got herself murdered, that’s what she’s done.’
Burden broke his rule. ‘Good God!’ he said.
‘I’m at Myfleet Manor. Get over here as soon as you can, Mike.’
‘And I’ve made this great enormous pudding,’ said jean Burden.’Try and get back for lunch.’
‘Not a hope.’ Burden changed his clothes, grabbed his car key. John was sitting on the garden wall, waiting for starter’s orders. ‘Better leave the front door for a day or two, John. Sorry about that.’
‘I’d be O.K. on my own.’
‘Don’t argue, there’s a good lad.’ He fished in his pocket for a half-crown. ‘You were saying something about a new transistor battery ...