‘You didn’t think of calling the au pair girl?’
‘Never crossed my mind, governor. What could that Catcher do I couldn’t do myself? I went round the grounds then and found the wall gate open.
Best get on the phone to the police yourself, Will, I thought, but when I got back to the house Mr Nightingale was up and about. Been having a bath, he said, and when he’d dried himself and come out I was gone.’
‘What happened next?’asked Burden.
Palmer scratched his head. ‘Mr Nightingale said Madam must have met with an accident while she was out in the grounds, but I said I’d searched the grounds. Then,’ he said, building up suspense like an experienced narrator, ‘I thought of that open gate and that dark old forest and my heart turned over. “I reckon she went into the forest and come over bad,”
I said to poor Mr Nightingale, so we went into the forest, our hearts in our mouths like, and I went first and then I found her. Lying face down she was with blood all over her lovely golden hair. But you saw her, governor. You know.’
‘Thank you, Mr Palmer. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I always try to do my duty, sir. Mr Nightingale’s been real good to me and Madam too. There’s some I could name as would take—advantage, but not me—I reckon I belong to what they call the old school.’
Wexford glanced up and saw through the cypresses a figure leaning on a spade. ‘Did Sean What’s-his-name take advantage Vhe asked softly.
‘Lovell, governor, Sean Lovell. Well now, he did, in a manner of speaking. Folks don’t know their place like what they did when I was young, and that Lovell-common as dirt he is. His mother’s no better than she should be and I don’t reckon he never had no father. Turn you up, it would, to see the inside of their cottage, But he fancied himself Madam’s equal, if you’ve ever heard the like. Elizabeth this and Elizabeth that, he says to me behimd her back. Don’t you let me hear you refer to Madam like that, I said, snubbing him proper.’
Burden said impatiently, ‘How did he take advantage?’
‘Fancies himself singing in one of them pop groups, he does. Madam was soft, you see, and she’d smile and listen ever so patient when he’d start his singing. Sang to her, he did ...’ Pal mer mouthed disgustedly, showing foul broken teeth. ‘When she’d got a window open he’d come up underneath and sing one of them rubbishy songs he’d got off the telly.
Familiar, you wouldn’t believe! I come on him one day standing with Madam down by the pond here, nattering to her nineteen to the dozen and his dirty paw on her arm. I could tell Madam didn’t like it. She jumped proper and went all red when I shouted at him. “A diabolical liberty,” I said to him when we was alone. “Elizabeth and me, we understand each other,” he says.
The nerve of it!’ Palmer’s old bones cracked as he got to his feet and scowled in Lovell’s direction. ‘All I can say is,’ he said, ‘I hope I’m gone before all this equality gets any worse than what it is.’
Skilful conversion and the use of room dividers had transformed the largest attic into an open-plan flat for the au pair girl. Sleek shelves of polished beech on which stood books and house plants divided the sitting room from the sleeping area. All the furniture was modern. Vermilion tweed covered the sofa and the two armchairs; the carpet was a sour smart green; the curtains red corded velvet.
‘Speak good English, do you, Miss Doorn?’ Wexford asked as she admitted them.
‘Oh, no, I am very bad,’ said the Dutch girl, giggling.
‘Everybody tell me I am very very bad.’ She smiled without shame.
She belonged, Wexford thought admiringly, to the classic Dutch type which, photographed in clogs and peasant dress among windmills and tulips, advertises the attractions of Holland on holiday posters, Her hair was pale gold and long, her eyes a bright frank blue and her skin as dazzling as any ivory tulip in the Keukenhof Gardens. When she laughed, and she seemed to be always laughing, her face lit up and glowed. She looked, Wexford thought, about twenty.
‘How long,’ he asked, ‘have you been living here with Mr and Mrs Nightingale?’
‘One year. Nearly one year and a half.’
‘So you knew them well? You lived as one of the family?’
‘There is no family,’ said Katje, pushing out full pink lips in disgust.
‘Just him and her.’ She shrugged. ‘And now she is dead.’
‘Yes indeed. That is why I am here. No doubt, you were a good friend to Mrs Nightingale, like a grown-up daughter?’
Katje laughed. She curled her legs under her, bounced up and down. Then she covered her mouth, suppressing giggles, with one hand. ‘Oh, I must not laugh when all is so sad! But it is so funny what you say. A
daughter! Mrs Nightingale wouldn’t like to hear that, I think. No, she think she is young girl, very young and pretty in little mini skirts and eye-liner on, so!’
Burden fixed her with a disapproving glare which she met with frank wide eyes. Persisting doggedly, Wexford said, ‘Nevertheless, you were in her confidence?’
‘Please?’
Burden came to his assistance. ‘She talked to you about her life?’ he said.
‘Me? No, never, nothing. At lunch we sit so, she there, I here. How is your mother, Katje? Will it rain today? Now I lie down and have my little rest. But talk? No, we do not talk!
‘You must have been lonely.’
‘Me?’ The giggles broke out in fresh gusts. ‘Perhaps I should be lonely
...’ She hesitated, struggling with her conditionals. ‘Perhaps if I stay in all day with him and her and all evening too, then I am lonely.
No, I have my friends in Kingsmarkham, many many friends, boys and girls.
Why do I like to stay here with old people?’
‘They were only in their forties,’ said thirty-six-yearold Burden hotly.
‘This,’ said Katje calmly, ‘is what I am saying to you. I am young, they old. Mr Nightingale, he make me laugh. He is a nice man and he say things to make me laugh, but he is old, old, older than my father in Gouda.’
Smug and secure in the unarguable possession of radiant youth, Katje smiled at Wexford, then let her eyes travel to Burden, where they lingered. She looked at him as if she were wondering whether he were obtainable. She giggled.
Blushing, Burden said sharply, ‘What did you see when you came home last night?’
‘Well, I am going to the movies with my friend who is a waiter at the Olive and Dove. First we see the movie, is Swedish film, very sexy, make me feel so hot, you understand?’
‘Oh, yes,’said Burden, looking down.
‘This is natural,’ said Katje severely, ‘when one is young.’ She stretched her long stockingless legs and wriggled her toes in the white sandals. ‘Afterwards I wish to go with my friend to his room but he will not because there is a manager at the hotel, a very unkind man, who is not letting him have girls. So we are sad and my friend takes me instead to the Carousel caf6. There we have coffee and one, two cakes.’
‘What time was this?’
‘It is a quarter to ten when we leave the movies. We are having our coffee and then we are sitting in the car, kissing and cuddling, but very sad because we cannot go to his room. My friend must rise very early in the morning, so he go back to the hotel and I go home. Now it is eleven, I think.’
‘You saw Mrs Nightingale leave the Manor grounds?’
Katje poked a lock of hair into the corner of her mouth. ‘Her I am seeing in the lights of the car, coming out of the gate near where the bonfire is burning. And she is seeing me too. This I know because she is closing the gate quick and hiding till I go by. Very funny, I think to myself. So I drive up along the road and I am leaving the car parked and walking back very soft, very secret, to see if she is coming out again.’ Suddenly Katje sat up straight, shooting her legs out and displaying the tops of her thighs to the nervous Burden. ‘She is coming out again!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I see her cross the road and go into the wood. And she is walking very quiet, looking like this over her shoulder.’ Katje pantominned it in a swift, curiously animal-like burlesque. ‘Then I know what she is doing. Many many times have I too walked like this when I am going to meet my friend in the woods and the unkind man is not allowing us to go to his room. Over my shoulder I am looking to see that no one is following to spy what we do.’