‘You knew she went for nocturnal walks in the forest?’
‘I knew she went for nocturnal walks in the grounds. Presumably it was because she was foolish enough to venture further that she met the end she did.’
‘Is that why,’ asked Wexford, ‘you weren’t surprised to hear of her death?’
‘On the contrary, I was very surprised. Naturally, I was shocked. But now that I’ve considered it, no, I’m not very surprised any more. Women on their own in lonely places do get murdered. Or so I’m told. I never read the newspapers. Matters of that kind don’t interest me.’
‘You’ve certainly made it clear that you disliked your sister.’ Wexford glanced about the large quiet room. ‘Strange, under the circumstances, that you should have been among those who acceptcd her bounty.’
‘I accepted my brother-in-law’s, Chief Inspector.’ White with anger or with some other emotion Wexford couldn’t analyse, Villiers sprang out of his chair. ‘Good morning to you.’ He opened the door and the dark stair well yawned ahead of him.
Wexford got up to leave. Halfway across the room he stopped and looked at Villiers, suddenly puzzled. It was impossible to believe the man could look worse, more ill, more corpselike, than when he had first seen him. But now as he stood in the doorway, one thin arm outflung, all vestige of colour, yellow-greyish pigment as it was, had drained from his skin.
Alarmed, Wexford started forward. Villiers gave a strange little gasp and fainted into his arms.
‘Here we are, then,’ said Crocker, who was the police doctor and Wexford’s friend. ‘Elizabeth Nightingale was a well-nourished and extremely well-preserved woman of about forty.’
‘Forty-one,’ said Wexford, taking off his raincoat and hanging it on the peg behind his office door. A couple of rounds of beef sandwiches and a flask of coffee, sent down from the canteen, awaited him on the corner of his desk. He sat down in the big swivel chair and, after looking distastefully at the topmost sandwich which was beginning to curl at the edges, started on it with a sigh.
‘Death,’ said the doctor, ‘resulted from a fractured skull and multiple injuries to the brain. At least a dozen blows were struck by a not very blunt metal instrument. I don’t mean an axe or a knife, but something with sharper edges to it, for instance, than a lead pipe or a poker. Death occurred-well, you know how hard it is to estimatesay after eleven p.m. and before one a.m.’
Burden was sitting against the wall. Above his head hung the official map of the Kingsmarkham district on which the dark mass of Cheriton Forest showed like the silhouette of a crouching cat. ‘Nothing’s come of our search of the grounds and the forest so far,’ he said. ‘What sort of a weapon had you in mind?’
‘Not my job, Mike old boy,’ said Crocker, moving to the window and staring down at the High Street below. Possibly he found this familiar sight boring, for he breathed heavily on the pane and began to draw on the breath film a pattern that might have been a pot plant or a diagram of the human respiratory system. ‘I just wouldn’t have a clue. Could be a metal vase or even a cooking utensil. Or a fancy ashtray or fire-tongs or a tankard.’
‘You think?’ said Wexford, munching scornfully. ‘A fellow goes into a wood to murder a woman armed with an egg-whisk, does he, or a saucepan? A bloke sees his wife carrying on with another man so he whips out the carved silver vase he happens to have in his pocket and bops her over the head with it?’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ said the doctor, shocked, ‘that you’ve got that pillar of society Quentin Nightingale lined up for this job?’
‘He’s human, isn’t he? He has his passions. Frankly, I’d rather plurnp for that brother of hers, that Villiers. Only he looks too ill to lift a knife and fork, let alone hit anyone with a frying pan.’ Wexford finished his sandwiches and replaced the cap on the thermos flask. Then he swivelled round and gazed thoughtfully at the doctor. ‘I’ve been talking to Villiers,’ he said. ‘He impressed me as a very sick man, among other things. Yellow skin, trembling hands, the lot. just now, when I was leaving, he fainted dead away.
For a minute I thought he was dead, but he came to all right and I got him over to the Manor.’
‘He’s a patient of mine,’ said Crocker, rubbing out his drawing with the heel of his hand and revealing to Wexford his favourite view of ancient housetops and old Sussex trees. ‘The Nightingales go privately to some big nob but Villiers has been on my list for years.’
‘And you,’ said Wexford sardonically, ‘being a true priest of the medical confessional, are going to keep whatever’s wrong with him locked up in your hippocratic bosom?’
‘Well, I would if there was anything to lock. Only it so happens that he’s as fit as you are.’ Crocker eyed Wexford’s bulk, the purple veins prominent on his forehead. ‘Fitter,’ he said critically.
With an effort Wexford drew in the muscles of his abdomen and sat up straighter. ‘Ain’t that arnazernent?’ he said. ‘I thought it was cancer, but it must be some inner torment feeding on his damask cheek. Like guilt. How old is he?’
‘Now look . said the doctor, fidgeting in his seat.
‘Go on, strain yourself. A man’s age isn’t something he confides to his quack behind the aseptic green shades of the consulting room.’
‘He’s thirty-eight.’
‘Thirty-eight! He looks ten years older and damn’ ill with it. By God, Mike here is a stripling compared to him.’
Two sets of ageing eyes focussed speculatively on Burden, who looked modestly away, not without a certain air of preening himself. The doctor said rather pettishly, ‘I don’t know why you keep on about him looking ill. He works himself too hard, that’s all. Anyway, he doesn’t look that ill or that old.’
‘He did today,’ said Wexford.
‘Shock,’ said the doctor. ‘What d’you expect when a man hears his sister’s been murdered?’
‘Just that, except that he evidently hated her guts. You should have heard the generous fraternal things he said about her. As nasty a piece of work as I’ve come across for a long time is Mr Villiers. Come on, Mike, we’re going to call on some ladies who will melt and tell all under the effect of your sexy and-may I say?-youthful charm.’
They all went down together in the lift and the doctor left them at the station steps. The wind had dropped entirely but the High Street was still littered by the debris the gale had left in its wake, broken twigs, a tiny empty chaffinch nest blown from the crown of a tall tree, here and there a tile from an ancient roof.
Bryant drove them out of town by the Pomfret road, soon taking the left-hand fork for Myfleet. Their route led them past Kingsmarkham Boys’
Grammar School, more properly known as the King Edward the Sixth Foundation for the Sons of Yeomen, Burgesses and Those of the Better Sort. The sons were at present home for the summer holidays and the brown-brick Tudor building bore a lonelier, more orderly, aspect than in term-time. A large new wing-a monstrosity, the reactionaries called it had been added to the rear and the left side of the old school five years before, for the yeomen and burgesses, if not the better sort, had recently increased in alarming numbers.
The school had a dignity and grace about it, common to large buildings of its vintage, and most Kingsmarkham parents sought places there for their sons, setting aside with contempt the educational and environmental advantages of Stowerton Comprehensive. Who wanted a magnificent steel and glass science lab, a trampoline room or a swimming pool of Olympic standard, when they could instead boast to their acquaintance of historic portals and worn stone steps trodden (though on one single occasion) by the feet of Henry the Eighth’s son? Besides, if your boy was at what everyone called the ‘King’s’ school you could quite convincingly pretend to those not in the know that he attended a public school and conceal the fact that the State paid.