'There’ll be an awful row,’ said Burden unhelpfully, using the very words Robin had used two days before,
‘I suppose so. I should have listened to you.’
‘Well… I didn’t say much. It was just that I had this feeling all the time, and you know how I distrust “feelings”.’
Wexford was silent. They had come to the end of the street where it joined Montfort Hill. There he said, ‘What was the feeling? I suppose you can tell me now.’
‘You’ve asked me at exactly the right point, OK, I’ll tell you. It struck me the first time we passed this spot.’ Burden led the chief inspector a little way down Montfort Hill, away from the bus stop they had been making for. ‘We’ll suppose Rhoda Comfrey is on her way to Dr Lomond’s, whose name she’s got out of the phone book. She isn’t exactly sure where Midsomer Road is, so she doesn’t get the bus, she walks from Parish Oak station. For some reason which we don’t know she doesn’t want to give Dr Lomond her true address, so she has to give him a false one, and one that’s within the area of his practice. So far she hasn’t thought one up. But she passes these shops and looks up at that tobacconist, and what’s the first thing she sees?’
Wexford looked up. ‘A board advertising Wall’s ice cream. My God, Mike, a hanging sign for Player’s Number Six cigarettes. Was that what your feeling was about. Was that why you kept looking back that first time we came in the car? She sees the number six, and then that black and white street sign for Princevale Road?’
Burden nodded unhappily.
‘I believe you’re right, Mike. It’s the way people do behave. It could happen almost unconsciously. Dr Lomond’s receptionist asks her for her address when she comes to register and she comes out with number six, Princevale Road.’ Wexford struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I ought to have seen it! I’ve come across something like it before, and here in Kenbourne Vale, years ago. A girl called herself Loveday because she’d seen the name on a shop.’ He turned on Burden. ‘Mike, you should have told me about this, you should have told me last week.’
‘Would you have believed me if I had?’
Hot-tempered though he might be, Wexford was a fair man. ‘I might’ve – but I’d have wanted to get into that house just the same.’
Burden shrugged. ‘We’re back to square one, aren’t we?’
Chapter 13
There was no point in delaying. He went straight to Hightrees Farm. Griswold listened to him with an expression of lip-curling disgust. In the middle of Wexford’s account he helped himself to a brandy and soda, but he offered nothing to his subordinate. When it was ended he said, ‘Do you ever read the newspapers?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course.’
‘Have you ever noticed how gradually over the past ten years or so the Press have been ramming it home to people that their basic freedoms are constantly under threat? And who comes in for most of the shit-throwing? The police. You’ve just given them a big helping of it on a plate, haven’t you? All ready for throwing tomorrow morning.’
‘I don’t believe Mrs Farriner will tell the Press, sir.’
‘She’ll tell her friends, won’t she? Some busy-body do-gooder will get hold of it.’ The Chief Constable, who referred to Mid-Sussex as the General had been in the habit of referring to la belle France, with jealousy and with reverence, said, ‘Understand, I will not have the hitherto unspotted record of the Mid-Sussex Constabulary smeared all over by the gutter Press. I will not have it endangered by one foolish man who acts on psychology and not on circumstantial evidence.’
Wexford smarted under that one. ‘Foolish man’ was hard to take. And he smarted more when Griswold went on, even though he now called him Reg which meant there would be no immediate retribution.
‘This woman’s been dead for two weeks, Reg, and as far as you’ve got, she might as well have dropped from Mars. She might as well have popped off in a space ship every time she left Kingsmarkham.’ I’m beginning to think she did, Wexford thought, though he said nothing aloud. ‘You know I don’t care to call the Yard in unless I must. By the end of this coming week I’ll have to if my own men can’t do better than this. It seems to me…’ and he gave Wexford a ponderous bull-like glare ‘… that all you can do is get your picture in the papers like some poove of a film actor.’
Sylvia sat in the dining room, the table covered with application forms for jobs and courses.
‘You’ve picked the wrong time of year,’ her father said, picking up a form that applied for entry to the University of London. ‘Their term starts next month.’
‘The idea is I get a job to fill in the year and start doing my degree next year. I have to “get a grant, you see.’
‘My dear, you don’t stand a chance. They’ll assess you on Neil’s salary. At least, I suppose so. He’s your husband.’
‘Maybe he won’t be by then. Oh, I’m so sick of you men ruling the world! It’s not fair just taking it for granted my husband pays for me like he’d pay for a child.’
‘Just as fair as taking it for granted the taxpayers will. I know you’re not interested in my views or your mother’s, but I’m going to give you mine just the same. The way the world still is, women have to prove they’re as capable as men. Well, you prove it. Do an external degree or a degree by correspondence and in something that’s likely to lead to a good job. It’ll take you five years and by that time the boys’ll be off your hands. Then when you’re thirty-five you and Neil will be two professional people with full-time jobs and a servant you both pay for. Nobody’ll treat you like a chattel or a furniture polisher then. You’ll see.’
She pondered, looking sullen. Very slowly she began filling in the section of a form headed ‘Qualifications’. The list of them, Wexford noted sadly, was sparse. She scrawled a line through Mr/Mrs/Miss and wrote Ms. Her head came up and the abundant hair flew out.
‘I’m glad I’ve got boys. I’d feel sick with despair for them if they were girls. Didn’t you want a son?’
‘I suppose I did before Sheila was born. But after she was born I didn’t give it another thought.’
‘Didn’t you think what we’d suffer? You’re aware and sensitive. Dad. Didn’t you think how we’d be exploited and humiliated by men and used?’
It was too much. There she sat, tall and powerful, blooming with health, the youthful hue sitting on her skin like morning dew, a large diamond cluster sparkling on her hand, her hair scented with St Laurent’s Rive Gauche. Her sister, described by critics as one of England’s most promising young actresses, had a big flat of her own in St John’s Wood where, it had often seemed to her father, she sweetly exploited and used all the men who frequented it.
‘I couldn’t send you back, could I?’ he snapped. ‘I couldn’t give God back your entrance ticket and ask for a male variety instead. I know exactly what Freud felt when he said there was one question that would always puzzle him. What is it that women want?’
‘To be people,’ she said. He snorted and walked out. The Crockers and a couple of neighbours were coming in for drinks. The doctor hustled Wexford upstairs and produced his sphygmomanometer.
‘You look rotten, Reg. What’s the matter with you?’
‘That’s for you to say. How’s my blood pressure?’
‘Not bad. Is it Sylvia?’
He hated explaining why his daughter and the children were in the house. People categorize others into the limited compartments their imaginations permit. They assumed that either Sylvia or her husband had been unfaithful or that Neil had been cruel. He couldn’t spell it all out, but just had to watch the speculating gleam in their eyes and take their pity.