‘I made her come,’ said Malina. ‘She was in an awful state. I thought she’d been really ill.’ And she sat down, having given Burden a shy sidelong smile.
‘What is it. Miss Flinders?’ Wexford said gently.
‘Tell him, Polly. You promised you would. It’s silly to come all this way for nothing.’
Polly Flinders lifted her head. She said rapidly, in a monotone, ‘I haven’t had a card from Grenville. That was last year’s. The postmark was smudged and I thought you wouldn’t know, and you didn’t know.’
The explosion of wrath she perhaps expected didn’t come. Wexford merely nodded. ‘You also thought I wouldn’t know he knew Rhoda Comfrey. But he had known her for years, hadn’t he?’
Breathlessly, Polly said, ‘She helped him with his books. She was there in his flat a lot. But I don’t know where she lived. I never asked, I didn’t want to know. About the postcard, I…’
‘Never mind the postcard. Were you and Miss Comfrey in Mr West’s flat on the evening of August fifth?’ A nod answered him and a choking sound like a sob. ‘And you both overheard her make a phone call from there, saying where she would be on the Monday?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Tell him the truth, Polly. Tell him everything and it’ll be all right.’
‘Very well. Miss Patel, I’ll do the prompting.’ He hadn’t taken his eyes from the other girl, and now he said to her, ‘Have you any idea of Mr West’s present whereabouts? No? I think you told me the lie about the postcard because you were afraid for Mr West, believing him to have had something to do with Miss Comfrey’s death.’
She gave him an eager pathetic nod, her hands clenched.
‘I don’t think we’ll talk any more now,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow evening. That will give you plenty of time to get into a calmer frame of mind.’ Malina looked disappointed, less so when he went on, ‘I shall want you to give me the name of the man with whom you spent that Monday evening. Will you think about that?’
Again she said yes, a sorrowful and despairing monosyllable, and then Burden took them both away, returning to say, ‘Rhoda Comfrey was blackmailing West. I wonder why we didn’t think of that befere.’
‘Because it isn’t a very bright idea. I can see how someone might succeed in blackmailing her. She had a secret life she genuinely wanted kept secret. But West?’
‘West,’ said Burden repressively, ‘is almost certainly homosexual. Why else reject Polly? Why else mooch about Soho at night? Why hobnob with all those blokes in bars? And why, most of all, have a long-standing friendship with an older woman on a completely platonic basis? That’s the sort of thing these queers do. They like to know women, but it’s got to be safe women, married ones or women much older than they are.’
Wexford wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Once again he had come up against Burden’s solid common sense. And hadn’t his own ‘feelings’ also been hinting at it when he read the letter to Charles West?
He jeered mildly just the same. ‘So this long-standing friend suddenly takes it into her head to blackmail him, does she? After ten years? Threatens to expose his gay goings-on, I suppose.’ He had never liked the word ‘queer’. ‘Why should he care? It’s nothing these days. He probably advertises his – his inversion in Gay News.’
‘Does he? Then why doesn’t your Indian lady friend know about it? Why doesn’t his agent or Vivian or Polly? It mightn’t do him any good with his readership if ordinary decent people were to find what he gets up to in London at night. It wouldn’t with me, I can tell you.’
‘Since when have you been one of his readers?’
Burden looked a little shamefaced as he always did when confessing to any even mild intellectual lapse. ‘Since yesterday morning,’ he admitted. ‘Got to do something while I’m being a phone operator, haven’t I? I sent Loring out to get me two of them in paperback. I thought they’d be above my head, but they weren’t. Quite enjoyable, lively sort of stuff, really, and the last thing you’d feel is that their author’s homosexual.’
‘But you say he is.’
‘And he wants to keep it dark. He’s queer but he’s still thinking of settling down with Polly – they do that when they get middle-aged – and Rhoda mightn’t have liked the idea of only being able to see him with a wife around. So she threatens to spill the beans unless he gives Polly up. And there’s your motive.’
‘It doesn’t account for how he happens to have the same name as a whole tribe of her aunt’s relatives.’
‘Look,’ said Burden, ‘your Charles West wrote to him, thinking he might be a cousin. Why shouldn’t Rhoda have done the same thing years ago, say after she’d read his first book? Charles West didn’t pursue it, but she may have done. That could be the reason for their becoming friends in the first place, and then the friendship was strengthened by Rhoda doing research for him for that book that’s dedicated to her. The name is relevant only in that it brought them together.’
‘I just hope,’ said Wexford, ‘that tomorrow will bring West and us together.’
Robin came up and opened the car door for him.
‘Thanks very much,’ said Wexford. ‘You’re the new hall porter, are you? I suppose you want a tip.’ He handed over the ices he had bought on the way home. ‘One for your brother, mind.’
‘I’ll never be able to do it again,’ said Robin.
‘Why’s that? School starting? You’ll still get in before I do.’
‘We’re going home, Grandad. Daddy’s coming for us at seven.’
To the child Wexford couldn’t express what he felt. There was only one thing he could say, and in spite of his longing to be alone once more with Dora in peace and quiet and orderliness, it was true. ‘I shall miss you.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin complacently. Happy children set a high valuation on themselves. They expect to be loved and missed. ‘And we never saw the water rat.’
‘There’ll be other times. You’re not going to the North Pole.’
The little boy laughed inordinately at that one. Wexford sent him off to find Ben and hand the ice over, and then he let himself into the house. Sylvia was upstairs packing. He put his arm round her shoulder, turned her face towards him.
‘Well, my dear, so you and Neil have settled your differences?’
‘I don’t know about that. Not exactly. Only he’s said he’ll give me all the support I need in taking a degree if I start next year. And he’s – he’s bought a dishwasher!’ She gave a little half-ashamed laugh. ‘But that’s not why I’m going back.’
‘I think I know why.’
She pulled away from him, turning her head. For all her height and her majestic carriage, there was something shy and gauche about her. ‘I can’t live without him. Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed him dreadfully.’
‘That’s the only good reason for going back, isn’t it?’
‘The other thing – well, you can say women are equal to men but you can’t give them men’s position in the world. Because that’s in men’s minds and it’ll take hundreds of years to change it,’ She came out with a word that was unfamiliar to her wellread father. ‘One would just have to practise aeonism,’ she said.
What had she been reading now? Before he could ask her, the boys came in.
‘We could have a last try for the water rat, Grandad.’
‘Oh, Robin! Grandad’s tired and Daddy’s coming for us in an hour.’
‘An hour,’ said Robin with a six-year-old’s view of time, ‘is ever so long.’
So they went off together, the three of them, over the hill and across the meadow to the Kingsbrook. It was damp and misty and still, the willows bluish amorphous shadows, every blade of grass glistening with water drops. The river had risen and was flowing fast, the only thing in nature that moved.