None of these calls even reached Wexford’s sanctum, though he was told of them. Personally he took the call from George Rowlands, former editor of the Gazette, who had nothing to tell him but that Rhoda had been a good secretary with the makings of a feature-writer. Every well-meant and apparently sane call he took, but the day passed without anything to justify his optimism. Friday came, and with it the inquest. It was quickly adjourned, and nothing much came out of it but a reproof for Brian Parker from an unsympathetic coroner. This was a court, not a child guidance clinic, said the coroner, managing to imply that the paucity of evidence was somehow due to Parker’s having rearranged Rhoda Comfrey’s clothes. The phone calls still came sporadically on the Saturday, but not one caller claimed to know Rhoda Comfrey by name or said he or she had lived next door to her or worked with her. No bank manager phoned to say she had an account at his bank, no landlord to say that she paid him rent.
‘This,’ said Wexford, ‘is ridiculous. Am I supposed to believe she lived in a tent in Hyde Park?’
‘Of course it has to be that she was living under an assumed name.’ Burden stood at the window and watched the bus from Stowerton pause at the stop, let off a woman passenger not unlike Rhoda Comfrey, then move off towards Forest Road. ‘I thought the papers were doing their usual hysterical stuff when they printed all that about her secret life.’ He looked at Wexford, raising his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were too.’
‘My usual hysterical stuff. Thanks very much.’
‘I meant melodramatic,’ said Burden, as if that mitigated the censure. ‘But they weren’t. You weren’t. Why would she behave like that?’
‘For the usual melodramatic reason. Because she didn’t want the people who knew Rhoda Comfrey to know what Rhoda Comfrey was up to. Espionage, drug-running, protection rackets, a call-girl ring. It’s bound to be something like that.’
‘Look, I didn’t mean you always exaggerate. I’ve said I was wrong, haven’t I? As a matter of fact, the call-girl idea did come into my mind. Only she was a bit old for that and nothing much to look at and – well…’
‘Well, what? She was the only virgin prostitute in London, was she? It’s a new line, Mike, it’s an idea. It’s a refreshing change in these dissolute times. I can think of all sorts of fascinating possibilities in that one, only I wouldn’t like to burn your chaste ears. Shall we try to be realistic?’
‘I always do,’ said Burden gloomily. He sat down and rested his elbows on Wexford’s desk. ‘She’s been dead since Monday night, and it’s Sunday now and we don’t even know where she lived. It seems hopeless.’
'That’s not being realistic, that’s defeatist. She can’t be traced through her name or her description, therefore she must be traced by other means. In a negative sort of way, all this has shown us something. It’s shown us that her murder is connected with that other life of hers. A secret life is almost always a life founded on something illicit or illegal. In the course of it she did something which gave someone a reason to kill her.’
‘You mean we can’t dismiss the secret life and concentrate on the circumstantial and concrete evidence we have?’
‘Like what? No weapon, no witnesses, no smell of a motive?’ Wexford hesitated and said more slowly, ‘She seldom came back here, but she had been coming once or twice a year. The local people knew her by sight, knew who she was. Therefore, I don’t think this is a case of someone returning home after a long absence and being recognized – to put it melodramatically, Mike – by an old enemy. Nor was her real life here or her work or her interests or her involvements. Those, whatever they were, she left behind in London.’
‘You don’t think the circumstances point to local knowledge?’
‘I don’t. I say her killer knew she was coming here and followed her, though not, possibly, with premeditation to kill. He or she came from London, having known her in that other life of hers. So never mind the locals. We have to come to grips with the London life, and I’ve got an idea how to do it. Through that wallet she had in her handbag.’
‘I’m listening,’ said Burden with a sigh.
‘I’ve got it here.’ Wexford produced the wallet from a drawer in his desk. ‘See the name printed in gold on the inside? Silk and Whitebeam.’
‘Sorry, it doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
‘They’re a very exclusive leather shop in Jermyn Street. That wallet’s new. I think there’s a chance they might remember who they sold it to, and I’m sending Loring up first thing in the morning to ask them. Rhoda Comfrey had a birthday last week. If she didn’t buy it herself, I’m wondering what are the chances of someone else having bought it for her as a gift.’
‘For a woman?'
‘Why not? If she was in need of a wallet. Women carry banknotes as much as we do. The days of giving women a bottle of perfume or a brooch are passing, Mike. They are very nearly the people now. Sic transit gloria mundi.’
‘Sic transit gloria Sunday, if you ask me,’ said Burden.
Wexford laughed. His subordinate and friend could still surprise him.
Chapter 6
As soon as he had let himself into his house, Dora came out from the kitchen, beckoned him into it and shut the door. ‘Sylvia’s here.’
There is nothing particularly odd or unusual about a married daughter visiting her mother on a Sunday afternoon, and Wexford said, ‘Why shouldn’t she be? What d’you mean?’
‘She’s left Neil. She just walked out after lunch and came here.’
‘Are you saying she’s seriously left Neil just like that? She’s walked out on her husband and come home to mother? I can’t believe it.’
‘Darling, it’s true. Apparently, they’ve been having a continuous quarrel ever since Wednesday night. He promised to take her to Paris for a week in September – his sister was going to have the children – and now he says he can’t go, he’s got to go to Sweden on business. Well, in the resulting row Sylvia said she couldn’t stand it any longer, being at home all day with the children and never having a break, and he’d have to get an au pair so that she could go out and train for something. So he said – though I think she’s exaggerating there – that he wasn’t going to pay a girl wages to do what it was his wife’s job to do. She’d only train for something and then not be able to get a job because of the unemployment. Anyway, all this developed into a great analysis of their marriage and the role men have made women play and how she was sacrificing her whole life. You can imagine. So this morning she told him that if she was only a nurse and a housekeeper she’d go and be a nurse and housekeeper with her parents – and here she is.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘In the living room, and Robin and Ben are in the garden. I don’t know how much they realize. Darling, don’t be harsh with her.’
‘When have I ever been harsh with my children? I haven’t been harsh enough. I’ve always let them do exactly as they liked. I should have put my foot down and not let her get married when she was only eighteen.’
She was standing up with her back to him. She turned round and said, ‘Hallo, Dad.’
‘This is a sad business, Sylvia.’
Wexford loved both his daughters dearly, but Sheila, the younger, was his favourite. Sheila had the career, the tough life, had been through the hardening process, and had remained soft and sweet. Also she looked like him, although he was an ugly man and everyone called her beautiful. Sylvia’s hard classical features were those of his late mother-inlaw, and hers the Britannia bust and majestic bearing. She had led the protected and sheltered existence in the town where she had been born. But while Sheila would have run to him and called him Pop and thrown her arms round him, this girl stood staring at him with tragic calm, one marmoreal arm extended along the mantlepiece.