And underneath:
'Rather sentimental, Minna, but you know what I mean.
Happy, happy birthday. All my love, Doon. March 2 1950.'
Burden looked over Wexford’s shoulder.
‘Who’s Minna?’
‘We’ll have to ask Parsons,’ Wexford said. ‘Could be second-hand. It looks expensive. I wonder why she didn’t keep it downstairs. God knows, this place needs brightening up.’
‘And who’s Doon?’ Burden asked.
‘You’re supposed to be a detective. Well, detect.’ He put the book on the floor and picked up the next one. This was the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, still in its black and pearl-grey jacket, and Doon had printed another message inside. Wexford read it aloud in an unemotional voice.
‘I know you have set your heart on this, Minna, and I was so happy when I went to Foyle’s and found it waiting for me.
Joyeux Noel, Doon, Christmas, 1950.’
The next book was even more splendid, red watered silk and black leather. ‘Let’s have a look at number three,’ Wexford said. ‘The Poems of Christina Rossetti. Very nice, gilt lettering and all. What’s Doon got to say this time?'
'An un-birthday present, Minna dear, from Doon who wishes you happy for ever and ever.
June 1950.'
'I wonder if Mrs P. bought the lot cheap from this Minna.’
‘I suppose Minna could be Mrs Parsons, a sort of nickname.’
‘It had just crossed my mind,’ Wexford said sarcastically. ‘They’re such good books, Mike, not the sort of things anyone would give to a church sale, and church sales seem to have been about Mrs Parsons’ mark. Look at this lot: Omar Khayydm; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; William Morris. Unless I’m much mistaken that Omar Khayydm cost three or four pounds. And there’s another one here, the Verses of Walter Savage Landor. It’s an old-fashioned kind of book and the leaves haven’t even been cut.’ He read the message on the fly-leaf aloud:
‘Rather apt, don’t you think, Minna? Love from Doon.
March 21st 1951.’
‘It wasn’t very apt, was it? And Minna, whoever she is, didn’t receive it with transport. She didn’t even cut the pages. I’m going to have another word with Parsons, Mike, and then we’re going to have all this lot carted down to the station. This attic is giving me the creeps.’
But Parsons didn’t know who Minna was and he looked surprised when Wexford mentioned the date, March 21st.
‘I never heard anyone call her Minna,’ he said distastefully, as if the name was an insult to her memory. ‘My wife never spoke about a friend called Doon. I’ve never even seen those books properly. Margaret and I lived in the house her aunt left her till we moved here and those books have always been in the trunk. We just brought them with us with the furniture. I can’t make it out about the date - Margaret’s birthday was March 21st.
‘It could mean nothing, it could mean everything,’ Wexford said when they were out in the car. ‘Doon talks about Foyle’s, and Foyle’s, in case you don’t know, my provincial friend, is in London in the Charing Cross Road.’
‘But Mrs Parsons was sixteen in 1949 and she stayed two years in Flagford. She must have been living only about five miles from here when Doon gave her those books.’
‘True. He could have lived here too and gone up to London for the day. I wonder why he printed the messages, Mike. Why didn’t he write them? And why did Mrs Parsons hide the books as if she was ashamed of them?’
‘They’d make a better impression on the casual caller than The Brides in the Bath or whatever it is,’ Burden said. ‘This Doon was certainly gone on her.’
Wexford took Mrs Parsons’ photograph out of his pocket. Incredible that this woman had ever inspired a passion or fired a line of verse!
‘Happy for ever and ever,’ he said softly. ‘But love isn’t what the rose is. I wonder if love could be a dark and tangled wood, a cord twisted and pulled tighter on a meek neck?’
‘A cord?’ Burden said. ‘Why not a scarf, that pink nylon thing? It’s not in the house.’
‘Could be. You can bet your life that scarf is with the purse and the key. Plenty of women have been strangled with a nylon stocking, Mike. Why not a nylon scarf?’
He had brought the Swinburne and the Christina Rossetti with him. It wasn’t much to go on, Burden reflected, a bundle of old books and an elusive boy. Doon, he thought, Doon. If Minna was anything to go by Doon was bound to be a pseudonym too. Doon wouldn’t be a boy any more but a man of thirty or thirty-five, a married man with children, perhaps, who had forgotten all about his old love. Burden wondered where Doon was now. Lost, absorbed perhaps into the great labyrinth of London, or still living a mile or two away . . . His heart sank when he recalled the new factory estate at Stowerton, the mazy lanes of Pomfret with a solitary cottage every two hundred yards, and to the north, Sewingbury, where road after road of post-war detathed houses pushed outwards like rays from the nucleus of the ancient town. Apart from these, there was Kingmarkham itself and the daughter villages, Flagford, Forby
‘I don’t suppose that Missal bloke could be Doon,.’ he said hopefully.
‘If he is,’ Wexford said, ‘he’s changed one hell of a lot.’
Chapter 7
When she shall unwind
All those wiles she wound about me . . .
A black Jaguar, not new but well tended, was parked out side the Missals’ house when Wexford and Burden turned in at the gate at seven o’clock. The wheels only were soiled, their hub-caps spattered with dried mud.
‘I know that car,’ Wexford said. ‘I know it but I can’t place it. Must be getting old.’
‘Friends for cocktails,’ Burden said sententiously.
‘I could do with a spot of gracious living myself,’ Wexford grumbled. He rang the ship’s bell.
Perhaps Mrs Missal had forgotten they were coming or Inge hadn’t been primed. She looked surprised yet spitefully pleased. Like her employer’s, her hair was done up on top of her head, but with less success. In her left hand she held a canister of paprika.
‘All are in,’ she said. ‘Two come for dinner. What a man! I tell you it is a waste to have men like him buried in the English countryside. Mrs Missal say, “Inge, you must make lasagna.” All will be Italian, paprika, pasta, pimentos . . . Ach, it is just a game!’
‘All right, Miss Wolff. We’d like to see Mrs Missal.’
‘I show you.’ She giggled, opened the drawing-room door and announced with some serendipity, ‘Here are the policemen!’