They came out of the hawthorn tent into comparative light and Wexford said to Bysouth:
‘How long have these cows been in here?’
‘Be three hour or more, sir.’
Wexford gave Burden a significent look. The wood was badly trampled and the few naked patches of ground were boggy with cattle dung. A marathon wrestling match could have taken place in that wood before breakfast, but Prewett’s cows would have obliterated all traces of it by lunchtime; a wrestling match or a struggle between a killer and a terrified woman. Wexford set Bryant and Gates to searching among the maze of gnat-ridden brambles while he and Burden went back to the car with the farmer.
Mr Prewett was what is known as a gentleman farmer and his well-polished riding boots, now somewhat spattered, did no more than pay service to his calling. The leather patches on the elbows of his tobacco-coloured waisted jacket had been stitched there by a bespoke tailor.
‘Who uses the lane, sir?’
‘I have a Jersey herd pastured on the other side of the Pomfret road,’ Prewett said. He had a county rather than a country accent. ‘Bysouth takes them over in the morning and back in the afternoon by way of the lane. Then there is the occasional tractor, you know.’
‘What about courting couples?’
‘A stray car,’ Prewett said distastefully. ‘Of course this is a private road. Just as private in fact, Chief Inspector, as your own garage drive, but nobody respects privacy these days. I don’t think any of the local lads and lasses come up here on foot. The fields are much more - well, salubrious, shall we say? We do get cars up here. You could stick a car under those overhanging branches and anyone could pass quite close to it at night without even seeing it was there.’
‘I was wondering if you’d noticed any unfamiliar tire marks between now and Tuesday, sir?’
‘Oh, come!’ Prewett waved a not very horny hand up towards the entrance to the lane and Burden saw what he meant. The lane was all tire marks; in fact it was the tire marks that made it into a road. ‘The tractors go in and out, the cattle trample it . . .’
‘But you have a car, sir. With all this coming and going it’s odd nobody saw anything unusual.’
‘You must remember it’s simply used for coming and going. No one hangs about here. My people have all got a job of work to do. They’re good lads and they get on with it. In any case you’ll have to discount my wife and myself. We’ve been in London from Monday until this morning and we mostly use the front entrance anyway. The lane’s a short cut, Chief Inspector. It’s fine for tractors but my own vehicle gets bogged down.’ He stopped, then added sharply, ‘When I’m in town I don’t care to be taken for a horny- handed son of toil.’
Wexford examined the lane for himself and found only a morass of deeply rutted trenches zig-zagged with the tread marks of tractor tires and deep round holes made by hoofs. He decided to postpone talking to Prewett’s four men and the girl agricultural student until the time of Mrs Parsons’ death had been fixed.
Burden went back to Kingsmarkham to break the news to Parsons because he knew him. Parsons opened the door numbly, moving like a sleep-walker. When Burden told him, standing stiffly in the dining-room with the dreadful books, he said nothing, but closed his eyes and swayed.
‘I’ll fetch Mrs Johnson,’ Burden said. ‘I’ll get her to make you some tea.’
Parsons just nodded. He turned his back and stared out of the window. With something like horror Burden saw that the two pairs of socks were still pegged to the line.
‘I’d like to be alone for a bit.’
‘Just the same, I’ll tell her. She can come in later.’ The widower shuffled his feet in khaki-coloured slippers.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘And thanks. You’re very good.’ Back at the station Wexford was sitting at his desk looking at the burnt matchstick. He said musingly:
‘You know, Mike, it looks as if someone struck this to get a good look at her. That means after dark. Someone held it until it almost burnt his fingers.’
‘Bysouth?’
Wexford shook his head.
‘It was light, light enough to see - everything. No, whoever struck that match wanted to make sure he hadn’t left anything incriminating behind him.’ He slipped the piece of charred wood into an envelope. ‘How did Parsons take it?’ he asked.
‘Difficult to say. It’s always a shock, even if you’re expecting it. He’s so doped up on what the doctor’s giving him he didn’t seem to take it in.’
‘Crocker’s doing the post-mortem now. Inquest at ten on Saturday.’
‘Can Crocker fix the time of death sir?’
‘Some time on Tuesday. I could have told him that. She must have been killed between half twelve and - what time did you say Parsons rang you on Tuesday night?’
‘Exactly half past seven. We were going to the pictures and I was keeping an eye on the time.’
‘Between half twelve and seven-thirty, then.’
‘That brings me to my theory, sir.’
‘Let’s have it. I haven’t got one.’
‘Well, Parsons said he got home at six but no one saw him. The first anyone knew he was in the house was when he phoned me at half past seven . . .’
‘Okay, I’m listening. Just stick your head out of the door and get Martin to fetch us some tea.’
Burden shouted for tea and went on:
‘Well, suppose Parsons killed her. As far as we know she doesn’t know anyone else around here and, as you always say, the husband is the first suspect. Suppose Parsons made a date with his wife to meet him at Kingsmarkham bus garage.’
‘What sort of a date?’
‘He could have said they’d go and have a meal somewhere in Pomfret, or go for a walk, a picnic . . . anything.’
‘What about the chops, Mike? She didn’t have a date hen she was talking to your supermarket woman.’
‘They’re on the phone. He could have telephoned her during his lunch hour - it had begun to clear up by then - and asked her to pick up the bus at the garage at ten to six, suggested going into Pomfret for a meal. After all, maybe they make a habit of going out to eat. We’ve only got his word for what they did.’
Martin came in with the tea and Wexford, cup in hand, went over to the window and looked down into the High Street. The bright sun made him screw up his eyes and he pulled at the cord of the blind, half closing the slats.
‘The Stowerton bus doesn’t go to Pomfret,’ he objected. ‘Not the five-thirty-five. Kingsmarkham is the terminus.’
Burden took a sheet of paper out of his pocket.
‘No, but the five-thirty-two does. Stowerton to Pomfret, via Forby and Kingsmarkham.’ He concentrated on the figures he had written. ‘Let me put it like this: Parsons phones his wife at lunchtime and asks her to meet the Stowerton bus that gets into Kingsmarkham at five-fifty, two minutes before the other bus, the one that goes into the garage. Now, he could have made that bus if he left a minute or two early.’
‘You’ll have to check that, Mike.’
‘Anyway, Mrs Parsons catches the bus. It passes Forby at six-one and reaches Pomfret at six-thirty. When they get to the nearest bus-stop to the wood by Prewett’s farm Parsons says it’s such a nice evening, let’s get off and walk the rest of the way . . .’
‘It’s a good mile this side of Pomfret. Still, they might be keen on country walks.’