Murder Being Once Done

Wexford nodded. 'Go on.'

'She almost bumped into me. She didn't know where she was going. I asked her if she was all right and she stopped smiling and gave me a rather a stunned look. For a moment I thought she was going to faint. "Are you all right?" I said again. "I don't know," she said. "I feel funny. I don't know what I feel, Mr Teal. I'd like to sit down." Anyway, the upshot of it was I took her into the Queen's Arms and bought her a brandy. She was rather reluctant about that, but she didn't seem to have much resistance left. I don't think she'd ever had brandy before. The colour came back into her face, what colour she ever had, and I thought she'd open her heart to me.'

'But she didn't?'

'No. She looked as if she wanted to. She couldn't. Years of repression had made it impossible for her to confide in anyone. Instead she began asking me about Johnny and Peggy Pope. Were they trustworthy? Did I think Johnny would stay with Peggy? I couldn't tell her. They've only been here four months, not much longer than Loveday herself. I asked her in what way trustworthy, but she only said, "I don't know." Then I brought her back here and the only other time I ever spoke to her was last week when she asked me about Johnny and Peggy again. She wanted to know if they were very poor.'

'Strange question. She couldn't have helped them financially.'

'Certainly not. She hadn't any money.'

'What does Lamont do for a living?'

'Peggy told me he's a bricklayer by trade but that kind of work spoils the hands, if you please, and our Johnny has ambitions to act. He did a bit of modelling once and since then he's had some very grandiose ideas about his future. He's scared Peggy'll leave him and take the baby, but not scared enough apparently to settle down to a job of work. I imagine Loveday was a bit in love with him but he wouldn't have looked at her. Peggy's quite dazzlingly beautiful, don't you think, in spite of the dirt?'

Wexford agreed, thanking Teal for the coffee and the information, although it had let in little daylight.

The bedroom door moved slightly as they came out into the hall.

'She had no friends, no callers?' Wexford asked.

'I wouldn't know.' Teal eyed the door narrowly, then flung it open. 'Come out of there, child! There's no need to eavesdrop.'

'I wasn't eavesdropping, Ivan.' In the interim the boy had dressed himself in a scarlet sweater and velvet trousers. He looked pretty and he smelt of toilet water. 'I do live here,' he said sulkily. 'You shouldn't shut me up.'

'Perhaps Mr Chell can help us.' Wexford did his best not to laugh.

'As a matter of fact, maybe I can.' Chell turned a coquettish shoulder in Teal's direction and gave the chief inspector a winning smile. 'I saw a girl looking for Loveday.'

'When was that, Mr Chell?'

'Oh, I don't know. Not very long ago. She was young. She came in a car, a red Mini. I was going out and this girl was standing on the step, looking at the bells. She said she'd rung at Flat Eight but the young lady seemed to be out. Funny thing for one girl to say about another, wasn't it? The young lady? Then Loveday came along the street and said hello to her and took her upstairs with her.'

Teal looked piqued. He seemed put out because Chell had told Wexford so much and he had told him so little. 'Well, describe this girl, child,' he said pettishly. 'Describe her. You see, Mr Wexford, that here we have a close observer who looks quite through the deeds of men.'

Wexford ignored him. 'What was she like?'

'Not exactly "with it", if you know what I mean.' The boy giggled. 'She'd got short hair and she was wearing a sort of dark blue coat Oh, and gloves,' he added as if these last were part of some almost unheard-of tribal paraphernalia.

'A full and detailed portrait,' sneered Teal. 'Never mind what colour her eyes were or if she were five feet or six feet tall. She wore gloves. Now all you have to do is find a conventional young lady who wears gloves and there's your murderer. Hey presto! Run along, now, back to your mirror. Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever!'

It wasn't until Wexford was out in the street that he realised he had left Utopia lying on Teal's table. Let it stay there. He didn't relish the thought of climbing all those stairs again to fetch it and perhaps intruding into the monumental row he guessed had broken out between the two men. Instead, he walked to the limit of the cul-de-sac where two stumpy stone posts sprouted out of the pavement and eyed the strange ugly church.

Like Peggy Pope's clothes, every item which went to make up this unprepossessing whole seemed chosen with a deliberate eye to the hideous. What manner of man, or group of men, he asked himself, had designed this building and seen it as fit for the worship of their God? It was hard to say when it had been built. There was no trace of the Classical or the Gothic in its architecture, no analogy with any familiar style of construc- tion. It was squat, shabby and mean. Perhaps in some seamy depths at its rear there were windows, but here at the front there was only a single circle of red glass not much bigger than a bicycle wheel, set under a rounded gable of portcoloured brick. Scattered over the whole facade was a noughts and crosses pattern of black and ochre bricks among the red.

The door was small and such as might have been attached to a garden shed. Wexford tried it but it was locked. He stooped down to read the granite tablet by this door: Temple of the Revelation. The Elect shall be Saved.

The hand which descended with a sharp blow on his shoulder made him wheel round.

'Go away,' said the bearded man in black. 'No trespassers here.'

'Kindly take your hand off my coat,' Wexford snapped.

Perhaps unused to any kind of challenge, the man did as he was told. He glared at Wexford, his eyes pale and fanatical. 'I don't know you.'

'That doesn't give you the right to assault me. I know you. You're the minister of this lot.'

'The Shepherd. What do you want?'

'I'm a police officer investigating the murder of Miss Loveday Morgan.'

The Shepherd thrust his hands inside his black cloak. 'Murder? I know nothing of murder. We don't read newspapers. We keep ourselves apart.'

'Very Christian, I'm sure,' said Wexford. 'This girl came to your church. You knew her.'

'No.' The Shepherd shook his head vehemently. He looked angry and affronted. 'I have been away ill and someone else was in charge of my flock. Maybe she slipped in past him. Maybe, in his ignorance, he took her for one of the five hundred.'

'The five hundred?'

'Such is our number, the number of the elect on the face of the Earth. We make no converts. To be one of the Children you must be born to parents who are both Children, and thus the number swells and with death declines. Five hundred,' he said adding less loftily, 'give or take a little.' Gathering the heavy dull folds of his robe around him,' he muttered, 'I have work to do. Good day to you,' and marched off towards Queen's Lane.

Wexford made his way to the northern gate of the cemetery. The ground at this end was devoted to Catholic graves. A funeral had evidently taken place on the previous day and the flowers brought by mourners were wilting in the March wind. He took an unfamiliar path which led him between tombs whose occupants had been of the Greek Orthodox faith, and he noted an epitaph on a Russian princess. Her name and patronymic reminded him of Tolstoy's novels with their lists of dramatic personae, and he was trying to decipher the Cyrillic script when a shadow fell across the tomb and a voice said: