'I take it Mr Fortune's inside the shop?' he said in an effort to change the subject. 'Who's the boy with the van?'
'That's Brian Gregson, sir. You've heard of him, I daresay. The one with the good friends all burning to give him an alibi.' Clements was calmer now as his attention was diverted from his personal problems back to the case. 'He's one of Sytansound's engineers, the only young unmarried one.'
Wexford remembered now that Howard had mentioned Gregson, but only in passing and not by name. 'What's this about an alibi?' he asked. 'And why should he need one?'
'Lie's just about the only man who ever associated with Loveday Morgan so-called. Tripper that's the cemetery bloke saw him giving her a lift home one night in his van. And one of the reps says Gregson used to chat her up in the shop sometimes.'
'A bit thin, isn't it?' Wexford objected.
'Well, his alibi for that Friday night is thin, too, sir. He says he was in the Psyche Club in Notting Hill that's a sort of drinking place, sir. God knows what else goes on there and four villains say he was with them there from seven till eleven. But three of them have got form. You couldn't trust them an inch. Look at him, sir. Wouldn't you reckon he'd got something to hide?'
He was a slight fair youth who seemed younger than the twenty-one years Howard had attributed to him and whose thin schoolboy arms looked too frail to support the boxes he was carrying from the van into the shop. Wexford thought he had the air of someone who believes that if he bustles away at his job, giving the impression of a rapt involvement, he may pass unnoticed and escape the interference of authority. Whether or not this was the hope that spurred him to trot in and out so busily with his loads, his work was destined to be interrupted.
As he again approached the rear of the van, determindedly keeping his eyes from wandering towards the police car, a ginger-headed, sharp-faced man came out of Sytansound. beckoned to him and called out:
'Gregson! Here a minute!'
'That's Inspector Baker, sir,' said Clements. 'He'll put him through the mill all right, tell him a thing or two like his father should have done years ago.'
Wexford sighed to himself, for he sensed what was coming and knew that, short of getting out of the car, he was powerless to stop it.
'Vicious, like all the young today,' said Clements. 'Take these girls that have illegits, they've got no more idea of their responsibilities than than rabbits.' He brought this last word out on a note of triumphant serendipity, perhaps believing that the chief inspector with his rustic background would be familiar with the behaviour of small mammals.
'They can't look after them,' he went on. 'You should have seen our boy when he first came to us, thin, white, his nose always running. I don't believe he'd been out in the fresh air since he was born. It isn't fair!' Clements' voice rose passionately. 'They don't want them, they'd have abortions only they leave it too late, while a decent, clean-living woman, a religious woman, like my wife has miscarriage after miscarriage and eats her heart out for years. I'd jail the lot of them, I'd . . .'
'Come now, Sergeant . . .' Wexford hardly knew what to say to calm him. He sought about in his mind for consoling platitudes, but before he could utter a single one the car door had opened and Howard was introducing him to Inspector Baker.
It was apparent from the moment that they sat down in the Grand Duke that Inspector Baker was one of those men who, like certain eager philosophers and scientists, form a theory and then force the facts to fit it. Anything which disturbs the pattern, however relevant, must be rejected, while insignificant data are grossly magnified. Wexford reflected on this in silence, saying nothing, for the inspector's conclusions had not been addressed to him. After the obligatory handshake and the mutterings of a few insincere words, Baker had done his best to exclude him from the discussion, adroitly managing to seat him at the foot of their table while he and Howard faced each other at the opposite end.
Clearly Gregson was Baker's candidate for the Morgan murder, an assumption he based on the man's record a single conviction for robbery the man's friends, and what he called the man's friendship with Loveday.
'He hung around her in the shop, sir. He gave her lifts in that van of his.'
'We know he gave her a lift,' said Howard.
Baker had a harsh unpleasant voice, the bad grammar of his childhood's cockney all vanished now, but the intonation remaining. He made everything he said sound bitter. 'We can't expect to find witnesses to every time they were together. They were the only young people in that shop. You can't tell me a girl like Morgan wouldn't have encouraged his attentions.'
Wexford looked down at his plate. He never liked to hear women referred to by their surnames without Christian name or style, not even when they were prostitutes, not even when they were criminals. Loveday had been neither. He glanced up as Howard said, 'What about the motive?'
Baker shrugged. 'Morgan encouraged him and then gave him the cold shoulder.'
Wexford hadn't meant to interrupt, but he couldn't help himself. 'In a cemetery?'
The inspector acted exactly like a Victorian parent whose discourse at the luncheon table had been interrupted by a child, one of those beings who were to be seen but not heard. But he looked as if he would have preferred not to see Wexford as well. He turned on him a reproving and penetrating stare, and asked him to repeat what he had said.
Wexford did so. 'Do people want to make love in cemeteries?'
For a moment it seemed as if Baker was going to do a Clements and say that 'they' would do anything anywhere. He appeared displeased by Wexford's mention of love-making, but he didn't refer to it directly. 'No doubt you have a better suggestion,' he said.
'Well, I have some questions,' Wexford said tentatively. 'I understand that the cemetery closes at six. What was Gregson doing all the afternoon?'
Howard, who seemed distressed by Baker's attitude, making up for it by a particularly delicate courtesy to his uncle, attending to his wants at the table and refilling his glass from the bottle of apple juice, said quickly, 'He was with Mrs Kirby in Copeiand Road until about one-thirty, then back at Sytansound. After that he went to a house in Monmouth Street that's near Vale Park, Reg and then he had a long repair job in Queen's Lane that took him until five-thirty, after which he went home to his parents' house in Shepherd's Bush.'
'Then I don't quite see . . .'
Baker had been crumbling a roll of bread into pellets with the air of a man preoccupied by his own thoughts. He raised his head and said in a way that is usually described as patient but in fact is a scarcely disguised exasperation, 'That the cemetery closes at six doesn't mean that no one can get in or out. There are breaches in the walls, quite a bad one at the end of Lammas Road, and vandals are always making them worse. The whole damned place ought to be ploughed up and built on.' Having given vent to his statement, utterly in opposition to Stephen Dearborn's views, he sipped his gin and gave a little cough. 'But that's by the way. You must admit, Mr Wexford, that you don't know this district like we do, and a morning's sightseeing isn't going to teach it to you.'
'Come. Michael,' Howard said uneasily. 'Mr. Wexford's anxious to learn. That's why he asked.'
Wexford was distressed to hear that his new acquaintance his antagonist rather shared Burden's Christian name. It reminded him bitterly how different his own inspector's response would have been. But he said nothing. Baker hardly seemed to have noticed Howard's mild reproof beyond giving a faint shrug. 'Gregson could have got in and out of the cemetery,' he said, 'as easily as you can swallow whatever that stuff is in your glass there.'
Wexford took a sip of the 'stuff' and tried again, determined not to let Howard see him show signs of offense.. 'Have you a medical report yet?'