Facing the rose-pink house and on the corner of the only side street to run out of Belgrade Road was a little shop, a general store, very like those to be found in the villages near Kingsmarkham. Wexford marvelled to see such a place here, only a hundred yards from a big shopping centre, and marvelled still more to see that it was doing a thriving trade. There was just one assistant serving the queue, a shabby little woman with a mole on the side of her nose, and he made his enquiries of her briefly, anxious not to keep her from her work. She had a curious flat voice, free from cockney, and she was patient with him, but neither she nor the woman shopper behind him a resident of the side street could recall anyone answering his description who had moved away in December.
About twenty houses remained to be visited. He visited them all, feeling very cold now and wondering how he was going to explain to Dora that he had got soaked to the skin. Between them all they were turning him into a hypochondriac, he thought, and he began to feel nervous, asking himself what all this tramping about and getting wet might be doing to his health. Crocker would have a fit if he could see him now, water running from his hair down the back of his neck as he emerged from the last house. Well, Crocker didn't know everythin& and for the rest of the day and all tomorrow until the evening he would take it easy.
He paused and, turning back, surveyed the whole length of the street once more. Through the falling silvery rain, under the messy clouds which were streaming across the sky from behind the-grey church spire, Belgrade Road looked utterly commonplace. Nothing but the church and the pink house distinguished it from a sister street which ran from the main highway in the opposite direction, and this latter was, if anything, more interesting and memorable. Buses used it and on a sunny day both sides of it would catch the full sun for hours. Why, then had Loveday Morgan chosen Belgrade Road?
He tried to imagine himself giving a false address in London. What street would he choose? Not one that he had stayed in or knew well, for that might lead to discovery. Say Lammas Grove, West Fifteen? Number 43, for instance. Immediately he asked himself why, and reasoned that he had picked the street because he had sat outside Sytansound there with Sergeant Clements, the number was just a number that had come to him....
So that was how it was done. That was the way Howard had inferred that it was done, and he had been right again. Obviously, then, it was hopeless to try to trace Loveday by these means. He must approach the matter from other angles.
9
In them they have . . . all manner of fruit, herbs and flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished, and so finely kept, that I never saw thing more fruitful nor better trimmed in any place.
GOING out in the evening was one of the excesses on ~] which Crocker had placed a strict ban. If Wexford's faith in the doctor had been shaken, his wife's had not. She could only be consoled by his promise to take a taxi to Laysbrook Place, to abstain from strong drink and not to stay out too long.
He was looking forward to this visit. A little judicious questioning might elicit from Dearborn more information about the cemetery. Was it, for instance, as easy to get in and out after the gates were closed as Baker had insisted? Before Tripper and his fellows went home at night did they make any sort of search of the place? Or must Loveday have been killed before six? If this was so, Gregson, occupied at work, would be exonerated. And might Dearborn not also know something of Loveday herself? He had interviewed her. It was possible that, at that interview, she had told him something of her past history.
Laysbrook Place was one of those country corners of London in which the air smells sweeter, birds sometimes sing and other trees grow apart from planes. An arch, hung with a brown creeper Wexford thought was wisteria, concealed most of the little street from Laysbrook Square.
He walked under it, light falling about him from two lamps on brackets, and saw ahead of him a single house such as might have stood in Kingsmarkham High Street. It wasn't an old house but old bricks and timber had been used in its construction, and it was like no London house Wexford had seen. For one thing, it was rather low and sprawling with gables and lattice windows; for another, it had a real garden with apple trees in it and shrubs that were probably lilac. Now, in early March, forsythia blazed yellow and luminous through the lamplit dark and, as he opened the gate, he saw snowdrops in drifts as thick and white as real snow.
The front door opened before he reached it and Stephen Dearborn came down the steps.
'What a lovely place,' Wexford said.
'You'd agree with my wife, then, that it's an improvement on Kenbourne?'
Wexford smiled, sighing a little to himself, for he had been so piercingly reminded of the country. He was suddenly conscious of the peace and the silence. Not even in Howard's house had he been able to escape from the ceaseless sound of traffic, but there was nothing more to be heard than a faint throbbing, what Londoners call the 'hum', ever present in the city and its suburbs but sometimes so remote as to seem like a sound in one's own head.
'My wife's upstairs with our daughter,' Dearborn said. 'She wouldn't go to sleep and it's no good my staying with her. I just want to cuddle her and play with her all the time.'
It was warm inside but airy, enough heat turned on to take off the March chill without making one gasp. The house was very obviously the residence of a rich man, but Wexford couldn't see any sign of pretentiousness or evidence that money had been spent with an eye to impress. It wasn't even very tidy. There was a scattering of crumbs under a tea-table and an ivory teething ring lay on a blanket in the middle of the carpet.
'What will you drink?'
Wexford was getting tired of drawing attention to his illness and his diet. 'Have you any beer?' he asked.
'Sure we have. I couldn't get through the weekend without it after all those shorts I have to consume the rest of the time. I drink it from the can, as a matter of fact.' Dearborn gave a sudden boyish smile. 'We'd better have glasses or my wife will kill me after you've gone.'
The beler was kept in a refrigerator with a wood veneered door which Wexford had at first glance taken for a glass cabinet. 'My favourite toy,' said Dearborn. 'When Alexandra gets a bit older I shall always keep it full of ice cream and cans of coke.' Still smiling, he filled their glasses. 'I've come to fatherhood rather late in life, Mr Wexford I was forty-three last Tuesday and my wife says it's made me sappy. I'd like to get the moon and stars for my daughter, but, as this is impossible, she shall have all the good things of this world instead.'
'You're not afraid of spoiling her?'
'I'm afraid of many things, Mr Wexford.' The smile died away and he became intensely serious. 'Of being too indulgent and too possessive among other things. I tell myself that she's not mine, that she belongs to herself. It's not easy being a parent.'
'No, it's not easy. And it's as well people don't know it, for if they did, maybe they wouldn't dare have children.'
Dearborn shook his head. 'I could never feel hke that. I'm a fortunate man. I've been lucky in marriage. And you know what they say, happy is the man who can make a living from his hobby. But, for all that, I didn't know what real happiness was till I got Alexandra If I lost her I'd I'd kill myself.'
'Oh, come, you mustn't say that.'