'It's true. I mean it. You don't believe me?'
But Wexford, who had many times heard men make similar threats without taking them very seriously, did believe him. There was a kind of earnest desperation in the man's whole manner, and he was relieved when the tension was slackened by the entry of Mrs Dearborn.
She told him she was glad to see him. 'As long as you don't encourage Stephen to cart us all off to some slum,' she said. 'He gets tired of places he can't improve.'
'It would be hard to improve on Laysbrook House,' said Wexford politely.
She was not at all beautiful and she had made no attempt to look younger than her forty years. Her walnut-brown hair was threaded with grey, her neck ringed with lines. He wondered what constituted her appeal. Was it the willowy ease with which she moved for she was very slim or the play of her long fine hands or her extreme femininity? The last, he thought. Her nails were varnished, her skirt short, she was even now taking a cigarette from a cedarwood box, but for all that she had all the old-fashioned womanly grace of a lady out of one of Trollope's novels, a squire's lady, a chatelaine.
That Dearborn was in love with her was immediately apparent from the way his eyes followed her to her chair and lingered on her, watching her settle herself and smooth her skirt over her crossed legs. It was almost as if those briefly caressing hands had for a moment become his own and, vicariously, he felt under them the smoothness of silk and flesh.
Wexford was wondering how to broach the subject of Kenbourne cemetery when Dearborn announced that it was time to get the maps out.
'Dull for you, darling,' he said. 'You've heard it all so many times before.'
'I can bear it. I shall knit.'
'Yes, do. I like to see you knitting. It's a funny thing, Mr Wexford, the qualities women think will attract us and the qualities which really do. I could watch Miss World doing a striptease and it would leave me cold, but let me see a woman in a clean white apron rolling pastry and I'd be in love with her before she could close the kitchen door.'
Mrs Dearborn laughed. 'That's true,' she said. 'You were.'
So that's the way they came together, Wexford thought. It really happened and not too long ago either. It must have been like a Dutch interior, the man visiting the house as a guest for the first time, the kitchen door half open and behind it this brown-haired woman with the sweet face looking up, startled from her cooking, shy at being caught in her apron and with flour on her arms.
Mrs Dearborn seemed to sense what was going on in his mind, for her eyes met his fleetingly and she pursed her lips, suppressing a smile. Then she lifted from a bag a mass of wool and half-completed work, as white and fluffy as flour, and began to knit.
To watch her was curiously soothing. Every harassed businessman, he thought, should have a tank of tropical fish at one end of his office and a woman knitting at the other. Tired now, he could have watched her all the evening, but he had to turn his attention to the maps, photographs and the old deeds which Dearborn had brought into the room and spread in front of them.
The enthusiasm of the crusader had taken hold of Dearborn and as he talked a light came into his eyes. This was Kenbourne as it had been in the time of the fourth George; here had stood the manor house which a royal duke had rented for his actress mistress; on the south side of Lammas Grove had stood a row of magnificent elms. Why shouldn't the land be cleared and fresh trees planted? Why not make all this waste stretch here into playing fields? There was no need for Wexford to ask about the cemetery. Before he could interrupt he was told its acreage, the history of every interesting person buried there, and informed that the state of the walls on the eastern side was so bad that soon vandals would be able to enter and plunder at will.
A point to Baker. Wexford tried to relax and make himself receptive, but he felt overwhelmed. He was ex- periencing a sensation he had often had before when lectured by someone with an obsession. It is all too much. It should be done in easy stages, but the obsessed cannot see this. Night and day he has lived with his passion and when he comes to enlighten the tyro, he is unable, because he has not been trained in teaching, to sketch in a simple background, awaken rterest and postpone the complex details until another occasion. Unrelated facts, historical anecdotes, instances of iconoclasm came tumbling from Dearborn's lips. He found maps to confirm this, deeds to verify that, until Wexford's head began to spin.
It was a relief when the time came for his glass to be refilled and he could lean back briefly to exchange a smile with Mrs Dearborn. But when he looked in her direction, expecting to be calmed by the sight of those rhythmically moving fingers, he saw that her work lay in her lap, her eyes were fixed in a dead stare on a distant part of the room, and she was compulsively picking at the piping on the arm of her chair.
The piping had been so badly frayed that the cord beneath was fully exposed on both arms. This was not the result of one evening of nervous tension but surely of many. And when he glanced at the other five or six chairs in the room and at the sofa, he saw that all, though otherwise immaculate, were in the same state. Loops of cord showed on every arm, protruding from feathery rags.
The sight upset him, for it seemed to destroy the picture he had of this couple's serene happiness. He felt a sudden tension. At the drinks tray Dearborn stood watching his wife, his face compassionate yet very slightly exasperated.
No one spoke. Into the silence the telephone rang shatteringly, making them jump but none of them as violently as Mrs Dearborn. She was out of her chair on the second ring, her sharp 'I'll get it!' almost a cry. Her grace had gone. She was like a medium who, awakened from a strange and transcending communion, must gather together the threads that hold her to reality and, in gathering them, suffers intolerable mental stress.
The telephone was at the far end of the room, on a table under the point on which Mrs Dearborn's eyes had long been fixed. She took the receiver and said hello, clearing her throat so that she could repeat the word in a voice above a whisper. That she wanted the call and was not afraid of it was apparent; that the wrong person had called showed in the sudden sagging of her shoulders.
'That's all right,' she said into the mouthpiece, and then to her husband, 'Only a wrong number.'
'We get so many,' Dearbom said, as if apologising for a fault of his own. 'You're tired, Melanie. Let me give you a drink.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, thanks.' She pushed a lock of hair from her forehead and Wexford saw how thin her wrists were. 'It's my daughter,' she said, the good hostess who knows that there must be no subterfuge before guests. 'I get so worried about her. Children are an anxiety these days, aren't they? You never know what trouble they may be in. But I won't bore you.' She took the whisky her husband handed her. 'Thank you, darling.' She sighed.
Husband and wife stood facing each other, hands briefly locked. Wexford was even more in the dark than before. What had she meant about her daughter, about not knowing what trouble she might be in? A baby young enough to use a teething ring, a baby its mother had left upstairs an hour before, was surely peacefully sleeping in its cot. Unless she was expecting a doctor to phone her because the child had been in . . .
He drank his second class of beer with a feeling of guilt. The unfamiliar alcohol made him feel lethargic and lightheaded and he was Dad when Dearborn packed up his papers and said that was enough for one night.
'You must come again. Or, better than that, I'll take you on a tour round some of the places we've talked about. I take Alexandra toKenbourne Vale.'He spoke quite seriously. 'She's not really old enough yet to understand, but you can see in her eyes she's beginning to take an interest. She's a very intelligent child. Are you in London for long?'