Wexford gave the doctor a lowering cowed glance. 'May God protect me from my friends. I'll tell you what, I'll go to London. How would that do? My nephew's always asking us. You know the one I mean, my sister's boy, Howard, the superintendent. with the Met. He's got a house in Chelsea.'
'All right. But no late nights, Reg. No participation in swinging London. No alcohol. I'm giving you a diet sheet one thousand calories a day. It sounds a lot, but, believe me, it ain't.'
'It's starvation,' said Wexford to the statue.
He had started to shiver, standing there and brooding. Time to get back for the pre-lunch rest and glass of tomato juice they made him have. One thing, he wasn't joining any Peter Pan expedition afterwards. He didn't believe in fairies and one statue a day was enough. A bus ride, maybe. But not on that one he could see trundling up Cremorne Road and ultimately bound for Kenbourne Vale. Howard had made it quite plain in his negative gracious way that that was one district of Lon- don in which his uncle wouldn't be welcome.
'And don't get any ideas about talking shop with that nephew of yours,' had been Crocker's parting words. 'You've got to get away from all that for a bit. Where did you say his manor is, Kenbourne Vale?'
Wexford nodded. 'Tough sort of place, I'm told.'
'They don't come any tougher. I trained there at St Biddulph's.' As always when speaking to the green rustic of his years in the metropolis, Crocker wore his Mr Worldly Wiseman expression and his voice became gently patronizing 'There's an enormous cemetery, bigger than Kensal Green and more bizarre than Brompton, with vast tombs and a few minor royals buried there, and the geriatric wards of the hospital overlook the cemetery just to show the poor old things what their next stoptll be. Apart from that, the place is miles of mouldering terraces containing two classes of persons: Threepenny Opera crooks and the undeserving poor.'
'I daresay,' said Wexford, getting his own back, 'it's changed in the intervening thirty years.'
'Nothing to interest you, anyway,' the doctor snapped. 'I don't want you poking your nose into Kenbourne Vale's crime, so you can turn a deaf ear to your nephew's invitations.'
Invitations! Wexford laughed bitterly to himself. Much chance he had of turning a deaf ear when Howard, in the ten days since his uncle's arrival, hadn't spoken a single word even to indicate that he was a policeman, let alone suggested a visit to the Yard or an introduction to his inspector. Not that he was neglectful. Howard was courtesy itself, the most considerate of hosts, and, when it came to conversation, quite deferential in matters, for instance, of literature, in spite of his Cambridge First. Only on the subject nearest to his uncle's heart (and, presumably, to his own) was he discouragingly silent.
It was obvious why. Detective superintendents, holding high office in a London crime squad, are above talking shop with detective chief inspectors from Sussex. Men who have inherited houses in Chelsea will not condescend very far with men who occupy three-bedroom visas in the provinces. It was the way of the world.
Howard was a snob. A kind, attentive thoughtful snob, but a snob just the same. And that was why, that above all, Wexford wished he had gone to the seaside or the health farm. As he turned into Theresa Street he wondered if he could stand another evening in Denise's elegant drawing room, the women chatting clothes and cooking, while he and Howard exchanged smaD talk on the weather and the sights of London, interspersed with bits of Eliot.
'You must try and see some City churches while you're here.'
'St Magnus Martyr, white and gold?'
'St Mary Woolooth, who toss the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine!'
Nearly another fortnight of it.
They wouldn't go to Peter Pan without him. Some other day, they said, resigning themselves without too much anguish to attending Harvey Nichols' fashion show instead. He swallowed his pills, ate his poached fish and fruit salad, and watched them leave the house, each suitably attired as befitted thirty years and fifty-five, Denise in purple velvet, feathers and a picture hat, Dora in the ranch mink he had bought her for their silver wedding. They got on fine, those two. As well as their joint determination to treat him like a retarded six-yearold with a congenital disease, they seemed to have every female taste in common.
Everybody got on fine but him: Crocker with his twentyeight-inch waistline; Mike Burden in Kingsmarkham police station getting the feel of his, Wexford's, mantle on his shoulders and liking it; Howard departing every day for his secret hush-hush job which might have been in Whitehall rather than Kenbourne Vale nick, for all he told his uncle to the contrary.
Self-pity never got anyone anywhere. He mustn't look on it as a holiday but as a rest cure. It was time to forget all those pleasant visions he had had in the train to Victoria, the pictures of himself helping Howard with his enquiries, even giving he blushed to recall it a few little words of advice. Crocker had been right. He did have delusions of grandeur.
They had been knocked on the head here all right. The house itself was enough to cut any provincial down to size. It wasn't a Wg house, but then, nor is the Taj Mahal very b4 What worried him and made him tread like a cat burglar were the exquisite appointments of the place: the fragile furniture, the pieces of Chinese porcelain balanced on tiny tables, the screens he was always nearly knocking over, Denise's flower arrangements. Weird, exotic, heterogeneous, they troubled him as almost daily a fresh confection appeared. He could never be sure whether a rosebud was intended to lie in that negligent fashion on the marble surface of a table or whether it had been inadvertently dislodged from its fellows in the majolica bowl by his own clumsy hand.
The temperature of the house, as he put it to himself, exaggerating slightly, was that of a Greek beach at noon in August. If you had the figure for it you could have gone about quite happily in a bikini. He wondered why Denise, who had, didn't. And how did the flowers survive, the daffodils ill-at-ease among avocado-pear plants?
When he had had his hour's rest with his feet up he took the two library tickets Denise had left him and walked down to Mauresa Road. Anything to get out of that house. The beautiful, warm, dull silence of it depressed him.
Why shouldn't he go home?
Dora could stay on if she liked. He thought of home with an ache in his belly that was only partly due to hunger. Home. The green Sussex meadows, the pine forest, the High Street full of people he knew and who knew him, the police station and Mike glad to see him back; his own house, cold as an English house should be except in front of the one great roar- ing fire; proper food and proper bread and in the fridge the secret beer cans.
Might as well get out a couple of books, though. Something to read in the train, and he could send them back to Denise by post. He chose a novel, and then, because he now felt he knew the old boy and had actually had a sort of conversation with him, More's Utopia. After that he had nothing at all to do so he sat down for a long while in the library, not even opening the books but thinking about home.
It was nearly five when he left. He bought an evening paper more from habit than from any desire to read it. Suddenly he found he was tired with the staggering weariness of someone who had nothing to do but must somehow fill the hours between getting up and bedtime.
A long way back to Theresa Street on foot, too long. He hailed a taxi, sank into its seat and unfolded his paper.
From the middle of the front page the bony, almost cadaverous, face of his nephew stared back at him.
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