Murder Being Once Done

'Who is she, Reg?' said Dora, not quite believing she was deceived, but not entirely happy either.

'Melanie?' he said airily. 'Oh, Melanie Just a woman I'm having a red-hot affair with. You know all those times you thought I was over at Kenbourne with Howard? Well, actually I was with her. There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle, my dear.' He stopped, caught his wife's eye. It was admonitory, yet faintly distressed. 'Dora!' he said. 'Look at me. Look at me. What woman in her right mind would want me?'

'I would.'

'Oh, wau.' He was oddly moved. He kissed her lightly. 'That's the blindness of love,' he said. 'Excuse me. I'll just give my mistress a tinkle.'

Dearborn was in the phone book, Stephen T., with some letters after it that Wexford thought indicated architectural qualifications. He dialled and Melanie Dearborn answered on the second ring. Did she always? Had she been sitting by the phone to jump out of her skin when it rang?

'I'm very sorry to trouble you Mr Wexford. I . . . Would it be a great imposition to ask you if you could come over here and see me?'

'Now, Mrs Dearborn?'

'Well, yes, please. Now.'

'Can you give me some idea what it's about?'

'May I leave that until I see you?'

Much intrigued, Wexford said, 'Give me ten minutes,' and rang off. He explained to Denise and Dora, or rather gave them what explanation he could, for he had no more idea than they as to why Melanie Dearborn wanted to see him in her husband's absence. Could it be that she was genuinely worried about Dearborn's obsession with the transformation of Kenbourne Vale because his passion led him to neglect her or his business? Or was it anxiety over some aspect of Alexandra's welfare that distressed her? Neither of these answers seemed probable.

'The library have got your book in, Uncle Reg.' said Denise. 'You can call in for it on your way back.'

As he picked up the blue card and left the house, he came to the conclusion that Mrs Dearborn had sent for him because he was a policeman.

The cab came to a halt at a double white line, and on the major road a red Mini passed them, coming from the direction of Laysbrook Square. Wexford caught only a quick glimpse of its driver, a young woman in a dark coat. Her gloved hands rang a bell in his mind but summoned nothing from its recesses, and he forgot the gloved girl when the taxi brought him under the mews arch and he saw Melanie Dearborn waiting for him on the steps of Laysbrook House.

Wexford achieved a calm and, he hoped, reassuring smile for her, but she did not smile back. She clasped his hand in both hers and began to let forth a stream of apologies for disturbing someone who was only a slight acquaintance.

His guess had been right. 'It's because you're a policeman,' she said when they were inside. 'Or rather, because you're a detective, but not exactly working at the moment, if you know what I mean.'

Wexford didn't.

'You can tell me what I ought to do,' she said, dropping into a chair and immediately applying both hands to the piping cords.

'I'm not so sure of that,' he demurred. She was such a nice woman and so obviously distressed that he allowed himself advice that should only have come from an intimate friend. 'Try to relax,' he said. 'Your hands . . . Let me give you a cigarette.'

She nodded, pulling her hands away from the chair arms and clutching one in the other. 'You're a soothing sort of person, aren't you?' she said as he lit her cigarette. 'I feel a bit better.'

'That's good. What's it all about?'

'My daughter,' said Melanie Dearborn. 'She's missing. I don't know where she is. Ought I to report her as a missing person?'

Wexford stared. 'The baby? You mean someone has taken the baby?'

'Oh, no, no, of course not! Alexandra is upstairs. I mean my elder daughter, Louise. She's twenty-one.' It was pathetic the way she waited shyly for the gallant thing to be said. Wexford couldn't say it. Today Mrs Dearborn looked amply old enough to be the mother of a grown-up daughter. But Dearborn was he the father? He could have sworn this pair hadn't been married more than three or four years. 'She's not Stephen's,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'I was married before. I was only nineteen when Louise was born and my first husband died when she was ten.'

'What makes you think she's missing? Does she usually live here?'

'No. She never has. She and Stephen don't get on, but I don't really know why not. They used to and it was actually through Isa she calls herself that that I first met Stephen. I suppose she resented my marrying again.'

An old story. The mother and daughter close, the interloping lover who leaves the daughter out in the cold.

'We got married three years ago,' she said. 'Isa was still at school, waiting to do her A Levels. She already had a provisional place at Cambridge, but when she heard we were going to get married she threw all that up and went off to share a flat with another girl.' Mrs Dearborn's fingers had returned to the compulsive fraying of the cords while her cigarette burnt itself out on the rim of the ashtray. 'She has an allowance under her father's will, a thousand a year. I don't know if she ever worked.'

'You never hear from her?'

'Oh, yes, we made up our quarrel in a sort of way. We were never like we used to be. She was always reserved and she became terribly secretive. I suppose that was my fault. I don't want to go in for a display of self-pity, Mr Wexford, but I had rather a lot to bear in my first marriage and then widowhood wasn't easy. I rather taught Isa to keep well, a stiff upper lip, and not show her feelings.'

Wexford nodded. 'But she kept in touch with you by phone or by letter?'

'She'd phone me from time to time but she would never come here and she refused to tell me where she was living after she had left the flat she shared with the other girl. She phoned from call boxes. It made me very unhappy and Stephen saw it and then then he got some private detective to find out where she was. Oh, it was so terrible! Isa swore she'd never speak to me again. She said I'd ruined her life. After that I tried not to let Stephen know I was worried about her and that's why I asked you to come here while while he was out.'

'When did you last hear from her?'

She crushed out the smouldering cigarette stub and lit another. 'I'd better tell you a bit more about it all. After Stephen ran her to earth like that she phoned me to tell me I'd ruined her life, I didn't hear a word for months. Then, about a year ago, she started phoning quite regularly again, but she wouldn't say where she was living and she always sounded unhappy.'

'You must have commented on that?'

'Of course I did. She'd always said, "Oh, it's nothing. The world's not a very jolly place, is it? You taught me that and it's true." Mr Wexford, you don't know her. You don't know how impossible it is to question her. She just says, "Let's leave that, shall we?" I wanted her to come and see me at Christmas to tell her about . . .'

He raised his eyebrows a fraction. 'Excuse me, if I don't tell you what that something was. It can't have anything to do with Isa being missing. Anyway, I begged her to come and she did come. She came on Boxing Day. That was the first time I'd seen my daughter for nearly three years. And after that she came agent, two or three times, but always when Stephen was out.'

'She saw him on Boxing Day'?

Melanie Dearborn shook her head. 'No, he spent the day with his mother. She's in a nursing home. Isa looked very thin and pale. It frightened me. She was never vivacious, if you know what I mean, but all the life seemed to have gone out of her. But she began to phone me regularly, about once a week. The last time I heard from her that was what you wanted to know, wasn't it? the last time was Friday a week ago. Friday, February 25th.'

Wexford felt the blood go from his face. He hoped it didn't show. 'She phoned you last Friday week?'