Wexford stood on the steps and watched him go. It was time for him to go too, to leave Kenbourne Vale and Loveday Morgan and forget them if he could. Strange how absorbed he had been in trying to discover who she was, tramping around Fulham, weaving fantasies. Now as he looked back on the past week, he realised that he was no nearer knowing who she was or who had killed her or why than he had been when Howard had found him in the vault. It seemed to him that he had had a few sensible ideas, firm conclusions, which even that howler of his couldn't shake, but they had grown vague now and he had almost forgotten what they were.
Water which had gathered on the blue glass panels of the lamp above his head trickled down and dripped on him. He moved slowly down the steps and as he did so water hit him from another angle. A wave of it splashed against his trouser legs and he glanced up, affronted. The taxi, cause of the offense, had drawn up a few yards from him and directly in front of the police station. Its rear door opened and a vision in a purple silk suit with a white orchid in its buttonhole descended on to the wet pavement.
'What a day for the Honourable Diana's wedding,' said Ivan Teal when he had paid the taxi driver. 'And she such a sunnynatured girl. Where are the flunkeys rushing to meet me with umbrellas?'
'This isn't the Dorchester,' said Wexford.
'Don't I know it! I have some experience of police stations, principally West End Central. Were you on your way to see me?'
'See you?' In Wexford's present state of mind, Garmisch Terrace and the case seemed a world away. 'Was I supposed to be seeing you?'
'Of course you were. I told Philip to say ten. He knew I had this wedding at St George's. The bride's gown is one of mine so I must be in at the kill. When you didn't turn up I came to you. The wedding's at half eleven.'
'Oh, that,' said Wexford, recalling how Chell had sidetracked him with his talk of newspaper cuttings. 'It doesn't matter now. Don't you waste your time.'
Teal stared at him. His hair was carefully waved and gusts of Aphrodisia came from it and his suit. 'You mean you've found out who she was?' he said.
Wexford almost asked who. Then he remembered that to some people Loveday Morgan's death was important and he said, 'If you've got some information you'd better see Superintendent Fortune or Inspector Baker.'
'I want to see you.'
'It was never my case. I'm here on holiday and I'm going home on Saturday. You're getting rather wet, you know.'
'This tussore isn't exactly drip-dry,' said Teal, moving under the arch from which the blue lamp hung. 'I wish I'd gone straight to Hanover Square,' he grumbled. 'It's always hell getting a taxi in Kenbourne. Can you see if that one down there has got his light up?'
Wexford didn't bother to look. 'You said you wanted to see the superintendent.'
'You said that. I'm not over-fond of policemen. Remember? You're different. If I can't talk to you I'll be on my way.' Teal flung out a purple silk arm. 'Taxi!' he shouted.
The cab was going the wrong way. It waited for some lights to go green and, in defiance of regulations, began to make a U-turn. Behind it, looming scarlet through the downpour, appeared the bus that went to Chelsea.
'It was nice meeting you,' said Teal, going down the steps. 'Never thought I'd say that to a . . .'
The taxi drew up, the bus went by. 'You'd better come in a minute,' said Wexford with a sigh. 'I can spare half an hour.'
Teal was never amiable for more than a few minutes.
'I can't spare that long myself,' he said with a return to asperity. 'Really, you're very inconsistent. What a ghastly place! No wonder policemen have a grudge against humanity. What's this? Some sort of annexe to the morgue?'
'An interview room.' Wexford watched him dust the seat of a chair before sitting on it. He supposed he ought to feel flattered. However highly one values one's profession, it is always a compliment to be told that one is better, more human, more sympathetic, less conventional, than the common run. But boredom with the whole business made him almost impervious to flattery.
'Comfy?' he said sarcastically.
'Oh, don't come that!' snapped Teal. 'Not you. You're not one of these flatfeet who think that because one's gay, one's got the mentality of a finicky schoolgirl I'm going to a wed- ding and I don't want to muck up my clothes any more than you would.'
Wexford looked at him with positive dislike. 'Well, Mr Teal, what is it you want to tell me?'
'That minister we were talking about remember? His name is Morgan.'
18
The priests whom they find exceeding vicious If vers, them they excommunicate from having any interest in divine matters.
IT was like giving up smoking, thought Wexford, who had given it up with some difficulty years before. The bloody things made you ill, you resisted them, they even bored you, but only let someone produce one or, worse, light it under your nose and you were hooked again, yearning, longing to get back to the old habit. Teal had done that to him, although he hadn't lighted it yet. Wexford tried to suppress the excitement he felt, the hateful irritating excitement, and said:
'What minister?'
Maddeningly, Teal began to digress. 'Of course it's hindsight,' he said, 'but there was something funny about her voice. I noticed it at the time and yet I didn't, if you know what I mean. She didn't have any accent.'
'I don't have any accent,' said Wexford rashly.
Teal laughed at that. 'You mean you think you don't. You can't hear that faint Sussex burr any more than I can hear the rag-trade camp in my voice unless I listen for it. Just think about it for a moment. Johnny talks R.A.D.A., Peggy South London, Phil suppressed cockney with a gay veneer, your superintendent pure Trinity. One doesn't have to be a Henry Higgins to sort all that out. Everyone has an accent that he's got from his parents or his school or his university or the society he moves in. Loveday didn't have any at all.'
'What's that go to do with some minister?'
'I'm coming to that. I've thought about it a lot. I've asked myself who are these rare creatures that speak unaccented English. One example would be servants of the old school. I should think that when there was a whole servant class they all talked like that flat, plain English without any inflexion or intonation. Their parents brought them up to it, having been servants themselves and knowing that cockney couldn't be acceptable in a housemaid. Who else? Children brought up in institutions, maybe. People who spent years of their lives in hospitals and perhaps people who have spent all their lives in closed communities.'
Wexford was growing very impatient. 'Brought up in an institution. . . ?'
'Oh, come on. You're the detective. Don't you remember my telling you how she went to the temple of the Children of the Revelation?'
'She can't have been one of them. She worked in a television shop. They don't have television or read newspapers.'
'There you have it, the reason why her parents haven't got in touch. Didn't it occur to you? Anyway, her father couldn't have got in touch. He's that Morgan who was their minister and got put inside. He's in prison.'
There was a dramatic pause. Wexford had thought he could never care about this case again, never experience for a second time the thrill and the dread of the hunter with his quarry in sight. Now he felt the tingle of adrenalin in his blood, a shiver travel up his spine.
'I keep this book of press cuttings,' Teal went on. 'That is, I collect newspapers that have bits about me in them, but often I don't cut the bits out for a year or so and the papers accumulate. Well, a couple of nights ago, having time to kill, I started on my cuttings and on the back of a photograph of one of my gowns there was a story about this Morgan appear- ing in a magistrates' court.'