'He who asks questions is a fool.
He who answers them is a greater fool.
What is truth? What man decides it shall be.
What is beauty? Beauty is in the eye of man.
What are right and wrong? Today one thing, another tomorrow.
Death only is real.
The last of the Montforts bids you read and pass on
Without comment.'
This epitaph -if epitaph it could be called- so interested Wexford that he took a scrap of paper and a pencil from his pocket and copied it down. Then he pushed open the door, expecting a creak, but there was no sound at all. Perhaps Mr Tripper had oiled the hinges. A creak would somehow have been reassuring. He realised suddenly that some of the awe and the disquiet he felt was due to the profound silence. Since entering the cemetery he had heard nothing but the crepitation of dead leaves beneath his feet and the rustle of the wind.
Inside the vault it was not quite dark. Utter darkness would have been less unpleasant. A little grayish light fell on to the flight of steps from a narrow vitrine in the rear wall. He went down the steps and found himself in a chamber about twelve feet square. The dead Montforts lay not in the coffins mentioned by Mr Tripper but in stone sarcophagi which rested on shelves. In the centre of the chamber was a marble basin absurdly ILke a birdbath and containing a dribble of water. He couldn't imagine what purpose it served. He approached the sarcophagi and saw that there were two rows of them with a narrow space between. It must have been there in that trough, on the damp stone floor, that Loveday Morgan's body had been found.
He shivered a little. The vault smelt of decay. Not surely of the dead Montforts, passed long ago to dust, but of rotted grave flowers and stagnant water and unventilated age. A nasty place. She had been twenty, he thought, and he hoped she had died quickly and not in here. What are right and wrong? Today one thing, another tomorrow. Death only is real.
He turned back towards the steps and, as he did so, he heard a sound above him, a footfall on the overgrown gravel path. Some attendant, no doubt. He set his foot on the bottom stair, looking up at the rectangle of dingy light between door and frame. And then, as he was about to speak and declare his presence, there appeared in the aperture, gaunt and severe, the face of his nephew.
3
You conceive in your mind either none at all or else a very false image and similitude of this thing.
EVERYONE is familiar with the sensation of wanting the earth to swallow him when he is caught in embarrassing circumstances. And what more appropriate plot of earth than this, thought Wexford, aghast. These acres, choked with the dead, might surely receive one more. There was, however, nothing for it but to mount the stairs and face the music.
Howard, peering down into semi-darkness, had not at first recognised the intruder. When he did, when Wexford, awk. wardly brushing cobwebs from his coat, emerged on to the path, his face registered simple blank astonishment.
'Good God. Reg.' he said.
He looked his uncle up and down, then stared into the vault, as if he thought himself the victim of some monstrous delusion. Either this was not Wexford, but some Kenbournite dis- guised to resemble him, or else this was not Kenbourne Vale cemetery. It took him a few moments to recover and then he said:
'I thought you wanted a holiday from all this sort of thing.'
It was stupid to stand there like a schoolboy. In general, embarrassment was foreign to Wexford and he brimmed over with self-confidence. Now he told himself that he was catching criminals when this man was chewing on a teething ring and he said rather coldly, 'Did you? I can't imagine why.' Never apologise, never explain. Won't let me keep you from your work. I've a bus to catch.'
Howard's eyes narrowed. 'No,' he said, 'you're not going like that.' He always spoke quietly, in measured tones. 'I won't have that. If you wanted to see the vault, why didn't you say last night? I'd have brought you with me this morning. If you wanted the inside stuff on the case, you only had to ask.'
Absurd as it was, undignified, to stand arguing in the bitter cold among toppled gravestones, Wexford couldn't leave it like that. All his resentment had boiled to the surface.
'Ask?' he shouted. 'Ask you when you've made a point of excluding me from everything to do with your work? When you and Denise have conspired to keep quiet about it like a couple of parents turning off the television in front of the child when the sexy play starts? I know when I'm not wanted. Ask!'
Howard's face had fallen glumly at the beginning of this speech, but now a faint smile twitched his lips. He felt in the pocket of his coat while Wexford leaned against the vault, his arms folded defiantly.
'Here, read that. It came two days before you did.' Reassured by the evidence he had produced, Howard spoke firmly now. 'Read it, Rem'
Suspiciously Wexford took the letter. Without his glasses he could only just read it, but he could make out enough. The signature, 'Leonard Crocker', leered blackly at him. '. . . I am confident I can rely on your good sense . . . Your uncle, a close friend of mine and my patient . . . Nothing he wants more than to get completely away from everything connected with police work . . . Better not let him come into any con- tact with . . .'
'We thought we were acting for the best, Reg.'
'Close friend!' Wexford exploded. 'What business has he got interfering with me?' Usually litter-conscious, he forgot his principles and, screwing the letter into a ball, hurled it among the bushes and the crumbling masonry.
Howard burst out laughing. 'I spoke to my own doctor about it,' he said, 'telling him what had been the matter with you and he said you Ludlow how diplomatic they are he said there were two opinions about it but he couldn't see that you'd come to any harm indulging er, your usual tastes. Still, Denise insisted we abide by what your own doctor said. And we did think it was your wish.'
'I took you for a snob,' said his uncle. 'Rank and all that.'
'Did you? That never struck me.' Howard bit his lip. 'You don't know how I've longed for a real talk instead of literary chit-chat, especially now when I'm short of men and up to my eyes in it.' Frowning, still concerned, he said, 'You must be frozen. Here comes my sergeant, so we can get away from ad these storeyed urns and animated busts.'
A thickset man of about forty was approaching them from the direction of St Peter's. He wore the cheerful and practical air of someone totally insensitive to atmosphere, to that of the cemetery and that which subsisted between the two other men. Howard introduced him as Sergeant Clements and presented the chief inspector without saying that Wexford was his uncle or attempting to account for his sudden and surdy astonishing appearance at the scene of a crime.
In such august company the sergeant knew better than to ask questions, or perhaps he had read the Montfort injunction.
'Very pleased to meet you, sir.'
'My uncle,' said Howard, relenting a little, 'is on holiday. He comes from Sussex.'
'I daresay it's a change, sir. No green fields and cows and what-not round here.' He gave Wexford a respectful and somewhat indulgent smile before turning to the superintendent 'I've had another talk.with Tripper, sir, but I've got nothing more out of him.'
'Right. We'll go back to the car. Mr Wexford will be lunching with me, and over lunch I'm going to try to persuade him to give us the benefit of his brains.'