“And every fancier being checked?” said Burden, unsmiling.
Wexford nodded. “And I know the bloody thing’s a hoax,” he said. “I shall spend the best part of my week end - and so will dozens of other policemen - chasing rabbits and farmers and checking shot-gun licences and being polite to human hair experts, but I know very well it’s a hoax and what I’m doing is an utter waste of time.”
“But it has to be done.”
“Of course it has to be done. Let’s go to lunch.”
At the Carousel Café only ham and salad was left on the menu. Wexford picked without enthusiasm at the salad in which lettuce leaves were economically eked out with shreds of cabbage and carrot. “Can’t get away from rabbits,” he muttered. “Want me to tell you about Swan and his wife?”
“I suppose I ought to have a bit of background.”
“Usually,” Wexford began, “you feel too much sympathy with the parents of a lost child. You find your emotions getting involved.” He shifted his gaze from his plate to Burden’s face and pursed his lips. “Which doesn’t help,” he said. “I didn’t feel particularly sorry for them. You’ll see why not in a minute.” Clearing his throat, he went on, “After Stella disappeared, we did more research into the life and background of Ivor Swan than I can ever remember doing with anyone. I could write his biography.”
“He was born in India, the son of one General Sir Rodney Swan, and he was sent home to school and then to Oxford. Being in possession of what he calls small private means, he never took up any particular career but dabbled at various things. At one time he managed an estate for someone, but he soon got the sack. He wrote a novel which sold three hundred copies, so he never repeated that experiment. Instead he had a spell in P.R. and in three months lost his firm an account worth twenty thousand a year. Utter ingrained laziness is what characterises Ivor Swan. He is indolence incarnate. Oh, and he’s good-looking, staggeringly so, in fact. Wait till you see.”
Burden poured himself a glass of water but said nothing. He was watching Wexford’s expression warm and liven as he pursued his theme. Once he too had been able to involve himself as raptly in the characters of suspects.
“Swan rarely had any settled home,” Wexford said. “Sometimes he lived with his widowed mother at her house in Bedfordshire, sometimes with an uncle who had been some sort of big brass in the Air Force. And now I come to an interesting point about him. Wherever he goes he seems to leave disaster behind him. Not because of what he does but because of what he doesn’t do. There was a bad fire at his mother’s house while he was staying there. Swan had fallen asleep with a cigarette burning in his fingers. Then there was the loss of the P.R. account because of what he didn’t do; the sacking from the estate management job - he left a pretty mess behind him there - on account of his laziness.”
“About two years ago he found himself in Karachi. At that time he was calling himself a free-lance journalist and the purpose of his visit was to enquire into the alleged smuggling of gold by airline staff. Any story he concocted would probably have been libellous, but, as it happened, it was never written or, at any rate, no newspaper printed it.”
“Peter Rivers worked for an airline in Karachi, not as a pilot but among the ground staff, meeting aircraft, weighing baggage, that sort of thing, and he lived with his wife and daughter in a company house. In the course of his snooping Swan made friends with Rivers. It would be mote to the point to say he made friends with Rivers’ wife.”
“You mean he took her away from him?” Burden hazarded.
“If you can imagine Swan doing anything as active as taking anyone or anything away from anyone else. I should rather say that the fair Rosalind – ‘From the East to Western Ind no jewel is like Rosalind’ - fastened herself to Swan and held on tight. The upshot was that Swan returned to England plus Rosalind and Stella and about a year later Rivers got his decree.”
“The three of them all lived in a poky flat Swan took in Maida Vale, but after they were married Swan, or more likely Rosalind, decided the place wasn’t big enough and they came out here to Hall Farm.”
“Where did he get the money to buy a farm?”
“Well, in the first place it isn’t a farm any more but a chichi tarted-up farmhouse with all the land let off. Secondly, he didn’t buy it. It was part of the property held under a family trust. Swan put out feelers to his uncle and he let him have Hall Farm at a nominal rent.”
“Life’s very easy for some people, isn’t it?” said Burden, thinking of mortgages and hire purchase and grudgingly granted bank loans. “No money worries, no housing problems.”
“They came here last October, a year ago; Stella was sent to the convent at Sewingbury - uncle paid the fees - and Swan let her have these riding lessons. He rides himself and hunts a bit. Nothing in a big way, but then he doesn’t do anything in a big way.”
“As to Rivers, he’d been having it off on the quiet with some air hostess and he also has married again. Swan, Rosalind and Stella plus an au pair girl settled down quite comfortably at Hall Farm, and then, bang in the middle of all this bliss, Stella disappears. Beyond a doubt, Stella is dead, murdered.”
“It seems clear,” said Burden, “that Swan can have had nothing to do with it.”
Wexford said obstinately, “He had no alibi. And there was something else, something less tangible, something in the personality of the man himself.”
“He sounds too lazy ever to commit an aggressive act.”
“I know, I know.” Wexford almost groaned the words. “And he had led, in the eyes of the law, a blameless life. No history of violence, mental disturbance or even bad temper. He hadn’t even the reputation of a philanderer, Casual girl friends, yes, but until he met Rosalind he had never been married or engaged to be married or even lived with a woman. But he had a history of a sort, a history of disaster. There’s a line in rather a sinister sonnet – ‘They that have power to hurt and yet do none.’ I don’t think that means they don’t do any hurt but that they do nothing. That’s Swan. If he didn’t do this killing it happened because of him or through him or because he is what he is. D’you think that’s all airy-fairy moonshine?’
“Yes,” said Burden firmly.
St. Luke’s Little Summer maintained its glory, at least by day. The hedges were a delicate green-gold and frost had not yet bitten into blackness the chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies in cottage gardens. The year was growing old gracefully.
The farm was approached by a narrow lane scattered with fallen leaves and overhung by hedges of Old Man’s Beard, the vapourish, thistledown seed heads of the wild clematis, and here and there, behind the fluffy masses, rose Scotch pines, their trunks a rich coral pink where the sun caught them. A long low building of stone and slate stood at the end of this lane, but most of its stonework was obscured by the flame and scarlet virginia creeper which covered it.
“Du coté de chez Swan,” said Wexford softly.
Proustian references were lost on Burden. He was looking at the man who had come round from the back of the house, leading a big chestnut gelding.
Wexford left the car and went up to him. “We’re a little early, Mr. Swan. I hope we’re not putting you out?”
“No,” said Swan. “We got back sooner than we expected. I was going to exercise Sherry but that can wait.
“This is Inspector Burden.”
“How do you do?” said Swan, extending a hand. “Very pleasant, all this sunshine, isn’t it? D’you mind coming round the back way?”