He was certainly an extremely handsome man. Burden decided this without being able to say in what his handsomeness lay, for Ivor Swan was neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, and his eyes were of that indeterminate colour men call grey for want of more accurate term. His features had no special regularity, his figure, though lean, no sign of athletic muscular development. But he moved with an entirely masculine grace, exuded a vague lazy charm and had about him an air of attractiveness, of making himself immediately noticed.
His voice was soft and beautiful, the words he used slowly enunciated. He seemed to have all the time in the world, a procrastinator who would always put off till tomorrow what he couldn’t bring himself to do today. About thirty-three or thirty-four, Burden thought, but he could easily pass fox twenty-five to a less discerning observer.
The two policemen followed him into a kind of lobby or back kitchen where a couple of guns and an assortment of fishing tackle hung above neat rows of riding boots and wellingtons.
“Don’t keep rabbits, do you, Mr. Swan?” Wexford asked.
Swan shook his head. “I shoot them, or try to, if they come on my land.”
In the kitchen proper two women were engaged on feminine tasks. The younger, an ungainly dark girl, was preparing - if the heaps of vegetables, tins of dried herbs, eggs and mincemeat spread on the counter in front of her were anything to go by - what Burden chauvinistically thought of as a continental mess. Well away from the chopping and splashing, a minute doll-like blonde was ironing shirts. Five or six had already been ironed. There were at least that number remaining. Burden noticed that she was taking extreme care not to cause a horizontal crease to appear under the yoke of the shirt she was at present attending to, an error into which hasty or careless women often fall and which makes the removal of a jacket by its wearer an embarrassment.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Swan. I wonder if I may trouble you for a few minutes?”
Rosalind Swan had a girlish air, a featherlight “bovver” haircut and nothing in her face or manner to show that eight months before she had been deprived of her only child. She wore white tights and pink buckled shoes, but Burden thought she was as old as he.
“I like to see personally to all my husband’s laundry,” she declared in a manner Burden could only describe as merry, “and Gudrun can’t be expected to give his shirts that little extra wifely touch, can she?”
From long experience Burden had learnt that if a man is having an affair with another woman and, in that woman’s presence, his wife makes a more than usually coquettish and absurd remark, he will instinctively exchange a glance of disgust with his mistress. He had no reason to suppose Gudrun was anything more than an employee to Swan - she was no beauty, that was certain - but, as Mrs. Swan spoke, he watched the other two. Gudrun didn’t look up and Swan’s eyes were on his wife. It was an appreciative, affectionate glance he gave her and he seemed to find nothing ridiculous in what she had said.
“You can leave my shirts till later, Rozzy.”
Burden felt that Swan often made remarks of this nature. Everything could be put off till another day, another time. Idleness or chat took precedence over activity always with him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Mrs. Swan said gaily:
“Shall we go into the lounge, my love?”
Wexford just looked at him, his face impassive.
The “lounge” was furnished with chintzy chairs, doubtful antiques, and, hanging here and there, brass utensils of no apparent use to a modern or, come to that, ancient household. It reflected no particular taste, had no individuality, and Burden remembered that Hall Farm, doubtless with all its contents, had been supplied to Swan by an uncle because he had nowhere else to live.
Linking her arm into her husband’s, Mrs. Swan led him to a sofa where she perched beside him, disengaged arms and took his hand. Swan allowed himself to be thus manipulated in a passive fashion and seemed to admire his wife.
“None of these names mean anything to me, Chief Inspector,” he said when he had looked at the list. “What about you, Roz?”
“I don’t think so, my love.”
Her love said, “I saw in the paper about the missing boy. You think the cases have some connection?”
“Very possibly, Mr. Swan. You say you don’t know any of the people on this list. Do you know Mrs. Gemma Lawrence?”
“We hardly know anyone around here,” said Rosalind Swan. “You might say we’ll still on our honeymoon, really.
Burden thought this a tasteless remark. The woman was all of thirty-eight and married a year. He waited for her to say something about the child who had never been found, to show some feeling for her, but Mrs. Swan was looking with voracious pride at her husband. He thought it time to put his own spoke in and he said flatly:
“Can you account for your movements on Thursday afternoon, sir?”
The man wasn’t very tall, had small hands, and any one could fake a limp. Besides, Wexford had said he hadn’t had an alibi for that other Thursday afternoon . . .
“You’ve quite cast me for the role of kidnapper, haven’t you?’ Swan said to Wexford.
“It was Mr. Burden who asked you,” Wexford said imperturbably.
“I shall never forget the way you hounded me when we lost poor little Stella.”
“Poor little Stella,” Mrs. Swan echoed comfortably.
“Don’t get upset, Rozzy. You know I don’t like it when you’re upset. All right, what was I doing on Thursday afternoon? Every time you add anyone to your missing persons list I suppose I must expect this sort of inquisition. I was here last Thursday. My wife was in London and Gudrun had the afternoon off. I was here all alone. I read for a bit and had a nap.” A flicker of temper crossed his face. “Oh, and at about four I rode over to Stowerton and murdered a couple of tots that were making the streets look untidy.”
“Oh, Ivor, darling!”
“That sort of thing isn’t amusing, Mr. Swan.”
“No, and it’s not amusing for me to be suspected of making away with two children, one of them my own wife’s.”
No more could be got out of him. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Burden as they drove back, “did she go on calling herself Rivers after her mother remarried?”
“Sometimes she was one, sometimes the other, as far as I could gather. When she became a missing person she was Stella Rivers to us because that was her real name. Swan said he intended to have the name changed by deed poll, but he hadn’t taken any steps towards it. Typical of him.”
“Tell me about this non-existent alibi,” said Burden.
Chapter 6
Martin, Loring and their helpers were still interviewing rabbit-keepers, Bryant, Gates and half a dozen others continuing a house-to-house search of Stowerton. During the chief inspector’s absence Constable Peach had brought in a child’s sandal which he had found in a field near Flagford, but it was the wrong size, and, anyway, John Lawrence hadn’t been wearing sandals.
Wexford read the messages which had been left on his desk, but most were negative and some needed immediate attention. He scanned the anonymous note again, then put it back in its envelope with a sigh.
"We had enough letters in the Stella Rivers case to paper the walls of this office,” he said, “and we followed them all up. We had five hundred and twenty-three phone calls. The fantasies that go on in people’s minds, Mike, the power of their imaginations! They were nearly all well intentioned. Ninety per cent of them really thought they had seen Stella and . . .”