“All those damp exercise yards, I daresay.”
“Oh, give over, will you? My friend has got some info as’ll open your eyes all right, re the antecedents of Mr. Ivor Bloody Swan.”
If Wexford was surprised, he didn’t show it. “He has no antecedents,” he said coldly, “or not what you mean by the term.”
“Not wrote down, I daresay. Not all our misdemeanours is recorded, Mr. Wexford, not by a long chalk. I’ve heard it said there’s more murderers walking the streets free as ever got topped on account of them as they murdered being thought to have died natural.”
Wexford rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully at Monkey. “Let’s see your friend,” he said, “and hear what he’s got to say. It might be worth a few bob.”
“He would want paying.”
“I’m sure he would.”
“He made a point of that,” said Monkey conversationally.
Wexford got up and opened a window to let some of the smoke out. “I’m a busy man, Monkey. I can’t hang about fencing with you all day. How much?”
“A monkey,” said Monkey succinctly.
In a pleasant but distant voice, tinged with incredulous outrage, Wexford said, “You must be off your nut if you seriously think the government is going to pay five hundred pounds to a clapped-out old lag for information it can get for nothing out of a file.”
“Five hundred,” Monkey repeated, “and if it all works out nice, the two thou reward the uncle’s putting up.” He coughed thickly but with no sign of distress. “If you don’t want nothing to do with it,” he said sweetly, “my friend can always go to the chief constable. He’s called Griswold, isn’t he?”
“Don’t you bloody threaten me!” said Wexford.
“Threaten? Who’s threatening? This info’s in the public interest, that’s what it is.”
Wexford said firmly, “You can bring your friend along here and then we’ll see. Might be worth a couple of nicker.”
“He won’t come here. He wouldn’t go voluntary like into a fuzz box. Different to me, he is. But him and me, we’ll be in the Pony six sharp tonight and I dare say he’d accept a friendly overture in the form of liquor.”
Was it possible that there was something in this story? Wexford wondered after Monkey had gone. And immediately he recalled Rivers’ hints as to the death of Swan’s aunt. Suppose, after all, that Swan had hastened the old lady’s departure? Poison, maybe. That would be in Swan’s line, a lazy, slow way of killing. And suppose this friend of Monkey’s had been in service in the house, an odd-job man or even a butler? He might have seen something, extracted something, kept it hidden for years in his bosom . . .
Wexford came down to earth and, laughing, quoted to himself a favourite passage from Jane Austen:
“Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known in a country like this where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”
Long ago he had learned these lines by heart. They had been of constant service to him and, when inclined to sail away on flights of fancy, kept his feet firmly on the ground.
It was much too late now to go out for lunch. The staff of the Carousel looked askance at you if you arrived for your midday meal after one-thirty. Wexford sent to the canteen for sandwiches and had eaten the first half-round when the report on the lock of hair came in from the lab. The hair, Wexford read, was a child’s but not John Lawrence’s. Comparison had been made with the strands taken from John’s hairbrush. Understanding only about twenty-five per cent of the technical jargon, Wexford did his best to follow just how they could be so certain the hairs in the brush differed from the hairs in the cut lock, and finally had to be content to know that they did differ.
His phone rang. It was Loring from the room where all the calls connected with the Lawrence and Rivers cases were received and checked.
“I think you’ll want to take this one, sir.”
Immediately Wexford thought of Monkey Matthews and just as quickly dismissed the thought. Monkey had never been known to use a telephone.
“Record it, Loring,” he said, and then, “Is it from a call box?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. We can’t trace it.”
“Put him on,” said Wexford.
As soon as he heard the voice he knew an attempt was being made to disguise it. A couple of pebbles in the man’s mouth, he decided. But some quality, the pitch perhaps, couldn’t be disguised. Wexford recognised the voice. Not its owner, nor could he recall where he had seen the speaker, what he had said or anything about him. But he was sure he recognised the voice.
“I’m not prepared to give my name,” it said. “I’ve written to you twice.”
“Your letters were received.” Wexford had stood up to take the call and from where he stood he could see the High Street and see a woman tenderly lifting a baby from a pram to take it with her into a shop. His anger was immense and he could feel the dangerous blood pounding in his head.
“You played around with me this morning. That’s not going to happen tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Wexford said evenly.
“I shall be in the grounds of Saltram House tomorrow by the fountains. I’ll be there at six p.m. with John. And I want the mother to come for him. Alone.”
“Where are you speaking from?”
“My farm,” said the voice, growing squeaky. “I’ve got a three-hundred-acre farm not so far from here. It’s a fur farm, mink, rabbits, chinchillas, the lot. John doesn’t know I keep them for their fur. That would only upset him, wouldn’t it?”
Wexford caught the authentic note of derangement He didn’t know whether this comforted or distressed him. He was thinking about the voice which he had heard before, a thin high voice, its possessor quick to take offence, looking for insult where none existed.
“You haven’t got John,” he said. “That hair you sent me wasn’t John’s.” Scorn and rage made him forget caution. “You are an ignorant man. Hair can be as precisely identified as blood these days.”
Heavy breathing at the other end of the line succeeded this statement. Wexford felt that he had scored. He drew breath to let loose vituperation, but before he could speak the voice said coldly:
“D’you think I don’t know that? I cut that hair from Stella Rivers.”
Chapter 13
The Piebald Pony is not the kind of pub connoisseurs of rural England normally associate with her country side. Indeed, if you approach it from the direction of Sparta Grove, and if you keep your eyes down so that you cannot see the green surrounding hills, you would not suppose yourself in the country at all. Sparta Grove and Charteris Road which it joins at a right angle - on this corner stands the Piebald Pony - resemble the back streets of an industrial city. A few of the houses have narrow front gardens, but most doors open directly on to the pavement, as do the entrances to the Pony’s public and saloon bars.
One of these rooms fronts Sparta Grove, the other Charteris Road, They are the same shape and size and the saloon bar is distinguished from the public only in that drinks cost more in the former, about a third of its stone floor is covered with a square of brown Axminster and its seating includes a couple of settees, upholstered in battered black, of the kind that used to be seen in railway waiting rooms.