He wouldn’t see Rushworth yet. First he needed enlightenment as to the man’s character and veracity.
“To get away from this house!” Gemma said. “Just to get away for a little while.” She put her arms round Burden’s neck and clung to him. “Where shall we go?”
“You decide.”
“I’d like London. You can lose yourself there, be just one in a lovely enormous crowd. And there are lights all night and things going on and . . .” She paused, biting her lip, perhaps at the look of horror on Burden’s face. “No, you’d hate it. We aren’t much alike, are we, Mike?”
He didn’t answer that. He wasn’t going to admit it aloud. “Why’ not somewhere on the coast?” he said.
“The sea?” She had been an actress, if not a very successful one, and she put all the loneliness and depth and vastness of the sea into those two words. He wondered why she had shivered. Then she said, “I don’t mind if you’d like to. But not to a big resort where you might see - well, families, people with - with children.”
“I thought of Eastover. It’s November, so there won’t be children.”
“All right.” She didn’t point out to him that he had asked her to decide. “We’ll go to Eastover.” Her lips trembled. “It’ll be fun,” she said.
“Everyone will think I’ve gone to Eastbourne with Grace and the children. I’d rather it was that way.”
“So that they can’t get hold of you?” She nodded with a kind of sage innocence. “I see. You remind me of Leonie. She always tells people she’s going to one place when really she’s going somewhere else so that she won’t be badgered with letters and phone calls.”
“It wasn’t that,” Burden said. “It’s just - well, I don’t want anyone . . . Not until we’re married, Gemma.”
She smiled, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. He saw that she really didn’t understand him at all, his need to be respectable, to put a good face on things. They didn’t speak the same language.
It was Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Mitchell, that creature of routine, was cleaning her landing window. While she talked she clutched a pink duster in one hand and a bottle of pink cleaning fluid in the other and, because she refused to sit down, Wexford couldn’t either.
“Of course I should have known if it was Mr. Rushworth,” she said. “Why, his own little boy, his Andrew, was playing there with the others. Besides, Mr. Rushworth’s quite a big man and the man I saw was little, very small-made. I told, the other officer what little hands he had. Mr. Rushworth wouldn’t pick leaves.”
“How many children has he?”
"Four. There’s Paul - he’s fifteen - and two little girls and Andrew. I’m not saying they’re my idea of good parents, mind. Those children are allowed to do just what they please, and Mrs. Rushworth didn’t take a blind bit of notice when I warned her about that man, but do a thing like that . . .! No, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there.”
Perhaps he had. Wexford left Mrs. Mitchell to her window-cleaning and crossed the swings field. The year was far too advanced now for any children to play there and there would be no more freak summers. The roundabout looked as if it had never spun on its scarlet axis and mould had begun to grow on the seesaw. Hardly a leaf remained on the trees, oak and ash and sycamore, which grew between the field and Mill Lane. He touched the lower branches and fancied that here and there he could see where a twig had been snapped off. Then, in a more ungainly fashion, he was sure, than the leaf-picker and his young companion, he scrambled down the bank.
Briskly he walked the length of the lane, telling himself it was as much for his health’s sake as for duty. He hadn’t expected to find anyone at home in the rented cottage but Harry Wild’s friend was off work with a cold. Leaving again after a quarter of an hour, Wexford was afraid his visit had only served to raise the man’s temperature, so heated had he been on the subject of Rushworth, a far from ideal landlord. Unless the tenant’s account was exaggerated, it appeared that the whole Rushworth family was in the habit of entering the cottage, helping themselves to garden produce and occasionally removing small pieces of furniture for which they substituted pencilled notes of explanation. They had retained a key of their own and the tenant paid so low a rent that he was afraid to expostulate. At any rate, Wexford now knew the identity of the boy who had been seen leaving the cottage that February afternoon. Beyond a doubt, it had been Paul Rushworth.
The day had been dull and overcast and now evening was closing in, although it was scarcely five, Wexford felt a first few drops of rain. On just such a day and at much this time Stella had followed the road he was taking, quickening her steps perhaps, wishing she had more to protect her than a thin riding jacket. Or had she even come so far back towards Stowerton? Had her journey - and her life - taken her no further than the cottage he had just left?
He had immersed himself so much in Stella, mentally transmuting his own elderly, male and stout body into the slight form of a twelve-year-old girl, that when he heard the sounds ahead of him he stepped back on to the grass verge and listened with a kind of hope.
The sounds were of horse’s hooves. A horse was coming round the bend in the lane.
He was Stella, not old Reg Wexford. He was alone and a bit frightened and it was beginning to rain, but Swan was coming . . . On a horse? One horse for two people? Why not in a car?
The horse and its rider came into sight. Wexford shook himself back into himself and called out. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fenn.”
The riding instructress reined in the big grey. “Isn’t he lovely?” she said. “I wish he was mine, but I’ve got to take him back to Miss Williams at Equita. We’ve had such a nice afternoon out, haven’t we, Silver?” She patted the animal’s neck. “You haven’t – er - caught anyone yet? The man who killed poor Stella Swan?”
Wexford shook his head.
“Stella Rivers, I should say. I don’t know why I find it so confusing. After all, I’ve got two names myself and half my friends call me Margaret and half by my second name. I ought not to get mixed up. Must be getting old.”
Wexford felt no inclination for gallantry and simply asked if she had ever seen Rushworth in the grounds of Saltram House.
“Bob Rushworth? Now you come to mention it, he and his wife were up here a lot last winter and she actually asked me if I thought it would be all right for them to take one of the statues away with them. The one that was lying down in the grass, you know.”
“You said nothing about this before.”
“Well, of course not,” said Mrs. Fenn, bending over to coo into the horse’s ear. “I know the Rushworths, I’ve known them for years. Paul calls me auntie. I suppose they wanted the statue for their garden. It’s not my place to say whether you can have it or you can’t, I said, and they didn’t take it, did they?” She edged herself more comfortably into the saddle. “If you’ll excuse me I must be on my way. Silver’s very highly bred and he gets nervous when it’s dark.” The horse lifted its head and emitted a loud whinny of agreement. “Never mind, darling,” said Mrs. Fenn. “Soon be home with Mother,”
Wexford went on. The rain was falling thinly but steadily. He passed Saltram Lodge and entered that part of the lane which was most thickly overshadowed by trees. They thinned out after two or three hundred yards to disclose the celebrated view of the great house.