The woman kept stooping down to collect shells and once she stumbled. When she stood up again he noticed that she dragged her leg and he wondered if he should go down the seaweedy steps and cross the sands to offer her his help. But perhaps that would mean bringing her back to the hotel while he fetched his car, and the sound of the ‘child’s voice would awaken Gemma . . .
They rounded the foot of the cliff, going towards Chine Warren. Receding fast, the tide seemed to be drawing the sea back into the heart of the red sunset, a November sunset which is the most lovely of the whole year.
Now the great wide sweep of, beach was deserted, but its young visitors had left evidence behind them. As sure as he could be that he was unobserved, Burden walked down the steps, pretending to stroll casually. The two sandcastles stood proudly erect, as if confident of their endurance until the sea conquered them, rushing them away when it returned at midnight. He hesitated, the rational sensible man momentarily intervening, and then he kicked over their turrets and stamped on their battlements until the sand they were made of was as flat as the surrounding shore.
Once more the beach belonged to him and Gemma. John or his deputies, his representatives, should not take her away from him. He was a man and any day a match for a lost dead child.
Rushworth came to the door in his duffel coat.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I was just going to take the dog out.”
“Postpone it for half an hour, will you?”
Not very willingly, Rushworth took off his coat, hung up the lead and led Wexford into a living room amid the cries of the disappointed terrier. Two teenage children were watching television, a girl of about eight sat at the table doing a jigsaw puzzle, and on the floor, lying on his stomach, was the most junior member of the family, Andrew, who had been John Lawrence’s friend.
“I’d like to talk to you alone,” said Wexford.
It was a biggish house with what Rushworth, in one of his house agent’s blurbs, would perhaps have described as three reception rooms. That evening none was fit for the reception of anyone except possibly a second-hand-furniture dealer. The Rushworths were apparently acquisitive creatures, snappers up of anything they could get for nothing, and Wexford, seating himself in this morning room-cum-study-cum-library, observed a set of Dickens he had surely last seen in Pomfret Grange before the Rogerses sold out and two stone urns whose design seemed very much in keeping with the other garden ornaments of Saltram House.
“I’ve racked my brains and I can’t tell you another thing about the fellows in that search party.”
“I’ve not come about that,” said Wexford. “Did you pinch those urns from Saltram House?”
“Pinch’ is a bit strong,” said Rushworth, taming red. “They were lying about and no one wanted them.”
“You had your eye on one of the statues too, didn’t you?”
“What’s this got to do with John Lawrence?”
Wexford shrugged. “I don’t know. It might have something to do with Stella Rivers. To put it in a nutshell, I’m here to know where you were and what you were doing on February 25th.”
“How can I remember that far back? I know what it is, it’s Margaret Fenn putting you up to all this. Just because I complained my girl wasn’t doing as well as she should at her riding lessons.” Rushworth opened the door and shouted, “Eileen!”
When she wasn’t at work, typing specifications for her husband, Mrs. Rushworth managed this sprawling household single-handed and it showed. She looked dowdy and harassed and her skirt hem was coming down at the back. Perhaps there was some foundation in the gossip that her husband chased the girls.
“Where were you that Thursday?” she enquired of him. “In the office, I suppose. I know where I was. I got it all sorted out in my mind when there was all that fuss about Stella Rivers being missing. It was half-term and I’d taken Andrew to work with me. He came with me in the car to pick Linda up from. Equita and - oh, yes – Paul - that’s my eldest - he came too and dropped off at the cottage. There was a little table there we thought we might as well have here. But we didn’t see Stella. I didn’t even know her by sight.”
“Your husband was in the office when you got back?”
“Oh, yes. He waited for me to get back before he went out in the car.”
“What kind of a car, Mr. Rushworth?”
“Jaguar. Maroon colour. Your people have already been all over my car on account of its being a Jaguar and a kind of red colour. Look, we didn’t know Stella Rivers. As far as we know, we’d never even seen her. Until she disappeared I’d only heard of her through Margaret always going on about how marvellous she was on a horse.”
Wexford favoured them with a hard, unsympathetic stare. He was thinking deeply, fitting in puzzle pieces, casting aside irrelevancies.
“You,” he said to Rushworth, “were at work when Stella disappeared. When John disappeared you were in Sewingbury waiting for a client who never turned up.” He turned to Mrs. Rushworth. “You were at work when John disappeared. When Stella vanished you were driving back from Equita along Mill Lane. Did you pass anyone?”
“Nobody,” said Mrs. Bushworth firmly. ‘Paul was still in the cottage. I know that - he’d put a light on - and, well, I’d better be quite frank with you. He’d actually been in Margaret Fenn’s place too. I’m sure he had because the front door was open, just a little bit ajar. I know he shouldn’t, though she does always leave her back door unlocked and when he was little she used to say he could let himself in and see her whenever he liked. Of course, it’s different now he’s so old, and I’ve told him again and again . . .”
“Never mind,” Wexford said suddenly. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If you wanted to talk to Paul . . . I mean, if it would clear the air . . .?”
“I don’t want to see him.” Wexford got up abruptly. He didn’t want to see anyone at all. He knew the answer. It had begun to come to him when Rushworth called out to his wife and now nothing remained but to sit down somewhere in utter silence and work it all out.
Chapter 21
“Our last day,” said Burden. “Where would you like to go? Shall we have a quiet drive somewhere and lunch in a pub?”
“I don’t mind. Anything you say?’ She took his hand, held it against her face for a moment, and burst out, as if she had kept the words inside her, burning and corroding for many hours, “I’ve got a dreadful feeling, a sort of premonition, that when we get back we’ll hear that they’ve found him.”
“John?”
“And - and the man who killed him,” she whispered.
“They’d let us know.”
“They don’t know where we are, Mike. No one knows.”
Slowly and evenly he said, “It will be better for you when you know it for sure. Terrible pain is better than terrible anxiety.” But was it? Was it better for him to know that Jean was dead than to fear she would die? Terrible anxiety always contains terrible hope. “Better for you,” he said firmly. “And then, when it’s behind you, you can start your new life?’