Inspector Burden escorted Archery along the drying pavements to the police station. Archery was ashamed to answer Burden's kindly question as to how he had slept. He had slept heavily and soundly. Perhaps he would also have slept dreamlessly had he known what the inspector now told him, that Elizabeth Crilling was alive.
"She came with us quite willing," Burden said and added rather indiscreetly, "To tell you the truth, sir, I've never seen her so calm and sane and—well, at peace, really."
"You want to go home, I suppose," Wexford said when Burden had left them alone in the blue and yellow office. "You'll have to come back for the inquest and the magistrates' court hearing. You found the body."
Archery sighed. "Elizabeth found a body sixteen years ago. If it hadn't been for her mother's self-seeking vanity, greed for something she had no claim to—that would never have happened. You might say that that greed reached out and destroyed long after its original purpose had been frustrated. Or you might say that Elizabeth bore her mother a grudge because Mrs. Crilling would never let her talk about Painter and bring her terrors to the light of day."
"You might," said Wexford. "It could be all those things. And it could be that when Liz left the chemist's she went back to Glebe Road, Mrs. Crilling was afraid to ask for another prescription, so Liz, in the addict's frenzy, strangled her."
"May I see her?"
"I'm afraid not. I'm beginning to guess just what she saw sixteen years ago and what she told you last night."
"After I'd talked to her I went to see Dr. Crocker. I want you to look at this." Archery gave Wexford Colonel Plashet's letter, silently indicating the relevant passage with his bandaged finger. "Poor Elizabeth," he murmured. "She wanted to give Tess a dress for her fifth birthday. Unless Tess has changed a lot it wouldn't have meant much to her."
Wexford read, closed his eyes briefly and then gave a smile. "I see," he said slowly and restored the letter to its envelope.
"I am right, aren't I? I'm not juggling things, imagining things? You see, I can't trust my own judgment any more. I have to have an opinion from an expert in deduction. I've been to Forby, I've seen a photograph, I've got a letter and I've talked to a doctor. If you had the same clues would you have come to the same conclusions?"
"I'm sure you're very kind, Mr. Archery." Wexford gave a broad ironic grin. "I get more complaints than compliments. Now, as to clues and conclusions, I would, but I'd have been on to it a whole lot sooner.
"You see, it all depends on what you're looking for and the fact is, sir, you didn't know what you were looking for. All the time you were trying to disprove something in the face of—well, you said it—expert deduction. What you've found now achieves the same result as the other thing would have. For you and your son, that is. But it hasn't changed what for justice is status quo. We would have made sure we knew precisely what we were looking for at the start, the basic thing. When you come down to that, it doesn't matter a damn to you who committed the crime. But you were looking through a pair of spectacles that were too big for you."
"A glass darkly," said Archery.
"I can't say I envy you the coming interview."
"Strange," said Archery thoughtfully as he got up to go, "that although we both held such opposing opinions in the end we were both right."
Wexford had said he must come back. He would make his visits short, though, short and blind, his eyes opening only in the court he could see out of this window, his words mere evidence. He had read stories of people transported to strange places, blindfolded and in shuttered cars, so that they should not see the country through which they passed. In his case he would be prevented from seeing visions and associations with those visions, by the presence of those he was legitimately allowed to love. Mary should come with him and Charles and Tess to be his shutters and his hood. Certainly he would never see this room again.
He turned to give it a last glance, but if he hoped to have the last word he was disappointed.
"Both right," said Wexford, giving Archery's hand a gentle clasp. "I by reason and you by faith. Which, taken all in all," he added, "is only what one might expect."
She opened the door to them carefully, grudgingly, as if expecting to see gypsies or a brush salesman from a disreputable firm.
"I hope you'll forgive us, Mrs. Kershaw," Archery said with too loud heartiness."Charles wanted to see Tess and as we were coming this way..."
It is difficult to greet callers, even unwelcome callers, without some kind of a smile. Irene Kershaw did not smile, but she made muttering noises in which he caught the occasional word: "very welcome, I'm sure," "unexpected..." and "not really prepared..." They got into the hall, but it was an awkward manoeuvre and it almost involved pushing past her. She had grown rather red and she said to Charles, now quite coherently: "Tess has popped down to the shops to get a few last-minute things for her holiday." Archery could see that she was angry and that she did not know how to vent her anger on people who were at the same time adults and from a different background from her own. "You've quarrelled haven't you?" she said. "What are you trying to do, break her heart?" Apparently she was capable of emotion, but once she had shown it, not capable of control. Tears welled into her eyes. "Oh dear ... I didn't mean to say that."
Archery had explained everything to Charles in the car. He was to find Tess, get her alone and tell her. Now he said "You might go down the hill, Charles, and see if you can meet her coming up, she'll be glad of a hand with her basket."
Charles hesitated, possibly because he was at a loss to answer Mrs. Kershaw's accusation and could not bring himself to echo so exaggerated an expression as "a broken heart." Then he said, "I'm going to marry Tess. That's what I've always wanted."
The colour died out of her face and now that there was no occasion for them the tears trickled down her cheeks. Archery would, under other circumstances, have been embarrassed. Now he realised that this mood of hers, tears, a lukewarm resentment that might be her nearest approach to passion, would make her receptive to what he had to say. A tired tigress apparently lurked under that dull suburban exterior, a mother beast capable of being roused only when its young was threatened.
Charles let himself out of the front door. Archery, left alone with her, wondered where the other children were and how soon Kershaw himself would return. Again he was finding himself, when in the sole company of this woman, at a loss for words. She made no effort to help him, but stood stiff and expressionless, dabbing at the tearmarks with the tips of her fingers.
"Perhaps we could sit down?" He made a gesture towards the glass door. "I should like to have a talk, settle things, I..."
She was recovering fast, tunnelling back into the sanctuary of her respectability. "You'd like some tea?"
The mood must not be allowed to peter out into small-talk over the cups. "No," he said, "no, really..."
She went before him into the living room. There were the books, the Reader's Digests, the dictionaries and the works on deep sea fishing. The portrait of Jill on the easel was finished and Kershaw had made the amateur's mistake of not knowing when to stop, so that the likeness had been lost in last-minute touches. In the garden which was spread before him with the unreality and the garish colours of a cushion cover in gros point, the Paul Crampel geraniums burned so brightly that they hurt his eyes.