Archery ignored this last. "He and Mrs. Primero belonged to the same blood group," he said.
"They were both Group O. They weren't quite so accurate about the minute grouping of blood sixteen years ago as they are now. It was handy for Painter, that. But it didn't do him any real good."
The clergyman crossed his legs and leaned back. Wexford could see he was trying to appear relaxed and making a poor job of it. "I believe you personally went to interview Painter after the crime was discovered?"
"We were round at the coach house by a quarter to eight. Painter was out. I asked Mrs. Painter where he was and she said he'd come back from the big house some time after six-thirty, washed his hands and gone straight out again. He'd told her he was going to Stowerton to see his friend. We'd only been there about ten minutes when he came in. His story didn't stand up, there was far too much blood around to have come from a cut finger and—well, you know the rest. It's all down there. I charged him on the spot."
The transcript fluttered a little in Archery's hand. He could not keep his fingers quite steady. "In evidence," he said, speaking slowly and evenly, "Painter said he hadn't been to Stowerton. 'I waited at the bus stop at the end of the lane, but the bus never came. I saw the police cars turn into the lane and I wondered what was up. Presently I felt a bit faint on account of my finger bleeding a lot. I came back to my flat. I thought my wife might know what it was all about.' " After a pause, he added with a kind of pleading eagerness, "That doesn't sound like the evidence of the complete moron you make him out to be."
Wexford answered him patiently as if he were talking to a precocious teenager. "They edit these things, Mr. Archery. They condense them, make them sound coherent. Believe me. You weren't in court and I was. As to the truth of that statement, I was in one of those police cars and I was keeping my eyes open. We overtook the Stowerton bus and turned left into the lane. There wasn't anyone waiting at that bus stop."
"I imagine you mean that while he said he was at the bus stop he was in fact hiding some clothes."
"Of course he was hiding the clothes! When he was working he habitually wore a raincoat. You'll see that in Mrs. Crilling's evidence and in Alice's. Sometimes it hung in the coach house and sometimes on a hook behind the back door of Victor's Piece. Painter said he had worn it that evening and had left it hanging on the back door. That raincoat couldn't be found. Both Alice and Roger Primero said they remembered having seen it on the back door that afternoon, but Mrs. Crilling was certain it wasn't there when she brought Elizabeth in at seven."
"You finally found the raincoat rolled up in a ball under a hedge two fields away from the bus stop."
"The raincoat plus a pullover," Wexford retorted, "and a pair of rubber gloves. The lot was sodden with blood."
"But anyone could have worn the raincoat and you couldn't identify the pullover."
"Alice Flower went so far as to say it looked like one Painter sometimes wore."
Archery gave a deep sigh. For a time he had been firing questions and statements briskly at Wexford, but suddenly he had fallen silent. Little more than indecision showed on his face. Wexford waited. At last, he thought, Archery had reached a point where it was going to become necessary to reveal those "personal reasons". A struggle was going on within him and he said in an artificial tone: "What about Painter's wife?"
"A wife cannot be compelled to give evidence against her husband. As you know, she didn't appear at the trial. She and the child went off somewhere and a couple of years later I heard she'd married again."
He stared at Archery, raising his eyebrows. Something he had said had made the clergyman's mind up for him. A slight flush coloured Archery's even tan. The brown eyes were very bright as he leaned forward, tense again.
"That child..."
"What of her? She was asleep in her cot when we searched Painter's bedroom and that's the only time I saw her. She was four or five."
Archery said jerkily, "She's twenty-one now and she's a very beautiful young woman."
"I'm not surprised. Painter was a nice enough looking fellow if you like the type, and Mrs. Painter was pretty." Wexford stopped. Archery was a clergyman. Had Painter's daughter taken after her father and somehow come into his care as a result of her transgressions? Archery could be a prison visitor. It was right up his street, Wexford thought nastily. Anger rose in his throat as he wondered if all this sparring discussion had been engineered merely because Archery wanted his help in getting the right psychological approach to a convicted thief or confidence woman. "What about her?" he snapped. Griswold could go to hell! "Now come on, sir, you'd better tell me and have done."
"I have a son, Chief Inspector, an only child. He also is twenty-one..."
"Well?"
Obviously the clergyman had difficulty in framing the words. He hesitated and pressed his long hands together. At last he said diffidently and in a low voice, "He wishes to marry Miss Painter." When Wexford started and stared at him, he added, "or Miss Kershaw, as her legal name now is."
Wexford was all at sea. He was astonished, a rare thing for him, and he felt a sharp-edged excitement. But he had shown all the surprise he thought consistent with policy and now he spoke soberly.
"You must excuse me, Mr. Archery, but I can't see how your son, the son of an Anglican clergyman, came to meet a girl in Miss Painter's—er, Miss Kershaw's—position."
"They met at Oxford," Archery said easily.
"At the university?"
"That is so. Miss Kershaw is quite an intelligent young woman." Archery gave a slight smile. "She's reading Modern Greats. Tipped for a First, I'm told."
4
If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.
If he had been asked to predict the future of such a one as Theresa Painter, what would he have foreseen for her? Children like her, Wexford reflected as he recovered from his second shock, children like Painter's little girl started life with a liability and a stain. The surviving parent, well-meaning relatives and cruel schoolfellows often made matters worse. He had hardly thought about the fate of the child until today. Now, thinking quickly, he supposed he would have counted her lucky to have become an anonymous manual worker with perhaps already a couple of petty convictions.
Instead to Theresa Painter had apparently come the greatest blessings of civilised life: brains, advanced education, beauty, friendship with people like this vicar, an engagement to this vicar's son.
Wexford cast his mind back to the first of only three encounters with Mrs. Painter. A quarter to eight it had been on that Sunday in September. He and the sergeant with him had knocked on the door at the foot of the coach house stairs and Mrs. Painter had come down to let them in. Whatever might have been fashionable in London at that time, the young women of Kingsmarkham were still doing their hair in a big pile on the forehead with tight curls falling to the shoulders. Mrs. Painter was no exception. Hers was naturally fair, her face was powdered and her mouth painted diffidently red. Respectable provincial matrons did not go in for eye make-up in 1950 and Mrs. Painter was of all things respectable. There seemed to be very little else to her. On her dry fine skin lines had already begun to form, little indentations which marked a regular prudish pursing of the lips, a setting of the chin that accompanied an outraged flounce.