“Mrs. Stokes?” he asked quietly.
“Yes?”
Morse introduced himself. “My sergeant called to see your daughter—”
“Oh yes.”
“—when you were there looking after the children, I believe. Very kind of you. Must be a bit wearisome... I wouldn’t know, though.”
“It’s a pleasure really.”
“Who’s looking after them today?”
“Oh they’re, er... you know, a friend, a neighbor. Won’t be for long anyway.”
“No.”
Morse turned away, following in Strange’s steps toward the car park.
She was lying, of course — Morse knew that. There was only one of the Barron children at home that day; as there had been when Lewis had called. The elder of the two, Alice, was away somewhere. That much, though very little else, Lewis himself had been able to learn from the Barrons’ GP the previous day. Morse thought he knew why, and another piece of the jigsaw had slipped into place.
“Hello! Chief Inspector Morse, isn’t it? My daughter tells me she saw you recently. But perhaps you don’t know me.”
“ Let’s say we’ve never been officially introduced, Mr. Harrison.”
“Ah! You do know me. I know you, of course, and Sergeant Lewis has been to see me. You probably sent him.”
“As a matter of fact I did.”
“I realize you weren’t yourself involved in my wife’s murder case but, er...”
Harrison was by some three inches or so the taller of the two, and Morse felt slightly uncomfortable as a pair of pale-grey eyes, hard and unsmiling, looked slightly down on him.
“... but I’d heard about you. Yvonne spoke about you several times. She’d looked after you once when you were in hospital. Remember?”
Morse nodded.
“Quite taken by you, she was. ‘A sensitive soul’ — I think that’s what she called you; said you were interesting to talk to and had a nice voice. Told me she was going to invite you out to one of her, er, soirées. When I was away, of course.”
“I should hope so. Wouldn’t have wanted any competition, would I?”
“Did you have any competition?”
“The only time I ever met Yvonne again was in the Maiden’s Arms,” said Morse gently, unblinking blue eyes now looking slightly upward into the strong, clean-shaven face of Harrison senior.
As Strange struggled to squeeze his bulk between seat and steering wheel, Morse looked back and saw that the funeral guests were almost all departed. But Linda Barron stood there still, in close conversation with Frank Harrison — both of them now stepping aside a little as another black Daimler moved smoothly into place outside the chapel, with another light-brown, lily-bedecked coffin lying lengthways inside, the polished handles glinting in the sun.
Morse found himself pondering on the funeral. “I wonder why he put in an appearance.”
“Who? Frank Harrison? Why shouldn’t he? Lived in the same village — had him in to do those house repairs—”
“Knew his wife had been in bed with him.”
“Fasten your seat belt, Morse!”
“Er, before we drive off, there’s something—”
“Fasten your seat belt! Know what that’s an anagram of, by the way? ‘Truss neatly to be safe.’ Clever, eh? Somebody told me that once. You probably.”
For a few seconds Morse looked slightly puzzled.
“Couldn’t have been me. It’s got to be ‘belts.’ Otherwise there’s one V short.”
“Just put the bloody thing on!”
But Morse left the bloody thing off as he looked directly ahead of him and completed his earlier sentence: “Just before we drive off, sir, there’s something I ought to mention. It’s about Lewis. I’m fairly sure he’s beginning to get some odd ideas about my being involved in some way with Yvonne Harrison.”
It was Strange’s turn to look directly ahead of him.
“And you think I wasn’t aware of that?” he asked quietly.
Chapter sixty
Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.
Once in Charlton Kings, a suburb on the eastern side of Cheltenham, Sergeant Lewis had followed the map directions carefully (he loved that sort of thing), turning right from the A40 through a maze of residential streets, and finally driving the unmarked police car past the sign on the whitewashed wall beside the gateway — “Sisters of the Covenant: Preparatory Boarding School for Girls” — and along the short graveled drive that led to a large, detached Georgian house.
Destination reached; and purpose, shortly afterward, fulfilled.
With a few extra suggestions from Morse, Lewis had found it comparatively easy to fill in most of the picture. The Barrons’ GP had professional and wholly proper reasons for his guarded reticence. But other sources had been considerably less cautious with their help and information: the Burford Social Services, the NSPCC, the headmistress of the village primary school, the local Catholic priest, and, last of all, the middle-aged nun, dressed in a chocolate-brown habit and white wimple, who was expecting him and who found little difficulty in answering his brief, pointed questions.
Five nuns, all of them resident, looked after the school, which was specifically dedicated to the physical and spiritual well-being of girls between the ages of four and eleven (currently eighteen of them) who for varied reasons — poverty, indifference, criminality, cruelty — had been ill-used in their family homes. In spite of a modest benefaction, the school was a place of limited resources, at least in human terms, and was appropriately designated “Private,” with the majority of parents paying fees of between £1,000 and £1,500 per term.
Alice Barron, yes — now aged six — was one of the pupils there, referred to the school by her mother. She had been abused, not sexually, it seemed, but certainly physically; certainly psychologically.
No, Alice was not one of our Lord’s brightest intellects; in fact she was in some ways a slow-witted child. This may have been the result of her home environment, but probably only partially so. Her younger sister (the teaching staff had learned) was as bright as the proverbial button; and such a circumstance could well have accounted to some degree for an impatient, expectant, aggressive parent to have...
“The father, you mean?”
“You’re putting words into my mouth, Sergeant.”
“But if you were a betting woman — which I know you’re not, of course...”
“What on earth makes you think that?” Her eyes momentarily glinted with humor. “But if I were, I would not be putting much money on the mother, no.”
“How are the accounts for each term settled?”
“I looked that up, as you asked me. I can’t be quite sure, but I suspect it’s been in cash.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Does Alice know about her father’s death?”
“Not yet, no.”
“Do you think this whole business is going to...?”
“Difficult to tell, isn’t it? She’s improving, right enough. She’s stopped wetting her bed, and she doesn’t scream so loudly in the night.”
“But if you were going to have another bet?”
“If I were a bookmaker, I’d lay you even money on it.”
As he drove back up to the A40, Lewis felt fairly sure he knew only a quarter as much about horse racing (and probably about life) as Sister Benedicta.
Chapter sixty-one
character (n.) handwriting, style of writing: Shakes. Meas. for M. Here is the hand and seal of the Duke. You know the character, I doubt not.