Wexford asked her if she would recognise any of the pieces if they were shown to her, but Anthea Gardner shook her head quite violently. ‘I told you, I never met the woman. I know nothing about her jewellery. I know there was a lot of it because Franklin told me he’d spent a fortune on jewellery in the first years of their marriage, but what kind it was and what it looked like I’ve no idea. And I don’t know what was the point of the feather boa.’
‘And are you saying he never heard from her again?’
‘That’s what I’m saying, yes. He never heard from her again.’
As they were driven away out of the white stucco enclaves of The Boltons, Wexford said generously, for the theory had been his alone, ‘Can we add to our scenario as a result of what we’ve heard?’
‘We’ll have to go back in time a bit. We know how Keith Hill happened to have free access to Orcadia Cottage. Franklin Merton was away on holiday in San Sebastian – where is that anyway?’
‘Spain.’
‘Oh, right. OK. Merton was away on holiday and in his absence Harriet had invited KH to stay. While he was there and maybe she was out somewhere he discovered her pin number, presumably pinched her credit card or one of her credit cards. Suppose, for instance, he had this Francine there and Harriet came back and discovered them together? He kills Harriet …’
‘Why?’ Wexford interrupted. ‘Because his elderly girlfriend discovered him with his young girlfriend? Hardly. What could she do? Fornication’s not yet a crime in this country.’
‘All right,’ said Tom, looking rather as if he would approve if it were. ‘If you insist. He gets rid of the girl, tries to placate Harriet, but she isn’t having any of it. They fight …’
‘What? Physically?’
‘Suppose the door to the cellar was open and she fell down the stairs or he pushed her …’
Suppose, Wexford thought. It was all supposition. It might have happened quite differently. He listened to Tom’s by now elaborate theory with half an ear, while saying to himself, we have to start again, we have to start from scratch and begin from a different angle. But it’s not my case, he thought, it can never be my case. It’s Tom’s, and what I say doesn’t really count. He said it, though, just the same.
‘Hardly any attention has been paid to the second woman in the tomb.’ How useful, how tactful, the passive voice could be! This version was so much more becoming than if he had said, ‘We ought to pay attention to the second woman.’
‘Because the tomb must have been opened for her body to be put in?’
‘I see it this way. That the people who knew the hole and the cellar were there in the first place are the three whose bodies have been there twelve years. Once they were dead and in there no one knew about it with the possible – no, the probable – exception of Franklin Merton. Once Franklin Merton was dead, had died a natural death, no one knew of it. The big plant pot placed on top of the manhole cover effectively sealed it up. If not for ever, more or less permanently. Until someone discovered it was there and saw it as a potential tomb or, rather, as an existing tomb which was like a vault. It had room for more bodies if bodies there were.’
Tom nodded. ‘All right. What next then?’
‘Back to Rokeby,’ said Wexford. ‘He must be the key to identification. It was he who proposed the construction of an underground room. And it has to be that which gave whoever it was ideas. He has yet to list the people who may have come to survey the place – or has he done that?’
‘We haven’t heard a word from him. No news yet from forensics on the Edsel either. We’ve still got nothing but conjecture to link the Edsel with the two men’s bodies.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I WON’T SAY a word,’ said Dora. ‘I shall want to, but I won’t because it would upset you. Not because it would upset her.’
Wexford smiled. ‘That’s a very good reason.’
Dora was going back to Kingsmarkham by train, leaving him in London. Her intention was to be in Great Thatto in advance of Sylvia’s return from hospital, and she would have Mary with her after the little girl’s three days of blissful holiday with her cousins. ‘Phone me,’ he said.
‘Don’t I always phone you?’
He laughed. ‘Tell me what she says about that miscreant who stabbed her. She wouldn’t be daft enough to forgive him, would she?’
‘I sincerely hope not.’
He was going to have a long conversation with Martin Rokeby. It was Tom Ede’s suggestion that he should see Rokeby alone or perhaps with Anne, his wife. No policeman, only this policeman’s aide, as Wexford was beginning to call himself. They would talk. Rokeby would say things to him he might not say to Tom.
A picture of Orcadia Cottage, as it now was or as it had been when Simon Alpheton painted it thirty-six years before, Wexford retained in his head. It was therefore something of a shock to see where the Rokebys now lived. Maida Vale sounds charming and parts of it are, but not St Mary’s Grove, its tall shabby late Victorian houses almost pressing against the Westway flyover. Traffic roared across the great arch of the road behind which was Paddington Station and the new glass towers of the canal basin. A flight of steps led up to the front door under a crumbling portico and when the door came open there were more steps, about fifty of them, to the top flat. Rokeby was standing outside his front door.
A smile might have been expected, but Rokeby didn’t smile. He had been watching Wexford mount the top few stairs but now he turned his head away, gave that most unwelcoming of greetings, ‘You’d better come in.’
Though they had been there for several weeks, the Rokebys had done nothing to make the place more attractive. The rooms were large, apparently retaining their original ornamentation, elaborate and very dusty cornices, shutters at the windows which looked as if they had never been moved, even a couple of fluted columns with Corinthian capitals. A cheap-looking, much-worn carpet covered the floors, wall-to-wall, and the curtains were of thin unlined cretonne. The view from one window was largely of pretty St Mary’s, Paddington Green, but from the other all that could be seen was the Westway, dark grey concrete with its sluggishly moving load of traffic. There were no books, no plants or flowers, no cushions and scarcely any ornaments.
Anne Rokeby sat in a cane chair with a seat covered in the same cretonne. She looked worried and worn. She didn’t get up when Wexford came in. There was no reason why she should, but no reason either, as far as he could tell, for the momentary shutting of her eyes. He noticed that her hands trembled slightly.
‘I would have thought,’ said Rokeby, ‘that we’d already talked about every possible aspect of this business. What else is there to say? I looked down a hole in my backyard and found those bodies and ruined my life. That’s that, isn’t it?’
Instead of answering, Wexford said, ‘I was hoping for a list from you of the various contractors you consulted about building an underground room at Orcadia Cottage.’
Rokeby shrugged. ‘But why? They didn’t build it. They said it wasn’t feasible and then planning permission was refused. What’s to say?’
Policemen don’t answer questions. They ask them. But Wexford wasn’t a policeman any more. ‘Mr Rokeby, three of the bodies you found had been put there or had died there about twelve years ago, but the fourth had been dead only about two years. This means that the coal hole had been opened and another body put in there something over two years ago. What I’d like us to talk about is when you first moved to Orcadia Cottage and you had builders in to convert a large bedroom into two small ones, when you applied for planning permission and when those contractors came to look at the place. I’d like some dates, if possible.’
Anne Rokeby suddenly stood up. ‘I don’t see why we should tell you. You’re not a policeman, are you?’