Their project – Wexford’s and Miles Crowhurst’s – was a house-to-house inquiry of a limited kind. Only three households were to be questioned and these investigations were to be more in the nature of conversations. What did the Milsoms of Alma Square, David Goldberg of Melina Place and John Scott-McGregor and Sophie Baird of Hall Road know of Martin and Anne Rokeby? Would they even have known of their existence before those hideous discoveries were made under their patio?
The Milsoms were a retired couple living in a house far too large for them. Peter Milsom had answered Wexford’s phone call with an immediate refusal to see them, but an intervention from his wife (a whispered, ‘It will only take a few minutes, Peter’) changed his refusal to a grudging acceptance. Any hope Wexford might have had that Bridget Milsom had some small piece of useful information to give them was quickly dashed. They knew the Rokebys, but only to ‘pass the time of day’. ‘I sometimes had a chat with Anne in the street,’ Mrs Milsom told him. She spoke as if one or both of the Rokebys was dead. She had never been inside the house. ‘I never really knew that Orcadia Cottage was there, what with the walls and the shrubs, you could barely see it from the road.’
‘We had an anniversary party,’ Peter Milsom said. ‘They came to that. I think that was the last time we saw them.’
Nearest of these dwellings to Orcadia Cottage was David Goldberg’s tiny house wedged between two bigger ones in Melina Place. A middle-aged man who looked ill and walked with a limp, he lived alone and told them he hadn’t been outside the front door for eighteen years. His cleaner brought in food for him and anything else he might require. He had lived in his house for all those years but had few friends and had managed – as people in London can – to know none of his neighbours beyond ‘passing the time of day’ with them. The only people he seemed to know were John Scott-McGregor and Sophie Baird of Hall Road, by coincidence the next couple on Wexford’s list. Of what he called ‘the Orcadia Place business’ Goldberg knew from television, which he seemed to watch obsessively and which Wexford could hear now.
Scott-McGregor had agreed on the phone to an interview but had told Crowhurst it would be useless: they knew nothing about ‘those people’. Theirs was one of the newer and smaller houses in this part of St John’s Wood, a 1950s redbrick of uninspiring design. And its occupants, Wexford thought, looked the kind of people who would never want to draw attention to themselves. They were strangely alike, both in their late thirties, of medium height, mousy-haired and with unmemorable features. Before she let them in, Sophie Baird greeted them on the doorstep with a little speech as to why, though her partner ran a removal company and she worked as a chief executive’s PA, neither of them was at work that day. Once they were in the living room, a place which for dullness matched its owners, Wexford let Crowhurst take the initiative. He began by speaking of Orcadia Cottage, but Scott-McGregor cut him short.
‘We know all that. You’d have to be deaf and blind not to know it.’
‘What we would like to talk about,’ Miles said, somewhat taken aback by this sharpness, ‘is if you have any knowledge of the house. If, for instance, you had ever been in there or in the patio at the back.’
Sophie Baird said, ‘Inside Orcadia Cottage, you mean?’
‘That’s right. Inside the house or in the patio while Mr Rokeby lived there.’
‘I went in there to a sort of house-warming party when the Silvermans moved in,’ said Sophie Baird. ‘That would have been – well, at least ten years ago. Long before John moved in with me.’
‘You were friends with these people? The Silvermans, I mean?’
‘Not really. They were American and you know how Americans are, very friendly, speak to everyone. Devora and I, we got talking in the street, something about where was the best butchers and the next thing was they were asking me to their party. I wanted to see the inside of the house again.’
‘Again?’ Wexford was suddenly alerted.
‘Oh, yes, didn’t I say? My parents owned this house and I lived here till I was eighteen. My father had this house built.’
‘But Orcadia Cottage? Your parents knew the Mertons?’
Sophie Baird looked at Wexford as if she thought he must be deaf or perhaps senile. ‘Oh, yes, didn’t I say? I’m sure I said. They were friends. My dad and Franklin were partners in a firm of accountants in the City. We were often in Orcadia Cottage. I was sure I’d said.’
‘No, Ms Baird, but never mind. Would you like to tell us what you remember about it?’
‘Well, I went there when I was a child, but mostly my dad and mum went there for dinner or drinks, that sort of thing. Only Mum got so she went off Harriet – that was Mrs Merton – and said Dad could go alone, she wasn’t going to. I suppose the last time I went there would have been in about nineteen eighty-two or three.’
‘Can you remember the house?’
‘I’ll tell you what I do remember.’ Sophie suddenly became animated. She looked quite pretty, showing white even teeth in a broad smile. ‘I remember the cellar. I’d never been in one before. I was about eight. Harriet was going down into the cellar to fetch something and I said could I come and we went down the stairs from the hall. She was never very nice to me, I don’t think she liked children, but she let me go down there with her and she showed me the coal hole. They didn’t have coal there any more …’
‘The stairs,’ said Wexford. ‘The stairs went down from the hall?’
‘That’s right. One flight went up and another went down to the cellar. Haven’t you been in there?’
Neither Wexford nor Miles Crowhurst answered her. ‘Did you go out into the patio?’ Wexford asked and almost before the words were out Scott-McGregor interrupted, ‘What is all this in aid of?’
‘We won’t be long, Mr Scott-McGregor. Believe me, Ms Baird’s information may be very useful. Did you go out to the patio, Ms Baird?’
‘Not that time. I went another time. The first time I went there was this manhole with a cover on it. Is that the sort of thing you want to know?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Well, the second time – I was about ten – there was a pot with plants on it standing on the manhole cover so that you couldn’t see it. Did you know that Harriet was the girl in Simon Alpheton’s painting? She didn’t look much like it when I knew her.’
‘Ms Baird,’ said Miles Crowhurst, ‘you have been most helpful. Thank you very much.’
Scott-McGregor turned to her. ‘Well,’ he said in a nasty tone, ‘you are a marvel. It’ll soon be ten quid to speak to you.’
‘It makes you wonder,’ said Miles when they were back in the car, ‘why a woman stays with a guy who talks to her like that. And she seems to have been with him quite a while.’
Wexford opened the passenger door. ‘I must go back for a moment. There’s something I didn’t ask. He won’t like it, but that can’t be helped.’
‘Francine,’ said Miles.
‘Francine.’ Wexford went quickly up the path. It was Sophie who answered his ring, still smiling from her recent success.
‘Have I ever heard the name Francine? I was at school with someone called that. Francine Jameson. That’s the only one I’ve ever known.’
‘How old would she be now?’
Sophie pulled a face. ‘Oh, dear, she was my age. She’d be thirty-seven.’
‘Where can I find her?’
She gave him an address in Hampstead. ‘We all met up at a school reunion about two years ago and she was there then. Is that what you want? Oh, good. I am doing well today, aren’t I?’ She spoke as if getting anything right was a rarity with her or perhaps that it would be rare for anything she did to be acclaimed.