‘We want to hear anything you can tell us about Mr Brex,’ said Wexford. ‘Was he employed? What did he live on? Oh, and what time of year was this?’
‘It was autumn. The leaves were falling. You ask if Teddy was employed. Well, he was self-employed. He was a joiner.’
Tom asked – spuriously, Wexford thought, ‘Why did he take you to Orcadia Cottage?’
Francine Hill looked at him again, another long look but incredulous this time. ‘We were boyfriend and girlfriend. We wanted somewhere we could be alone.’
‘You had been learning French at school,’ Tom said. ‘Teddy Brex asked you to translate a French word. La Punaise.’ He pronounced it ‘punish.’
Francine shrugged slightly, holding out her hands. It was the test, Wexford thought. Tom was putting her to the test. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘We could show Dr Hill the piece of paper on which it was written down.’
Tom nodded, called Rita Debach to fetch the relevant evidence, as well as the jewellery which had been found in the vault. She took a long time. Meanwhile, Francine talked about her experiences in Orcadia Cottage. No, she had never been into the cellar, she had never been outside at the back, never seen the patio with the manhole. There was no staircase down to a cellar that she saw.
‘Do you think,’ Wexford asked, ‘that Teddy Brex would have been capable of bricking up a doorway, plastering over the brickwork and painting the new area of wall?’
‘Yes, I think so. I don’t know why he would. It wasn’t his house. But if you’re asking me if he could have done it, yes, he could and he would have made a wonderful job of it. He was a perfectionist.’
The scrap of paper arrived, protected between two sheets of plastic. As soon as she saw it she recognised the writing. ‘Oh, yes. Teddy wrote that. I remember now.’
‘Would you have anything in your possession,’ Tom said, reverting to policeman-speak, ‘which might have on it Brex’s fingerprints?’
‘After twelve years?’
‘What happened to Teddy Brex, Dr Hill? You split up? One of you broke it off?’
Wexford could tell at once that this was a question she didn’t want to answer. Tom sat stolid, the picture of the unimaginative cop, the kind that has given the sobriquet ‘plod’ to the whole genus. Yet Tom wasn’t really like that. He would hardly have reached the rank he had if he had been. Could it be, Wexford speculated to himself, that he was the kind of man who, if he finds a woman attractive yet knows she must be unattainable, is made brutishly angry by his frustrations?
‘Or you just drifted apart?’ This time the sarcasm was barely veiled. ‘It was just one of those things?’
The blood rushed into her white face, suffusing it with colour. ‘I got ill. I was ill for weeks and couldn’t meet him. I had troubles at home – my stepmother died. After that I never heard from him again.’ Wexford sensed that this was something she didn’t want to tell them. ‘Once I was better I did try to get in touch, but I couldn’t find him.’
She looked at the jewellery, the two strings of pearls, the diamond and sapphire necklace, the ring, the bracelets and the gold collar. ‘I think this may be some of the jewellery in the drawer, but I can’t really say. I don’t remember.’
Silence. Tom called for Rita to come and remove the exhibits. Wexford turned to Francine Hill and asked her if she would show them where Teddy Brex’s house was.
‘I couldn’t today.’
‘Sometime on Thursday?’ Friday was impossible. On Friday he would be in Kingsmarkham, at the inquest on Jason Wardle. ‘Perhaps Thursday afternoon?’
‘Would two on Thursday afternoon be all right?’
It would be fine, Wexford said, and thank you very much, Dr Hill, you’ve been very helpful. Rita Debach showed her out. The door had scarcely closed when Tom said, ‘Snooty little piece, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t know what use you think seeing this fellow’s house is going to be, but you can go with Lucy if you like.’
And if PC Debach were sent, Wexford would no doubt be going with her. A policeman’s aide’s lot is not a happy one, he paraphrased to himself, which led the increasingly cross Tom to ask what he thought he was laughing at.
‘Nothing,’ said Wexford. ‘Sorry.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
THEY PICKED HER up at her home in Muswell Hill, an unpretentious semi-detached house in the street Wexford should have taken when looking for a way back to Shepherds Hill – should have taken and thereby never found Francine Hill and the Crouch End medical centre. A young man with a baby in his arms came to the door with her to see her off. Wexford, already far more involved with her and her concerns than he usually was with a witness, was pleased to see what he took for signs of happiness and fulfilment. They kissed and she kissed the smiling baby.
It took her a long time to find the house. They drove round and round the little streets on the south side behind the North Circular Road. Wexford could understand her difficulty for they all looked the same. ‘It was on a corner,’ she kept saying and then, ‘on a corner but with the turning on the left side of the house.’
Some front gardens were tended, some left to become wilderness, some repositories for bikes, motorbikes and the insides of engines. Some of the little houses, generally in semi-detached pairs, had pebble-dashed facades, some plastered and painted with contrasting colour trims and fake porticos. But most were run-down and all of them, despite being ‘trimmed in jollity’, looked what they were and who they were designed for, homes for the poor.
‘I haven’t been here since Teddy brought me in ’97,’ Francine said. ‘I came two or three times. I didn’t realise then how – well, how dismal it was. Look, that one’ – she pointed – ‘Number 83 on the corner. That’s it. I’m almost sure. Would you drive down the turning? Yes, can you see over the fence? That carport. Teddy kept his Edsel under that.’
The house was occupied. Somehow – and all burglars know this – whether a house is occupied is always apparent from the outside. Not that the owners are at home or out, but that someone lives there permanently. Curtains hung at the windows, the plant in the pot by the front door wasn’t in the best of health, but it was alive and the soil round its stem was damp. Lucy rang the bell. If Francine thought Teddy Brex might answer the door she was the only one of them who did. It was eventually answered by an old woman, a woman who looked as if she was in her hundredth year. Her face was a relief map, criss-crossed by roads and rivers, her eye sockets moon craters, her mouth a thin slash between escarpments. A wisp of hair floated like a puff of white smoke on her head. She said in a surprisingly strong voice, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’
Lucy showed her warrant card, introduced Francine Hill and Wexford. ‘We are looking for Mr Teddy Brex. May we come in?’
‘He’s not here. You can come in if you want, but only for a minute or two. I’m busy.’
Old people are expected to live in cluttered dwellings, the accumulations of a long life covering every surface, old faded cushions on the armchairs, antimacassars too, framed photographs in which the pictures have faded to pastel shades, footrests for old feet and among the clutter on a table top, a magnifying glass for old eyes. Number 83 whatever this road was called was very unlike that. The room they went into was almost stark, its walls grey and white, the ceiling a darker grey. Two armchairs, an upright chair and a television set, the uncurtained French window affording a view of nothing much beyond a large carport.
Lucy said, ‘May we sit down?’ and without waiting for an answer, did so. Politely, Wexford waited for the owner of this house, if she was the owner, to seat herself, which she finally did in a stiff, reluctant kind of way. ‘May we know your name?’