‘You mean she’d just call at some lap-dancing club or place where there are strippers.’
‘She might if she was desperate enough to get what was to her a large sum of money,’ said Burden.
But it was more than two years ago, Wexford reminded himself. Had she complied and been killed because of what she had done and what she might tell? It seemed a possibility.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IT WAS MONDAY morning and Wexford and Lucy Blanch were on their way to see Mildred Jones. Neither of them looked forward to the visit. The day began badly with Martin Rokeby emerging from his front door and shouting at Lucy not to park the car in front of his house. She moved it a few feet, explaining that they had calls to make in the neighbourhood and there was nowhere else to put it. Rokeby began on a long peevish complaint, the gist of which was that the police had been investigating this case for months and still had got nowhere.
They walked round the corner and into Orcadia Mews. Wexford was glad to be back in London for no better reason than that his stay in Kingsmarkham had been horrible. Returning from his evening out with Burden, he was told by Dora, whispering, that another child had joined the household, a schoolfellow of Mary’s. The previous week Sylvia had promised this little boy’s mother to have her son for the night while the parents celebrated a wedding anniversary. Ben would have to share his room with this child, had at first refused outright, then agreed with an ill grace and after putting up a lot of conditions.
‘You and Dad might have given me a little more notice you were coming,’ Sylvia had said, causing Dora to explode.
‘This is our house, Sylvia! How dare you tell me we should have given you notice to come to our own house!’
‘I wish we didn’t have to be here,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’m not getting any pleasure out of it. Thank God I’m back at work.’
Wexford had not even attempted to bring about a truce but had gone straight to bed. Guilty now because he and Dora were occupying the largest of the four bedrooms, he lay awake for a long time, to be awakened almost at once by shouts and running feet in the passage outside. The little boy guest had been sick. He needed comforting and cleaning up and his bed sheets changed. In the morning Sylvia refused her father’s offer to take all of them out for lunch, so he and Dora were on their way back to London by eleven.
Mildred Jones had had her once-pink front door repainted. Now it was lime green. Although Lucy had phoned her to arrange their visit, Mrs Jones behaved as if their appearance on her doorstep was the first she had heard of it. ‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ were her opening words, without even the preamble of a ‘Good morning’ in reply to Lucy’s polite greeting.
Assessing this woman’s character, Wexford had noted how dramatically she was changed by her view of the day ahead of her. When about to lunch with a man, she was ebullient, confident and assertive, but with a blank or tedious day in prospect she became petulant and sullen. Today was evidently going to be blank or tedious. Her mood seemed also to affect the way she dressed, to the extent that she wore unflattering clothes on bad days and attractive ones when things looked to be going well.
‘I can’t offer you anything to drink,’ she said as she led them into the living room. ‘Raisa’s too busy.’
This attitude, that any domestic task must be performed by the cleaner and never by the employer, brought a humourless smile to Wexford’s lips, a reaction he was later to regret.
‘Something amuses you?’
He took it to be a rhetorical question and said nothing. Lucy said they would like to talk about Vladlena. Was she aware that Vladlena had a sister who had come to this country with her in a minibus driven across Europe?
‘She’d be another illegal immigrant? Because if so, I don’t want to talk about her or any of them. I told you before’ – she glowered at Wexford – ‘I’ve been frightened out of my wits I’d be in trouble with the immigration.’
‘We’re not concerned with immigration, Mrs Jones …’ Wexford began and Lucy added what he hadn’t felt it was incumbent on him to say, ‘We’re concerned with the identity of the young woman whose body was with the others underneath Orcadia Cottage.’
Without exciting plans for her day, Mildred Jones was wearing no make-up to cover her sudden pallor. Her face turned a yellowish white. ‘You mean you think that girl in the hole, the cellar, was Vladlena?’
‘We only want to eliminate her from our enquiries,’ Wexford said.
‘That’s what you all say. I’d like a pound for the number of times I’ve heard that on TV. What a ghastly idea.’
How much he would have liked to say that – considering her attitude towards her former cleaner – he would have expected her to be pleased at the prospect. But he had wanted to say that sort of thing when he was a young policeman decades ago. Now he was old there was all the more reason to restrain himself. Instead, politely, he asked Mrs Jones how Vladlena had usually been dressed.
Dress was a subject, he could tell, which greatly interested her. ‘She wasn’t what you’d call elegant.’ She laughed, and paused to let her wit be appreciated. ‘She wore this one cotton frock day in and day out. I asked her about it and she said it was all she had, so I took pity on her and gave her a couple of cast-offs of my own. She was practically anorexic, so of course she had to take them in a bit before she could wear them.’
‘Did you ever see her in a miniskirt and wearing a leather jacket?’
She looked at Wexford as if he had asked something obscene. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just answer the question, please, Mrs Jones.’
‘A leather jacket, yes. A miniskirt, no.’
As she spoke, a diffident Raisa put her head round the door. ‘You like coffee, madam?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. When I want you I’ll call you.’ Mildred Jones turned back to Lucy. ‘I saw her wearing a black leather jacket and a long floral skirt, not a very attractive combination in my opinion.’
‘Where was that?’ Wexford asked. ‘When she was shopping for Mr Goldberg?’
‘Of course not. Whatever put that idea into your head? It wasn’t round here at all. It was in Oxford Street. I’d been in Selfridges and when I came out I found the police had closed the street to traffic. Some silly woman had run across in front of a bus and got knocked down. So, of course, everyone had to suffer and while I was walking all the way to Marble Arch to get a taxi – carrying heavy bags I may add – I saw her coming out of that cheap store, Primark. She was doing all right, carrying bags of stuff she’d bought.’
This meant little to Wexford, but he could see that Lucy’s reaction was very different. ‘Are you sure, Mrs Jones? The closing of Oxford Street for a street accident was only about a year ago.’
‘I know that.’ Mildred Jones eyed Lucy indignantly. ‘I hope you’re not calling me a liar.’
‘You’re telling us you saw Vladlena a year ago?’ said Wexford.
‘For God’s sake. How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘Once more, please, to be sure.’
‘I saw her a year ago.’
He and Lucy were silent until they had rounded the corner into Orcadia Place. They looked at each other and laughed and Wexford said, ‘Maybe we should be thankful for small mercies. I’m glad to know she’s alive and apparently quite prosperous, aren’t you?’