‘The bodies were photographed where they were. The pathologist came and looked at them where they were, and after all that stuff was gone through they were taken away. It was then and only then that I and DS Blanch had a good look round the coal hole and the cellar. The door from the coal hole to the cellar had been closed, but we opened it – of course we did – in case there were more bodies on the other side, but there weren’t. There was nothing, not even any coal or wood or the kind of junk people put in cellars. Nothing at all. Except, of course, the stairs. The stairs went up from the cellar floor to a blank wall.’
‘The bodies?’ Wexford asked. ‘There’s been nothing in the papers about that, there wouldn’t be. Only that they were there. DNA?’
‘I think I’ll keep that for tomorrow, Reg. I’ll come and pick you up, shall I? Bright and early – nine a.m. too early for you?’
‘Nine is fine. The address is The Coachhouse, 2 Vale of Health Lane, Hampstead.’
He felt rather diffident giving Tom Ede this classy address. Tom, he knew, lived in a flat in Finchley, and Wexford was already learning the niceties and fine shades of where in London it is de rigueur to live and where not quite so posh. He had learnt how it is quite OK to live in West Two and North-west Eight, top drawer to live in West One, North-west Three or South-west Three, less so in North Eleven or South-west Twelve. It was better to have a phone number preceded by a seven than by an eight. Much as he despised this postcode and number snobbery, he found it fascinating. Still, it was difficult when he had to give someone like Tom an address in the best part of Hampstead – not that it was his except on loan, not that he had any right to what belonged to his daughter. When the time came he was going to have to explain to Tom how he and Dora came to be staying there. He hadn’t yet made himself say ‘living there’.
‘Open confession is good for the soul,’ said Tom, ‘and I’ll tell you frankly, I’ve asked for your help because so far we’re getting nowhere fast.’
Home – it was sort of half-home now – on the bus. On two buses, the second one up Haverstock Hill because he didn’t know a less complex route. He used his newly acquired Freedom Pass in its purple case. The beauties of Hampstead still drew his eyes, the church where Constable’s tomb was, Holly Mount and the Everyman Cinema, but his mind was still with Tom Ede in Orcadia Place. It must be the same, he thought. Did Tom know? Did it matter whether he knew? One of the most famous of modern paintings it must be, still unknown to many. He got off the bus and walked down into the Vale of Health.
The kitchen and living area were on the ground floor where a Victorian family’s brougham had been once housed and the horse stabled. Stairs went up to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was all very light with white paint and big windows but not stark, nothing like being the shubunkin in a fish tank. He found Dora with Anoushka on her knee, reading The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.
‘It’s just me today, Grandad. Are you pleased?’
Wexford gave her a kiss, then kissed Dora. ‘If I say I’m pleased you’ll tell Amy and she’ll think I like you better than her.’
‘You do like me better,’ said Anoushka.
‘I like you both the same, but for different reasons. Where is she anyway?’
‘Gone to her dancing class. I hate dancing.’
‘So do I,’ said Wexford, ‘but don’t tell Amy.’ He addressed his wife. ‘All those books and papers we brought here from home’ – Kingsmarkham was still really home – ‘what happened to them?’
‘You stuffed them into that big cupboard in the spare bedroom. You said you’d tidy them up, put them in the bookcases, but they’re still waiting.’
Wexford pulled a hangdog face which made Anoushka laugh. ‘There’s something I want to look for.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Of course you can. You can help.’
This provoked sardonic laughter from Dora. Wexford and Anoushka went upstairs to the spare bedroom and Wexford opened the double doors of the cupboard. The books were stacked at the bottom, a mass of papers, which threatened to fall off but didn’t, occupied the top two shelves. Better remove the lot. He brought down two armfuls of magazines, papers, sheets of paper, forms, catalogues, and spread them about the floor.
‘What are we looking for, Grandad?’
‘A picture of a house. You know what a calendar is?’
‘A thing you hang up on the wall that’s got pictures and numbers on it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’ll look!’
He let her look, knowing that when a child wants to help you must patiently let her, perhaps encouraging her but never never intervening because you know you will do it faster yourself. Anoushka found two calendars but not the one he wanted. His eye caught that one, lying half under an old copy of the New Statesman, but nothing would have made him reach for it while she was in the room. She was bored now and after graciously accepting his extravagant thanks, said she was going back to Grandma for more adventures of two rats and a family of kittens. Once he heard the reading start again, he picked up the calendar and leafed through it, passing the Waterhouse for January, the Laura Knight for February, the Sargent for March – and there it was for Apriclass="underline" a reproduction of the painting whose name had alerted him when Tom Ede named a street in St John’s Wood.
It was of a man and a girl standing in front of a house, she in a dress the same red as her hair, he in a dark blue suit. The expressions on their faces were of passionate love for each other. Behind them was a living wall of green leaves and under the picture was the legend: Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place by Simon Alpheton, 1973. The red dress, he remembered reading somewhere, was by the great Venetian designer Mariano Fortuny, and reading somewhere else that the painting had been the Royal Academy’s Picture of the Year. Since then it had been on postcards, calendars, posters, advertisements.
It had been painted thirty-six years before. Marc Syre had been a pop star and celebrity or ‘sleb’, as they called them today, Harriet simply his girlfriend. She was very likely still alive, but Marc Syre was dead. Wexford remembered hearing or reading that he had died from taking LSD and jumping off Beachy Head. But once he had been the owner or tenant of Orcadia Cottage. Before his cellar became a charnel house, a repository of the remains of two men and two women unknown to him or not yet born.
I shall not call it a charnel house, he decided, or a patio-tomb. I shall call it ‘the vault’. He took the calendar into the kitchen where he had left his briefcase and put it inside the case so that Anoushka wouldn’t see and went into the living room, carrying the two others she had found as if they were of immense value to him.
CHAPTER FOUR
SO THAT WAS what he was, Detective Superintendent Ede’s expert adviser. It made him laugh every time he repeated it to himself. He laughed now as he picked up his briefcase, kissed Dora and went off outside to await the arrival of Tom’s car in the Vale of Health. Wexford knew he would be absolutely on time and he was. Tom came in an unmarked car – as an unmarked policeman, of course he did – driven by a young woman he introduced as his sergeant, DS Lucy Blanch. Lucy, as she wanted Wexford to call her, was a slim black woman with a pretty face and ebony hair. He would have liked to ask her if she plaited those corn rows herself or did a hairdresser do it, but he was always conscious of anything that might be construed as racist. Tom had been sitting next to her but when Wexford got into the back he came and sat beside him.