‘So that we can talk a bit more about the case.’
Tom didn’t comment on Sheila’s stately house or the wide garden or the little gabled coachhouse at its gates. By this time Wexford had learnt to categorise visitors as likeable or not by whether they said he’d done all right for himself, hadn’t he, that must be costing him a packet, or noticed his second home with no more envious deference than if it had been a one-bedroom flat in Tooting. It was a test that Mike Burden had passed with honours, but then Mike had worked for him and with him since Sheila had been a young girl and knew all the circumstances.
Lucy drove along Fitzjohn’s Avenue, getting caught up in a traffic jam halfway down. Roadworks again. Wexford was daily amazed by the cones and barriers spread out everywhere while holes were dug, pipes exposed and apparently essential work carried out if London were not to break down and come to a standstill. Here temporary lights had been put up, staying red much longer than for a normal traffic-light span.
‘Before we start,’ Wexford said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He opened his briefcase and took out the calendar. ‘Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place. But perhaps you know about it.’
Tom Ede took it in both hands. ‘I’ve heard about this, but not seen it. The painter was Simon Alpheton, was it?’
Wexford was pleased. ‘You can see the date is 1973. Has it changed a lot?’
‘A previous owner called Clay Silverman had the Virginia creeper cut down. Who are or were Marc and Harriet?’
‘Marc was Marc Syre, a rock musician in a group called Come Hither. The woman in the red dress was his girlfriend. I think her name was Harriet Oxenholme. He died – Marc Syre. I mean, killed himself after taking LSD. I don’t know what happened to her.’
Tom was silent for a moment, considering. The temporary light turned green and Lucy moved along in the queue of cars and vans and a bus. ‘This Syre must have rented it. A John Walton owned it until 1974 when he sold it to a man called Franklin Merton, who had a survey carried out. That’s important, as you can imagine.’ Tom paused to look at a sheaf of notes he had with him. ‘Merton sold the house in 1998 to Americans called Clay and Devora Silverman. They dispensed with a survey and relied on the surveyor’s report Merton had had done. Apparently the place was very much in demand and in 2002, as Silverman was suddenly sent back to the United States, he wanted a quick sale. The Rokebys also didn’t bother with a survey, paid cash and moved in within five weeks.’
Wexford thought about it. ‘This means that three of the bodies, the two men and the older woman were probably put in the vault’ – his first use of the word – ‘during Merton’s occupancy. Is it known how long they’ve been there?’
‘The trouble is,’ said Tom, ‘that however long ago it is, it’s a long time. Between ten and fifteen years is the estimate, later narrowed down to between eleven and thirteen – we’ll say twelve years. That would very likely be at the end of Merton’s occupancy, as you say. But Merton is dead. He was in his seventies when he sold the house and he died last year.’
‘And the younger woman?’
‘That’s difficult. She’s been dead between two and two-and-a-half years. Say two to three. We assume she’s been in the tomb that same length of time but it may have been only two years.’
‘I suppose it depends,’ said Wexford, ‘on whether her killer had the vault in mind before he killed her or only thought of it as a possible burial place later on.’
They were nearly there. Lucy was a good driver, precise and dashing, squeezing through spaces between a bus and a lorry with a skill Wexford was sure he couldn’t have mustered. She directed his attention to the Beatles’ Abbey Road Studios as she pulled up to allow three teenagers to stand in the middle of the pedestrian crossing and have their photographs taken.
‘It’s a funny thing, sir,’ she said, ‘that none of the drivers who have to stop for this sort of thing ever sound their horns or shout or anything even if whole droves of kids cross and do that. It’s a tribute to the Beatles, don’t you think?’
Wexford laughed. ‘I expect you’re right.’
She drove on down Grove End Road, turned right into Melina Place and then into Orcadia Place. A country lane it might have been, but one where all the trees had had the attention of a tree surgeon, every weed had been removed and each wild flower had been replaced by a pansy or a tuft of primulas. A high wall concealed all but the upper floor and almost flat roof of Orcadia Cottage, but there was a wrought iron gate in this wall, set between pillars on which stood two falcons in terra cotta. As he got out of the car Wexford could see through the bars and curlicues roses of many shapes and colours, but no scent as far as he could tell. Tom paused to put on a red and blue striped tie, somewhat the worse for rough handling.
A small crowd of perhaps six people had gathered by the gate, in hopes perhaps of some such event as their arrival. The very large young woman with a plump child strapped into a buggy stepped back reluctantly for Lucy to open the gate and let Tom and Wexford through. The man in sunglasses and a lounge suit looked as if he were going to come up to them and ask for an autograph, but he quickly put his notebook away as if he feared he might be doing something illegal.
Shallow steps mounted to the pale grey front door and on these steps stood stone pots of bay trees and others planted with purple pansies and pink petunias. A trailing plant with dappled leaves, green and white, dripped from the rims of urns and vases. But the Virginia creeper of the picture had gone, as Tom had said, and in its absence all the pale brickwork was revealed with the medallion that was a copy of one by Della Robbia. Under the eaves a frieze of green and blue tiles ran round the house. A cottage it might be called, but in Wexford’s eyes it seemed a sizeable house and one which, from its garden, no other house could be seen. All was screened by shrubs and conifers and hedgerows and roses of many colours. And the place was very quiet. Only if you strained your ears to listen could you hear a distant hum from St John’s Wood Road and Hamilton Terrace.
Lucy took a key from her jacket pocket and opened the front door. The interior was a disappointment, department-store furnishings and window drapings in conventional creams and browns. No books. A picture, framed in heavily ornate gilt occupied the centre of each wall. The whole place looked lifeless and smelt stuffy.
‘The Rokebys no longer live here then?’
‘Anne Rokeby couldn’t stand it. They’re renting a flat in Maida Vale. No doubt they’ll come back when the investigation’s done with. When we’ve found the answer, whenever that will be.’
Tom led the way down a passage which led to the kitchen. The door was closed. Alongside it, to the left, was an area of wall on which a picture hung, a reproduction of Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
‘The cellar and the stairs to it are just under here,’ Tom said. ‘The flight of stairs – there are twelve of them – come up here and reach to just where our feet are. There ought to be a door but there isn’t. That wall is where there once was a door, it has to be. Let’s go outside.’
They went by way of the backdoor which opened from the kitchen. Outside was a kind of backyard, too large to be called a patio, paved in York stone, with narrow borders on three sides, planted with lavender and heathers, not yet in bloom. In the high rear wall was a solid wooden door, painted black, which Lucy told Wexford led out into the mews. Tom opened the gate and Wexford saw garages with flats over them and a block of flats. Lucy told him they were flats, though they looked like a terrace of houses, two storeys high with balconies on top and bay windows on the ground floor.