"A what?" said Burden, trying to open the front gate without getting his hand stung by the nettles that thrust their leaves through it.
"It is just," said Wexford with a rueful smile, "a long name for a kind of chronic plague." He laughed at Burden"s incredulous suspicious face. "Don"t worry, Mike, it"s not infectious and it only attacks the old."
5.
NOT only the front gate, but the front door too, was owergrown with nettles and their antidote, the dock. Before they had a chance to lift the knocker a grey lace curtain, re-perforated with larger holes, was lifted at a lattice window and a face appeared.
"I don"t know what you want but you"ll have to go round the back."
The side gate fell over as they pushed it. With a shrug, Wexford laid it down flat on a luxuriant bed of weeds. The back garden was a squalid blot on a fair landscape, the magnificence of the forest showing up, like a stain on black velvet, these twenty square yards of waist-high gra.s.s, dandelions, tumbled corrugated iron and broken chicken coops. A
reasonably shipshape shed filled one of the farthest corners, its footings hidden under heaps of rags, green gla.s.s bottles and a mattress which looked as if it had been used for bayonet practice. Among the weeds an enamel chamber-pot and several battered saucepans could be discerned.
Wexford noticed that a gate in the back fence led directly into the forest.
The back door opened suddenly and the woman who had spoken to them from the window put her head out.
"What d"you want?"
"Mrs Lovell?"
"That"s right. What d"you want?"
"A word with you, if you please," Wexford said smoothly."We"re police officers."
She gave them a narrow suspicious glance. "About her over at the house, is it? You"d better come in. His lordship said there was police about."
"His lordship?" queried Burden. Had the exalted circles in which they, found themselves even more exalted people, in fact t.i.tled personages, on their perimeters?
"My son, my Scan," said Mrs Lovell, disillusioning him. "Come on. You can go in the lounge, if you like. In here."
This room, euphemistically named, was slightly less dirty than the kitchen, but it too smelt of greens, a chronic gas leak, faintly of gin. It was furnished with a new bright pink suite, already soiled, and a heterogeneous a.s.sortment of ancient cottage pieces and modern gimcrack. The Queen smiled aloofly from a calendar, pinned to the wall between newspaper cut-outs of the Rolling Stones and a large framed oil of a Roman lady stabbing herself.
In feature she wasn"t unlike Mrs Lovell, while unable to compare with her in amplitude. There was a strong flavour of the gypsy in Mrs Lovell"s still-handsome face, the aquiline nose, full curved lips and black eyes.
Medusa hair black and tangled, fell to her shoulders. Her embonpoint didn"t extend to her face. The impression was that fat had crept upwards to cease at the neck, deterred perhaps by the threat implicit in that strong unwrinkled chin.
Her body was enormous, but not without a coa.r.s.e attraction, the fat distributed hugely in the right places. The bosom of a Mother Earth G.o.ddess, sixty inches round yet discernibly cloven, matched in girth immense hips. Like Katje, Mrs Lovell lacked inhibition and when she sat down her already low-cut blouse strained a further two inches down, corresponding to the ascent above her knees of a tight black skirt. Feeling that where feminine flesh was concerned, enough was enough for one afternoon -besides, in this case, the flesh could have done with a bath- Wexford looked away.
"We"re just making routine enquiries, Mrs Lovell," he said. "Would you mind telling me how your son spent last evening?"
"Had his tea," she said. "Then he sat about watching the TV. His lordship"s keen on the TV, and why not, being as he pays the licence?"
"Why not indeed? But he didn"t watch it after ninethirty, did he?"
Mrs Lovell looked from Wexford to Burden. It was transparent she was deciding whether to lie or tell the truth, perhaps only because telling the truth is always easier. Everything about her appearance and that of the cottage testified to a gross laziness, a deadly sloth. At last she said economically, "He went out."
"Where did he go?"
"I never asked him. I don"t interfere with his ways ..
She picked at a ragged thumbnail. "... and he don"t with mine. Never have. Maybe he went down the shed. Spends a lot of time down the shed, he does."
"Doing what, Mrs Lovell?"
"His lordship"s got his records down there."
"Surely he can play his records in the house?" said Burden.
"Can if he wants." Mrs Lovell chewed a hangnail. "Don"t matter to me one way or another. I don"t interfere with him and he don"t with me."
"What time did he come in?"
"I never heard him. My gentleman friend come in about seven. Sean and him, they don"t hit it off all that grand. I reckon that was why his lordship took himself off down the shed. He hadn"t come in when my friend went, half ten that"d have been-but there, like I say, I don"t interfere with him and he don"t ..."
"Yes, yes, I see. Sean was very fond of Mrs Nightingale, I believe?"
"You can believe what you like." Mrs Lovell gave a huge yawn, revealing fine sharp teeth. "Live and let live, that"s my motto. Her up at the Manor, she believed in interfering with folks, making them better themselves. Gave his lordship some funny ideas." She stretched her arms above her head, yawned again and swung her legs up on to the sofa.
Wexford thought of a fat cushiony cat, purring and preening itself, unconscious of the squalor in which it lived.
"What sort of ideas?" he asked.
" "Bout getting into show business, singing, all that. I never took no notice. Maybe she fancied him. I never asked."
"Would you have any objection if we searched this house?"
For the first time she smiled, showing an unsuspected ironic humour.
"Search all you like," she said. "Rather you than me."
"A depressing experience," said Wexford as they returned to the car.
Bryant, rather pale, followed at a distance.
"Never in all my years of C.I.D. work have I come across anything like it," Burden exploded. "I itch all over." He wriggled inside his clothes, scratching his head.
"Well, your young lady friend did warn you."
Burden ignored this. "Those beds!" he said. "That kitchen!"
"More than I"d bargained for, I admit,"Wexford agreed. "The only clean place was that shed. Odd that, Mike. A rug on the floor, couple of decent chairs, a record-player. Could be a love-nest."
Burden shuddered. "No one"s ever going to make me believe a lady like Mrs Nightingale would have a.s.signations there."
"Perhaps not," Wexford said reluctantly. "On the practical side, we didn"t unearth much, did we? One bra.s.s candlestick and a metal hot-water bottle.
They hadn"t got blood on them and they hadn"t been cleaned, by G.o.d, in the last fifty years. And the clothes she said "his lordship" wore last night were almost natty. But what was he doing, Mike? Bryant checked on the pub and he wasn"t there. The last bus out of Myfleet goes at nine-twenty, so he wasn"t on that. A boy like Scan Lovell doesn"t traipse about admiring the beauties of nature. He gets too much of that all day long."
"n.o.body," Burden persisted doggedly, "is going to make me believe there was anything between him and Mrs Nightingale. That mother of his is no more than the village trollop, if you ask me. "I don"t interfere with him"
indeed. That"s just another way of saying you"ve always neglected your child. I know you think I"m old-fashioned, sir, and a puritan, but I don"t know what women are coming to these days. Dirty, f.e.c.kless or immoral, or the whole lot together. First there"s this Mrs Nightingale with her face-lifting and her secret meetings, then there"s that Dutch girl boasting of the way she carries on, and as for Mrs Lovell ..."
"I thought you"d feel that way," said Wexford with a kindly smile, "and that"s why I"m laying on something respectable for you. We are going to call on a virtuous wife, Mrs Georgina Villiers, who will, tell us, I hope, without fainting or a.s.suring us of her broken-hearted devotion to Mrs Nightingale"s memory, just who her friends were and what her nasty brother did to make them loathe each other!
"My husband"s gone back to the Manor," said Georgina Villiers."He won"t be long."
"We should like to talk to you."
"Oh, would you?" Mrs Villiers looked surprised and rather frightened, as if few people had ever wanted to talk exclusively to her."Well, all right!
She led them by way of a porridge-papered hall into a porridge-papered living room. It was as untidy and characterless as its owner, who stood awkwardly before saying in the abrupt voice of a charmless woman, "Well, sit down."
"We shan"t keep you long, Mrs Villiers. How is your husband after this morning"s shock?"
"Oh, that. He"s all right now." Suddenly she became aware that her visitors wouldn"t sit down before she did and, with a slight nervous laugh, she crossed the room and perched herself on the arm of a chair. "Oh, dear. I"d better close the front door. Excuse me, I"ll just do that! Wexford noticed that for s.-thin and slight a woman she had a strong athletic stride. Her legs, stockingless, were well muscled, tanned a reddish brown.
"Well, what did you want to ask me?" Her voice had a brusque barking note, as if she were used to command but not always to having her commands obeyed. Hundreds of dark brown freckles peppered her skin, the white vulnerable skin of the auburn-haired. She seemed in her late twenties, a woman weo didn"t know how to make herself pretty but who tried. The edelweiss brooch on her blouse collar, the slide in her hair, showed that she tried. "My husband-you really should talk to my husband. He won"t be long." She eyed the clock rather wildly. "Quen-my brother-in-law, that is-wouldn"t keep him long. Anyway, what did you want to ask me?"
"First of all, Mrs Villiers," said Burden, "did you and your husband come straight back here after your visit to the Manor last night?"
"Oh, yes."
"What did you do when you got home?"
"We went to bed. We both went straight to bed."
"You had been driving the car I saw outside?" Wexford put in.
Georgina Villers shook her head so violently that her hair flew out, disclosing unsuitable pendant car-rings. "We went in Denys"s car. We"ve got two cars. When we got married last year I had a car and he had a car.
Only old cars, but we kept them both. They aren"t worth much, you see."She managed a feverish, very bright smile. "He"s out in his car now."
"And yours, I see," said Wexford in a pleasant fatherly voice, "has just been cleaned, Always clean your car on a Wednesday, do you, Mrs Villiers?
I expect you"re like my wife, a special time of the week for every little ch.o.r.e, eh? That way nothing gets left."
"No, I"m afraid not. I"m not methodical." She blinked at him, puzzled by the turn the conversation had taken. "I ought to be, I know. Denys would like it if ... Why do you ask?"
,I"ll tell you, Mrs Villiers. If you were very methodical and always worked to a routine you"d be conditionedto it, and then I could understand that even the violent death of your sister-in-law might not make you deviate from that routine. But since you aren"t methodical and only, I a.s.sume, clean your car when you feel like it or when it needs it, why did you choose today of all days?"
She blushed deeply. A fear that was almost anguish showed in her eyes and she blinked again, bringing her hands together and then clasping them. "I don"t know what you mean. I don"t understand."
"Don"t distress yourself. Perhaps you cleaned the car because you were upset. Was that it?" She was very slow on the uptake, Wexford thought, too frightened or too obtuse to see the loophole he was offering her. He offered it more explicitly. "I suppose you took the very sensible att.i.tude that when one is unhappy or worried, work is the best thing to take one"s mind off one"s troubles?"