A Guilty Thing Surprised Part 12

'Going to be sick!' he shouted. Moving faster than Burden would have believed possible in a woman of her age, Mrs Cantrip flung open the garden door.

'Not in my kitchen, you're noff With the unmoved scowl of the English rustic, the old gardener and the purveyor of game watched him stagger out, then listened with a quickened though still apathetic interest to the sounds of retching. Alf, hitherto monosyllabic, made what was for him a long speech.

'Old stomach complaint,' he said. 'No guts.' He laughed. 'Wants to be a bleeding pop singer. Mental, I reckon he is.'

Mrs Cantrip took his cup and saucer and put them in the dishwasher. When the man made no move to go, she said briskly, 'I'll say good night, then, Alf. And we don't want no more eggs till Monday.'

Leaving the Manor by the front and back doors respectively, Wexford and Burden encountered each other in the village street. There they exchanged news and were about to embark on one of their acrimonious but valuable discussions when Mrs Cantrip, puffed with running, caughtthem up.

'Oh, sir,' she said to Burden, 'I am glad I caught you. I want to apologise, like, for the way those two went on, old Will and that Alf.

Will's that talkative and as for Alf Tawney ... He's not got the manners he was born with. Would I be in your way if I was to walk along with you a bit?'

'Not at all, Mrs Cantrip,' said Wexford graciously. He stopped by the official car and told Bryant to drive it back to the station.'Who's Alf Tawney?'

'Just a fellow we get our veg and chickens and such from, sir. He lives in a caravan on his ground at Cl.u.s.terwell.' Mrs Cantrip's face closed into a kind of prudish blankness, just as Burden's own sometimes did when a subject he would have described as 'suggestive' was about to be discussed. 'You wouldn't be interested in Alf,' she said primly.

'I don't know,' said Wexford. 'Anyone a.s.sociated with Mrs Nightingale interests us, even if he only supplied her with vegetables.'

'Mrs Nightingale never a.s.sociated with him, sir,' said Mrs Cantrip, shocked. 'If she'd ever heard of him it was only through that Sean.' She sighed, as if coming to a painful decision. 'Well, you may as well know, seeing as it's common gossip and the scandal of the village. Alf's carrying on with Sean's mother.'

'Dear me,'said Wexford.'That's bad.'

'There's some as don't blame Alf, him being a widow man since his boy was twelve and what with no one to cook his meals and see to his things. It's her I blame. For, like the Bible says, sir, woman is a temptation to man and no two ways about it: 'True,'said Wexford with feeling.

'Mind you, I don't care for that Scan myself, but there's none as 'd deny Mrs Lovell's neglected him shameful. You might say he's never had no proper mother.'

'And Mrs Nightingale never had a son.'

Mrs Cantrip turned her face up to him. Once more, as they approached ground she had decided must be forbidden, she looked guarded and resentful. 'That Sean wouldn't have dared think of Madam in that way,' she said. 'There are limits. Besides, Mrs Nightingale-well, she looked so young and lovely, sir. She didn't like people knowing her age. It went to my heart sometimes the way she wanted Scan and Catcher to feel she was the same age as what they were. And when Sean said-it wasn't respectful, sir, but he doesn't know no better-when he said she wasn't square and once when he said she was nicer to look at than any lady for miles round, she looked so pleased and happy.'

'He is a very handsome young man,' said Wexford.

'I can't see it myself, sir, but tastes differ. Well, here's where I live, so I'll say good night. And I hope you've taken no offence at the way them two went on, sir.'

They watched her go into the freshly painted white cottage whose patchwork-quilt garden was one of those Burden had earlier admired. She gathered into her arms a cushiony yellow cat which had strolled out to meet her, and closed the front door, 'The poor neglected boy,' said Wexford thoughtfully, 'inherits three hundred pounds under Mrs Nightingale's will. I wonder if he knows and if he thought it worth killing for? But we'll leave that for the moment and call on the princ.i.p.al beneficiary.'

'Sir?'Burden looked at him enquiringly.

'I'll tell you in the car.' Wexford grinned broadly.

'How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of him who bringeth good tidings!'

How would she receive the news? Wexford wondered. With surprised gratification? Or with fear that the will had been disclosed to official eyes? It might be that she was genuinely ignorant of its contents or even of its existence.

He told her baldly that Mrs Nightingale's will was in her favour and watched her reactions. They were disappointing. She shrugged her shoulders and said, 'That's a surprise. I had no idea.' As usual she wore the necklace, bracelets and ear-rings which were as indispensable to her as stockings and lipstick might be to another woman, and not even the faintest flash of concupiscence crossed her face to show that she would be glad to replace them with real stones. Her expression was apathetic and indifferent, almost sleepy, as if she had recently pa.s.sed through some ordeal, so tumultuous that it had left her drained of all feeling.

'You didn't know she had made a will? Or you don't know what she's left you?'

'No to both,' said Georgina. She sat down on the arm of a chair. Her blouse was sleeveless and Wexford noticed the strong sinews of her shoulders and upper arms. Only once before had he seen such sinews on a woman's arms and that woman had been a female wrestler.

'You inherit all Mrs Nightingale's jewellery,' he said.

'I see. When you said the will was in my favour I thought it must be something like that. Elizabeth hadn't any money of her own and she always got through her allowance before the next was due. She was awfully extravagant.'

'Mrs Villiers, this puts a rather different complexion on the circ.u.mstances of your sister-in-law's death.'

'Does it? I'm afraid I don't quite understand.'

'Let me explain then.' Wexford paused as the door opened and Denys Villiers came in, his recently published book open in his hand.

'Oh, there you are, Denys,'his wife said, getting up. Her voice was still dull and toneless. as she said, 'Fancy, Elizabeth made a will and left me all those rings and necklaces of hers.'

Villiers put his thumb between the pages of his book to mark the place and looked with dry amus.e.m.e.nt into the stern faces of the two policemen. Then, without warning, he burst into a roar of hysterical laughter.

11.

HER husband's laughter had a far more disturbing effect on Georgina than had Wexford's tidings. Something had been slumbering under her veil of apathy. The laughter brought it to life and it showed in her eyes and her trembling lips as raw terror.

'Don't, Denys, don't. Oh, stop!' She clutched his arm and shook it.

'May we share the joke, sir?' asked Wexford blandly.

Villiers stopped laughing as people can when their laughter doesn't stem from amus.e.m.e.nt but from some irony they have observed with admiration.

He shrugged and then, his face going blank, opened his book once more and began to read where he had left off.

'Mrs Villiers,' said Wexford, 'I want to talk to you again about the events of Tuesday night.'

'But, why?' Her voice was barely under control. 'I thought it was all over. I was just beginning to stop thinking about it and now .-. Oh G.o.d, what shall I do?' She stood for a moment, staring wildly at them and then ran from the room.

Villiers smiled a little, apparently at something in his own book. Aware as he was of the huge vanity of writers, Wexford was nevertheless unable to understand how one of them could actually laugh at something he had written himself.

'I can see I shall have to read this book of yours.'

Villiers lifted his eyes and, again closing his book, kept his fingers inside it to mark the place. He took a copy of Wordsworth in Love from a stack on the window-sill and handed it to the chief inspector. 'You can have this if it interests you.' The weary grey eyes met Wexford's and held them.

'Thank you. It will interest me. I'm always willing to be enlightened.

For one thing, I'm curious to discover why you've made yourself an authority on Wordsworth.'

'A matter of taste, Mr Wexford.'

'But there is always something to account for taste.'

Villiers shrugged impatiently. 'Well, you've brought us the news and we've had our little bit of literary chit-chat. Is there anything else?'

'Certainly there is. I am investigating a murder, Mr Villiers.'

'But not very fruitfully, if I may say so.' Villiers sat down astride a dining chair, his chest against its bars and his arms folded on the top of its back. The ashen face with its tracery of lines again gave Wexford the impression that this man was sick, was dying. 'And what's the point, anyway?' he said. 'Elizabeth is dead and cannot be resurrected, You find who killed her and put him in prison for twenty or thirty years. Who benefits? Who's the happier for it?'

'You're in favour of capital punishment perhaps? I'm surprised your first wife didn't convert you from that view.'

If Villiers was astonished that Wexford knew of his previous marriage he gave no sign of it. 'Capital punishment?' he said. 'No, I'm not in favour of it. I don't care much. I don't care about people being kept in prison either except that my tax pays for their board.'

'It seems to me, sir, that you don't care much for anything.'

'That's so. So-called current affairs don't interest me and nor does current opinion. I don't like people and people don't like me. They're mostly fools,' said the misanthropist with a kind of bitter relish. 'I don't suffer fools gladly. Progress bores me and so does noise.' He added very quietly, 'I want to be left in peace to live in the past.'

'Then let's discuss the past,' said Wexford. 'The recent past. Tuesday night, for instance.'

Sitting opposite Burden in the living room, Georgina said fretfully, 'I

told you about Tuesday night last time you were here. If you've got a bad memory you ought to have written it down.'

'Never mind my memory, Mrs Villiers. You just tell me again. You left the Manor at ten-thirty in your husband's car. Who was driving?'

'My husband was driving. He always drives when we're out together. I think the man should always drive, don't you?' She set her mouth stubbornly. 'The man should always be the dominant partner in a marriage so that his wife can look up to him. We,' she said in a loud defiant voice, 'are very happily married.'

'That's nice,' said Burden. 'What time did you reach home?'

'I told you. About twenty to eleven. We went in and we went straight to bed. And that's all.'

'No, it isn't all. No one comes home from an evening out and goes straight to bed. One of you must have put the car away. One of you must have locked up.'

Oh, well, if that's what you want. My husband just left the car on the drive. Mine was in the garage.'

'Did you both go into the house together?'

'Of course.'

'Side by side? Squeezing through the door at the same time?'

'Don't be silly,' said Georgina petulantly. 'I went in first and then my husband followed about a minute later. He locked the car because it was going to be left on the drive all night. He always does that.'

'Very prudent. Since you're evidently so careful, you wouldn't have put the milk bottles out before you went to the Manor. Who did that when you got home? Who checked that all the windows were closed and the back door locked?'

She hesitated, looking at him sullenly. Her fingers played nervously with her beads. 'My husband always does that,'she said.'l went to bed first.'

'How long did it take you to get to bed, Mrs Villiers? Ten minutes? A

quarter of an hour? You didn't go to bed unwashed and in all your clothes.'

'Of course I didn't. I put the bedroom light on and undressed and went to the bathroom and then I went to bed. My husband came to bed. He always reads for about half an hour before we go to sleep.'

'Double bed, Mrs Villiers?'

'No, we have twin beds. But you needn't read anything into that. We're a very happy couple.'

'Yes, you told me before. Now, tell me, what time did you go to the Manor?'

'We got there at about half past eight.'

'I believe,' said Burden disarmingly, 'that you often went there to play bridge. How long did you usually stay there?'

'Sometimes till midnight in the holidays.'

'Tuesday night was still in the holidays, wasn't it? Why did you leave so early?'

'My-husband,' said Georgina, putting as she always did a self-conscious pride of ownership into the word, 'my husband had some research to do down at the school and ...' She clapped her hand over her mouth but too late to stifle a little sharp cry. 'When we got home,' she stammered, 'he changed his mind and ... Oh, why won't you leave us alone? We could be happy if everyone would leave us alone!'

Burden's stare was hard and penetrating. He looked at her without blinking as she began to cry.

'I left the car on the drive,' said Villiers to Wexford. 'No, I didn't check the back door or the windows. That's my wife's province. I went straight to bed and straight to sleep.'

Burden came in. 'May I, sir?'

'Go ahead,' said Wexford.

'What about this research you were going to do down at the school, sir? The essential research that took you away from the Manor at ten-thirty?'

Villiers lit a cigarette. 'Don't you ever make excuses to get away from a boring host and hostess, Inspector?' he asked imperturbably. 'Don't you ever say you're expecting a phone call or you must get back to that boy of yours?'

Burden scowled at him, furious that John had been brought into this interrogation. It was humiliating to find that Villiers, who ostentatiously ignored him as a private person, should all the time have recognised him as a parent.

'So this was an empty excuse,' he said angrily. 'A deliberate lie.'