WEXFORD HAD THEM WITH HIM ALL DAY SUNDAY, and Monday morning’s papers said an arrest was imminent. But Wexford wanted the two women, not just one, Joy as well as Wendy. Charging Wendy with Rodney Williams’s murder was an obvious act. The knife buried in her living room wall had a blade which exactly matched the knife wounds on the body, and it was wrapped in part of the Daily Mail of 15 April. Still, he wanted Joy as well and Joy had no apparent connection with the crime. The only evidence he had was a witness who claimed to have seen the two women together and a voice on the phone that was probably hers.
Joy also had an alibi. Wendy didn’t. All day long nails were going into Wendy’s coffin, or at least the shades of the prison house were closing about her. Until Ovington came. That is, until Ovington’s second visit.
Alone in the house, eating a junk-food supper, Wexford got a call from Burden late on Saturday evening. Jenny’s labor hadn’t exactly been a false alarm but it had gradually subsided during the day. They were keeping her in, though, and considering some method of induction …
“You wanted her to wait a week,” said Wexford nastily. “You’d better come back to work.”
He phoned Ovington first thing in the morning. Never mind about Sunday and all that. By the time Ovington arrived at the police station he and Sergeant Martin and Polly Davies had Joy and Wendy in an interview room, the demented refugee and the broken doll. The curious thing was they had come closer to each other. In appearance, that is. There had been a sort of blending, and he thought of Kipling’s hedgehog and tortoise, combining to make an armadillo. Joy and Wendy hadn’t gone that far, but anxiety and harassment had done their work on the younger woman and the older had smartened herself up, perhaps because her son was back. At any rate the head-scarf was gone and she had proper shoes on. But Wendy’s make-up was stale, she had hairs all over the shoulders of her black cotton dress, and the ladder that sprang in her tights didn’t fidget her.
He left them to go and talk to Ovington. Smiling as usual, absurdly ingratiating, he could hardly have persuaded even the most gullible to believe him, certainly not a hard-headed policeman.
“She was with you on April the fifteenth?” Wexford said. “She came to your place after work for a drink? Why hasn’t she so much as mentioned this to me?”
“She doesn’t want anyone to know she was seeing me while her husband was still alive.”
That was in character. Wifely virtue was one of the aspects of the image Wendy liked to present. That didn’t mean Ovington’s story was true. Ovington was trying it on, a kind, stupid man with a misplaced idea of duty. Absently Wexford thanked him for coming. Then, as he was going back to the Williams wives, it occurred to him Ovington might have been in it with Wendy instead of Wendy with Joy. In that case who had made the phone call?
Wendy was crying. She said she was cold. It was true that the weather had turned very cold for the time of year, but she should have been prepared for that, sacrificed vanity, and brought a coat. He thought of all the places in the world and all the policemen in them where Wendy would have been allowed to shiver, where the temperature would have been lowered if possible, a little hypothermia encouraged. You couldn’t call it torture, cooling someone into admissions …
“Get her something to put on,” he said to Polly.
He took them through the incest again and he got more stories full of holes. Joy hadn’t believed Rodney would do that, yet she insisted Sara had led him on, insisted too that he would have gone to prison if she had breathed a word. Wendy now said Veronica had told her Rodney had started coming into her bedroom to kiss her goodnight and it wasn’t “nice.” That, said Joy, forgetting her former statement, was just how it had begun with Sara. Polly came back into the room with a gray knitted garment, something from Marks and Spencer’s range for old ladies—God knows where she found it—which Wendy put on with a show of reluctance.
Sandwiches were brought in to them at lunch-time, one lot corned beef, the other egg and cress. Not exactly the Sunday joint, two veg, and Yorkshire pudding. By that time Wexford had taken them through 15 April and was getting on to last Thursday night. Wendy had forgotten her coat but not her box of tissues, shades of peach this time. She sat sniveling into handfuls of them.
Just before three Joy broke at last. She started to howl like a dog. She rocked back and forth in her chair, howling and drumming her fists on the table. Wexford stopped the proceedings and sent for a cup of tea. He took Wendy into the interview room next door and asked her about Ovington. Rather to his surprise she agreed without much reluctance that she had been in Ovington’s flat on 15 April from about 7:45 until about 9:15. Why hadn’t she said so before? She gave the reason Ovington had given for her. They had hatched this up together, Wexford thought.
“I thought I might as well tell you,” she said with an aplomb that almost staggered him. “I didn’t before because you’ve all got minds capable of anything. But there’s been so much real dirt dug up I don’t think my innocent little friendship amounts to much.”
What did any of it weigh against that knife in the wall?
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON BURDEN WALKED in, looking a hundred years old.
“For God’s sake,” said Wexford. “I wasn’t serious.”
The truth was Burden didn’t know how otherwise to pass the time. He started on Joy, trying to break her alibi. But the tea had done wonders for her. She stuck to her story about watching television at the Harmers’ and after half an hour of that had the brainwave that might have struck her days ago. She didn’t have to talk at all if she didn’t want to. Nobody had charged her with anything.
Unfortunately, by this time Wendy was back in the room with her and heard what she said.
Through her tears she smiled quite amicably at Joy. “Good idea. I’m not talking either then. Pity I didn’t think of it before.”
Joy uttered one last sentence. “It was me thought of it, not you.”
United in silence, they stared at Wexford. Why not charge them both? With murdering Rodney Williams and, if he couldn’t make that stick, with murdering Paulette Harmer? Special court in the morning, a remand in custody … Archbold came in and said there were three people to see him. He left the silent women with Burden and Martin and went down in the lift.
James Ovington was sitting there with his taciturn father and an elderly woman he introduced as his mother. Somehow Wexford had never thought of Ovington père as having a wife, but, of course, he would have; James Ovington must have come from somewhere. He only looked like a waxwork. More so than ever this afternoon, his complexion fresher, his cheeks pinker, his smile flashing.
“My parents want to tell you something.”
That was one way of putting it. They didn’t look as if they had any desire beyond that of going home again. Wexford asked them to go up to the first floor with him to his office, but Mrs. Ovington said she’d rather not, thank you, as if any suggestion of going upstairs in the company of men was indecent. They compromised with an interview room. Mrs. Ovington looked disparagingly about her, evidently thinking it wasn’t very cozy. James Ovington said, “What were you going to tell the chief inspector, Dad?”
Nothing, apparently.
“Now you know you were willing to come here and tell him.”
“Not willing,” said Ovington senior. “If I must I must. That’s what I said.”
“Is this something about Mrs. Wendy Williams, Mr. Ovington?” prompted Wexford.
Very slowly and grudgingly Ovington said, “I saw her.”
“We both did,” said Mrs. Ovington, suddenly brave. “We both saw her.”
Wexford decided patience was the only thing. “You saw her, yes. When was this?”
James opened his mouth to speak, wisely shut it again. His father pondered, at last said, “She’s got a car. She’d parked it outside the shop on the yellow line. That don’t matter after half six. We never saw her go in.”
Silence fell and endured. Wexford had to prompt.
“Go in where?”
“My son’s place, of course. What else are we talking about? He’s got the bottom flat and we’ve got the top, haven’t we?”
“Up four flights,” said his wife. “Wear the old ones out first, that’s what it is.”
“We saw her come out,” said Ovington. “Out of our front window. Round a quarter past nine. Tripped over and nearly fell in them heels. That’s how Mother come to see her. I said, Here, Mother, look at this, them heels’ll have her over.”
“It was April the fifteenth!” said James, unable to contain himself any longer.
“I don’t know about that.” His father shook his head. “But it was the first Thursday after Easter.”
THAT NIGHT HE WENT TO BED EARLY AND slept for nine hours. He didn’t let himself think about the two women, Joy with no evidence against her, Wendy exonerated by the Ovingtons. They had been sent home with the warning that he would very likely want them back again on Monday morning. Old Ovington hadn’t been lying, but still his story didn’t militate against the possibility that while Joy had done the deed in Wendy’s house, Wendy had later met her in time to help her dispose of the body, the clothes, and the car.
In the morning he awoke clear-headed and calm. Immediately he remembered what it was Wendy had said to him. It had been when she told him Veronica was to play in a tennis singles final. The significance was in what it reminded him of, and now he remembered that too and as he did so everything began to fall gently and smoothly into place, so that he felt like one recalling and then using the combination of a safe until the door slowly swings open.
“But what a fool I’ve been,” he said aloud.
“Have you, darling?”
“If I’d got on to it sooner maybe that poor girl wouldn’t have died.”
“Come on,” said Dora. “You’re not God.”
The phone was ringing as he left the house. It was Burden, but Wexford wasn’t there to answer it and Dora spoke to him.
A report on the postmortem, rushed through by Sir Hilary Tremlett, was awaiting Wexford. He went through it with Crocker beside him. Strangling had been with a fine powerful cord, and whatever this was had left a red staining in the deep indentation it had made around the victim’s neck.
“The nylon line from the spool of an electric edge trimmer,” said Wexford.
Crocker looked at him. “That’s a bit esoteric.”
“I don’t think so. Joy Williams has three such spools in her garage and one of them, unless I’m much mistaken, will be empty.”
“Are you going to go there and check that?”
“Not just at the moment. Maybe later. Do you think it wrong to encourage a child to inform against its immediate family?”
“Like what happens in totalitarian societies, d’you mean? Or what I suppose happens. Extremists always believe the means are justified by the end. It depends what you mean by immediate family too, I mean, against a parent is a bit grim. That sticks in one’s throat.”
“Drugging a man and stabbing him and burying the knife in a wall sticks in one’s throat too.” Wexford picked up the phone and put it down again. “I’ve got two women to arrest,” he said, “and the way things are I’ll never make the charges stand up. When do the schools go back?”
Crocker looked a little startled at this apparent non sequitur. “The state schools—that is, the older kids—sometime this week.”
“I’d better do it today if I’m to catch her without her mother.” He lifted the phone again, this time asked for an outside line. It rang for so long he began to think she must be out. Then at last Veronica Williams’s soft, rather high voice answered, giving the number in all its ten digits. Wexford spoke her name, “Veronica?” then said, “This is Chief Inspector Wexford at Kingsmarkham CID.”
“Oh, hello, yes.” Was she afraid, or did she always answer the phone in this cautious breathless way?
“Just one or two things to check with you, Veronica. First, what time is your match tonight and where is it?”
“Kingsmarkham Tennis Club,” she said. “It’s at six.” She gathered some courage. “Why?”
Wexford was too old a hand to answer that. “After that’s over I’d like to talk to you. Not you and your mother, just you alone. All right? I think you have quite a lot of things you’d like to tell me, haven’t you?”
The silence was so heavy he thought he’d gone too far. But no. And it was better than he had hoped. “I have got things to tell you. There are things I’ve got to tell you.” He thought he heard a sob, but she might only have been clearing her throat.
“All right then. When you’ve finished your match come straight here. D’you know where it is?” He gave her directions. “About ten minutes’ walk from the club. I’ll have a car to send you home in.”
She said, “I’ll have to tell my mother.”
“By all means tell your mother. Tell anyone you like.” Did he sound too eager? “But make sure your mother knows I want to see you alone.”
The enormity of what he was doing hit him as he put the phone down. Could anything justify it? She was a sixteen-year-old girl with vital information for him. The last teenage girl with vital information for him had been strangled before she could impart it. Was he sending her to the same death as Paulette Harmer? If Burden had been there he would have told him everything, but with the doctor he had reservations.
“You’re not going round then, then?” Crocker said, a little mystified as much by Wexford’s expression as by the cryptic phone conversation.
“That’s the last thing I must do.”
Later, when the doctor had gone, Wexford thought, I hope I have the nerve to stick it out. Pity it’s so many hours off. But the advantage of an evening match was that afterwards it would soon be dark … Advantage! She would be phoning her mother now at Jickie’s to tell her, he thought, and somehow—hopefully—persuading Wendy not to come with her. He would have that girl watched every step of the way.
The phone rang.
He picked it up and the telephonist said she had a Miss Veronica Williams for him. What a little madam she was, giving her name as “Miss”!
“I could come and see you now,” the childish voice said. “That might be easier. Then I wouldn’t have to upset Mummy. I mean I wouldn’t have to tell her I don’t want her with me.”
He braced himself. He hardened his heart. “I’m too busy to see you before this evening, Veronica. And I’d like you to tell your mother, please. Tell her now.”
If she called back, he thought, he’d relent and let her come. He wouldn’t be able to hold out. Would she recognize Martin? Archbold? Palmer? Certainly she’d know Allison. But would it matter if she did recognize them? He’d be there himself anyway. There was no way he was going to let her take that ten-minute walk in the half-dark from the club down a lane off the Pomfret Road to the police station, especially in the case of her following his directions and taking the footpath across one and a half fields.
The phone rang again. That’s it, he thought. I can’t keep it up. I’ll go round there and she’ll tell me and that’ll be evidence enough … He picked up the receiver.
“Inspector Burden for you, Mr. Wexford.”
Burden’s voice sounded strange, not really like his voice at all.
“It’s all over. Mother and baby are doing fine. Jenny had a Caesarean at nine this morning.”
“Congratulations. That’s great, Mike. Give my love to Jenny, won’t you? You’d better tell me what Mary weighed so that I can tell Dora.”
“Eight pounds nine ounces, but it’s not going to be Mary. We’re changing just one letter in the name.”
Wexford didn’t feel up to guessing. Jenny’s persuaded him into something fancy against his better judgment, he thought.
“Mark, actually,” said Burden. “I’ll see you later. Cheers for now.”