18     

The Monday of the week before Christmas passed and the Tuesday came and there was nothing from Lovat. Very likely he was too busy with the Morag Grey case to make much effort. Her body hadn’t been found, and her husband, remanded in custody for a week, was due to appear in court again solely on the shop-breaking charge. Wexford phoned Myringham police station on Tuesday afternoon. It was Mr Lovat’s day off, Sergeant Hutton told him, and he wouldn’t be found at home as he was attending something called the convention of the Society of Friends of the British Badger.

No word came from Howard. It wasn’t awe that stopped Wexford phoning him. You don’t harass someone who is doing you the enormous favour of giving up all his free time to gratify your obsession, pursue your chimera. You leave him alone and wait. Chimera: Monster, bogy, thing of fanciful conception. That was how the dictionary defined it, Wexford discovered, looking the word up in the solitude of his office. Thing of fanciful conception … Hathall was flesh and blood all right, but the woman? Only Howard had ever seen her, and Howard wasn’t prepared to swear that Hathall—the monster, the body—had been her companion. Let nothing you dismay, Wexford told himself. Someone had made that handprint, someone had left those coarse dark hairs on Angela’s bedroom floor.

And even if his chances of ever laying hands on her were now remote, growing more remote with each day that passed, he would still want to know how it had been done, fill in those gaps that still remained. He’d want to know where Hathall had met her. In the street, in a pub, as Howard had once suggested? Or had she originally been a friend of Angela’s from those early London days before Hathall had been introduced to his second wife at that Hampstead party? Surely she must have lived in the vicinity of Toxborough or Myringham if hers had been the job of making withdrawals from those accounts. Or had that task been shared between her and Angela? Hathall had worked only part-time at Kidd’s. On his days off, Angela might have used the car to collect.

Then there was the book on Celtic languages, another strange ‘exhibit’ in the case he hadn’t even begun to account for, Celtic languages had some, not remote, connection with archaeology, but Angela had shown no interest in them while working at the library of the National Archaeologists’ League. If the book wasn’t relevant, why had Hathall been so upset by the sight of it in his, Wexford’s, hands?

But whatever he might deduce from the repeated examination of these facts, from carefully listing apparently unconnected pieces of information and trying to establish a link, the really important thing, the securing of Hathall before he left the country, depended now on finding evidence of that fraud. Putting those puzzle pieces together and making a picture of his chimera could wait until it was too late and Hathall was gone. That, he thought bitterly, would make an occupation for the long evenings of the New Year. And when he had still heard nothing from Lovat by Wednesday morning, he drove to Myringham to catch him in his own office, getting there by ten o’clock. Mr Lovat, he was told, was in court and wasn’t expected back before lunch.

Wexford pushed his way through the crowds in Myringham’s shopping precinct, climbing concrete steps, ascending and descending escalators—the whole lot strung with twinkling fairy lights in the shape of yellow and red daisies—and made his way into the magistrates’ court. The public gallery was almost empty. He slid into a seat, looked round for Lovat, and spotted him sitting at the front almost under the Bench.

A pale-faced gangling man of about thirty was in the dock—according to the solicitor appearing for him, one Richard George Grey, of no fixed abode. Ah, the husband of Morag. No wonder Lovat looked so anxious. But it didn’t take long for Wexford to gather that the shop-breaking charge against Grey was based on very fragile evidence. The police, obviously, wanted a committal which it didn’t look as if they would get. Grey’s solicitor, youthful, suave and polished, was doing his best for his client, an effort that made Lovat’s mouth turn down. With rare schadenfreude, Wexford found himself hoping Grey would get off. Why should he be the lucky one, able to hold a man until he had got enough evidence against him to charge him with the murder of his wife?

‘And so you will appreciate, Your Worships, that my client has suffered from a series of grave misfortunes. Although he is not obliged to divulge to you any previous convictions, he wishes to do so, aware, no doubt, of how trivial you will find his one sole conviction to be. And of what does this single conviction consist? That, Your Worships, of being placed on probation for being found on enclosed premises at the tender age of seventeen.’

Wexford shifted along to allow for the entry of two elderly women with shopping bags. Their expressions were avid and they seemed to make themselves at home. This entertainment, he thought, was free, matutinal, and the real nitty-gritty stuff of life, three advantages it had over the cinema. Savouring Lovat’s discomfiture, he listened as the solicitor went on.

‘Apart from this, what do his criminal proclivities amount to? Oh, it is true that when he found himself destitute and without a roof over his head, he was driven to take refuge in a derelict house for which its rightful owner had no use and which was classified as unfit for human habitation. But this, as Your Worships are aware, is no crime. It is not even, as the law has stood for six hundred years, trespass. It is true too that he was dismissed by his previous employer for—he frankly admits, though no charge was brought—appropriating from this employer the negligible sum of two pounds fifty. As a result, he was obliged to leave his flat or tied cottage in Maynnot Hall, Toxborough, and as an even more serious result was deserted by his wife on the ground that she refused to live with a man whose honesty was not beyond reproach. This lady, whose whereabouts are not known and whose desertion has caused my client intense distress, seems to have something in common with the Myringham police, in particular that of hitting a man when he is down …’

There was a good deal more in the same vein. Wexford would have found it less boring, he thought, if he had heard more of the concrete evidence and less of this airy-fairy-pleading. But the evidence must have been thin and the identification of Grey shaky, for the magistrates returned after three mintues to dismiss the case. Lovat got up in disgust and Wexford rose to follow him. His elderly neighbours moved their shopping bags under protest, there was a press of people outside the court—a cloud of witnesses appearing for a grievous bodily harm case—and by the time he got through, Lovat was off in his car and not in the direction of the police station.

Well, he was fifteen miles north of Kingsmarkham, fifteen miles nearer London. Why waste those miles? Why not go on northwards for a last word with Eileen Hathall? Things could hardly be worse than they were. There was room only for improvement. And how would he feel if she were to tell him Hathall’s emigration had been postponed, that he was staying a week, a fortnight, longer in London?

As he passed through Toxborough, the road taking him along Maynnot Way, a memory twitched at the back of his mind. Richard and Morag Grey had lived here once, had been servants presumably at Maynnot Hall—but it wasn’t that. Yet it had something to do with what the young solicitor had said. Concentratedly, he reviewed the case, what he had come to think of as Hathall country, a landscape with figures. So many places and so many figures … Of all the personalities he had encountered or heard spoken of, one had been hinted at by that solicitor in his dramatic address to the Bench. But no name had been mentioned except Grey’s … Yes, his wife. The lost woman, that was it. Oeserted by his wife on the ground that she refused to live with a man whose honesty was not beyond reproach.’ But what did it remind him of? Way back in Hathall country, a year ago perhaps, or months or weeks, someone somewhere had spoken to him of a woman with a peculiar regard for honesty. The trouble was that he hadn’t the slightest recollection of who that someone had been.

No effort of memory was required to identify Eileen Hathall’s lunch guest. Wexford hadn’t seen old Mrs Hathall for fifteen months and he was somewhat aghast to find her there. The ex-wife wouldn’t tell the ex-husband of his call, but the mother would very likely tell the son. Never mind. It no longer mattered. Hathall was leaving the country in five days’ time. A man who is fleeing his native land for ever has no time for petty revenges and needless precautions.

And it seemed that Mrs Hathall, who was sitting at the table drinking an after-lunch cup of tea, was under a lucky misapprehension as to the cause of his visit. This tiresome policeman had called at a house where she was before; he was calling at a house where she was again. On each previous occasion he had wanted her son, therefore—‘You won’t find him here,’ she said in that gruff voice with its North Country undercurrent. ‘He’s busy getting himself ready for going abroad.’

Eileen met his questioning glance. ‘He came here last night and said good-bye,’ she said. Her voice sounded calm, almost complacent. And looking from one woman to the other, Wexford realized what had happened to them. Hathall, while living in England, had been to each of them a source of chronic bitterness, breeding in the mother a perpetual need to nag and harass, in the ex-wife resentment and humiliation. Hathall gone, Hathall so far away that he might as well be dead, would leave them at peace. Eileen would take on the status almost of a widow, and the old woman would have a ready-made respectable reason—her grand-daughter’s English education—as to why her son and daughter-in-law were parted.

‘He’s going on Monday?’ he said.

Old Mrs Hathall nodded with a certain smugness. ‘Don’t suppose we shall ever set eyes on him again.’ She finished her tea, got up and began to clear the table. The minute you finished a meal you cleared the remains of it away. That was the rule. Wexford saw her lift the lid from the teapot and contemplate its contents with an air of irritation as if she regretted the wicked waste of throwing away half a pint of tea. And she indicated to Eileen with a little dumb show that there was more if she wanted it. Eileen shook her head and Mrs Hathall bore the pot away. That Wexford might have drunk it, might at least have been given the chance to refuse it, didn’t seem to cross their minds. Eileen waited till her mother-in-law had left the room.

‘I’m well rid of him,’ she said. ‘He’d no call to come here, I’m sure. I’d done without him for five years and I can do without him for the rest of my life. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good riddance.’

It was as he had supposed. She was now able to pretend to herself that she had sent him away, that now Angela was gone she could have accompanied him to Brazil herself had she so chosen. ‘Mum and me,’ she said, surveying the bare room, unadorned by a single bunch of holly or paper streamer, ‘Mum and me’ll have a quiet Christmas by ourselves. Rosemary’s going to her French pen-friend tomorrow and she won’t be back till her school term starts. We’ll be nice and quiet on our own.’

He almost shivered. The affinity between these women frightened him. Had Eileen married Hathall because he could bring her the mother she wanted? Had Mrs Hathall chosen Eileen for him because this was the daughter she needed?

‘Mum’s thinking of coming to live there with me,’ she said as the old woman came plodding back. ‘When Rosemary goes off to college, that is. No point in keeping up two homes, is there?’

A warmer, a more affectionate, woman might have reacted by smiling her gratification or by linking an arm with this ideal daughter-in-law. Mrs Hathall’s small cold eyes flickered their approval over the barren room, resting briefly on Eileen’s puffy face and crimped hair, while her mouth, rigid and down-turned, showed something like disappointment that she had no fault to find. ‘Come along then, Eileen,’ she said. ‘We’ve got them dishes to do.’

They left Wexford to find his own way out. As he came from under the canopy that reminded him of a provincial railway station, the car that had been Hathall’s turned into the drive, Rosemary at the wheel. The face that was an intelligent version of her grandmother’s registered recognition but no polite expression of greeting, no smile.

‘I hear you’re going to France for Christmas?’

She switched off the engine but otherwise she didn’t move.

‘I remember your saying once before that you’d never been out of England.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Not even on a day trip to France with your school, Miss Hathall?’

‘Oh, that,’ she said with icy calm. ‘That was the day Angela got herself strangled.’ She made a quick chilling gesture of running one finger across her throat. ‘I told my mother I was going with school. I didn’t. I went out with a boy instead. Satisfied?’

‘Not quite. You can drive, you’ve been able to drive for eighteen months. You disliked Angela and seem fond of your father …’

She interrupted him harshly. ‘Fond of him? I can’t stand the sight of any of them. My mother’s a vegetable and the old woman’s a cow. You don’t know—no one knows—what they put me through, pulling me this way and that between them.’ The words were heated but her voice didn’t rise. ‘I’m going to get away this year and none of them’ll ever see me again for dust. Those two can live here together and one day they’ll just die and no one’ll find them for months.’ Her hand went up to push a lock of coarse dark hair from her face, and he saw her fingertip, rosy red and quite smooth. ‘Satisfied?’ she said again.

‘I am now.’

‘Me kill Angela?’ She gave a throaty laugh. ‘There’s others I’d kill first, I can tell you. Did you really think I’d killed her?’

‘Not really,’ said Wexford, ‘but I’m sure you could have if you’d wanted to.’

He was rather pleased with this parting shot and thought of a few more esprits d’escalier as he drove off. It had only once before been his lot to confound a Hathall. He might, of course, have asked her if she had ever known a woman with a scarred fingertip, but it went against the grain with him to ask a daughter to betray her father, even such a daughter and such a father. He wasn’t a medieval inquisitor or the pillar of a Fascist state.

Back at the police station he phoned Lovat who, naturally, was out and not expected to reappear till the following day. Howard wouldn’t phone. If he had watched last night he had watched in vain, for Hathall had been making his farewells at Croydon.

Dora was icing the Christmas cake, placing in the centre of the white frosted circle a painted plaster Santa Claus and surrounding it with plaster robins, ornaments which came out each year from their silver paper wrappings and which had first been brought when Wexford’s elder daughter was a baby.

‘There! Doesn’t it look nice?’

‘Lovely,’ said Wexford gloomily.

Dora said with calculated callousness, ‘I shall be glad when that man’s gone to wherever he’s going and you’re your normal self again.’ She covered the cake and rinsed her hands. ‘By the way, d’you remember once asking me about a woman called Lake? The one you said reminded you of George the Second?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Wexford uneasily.

‘Something like that. Well, I thought you might be interested to know she’s getting married. To a man called Somerset. His wife died a couple of months ago. I imagine something has been going on there for years, but they kept it very dark. Quite a mystery. He can’t have made any death-bed promises about only taking mistresses, can he? Oh, darling, I do wish you’d show a bit of interest sometimes and not look so perpetually fed up!’