Baker was looking impatient. If it is possible to eat ham and tomatoes with an exasperated air, he was doing so. And he maintained a total disapproving silence.
Vivian said vaguely, ‘People don’t, you know. I mean, I reckon Rita here was born in Jamaica, but I don’t know, you know. I don’t go about telling people where I was born. Gren may have been born in France, you know, France wouldn’t surprise me.’ He banged his chest. ‘Old Gren brought me this T-shirt back from his last hols, you know. Always a thoughtful sort of chap. I mean, I don’t like to think of him in trouble, I don’t at all.’
‘Did you see him leave for this holiday of his? I mean…’ How easy it was to pick up the habit! ‘When he left here on Sunday, the seventh?’
‘Sure I did. He popped in the bar. About half-six it was, you know. “I’m just off, Vie,” he says. He wouldn’t have a drink, you know, on account of having a long drive ahead of him. I mean, his car was parked out here in the street, you know, and I went out and saw him off. “Back on September fourth,” he says, and I remember I thought to myself, his birthday’s round about then, I thought, eighth or the ninth, you know, and I thought I’d look that up and check and have a bottle of champers for him.’
‘Can you also remember what he was wearing?’
‘Gren’s not a snappy dresser, you know. I mean, he went in for those roll-neck jobs, seemed to like them, never a collar and tie if he could get away with it. His old yellow one, that’s what he was wearing, you know, and a sweater and kind of dark-coloured trousers. Never one for the gear like me, you know. I’d have sworn he went to France, I mean I’d have taken my oath on it. This is beyond me, frankly, you know. I’m lost. When I think he called out to me, “I’ll be in Paris by midnight, Vie,” in that funny high voice of his, and he never went there at all – well, I go cold all over, you know. I mean, I don’t know what to think.’
Baker could stand no more. Abruptly he said, ‘We’ll have the bill, please.’
‘Sure, yes, right away. Rita! When he turns up – well, if there’s anything I can do, you know, any sort of help I can give, you can take that as read, you know. I mean, this has knocked me sideways.’
It was evident that Baker thought the representatives of the Mid-Sussex Constabulary would return to their rural burrow almost at once. He had even looked up the time of a suitable train from Victoria and offered a car to take them there. Wexford hardened himself to hints – there were so many other hints he would have softened to if he had known how – and marched boldly back into the police station where Loring sat patiently waiting for him.
‘Well?’
‘Well, sir I’ve found him.’ Loring referred to his notes. ‘The birth was registered at Myringham. In the county,’ he said earnestly, ‘of Sussex. 9 September 1940. John Grenville West. His father’s name is given as Ronald Grenville West and his mother’s name as Lilian West, born Crawford.’
Chapter 19
Little John. Sweet affectionate little love, the way them mongols are… Mrs Parker’s voice was among the whisperers. He could hear it clearly in the receiver of his mind, and hear too Lilian Crown’s, brash and tough and uncaring. Been in a home for the backward like since he was so high…
‘I looked up the parents too, sir, just to be on the safe side. Ronald West’s parents were John Grenville West and Mary Ann West, and Ronald’s birth was also registered in Myringham in 1914. The mother, Lilian West, was the daughter of William and Agnes Crawford, and her birth was registered in Canterbury in 1917. Ronald and Lilian West were married in Myringham in 1937.’
‘You’re sure there’s no other John Grenville West born on that date and registered at Myringham?’
How could there be? Such a coincidence would evince the supernatural.
‘Quite sure, sir,’ said Loring.
‘I know who this man is. He’s mentally retarded. He’s been in an institution for the greater part of his life.’ Wexford was uncertain whom he was addressing. Not Baker or Loring or the baffled Clements. Perhaps only himself. ‘It can’t be!’ he said.
‘It is, sir,’ said Loring, not following, anxious only that his thoroughness should not be questioned.
Wexford turned from him and buried his face in his hands. Burden would have called this hysterical or maybe just melodramatic. For Wexford, at this moment, it was the only possible way of being alone. Fantastic pictures came to him of a normal child being classified as abnormal so that his mother, in order to make a desired marriage, might be rid of him. Of that child somehow acquiring an education, of being adopted but retaining his true name. Then why should Lilian Crown have concealed it? He jumped up. ‘Michael, may I use your phone?’
‘Sure you can, Reg.’
Baker had ceased to hint, had stopped his impatient fidgeting. Wexford knew what he was thinking. It was as if there had been placed before him, though invisible to others, a manual of advice to ambitious policemen. Always humour the whims of your chief’s uncle, even though in your considered opinion the old boy is off his rocker. The uses of nepotism must always be borne in mind when looking to promotion. Burden’s voice, from down there in the green country, sounded sane and practical and encouraging.
‘Mike, could you get over to the Abbotts Palmer Hospital? Go there, don’t phone. I could do that myself. They have, or had, an inmate called John Grenville West. See him if you can.’
‘Will do,’ said Burden. ‘Is he seeable? What I’m trying to say is, is he some sort of complete wreck or is he capable of communicating?’
‘If he’s who he seems to be, he’s more than capable of communicating, in which case he won’t be there. But I’m not sending you on a wild goose chase. You have to find out when he entered the institution, when he left and how. Everything you can about him, OK? And if you find he’s not there but was cured, if that’s possible, and went out into the world, confront the man’s mother with it, will you? You may have to get tough with her. Get tough. Find out if she knew he was Grenville West, the author, and why the hell she didn’t tell us.’
‘Am I going to find out who his mother is?’
‘Mrs Lilian Crown, 2 Carlyle Villas, Forest Road.’
‘Right,’ said Burden.
‘I’ll be here. I’d come back myself, only I want to wait in Kenbourne till Polly Flinders gets home this evening.’
Baker accepted this last so philosophically as to send down for coffee. Wexford took pity on him.
'Thanks, Michael, but I’m going to take myself off for a walk.’ He said to Loring, ‘You can get over to All Soul Grove and find out when the Flinders girl is expected home. If Miss Patel is taking another of her days off, I daresay you won’t find the work too arduous.’
He went out into the hazy sunshine. Sluggishly people walked, idled on street corners. It seemed strange to him, as it always does to us when we are in a state of turbulence, that the rest of humanity was unaffected. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round. Giddiness exactly described his present condition, but it was a giddiness of the mind, and he walked steadily and slowly along Kenbourne High Road. At the cemetery gate he turned into the great necropolis. Along the aisles, between the serried tombs, he walked, and sat down at last on a toppled gravestone. On a warm summer’s day there is no solitude to be found on a green or in a park, but one may always be sure of being alone in the corner of a cemetery. The dead themselves seem to decree silence, while the atmosphere of the place and its very nature are repellent to most people.
Very carefully and methodically he assembled the facts, letting the whispers wait. West had been cagey about his past, had made few friends, and those he had were somehow unsuitable and of an intellect unequal to his own. He gave his publishers and his readers his birthplace as London, though his passport and the registration of his birth showed he had been born in Sussex. His knowledge of the Sussex countryside and its great houses also showed a familiarity with that county. No one seemed to know anything of his life up to fourteen years before, and when he had first come to Elm Green and two years before his book was published.