Wexford sighed. It was at times like this that he most missed Burden, or Burden as he used to be. “I think we’ll have another drink,” he said. “My round.”
“You don’t have to act as if I was a complete fool,” said the doctor huffily. “I’m not trained to make this sort of diagnosis.” As Wexford got up, he snapped vindictively, “Orange juice for you, that’s an order.”
With a glass of lager, not orange juice, before him, Wexford said, “You’re worse than Dr. Watson, you are. And while we’re on the subject, though I’ve the utmost respect for Sir Arthur, life isn’t much like Sherlock Holmes stories and I don’t believe it ever was. People don’t nurse revenge for years and years nor do they find it possible to bribe more or less respectable estate agents, fathers of families, into doing murder for them.”
“But you said,” Crocker retorted, “that the Scotts were staying with the Rushworths in their cottage.”
“No, I didn’t. Use your head. How could they have been staying in a house that was let to another tenant? All that made me consider that house was that it dated from about 1750. I had forgotten all about the Scotts’ relative being called Eileen - it was only mentioned in passing - but when I heard Rushworth call his wife Eileen, then I knew. After that I only had to do some simple checking.”
“I am so entirely in the dark,” said Crocker, “that I don’t know what to say.”
For a moment Wexford savoured the experience of seeing the doctor at a loss. Then he said, “Eileen is a fairly common name. Why should Mrs. Rushworth be its only possessor in the district? At that point I remembered that someone else had told me she had two Christian names, was called by the first by half the people she knew and by the second by the rest. I didn’t care to enquire of her personally. I checked with Somerset House. And there I found that Mrs. Margaret Eileen Fenn was the daughter of one James Collins and his wife Eileen Collins, nee Scott.”
“Beyond a doubt, it was with Mrs. Fenn that the Scotts had been staying in February, at Saltram Lodge which is also an eighteenth-century house. They stayed with her, and on February 25th, after saying good-bye to Mrs. Fenn before she left for work at Equita, they too left by taxi to catch the three forty-five train from Stowerton to Victoria.”
Crocker held up his hand to halt Wexford, “I remember now. Of course I do. It was poor old Scott who had that stroke on the platform. I happened to be in the station, booking a seat, and they sent for me. But it wasn’t at a quarter to four, Reg. More like six o’clock”
“Exactly. Mr. and Mrs. Scott didn’t catch the three forty-five. When they got to the station Scott realised they had left one of their suitcases behind at Mrs. Fenn’s. You ought to know that. It was you who told me.”
“So I did.”
“Scott was a strong, hale man at that time. Or so he thought. There wasn’t a taxi about - mind you I’m guessing this bit - and be decided to walk back to Mill Lane. It took him about three quarters of an hour. But that wouldn’t have worried him. There wasn’t another train that stopped at Stowerton till six-twenty-six. He had no difficulty in getting into the house, for Mrs. Fenn always leaves her back door unlocked. Perhaps he made himself a cup of tea, perhaps be merely rested. We shall never know. We must now go back to Stella Rivers.”
“She called at Saltram Lodge?”
“Of course. It was the obvious place. She too knew about the unlocked back door and that Mrs. Fenn, her friend and teacher, had a phone. It was raining, it was growing dark She went into the kitchen and immediately encountered Scott.”
“And Scott recognised her?”
“As Stella Rivers. Not knowing what her correct name was, Mrs. Fenn spoke of her sometimes as Rivers, sometimes as Swan. And she would have spoken of her to Scott, her uncle, and pointed her out, for she was proud of Stella.”
“As soon as she had got over her surprise at finding someone in the house, Stella must have asked to use the phone. What words did she use? Something like this, I fancy: “I’d like to phone my father” - she referred to Swan as her father – “Mr. Swan of Hill Farm. When he comes, we’ll drive you back to Stowerton” Now Scott hated the very name of Swan. He had never forgotten and he had always dreaded a chance meeting with him. He must then have checked with Stella that it was Ivor Swan to whom she referred and then he realised that here he was face to face with the daughter - or so he thought – of the man who had left his own child to die when she was at the same age as this child.”
Chapter 22
When they came back to Eastover from their drive the sun had set, leaving long fiery streaks to split the purple clouds and stain the sea with coppery gold. Burden pulled the car into an empty parking place on the cliff-top and they sat in silence, looking at the sea and the sky and at a solitary trawler, a little moving smudge on the horizon.
Gemma had withdrawn more and more into herself as the days had passed by and sometimes Burden felt that it was a shadow who walked with him, went out with him in the car and lay beside him at night. She hardly spoke. It was as if she had become bereavement incarnate or, worse than that, a dying woman. He knew she wanted to die, although she had not directly told him so. The night before he had found her lying in the bath in water that had grown cold, her eyes closed and her head slipping down into the water, and, although she denied it, he knew she had taken sleeping tablets half an hour before. And today, while they were on the downs, he had only just succeeded in preventing her from crossing the road in the path of an oncoming car.
Tomorrow they must go home. Within a month they would be married and before that he would have to apply for a transfer to one of the Metropolitan divisions. That meant finding new schools for the children, a new house. What kind of a house would he find in London for the price he would get for his Sussex bungalow? But it must be done. The mean, indefensible thought that at any rate he would only have two children to support and not three, that in her state his wife would not vex him with riotous parties or fill the place with her friends, brought a blush of shame to his face.
He glanced tentatively at Gemma, but she was staring out to sea. Then he too followed her gaze and saw that the beach was no longer deserted. Quickly he started the car, reversed across the turf and turned towards the road that led inland. He didn’t look at her again, but he knew that she was weeping, the tears falling unchecked down those thin pale cheeks.
“Scott’s first thought,” said Wexford after a pause, “was probably just to leave her to it, flee back the way he had come away from these Swans. They say murder victims - but this wasn’t really murder - are self-selected. Did Stella point out that it was pouring with rain, that he could have a lift? Did she say, ‘I’ll just phone. He’ll be here in a quarter of an hour?’ Scott remembered it all then. He had never forgotten it. He must stop her using that phone and he got hold of her. No doubt she cried out. How be must have hated her, thinking he knew what she meant to the man he hated. I think it was this which gave him strength and made him hold her too tight, press his strong old hands too hard about her neck . . .”
The doctor said nothing, only staring the more intently at Wexford.
“It takes half an hour to walk from Rushworth’s cottage to Saltram House and back again,” the chief inspector resumed. “Less than that from Saltram Lodge. And Scott would have known about the fountains and the cisterns. He would have been interested in them. He was a plumbing engineer. He carried the dead child up to the Italian garden and put her in the cistern. Then he went back to the lodge and fetched his case. A passing motorist gave him a lift back to Stowerton. We may imagine what sort of a state he was in.”