But it would not go away and you were back in the big house, listening to the voices that went on coaxing, cajoling, arguing until you were bored, so bored until you went out into the garden and met the little girl.
You went up to her and you said, "Do you like my dress?"
"It's pretty," she said, and she didn't seem to mind that it was much nicer than her own.
She was playing with a heap of sand, making pies in an old cup without a handle. You stayed and played and after that you came to the sand every day, down there out of sight of the big windows. The sand was warm and nice and you could understand it. You could understand the little girl too, even though she was the only little girl you had ever known. You knew a lot of grown-ups, but you could not understand them, nor the ugly words and the funny wheedling way the talk was always about money, so that you seemed to see coins dropped out of wriggling lips and sliding dirtily through twitching fingers.
The little girl had some magic about her, for she lived in a tree. Of course it was not really a tree but a house inside a kind of bush all shivering with leaves.
The sand was not dry like the desert you lived in now, but warm and moist, like beach sand washed by a tepid sea. It was dirty too and you were afraid of what would happen if you got it on your dress...
You cried and stamped your foot, but you never cried as you were crying now as the good-looking inspector came up to the car, his eyes full of anger.
Did he seriously imagine he was going to find anything new after so long? Archery considered Wexford's question. It was, he decided, more a matter of faith than of any real belief in Painter's innocence. But faith in what? Not, surely, in Mrs. Kershaw. Perhaps it was just a childlike certainty that such things could not happen to anyone connected with him, Archery. The child of a murderer could not be as Tess was, Kershaw would not have loved her, Charles would not want to marry her.
"It can't do any harm to see Alice Flower," he said. He felt he was pleading, and pleading weakly. "I'd like to talk to the Primero grandchildren, particularly the grandson."
For a moment Wexford said nothing. He had heard of faith moving mountains, but this was simply absurd. To him it was almost as ridiculous as if some crank had come to him with the suggestion that Dr. Crippen was the innocent victim of circumstances. From bitter experience he knew how difficult it was to hunt a killer when only a week had elapsed between a murder and the beginning of an investigation. Archery was proposing to open an enquiry a decade and a half too late and Archery had no experience at all.
"I ought to put you off," he said at last. "You don't know what you're attempting." It's pathetic, he thought, it's laughable. Aloud he said, "Alice Flower's in the geriatric ward at Stowerton Infirmary. She's paralysed. I don't even know if she could make herself understood."
It occurred to him that Archery must be totally ignorant of the geography of the place. He got up and lumbered over to the wall map.
"Stowerton's there," he said, pointing with the sheathed tip of a ballpoint pen, "and Victor's Piece is about here, between Stowerton and Kingsmarkham."
"Where can I find Mrs. Crilling?"
Wexford made a wry face. "In Glebe Road. I can't recall the number off-hand, but I'll get it looked up or you could find it on the electoral register." He turned round ponderously and fixed Archery with a grey glare. "You're wasting your time, of course. I'm sure I don't have to tell you to be very careful when it comes to throwing out a lot of unfounded accusations."
Under those cold eyes it was difficult for Archery not to drop his own. "Chief Inspector, I don't want to find someone else guilty, just prove that Painter was innocent."
Wexford said briskly, "I'm afraid you may find the former consequent upon the latter. It would be a wrong conclusion, of course—I don't want trouble." At a knock on the door he spun round testily. "Yes, what is it?"
Sergeant Martin's bland face appeared. "That fatal on the zebra in the High Street, sir?"
"What of it? It's hardly my province."
"Gates has just been on, sir. A white Mini, LMB 12M, that we've had our eye on—it was in collision with a pedestrian. It appears they want a clergyman and Gates recalled that Mr. Archery was..."
Wexford's lips twitched. Archery was in for a surprise. In the courtly manner he sometimes assumed, he said to the vicar of Thringford, "It looks as if the secular arm needs some spiritual assistance, sir. Would you be so good...?"
"Of course I will." Archery looked at the sergeant. "Someone has been knocked down and is—is dying?"
"Unfortunately, yes, sir," said Martin grimly.
"I think I'll come with you," said Wexford.
As a priest of the Anglican Church Archery was obliged to hear confession if a confessor was needed. Until now, however, his only experience of this mystery concerned a Miss Baylis, an elderly female parishioner of his who, having been (according to Mrs. Archery) for many years in love with him, demanded he should listen to a small spate of domestic sins mumbled out each Friday morning. Hers was a masochistic, self-abasing need, very different from the yearning of the boy who lay in the road.
Wexford shepherded him across the black and white lines to the island. Diversion notices had been placed in the road, directing the traffic around Queen Street, and the crowd had been induced to go home. There were several policemen buzzing and pacing. For the first time in his life Archery realised the aptness of the term "bluebottles". He glanced at the Mini and averted his eyes hastily from the bright bumper with its ribbon of blood.
The boy looked at him doubtfully. He had perhaps five minutes to live. Archery dropped to his knees and put his ear to the white lips. At first he felt only fluttering breath, then out of the soft sighing vibration came something that sounded like "Holy orders...", with the second word rising on a high note of enquiry. He bent closer as the confession began to flow out, jerky, toneless, spasmodic, like the gulping of a sluggish stream. It was something about a girl, but it was utterly incoherent. He could make nothing of it. We fly unto Thee for succour, he thought, on behalf of this Thy servant, here lying under Thy hand in great weakness of body...
The Anglican Church provides no order quite comparable to that of Extreme Unction. Archery found himself saying urgently over and over again, "It will be all right, it will be all right." The boy's throat rattled and a stream of blood welled out of his mouth, splashing Archery's folded hands. "We humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear brother, into Thy hands..." He was tired and his voice broke with compassion and with horror. "Most humbly beseeching Thee that it may be precious in Thy sight..."
It was the doctor's hand that appeared, mopping with a handkerchief at Archery's fingers, then feeling a still heart and an inert pulse. Wexford looked at the doctor, gave an infinitesimal shrug. Nobody spoke. Across the silence came the sound of brakes, a horn braying and an oath as a car, taking the diversion too late, veered into Queen Street. Wexford pulled the coat up over the dead face.
Archery was shattered and cold in the evening heat. He got up stiffly, feeling an utter loneliness, a terrible desire to weep. The only thing to lean on now the bollard was gone was the rear of that lethal white car. He leaned on it, feeling sick.
Presently he opened his eyes and moved slowly along the body of the car to where Wexford stood contemplating a girl's shaggy black head. This was no business of his, Archery's. He wanted no hand in it, only to ask Wexford where he could find an hotel for the night.