Presently he sat down on the bed and put his hand to the telephone. It rested there immobile for some minutes. What was the point of ringing Mary when he had nothing to tell her, no plans even for what he would do in the morning? He felt a sudden distaste for Thringford and its small parochial doings. He had lived there so long, so narrowly, and outside all the time there had been a world of which he knew little. From where he sat he could see nothing but sky, broken continents and islands on a sea of azure. "Here will we sit and let the sound of music creep in our ears..." He took his hand from the telephone and lay back, thinking of nothing.
9
The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having war in his heart: his words were smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords.
"I suppose there isn't anything in it?'
"In what, Mike? Liz Crilling having some dark secret her mother doesn't want extorted from her under the third degree?"
Burden lowered the blinds against the brazen morning sky. "Those Crillings always make me uneasy," he said.
"They're no more kinky than half our customers," Wexford said breezily. "Liz'll turn up at the Assizes all right. If not for any other reason simply because Mrs. Crilling doubts her ability to get a thousand quid out of her brother-in-law, or whoever it is supports them. And then if she's got something to tell us, she'll tell us."
Burden's expression, though apologetic, was obstinate. "I can't help feeling it's got some connection with Painter," he said.
Wexford had been leafing through a thick orange-coloured trade directory. Now he dropped it on the desk with a deliberate bang. "By God, I won't have any more of this! What is it, anyhow, some sort of conspiracy to prove I can't do my job?"
"I'm sorry, sir, you know I didn't mean that."
"I don't know a damn thing, Mike. I only know the Painter case was an open and shut affair, and nobody's got a hope in hell of showing he didn't do it." He began to calm down slowly, and he spread his hands in two large implacable fans on the directory cover. "Go and question Liz by all means. Or tell Archery to do it for you. He's a fast worker that one."
"Is he? What makes you say so?"
"Never mind. I've got work to do if you haven't and..." said Wexford, splendidly co-ordinating his metaphors, "I'm fed up to my back teeth with having Painter rammed down my throat morning, noon and night."
Archery had slept deeply and dreamlessly. It occurred to him that he had done all his dreaming while he was awake and there was none left for sleep. The telephone roused him. It was his wife.
"Sorry it's so early, darling, but I've had another letter from Charles."
There was a cup of cold tea by the bed. Archery wondered how long it had been there. He found his watch and saw that it was nine. "That's all right. How are you?"
"Not so bad. You sound as if you're still in bed."
Archery grunted something.
"Now, listen. Charles is coming down tomorrow and he says he's coming straight over to Kingsmarkham."
"Coming down?"
"Oh, it's all right, Henry. He's going to cut the last three days of term. Surely it can't matter much."
"As long as it isn't the thin end of the wedge. Is he coming to The Olive?"
"Well, naturally. He's got to stay somewhere. I know it's expensive, darling, but he's got himself a job for August and September—something in a brewery. It sounds awful but he's going to get sixteen pounds a week and he says he'll pay you back."
"I hadn't realised I made such an avaricious impression on my son."
"You know he doesn't mean that. You are touchy this morning..."
After she had rung off he still held the receiver for some moments in his hand. He wondered why he hadn't asked her to join him as well. He had meant to last night and then ... Of course, he had been so drowsy while she was speaking that he hardly knew what he was saying.
The operator's voice broke in. "Have you finished or did you want to make a call?"
"No thank you. I've finished."
The little sandy houses in Glebe Road seemed to have been bleached and dried up by the sun. This morning they looked even more like desert dwellings, each surrounded by its own scanty oasis.
Burden went first to number a hundred and two. An old acquaintance of his lived there, a man with a long record and a nasty sense of humour called by some "Monkey" Matthews. Burden thought it more than likely that he was responsible for the homemade bomb, a bizarre affair of sugar and weed killer stuffed into a whisky bottle that a blonde woman of easy virtue had received that morning through her letter box. The bomb had done no more than wreck the hall of her flat, she and her current lover being still in bed, but Burden thought it might amount to attempted murder just the same.
He knocked and rang but he was sure the bell didn't work. Then he went round the back and found himself ankle-deep in garbage, pram wheels, old clothes, newspapers and empty bottles. He looked through the kitchen window. There was a packet of weed killer—sodium chlorate crystals—on the window sill and the top had been torn off. How confident could you get, or how stupid? He went back up the street to a call box and told Bryant and Gates to pick up the occupant of a hundred and two Glebe Road.
Twenty-four was on the same side. Now he was so near there would be no harm in having a chat with Liz Crilling. The front door was closed but the latch was down. He coughed and walked in.
In the back room a plastic transistor was playing pop music. Elizabeth Crilling sat at the table reading the Situations Vacant in last week's local paper and she was wearing nothing but a slip, its broken shoulder strap held together with a safety pin.
"I don't remember inviting you in."
Burden looked at her distastefully. "D'you mind putting something on?" She made no move but kept her eyes on the paper. He glanced around the dismal, untidy room, and from the various miscellaneous heaps of clothes, selected something that might have been a dressing gown, a pink floppy thing whose flounces recalled withered petals. "Here," he said, and he wondered if she were not quite well, for she shuddered as she put the dressing gown round her. It was far too big, obviously not her own.
"Where's your mother?"
"I don't know. Gone out somewhere. I'm not her keeper." She grinned suddenly, showing her beautiful teeth. "Am I my mother's keeper? That's good, don't you think? Which reminds me..." The smile died and she exclaimed sharply, "What's that clergyman doing here?"
Burden never answered a question if he could help it.
"Looking for a new post, are you?"
She gave a sulky pout. "I phoned my firm yesterday when I got back from that bloody court and they gave me the push. I've got you lot to thank for that." Burden inclined his head politely. "Well, I've got to have a job, haven't I? They want girls at the raincoat factory and they say you can pick up twenty quid a week with overtime."