Burden remembered her education, the expensive schools the Crilling relatives had paid for.
She stared at him boldly. "I may as well go and see them," she said. "What's the harm? Life's hell anyway." She gave a strident laugh, walked to the mantelpiece and leaned against it, looking down at him. The open dressing gown, the tatty underclothes were provocative in a raw, basic way that seemed to go with the hot weather and the dishevelled room. "To what do I owe the honour of this visit? Are you lonely, Inspector? I hear your wife's away." She took a cigarette and put it between her lips. Her forefinger was rusty with nicotine, the nail yellow, the cuticle bitten. "Where the hell are the matches?"
There was something in the quick wary look she gave over her shoulder that impelled him to follow her to the kitchen. Once there, she turned to face him, grabbed a box of matches and stood as if barring his way. He felt a thrill of alarm. She thrust the matches into his hand.
"Light it for me, will you?"
He struck the match steadily. She came very close to him and as the flame shrivelled the tobacco, closed her fingers over his hand. For a split second he felt what his rather prudish nature told him was vile, then that nature, his duty and a swift suspicion took over. She was breathing hard, but not, he was certain, because of his nearness to her. From long practice he sidestepped neatly, freeing the long bare leg from between his own, and found himself confronting what she perhaps had hoped to hide from him.
The sink was crammed with dirty crocks, potato peelings, tea leaves, wet paper, but the Crillings were long past middle-class concealment of squalor.
"You could do with a few days off, I should think," he said loudly. "Get this place in some sort of order."
She had begun to laugh. "You know, you're not so bad-looking on the other side of a smoke-screen."
"Been ill, have you?" He was looking at the empty pill bottles, the one that was half full and the syringe. "Nerves, I daresay."
She stopped laughing. "They're hers."
Burden read labels, saying nothing.
"She has them for her asthma. They're all the same." As he put out his hand to find the hypodermic she seized his wrist. "You've no business to turn things over. That amounts to searching and for searching you need a warrant."
"True," said Burden placidly. He followed her back to the living room and jumped when she shouted at him:
"You never answered my question about the clergyman."
"He's come here because he knows Painter's daughter," said Burden guardedly.
She went white and he thought she looked like her mother.
"Painter that killed the old woman?"
Burden nodded.
"That's funny," she said. "I'd like to see her again. He had a queer feeling she was changing the subject, and yet her remark was not inconsequential. She turned her eyes towards the garden. But it wasn't, he thought, the nettles, the brambles and the mean wire fence she could see. "I used to go over to the coach house and play with her," she said. "Mother never knew. She said Tess wasn't my class. I couldn't understand that. I thought, how can she have a class if she doesn't go to school?" She reached up and gave the birdcage a vicious push. "Mother was always with the old woman—talk, talk, talk, I'll never forget it—and she used to send me into the garden to play. There wasn't anything to play with and one day I saw Tessie, mucking about with a heap of sand ... Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Am I?"
"Does she know about her father?" Burden nodded. "Poor kid. What does she do for a living?"
"She's some kind of a student."
"Student? My God, I was a student once." She had begun to tremble. The long worm of ash broke from her cigarette and scattered down the pink flounces. Looking down at it, she flicked uselessly at old stains and burn marks. The movement suggested the uncontrollable jerking of chorea. She swung round on him, her hate and despair striking him like a flame. "What are you trying to do to me?" she shouted. "Get out! Get out!"
When he had gone she grabbed a torn sheet from a stack of unironed linen and flung it over the birdcage. The sudden movement and the gust of breeze it had caused fluttered the thing her mother called a negligee but that she had never feared until it touched her own skin. Why the hell did he have to come here and rake it all up again? Perhaps a drink would help. True, it hadn't done so the other day ... There never was a drink in this house, anyway.
Newspapers, old letters and unpaid bills, empty cigarette packets and a couple of old laddered stockings tumbled out when she opened the cupboard door. She rummaged in the back among dusty vases, Christmas wrapping paper, playing cards with dogeared corners. One vase had an encouraging shape. She pulled it out and found it was the cherry brandy Uncle had given her mother for her birthday. Filthy, sweet cherry brandy ... She squatted on the floor among the debris and poured some of it into a grimy glass. In a minute she felt a lot better, almost well enough to get dressed and do something about the bloody job. Now she had begun she might as well finish the bottle—it was wonderful how little it took to do the trick provided you started on an empty stomach.
The neck of the bottle rattled against the glass. She was concentrating on keeping her hand steady, not watching the liquid level rise and rise until it overbrimmed, spilt and streamed over the spread pink flounces.
Red everywhere. Good thing we're not houseproud, she thought, and then she looked down at herself, at red on pale pink ... Her fingers tore at the nylon until they were red and sticky too. O God, God! She trampled on it, shuddering as if it were slimy, alive, and threw herself on the sofa.
...You had nothing pretty on now, nothing to show to Tessie. She used to worry in case you got yourself dirty and one day when Mummy was indoors with Granny Rose and the man they called Roger she took you upstairs to see Auntie Rene and Uncle Bert, and Auntie Rene made you put an old apron on over your frock.
Uncle Bert and Roger. They were the only men you knew apart from Daddy who was always ill—"ailing" Mummy called it. Uncle Bert was rough and big and once when you came upstairs quietly you heard him shouting at Auntie Rene and then you saw him hit her. But he was kind to you and he called you Lizzie. Roger never called you anything. How could he when he never spoke to you, but looked at you as if he hated you?
It was in the Autumn that Mummy said you ought to have a party frock. Funny really, because there weren't any parties to go to, but Mummy said you could wear it on Christmas day. Pink it was, three layers of pale pink net over a pink petticoat, and it was the most beautiful dress you had ever seen in your life...
Elizabeth Crilling knew that once it had begun it would go on and on. Only one thing could stop it now. Keeping her eyes from the pink thing, all spattered with red, she stumbled out into the kitchen to find her temporary salvation.
Irene Kershaw's voice on the telephone sounded cold and distant. "Your Charlie seems to have had a bit of a tiff with Tessie, Mr. Archery. I don't know what it's all about, but I'm sure it can't be her fault. She worships the ground he treads on."
"They're old enough to know what they're doing," said Archery insincerely.
"She's coming home tomorrow and she must be upset if she's cutting the last days of term. All the people round here keep asking when the wedding is and I just don't know what to say. It puts me in a very awkward position."
Respectability, always respectability.
"Did you ring me up about something special, Mr. Archery, or was it just for a chat?"
"I wondered if you'd mind giving me your husband's business number?"