"I can't stand these contemporary-type nicks," he said impudently to the station sergeant. Wexford came out of his office, ignoring Archery, and crossed to the desk. "Give me the old-fashioned kind every time. I've got a slummy mind, that's my trouble."
"I'm not interested in your views on interior decoration, Monkey," said Wexford.
The little man turned to him and grinned. "You've got a nasty tongue, you have. Your sense of humour's sunk as you've gone up. Pity, really."
"Shut up!"
Archery listened in admiration. He wished that he had the power and the authority to talk like that to Mrs. Crilling, or that such authority could be vested in Charles, enabling him to question Primero without the inhibitions of subterfuge. Wexford, talking silkily about bombs and attempted murder, ushered the little man into his office and the door closed on them. Such things did go on, Archery thought. Perhaps his own new-forming theories were not so farfetched after all.
"If I could just see Inspector Burden for a moment," he said more confidently to the station sergeant.
"I'll see if he's free, sir."
Eventually Burden came out to him himself. "Good morning, sir. Doesn't get any cooler, does it?"
"I've got something rather important to tell you. Can you spare me five minutes?"
"Surely."
But he made no move to take him into a more private place. The station sergeant occupied himself with perusing a large book. Sitting on a ridiculous spoon-shaped chair outside Wexford's office, Archery felt like a school boy, who having waited a long time to see the headmaster, is compelled to confide in and perhaps take his punishment from an underling. Rather chastened, he told Burden briefly about Mrs. Crilling.
"Most interesting. You mean that when Mrs Primero was murdered the Crilling woman thought the will was valid?"
"It amounts to that. She didn't mention the murder."
"We can't do anything. You realise that?"
"I want you to tell me if I have sufficient grounds to write to the Home Secretary."
A constable appeared from somewhere, tapped on Wexford's door and was admitted.
"You haven't any circumstantial evidence," Burden said. "I'm sure the Chief Inspector wouldn't encourage it."
A roar of sardonic laughter sounded through the thin dividing wall. Archery felt unreasonably piqued. "I think I shall write just the same."
"You must do as you please, sir." Burden got up. "Been seeing much of the country round here?"
Archery swallowed his anger. If Burden intended to terminate the interview with small talk, small talk he should have. Hadn't he promised his old friend Griswold and, for that matter, the Chief Inspector, not to make trouble?
"I went to Forby yesterday," he said. "I was in the churchyard and I happened to notice the grave of that boy Mr. Wexford was talking about in court the other day. His name was Grace. Do you remember?"
Burden's face was a polite blank but the station sergeant glanced up.
"I'm a Forby man myself, sir," he said. "We make a bit of a song and dance about John Grace at home. They'll tell you all about him in Forby for all it was twenty years ago."
"All about him?"
"He fancied himself as a poet, poor kid, wrote plays too. Sort of religious mystic he was. In his day he used to try and sell his verses from door to door."
"Like W. H. Davis," said Archery.
"I daresay."
"Was he a shepherd?"
"Not as far as I know. Baker's roundsman or something."
Wexford's door swung open, the constable came out and said to Burden, "Chief Inspector wants you, sir."
Wexford's voice roared after him, "You can come back in here, Gates, and take a statement from Guy Fawkes. And give him a cigarette. He won't blow up."
"It seems I'm wanted, sir, so if you'll excuse me..."
Burden went with Archery to the entrance doors.
"You had your chat with Alice Flower just in time," he said. "If you had it, that is."
"Yes, I talked to her. Why?"
"She died yesterday," said Burden. "It's all in the local rag."
Archery found a newsagent. The Kingsmarkham Chronicle had come out that morning and fresh stacks of papers lay on the counter. He bought a copy and found the announcement at the bottom of the back page.
"Death of Miss A. Flower."
He scanned it and took it back with him to the terrace of the hotel to read it properly.
"The death occurred today..." That meant yesterday, Archery thought, looking at the dateline. He read on. The death occurred today of Miss Alice Flower at Stowerton Infirmary. She was eighty-seven. Miss Flower, who had lived in the district for twenty-five years, will be best remembered for the part she played in the notorious Victor's Piece murder trial. She was for many years maid and trusted friend of Mrs Primero..."
There followed a brief account of the murder and the trial.
"The funeral will take place at Forby parish church on Monday. Mr. Roger Primero has expressed a wish that the last rites may be celebrated quietly and that there will be no sightseers."
Roger Primero, faithful to the end, Archery thought. He found himself hoping that Charles had done nothing to distress this kindly and dutiful man. So Alice Flower was dead at last, death had waited just long enough to let her tell him, Archery, all she knew. Again he seemed to feel the working of destiny. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!
He went in to lunch, feeling jaded and depressed. Where on earth was Charles? He had been gone more than two hours. By now Primero had probably seen through that absurd cover story and...
His imagination showing him his son being interrogated by Wexford at his nastiest, he was just picking at his fruit salad and warm ice cream when Charles burst into the dining room, swinging the car keys.
"I was wondering where you'd got to."
"I've had a most instructive morning. Anything happen here?"
"Nothing much. Alice Flower is dead."
"You can't tell me anything about that. Primero was full of it. Apparently he was at her bedside for hours yesterday." He threw himself into a chair next to his father's. "God, it was hot in that car! As a matter of fact, her dying like that was a help if anything. Made it easier to get him on to the murder."
"I didn't think you could be so callous," said Archery distastefully.
"Oh, come off it, Father. She'd had her allotted span plus seventeen. She can't have wanted to live. Don't you want to hear what I got out of him?"
"Of course."
"You don't want any coffee, do you? Let's go outside."
There was no one on the terrace. A yellow climbing rose had shed its petals all over the ground and the battered cane chairs. What residents there were had left possessions out here as if to reserve permanent perches, magazines, library books, a roll of blue knitting, a pair of glasses. Ruthlessly Charles cleared two chairs and blew away the rose petals. For the first time Archery noticed that he looked extremely happy.
"Well," he said when they had sat down, "the house first. It's quite a place, about ten times the size of Thringford Manor, and it's all built of grey stone with a kind of pediment thing over the front door. Mrs. Primero lived there when she was a girl and Roger bought it when it came up for sale this spring. There's a park with deer in it and a vast drive coming up from a pillared entrance. You can't see the house from the road, only the cedars in the park.
They've got an Italian butler—not so classy as an English one, d'you think? But I suppose they're a dying race. Anyway, this butler character let me in and kept me hanging about for about ten minutes in a hall the size of the ground floor of our house. I was a bit nervous because I kept thinking, suppose he's rung up the Sunday Planet and they've said they've never heard of me? But he hadn't and it was all right. He was in the library. Superb collection of books he's got and some of them looked quite worn, so I suppose someone reads them, though I shouldn't think he does.