From Doon With Death

by From Doon

  ‘While Mrs Missal is having her hair done, Mike,’ Wexford said, ‘I am going to have a word with Inge. As Mrs Missal says, Thank God for Inge!’

  There was a tin of polish and a couple of dusters on the dining-room floor and the Indian rugs were spread on the crazy paving outside the windows. Inge Wolff, it seemed, had duties apart from minding Dymphna and Priscilla.

  ‘All I know I will tell you,’ she said dramatically. ‘What matter if I get the push? Next week, anyhow, I go home to Hanover.’

  Maybe, Wexford though, and, on the other hand, maybe not. The way things were going Inge Wolff might be needed in England for the next few months.

  ‘On Monday Mrs Missal stay at home all the day. Just for shopping in the morning she go out. Also Tuesday she go shopping in the morning, for in the afternoon is closing of all shops.’

  ‘What about Tuesday afternoon, Miss Wolff?’

  ‘Ah, Tuesday afternoon she go out. First we have our dinner. One o’clock. I and Mrs Missal and the children. Ah, next week, only think, no more children! After dinner I wash up and she go up to her bedroom and lie down. When she come down she say, “Inge, I go out with the car,” and she take the key and go down the garden to the garage.’

  ‘What time would that be, Miss Wolff?’

  ‘Three, half past two. I don’t know.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Then she come back, five, six.’

  ‘How abut Wednesday?’

  ‘Ah, Wednesday, I have half-day off. Very good. Dymphna come home to dinner, go back to school. I go out. Mrs Missal stay home with Priscilla. And when comes the evening she go out, seven, half past seven. I don’t know. In this house always are comings and goings. It is like a game.’

  Wexford showed her the snapshot of Mrs Parsons.

  ‘Have you ever seen this woman, Miss Wolff? Did she ever come here?’

  ‘Hundreds of women like this in Kingsmarkham. All are alike except rich ones. The ones that come here, they are not like this.’ She gave a derisive laugh. ‘Oh, no, is funny. I laugh to see this. None come here like this.’

  When Wexford got back to the station Helen Missal was sitting in the entrance hall, her red hair done in elaborate scrolls on the top of her head.

  ‘Been thinking things over, Mrs Missal?’ He showed her into his office.

  ‘About Wednesday night . . .’

  ‘Frankly, Mrs Missal, I’m not very interested in Wednesday night. Now, Tuesday afternoon . . .’

  ‘Why Tuesday afternoon?’

  Wexford put the photograph on his desk where she could see it. Then he dropped the lipstick on top of it. The little gilt cylinder rolled about on the shiny snapshot and came to rest.

  ‘Mrs Parsons was killed on Tuesday afternoon,’ he said patiently, ‘and we found your lipstick a few yards from her body. So, you see, I’m not very interested in Wednesday night.’

  ‘You can’t think . . . Oh, my God! Look, Chief Inspector, I was here on Tuesday afternoon. I went to the pictures.’

  ‘You must just about keep that place going, madam. What a pity you don’t live in Pomfret. They had to close the cinema there for lack of custom.’

  Helen Missal drew in her breath and let it out again in a deep sigh. She twisted her feet round the metal legs of the chair.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell you about it,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’d better tell the truth.’ She spoke as if this was always a last distasteful resort instead of a moral obligation.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best, madam.’

  ‘Well, you see, I only said I went to the pictures on Wednesday to have an alibi. Actually, I went out with a friend.’ She smiled winningly. ‘Who shall be nameless.’

  ‘For the moment,’ Wexford said, un-won.

  ‘I was gong out with this friend on Wednesday night, but I couldn’t really tell my husband, could I? So I said I was going to the pictures. Actually we just drove around the lanes. Well, I had to see the film, didn’t I? Because my husband always . . . I mean, he’d obviously ask me about it. So I went to see the film on Tuesday afternoon.’

  ‘In your car, Mrs Missal? You only live about a hundred yards from the cinema.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve been talking to that bloody little Inge. You see, I had to take the car so that she’d think I’d gone a long way. I mean, I couldn’t have gone shopping because it was early closing and I never walk anywhere. She knows that. I thought if I didn’t take the car she’d guess I’d gone to the pictures and then she’d think it funny me going again on Wednesday.’

  ‘Servants have their drawbacks,’ Wexford said.

  ‘You’re not kidding. Well, that’s all there is to it. I took the car and stuck it in Tabard Road . . . Oh God, that’s where that woman lived, isn’t it? But I couldn’t leave it in the High Street because . . .’ Again she tried a softening smile. ‘Because of your ridiculous rules about parking.’

  Wexford snapped sharply:

  ‘Do you know this woman, madam?’

  ‘Oh, you made me jump! Let me see. Oh, no, I don’t think so. She’s not the sort of person I’d be likely to know, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Who did you go out with on Wednesday night when you lost your lipstick, Mrs Missal?’

  The smiles, the girlish confidences, hadn’t worked. She flung back her chair and shouted at him:

  ‘I’m not going to tell you, I won’t tell you. You can’t make me! You can’t keep me here.’

  ‘You came of your own accord, madam,’ Wexford said. He swung open the door, smiling genially. ‘I’ll just look in this evening when your husband’s at home and we’ll see if we can get everything cleared up.’

  The Methodist minister hadn’t been much help to Burden. He hadn’t seen Mrs Parsons since Sunday and he’d been surprised when she didn’t come to the social evening on Tuesday. No, she had made no close friends at the church and he couldn’t recall hearing anyone use her Christian name.

  Burden checked the bus times at the garage and found that the five-thirty-two had left Stowerton dead on time. Moreover, the conductress on the Kingsmarkham bus, the one that left Stowerton at five-thirty-five, remembered seeing Parsons. He had asked for change for a ten-shilling note and they were nearly in Kingsmarkham before she got enough silver to change it.

  ‘Fun and games with Mrs Bloody Missal,’ Wexford said when Burden walked in. ‘She’s one of those women who tell lies by the light of nature, a natural crook.’

  ‘Where’s the motive, sir?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Maybe she was carrying on with Parsons, picked him up at his office on Tuesday afternoon and bribed the entire Southern Water Board to say he didn’t leave until after five-thirty. Maybe she’d got another boy friend she goes out with on Wednesdays, one for every day of the week. Or maybe she and Parsons and Mr X, who shall be nameless (God Almighty!), were Russian agents and Mrs Parsons had defected to the West. It’s all very wonderful, Mike, and it makes me spew!’

  ‘We haven’t even got the thing she was strangled with,’ Burden said gloomily. ‘Could a woman have done it?’

  ‘Crocker seems to think so. If she was a strong young woman, always sitting about on her backside and feeding her face.’

  ‘Like Mrs Missal.’

  ‘We’re going to get down there tonight, Mike, and have the whole thing out again in front of her old man. But not till tonight. I’m gong to give her the rest of the day to sweat in. I’ve got the report from the lab and there’s no cow dung on Mrs Missal’s tyres. But she didn’t have to use her own car. Her husband’s a car dealer, got a saleroom in Stowerton. Those people are always chopping and changing their cars. That’s another thing we’ll have to check up on. The inquest’s tomorrow and I want to get somewhere before then.’

  Burden drove his own car into Stowerton and pulled into the forecourt of Missal’s saleroom. A man in overalls came out from the glass-walled office between the rows of petrol-pumps.

  ‘Two and two shots, please,’ Burden said. ‘Mr Missal about?’

  �
�He’s out with a client.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ Burden said. ‘I looked in on Tuesday afternoon and he wasn’t here . . .’

  Always in and out he is. In and out. I’ll just give your windscreen a wipe over.’

  ‘Maybe Mrs Missal?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her inside three months. Back in March was the last time. She come in to lend the Merc and bashed the grid in. Women drivers!’

  ‘Had a row, did they? That sounds like Pete.’

  ‘You’re not joking. He said, never again. Not the Merc or any of the cars.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Burden said. He gave the man a shilling; more would have looked suspicious. ‘Marriage is a battlefield when all’s said and done.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you came in.’

  Burden switched on the ignition and put the car in gear.

  ‘Don’t trouble,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing him tonight.’

  He drove towards the exit and braked sharply to avoid a yellow convertible that swung sharply in from Maryfield Road. An elderly man was at the wheel, beside him, Peter Missal.

  ‘There he is, if you want to catch him,’ the pump attendant shouted.

  Burden parked his own car and pushed open the swing doors. He waited beside a Mini-car revolving smoothly on a scarlet roundabout. Outside he could see Missal talking to the driver of the convertible. Apparently the deal was off, for the other man left on foot and Missal came into the saleroom.

  ‘What now?’ he said to Burden. ‘I don’t like being hounded at my place of business.’

  ‘I won’t keep you,’ Burden said. ‘I’m just checking up on Tuesday afternoon. No doubt you were here all day. In and out, that is.’

  ‘It’s no business of yours where I was.’ Missal flicked a speck of dust from the Mini’s wing as it circled past. ‘As a matter of fact I went into Kingsmarkham to see a client. And that’s all I’m telling you. I respect personal privacy and it’s a pity you don’t do the same.’

  ‘In a murder case, sir, one’s private life isn’t always one’s one affair. Your wife doesn’t seem to have grasped that either.’ He went towards the doors.

  ‘My wife . . .’ Missal followed him and, looking to either side of him to make sure there was no one about, hissed in an angry half-whisper: ‘You can take that heap of scrap metal off my drive-in. It’s causing an obstruction.’

  6

  Who was her father?

  Who was her mother?

  Had she a sister?

  Had she a brother?

  Or, was there a dearer one

  Still, and a nearer one

  Yet, than all other?

  Thomas Hood, The Bridge of Sighs

  The murder books had been taken away and the top shelf of the bookcase was empty. If Parsons was innocent, a truly bereaved husband, Burden thought, how dreadfully their covers must have screamed at him when he came into the shabby dining-room this morning. Or had he removed them because they had served their purpose?

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ Parsons said, ‘I must know. Was she . . . ? Had she . . . ? Was she just strangled or was there anything else?’ He had aged in the past days or else he was a consummate actor.

  ‘You can set your mind at rest on that score,’ Wexford said quickly. ‘Your wife was certainly strangled, but I can assure you she wasn’t interfered with in any other way.’ He stared at the dull green curtains, the lino that was frayed at the skirting board, and said impersonally, ‘There was no sexual assault.’

  ‘Thank God! Parsons spoke as if he thought there was still a God in some nonconformist heaven and as if he was really thanking Him. ‘I couldn’t bear it if there had been. I couldn’t go on living. It would just about have killed Margaret.’ He realized what he had said and put his head in his hands.

  Wexford waited until the hands came down and the tearless eyes were once more fixed on his own.

  ‘Mr Parsons, I can tell you that as far as we know there was no struggle. It looks as if your wife was sleeping until just before she was killed. There would have been just a momentary shock, a second’s pain – and then nothing.’

  Parson’s mumbled, turning away his face so that they could catch only the last words, ‘ . . . For though they be punished in the sight of man, yet is their hope full of immortality.’

  Wexford got up and went over to the bookcase. He didn’t say anything about the missing library of crime, but he took a book out of one of the lower shelves.

  ‘I see this is a guide to the Kingsmarkham district.’ He opened it and Burden glimpsed a coloured photograph of the market place. ‘It isn’t a new book.’

  ‘My wife lived here – well, not here. In Flagford it was – for a couple of years after the end of the war. Her uncle was stationed with the R.A.F. at Flagford and her aunt had a cottage in the village.’

  ‘Tell me about your wife’s life.’

  ‘She was born in Balham,’ Parsons said. He winced, avoiding the Christian name. ‘Her mother and father died when she was a child and she went to live with this aunt. When she was about sixteen she came to live in Flagford, but she didn’t like it. Her uncle died – he wasn’t killed or anything – he died of heart disease, and her aunt went back to Balham. My wife went to college in London and started teaching. Then we got married. That’s all.’

  ‘Mr Parsons, you told me on Wednesday your wife would have taken her front-door key with her. How many keys did you have between you?’

  ‘Just the two.’ Parsons took a plain Yale key from his pocket and held it up to Wexford. ‘Mine and – and Margaret’s. She kept hers on a ring. The ring has a silver chain with a horseshoe charm on the end of it.’ He added simply in a calm voice: ‘I gave it to her when we came here. The purse is a brown one, brown plastic with a gilt clip.’

  ‘I want to know if your wife was in the habit of going to Prewett’s farm. Did you know the Prewetts or any of the farm workers? There’s a girl there called Dorothy Sweeting. Did your wife ever mention her?’

  But Parsons had never even heard of the farm until his wife’s body had been found there. She hadn’t cared much for the country or for country walks and the name Sweeting meant nothing.

  ‘Do you know anyone called Missal?’

  ‘Missal? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘A tall good-looking woman with red hair. Lives in a house opposite The Olive and Dove. Her husband’s a car dealer. Big bloke with a big green car.’

  ‘We don’t . . . we didn’t know anyone like that.’ His face twisted and he put up a hand to hide his eyes. ‘They’re a lot of snobs round here. We didn’t belong and we should never have come.’ His voice died to a whisper. ‘If we’d stayed in London,’ he said, ‘she might still be alive.’

  ‘Why did you come, Mr Parsons?’

  ‘It’s cheaper living in the country, or you think it’s cheaper till you try it.’

  ‘So your coming here didn’t have anything to do with the fact that your wife once lived in Flagford?’

  ‘Margaret didn’t want to come here, but the job came up. Beggars can’t be choosers. She had to work when we were in London. I thought she’d find some peace here.’ He coughed and the sound tailed away into a sob. ‘And she did, didn’t she?’

  ‘I believe there are some books in your attic, Mr Parsons. I’d like to have a good look through them.’

  ‘You can have them,’ Parsons said. ‘I never want to see another book as long as I live. But there’s nothing in them. She never looked at them.’

  The dark staircases were familiar now and with familiarity they had lost much of that sinister quality Burden had felt on his first visit. The sun showed up the new dust and in its gentle light the house seemed no longer like the scene of a crime but just a shabby relic. It was very close and Wexford opened the attic window. He blew a film of dust from the surface of the bigger trunk and opened its lid. It was crammed with books and he took the top ones out. They were novels: two by Rhoda Broughton, Evelina in the Everyman’s Library and Mrs Craik’s John Ha
lifax, Gentleman. Their fly-leaves were bare and nothing fluttered from the pages when he shook them. Underneath were two bundles of school stories, among them what looked like the complete works of Angela Brazil. Wexford dumped them on the floor and lifted out a stack of expensive-looking volumes, some bound in suède, others in scented leather or watered silk.

  The first one he opened was covered in pale green suède, its pages edged with gold. On the fly-leaf someone had printed carefully in ink:

  If love were what the rose is;

  And I were like the leaf,

  Our lives would grow together

  In sad or singing weather . . .

  And underneath:

  Rather sentimental, Minna, but you know what I mean. Happy, happy birthday. All my love, Doon. March 21st, 1950.

  Burden looked over Wexford’s shoulder.

  ‘Who’s Minna?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Parsons,’ Wexford said. ‘Could be second-hand. It looks expensive. I wonder why she didn’t keep it downstairs. God knows, this place needs brightening up.’

  ‘And who’s Doon?’ Burden asked.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a detective. Well, detect.’ He put the book on the floor and picked up the next one. This was the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, still in its black and pearl-grey jacket, and Doon had printed another message inside. Wexford read it aloud in an unemotional voice.

  ‘I know you have set your heart on this, Minna, and I was so happy when I went to Foyle’s and found it waiting for me. Joyeux Noél, Doon, Christmas, 1950.’ The next book was even more splendid, red watered silk and black leather. ‘Let’s have a look at number three,’ Wexford said. ‘The Poems of Christina Rossetti. Very nice, gilt lettering and all. What’s Doon got to say this time? An un-birthday present, Minna dear, from Doon who wishes you happy for ever and ever. June 1950. I wonder if Mrs P. bought the lot cheap from this Minna.’

  ‘I suppose Minna could be Mrs P., a sort of nickname.’

  ‘It has just crossed my mind,’ Wexford said sarcastically. ‘They’re such good books, Mike, not the sort of things anyone would give to a church sale, and church sales seem to have been about Mrs Parsons’ mark. Look at this lot: Omar Khayyám; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; William Morris. Unless I’m much mistaken that Omar Khayyám cost three or four pounds. And there’s another one here, the Verses of Walter Savage Landor. It’s an old-fashioned kind of book and the leaves haven’t even been cut.’ He read the message on the fly-leaf aloud: