by From Doon
‘I promise to bring back with me
What thou with transport will receive,
The only proper gift for thee.
Of which no mortal shall bereave.
Rather apt, don’t you think, Minna? Love from Doon. March 21st, 1951.’
‘It wasn’t very apt, was it? And Minna, whoever she is, didn’t receive it with transport. She didn’t even cut the pages. I’m going to have another word with Parsons, Mike, and then we’re going to have all this lot carted down to the station. This attic is giving me the creeps.’
But Parsons didn’t know who Minna was and he looked surprised when Wexford mentioned the date, March 21st.
‘I never heard anyone call her Minna,’ he said distastefully, as if the name was an insult to her memory. ‘My wife never spoke about a friend called Doon. I’ve never even seen those books properly. Margaret and I lived in the house her aunt left her till we moved here and those books have always been in the trunk. We just brought them with us with the furniture. I can’t make it out about the date – Margaret’s birthday was March 21st.’
‘It could mean nothing, it could mean everything,’ Wexford said when they were out in the car. ‘Doon talks about Foyle’s, and Foyle’s in case you don’t know, my provincial friend, is in London in the Charing Cross Road.’
‘But Mrs P. was sixteen in 1949 and she stayed two years in Flagford. She must have been living only about five miles from here when Doon gave her those books.’
‘True. He could have lived here too and gone up to London for the day. I wonder why he printed the messages, Mike. Why didn’t he write them? And why did Mrs P. hide the books as if she was ashamed of them?’
‘They’d make a better impression on the casual caller than The Brides in the Bath or whatever it is,’ Burden said. ‘This Doon was certainly gone on her.’
Wexford took Mrs Parson’s photograph out of his pocket. Incredible that this woman had ever inspired a passion or fired a line of verse!
‘Happy for ever and ever,’ he said softly. ‘But love isn’t what the rose is. I wonder if love could be a dark and tangled wood, a cord twisted and pulled tighter on a meek neck?’
‘A cord?’ Burden said. ‘Why not a scarf, that pink nylon thing? It’s not in the house.’
‘Could be. You can bet your life that scarf is with the purse and the key. Plenty of women have been strangled with a nylon stocking, Mike. Why not a nylon scarf?’
He had brought the Swinburne and the Christina Rossetti with him. It wasn’t much to go on, Burden reflected, a bundle of old books and an elusive boy. Doon, he thought, Doon. If Minna was anything to go by Doon was bound to be a pseudonym too. Doon wouldn’t be a boy any more but a man of thirty or thirty-five, a married man with children, perhaps, who had forgotten all about his old love. Burden wondered where Doon was now. Lost, absorbed perhaps into the great labyrinth of London, or still living a mile or two away . . . His heart sank when he recalled the new factory estate at Stowerton, the mazy lanes of Pomfret with a solitary cottage every two hundred yards, and to the north, Sewingbury, where road after road of post-war detached houses pushed outwards like rays from the nucleus of the ancient town. Apart from these, there was Kingsmarkham itself and the daughter villages, Flagford, Forby . . .
‘I don’t suppose that Missal bloke could be Doon,’ he said hopefully.
‘If he is,’ Wexford said, ‘he’s changed one hell of a lot.’
The river of my years has been sluggish, Minna, flowing slowly to a sea of peace. Ah, long ago how I yearned for the torrent of life!
Then yesternight, yestere’en, Minna, I saw you. Not as I have so often in my dreams, but in life. I followed you, looking for lilies where you trod . . . I saw the gold band on your finger, the shackle of an importunate love, and I cried aloud in my heart, I, I, too have known the terrors of the night!
But withal my feast has ever been the feast of the spirit and to that other dweller in my gates my flesh has been as an unlit candle in a fast-sealed casket. The light in my soul has guttered, shrinking in the harsh wind. But though the casket be atrophied and the flame past resuscitation, yet the wick of the spirit cries, hungering for the hand that holds the taper of companionship, the torch of sweet confidence, the spark of friends reunited.
I shall see you tomorrow and we shall ride together along the silver streets of our youth. Fear not, for reason shall sit upon my bridle and gentle moderation within my reins. Will all not be well, Minna, will all not be pleasant as the warm sun on the faces of little children?
7
When she shall unwind
All those wiles she wound about me. . . .
Francis Thompson, The Mistress of Vision
A black Jaguar, not new but well tended, was parked outside the Missals’ house when Wexford and Burden turned in at the gate at seven o’clock. The wheels only were soiled, their hubcaps spattered with dried mud.
‘I know that car,’ Wexford said. ‘I know it but I can’t place it. Must be getting old.’
‘Friends for cocktails,’ Burden said sententiously.
‘I could do with a spot of gracious living myself,’ Wexford grumbled. He rang the ship’s bell.
Perhaps Mrs Missal had forgotten they were coming or Inge hadn’t been primed. She looked surprised yet spitefully pleased. Like her employer’s, her hair was done up on top of her head, but with less success. In her left hand she held a canister of paprika.
‘All are in,’ she said. ‘Two come for dinner. What a man! I tell you it is a waste to have men like him buried in the English countryside. Mrs Missal say, “Inge, you must make lasagna.” All will be Italian, paprika, pasta, pimentoes . . . Ach, it is just a game!’
‘All right, Miss Wolff. We’d like to see Mrs Missal.’
‘I show you.’ She giggled, opened the drawing-room door and announced with some serendipity, ‘Here are the policemen!’
Four people were sitting in the flowered armchairs and there were four glasses of pale dry sherry on the coffee-table. For a moment nobody moved or said anything, but Helen Missal flushed deeply. Then she turned to the man who sat between her and her husband, parted her lips and closed them again.
So that’s the character Inge was going on about in the hall, Burden thought. Quadrant! No wonder Wexford recognized the car.
‘Good evening, Mr Quadrant,’ Wexford said, indicating by a slight edge to his voice that he was surprised to see him in this company.
‘Good evening, Chief Inspector, Inspector Burden.’
Burden had long known him as a solicitor he often saw in Kingsmarkham magistrates’ court, long known and inexplicably disliked. He nodded to Quadrant and to the woman, presumably Quadrant’s wife, who occupied the fourth armchair. They were somewhat alike, these two, both thin and dark with straight noses and curved red lips. Quadrant had the features of a grandee in an El Greco portrait, a grandee or a monk, but as far as Burden knew he was an Englishman. The Latin lips might have first drawn breath in a Cornish town and Quadrant be the descendant of an Armada mariner. His wife was beautifully dressed with the careless elegance of the very rich. Burden thought she made Helen Missal’s blue shift look like something from a chainstore sale. Her fingers were heavily be-ringed, vulgarly so, if the stones were false, but Burden didn’t think they were false.
‘I’m afraid we’re intruding again, sir,’ Wexford said to Missal, his eyes lingering on Quadrant. ‘I’d just like to have a talk with your wife, if you don’t mind.’
Missal stood up, his face working with impotent rage. In his light-weight silver-grey suit he looked fatter than ever. Then Quadrant did a strange thing. He took a cigarette out of the box on the table, put it in his mouth and lit the cork tip. Fascinated, Burden watched him choke and drop the cigarette into an ashtray.
‘I’m sick and tired of all this,’ Missal shouted. ‘We can’t even have a quiet evening with our friends without being hounded. I’m sick of it. My wife has given you her explanation and that ought to be en
ough.’
‘This is a murder enquiry, sir,’ Wexford said.
‘We were just going to have dinner,’ Helen Missal spoke sulkily. She smoothed her blue skirt and fidgeted with a string of ivory beads. ‘I suppose we’d better go into your study, Pete. Inge’ll be in and out of the dining-room. God! God damn it all, why can’t you leave me in peace?’ She turned to Quadrant’s wife and said: ‘Will you excuse me a moment, Fabia, darling? That is, if you can bear to stay and eat with the criminal classes.’
‘You’re sure you don’t want Douglas to go with you?’ Fabia Quadrant sounded amused, and Burden wondered if the Missals had warned them of the impending visit, suggested perhaps that this was to enquire into some parking offence. ‘As your solicitor, I mean,’ she said. But Wexford had mentioned murder and when he lit that cigarette Quadrant had been frightened.
‘Don’t be long,’ Missal said.
They went into the study, and Wexford closed the door.
‘I want my lipstick back,’ Helen Missal said, ‘and I want my dinner.’
Unmoved, Wexford said, ‘And I want to know who you went out with when you lost your lipstick, madam.’
‘It was just a friend,’ she said. She looked coyly up at Wexford, whining like a little girl asking permission to have a playmate to tea. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have any friends?’
‘Mrs Missal, if you continue to refuse to tell me this man’s name I shall have no alternative but to question your husband.’
Burden was becoming used to her sudden changes of mood, but still he was not quite prepared for this burst of violence.
‘You nasty low-down bastard!’ she said.
‘I’m not much affected by that sort of abuse, madam. You see, I’m accustomed to moving in circles where such language is among the terms of reference. His name, please. This is a murder enquiry.’
‘Well, if you must know it was Douglas Quadrant.’
And that, Burden thought, accounts for the choking act in the other room.
‘Inspector Burden,’ Wexford said, ‘will you just take Mr Quadrant into the dining-room (never mind about Miss Wolff’s dinner) and ask him for his version of what happened on Wednesday night?’ Or was it Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Missal?’
Burden went out and Wexford said with a little sigh, ‘Very well, madam, now I’d like to hear about Wednesday night, all over again.’
‘What’s that fellow going to say in front of my husband?’
‘Inspector Burden is a very discreet officer. Provided I find everything satisfactory I’ve no doubt you can convince your husband that Mr Quadrant was consulted simply in his capacity as your solicitor.’
This was the line Burden took when he went back into the drawing-room.
‘Is there some difficulty about Mrs Missal, then, Inspector?’ Fabia Quadrant asked. She might have been asking some minion if he had attended to the wants of a guest. ‘I expect my husband can sort it out.’
Quadrant got up lazily. Burden was surprised that he offered no resistance. They went into the dining-room and Burden pulled out two chairs from the side of the table. It was laid with place mats, tall smoky purple glasses, knives and forks in Swedish steel and napkins folded into the shape of water-lilies.
‘A man must live,’ Quadrant said easily when Burden asked him about his drive with Helen Missal. ‘Mrs Missal is perfectly happily married. So am I. We just like to do a little dangerous living together from time to time. A drive, a drink . . . No harm done and everyone the happier for it.’ He was being disarmingly frank.
Burden wondered why. It didn’t seem to tie with his manner when they had first arrived. Everyone the happier for it? Missal didn’t look happy . . . and the woman with the rings? She had her money to console her. But what had all this to do with Mrs Parsons?
‘We drove to the lane,’ Quadrant said, ‘parked the car and stood on the edge of the wood to have a cigarette. You know how smoky it gets inside a car, Inspector.’ Burden was to be brought in as another man of the world. ‘I’m afraid I know nothing about the lipstick. Mrs Missal is rather a happy-go-lucky girl. She tends to be careless about unconsidered trifles.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps that’s what I like about her.’
‘I suppose all this did happen on Wednesday,’ Burden said, ‘not Tuesday afternoon?’
‘Now, come, Inspector. I was in court all day Tuesday. You saw me yourself.’
Had he seen him? Part of the time, yes, but he certainly hadn’t had Quadrant under his eye all day.
‘We’d like to have a look at your car tyres, sir.’ But as he said it Burden knew it was hopeless. Quadrant admitted visiting the lane on Wednesday.
In the study Wexford was getting much the same story from Helen Missal.
‘We didn’t go into the wood,’ she said. ‘We just stood under the trees. I took my handbag with me because it had got quite a bit of money in it and I think I must have dropped my lipstick when I opened the bag to get my hanky out.’
‘You never went out of sight of the car?’
The net was spread and she fell in it.
‘We never went out of sight of the car,’ she said. ‘We just stood under the trees and talked.’
‘What a nervous person you must be, Mrs Missal, nervous and extremely cautious. You had Mr Quadrant with you and you were in sight of the car, but you were afraid someone might try to steal your handbag under your very eyes.’
She was frightened now and Wexford was sure she hadn’t told him everything.
‘Well, that’s how it happened. I can’t be expected to account for everything I do.’
‘I’m afraid you can, madam. I suppose you’ve kept your cinema ticket?’
‘Oh, my God! Can’t you give me any peace? Of course I don’t keep cinema tickets.’
‘You don’t show much foresight, madam. It would have been prudent to have kept it in case your husband wanted to see it. Perhaps you’ll have a look for that ticket and when you’ve found it I’d like you to bring it down to the station. The tickets are numbered and it will be simple to determine whether yours was issued on Tuesday or Wednesday.’
Quadrant was waiting for him in the dining-room, standing by the sideboard now and reading the labels on two bottles of white wine. Burden still sat at the table.
‘Ah, Chief Inspector,’ Quadrant said in the tone he used for melting the hearts of lay magistrates. ‘“What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”!’
‘I wish you could convince Mrs Missal of the truth of that maxim, sir. Very unfortunate for you that you happened to choose that particular lane for your . . . your talk with her on Wednesday night.’
‘May I assure you, Chief Inspector, that it was merely a matter of misfortune.’ He continued to look at the bottles of Barsac, misted and ice-cold. ‘Had I been aware of the presence of Mrs Parsons’ body in the wood I should naturally have come straight to you. In my position, my peculiar position, I always take it upon myself to give every possible assistance to you good people.’
‘It is a peculiar position, isn’t it, sir? What I should call a stroke of malignant fate.’
In the drawing-room Missal and Mrs Quadrant were sitting in silence. They looked, Burden thought, as if they had little in common. Helen Missal and the solicitor filed in, smiling brightly, as if they had all been playing some party game. The charade had been acted, the word discovered. Now they could all have their dinner.
‘Perhaps we can all have our dinner now,’ Missal said.
Wexford looked at him.
‘I believe you were in Kingsmarkham on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Missal? Perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me where you were exactly and if anyone saw you.’
‘No, I won’t,’ Missal said. ‘I’m damned if I do. You send your henchman –’
‘Oh, Peter,’ Fabia Quadrant interrupted. ‘Henchman! What a word.’
Burden stood woodenly, waiting.
‘You send your underling to show me up in front of my clients and my staff. You persec
ute my wife. I’m damned if I tell you what I do with every minute of my time!’
‘Well, I had to,’ Helen Missal said. She seemed pleased with herself, delighted that the focus of attention had shifted from herself to her husband.
‘I’d like a sample from your car tyres,’ Wexford said, and Burden wondered despairingly if they were going to have to scrape mud from the wheels of every car in Kingsmarkham.
‘The Merc’s in the garage,’ Missal said. ‘Make yourself at home. You do inside, so why not make free with the grounds? Maybe you’d like to borrow the lawn for the police sports.’
Fabia Quadrant smiled slightly and her husband pursed his lips and looked down. But Helen Missal didn’t laugh. She glanced quickly at Quadrant and Burden thought she gave the ghost of a shiver. Then she lifted her glass and drained the sherry at a single gulp.
Wexford sat at his desk, doodling on a piece of paper. It was time to go home, long past time, but they still had the events of the day, the stray remarks, the evasive answers, to sift through and discuss. Burden saw that the Chief Inspector was writing, apparently aimlessly, the pair of names he had scribbled that morning when Mrs Missal had first come to him: Missal, Parsons: Parsons, Missal.
‘But what’s the connection, Mike? There must be a connection.’ Wexford sighed and drew a thick black line through the names. ‘You know, sometimes, I wish this was Mexico. Then we could keep a crate of hooch in here. Tequila or some damn’ thing. This everlasting tea is making me spew.’
‘Quadrant and Mrs Missal . . .’ Burden began slowly.
‘They’re having a real humdingin’ affair,’ Wexford interrupted, ‘knocking it off in the back of his Jag.’