Part 6 (1/2)

”Don't be too sure,” said Burden. ”What's the betting he brings her along? Do you want another couple of units of that red plonk?”

Wexford sat in his office at the rosewood desk (which was his own and not the property of the Mid-Suss.e.x Police Force) contemplating the T-s.h.i.+rt that had been found in the kitchen of Grimble's bungalow. It had already been examined in the lab and put to rigorous testing.

On a white background was printed in black a scorpion, measuring twelve inches from head to curled-up forked tail. The lab gave its length in centimeters but Wexford refused to cope with that. Under the scorpion's tail was the name sam in block letters. The letters had been printed in red but had now faded to a dull pink. The only label inside the T-s.h.i.+rt was a tiny square of cotton bearing the letter ”M” for medium.

He left it lying there when Grimble was announced. Burden would have won his bet if Wexford had done more than smile in response to the challenge, for Grimble had indeed brought his wife. She was without her knitting, and the devil finding no work for idle hands, hers wandered aimlessly about her lap, rubbed the surface of Wexford's desk, and occasionally scratched portions of her anatomy.

Grimble listened with apparent surprise and growing distaste to the story of the discovery, related by Burden, in his late father's house. His wife's mouth fell open and one of those fidgety hands came up to cover it as if the solecism of relating such a story had been hers, not Wexford's.

”What's that thing?” He pointed an accusing finger at the T-s.h.i.+rt. ”What's that doing there?”

In a level voice, Wexford said, ”It was in your late father's house. In the kitchen. Is it yours?”

”Of course it isn't b.l.o.o.d.y mine.” Wexford had never seen Grimble so angry. ”Would I wear a thing like that?” He c.o.c.ked his thumb in his wife's direction. ”And it isn't hers. I told you time and again I never set foot in that place after they never gave me my permission.”

”Now, John,” said his wife, ”you keep calm.”

Grimble took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. Unlikely as it seemed, it was apparent someone-probably Kathleen Grimble-had taught him a technique for dealing with rage. His face gradually lost the dark red color that had suffused it. He began shaking his head slowly.

”I don't get it,” he said. ”What was that door doing shut?”

”Which door is that, Mr. Grimble?”

”Door to the cellar. He said he found it shut. That door was never shut. My old dad kept that open all the years he lived there. I was a boy there, I grew up there, didn't I, Kath, and I never saw that door shut, didn't know it could shut.”

Perhaps believing some response was required, Kathleen Grimble said, ”There wasn't no need to shut that door.”

Grimble nodded. ”I reckon whoever it was went down there snooping about”-his eyes wandered malevolently to Burden-”they got it wrong. That door was never shut.”

Unwilling to enter into an undignified argument, Burden nevertheless saw himself heading that way. ”The door was shut,” he said as shortly and crisply as he could. ”That you have to accept. I found it shut and opened it myself. I had some trouble in getting it to open.”

”It never was shut before, that's all I can say.” As with many people who make this remark, it was far from all he could say, but as he launched into a week-by-week, month-by-month account of the number of times he had been down the cellar steps and found the door open, Wexford briskly cut him short.

”All right. Thank you. Tell me about your father's tenant-a Mr. Chapman, was it?”

Grimble's face distorted into a moue of disgust that anyone could mistake this man's real name for Chapman. ”Chadwick, Chadwick. Who told you he was called Chapman? They want their head tested. Chadwick, he was called.”

”Of course he was.” Kathleen was rubbing her fingertips together like someone crumbling bread. ”Never Chapman. Where did you get that from?”

Instead of answering her, Wexford said, ”Was his first name Sam?”

Uttering this innocuous three-letter word caused a similar explosion to that brought about by their mistake in Chadwick's surname. ”Sam? You lot haven't done your homework, have you? Douglas was his name. My poor old dad called him Doug.”

”That's right,” said Kathleen with an approving smile for her husband. ”He did. Friendly to everyone, John's dad was. Kindness itself.”

”But he evicted this Chadwick?”

”No, he never. He wanted his rent. Kept him waiting weeks for it, Chadwick did.”

”Don't forget the piano, John.”

”I won't. You can be sure of that. Chadwick played that piano at all hours. Midnight, six in the morning, it was all one to him. And that was only half of it. He left wet towels on the bathroom floor like he had a servant to pick them up for him. It was hard on my poor old dad, he was a sick man then, got the Big C, though he didn't know it, poor old devil. He wasn't going to evict him, was he? Not with all that rent owing. Chadwick did a moonlight flit, left his stuff behind. Dad was an honest man, he wasn't keeping nothing what wasn't his due, so he put all that junk outside the house and held on to the piano. It was his right, wasn't it? Chadwick's pal came back with a van and knocked at the door and asked for the piano and Dad said-”

Damon Coleman had come into the room and, speaking softly to Wexford, said, ”Miss Laxton's sent a note over to you, sir. I've got it here. I think it's the DNA test result.”

”Okay. Thanks, Damon.” Wexford unfolded the sheet of paper and read the result. He looked up, said to Grimble, ”No doubt, you'll be glad to hear the body in your trench isn't that of your second cousin Peter Darracott.”

Grimble said in a contemptuous tone that he had never thought it was. ”That his DNA you've got there?”

”It's the result of comparing the body in your trench with Mark Page's DNA, yes.”

An electrifying change came over Grimble. It was as if he had literally seen the light and it had brought him not only revelation but huge pleasure and a kind of triumph. ”You took a whatsit-a sample or whatever-from that little b.u.g.g.e.r Mark Page?” When neither Wexford nor Burden said a word, he went on, ”My cousin Maureen Page's boy?”

”Yes, Mr. Grimble. What is all this?”

”I'll tell you what all this is. Mark Page is adopted, that's what.”

They looked at him almost as bleakly as he had at them when he heard of the body in his father's house.

”Maureen couldn't have kids of her own. Her and her husband, George Page, they adopted a girl first and then this kid Mark.”

”Mr. Page said nothing about this,” said Burden.

”No, he wouldn't.” Kathleen Grimble had begun to giggle. ”He knows, of course he does. Known since he was four, he has. But he don't like it, he's like ashamed. He wouldn't tell you. Even if you asked he wouldn't.”

After that, the interview came to an abrupt end. Wexford asked only one more question and that was concerning the possible whereabouts of Douglas Chadwick. Surprisingly, Kathleen Grimble had an address for him. It appeared that whatever secretarial work had been required by Grimble senior (or, come to that, by Grimble junior) had been performed by Kathleen, the established ways of things in a world where women carried out the despised functions of housework, child-rearing, and the exercise of the mind. She had written to him when he answered Grimble senior's original advertis.e.m.e.nt, which she also had drafted. That letter had been sent thirteen years before, so there wasn't much chance that whoever lived at the address now would have much idea of Chadwick's present whereabouts.

”If he has any whereabouts,” said Wexford.

”I could wring that Mark Page's neck.” Burden was still wrathful. ”Why didn't he say? Didn't he realize?”

”Speaking of necks, he's thick from his upwards. We'll ask Maureen Page herself or the sister Peter Darracott didn't go to when he said he had. And when dealing with this family, make sure she really is his sister and not someone his dead brother married or lived with or happened to be brought up by his parents. Remember old Grimble was young Grimble's stepfather, not his own father. And let's hope she's not a Seventh Day Adventist or a Jehovah's Witness who objects to giving us a spot of saliva.”

Chapter Nine.

It would have been hard for Wexford to get to Forby village hall by seven-thirty, or indeed any time before nine, but his attempts to cancel aroused wails of disappointment from his younger daughter.

Her ”Oh, Pop, you promised!” sounded very much the sort of thing she used to say when she was five. It still went straight to his heart. Her follow-up remark was a little more mature. ”Having a detective chief inspector there would mean so much to them.”

He tried a ridiculous reproof in Hannah's style, political correctness gone mad, and said, ”I question whether you ought to refer to an ethnic minority as 'them,' Sheila.”