was, if anything, more interesting and memorable. Buses used it and on a sunny day both sides of it would catch the full sun for hours. Why, then had Loveday Morgan chosen Belgrade Road?
He tried to imagine himself giving a false address in London. What street would he choose? Not one that he had stayed in or knew well, for that might lead to discovery. Say Lammas Grove, West Fifteen? Number 43, for instance. Immediately he asked himself why, and reasoned that he had picked the street because he had sat outside Sytansound there with Sergeant Clements, the number was just a number that had come to him . . .
So that was how it was done. That was the way Howard had inferred that it was done, and he had been right again. Obviously, then, it was hopeless to try to trace Loveday by these means. He must approach the matter from other angles.
9
In them they have . . . all manner of fruit, herbs and flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished, and so finely kept, that I never saw thing more fruitful nor better trimmed in any place.
Going out in the evening was one of the excesses on which Crocker had placed a strict ban. If Wexford’s faith in the doctor had been shaken, his wife’s had not. She could only be consoled by his promise to take a taxi to Laysbrook Place, to abstain from strong drink and not to stay out too long.
He was looking forward to this visit. A little judicious questioning might elicit from Dearborn more information about the cemetery. Was it, for instance, as easy to get in and out after the gates were closed as Baker had insisted? Before Tripper and his fellows went home at night did they make any sort of search of the place? Or must Loveday have been killed before six? If this was so, Gregson, occupied at work, would be exonerated. And might Dearborn not also know something of Loveday herself? He had interviewed her. It was possible that, at that interview, she had told him something of her past history.
Laysbrook Place was one of those country corners of London in which the air smells sweeter, birds sometimes sing and other trees grow apart from planes. An arch, hung with a brown creeper Wexford thought was wisteria, concealed most of the little street from Laysbrook Square. He walked under it, light falling about him from two lamps on brackets, and saw ahead of him a single house such as might have stood in Kingsmarkham High Street. It wasn’t an old house but old bricks and timber had been used in its construction, and it was like no London house Wexford had seen. For one thing, it was rather low and sprawling with gables and lattice windows; for another, it had a real garden with apple trees in it and shrubs that were probably lilac. Now, in early March, forsythia blazed yellow and luminous through the lamplit dark and, as he opened the gate, he saw snowdrops in drifts as thick and white as real snow.
The front door opened before he reached it and Stephen Dearborn came down the steps.
‘What a lovely place,’ Wexford said.
‘You’d agree with my wife, then, that it’s an improvement on Kenbourne?’
Wexford smiled, sighing a little to himself, for he had been so piercingly reminded of the country. He was suddenly conscious of the peace and the silence. Not even in Howard’s house had he been able to escape from the ceaseless sound of traffic, but there was nothing more to be heard than a faint throbbing, what Londoners call the ‘hum’, ever present in the city and its suburbs but sometimes so remote as to seem like a sound in one’s own head.
‘My wife’s upstairs with our daughter,’ Dearborn said. ‘She wouldn’t go to sleep and it’s no good my staying with her. I just want to cuddle her and play with her all the time.’
It was warm inside but airy, enough heat turned on to take off the March chill without making one gasp. The house was very obviously the residence of a rich man, but Wexford couldn’t see any sign of pretentiousness or evidence that money had been spent
He tried to imagine himself giving a false address in London. What street would he choose? Not one that he had stayed in or knew well, for that might lead to discovery. Say Lammas Grove, West Fifteen? Number 43, for instance. Immediately he asked himself why, and reasoned that he had picked the street because he had sat outside Sytansound there with Sergeant Clements, the number was just a number that had come to him . . .
So that was how it was done. That was the way Howard had inferred that it was done, and he had been right again. Obviously, then, it was hopeless to try to trace Loveday by these means. He must approach the matter from other angles.
9
In them they have . . . all manner of fruit, herbs and flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished, and so finely kept, that I never saw thing more fruitful nor better trimmed in any place.
Going out in the evening was one of the excesses on which Crocker had placed a strict ban. If Wexford’s faith in the doctor had been shaken, his wife’s had not. She could only be consoled by his promise to take a taxi to Laysbrook Place, to abstain from strong drink and not to stay out too long.
He was looking forward to this visit. A little judicious questioning might elicit from Dearborn more information about the cemetery. Was it, for instance, as easy to get in and out after the gates were closed as Baker had insisted? Before Tripper and his fellows went home at night did they make any sort of search of the place? Or must Loveday have been killed before six? If this was so, Gregson, occupied at work, would be exonerated. And might Dearborn not also know something of Loveday herself? He had interviewed her. It was possible that, at that interview, she had told him something of her past history.
Laysbrook Place was one of those country corners of London in which the air smells sweeter, birds sometimes sing and other trees grow apart from planes. An arch, hung with a brown creeper Wexford thought was wisteria, concealed most of the little street from Laysbrook Square. He walked under it, light falling about him from two lamps on brackets, and saw ahead of him a single house such as might have stood in Kingsmarkham High Street. It wasn’t an old house but old bricks and timber had been used in its construction, and it was like no London house Wexford had seen. For one thing, it was rather low and sprawling with gables and lattice windows; for another, it had a real garden with apple trees in it and shrubs that were probably lilac. Now, in early March, forsythia blazed yellow and luminous through the lamplit dark and, as he opened the gate, he saw snowdrops in drifts as thick and white as real snow.
The front door opened before he reached it and Stephen Dearborn came down the steps.
‘What a lovely place,’ Wexford said.
‘You’d agree with my wife, then, that it’s an improvement on Kenbourne?’
Wexford smiled, sighing a little to himself, for he had been so piercingly reminded of the country. He was suddenly conscious of the peace and the silence. Not even in Howard’s house had he been able to escape from the ceaseless sound of traffic, but there was nothing more to be heard than a faint throbbing, what Londoners call the ‘hum’, ever present in the city and its suburbs but sometimes so remote as to seem like a sound in one’s own head.
‘My wife’s upstairs with our daughter,’ Dearborn said. ‘She wouldn’t go to sleep and it’s no good my staying with her. I just want to cuddle her and play with her all the time.’
It was warm inside but airy, enough heat turned on to take off the March chill without making one gasp. The house was very obviously the residence of a rich man, but Wexford couldn’t see any sign of pretentiousness or evidence that money had been spent
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