ground left vacant after the demolition of some isolated old house. They were a sign of the times, of scarcity of land and builders’ greed. But they were handsome enough for all that, three floors high, boarded in red cedar between the wide plateglass windows. Each had its own garage, integrated and occupying part of the ground floor, each having a different coloured front door, orange, olive, blue, chocolate, yellow and lime. Number six, at this end of the block, had the typical invitation-to-burglars look a house takes on when its affluent and prideful owner is away. All the windows were shut, all the curtains drawn back with perfect symmetry. An empty milk bottle rack stood on the doorstep, and there were no bottles, full or empty, beside it. Stuck through the letterbox and protruding from it were a fistful of letters and circulars in brown envelopes. So much for police surveillance, Wexford thought to himself.
It was rather unwillingly that he now relinquished a share of the investigating to Baker and Clements, though he knew Baker’s efficiency. The hard-faced inspector and his sergeant went off to ring at the door of number one. With Burden beside him, Wexford approached the house next door to the empty one. Mrs Cohen at number five was a handsome Jewess in her early forties. Her house was stuffed with ornaments, the wallpaper flocked crimson on gold, gold on cream. There were photographs about of nearly grown-up children, a buxom daughter in a bridesmaid’s dress, a son at his bar mitzvah.
‘Mrs Farriner’s a very charming nice person. What I call a brave woman, self-supporting, you know. Yes, she’s divorced. Some no-good husband in the background, I believe, though she’s never told me the details and I wouldn’t ask. She’s got a lovely little boutique down at Montfort Circus. I’ve had some really exquisite things from her and she’s let me have them at cost. That’s what I call neighbourly. Oh, no, it couldn’t be’ - looking at the photograph ‘ - not murdered. Not a false name, that’s not Rose’s nature. Rose Farriner, that’s her name. I mean, it’s laughable what you’re saying. Of course I know where she is. First she went off to see her mother who’s in a very nice nursing home somewhere in the country, and then she was going on to the Lake District. No, I haven’t had a card from her, I wouldn’t expect it.’
The next house was the one which had been burgled, and Mrs Elliott, when they had explained who they were, promptly assumed that there had been another break-in. She was at least sixty, a jumpy nervous woman who had never been in Rose Farriner’s house or entertained her in her own. But she knew of the existence of the dress shop, knew that Mrs Farriner was away and had remarked that she sometimes went away for weekends, in her view a dangerous proceeding with so many thieves about. The photograph was shown to her and she became intensely frightened. No, she couldn’t say if Mrs Farriner had looked like that when young. It was evident that the idea of even hazarding an identification terrified her, and it seemed as if by so doing she feared to put her own life in jeopardy.
‘Rhoda,’ said Wexford to Burden, ‘means a rose. It’s Greek for rose. She tells people she’s going to visit her mother in nursing home. What are the chances she’s shifted the facts, and mother is father and the nursing home’s a hospital?’
Baker and Clements met them outside the gate of number three. They too had been told of mother and the nursing home, of the dress shop, and they too had met only with doubt and bewilderment over the photograph. Together the four of them approached the last, the chocolate coloured, front door.
Mrs Delano was very young, a fragile pallid blonde with a pale blond baby, at present asleep in its pram in the porch. ‘Rose Farriner’s somewhere around forty or fifty,’ she said as if one of those ages was much the
It was rather unwillingly that he now relinquished a share of the investigating to Baker and Clements, though he knew Baker’s efficiency. The hard-faced inspector and his sergeant went off to ring at the door of number one. With Burden beside him, Wexford approached the house next door to the empty one. Mrs Cohen at number five was a handsome Jewess in her early forties. Her house was stuffed with ornaments, the wallpaper flocked crimson on gold, gold on cream. There were photographs about of nearly grown-up children, a buxom daughter in a bridesmaid’s dress, a son at his bar mitzvah.
‘Mrs Farriner’s a very charming nice person. What I call a brave woman, self-supporting, you know. Yes, she’s divorced. Some no-good husband in the background, I believe, though she’s never told me the details and I wouldn’t ask. She’s got a lovely little boutique down at Montfort Circus. I’ve had some really exquisite things from her and she’s let me have them at cost. That’s what I call neighbourly. Oh, no, it couldn’t be’ - looking at the photograph ‘ - not murdered. Not a false name, that’s not Rose’s nature. Rose Farriner, that’s her name. I mean, it’s laughable what you’re saying. Of course I know where she is. First she went off to see her mother who’s in a very nice nursing home somewhere in the country, and then she was going on to the Lake District. No, I haven’t had a card from her, I wouldn’t expect it.’
The next house was the one which had been burgled, and Mrs Elliott, when they had explained who they were, promptly assumed that there had been another break-in. She was at least sixty, a jumpy nervous woman who had never been in Rose Farriner’s house or entertained her in her own. But she knew of the existence of the dress shop, knew that Mrs Farriner was away and had remarked that she sometimes went away for weekends, in her view a dangerous proceeding with so many thieves about. The photograph was shown to her and she became intensely frightened. No, she couldn’t say if Mrs Farriner had looked like that when young. It was evident that the idea of even hazarding an identification terrified her, and it seemed as if by so doing she feared to put her own life in jeopardy.
‘Rhoda,’ said Wexford to Burden, ‘means a rose. It’s Greek for rose. She tells people she’s going to visit her mother in nursing home. What are the chances she’s shifted the facts, and mother is father and the nursing home’s a hospital?’
Baker and Clements met them outside the gate of number three. They too had been told of mother and the nursing home, of the dress shop, and they too had met only with doubt and bewilderment over the photograph. Together the four of them approached the last, the chocolate coloured, front door.
Mrs Delano was very young, a fragile pallid blonde with a pale blond baby, at present asleep in its pram in the porch. ‘Rose Farriner’s somewhere around forty or fifty,’ she said as if one of those ages was much the
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