"Oh that. Stepha must have told you. But that has nothing to do with William's death."
This as she saw Sergeant Havers write a few lines in her notebook.
"One can never be sure. Will you tell us about it?"
A hand fluttered up as if in protest but resettled in her lap. "Richard
hadn't been back from the fens for long. He ran into us at the Dove and
Whistle. There were words. Silly. Over in a minute. That's all."She
smiled vaguely.
"What sort of words?"
"It really had nothing to do with Roberta initially. We were all sitting
together at a table and William, I'm afraid, made a comment about
Hannah. The barmaid. Have you seen her?"
"Last night."
"Then you know she looks…different. William didn't at all approve of
her, nor of the way her father deals with her. You know—as if he's just
amused by it all. So William said something about it. Something like,
‘Why her dad lets her walk about looking like a tart is a mystery to
me.' That sort of thing. Nothing really serious. Richard was just a bit
in his cups. He'd a terrible set of scratches on his face, so I think
he'd been at it with his wife as well. His mood was foul. He said
something about not being such a fool as to judge by appearances,
that—as I recall—an angel could be wearing a streetwalker's guise and
the sweetest blonde-headed little face could hide a whore."
"And William took that to mean what?"
She produced a tired smile. "As a reference to Gillian, his older
daughter. Rather immediately, I'm afraid. He demanded to know what
Richard meant by his remark. Richard and Gilly had been great friends,
you see. I think— to avoid having to explain—Richard sidetracked onto
Roberta."
"How?"
"As an example of not judging by appearances. Of course, it went on from
there. Richard demanded to know why Roberta had been allowed to get
into such an unattractive state. In turn, William demanded to know what
he had meant by his insinuation about Gilly. Richard demanded that
William answer. William demanded that Richard answer. You know the sort
of thing."
"And then?"
She laughed. It was a tittering sound, like that of a trapped bird. "I
thought they might fight. Richard said no child of his would ever be
allowed to eat her way into an early grave and that William ought to be
ashamed of the job he'd done as a father. William became so angry that
he said something about Richard being ashamed of the job he was doing as
a husband. He made a…well, a bit of a crude reference to Madeline going
unsatisfi ed—she's Richard's wife, have you met her?—and frankly just
when I thought Richard might truly hit his uncle, instead he just
laughed. He said something about being a fool to waste his time worrying
about Roberta and left us."
"That was all?"
"Yes."
"What do you suppose Richard meant?"
"By being a fool?"As if seeing the direction his question was taking
her, she frowned. "You want me to say that he felt he was being a fool
because if Roberta died, he'd get the farm."
"Is that what he meant?"
"No, of course not. William rewrote his will shortly after Richard
returned from the fens. Richard knew very well that the farm had been
left to him, not to Roberta."
"But if you and William married, then the will would most likely have been rewritten once again. Isn't that true?"
Clearly, she saw the trap. "Yes but…I know what you're thinking. It was
to Richard's advantage that William should die before we could marry.
But isn't that always the case when there's an inheritance involved? And
people don't generally kill one another just because they're to inherit
something in a will."
"On the contrary, Mrs. Odell,"Lynley objected politely, "people do it all the time."
"That wasn't the case here. I just think… well, that Richard's not very
happy. And unhappy people say lots of things that they really don't mean
and do lots of things that they wouldn't otherwise do just to try to
forget their unhappiness, don't they?"
Neither Lynley nor Havers replied at once. Olivia moved restlessly in
her chair. Outside, Bridie's voice rose as she called to her duck.
"Did Roberta know about this conversation?"Lynley asked.
"If she did, she never mentioned it. When she was here she mostly
talked—in that low-voiced way of hers—about the wedding. I think she was
eager for William and me to marry. To have a sister in Bridie. To have
what she once had with Gillian. She missed her sister dreadfully. I
don't believe she ever got over Gillian's running away."Her nervous fi
ngers found a loose thread on the hem of her skirt, and she twisted it
compulsively until it broke. Then she looked at it mutely, as if
wondering how it came to be wrapped round her fi nger. "Bobba—that's
what William always called her, and we did as well—would take Bridie off
so that William and I could have time alone. She and Bridie and
Whiskers and that duck would go off together. Can you imagine what they
looked like?"She smiled and smoothed the creases in her skirt. "They'd
go to the river, across the common, or down to the abbey for a picnic.
The four of them. And then William and I would be able to talk."
"What did you talk about?"
"Tessa, mostly. Of course, it was a problem, but the last time he was
here—the day of his death—he said it had fi nally been overcome."
"I'm not certain that I understand,"Lynley remarked. "What kind of a
problem? Emotional, you mean? An unwillingness to come to terms with her
death?"
Olivia had been looking out the window, but she turned to them upon the
last word. "Death?"she asked, perplexed. "Tessa's not dead, Inspector.
She deserted William a short time after Roberta was born. He'd hired a
detective to find her so that he could have their marriage annulled by
the Church, and Saturday afternoon he came to tell me she'd been found
at last."
"York,"the man said. "And I'm not obligated to tell you anything more. I've yet to be paid for my services, you know."
Lynley gripped the telephone in his hand. He could feel the anger
burning in his chest. "How does a court order sound?"he asked
pleasantly.
"Listen here, old chap, don't try to pull that kind of shit on me—"
"Mr. Houseman, may I remind you that, in spite of what you may think,
you are not part of a Dashiell Hammett novel."Lynley could just picture
the man, feet up on his desk, a bottle of bourbon in the filing drawer, a
gun tossed from hand to hand as he balanced the telephone receiver on
his shoulder. He wasn't too far from the truth.
Harry Houseman looked out the grimy window of his office above Jackie's
Barber Shop in Richmond's Trinity Church Square. A light rain was
falling, not enough to clean off his window, just enough to emphasise
its fi lth. What a dreary day, he thought. He'd intended to spend it on a
drive to the coast—a little lady in Whitby was only too eager to do
some serious private investigating with him—but this kind of weather
didn't put him in the mood. And God knows he needed to be in the mood
more and more these days before anything happened in the land down
under. He grinned, showing a badly capped front tooth. It added a
piratical dimension to his otherwise mundane appearance: dull brown
hair, muddycoloured eyes, cadaverous skin, and the incongruity of full,
sensual lips.
He played with a well-chewed pencil on the top of his scarred desk. His
eyes caught the thin-lipped glance of his wife's shrewish face peering
moodily out at him from the photograph nearby. He reached out with his
pencil and toppled it over, face down.
"I'm sure we can reach some sort of mutual agreement,"Houseman said into
the phone. "Let me see. Miss Doalson?"A suitable pause for dramatic
effect. "Do I have time today to…Well, cancel that. It can certainly
wait until I see…"Back to the phone. "What did you say your name was?"
"We aren't going to see each other,"Lynley responded patiently. "You're
going to give me the address in York and that's going to be the end of
our relationship."
"Oh, I don't see how I can—"
"Certainly you do."Lynley's voice was steel. "Because, as you said, you
haven't been paid yet. And in order for you ever to get paid once the
estate is settled—which may, incidentally, take years if we don't get to
the bottom of this—you're going to have to give me Tessa Teys's
address."
A pause for consideration. "What is that, Miss Doalson?"the infuriating
voice asked in saccharine tones. "On the other line? Well, put him off,
will you?"A martyred sigh. "I can see, Inspector, that you're not an
easy man to deal with. We all have to make a living, you know."
"Believe me, I know,"Lynley replied curtly. "The address?"
"I'll just have to find it in my fi les. May I give you a ring in…say an hour or so?"
"No."
"Well, good God, man—"
"I'm on my way to Richmond."
"No, no, that won't be necessary. Just wait a moment, old chap."Houseman
leaned back in his chair, eyeing the grey sky for a minute. He reached
over to his dented filing cabinet, opening and closing a few drawers for
effect. "What's that, Miss Doalson?"he called. "No, put her off till
tomorrow, will you? I don't care if she's weeping buckets, sweetheart, I
don't have time to spend with her today."He picked the scrap of memo
paper off his desk. "Ah, here it is, Inspector,"he said and gave Lynley
the address. "But don't expect her to welcome you with open arms, will
you?"
"I don't particularly care how she welcomes me, Mr. Houseman. Good—"
"Oh, but you ought to, Inspector. Just a bit, you know. Hubby went mad
when he heard the news. Thought he'd strangle me right on the spot, so
God knows what he'll do when Scotland Yard shows up. He's one of those
scholarly types, big words and thick specs. But trust me, Inspector,
that man is deep. There's an animal inside him."
Lynley's eyes narrowed. It was a cast upon the waters, an expert
manoeuvre. He wanted to swim past it but admitted defeat. "What are you
talking about? What news did he hear?"
"The news about hubby number one, of course."
"What are you trying to tell me, Houseman?"
"That Tessa Teys is a bigamist, old boy,"Houseman finished with delight.
"Married up with number two without seeing to the formal bye-byes to
our William. Can you imagine her surprise when I popped up on her
doorstep?"
The house wasn't at all what he had expected. Women who desert husband
and children should somehow end up in tenement buildings pungent with
the odours of garlic and urine. They should daily subdue a bucking,
quarrelsome conscience with liberal applications of soporific gin. They
should be faded and worn, their looks quite destroyed by the ravages of
shame. Whatever they should be, Lynley was certain they shouldn't be
Tessa Teys Mowrey.
He'd parked in front of the house, and they stared at it silently until
Havers fi nally spoke. "Not exactly gone downhill, has she?"she asked.
They'd found it easily, a new, middle-class neighbourhood a few miles
from the city centre, the kind of place where houses have numbers as
well as coy little names. The Mowreys' home was called Jorvik View. It
was the concrete reality of every mediocre dream: a facade of brick
covered the poured-block construction; red tiles swept up to form steep
gables; white-curtained bay windows showed off sitting and dining rooms
on either side of a polished front door. A single-car, attached garage
was topped by a white iron-fenced roof terrace, and a door opened onto
this from the upper floor of the house. It was on this terrace that they
had their first glimpse of Tessa.
She came out of the door, blonde hair blowing lightly in the breeze, to
water potted plants: spider chrysanthemums, dahlias, and marigolds that
made an autumn wall of colour against the white iron. She saw the
Bentley and hesitated, watering can poised in midair, appearing every
bit in the late morning light as if Renoir had captured her by surprise.
And she looked, Lynley noted grimly, not a day older than her photograph
taken nineteen years before and religiously enshrined at Gembler Farm.
"So much for the wages of sin,"he muttered.
