Wilde took his leave of Eaton and Rowlands at the porters’ lodge. They were staying the night at the Bull and would contact him in the morning to see if he had found Marcus Marfield. Wilde promised nothing, merely wished them a good evening, and set off home. Instead of turning right at Jesus Lane, however, he carried on along Bridge Street, up past Magdalene College onto Castle Street and then veered right on to the Histon road.
He found Claire Marfield’s house on the edge of the village, backing on to a plum orchard. A gatepost sign said Chivers and Sons. The trees, all in tidy rows, were heavy with fruit, which was already being picked by a team of harvest workers. The air was heady with sweetness.
Claire’s house was large and imposing, an early Victorian merchant’s property which stood a little way apart from the orchard, surrounded by a ragged privet hedge. A small fair-haired child was playing in the front garden. The child looked at him with interest, then ran giggling around the side of the house. So that was Marfield’s son, Walter.
Wilde knocked at the front door. Claire appeared within seconds, drying her hands on a floral apron.
‘Professor Wilde.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on you, Mrs Marfield, but I wondered if you had had any word from Marcus?’
‘I haven’t, I’m afraid. But do come in – I’ve got the kettle on.’
Wilde took a seat at the kitchen table while Claire Marfield spooned leaves into a china teapot and poured in boiling water, then replaced the top and left it to brew.
‘I think I just met Walter – but he ran away before I could say hello.’
‘Ah, he’ll come in soon enough, then you can meet him properly. Do you think he looks like Marcus?’
‘He certainly has his colouring . . .’ Wilde paused. ‘Can I ask you something else – who knows about your marriage? Your parents? His parents? Anyone else?’
‘The vicar and a couple of people we dragged off the street as witnesses. The idea was we were supposed to keep it a secret, you see, because Marcus was an undergraduate. He said the college wouldn’t allow it, that he would be rusticated.’
Wilde had to concede that might indeed have happened, given the circumstances. ‘But once he had gone to Spain, there was no motive for secrecy then?’
‘Who should I have told? It was no one’s business. I get enough looks and whispered comments about my status as it is, Mr Wilde, but I’m damned if I can be bothered to tell anyone the truth. Anyway, Marcus wanted it kept quiet, so that was good enough for me. I kept hoping he’d get bored by the war and return home within a couple of weeks. That was two and a half years ago.’
When she visited Wilde in college he had thought her spectacles made her look rather serious. Now, in her workaday clothes, dark hair awry, with a kettle in hand, she looked like a young housewife. She was certainly a great deal more relaxed and warm than she had been at their first meeting.
‘Your feelings are understandable.’
‘But why do you ask, Mr Wilde?’
Just then the child ran in, saw Wilde and began giggling again. He jumped on his mother’s lap and she stroked his hair fondly.
‘Apart from his fair complexion, I actually think he looks more like you,’ said Wilde. ‘Look, can I ask you something else: what do you know about your husband’s family. I take it you’ve met them all?’
‘Well, I liked his brother, Toll, but I couldn’t abide either of his parents. I found his mother particularly unfriendly.’ She shrugged and gave a weak smile.
On the basis of his short phone call with her, Wilde could imagine that the elder Mrs Marfield could be a hard woman to warm to.
‘You know his father’s dead?’
‘I saw the death notice in The Times this morning. It didn’t give a cause of death. Did the witch poison him?’
‘He shot himself.’
‘Oh my God, I’m sorry to hear that. Truly, no one deserves that.’
‘I suppose he was very disappointed by the turn of events with Marcus. Was he very upset by your pregnancy?’
Claire hesitated before answering. ‘Certainly the pregnancy had a big impact on the harpy. Marcus told me that gin and knitting needles was one of her less extreme suggestions, a nunnery another, even a one-way ticket to Canada.’
‘And Colonel Marfield?’
‘You know, I’m not sure how concerned he was about the baby. Of course, he supported his wife, but I got the feeling there was something else between him and Marcus.’
‘Marcus’s plans to go to Spain?’
‘I suppose that had something to do with it. They are not a very forthcoming family, so it’s difficult to know. I wasn’t on speaking terms after Marcus left. There was nothing said and no attempt to make contact. But I can imagine Colonel Marfield was beside himself. Do you think that had something to do with his suicide?’
‘It has to be a possibility. What about his brother? Did you have no contact with him?’
‘Toll? I met him only the once. He came over just before the wedding. I liked him. Very different to Marcus, of course. Nowhere near as good looking and didn’t have the voice, but there was something quite sweet about him.’
‘But he and Marcus didn’t get on?’
‘No, Marcus was stand-offish, made it quite clear he didn’t want him in his life – and I think Toll felt the same. He only came over to meet me because he thought it his duty as a brother.’
‘Where’s Toll now?’
‘I’m afraid I have no idea. He must have graduated and left Balliol.’
‘One more thing, did you ever meet an old friend of his family named Guy Rowlands?’
‘No, should I have?’
‘So there would be no reason for him to know of your existence?’
‘God no, they wouldn’t have told any of their friends about me or Walter – or the marriage for that matter. The harpy wouldn’t have breathed a word. How would they have explained their son’s frightful behaviour at the Mother’s Union and the golf club? Why are you asking these things?’
Why indeed? But there was something about Marcus Marfield that didn’t add up – and hadn’t ever since the mysterious Honoré had run Wilde to earth in rural France.
‘Just curiosity,’ he said lamely. ‘Now – how about that tea before it gets stewed?’
*
It was twilight – just after seven thirty – when he left Claire Marfield’s house. As he kicked the motorbike into life, a van across the street caught his eye. It was an ordinary dark-green delivery van, without markings of any kind, except that the driver’s side wing mirror was hanging loose.
He had seen an identical green delivery van outside the college before he came here. That, too, had its wing mirror almost detached. Why would a vehicle parked near his college in the centre of Cambridge now be here in a side street at Histon an hour or so later? Coincidence? Wilde switched off the engine, dismounted and started to cross the street towards the van. Now he could see that there was a figure in the driver’s seat.
He was three yards from the vehicle when it pulled out sharply and sped away. But he had already seen enough.
The driver was a woman. The woman he had seen first at Le Vernet and then, later, in the early hours of the morning outside Jim Vanderberg’s house in Chelsea. She had had a pistol in her hand and had been engaged in a confrontation with Marcus Marfield. Rosa, that was her name. Someone he had known in Spain, he said.
For a few moments, Wilde watched the van as it disappeared down the road, going south. By the time he decided to follow it, he had lost precious time and, for once, the Rudge let him down. In his haste to fire her up again, he flooded the engine and had to wait a minute before trying once more.
When he finally got going, the van was long gone. He rode at speed back into town, hoping to find it, but in vain, and so he headed for home. He wanted to see Lydia.
*
She was in her kitchen and the aroma suggested she had something in the oven. Rupert Weir was there, too, warming a glass of brandy in his hands.
‘Food,’ Wilde said. ‘And drink. Now that’s the kind of welcome I like.’
‘Fish pie,’ she said.
‘You know the way to a man’s heart, Miss Morris. Anyone would think we had something to celebrate. I hope you’re staying to dine with us, Rupert?’
‘No, no, Tom. I just dropped in to show you this.’ Dr Weir patted the notebook on the table in front of him. ‘These are Eric Charlecote’s notes. I was hoping one of you two might make head or tail of it, because I’m damned if I can.’
Wilde examined the scrawl and shook his head. ‘Bloody doctors and their handwriting! I suspect there are only two people who can unravel this and unfortunately one of those is dead.’
‘The other being Miss Hollick, his secretary,’ put in Lydia.
‘Of course,’ said Weir. ‘But how can I ask her to deciper it when she’ll know I stole it from his office?’
‘Borrowed, not stole,’ Lydia said. ‘And she might be happy to help if she can be persuaded that this might throw some light on the death of a man she cared about.’
‘Will you take it to her then, Lydia? I know it sounds cowardly, but I really don’t want to jeopardise my professional reputation. Confessing to light burglary of a colleague’s office might not go down too well at Addenbrooke’s.’
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’
‘Good, then I’ll leave it here and wish you two lovebirds goodnight.’ Weir grinned and held up an admonishing finger in Lydia’s direction, then downed his brandy with a flourish.
‘Before you go, Rupert, I wanted a favour,’ said Wilde. ‘Can you get hold of some coroner’s records? Marcus Marfield’s father shot himself on Monday morning. Colonel Ronald Marfield. Down in Ipswich.’
‘Of course. I’m not sure if the inquest will have been held yet, but the coroner should already know just about everything there is to know. I’ll give him a call in the morning. And you, Lydia, go easy on the wine!’ He gave her an ostentatious wink.
*
‘What was that about?’ Wilde demanded after Weir had departed. ‘Since when did Rupert Weir ever suggest self-denial or restraint in anything!’
‘Oh, just being proprietorial, I suppose, the way GPs tell one not to smoke too much as they’re lighting their own cigarettes.’ Even as she spoke, she realised this must be the moment. She smiled at him cautiously. ‘Actually, there was more to it than that, Tom . . . What would you say to the prospect of a child?’
The question threw him. ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘A child. You heard me.’
His brow knitted. ‘You mean take in one of the evacuees? Why not? Good idea. We could give one or two of them a good home between us.’
‘Yes, that’s a good idea. But it wasn’t quite what I was thinking.’ She took his hands. ‘Haven’t you noticed anything different about me recently?’
His creased face betrayed his puzzlement, and then his eyes widened as it dawned on him. ‘Oh my God, Lydia, are you saying—’
She nodded.
For a few seconds, he held back, stunned, and then he took her in his arms. His heart was thumping and he clutched her tightly to his chest. ‘Is this true? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘How long? When?’
‘Eleven or twelve weeks. It must be due around the end of March. Easter probably – perhaps just after. Tom, are you pleased? I’ve been so worried about telling you.’
‘Pleased?’ He hugged her even tighter and kissed her mouth. ‘I’ve wanted this for longer than you could imagine.’
‘I’ve been trying to tell you for days.’
‘How did I not notice?’
‘Indeed. Rupert Weir suspected, so did Françoise Talbot when we were in France.’
‘Well, they’re doctors, aren’t they! But I should have realised, too – the tiredness, the sickness on the journey home, the abstinence.’
‘There’s something else I haven’t told you. I don’t want to publish poetry any more. I’m considering retraining to be a doctor. The country needs doctors more than ever – but how can I do that and look after a baby?’
‘You’re throwing questions at me and I haven’t even had a chance to adjust to prospective fatherhood yet!’ Wilde was terrified, and hoping desperately that it didn’t show. The loss of Charlotte and their baby all those years ago . . . his son would have been thirteen by now. Sometimes it felt like a lifetime away, sometimes it was only yesterday and the pain cut him to the heart.
Lydia saw the fear in his eyes. There was little in life that scared Tom Wilde. Certainly not physical pain; you couldn’t be a boxer if you feared getting hurt. But any threat to those he loved, that was something else.