6
Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?
Had she a brother?
Or, was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one
Yet, than all other?
Thomas Hood, The Bridge of Sighs
The murder books had been taken away and the top shelf of the bookcase was empty. If Parsons was innocent, a truly bereaved husband, Burden thought, how dreadfully their covers must have screamed at him when he came into the shabby dining-room this morning. Or had he removed them because they had served their purpose?
‘Chief Inspector,’ Parsons said, ‘I must know. Was she . . . ? Had she . . . ? Was she just strangled or was there anything else?’ He had aged in the past days or else he was a consummate actor.
‘You can set your mind at rest on that score,’ Wexford said quickly. ‘Your wife was certainly strangled, but I can assure you she wasn’t interfered with in any other way.’ He stared at the dull green curtains, the lino that was frayed at the skirting board, and said impersonally, ‘There was no sexual assault.’
‘Thank God! Parsons spoke as if he thought there was still a God in some nonconformist heaven and as if he was really thanking Him. ‘I couldn’t bear it if there had been. I couldn’t go on living. It would just about have killed Margaret.’ He realized what he had said and put his head in his hands.
Wexford waited until the hands came down and the tearless eyes were once more fixed on his own.
‘Mr Parsons, I can tell you that as far as we know there was no struggle. It looks as if your wife was sleeping until just before she was killed. There would have been just a momentary shock, a second’s pain – and then nothing.’
Parson’s mumbled, turning away his face so that they could catch only the last words, ‘ . . . For though they be punished in the sight of man, yet is their hope full of immortality.’
Wexford got up and went over to the bookcase. He didn’t say anything about the missing library of crime, but he took a book out of one of the lower shelves.
‘I see this is a guide to the Kingsmarkham district.’ He opened it and Burden glimpsed a coloured photograph of the market place. ‘It isn’t a new book.’
‘My wife lived here – well, not here. In Flagford it was – for a couple of years after the end of the war. Her uncle was stationed with the R.A.F. at Flagford and her aunt had a cottage in the village.’
‘Tell me about your wife’s life.’
‘She was born in Balham,’ Parsons said. He winced, avoiding the Christian name. ‘Her mother and father died when she was a child and she went to live with this aunt. When she was about sixteen she came to live in Flagford, but she didn’t like it. Her uncle died – he wasn’t killed or anything – he died of heart disease, and her aunt went back to Balham. My wife went to college in London and started teaching. Then we got married. That’s all.’
‘Mr Parsons, you told me on Wednesday your wife would have taken her front-door key with her. How many keys did you have between you?’
‘Just the two.’ Parsons took a plain Yale key from his pocket and held it up to Wexford. ‘Mine and – and Margaret’s. She kept hers on a ring. The ring has a silver chain with a horseshoe charm on the end of it.’ He added simply in a calm voice: ‘I gave it to her when we came here. The purse is a brown one, brown plastic with a gilt clip.’
‘I want to know if your wife was in the habit of going to Prewett’s farm. Did you know the Prewetts or any of the farm workers? There’s a girl there called Dorothy Sweeting. Did your wife ever mention her?’
But Parsons had never even heard of the farm until his wife’s body had been found there. She hadn’t cared much for the country or for country walks and the name Sweeting meant nothing.
‘Do you know anyone called Missal?’
‘Missal? No, I don’t think so.’
‘A tall good-looking woman with red hair. Lives in a house opposite The Olive and Dove. Her husband’s a car dealer. Big bloke with a big green car.’
‘We don’t . . . we didn’t know anyone like that.’ His face twisted and he put up a hand to hide his eyes. ‘They’re a lot of snobs round here. We didn’t belong and we should never have come.’ His voice died to a whisper. ‘If we’d stayed in London,’ he said, ‘she might still be alive.’
‘Why did you come, Mr Parsons?’
‘It’s cheaper living in the country, or you think it’s cheaper till you try it.’
‘So your coming here didn’t have anything to do with the fact that your wife once lived in Flagford?’
‘Margaret didn’t want to come here, but the job came up. Beggars can’t be choosers. She had to work when we were in London. I thought she’d find some peace here.’ He coughed and the sound tailed away into a sob. ‘And she did, didn’t she?’
‘I believe there are some books in your attic, Mr Parsons. I’d like to have a good look through them.’
‘You can have them,’ Parsons said. ‘I never want to see another book as long as I live. But there’s nothing in them. She never looked at them.’
The dark staircases were familiar now and with familiarity they had lost much of that sinister quality Burden had felt on his first visit. The sun showed up the new dust and in its gentle light the house seemed no longer like the scene of a crime but just a shabby relic. It was very close and Wexford opened the attic window. He blew a film of dust from the surface of the bigger trunk and opened its lid. It was crammed with books and he took the top ones out. They were novels: two by Rhoda Broughton, Evelina in the Everyman’s Library and Mrs Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman. Their fly-leaves were bare and nothing fluttered from the pages when he shook them. Underneath were two bundles of school stories, among them what looked like the complete works of Angela Brazil. Wexford dumped them on the floor and lifted out a stack of expensive-looking volumes, some bound in suède, others in scented leather or watered silk.
The first one he opened was covered in pale green suède, its pages edged with gold. On the fly-leaf someone had printed carefully in ink:
If love were what the rose is;
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather . . .
And underneath:
Rather sentimental, Minna, but you know what I mean. Happy, happy birthday. All my love, Doon. March 21st, 1950.
Burden looked over Wexford’s shoulder.
‘Who’s Minna?’
‘We’ll have to ask Parsons,’ Wexford said. ‘Could be second-hand. It looks expensive. I wonder why she didn’t keep it downstairs. God knows, this place needs brightening up.’
‘And who’s Doon?’ Burden asked.
‘You’re supposed to be a detective. Well, detect.’ He put the book on the floor and picked up the next one. This was the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, still in its black and pearl-grey jacket, and Doon had printed another message inside. Wexford read it aloud in an unemotional voice.
‘I know you have set your heart on this, Minna, and I was so happy when I went to Foyle’s and found it waiting for me. Joyeux Noél, Doon, Christmas, 1950.’ The next book was even more splendid, red watered silk and black leather. ‘Let’s have a look at number three,’ Wexford said. ‘The Poems of Christina Rossetti. Very nice, gilt lettering and all. What’s Doon got to say this time? An un-birthday present, Minna dear, from Doon who wishes you happy for ever and ever. June 1950. I wonder if Mrs P. bought the lot cheap from this Minna.’
‘I suppose Minna could be Mrs P., a sort of nickname.’
‘It has just crossed my mind,’ Wexford said sarcastically. ‘They’re such good books, Mike, not the sort of things anyone would give to a church sale, and church sales seem to have been about Mrs Parsons’ mark. Look at this lot: Omar Khayyám; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; William Morris. Unless I’m much mistaken that Omar Khayyám cost three or four pounds. And there’s another one here, the Verses of Walter Savage Landor. It’s an old-fashioned kind of book and the leaves haven’t even been cut.’ He read the message on the fly-leaf aloud:
‘I promise to bring back with me
What thou with transport will receive,
The only proper gift for thee.
Of which no mortal shall bereave.
Rather apt, don’t you think, Minna? Love from Doon. March 21st, 1951.’
‘It wasn’t very apt, was it? And Minna, whoever she is, didn’t receive it with transport. She didn’t even cut the pages. I’m going to have another word with Parsons, Mike, and then we’re going to have all this lot carted down to the station. This attic is giving me the creeps.’
But Parsons didn’t know who Minna was and he looked surprised when Wexford mentioned the date, March 21st.
‘I never heard anyone call her Minna,’ he said distastefully, as if the name was an insult to her memory. ‘My wife never spoke about a friend called Doon. I’ve never even seen those books properly. Margaret and I lived in the house her aunt left her till we moved here and those books have always been in the trunk. We just brought them with us with the furniture. I can’t make it out about the date – Margaret’s birthday was March 21st.’
‘It could mean nothing, it could mean everything,’ Wexford said when they were out in the car. ‘Doon talks about Foyle’s, and Foyle’s in case you don’t know, my provincial friend, is in London in the Charing Cross Road.’
‘But Mrs P. was sixteen in 1949 and she stayed two years in Flagford. She must have been living only about five miles from here when Doon gave her those books.’
‘True. He could have lived here too and gone up to London for the day. I wonder why he printed the messages, Mike. Why didn’t he write them? And why did Mrs P. hide the books as if she was ashamed of them?’
‘They’d make a better impression on the casual caller than The Brides in the Bath or whatever it is,’ Burden said. ‘This Doon was certainly gone on her.’
Wexford took Mrs Parson’s photograph out of his pocket. Incredible that this woman had ever inspired a passion or fired a line of verse!
‘Happy for ever and ever,’ he said softly. ‘But love isn’t what the rose is. I wonder if love could be a dark and tangled wood, a cord twisted and pulled tighter on a meek neck?’
‘A cord?’ Burden said. ‘Why not a scarf, that pink nylon thing? It’s not in the house.’
‘Could be. You can bet your life that scarf is with the purse and the key. Plenty of women have been strangled with a nylon stocking, Mike. Why not a nylon scarf?’
He had brought the Swinburne and the Christina Rossetti with him. It wasn’t much to go on, Burden reflected, a bundle of old books and an elusive boy. Doon, he thought, Doon. If Minna was anything to go by Doon was bound to be a pseudonym too. Doon wouldn’t be a boy any more but a man of thirty or thirty-five, a married man with children, perhaps, who had forgotten all about his old love. Burden wondered where Doon was now. Lost, absorbed perhaps into the great labyrinth of London, or still living a mile or two away . . . His heart sank when he recalled the new factory estate at Stowerton, the mazy lanes of Pomfret with a solitary cottage every two hundred yards, and to the north, Sewingbury, where road after road of post-war detached houses pushed outwards like rays from the nucleus of the ancient town. Apart from these, there was Kingsmarkham itself and the daughter villages, Flagford, Forby . . .
‘I don’t suppose that Missal bloke could be Doon,’ he said hopefully.
‘If he is,’ Wexford said, ‘he’s changed one hell of a lot.’


The river of my years has been sluggish, Minna, flowing slowly to a sea of peace. Ah, long ago how I yearned for the torrent of life!
Then yesternight, yestere’en, Minna, I saw you. Not as I have so often in my dreams, but in life. I followed you, looking for lilies where you trod . . . I saw the gold band on your finger, the shackle of an importunate love, and I cried aloud in my heart, I, I, too have known the terrors of the night!
But withal my feast has ever been the feast of the spirit and to that other dweller in my gates my flesh has been as an unlit candle in a fast-sealed casket. The light in my soul has guttered, shrinking in the harsh wind. But though the casket be atrophied and the flame past resuscitation, yet the wick of the spirit cries, hungering for the hand that holds the taper of companionship, the torch of sweet confidence, the spark of friends reunited.
I shall see you tomorrow and we shall ride together along the silver streets of our youth. Fear not, for reason shall sit upon my bridle and gentle moderation within my reins. Will all not be well, Minna, will all not be pleasant as the warm sun on the faces of little children?