"Possibly," said Maeve. "About then. I can't be all that sure of the date."

"I can. You gave him some money. Why?"

"Really! I told you why or my wife-in-law did." Here a sly smile at Claudia. "It was a wedding present. He had found some woman, one of the fruit-pickers, he was going to marry."

"A thousand pounds, I think you said?"

"Then you think wrong." Claudia dissolved into silent laughter. "We'd better things to do with that sort of money."

He sat down again but this time on an upright chair well away from her. A wasp had got into the room, wheeled about sluggishly before making for the open jam jar. He watched it crawl onto the jam's smooth golden crust. "Miller had read the book Mr. Tredown had concocted from his ma.n.u.script and was blackmailing you for plagiarism, for pa.s.sing off his work as Mr. Tredown's."

"I know what plagiarism is, thank you very much." Claudia shook even more with silent mirth. Then, suddenly she was serious. She frowned and swept the wings of charcoal-colored hair away from her face. "How did he die? Dusty, I mean."

Didn't she know? Then Wexford recalled that, apart from him and his discreet team, Miller's death was known only to Irene McNeil and Bridget Cook. He was almost sure there had been some kind of s.e.xual relationship between Miller and Claudia Ricardo, brief perhaps, a quick coupling in the bushes or in Grimble's house, but something. "That I can't tell you," he said.

"But he is dead?"

"I've told you so, Miss Ricardo."

She said nothing.

"I'm sorry," he said, "if it upsets you."

"Upsets me?" Her reply came as a strident shout. "You must be mad. I'm delighted. I've a little holiday in my heart." It was evidently a favorite phrase of hers. "You've made my day."

The wasp was satiated. It had crawled up to the rim of the jar. Maeve said, "Claudia," in a warning tone, got up, and crossed to the table. The wasp was grooming itself, lifting its wings, wiping or washing traces of lemon curd from its legs. Maeve put out her hand, picked it up swiftly between finger and thumb and, before it could sting her, crushed the life out of it.

Claudia started laughing again. With an exasperated glance at her, Maeve dropped the wasp corpse onto the tray.

"He came away from here with the money you gave him," Wexford said, "and instead of going back to the site where the fruit-pickers were camped, went next door to wash himself and find other clothes to wear. Your delight, I suppose, is typically that of the blackmailer's victim when she or he knows the extortion can't be repeated."

"For a policeman," said Maeve, "you have a most unusual command of the English language."

This he ignored. Her almost clinical extermination of the wasp had disturbed him. Was he being too fanciful in thinking that if she could do that so ruthlessly she might be capable of other, more serious, executions? Probably he was. He got up. "I shall visit Mr. Tredown in the hospice tomorrow afternoon," he said. "Perhaps you'll tell him to expect me. I shall be on my own."

His evenings he treasured when he could spend them at home, but when the case in hand was as important as this one, they were rare. To Selina and Vivien Hexham he thought he owed a visit rather than expecting them to come once more to him, and he arranged to call at Selina's house at seven. Hannah came with him. So difficult and p.r.i.c.kly in some circ.u.mstances, she was an ideal companion for the coming encounter. Her sympathies were always with stalwart young women who postponed or refused marriage in favor of independence and a career.

During the day she had had another meeting with Bridget Cook, this time on a park bench about half a mile from where Bridget lived with Williams. The purpose had been to discover, if she could, where Miller had lived in the years between his first fruit-picking adventure in Flagford and his second and ultimate.

"Where was he living when you met him?"

Bridget had known that. "In a trailer park outside G.o.dalming." Hannah noted with amus.e.m.e.nt how she used the American phrase, culled no doubt from television, rather than the British "caravan site." "It was a van belonging to a pal who'd given him a lend of it."

"Did you ever go there?"

"Once or twice. We was like in a relationship." Seeing from her expression that Hannah wanted more, she said, "My mum lives there. She went into the hospital to have her knee done. She'd fallen over and she had to have her knee replaced. I was stopping in her house and I met Sam. In a pub. Then he come back home with me."

"Right. This-er, van he was living in, did he have a computer there or a typewriter, pens and paper, dictionaries, and that sort of thing?"

Bridget stared. "I never saw nothing like that. I mean, pens he had. Like a ballpoint and a pad for writing on. He wrote his poems there. That's when he wrote that poem for me."

"And where had he been living before he came to G.o.dalming?"

"He said he used to have a van." Describing the difference between this shortened form of "caravan" and the commercial vehicle eluded her. All she could do was point to the distant roadway where a red Royal Mail van was parked. "Like that only bigger. He drove about, getting work where he could."

"Did he sleep in it?"

"Sure. Why not? He had a mattress in the back."

That some people, quite a lot of people, lived liked this was no news to Hannah, but every fresh time she heard of it or witnessed it, her thoughts went to her conventional middle-cla.s.s mother and Bal's conventional middle-cla.s.s professional parents and she wondered if they had ever heard of these lifestyles. Her only astonishment came from her awareness that the man had never been in prison or even charged with any offense, as to her certain knowledge he had not.

It was in the report she had written, but she told Wexford about it later in the car after they had met on Barnes Common. "I said you might want to see her and I've got a phone number and an address to contact her. Not her home address, of course. The dreaded Williams might be on the watch. She's got a cleaning job three days a week and I can get in touch with her any Tuesday or Thursday."

"Where's the woman who employs her then?" Wexford asked, amused.

"It's a man, guv. You won't believe this but he's a cabinet minister and he's in his government department from nine a.m."

Selina Hexham must have been watching, for she opened the front door to them before they were halfway up the path. Vivien wasn't with her this time. Since coming home from work Selina had changed into a black tunic and tracksuit pants and her only jewelry, apart from the ring, were small gold studs in her ears. They sat down in that living room, which had seen so much anxiety, hateful realization, and pain. It seemed not to touch Hannah, who hadn't been made aware of it in the way he had, and because she hadn't eaten since a kind of brunch at eleven in the morning, fell upon the milky coffee and biscuits they were offered, while Wexford took his coffee black and let his thoughts drift briefly to a gla.s.s of claret.

"I want you to tell me, Selina, why you think your father kept his . . . life up here in his study a secret from your mother. From you all really, but especially from your mother. If he was doing research for authors, as I think he was, what was the point of not being open about it?"

She seemed puzzled. "You mean research in biology?"

"He was interested in various mythologies too, wasn't he?"

"Yes, but I don't think he had any particular knowledge. He just liked them. Do you mind if I ask you why?"

"You can ask me anything you like," said Wexford. "There may be some things I wouldn't think it right to tell you at this stage, but if there are I'll let you know. I'm asking this because I have an idea-and it's only an idea at the moment-that your father may have gone to call on Owen Tredown after he'd left the Davidsons. And if he did, could it have been to advise him on the writing of The First Heaven The First Heaven?"

Selina frowned a little. She was very young but already two parallel lines were cut into the s.p.a.ce between her black eyebrows. "I've been thinking a lot about that. And I've come to rather a strange conclusion. I've been wondering if he did keep it a secret from her or if maybe she knew and they both kept it a secret from us. We were children. Maybe they thought it wouldn't have interested us, and I suppose they were right."

"But it was a perfectly respectable thing to be doing, a useful, valuable thing."

She agreed rather reluctantly, "Yes. Perhaps so. But Vivien and I, we'd have thought it a dull thing, we'd have thought it boring, and we wouldn't have understood how it could have been important enough to take him away from us almost every evening. I mean, I can understand now that Dad and Mum could have needed the extra money, but I wouldn't have done then. They never talked to us about money. Mum said to me after he-well, after he'd gone, that children could have terrific anxieties if they thought their parents were short of cash. They imagined themselves without a home, sleeping in the street, that sort of thing. But then I thought, if he'd taken on this researching thing, Mum would have mentioned it when Dad went missing-and she didn't."

"We wondered," said Wexford, recalling that this had been Burden's idea. "We also wondered if your father had perhaps embarked on something which, if it was successful, would bring him a lot of kudos, but if it failed might make him seem ridiculous. Forgive me, but that's the way I have to put it."

"That's all right. I'm past all that. But I don't know, I just don't know."

He nodded. "All right."

Hannah, who had been silent up till then, spoke for him. "Will you lend us your ring?"

There was no eager response. Selina touched the ring, covered it with the fingers of her left hand. Then, without answering, she pulled it off and handed it to him in one of those rapid gestures people make when they know they must relinquish something they desperately want to keep.

"Thank you. It will be quite safe."

Hannah wrote her a receipt for it. Selina looked at it strangely, as if to receive this slip of paper was the last thing she expected to be given in exchange for a precious possession.

"What do you want it for, guv?" Hannah said when they were seated in the car and Donaldson was pa.s.sing through Croydon.

"I'm not sure yet," he said, not entirely truthfully. "Is this your street or is it the next one?"

"This one."

She got out of the car and ran up the stairs to the front door. Just as Donaldson pulled away, Wexford looked at the front window and saw her head and Bal's silhouetted behind the thin curtains. He rested his head back against the cushion and thought about the two women who called themselves wives-in-law. They had invited him to Athelstan House, he hadn't made the appointment himself. Why had they? There had been nothing they wanted to tell him he hadn't heard before and nothing they wanted him to tell them. He remembered the tray with the biscuits on it and the open jar of lemon curd and an unpleasant thought came to him. Would that wasp which had feasted on it have died if Maeve hadn't first crushed the life out of it? Was that why she had been so quick to seize upon it, even risking a sting?

Bizarre as it seemed as midmorning refreshments, that lemon curd had been intended for him. Was it too far-fetched to think of poison? Of course it was. He must be overtired. Wearily now, he found himself fingering the ring in his pocket. It might have been one of those talismans that abound in fantasy literature, a magic ring that would make him invisible or give him his heart's desire. Perhaps he should make a wish.

"Keep Shamis Imran safe from harm," he said under his breath, and added, "What a fool I am."

Chapter Twenty-four.

Something dull and subdued about Matea made him ask. Very young people have a glow about them that starts to fade in the mid-twenties. Jane Austen called it "bloom." In Matea's case, the bloom had clouded, dulling her eyes and turning her hair lifeless and lank. Though she was as polite as ever, there was a la.s.situde about the way she served them.

"How are you, Matea? Are you all right?"

The tone in which she said "Fine" would have been funny if it hadn't sounded like misery. She came back with their naan and a jug of water in which she had forgotten to put any ice.

"I wonder what's going on in that family," Wexford said. "Akande's alerted the Social Services, but there doesn't seem much to be done. According to Mrs. Dirir, Shamis was running around as normal the day after they got back. She couldn't be doing that if she'd just undergone mutilation."

Burden made a face. "It's nasty, isn't it? It makes you wonder how feminists-all women in fact-can concentrate on any other aspect of persecution of women while female genital mutilation flourishes. Why isn't half the human race up in arms?"

"Is this my old friend Mike Burden talking?"

Burden didn't change color. Blushing was a reaction he had left in the past. "Well, those are Jenny's ideas. I can't say I don't agree, though."

Matea brought their chicken tikka and Wexford poured them gla.s.ses of water. He said nothing about the lack of ice. "I'm going to see Tredown this afternoon."

"Is that purely sick visiting or because you want a talk?"

"I hope he'll want to talk to me."

"What, a deathbed confession?"

"It could be," said Wexford. "Last time I saw him I had a feeling he might say a lot if he could be apart from those two women. Realistically, though, I think only he can tell me how he found Hexham to do his research for him. Was it through some sort of advertis.e.m.e.nt or by word of mouth? How many times had Hexham been to Athelstan House and how and where did he go when he left on that particular day? In a taxi to Kingsmarkham station? On foot? Surely not. It was pouring with rain. Or did he never leave the place alive? Those are the things I want to know, or rather, the things I'm likely to find out."

"Do we know how long Tredown has got?"

"You mean till the end? Till death parts him from those two wives of his?"

"I suppose I do, yes."

"Weeks rather than months, I think. Do you want some halva? Or some yogurt? What I like about this place is that it takes its name literally, it's a pa.s.sage to India and it picks up national dishes all along the way."

Afterward he wondered why he had chosen to go in his own car to Pomfret instead of letting Donaldson drive him. It had something to do with the awesome nature of this place, its function as death's waiting room, its humane and tender purpose. Officialdom should not come here and disrupt these last peaceful days where palliative care was all and hope was over.

When he came here before, just to have a look, he had noticed there was nowhere to park cars in the front of the building. He drove in through the gateway, past the pond with the ducks, the hostas and the bulrushes, and followed the paved path that led around the side of the hospice to the back. Here was another arrow pointing to the rather distant car park, an area screened off by trees and shrubs. Five cars were already there and one of them was Maeve Tredown's, the dark red Volvo. He experienced a slight sinking of the heart, a feeling composed of exasperation and a sense of the futility of his coming here at all. He had told her he would be visiting that day. Couldn't she have taken the hint? Or was it rather that she (and possibly Claudia Ricardo, too) had come because he was coming? He could see someone in the car, but it was too far off for him to be sure it was Maeve.

Reflecting on this, he began walking slowly along the drive-way toward an arrow marked "Reception." When he reached the side of the building and was between its brick wall and a tall chain-link fence, wondering if there was any point in his staying, he heard a car behind him. It was going fast, too fast to negotiate this fairly narrow pa.s.sage, and he leapt aside. As he did so, turning to face the oncoming vehicle, instead of stopping its driver accelerated. He shouted and threw up his arms, but the car drove straight at him, scooping him up onto its bonnet and swerving to sc.r.a.pe its bodywork along the wall.

It was a bizarre, unreal happening, something he'd seen in films, only heard of in life. He teetered there, sliding, kicking on the slippery surface, trying and failing to get a grip on something, anything. Slithering off, making frenzied sounds, calling for help, he crashed onto the paving stones up against the fence, his right hand out to break his fall. Pain shot up his arm. Afterward he said he knew he was alive because he heard a bone in his wrist crack. The dark red Volvo hesitated only for a moment before charging toward the gateway and out into Pomfret High Street with a roar and a gush of exhaust fumes.

Hannah had slipped the ring on, but it was too big for the third finger of her slender hand, fitting rather more tightly on the middle finger. It seemed an omen. She might wear the diamond Bal had given her for her engagement; no wedding band should ever replace it. If they wanted children she could have them without benefit of matrimony. She was too young to worry about inheritance tax, and the law would be changed by then, anyway. No, she'd never marry, she thought, as Damon came down the police station steps and got into the driving seat.

"She's on a week's holiday and she's staying with her mother," Hannah said. "G.o.dalming somewhere. Salterton Street. G.o.d knows where that is, you'll have to use the satnav."

Fascinated by modern technology, Damon was delighted to get the chance. The satellite navigation voice, not unlike Hannah's own, directed him the opposite way to where he would have gone if left to himself. He sighed happily. "This woman, isn't there some nutcase boyfriend who's paranoid about her knowing other guys?"

"You're quite safe," said Hannah, laughing. "It's only one particular guy. She's left him behind in my neck of the woods."

The little house in a G.o.dalming backstreet was found with ease but no more quickly, Damon insisted, than he could have done on his own. He was mildly disillusioned. Letting them into the house was a very old woman, small, shriveled, stick thin, in a short-sleeved sweater and leggings that would have fitted an undersized twelve-year-old. It was hard to believe she and tall brawny Bridget Cook could be mother and daughter.

"You're not wanting to take my ring off me?" were almost the first words Bridget said.

"We'd just like to compare it with this one, Miss Cook," Hannah said. She held out the ring Selina Hexham had lent Wexford on the palm of her hand.

"I don't know if it'll come off."

Bridget struggled with the ring, twisting and pulling it, failing to move it over the swollen joint.

"Come on, love," said Mrs. Cook in her birdlike twitter, "let me have a go. I've got just the thing. Wait a minute."

A jar of Vaseline was produced, the finger anointed, and at last the ring began to slide. Mrs. Cook gave it a final pull over her daughter's knuckle and the two rings lay side by side. Each had a chased design of leaves, as if a laurel wreath encircled them. Hannah looked closely, lifted each one in turn up to the light while the always obliging Mrs. Cook produced a magnifying gla.s.s. "Forever" was inside Bridget's, and "Forever" inside Selina Hexham's, identical promises engraved at the same time, in the same italics.

"Let me see." Lily Cook brandished her magnifying gla.s.s. "I can't see that even with my gla.s.ses. Oh, look, fancy that. Who's that other one belong to, Bridge?"

"I don't know," Bridget said sadly. It was as if some a.s.sumption she had made had been destroyed at a blow.

"May I borrow it, Miss Cook?"