About the Book

‘Don’t forget,’ Wexford said, ‘I’ve lived in a world where the improbable happens all the time.’

However, the impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead, belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila.

Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but, for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the law.

But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case.

The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John’s Wood. None carries identification. But the man’s jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of £40,000.

It is not a hard decision for Wexford. He is intrigued and excited by the challenge, and, in the early stages, not really anticipating that this new investigative role will bring him into physical danger.

About the Author

Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her ground-breaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced readers to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford.

With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.

Rendell won numerous awards, including the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.

Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Ruth Rendell

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Copyright

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN 9781409049975

Version 1.0

Published by Hutchinson 2011

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd 2011

Ruth Rendell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Hutchinson

Hutchinson
The Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Hutchinson is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091921460
ISBN 9780091925369

To Paul and Marianne with love

CHAPTER ONE

‘A CURIOUS WORLD we live in,’ said Franklin Merton, ‘where one can afford a house but not a picture of a house. That must tell us some profound truth. But what, I wonder?’

The picture he was talking about was Simon Alpheton’s Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place, later bought by Tate Britain – simply ‘the Tate’ in those days – and the house the one in the picture, Orcadia Cottage. His remark about the curious world was addressed to the Harriet of the picture, for whom he had bought it and whom he intended to marry when his divorce came through. Later on, when passion had cooled and they were husband and wife, ‘I didn’t want to get married,’ he said. ‘I married you because I’m a man of honour and you were my mistress. Some would say my views are out of date but I dispute that. The apparent change is only superficial. I reasoned that no one would want my leavings, so for your sake the decent thing was to make an honest woman of you.’

His first wife was Anthea. When he deserted her he was also obliged to desert their dog O’Hara and to him that was the most painful thing about it.

‘You don’t keep a bitch and bark yourself,’ he said to Harriet when she protested at having to do all the housework.

‘Pity I’m not an Irish setter,’ she said and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince.

They lived together for five years and were married for twenty-three, the whole time in that house, Orcadia Cottage or Number 7a Orcadia Place, London NW8. Owing to Franklin’s sharp tongue, verbal cruelty and indifference, and to Harriet’s propensity for sleeping with young tradesmen in the afternoons, it was not a happy marriage. They took separate holidays, Franklin going away ostensibly on his own but in fact with his first wife, and he came back from the last one only to tell Harriet he was leaving. He returned to Anthea and her present Irish setter De Valera, intending to divorce Harriet as soon as feasible. Anthea, a generous woman, urged him to do his best to search for her, for she couldn’t be found at Orcadia Cottage. The largest suitcase, most of her clothes and the best of the jewellery he had bought her were missing, and it was Franklin’s belief that she had gone off with her latest young man.

‘She’ll be in touch as soon as she’s in need,’ said Franklin to Anthea, ‘and that won’t be long delayed.’

But Harriet never got in touch. Franklin went back to Orcadia Cottage to look for some clue as to where she might have gone but found only that the place was exceptionally neat, tidy and clean.

‘One odd thing,’ he said. ‘I lived there for all those years and never went into the cellar. There was no reason to do so. Just the same, I could have sworn there was a staircase going down to it with a door just by the kitchen door. But there isn’t.’

Anthea was a much cleverer woman than Harriet. ‘When you say you could have sworn, darling, do you mean you would go into court, face a jury and say, “I swear there was a staircase in that house going down to the cellar”?’

After thinking about it, Franklin said, ‘I don’t think so. Well, no, I wouldn’t.’

He put it on the market and bought a house for Anthea and himself in South Kensington. In their advertisements the estate agents described Orcadia Cottage as ‘the Georgian home immortalised in the internationally acclaimed artwork of Simon Alpheton’. The purchasers, an American insurance broker and his wife, wanted to move in quickly and when Franklin offered them the report his own surveyors had made thirty years before, they were happy to do without a survey. After all, the house had been there for two hundred years and wasn’t likely to fall down now.

Clay and Devora Silverman bought the house from Franklin Merton in 1998 and lived there until 2002, before returning to the house they had rented out in Hartford, Connecticut. The first autumn they spent at Orcadia Cottage the leaves on the Virginia creeper, which covered the entire front and much of the back of the house, turned from green to copper and copper to red and then started to fall off. Clay Silverman watched them settle on the front garden and the paving stones in the back. He was appalled by the red sticky sodden mass of leaves on which he and Devora slipped and slid and Devora sprained her ankle. Knowing nothing about natural history and still less about gardening, he was well-informed about art and was familiar with the Alpheton painting. It was one of his reasons for buying Orcadia Cottage. But he had assumed that the green leaves covering the house which formed the background to the lovers’ embrace remained green always and remained on the plant. After all of them had fallen he had the creeper cut down.

Orcadia Cottage emerged as built of bricks in a pretty pale red colour. Clay had shutters put on the windows and the front door painted a pale greenish-grey. In the paved yard at the back of the house was what he saw as an unsightly drain cover with a crumbling stone pot on top of it. He had a local nursery fill a tub with senecios, heathers and cotoneaster to replace the pot. But four years later he and Devora moved out and returned home. Clay Silverman had given £800,000 for the house and sold it for £1,500,000 to Martin and Anne Rokeby.

The Rokebys had a son and daughter; there were only two bedrooms in Orcadia Cottage but one was large enough to be divided and this was done. For the first time in nearly half a century the house was home to children. Again there was no survey on the house, for Martin and Anne paid cash and needed no mortgage. They moved into Orcadia Cottage in 2002 and had been living there for four years, their children teenagers by this time, when Martin raised the possibility with his wife of building underground. Excavations to construct an extra room or two – a wine cellar, say, or a ‘family room’, a study or all of those things – were becoming fashionable. You couldn’t build on to your historic house or add an extra storey, but the planning authority might let you build subterraneanly. A similar thing had been done in Hall Road which was near Orcadia Place and Martin had watched the builders at work with interest.

A big room under Orcadia Cottage would be just the place for their children to have a large-screen television, their computers, their ever-more sophisticated arrangements for making music, and maybe an exercise room, too, for Anne, who was something of a work-out fanatic. In the late summer of 2006 he began by consulting the builders who had divided the large bedroom but they had gone out of business. A company whose board outside the Hall Road house gave their name, phone number and an email address were next. But the men who came round to have a look said it wouldn’t be feasible. A different firm was recommended to him by a neighbour. One who came said he thought it could be done. Another said it was possible if Martin didn’t mind losing all the mature trees in the front garden. Nevertheless, he applied to the planning authority for permission to build underneath the house.

Martin and Anne and the children all went to Australia for a month. The house was too old, prospective builders said, it would be unwise to disturb the foundations. Others said it could be done, but at a cost twice that which Martin had estimated. They said all this on the phone without even looking at it. The project was put an end to when planning permission was refused, having had a string of protests from all the Rokebys’ neighbours except the one who had recommended the builder.

All this took about a year. In the autumn of 2007 the Rokebys’ son, who had been the principal family member in favour of the underground room, went off to university. Time went on and the plan was all but forgotten. The house seemed bigger now their daughter was away at boarding school. In the early spring of 2009 Martin and Anne went on holiday to Florence. There, in a shop on the Arno, Anne fell in love with a large amphora displayed in its window. Apparently dredged up from the waters of the Mediterranean, it bore a frieze round its rim of nymphs and satyrs dancing and wreathing each other with flowers.

‘I must have that,’ said Anne. ‘Imagine that replacing that hideous old pot.’

‘You have it,’ Martin said. ‘Why not? So long as you don’t try getting it on the flight.’

The shop sent it, carefully packed in a huge crate, and it finally arrived in St John’s Wood in May 2009 by some circuitous route not involving aircraft. A local nursery agreed to plant it with agapanthus and sedum spectabile, but before this was done Martin emptied the plants and soil out of the wooden tub, placed the remains of the tub into a black plastic bag and put it out into the mews for the rubbish collection.

‘I’ve often wondered what’s under that lid thing but never bothered to have a look.’

‘Now’s your chance,’ said Anne, uninterested.

‘It’s probably too heavy to lift.’

But it wasn’t too heavy. Martin lifted the manhole cover to disclose a large dark cavity. He could see nothing much beyond what appeared to be a plastic bag or sheet of plastic lying in the depths. Better get a torch, he thought, and he did, thus wrecking his life for a long time to come.

An exaggeration? Perhaps. But not much of one. By shining that torch down into the dark cavity, he gained a place for his wife and himself and his home on the front page of every daily newspaper, put an end to his and his family’s peace for months, attracting mobs of sightseers to the street and the mews, reducing the selling price of his house by about a million pounds and making Orcadia Place as notorious as Christie’s home in Notting Hill and the Wests’ in Gloucester.

CHAPTER TWO

CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD, who was no longer a chief inspector or a policeman or a permanent resident of Kingsmarkham in the county of Sussex, sat in the living room of his second home in Hampstead reading the Booker Prize winner. He was no longer any of those other things, but he was still a reader. And now he had all the time in the world for books.

Of course, he had many interests besides. He loved music: Bach, Handel, lots of opera. Walking he found a bore when he always walked the same route in Kingsmarkham, but London was different; London walks were a never-ending source of interest and excitement. Galleries he visited, usually with his wife Dora. It was a mild winter and he went on the river with her, took the canal trip with her from Paddington Basin to Camden Lock and back. They went to Kew Gardens and Hampton Court. For all that, for all this richness, he missed what had been his life. He missed being a policeman.

So the chance encounter with Tom Ede as he was walking down the Finchley Road changed things. They had first met years ago when Tom had been a very young police constable and Wexford staying with his nephew Chief Superintendent Howard Fortune in Chelsea. Wexford had taken an interest in one of Howard’s cases and Tom had come to his attention as exceptionally bright and persevering. That had been more than thirty years ago, but he had recognised Tom at once. He looked older, of course, but it was the same face if overlaid with lines, the same hairline if grey now instead of brown. Must be because he hasn’t gained weight, Wexford had thought at the time, rueful about his own increased girth.

He’d looked at Tom, hesitated, then said, ‘It’s Thomas Ede, isn’t it? You won’t know me.’

But Tom did – just – when he had taken a long look. He was Detective Superintendent Ede now, based at the new Metropolitan Police headquarters in Cricklewood. They had exchanged phone numbers. Wexford had gone on his way with an extra spring in his step and now he was hoping Tom would phone. For what? To arrange to meet on some social occasion? No, don’t deceive yourself, he thought. You want the improbable: that he’ll ask for help. He went back to last year’s Booker winner, enjoying it but with maybe a small fraction of his mind thinking about the phone and how Tom had said he would ring ‘around lunchtime’.

It was six months now since he had retired and been presented with the pretty carriage clock which, on the coachhouse (how appropriate!) living room mantelpiece, told him that the time was well into what he called lunchtime. He had eaten the lunch Dora had left him, the meat and ciabatta and ignoring most of the salad. Still, even now, his mind went back to what might have happened, would have happened, if Sheila hadn’t offered them this place.

‘Of course, we don’t want rent, Pop. You and Mother will be doing us a favour, taking on the coachhouse.’

The real meaning of retirement had come to him the first day. When it didn’t matter what time he got up he could stay in bed all day. He didn’t, of course. Those first days all his interests seemed petty, not worth doing. It seemed to him that he had read all the books he wanted to read, heard all the music he wanted to hear. He thought of closing his eyes and turning his face to the wall. That was on the first days and he put on a show of enjoying having nothing to do for Dora’s sake. He even said he was relishing this slack and idle time. She saw through that; she knew him too well. After about a week of it he said how much he wished they could live in London. Not all the time, he loved their Kingsmarkham house, neither of them would want to give that up.

‘You mean have somewhere in London as well?’

‘I suppose that’s what I do mean.’

‘Could we afford it?’

‘I don’t know.’

A studio flat, he had thought. That was an elegant term for a bedsitter with one corner cut off for a kitchen and a cupboard turned into a shower room. Gradually learning how to use the Internet, he found estate agents online and looked at what they had to offer. Dora asked her question again.

‘Could we afford it?’

An unqualified ‘no’ this time.

They said nothing about it to either of their daughters. Saying you can’t afford something to a rich child is tantamount to asking for financial aid. Their elder, Sylvia, was comfortable but not rich. Sheila, the successful actress on stage and TV, had an equally successful husband. Their large Victorian house on the edge of Hampstead Heath, if it were up for sale, would be one of those that estate agents’ websites offered as ‘in excess of eight million’. So they said nothing to Sheila, even pretended how happily their lives had been transformed by his retirement. But Sheila knew him almost as well as his wife did.

‘Have the coachhouse for a second home, Pop.’

That was what it was called, a kind of garage for a brougham when people possessed such transport, with a stable for the horse and a flat over the top for the coachman. Carefully converted, it was now a small house with two bedrooms and – unheard-of luxury – two bathrooms.

‘I still can’t really believe it,’ Dora said on their first evening.

‘I can,’ said Wexford. ‘Don’t forget, I’ve lived in a world where the improbable happens all the time. What would you rather do tomorrow, go by train to Kew Gardens or have a boat up the river to the Thames Barrier?’

‘Couldn’t we do both?’

During those months they had twice been back to Kingsmarkham for a week at a time and that, too, had been enjoyable, like coming home from a holiday while still wanting to resume that holiday later. But it was a mixed pleasure; this was his manor, this was where he had been the law incarnate for so long. It brought home to him how much he missed being that law.

He walked such a lot in London that he was losing weight and was beginning to know his way around without the satnav of the London Guide. He had his car with him and he drove it, but not often. Driving and being driven he didn’t miss. Being a policeman was what he missed. Would he always?

He picked up the Booker winner once more and as he opened it at the marked place, the phone rang. Pleasantries were exchanged, the ‘how are yous’ that no one really wanted an answer to, but seem to be requisite at every meeting. In spite of his fantasy, Wexford couldn’t quite believe it when, after replying that he was very well, Tom said it was help he wanted.

‘In what capacity?’

‘Well, I was thinking. I mean, you may not want to do this at all. You may not want anything to do with it. You’ve retired and no doubt thanking your stars you have but … If you did, if you’d just think about it, you could be an adviser. Expert advisers are very popular these days, not to say trendy. And I do see you as an expert. Maybe I’m kidding myself but years and years ago I think you spotted some sort of aptitude for police work in me and now – well, I’m remembering a real talent for it in you. If you were my adviser you could come anywhere with me, have access to anything – well, almost anything. I expect you’re busy now, but if not …’

‘I’m not at all busy,’ said Wexford.

‘It’s the Orcadia Place case I’m talking about and if …’

‘Are you at your new HQ in Cricklewood?’

‘That’s it. Mapesbury Road. Strike while the iron is hot then.’ Tom paused, said with slight embarrassment, ‘There wouldn’t be any – er, emolument, I’m afraid. We have to tighten our belts in these hard times.’

Wexford wasn’t surprised.

He meant to walk all the way, but it was longer than he thought and carefully buying a ticket from a machine, he got on a bus. It was a beautiful day, June as it should be but seldom was, the sky a cloudless blue, the sun hot but cool in the shade of the trees. To think that before he came here, in spite of numerous visits, he had believed there were no gardens in London or if there were a few they would be arid plots of dry grass and dusty bushes. The flowers amazed him. Roses were everywhere, bush roses, standards, climbers and ramblers dripping blossom over ancient moss-grown brick walls.

Even Shoot-up Hill had its share of flowers. The bus stopped near the end of Mapesbury Road where the new Met headquarters was a huge glass ziggurat in a street of big Victorian villas, and he felt glad he would be visiting and not working there. That word ‘working’ stimulated a rush of adrenalin and he speeded up his pace.

Automatic doors, of course, and a huge foyer that seemed to be mostly windows and marble floor. It might have been a hospital or the offices of some large company. The house-plants standing about in black ceramic tubs were the kind you can’t tell are real or artificial unless you actually touch their leaves.

A young woman sat behind the long boomerang-shaped counter, engrossed by the screens of three desktop computers. He was so used to presenting his warrant card that he was feeling in his pocket for it before he remembered that he no longer had it, that he was no longer entitled to have it. He gave his name, said Detective Superintendent Ede was expecting him.

‘Take the lift,’ she said, scarcely looking up. ‘Third floor, turn left and it’s the third door on the right.’

While he waited for the lift to come he was transported back in time to when, in very different surroundings, he had started his first day as Detective Constable Wexford with the Brighton Police. Years, decades, had gone by, yet he thought he felt much the same, apprehensive, excited, wondering what the coming weeks would bring.

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU’LL HAVE READ about it or seen it on TV. God knows it’s had enough media coverage. It’s one of those cases where people start asking if they’ve found any more bodies.’

‘Except that these were all in the same place,’ said Wexford.

‘That’s true. We don’t even know if they were murdered – well, one was. Probably.’

‘Only probably?’

‘Three of them have been there so long we can’t tell how long they’ve been dead, let alone what they died of.’

Detective Superintendent Thomas Ede was sitting in his chair behind his desk in his glass-walled box of an office, the glass being the kind you can see out of but no one can see in. Laminated wood floor with a faux fur rug, the fur looking like the skin of a hybrid tiger and giraffe. Ede was a tall, thin man with a small head and tense, sharp features. He wore a dark grey suit and a white shirt, but no tie, a style of dressing Wexford thought looked fine on women, less ‘right’ on men, though it was becoming universally popular. Wexford sat opposite him in the clients’ seat, the interviewee’s place. This was something new to him, something he had to get resigned to. And he was getting there, it was all right, it was inevitable.

‘I’ve read about it,’ he said, ‘but you tell me. That way I’ll get it right.’

‘Well, as you know, this all started a month ago. We were first called at the beginning of May. The location is a street in St John’s Wood called Orcadia Place, but that detail wasn’t in the papers, was it? You’re looking as if something’s struck you.’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Wexford said. ‘Go on.’

‘The house itself is called Orcadia Cottage. It’s not a cottage as we know it but a sizeable detached house, very pretty if you like that sort of thing. Front garden’s full of flowers and trees, the back is a kind of courtyard or patio. Orcadia Place is one of those streets in St John’s Wood that are more like country lanes, hedges, big trees, cobbled roadway, that kind of thing. Orcadia Cottage belongs to a man called Martin Rokeby. He bought it about seven years ago for one and a half million. It would fetch four now – or would have before what was found in the coal hole. By the way, we call it the “patio-tomb”. Got to call it something, haven’t you?

‘The set-up is peculiar to say the least. On the face of it, the area, paved in York stone, is quite large and plain with a border round its edges. The way into the patio from the house is by a door from the kitchen and a pair of French windows. A door in the back wall opens into the mews. More or less in the middle of this patio is the manhole cover, circular, which when closed – and it always was closed – lies flush with the paving. A tub stood on it and entirely covered it up.

‘Now Rokeby had never lifted up this manhole cover. Or so he says. He had no survey done when he bought the house as he had no mortgage and distrusted surveys on old houses, reasoning that they were bound to be full of faults but never fell down. It’s a point of view. You can spend a fortune on surveys and most of the time needlessly. Anyway, Rokeby says he didn’t even know the manhole cover was there. The tub which stood on it was a half-barrel of wood bound in iron, not particularly attractive, and Mrs Rokeby said she’d like a new one. She’s the gardener. Well, the two of them were on holiday in Italy – they went on a lot of expensive holidays, Australia at the time he was planning the underground room – and in a shop in Florence she saw this, I quote, “amazingly beautiful amphora”, whatever that is, that some boat dredged up from out of the Mediterranean. I don’t know about these things. Maybe you do. Anyway, she had to have it – they’re not short of a penny or two, as you’ll have guessed – couldn’t, needless to say, take it home with them on a flight, so she asked to have it sent. Heaven knows what that cost but it doesn’t matter.’

Wexford noted that ‘heaven’ where another man would have said ‘God’. He wondered what it meant, if anything, vaguely remembering that Tom Ede, when young, had a connection with some nonconformist church or cult.

‘Much to their surprise,’ Ede went on, ‘when they emptied the soil out of the half-barrel and took the thing away, what did they find underneath but this manhole cover. Now Rokeby, quite reasonably, supposed this to be covering a drain or a fuel store that was no longer in use, and at first he intended to leave things as they were and just stick the amphora thing on the top with some lilies planted in it.’

‘Why didn’t he?’ said Wexford.

‘Curiosity, he says. The manhole cover wasn’t heavy. He lifted it off and instead of the drain or drainpipe he expected, leading away into the mews, he found himself looking down into a black hole. At the bottom was something he couldn’t properly see apart from a kind of shininess that seemed to be a sheet of plastic. That was covering a multitude of sins, but he didn’t know it then.

‘Now before he did anything more, he went into the house and fetched his wife. The two of them looked down into the darkness and at that shiny thing and what looked – he said they could just about see it – like a woman’s shoe. If the way into this hole was by the manhole, where was the way out? Was there a way out? Rokeby actually asked his wife if they had a cellar that he didn’t know was there. She told him that of course they hadn’t. There would be a door down to it in the house, there would be a staircase.

‘Well, Rokeby went indoors and fetched a torch. A big powerful halogen thing, apparently. In the circumstances it might have been better for them if it had been a feeble little job with a failing battery. He shone it down the hole and there he saw a large plastic bag full of what he called “something horrible”, as well as two skulls, the bones of a skeleton and a badly decomposed corpse. Anne Rokeby also saw it and she fainted. He took her indoors and called us after he’d been sick.’

Wexford nodded. ‘You believe neither of them knew anything about it beforehand? I mean, that the existence of the hole was a surprise to them?’

‘Well, you know, Reg, I’m inclined to believe it. But I’m open to having my mind changed.’

‘What was it? A coal hole?’

‘In the days when people had coal fires and coke boilers, coal was delivered by way of the mews and the sacks emptied down the hole.’

‘And the occupants of Orcadia Cottage would fetch up the coal by going down the steps to the cellar and thence to the coal hole.’

‘Ah, so you might assume,’ said Tom Ede, ‘but they couldn’t have because, though there’s a cellar that communicates with the coal hole, there’s no way into it from the house.’

‘No stairs down?’

‘Stairs down, but no door to them. I can take you up there. We can go and look.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Wexford asked.

‘Tomorrow, certainly. Two minds with but a single thought. But before we make arrangements. I went down to Orcadia Place with my sergeant that you’ll meet. By the time we got there they’d got a ladder down into the coal hole but not, of course, touched anything. I went down. I was the first. There was no smell, just a sort of stuffiness, though of course a lot of air had been getting in there by that time.

‘It was – well, a grim sight. You know the kind of things we have to see in the course of our work, but I think I can say I’ve never seen anything to come up to this. Or perhaps I should say come down to this. The thing sealed up in a big plastic bag was a man’s body badly decomposed, as was the body of the older woman. I don’t know why but I expect the forensics people do. The young man was a skeleton, the skull almost detached. The younger woman was in the best condition but decomposing. She, of course, had been there much less longer than the others. The pathologist determined that with no trouble. All the bodies were fully clothed, but with only a single clue to their identities and that not much of a one. None of them were carrying identification. The women’s clothes looked as if they had been dressed for indoors, so hadn’t had handbags with them and women don’t put stuff in pockets, do they? The young man had some coins in his jeans pocket and a piece of paper with “Francine” written on it and under that “La Punaise” and a four-digit number – and, wait for it, a lot of valuable jewellery. Not only in his jeans pocket but in the pockets of the jacket that was still on the body: strings of pearls, a diamond and sapphire necklace, a gold collar thing, bracelets, rings and other stuff, you name it. The lot has been valued at worth something in the region of forty thousand pounds.

‘The bodies were photographed where they were. The pathologist came and looked at them where they were, and after all that stuff was gone through they were taken away. It was then and only then that I and DS Blanch had a good look round the coal hole and the cellar. The door from the coal hole to the cellar had been closed, but we opened it – of course we did – in case there were more bodies on the other side, but there weren’t. There was nothing, not even any coal or wood or the kind of junk people put in cellars. Nothing at all. Except, of course, the stairs. The stairs went up from the cellar floor to a blank wall.’

‘The bodies?’ Wexford asked. ‘There’s been nothing in the papers about that, there wouldn’t be. Only that they were there. DNA?’

‘I think I’ll keep that for tomorrow, Reg. I’ll come and pick you up, shall I? Bright and early – nine a.m. too early for you?’

‘Nine is fine. The address is The Coachhouse, 2 Vale of Health Lane, Hampstead.’

He felt rather diffident giving Tom Ede this classy address. Tom, he knew, lived in a flat in Finchley, and Wexford was already learning the niceties and fine shades of where in London it is de rigueur to live and where not quite so posh. He had learnt how it is quite OK to live in West Two and North-west Eight, top drawer to live in West One, North-west Three or South-west Three, less so in North Eleven or South-west Twelve. It was better to have a phone number preceded by a seven than by an eight. Much as he despised this postcode and number snobbery, he found it fascinating. Still, it was difficult when he had to give someone like Tom an address in the best part of Hampstead – not that it was his except on loan, not that he had any right to what belonged to his daughter. When the time came he was going to have to explain to Tom how he and Dora came to be staying there. He hadn’t yet made himself say ‘living there’.

‘Open confession is good for the soul,’ said Tom, ‘and I’ll tell you frankly, I’ve asked for your help because so far we’re getting nowhere fast.’

Home – it was sort of half-home now – on the bus. On two buses, the second one up Haverstock Hill because he didn’t know a less complex route. He used his newly acquired Freedom Pass in its purple case. The beauties of Hampstead still drew his eyes, the church where Constable’s tomb was, Holly Mount and the Everyman Cinema, but his mind was still with Tom Ede in Orcadia Place. It must be the same, he thought. Did Tom know? Did it matter whether he knew? One of the most famous of modern paintings it must be, still unknown to many. He got off the bus and walked down into the Vale of Health.

The kitchen and living area were on the ground floor where a Victorian family’s brougham had been once housed and the horse stabled. Stairs went up to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was all very light with white paint and big windows but not stark, nothing like being the shubunkin in a fish tank. He found Dora with Anoushka on her knee, reading The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

‘It’s just me today, Grandad. Are you pleased?’

Wexford gave her a kiss, then kissed Dora. ‘If I say I’m pleased you’ll tell Amy and she’ll think I like you better than her.’

‘You do like me better,’ said Anoushka.

‘I like you both the same, but for different reasons. Where is she anyway?’

‘Gone to her dancing class. I hate dancing.’

‘So do I,’ said Wexford, ‘but don’t tell Amy.’ He addressed his wife. ‘All those books and papers we brought here from home’ – Kingsmarkham was still really home – ‘what happened to them?’

‘You stuffed them into that big cupboard in the spare bedroom. You said you’d tidy them up, put them in the bookcases, but they’re still waiting.’

Wexford pulled a hangdog face which made Anoushka laugh. ‘There’s something I want to look for.’

‘Can I come?’

‘Of course you can. You can help.’

This provoked sardonic laughter from Dora. Wexford and Anoushka went upstairs to the spare bedroom and Wexford opened the double doors of the cupboard. The books were stacked at the bottom, a mass of papers, which threatened to fall off but didn’t, occupied the top two shelves. Better remove the lot. He brought down two armfuls of magazines, papers, sheets of paper, forms, catalogues, and spread them about the floor.

‘What are we looking for, Grandad?’

‘A picture of a house. You know what a calendar is?’

‘A thing you hang up on the wall that’s got pictures and numbers on it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’ll look!’

He let her look, knowing that when a child wants to help you must patiently let her, perhaps encouraging her but never never intervening because you know you will do it faster yourself. Anoushka found two calendars but not the one he wanted. His eye caught that one, lying half under an old copy of the New Statesman, but nothing would have made him reach for it while she was in the room. She was bored now and after graciously accepting his extravagant thanks, said she was going back to Grandma for more adventures of two rats and a family of kittens. Once he heard the reading start again, he picked up the calendar and leafed through it, passing the Waterhouse for January, the Laura Knight for February, the Sargent for March – and there it was for April: a reproduction of the painting whose name had alerted him when Tom Ede named a street in St John’s Wood.

It was of a man and a girl standing in front of a house, she in a dress the same red as her hair, he in a dark blue suit. The expressions on their faces were of passionate love for each other. Behind them was a living wall of green leaves and under the picture was the legend: Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place by Simon Alpheton, 1973. The red dress, he remembered reading somewhere, was by the great Venetian designer Mariano Fortuny, and reading somewhere else that the painting had been the Royal Academy’s Picture of the Year. Since then it had been on postcards, calendars, posters, advertisements.

It had been painted thirty-six years before. Marc Syre had been a pop star and celebrity or ‘sleb’, as they called them today, Harriet simply his girlfriend. She was very likely still alive, but Marc Syre was dead. Wexford remembered hearing or reading that he had died from taking LSD and jumping off Beachy Head. But once he had been the owner or tenant of Orcadia Cottage. Before his cellar became a charnel house, a repository of the remains of two men and two women unknown to him or not yet born.

I shall not call it a charnel house, he decided, or a patio-tomb. I shall call it ‘the vault’. He took the calendar into the kitchen where he had left his briefcase and put it inside the case so that Anoushka wouldn’t see and went into the living room, carrying the two others she had found as if they were of immense value to him.

CHAPTER FOUR

SO THAT WAS what he was, Detective Superintendent Ede’s expert adviser. It made him laugh every time he repeated it to himself. He laughed now as he picked up his briefcase, kissed Dora and went off outside to await the arrival of Tom’s car in the Vale of Health. Wexford knew he would be absolutely on time and he was. Tom came in an unmarked car – as an unmarked policeman, of course he did – driven by a young woman he introduced as his sergeant, DS Lucy Blanch. Lucy, as she wanted Wexford to call her, was a slim black woman with a pretty face and ebony hair. He would have liked to ask her if she plaited those corn rows herself or did a hairdresser do it, but he was always conscious of anything that might be construed as racist. Tom had been sitting next to her but when Wexford got into the back he came and sat beside him.

‘So that we can talk a bit more about the case.’

Tom didn’t comment on Sheila’s stately house or the wide garden or the little gabled coachhouse at its gates. By this time Wexford had learnt to categorise visitors as likeable or not by whether they said he’d done all right for himself, hadn’t he, that must be costing him a packet, or noticed his second home with no more envious deference than if it had been a one-bedroom flat in Tooting. It was a test that Mike Burden had passed with honours, but then Mike had worked for him and with him since Sheila had been a young girl and knew all the circumstances.

Lucy drove along Fitzjohn’s Avenue, getting caught up in a traffic jam halfway down. Roadworks again. Wexford was daily amazed by the cones and barriers spread out everywhere while holes were dug, pipes exposed and apparently essential work carried out if London were not to break down and come to a standstill. Here temporary lights had been put up, staying red much longer than for a normal traffic-light span.

‘Before we start,’ Wexford said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He opened his briefcase and took out the calendar. ‘Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place. But perhaps you know about it.’

Tom Ede took it in both hands. ‘I’ve heard about this, but not seen it. The painter was Simon Alpheton, was it?’

Wexford was pleased. ‘You can see the date is 1973. Has it changed a lot?’

‘A previous owner called Clay Silverman had the Virginia creeper cut down. Who are or were Marc and Harriet?’

‘Marc was Marc Syre, a rock musician in a group called Come Hither. The woman in the red dress was his girlfriend. I think her name was Harriet Oxenholme. He died – Marc Syre. I mean, killed himself after taking LSD. I don’t know what happened to her.’

Tom was silent for a moment, considering. The temporary light turned green and Lucy moved along in the queue of cars and vans and a bus. ‘This Syre must have rented it. A John Walton owned it until 1974 when he sold it to a man called Franklin Merton, who had a survey carried out. That’s important, as you can imagine.’ Tom paused to look at a sheaf of notes he had with him. ‘Merton sold the house in 1998 to Americans called Clay and Devora Silverman. They dispensed with a survey and relied on the surveyor’s report Merton had had done. Apparently the place was very much in demand and in 2002, as Silverman was suddenly sent back to the United States, he wanted a quick sale. The Rokebys also didn’t bother with a survey, paid cash and moved in within five weeks.’

Wexford thought about it. ‘This means that three of the bodies, the two men and the older woman were probably put in the vault’ – his first use of the word – ‘during Merton’s occupancy. Is it known how long they’ve been there?’

‘The trouble is,’ said Tom, ‘that however long ago it is, it’s a long time. Between ten and fifteen years is the estimate, later narrowed down to between eleven and thirteen – we’ll say twelve years. That would very likely be at the end of Merton’s occupancy, as you say. But Merton is dead. He was in his seventies when he sold the house and he died last year.’

‘And the younger woman?’

‘That’s difficult. She’s been dead between two and two-and-a-half years. Say two to three. We assume she’s been in the tomb that same length of time but it may have been only two years.’

‘I suppose it depends,’ said Wexford, ‘on whether her killer had the vault in mind before he killed her or only thought of it as a possible burial place later on.’

They were nearly there. Lucy was a good driver, precise and dashing, squeezing through spaces between a bus and a lorry with a skill Wexford was sure he couldn’t have mustered. She directed his attention to the Beatles’ Abbey Road Studios as she pulled up to allow three teenagers to stand in the middle of the pedestrian crossing and have their photographs taken.

‘It’s a funny thing, sir,’ she said, ‘that none of the drivers who have to stop for this sort of thing ever sound their horns or shout or anything even if whole droves of kids cross and do that. It’s a tribute to the Beatles, don’t you think?’

Wexford laughed. ‘I expect you’re right.’

She drove on down Grove End Road, turned right into Melina Place and then into Orcadia Place. A country lane it might have been, but one where all the trees had had the attention of a tree surgeon, every weed had been removed and each wild flower had been replaced by a pansy or a tuft of primulas. A high wall concealed all but the upper floor and almost flat roof of Orcadia Cottage, but there was a wrought iron gate in this wall, set between pillars on which stood two falcons in terra cotta. As he got out of the car Wexford could see through the bars and curlicues roses of many shapes and colours, but no scent as far as he could tell. Tom paused to put on a red and blue striped tie, somewhat the worse for rough handling.