A New Lease of Death Read Free Page B

after the murder I noticed she’d got bruises on her arm, too many bruises for her just to have got them through the usual kitchen accidents, and I wouldn’t mind betting her husband used to knock her about.’
    ‘So, in fact,’ Burden said, ‘they were two completely separate units. Mrs Primero and her maid living alone at Victor’s Piece, the Painter family in their own home at the bottom of the garden.’
    ‘I don’t know about “bottom of the garden”. The coach house was about a hundred feet from the back door of the big house. Painter only went up there to carry in the coal and receive his instructions.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Burden, ‘there was some complicated business about coal, I seem to remember. Wasn’t it more or less the crux of the whole thing?’
    ‘Painter was supposed to chop wood and carry coal,’ Wexford continued. ‘Alice was past carrying coal and Painter was supposed to bring a scuttleful at mid-day – they never lit a fire before that – and another one at six-thirty. Now, he never objected to the gardening or the car maintenance, but for some reason he drew the line at the coal. He did it – apart from frequent lapses – but he was always grumbling about it. The mid-day duty cut across his dinner time, he said, and he didn’t like turning out on winter evenings. Couldn’t he bring two scuttles at eleven? But Mrs Primero wouldn’t have that. She said she wasn’t going to have her drawing room turned into a railway yard.’
    Burden smiled. His tiredness had almost worn off. Given breakfast, a shave and a shower down, he would be a new man. He glanced at his watch, then across the High Street to where the blinds were going up on the Carousel Café.
    ‘I could do with a cup of coffee,’ he said.
    ‘Two minds with but a single thought. Root someone out and send them over.’
    Wexford stood up and stretched, tightened his tie and smoothed back the hair that was too sparse to become untidy. The coffee arrived in wax cups with plastic spoons and little cubes of wrapped sugar.
    ‘That’s better,’ said Wexford. ‘D’you want me to go on?’ Burden nodded.
    ‘By September 1950 Painter had been working for Mrs Primero for three years. The arrangement appeared to work pretty well apart from the difficulties Painter made about the coal. He never brought it in without complaining and he was always asking for a rise.’
    ‘I suppose he thought she was rolling in money?’
    ‘Of course, he couldn’t have known what she’d got in the bank or in shares or whatever it was. On the other hand it was an open secret she kept money in the house.’
    ‘In a safe, d’you mean?’
    ‘Not on your life. You know these old girls. Some of it was in drawers stuffed into paper bags, some of it in old handbags.’
    With a feat of memory Burden said suddenly, ‘And one of those handbags contained the two hundred pounds?’
    ‘It did,’ Wexford said grimly. ‘Whatever she might have been able to afford, Mrs Primero refused to raise Painter’s wages. If he didn’t like the set-up he could go, but that would mean giving up the flat.
    ‘Being a very old woman, Mrs Primero felt the cold and she liked to start fires in September. Painter thought this unnecessary and he made the usual fuss about it …’
    He stopped as the telephone rang and he took the receiver himself. Burden had no idea from Wexford’s reiterated, ‘Yes, yes … all right,’ who it could be. He finished his coffee with some distaste. The rim of the wax cup had become soggy. Wexford dropped the phone.
    ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Am I dead? Have I forgotten I’ve got a home of my own? She’s run out of housekeeping and she can’t find the cheque book.’ He chuckled, felt in his pocket and produced it. ‘No wonder. I’ll have to nip back.’ He added with sudden kindness, ‘Go home and have a bit of shuteye, why don’t you?’
    ‘I don’t like being left in the air,’ Burden grumbled. ‘Now I know how my kids feel when