[Wexford 01] From Doon & Death Read Free Page B

and Wexford looked at it
    Tell me about yesterday morning, Mr Parsons,' he said. 'How did your wife seem? Excited? Worried?'
    Parsons slapped his hands down on to his spread knees. It was a gesture of despair; despair and exasperation.
    'She was the same as usual,' he said. 'I didn't notice anything. You see, she wasn't an emotional woman.' He looked down at his shoes and said again, 'She was the same as usual.'
    'What did you talk about?'
    ‘I don't know. The weather. We didn't talk much. I have to get off to work at half past eight - ’I work for the Southern Water Board at Stowerton. I said it was a nice day and she said yes, but it was too bright. It was bound to rain, too good to last. And she was right. It did rain, poured down all the morning ’
    'And you went to work. How? Bus, train, car?'
    'I don't have a car ...'
    He looked as if he was about to enumerate all the other things he didn't have, so Wexford said quickly: 'Bus then?'
    ‘I always catch the eigh t-thirty-seven from the market place. I said good-bye to her. She d idn't come to the door. But that’ s nothing. She never did. She was washing up ’
    Did she say what she was going to do with herself during the day?'
    The usual things, I suppose, shopping and the house. You know the sort of things women do.' He paused, then said suddenly: Took, she wouldn't kill herself. Don't get any ideas like that Margaret wouldn't kill herself. She's a religious woman.'
    'All right, Mr Parsons. Try to keep cal m and don't worry. We'll do ever ything we can to find her ’
    Wexford considered, dissatisfaction in the lines of his face, and Parsons seemed to interpret this characteristically. He sprang to his feet, quivering.
    ‘I know what you're thinking,' he shouted. ‘Y ou think I've done away with her. I know how your minds work. I've read it all up.'
    Burden said quickly, trying to smooth things down. 'Mr Parsons is by way of being a student of crime, sir.'
    'Crime?' Wexford raised his eyebrows. 'What crime?'
    'Well have a car to take you home,' Burden said. ‘I should take the day off. Get your doctor to give you something so that you can sleep.'
    Parsons went out jerkily, walking like a paraplegic. and from the window Burden watched him get into the car beside Gates. The shops were opening now and the fruiterer on the opposite side of the street was putting up his sunblind in anticipation of a fine day. If this had been an ordinary Wednesday, a normal weekday. Burden thought, Margaret Parsons might now have been kneeling in the sun, polishing that gleaming step, or opening the windows and letting some air into those musty rooms. Where was she, waking in the arms of her lover or lying in some more final resting place?
    'She's bolted, Mike,' Wexford said. 'That's what my old father used to call a woman who eloped. A bolter. Still, better do the usual check-up. You can do it yourself since you knew her by sight'
    Burden picked up the photograph and put it in his pocket. He went first to the station but the ticket-collector and the booking clerks were sure Mrs Parsons hadn't been through.
    But the woman serving at the bookstall recognized her at once from the picture.
    That’ s funny,' she said. 'Mrs Parsons always comes in to pay for her papers on Tuesdays. Yesterday was Tuesday but I'm sure I never saw her. Wait a minute, my husband was on in the afternoon.' She called, 'George, here a sec.!'
    The bookstall proprietor came round from the part of the shop that fronted on to the street He opened his order book and ran a finger down the edge of one of the pages.
    ‘N o ’ he said. 'She never came. There's two-and-two outstanding.' He looked curiously at Bu rden, greedy for explanations. ‘P eculiar, that,' he said. 'She always pays up, regular as clockwork'
    Burden went back to the High Street to begin on the shops. He marched into the big supermarket and up to the check-out counter. The woman by the till was standing idly, lulled by background music. When Burden