Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’d been called out to him and found him at death’s door? How would you have got in touch with his next of kin?’

    ‘He wasn’t at death’s door. People don’t have deathbeds like that any more, Reg. They get ill, they linger, they go into hospital. The majority of people die in hospital these days. During the whole long painful process we’d have got her address.’

    ‘Well, you didn’t,’ Wexford snapped. ‘The hospital haven’t got it now. How about that? I have to have that address.’

    ‘It’ll be at old Comfrey’s place,’ said Crocker easily.

    ‘I just hope so. I’m going over there now to find it if it’s findable.’

    The doctor jumped down from his perch on the edge of the desk. With one of those flashbacks to his youth, to his schooldays, he said on an eager note, ‘Can I come too?’

    ‘I suppose so. But I don’t want you cavorting about and getting in everyone’s way.’

    ‘Thanks very much,’ said Crocker in mock dudgeon. ‘Who do you think the popularity polls show to be the most respected members of the community? General practitioners.’

    ‘I knew it wasn’t cops,’ said Wexford.

Chapter 4

    The house smelt as he had thought it would, of the old person’s animal-vegetable-mineral smell, sweat, cabbage and camphor.
    ‘What did moths live on before man wore woollen clothes?’

    ‘Sheep, I suppose,’ said the doctor.

    ‘But do sheep have moths?’

    ‘God knows. This place is a real tip, isn’t it?’

    They were turning out drawers in the two downstairs rooms. Broken pens and pencils, dried-out ink bottles, sticking plaster, little glass jars full of pins, dead matches, nails, nuts and bolts, screws of thread; an assortment of keys, a pair of dirty socks full of holes, pennies and threepenny bits from the old currency, pieces of string, a broken watch, some marbles and some dried peas; a five-amp electric plug, milk bottle tops, the lid of a paint tin encrusted with blue from the front door, cigarette cards, picture hangers and an ancient shaving brush.

    ‘Nice little breeding ground for anthrax,’ said Crocker, and he pocketed a dozen or so boxes and bottles of pills that were ranged on top of the chest. I may as well dispose of this lot while I’m here. They won’t chuck them out, no matter how often you tell them. Though why they should be so saving when they get them for free in the first place, I never will know.’

    The footfalls of Burden, Loring and Gates could be heard overhead. Wexford knelt down, opened the bottom drawer. Underneath a lot of scattered mothballs, more socks redolent of cheesy mustiness, and a half-empty packet of birdseed, he found an oval picture frame lying face-downwards. He turned it over and looked at a photograph of a young woman with short dark hair, strong jaw, long upper lip, biggish nose.

    ‘I suppose that’s her,’ he said to the doctor.

    ‘Wouldn’t know. I never saw her till she was dead and she didn’t look much like that then. It’s the spitting image of the old man, though, isn’t it? It’s her all right.’

    Wexford said thoughtfully and a little sadly, remembering the over-made-up, raddled face, ‘It does look like her. It’s just that it was taken a long time ago.’ And yet she hadn’t looked sad. The dead face, if it were possible to say such a thing, had looked almost pleased with itself. ‘We’ll try upstairs,’ he said.

    There was no bathroom in the house, and the only lavatory was outside in the garden. The stairs were not carpeted but covered with linoleum. Burden came out of the front bedroom which was James Comfrey’s.

    ‘Proper old glory hole in there. D’you know, there’s not a book in the house, and not a letter or a postcard either.’

    ‘The spare room,’ said Crocker.

    It was a bleak little place, the walls papered in a print of faded pink and mauve sweet pea, the bare floorboards stained dark brown, the thin curtains whitish now but showing faintly the remains of