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

an answer. ‘Ninety-two,’ she said, ‘and I still do the veg and make my own bed and do my room. And I looked after Brian and Nicky when Stell was in the hospital having Katrina. I was only eighty-nine then, though. Eleven children I’ve had and reared them all. Six of them gone now.’ She levelled at him a girl’s blue eyes in nests of wrinkles. ‘It’s not good to see your children go before you, young man.’ Her face was white bone in a sheath of crumpled parchment. ‘Brian’s dad was my youngest, and he’s been gone two years come November. Only fifty, he was. Still, Brian and Stell have been wonderful to me. They’re a wonder, they are, the pair of them.’ Her mind, drifting through the past, the ramifications of her family, returned to him, this stranger who must have come for something. ‘What were you wanting? Police, Stell said.’ She sat back, put the colander on the floor, and folded her hands. ‘Rhoda Comfrey, is it?’

    ‘Your grandson told you?’

    'Course he did. Before he ever told you.’ She was proud that she enjoyed the confidence of the young, and she smiled. But the smile was brief. Archaically, she said, ‘She was wickedly murdered.’

    ‘Yes, Mrs Parker. I believe you knew her well?’

    ‘As well as my own children. She used to come and see me every time she come down here. Rather see me than her dad, she would.’

    At last, he thought. ‘Then you’ll be able to tell me her address?’

    ‘Speak up, will you?’

    ‘Her address in London?’

    ‘Don’t know it. What’d I want to know that for? I’ve not written a letter in ten years and I’ve only been to London twice in my life.'

    He had wasted his time coming here, and he couldn’t afford to waste time.

    ‘I can tell you all about her, though,’ said Mrs Parker. ‘Everything you’ll want to know. And about the family. Nobody can tell you like I can. You’ve come to the right place for that.’

    ‘Mrs Parker, I don’t think . . .’ That I care? That it matters? What he wanted at this stage was an address, not a biography, especially not one told with meanderings and digressions. But how to cut short without offence a woman of ninety-two whose deafness made interruption virtually impossible? He would have to listen and hope it wouldn’t go on too long. Besides, she had already begun . . .

    ‘They come here when Rhoda was a little mite. An only child she was, and used to play with my two youngest. A poor feeble thing was Agnes Comfrey, didn’t know how to stand up for herself, and Mr Comfrey was a real terror. I don’t say he hit her or Rhoda, but he ruled them with a rod of iron just the same.’ She rapped out sharply. ‘You come across that Mrs Crown yet?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Wexford, ‘But . . .’ Oh, not the aunt, he thought, not the by-path. She hadn’t heard him.

    ‘You will. A crying scandal to the whole neighbourhood, she is. Used to come here visiting her sister when her first husband was alive. Before the war, that was, and she was a real fly-by-night even then, though she never took to drink till he was killed at Dunkirk. She had this baby about three months after - I daresay it was his all right, give her the benefit of the doubt - but it was one of them mongols, poor little love. John, they called him. Her and him come to live here with the Comfreys. Aggie used to come over to me in a terrible state of worry about what Lilian got up to and tried to keep dark, and Jim Comfrey threatening to throw her out.'

    ‘Well, the upshot of it was she met this Crown in the nick of time and they took the house next door when they was married on account of it had been empty all through the war. And d’you know what she done then?’ Wexford shook his head and stared at the pyramid of peas which were having a mesmeric effect on him.

    ‘I’ll tell you. She had little John put in a home. Have you ever heard the like, for a mother to do such a thing like that? Sweet affectionate