Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods Read Online Free PDF Page B

still far from naturally. ‘Her father. Her mother’s dead and he’s married again. She got up, moving like a woman recovering from a long and serious illness. She opened a drawer in a desk designed to look as if made for a contemporary of Shakespeare, lifted out a thick leather-bound album and extracted from one of its grey, gilt-ornamented pages a photograph of a young woman. Still slow and somnambulant, she handed it to Wexford. ‘Her father lives at 28 Forest Road, if you know where that is.’
       The last street in the district to bear the postal address Kingsmarkham. It turned directly off the Pomfret road and the houses in it would very likely have a pleasant view of Cheriton Forest. Katrina Dade was sitting down again but on a buttoned and swagged sofa, beside her husband, who was making an exasperated face. Wexford concentrated on the picture of Joanna Troy. The first thing that struck him was her youth. He had assumed she would be the same sort of age as Katrina but this woman looked years younger, a girl still.
       ‘When was this taken?’
       ‘Last year.’
       Well. Of course it was true that many people had friends a lot older or a lot younger than themselves. He wondered how these women had met. Joanna Troy looked confident and in control rather than handsome. Her short straight hair was fair, her eyes perhaps grey, it was hard to tell. Her skin was the fresh pink and white that used to be called a ‘real English complexion’. Somehow he could tell she would never be very clothes-conscious, but rather a jeans and sweater woman when she could get away with it, though the photograph showed nothing of her below the shoulders. He was asking himself if there were any more questions he need put to the Dades at this stage when a shattering scream brought him to his feet. Vine also leapt up. Katrina Dade, her head back and her neck stretched, her fists pumping the air, was shrieking and yelling at the top of her lungs.
       Dade tried to put his arms round her. She fought him off and continued to make some of the loudest screams Wexford had ever heard, as loud as children in supermarket aisles, as loud as his granddaughter Amulet at her most wilful. Seldom at a loss as to what to do, he was almost flummoxed. Perhaps the woman’s face should be slapped - that used to be the sovereign remedy - but if so, if that wasn’t about as politically incorrect as could be, he wasn’t going to be the one to do it. He beckoned to Vine and they moved as far from the screaming Katrina and her ineffectual husband as they could get, standing by a pair of french windows that gave on to a terraced garden and then to the floods below.
       Katrina having subsided into sobs, Dade said, ‘Would you get me a glass of water, please?’
       Vine shrugged but went to fetch it. He watched Katrina choke over the water, dodged out of the way before she hurled the remaining contents in his direction. This action seemed to relieve her feelings and she laid her head back against a cushion. Wexford took advantage of the silence to tell Dade they would like to have a look at the children’s rooms.
       ‘I can’t leave her, can I? You’ll have to find them your selves. Look, as soon as she shuts up I have to get off to work. All right with you, is it? I have your permission?’
       ‘Rude bugger, isn’t he?’ Vine said when they were on the stairs.
       ‘He’s got a lot to put up with.’ Wexford grinned. ‘You have to make allowances. I can’t really believe any thing much has happened to these kids. Maybe I should, maybe it’s their mother’s behaviour making me think none of this is quite real. I could be entirely wrong and we have to act as if I am.’
       ‘Isn’t it because there are three of them, sir? It’s harder to believe in three people disappearing. Unless they’re hostages, of course.’ Vine was remembering that Wexford’s wife had been one of the hostages in the Kingsmarkham bypass