Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods Read Online Free Page A

one of those faces on which years of stress and yielding to that stress show in its lines and tensions. As she led them into a living room a man came out. He was very tall, a couple of inches taller than Wexford, which would make him six feet five, his head too small for his body.
       ‘Roger Dade,’ he said brusquely and in a public school accent which sounded as if he purposely exaggerated it. ‘My wife.’
       Wexford introduced himself and Vine. The Tudor style was sustained inside the house where there was a great deal of carved woodwork, gargoyles on the stone fireplace (containing a modern, unlit gas fire), paisley pattern wallpaper and lamps of wrought iron and parchment painted with indecipherable ancient glyphs.
       The top of the coffee table round which they sat held, under glass, a map of the world as it was known in, say, fifteen fifty with dragons and tossing galleons. Its choppy seas reminded Wexford of his back garden. He asked the Dades to tell him about the weekend and to begin at the beginning.
       The children’s mother began, making much use of her hands. ‘We hadn’t been away on our own, my husband and I, since our honeymoon. Can you believe that? We were desperate just to get away without the children. When I think of that now, I feel just so guilty I can’t tell you. A hundred times since then I’ve bitterly regretted even thinking like that.’
       Her husband, looking as if going away with her was the last thing he had been desperate to do, sighed and cast up his eyes.’ ‘You’ve nothing to be guilty about, Katrina. Give it a rest, for God’s sake.’
       At this the tears had come into her eyes and she made no effort to restrain them. Like the water outside, they welled and burst their banks, trickling down her cheeks as she gulped and swallowed. As if it were a gesture which he was more than accustomed to perform, as automatic as turning off a tap or closing a door, Roger Dade pulled a handful of tissues from a box on the table and passed them to her. The box was contained in another of polished wood with brass fittings, evidently as essential a part of the furnishings as a magazine or CD rack might be in another household. Katrina Dade wore a blue crossover garment. A skimpy dressing gown or something a fashionable woman would wear in the daytime? To his amusement, he could see Vine doing his best to avert his eyes from the bare expanse of thigh she showed when the front of the blue thing parted.
       ‘But what’s the use?’ The tears roughened her voice and half choked it. ‘We can’t put the clock back, can we? What time did we leave on Friday, Roger? You know how hopeless I am about things like that.’
       Roger Dade indeed looked as if, with varying degrees of impatience and exasperation, he had borne years of unpunctuality; forgetfulness and a sublime indifference to time. ‘About half past two,’ he said. ‘Our flight was four thirty from Gatwick.’
       ‘You went by car?’ Vine asked.
       ‘Oh, yes, I drove.’
       ‘Where were the children at this time?’ Wexford had directed his eyes on to Dade and hoped he would answer but he was to be disappointed.
       ‘At school, of course. Where else? They’re quite used to letting themselves into the house. They wouldn’t have to be on their own for long. Joanna was coming over at five.’
       ‘Yes. Joanna. Who exactly is she?’
       ‘My absolutely dearest closest friend. That’s what makes all this so awful, that she’s missing too. And I don’t even know if she can swim. I’ve never had any reason to know. Perhaps she never learned. Suppose she couldn’t and she fell into the water, and Giles and Sophie plunged into the water to save her and they all...’
       ‘Don’t get in a state,’ said Dade as the tears bubbled up afresh. ‘You’re not, helping with all this blubbing.’ Wexford had never actually heard the word used before, only seen it in print years before in