The musky scent of lilies was overpowering. If there were one flower that Stafford disliked it was the lily. Death, that’s what they always reminded him of. The sweet smell of death and loss. Every funeral he’d ever been to as far back as he could remember he’d seen lilies. There was something about their bloated flower heads he found quietly disturbing. They were in abundance here, along with more condolence cards than they had on the racks at Clinton’s. Wood must have been a popular man in life, Stafford thought. It caused him to ponder on how many cards and lilies he’d receive after he’d died. As many as this? More? Fewer? Did it really matter?
That it mattered to Mrs Wood was plain to see; the flowers and cards were given prominence and one tiny area near the TV in the corner of the room, on which stood a photograph of the late Mr Wood, had become something of a shrine. She was running out of room to put them all.
She was a small woman, very quiet, everything about her being round; round eyes, round face, round body like a ball dressed in tweed. She was putting on one of those forced welcoming smiles, behind which he could tell there was a frenzy of dark, conflicting emotions. She offered Styles and him a cup of tea, and appeared glad of the task which helped occupy another few seconds of her mind’s time. Styles never drank tea; he was a strong black coffee man, but he made appreciative noises when she brought in a tray bearing china cups and saucers that must have been in their possession since they got married, brought out, he imagined, only for special occasions. Everything in the house pointed to a life made for two suddenly halved.
Mrs Wood sat down, hands clasped in her lap, scrutinising the arranged crockery to satisfy herself that everything was as it should be. Only everything wasn’t as it should be. It was an acted-out normality, Stafford thought. He glanced at Styles, whom he thought looked faintly uneasy in the face of the woman’s automaton intensity. Or maybe he was transplanting his own mood there. Stafford pictured his own wife sat in Mrs Wood’s place. Would she behave the same way if he had died?
‘You were there when he passed away,’ she said to the two officers.
‘We arrived afterwards,’ Stafford explained. ‘There was nothing we could do, I’m afraid,’ he added.
‘There was nothing anyone could do,’ she said. ‘I never expected a heart attack. He was such a healthy man, for his age, or so we thought. You know, golf at the weekends, liked to walk the dog every day. But Carl was getting on,’ she noted with wooden forbearance. ‘One must be grateful for what one’s had, I suppose.’
She didn’t look in the least grateful, Stafford thought. She didn’t look like anything. He marvelled at how a face can be bleached entirely of emotional colour. ‘Did you husband, especially of late, say that he was troubled in any way? Did he show any signs that something gave him cause for concern?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said without hesitation. ‘He was not an easy man to live with. He fretted over most things, like work, or paying the bills, or leaves on the lawn. His teacup always had a storm in it. I did say that he’d worry himself into an early grave.’ She lifted the cup of tea to her lips, her eyes unblinking.
‘Was he worrying about anything out of the ordinary, aside from the leaves and the bills?’ asked Styles.
She fixed him with an unexpectedly stern stare from over the delicate rim of her china cup. ‘Leaves and bills were very real to him,’ she said crisply, then remembered herself. ‘They might seem silly little things to others.’ She glanced upwards to a spot on the ceiling. ‘The death of his one-time friend and colleague troubled him greatly,’ she said. ‘He passed away only three weeks ago and Carl took the news terribly. Well you would, wouldn’t you? A friend passing away like that.’
‘What was the friend’s name?’ asked Stafford.
‘Howard Baxter,’ she said. ‘He was an archivist, I believe. They went back a long time, to when they were just starting out in the 1970s but they’d not seen each other in a long while. It’s still upsetting, though, when a friend dies, even a friendship that has lapsed. It sets you to thinking — about life, getting on, the impermanence of things. Drives you into melancholy if you let it. That was the effect on Carl at any rate. What made it worse was the fact Howard had taken his own life. Hung himself, I think. Carl didn’t want to talk about it. Even refused to go to his funeral, which was out of character. It was a shame, too, by the sounds of it; Howard was about to publish something quite extraordinary by all accounts, and in truth the man was in desperate need of the income as it transpired he was a bit of a gambling man with huge debts. It’s strange, don’t you think, how a person like Howard, who’d always held down good jobs, can end up still being in so much debt. He even worked for Lambert-Something or other as an archivist — you know, the pharmaceutical firm.’
‘Lambert-Chide?’ said Styles.
‘That’s the one. Surely such jobs must have been pretty lucrative, and he’s always had them. Well, that hardly matters to him now, does it? Debt or riches we are all equal bedfellows in the grave, are we not? It sounds as if his debts drove him to his final decision. Very sad.’ She nodded. ‘Is the tea to your satisfaction, Inspector?’ she asked of Styles.
‘Perfectly fine,’ he replied, taking a sip to prove it. He noticed the woman’s hand trembled, like a leaf shivered by a breeze.
She let her cup rest in the saucer, the two rattling tellingly together. She set them down on the coffee table in front of her. ‘A Return to Eden,’ she said absently.
‘Sorry, Mrs Wood?’ said Stafford.
‘That, I believe, was the title of Howard’s work. I haven’t the faintest idea what it was all about, but I did hear Carl talking about it over the phone to him — why, it must have only been a fortnight before Howard died, the last conversation they would ever have, as it happens. And, ironically, the first they’d had in over ten years. Carl wasn’t best pleased about it, whatever it was. I heard him telling Howard not to be so damned foolish, which was uncharacteristically harsh for Carl. I remember he came off the line looking rather worried. But as I say, being rather worried was not unusual for Carl, and it’s a fact that historians can be scathingly critical of each other’s works, you know. That’s what was at the heart of it, I shouldn’t wonder; professional ardour that was probably regretted afterwards.’
‘Did Mr Howard Baxter have a wife, children we might talk to about this Return to Eden?’ asked Stafford.
She shook her head. ‘He was…’ She hid her lips behind her cup. ‘…you know, batted for the other side, so to speak.’
‘Gay?’ said Stafford.
‘That, yes,’ she said. ‘No wife, no children. He had a partner, as they call them.’
‘Where can we find him, do you know?’
‘Really, Inspector Styles, I don’t pry into those kinds of things.’
‘No, course not, Mrs Wood.’
‘Did Carl have any enemies, Mrs Wood?’ asked Styles bluntly.
She looked surprised by the question. ‘Enemies? Carl? No, quite the opposite.’ She indicated with a blink the ranks of condolence cards. ‘Too many friends, in fact. Why do you ask?’ She glanced worriedly from one to the other. ‘Surely you don’t suspect anything underhand; he was a man well-loved and highly respected, held in high regard by his peers. And after all, it was a heart attack — that much is proven. The doctor’s report said so.’ She dipped down into melancholy. ‘He was too kind a man to have enemies. Jealous rivals, perhaps, but enemies is too strong a word. He was a nice man. I shall miss his kindness,’ she said. She looked about the room, as if kindness were a physical commodity she could lay her hands on; as if traces of it might be left behind.
‘Did he ever mention the name Doradus, even in passing?’
She thought about it, made as if to answer in the negative and then checked herself. ‘It’s something I heard him mention in connection with the Lunar Club…’
‘The Lunar Club, Mrs Wood? What’s that?’ asked Stafford.
‘Oh, a little something Carl was intermittently involved with. Just a group of three historians having an excuse to get together every now and again to discuss work — or so he told me. Both Carl and Howard belonged to it; they started it many years ago, before I first started to court Carl. It dropped off after a little while when they all grew up and went their separate ways.’
Style’s eyes were alight. He leant forward. ‘So who was the third member of this Lunar Club, Mrs Wood? The third man?’ he asked.
She said she could not easily recall but had the information in her husband’s address book. She returned minutes later, popping a pair of reading glasses onto her button nose and flicking through pages turned soft and yellow by age and continual use. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘The other member of their little gang was a man called Charles Rayne.’ She looked up. ‘He used to live in Derbyshire. He may be there still. Does that help you?’
Stafford and Styles exchanged a cursory glance. ‘That helps us a great deal, thank you, Mrs Wood,’ nodded Stafford. ‘May we have the book?’
She handed it over. ‘Please take it. It is of little use to Carl or me now.’