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a ball under a hedge two fields away from the bus stop.’
    ‘The raincoat plus pullover,’ Wexford retorted, ‘and a pair of rubber gloves. The lot was sodden with blood.’
    ‘But anyone could have worn the raincoat and you couldn’t identify the pullover.’
    ‘Alice Flower went so far as to say it looked like one Painter sometimes wore.’
    Archery gave a deep sigh. For a time he had been firing questions and statements briskly at Wexford, but suddenly he had fallen silent. Little more than indecision showed on his face. Wexford waited. At last, he thought, Archery had reached a point where it was going to become necessary to reveal those ‘personal reasons’. A struggle was going on within him and he said in an artificial tone:
    ‘What about Painter’s wife?’
    ‘A wife cannot be compelled to give evidence against her husband. As you know, she didn’t appear at the trial. She and the child went off somewhere and a couple of years later I heard she’d married again.’
    He stared at Archery, raising his eyebrows. Something he had said had made the clergyman’s mind up for him. A slight flush coloured Archery’s even tan. The brown eyes were very bright as he leaned forward, tense again.
    ‘That child …’
    ‘What of her? She was asleep in her cot when we searched Painter’s bedroom and that’s the only time I saw her. She was four or five.’
    Archery said jerkily. ‘She’s twenty-one now and she’s a very beautiful young woman.’
    ‘I’m not surprised. Painter was a nice enough looking fellow if you like the type, and Mrs Painter was pretty.’ Wexford stopped. Archery was a clergyman. Had Painter’s daughter taken after her father and somehow come into his care as a result of her transgressions? Archery could be a prison visitor. It was right up his street, Wexford thought nastily. Anger rose in his throat as he wondered if all this sparring discussion had been engineered merely because Archery wanted his help in getting the right psychological approach to a convicted thief or confidence woman. ‘What about her?’ he snapped. Griswold could go to hell! ‘Now come on, sir, you’d better tell me and have done.’
    ‘I have a son, Chief Inspector, an only child. He also is twenty-one …’
    ‘Well?’
    Obviously the clergyman had difficulty in framing the words. He hesitated and pressed his long hands together. At last he said diffidently and in a low voice, ‘He wishes to marry Miss Painter.’ When Wexford started and stared at him, he added, ‘or Miss Kershaw, as her legal name now is.’
    Wexford was all at sea. He was astonished, a rare thing for him, and he felt a sharp-edged excitement. But he had shown all the surprise he thought consistent with policy and now he spoke soberly.
    ‘You must excuse me, Mr Archery, but I can’t see how your son, the son of an Anglican clergyman, came to meet a girl in Miss Painter’s – er, Miss Kershaw’s – position.’
    ‘They met at Oxford,’ Archery said easily.
    ‘At the
university
?’
    ‘That is so. Miss Kershaw is quite an intelligent young woman.’ Archery gave a slight smile. ‘She’s reading Modern Greats. Tipped for a First, I’m told.’

4
    If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.
    The Banns of Marriage
    IF HE HAD been asked to predict the future of such a one as Theresa Painter, what would he have foreseen for her? Children like her, Wexford reflected as he recovered from his second shock, children like Painter’s little girl started life with a liability and a stain. The surviving parent, well-meaning relatives and cruel schoolfellows often made matters worse. He had hardly thought about the fate of the child until today. Now, thinking quickly, he supposed he would have counted her lucky to have become an anonymous manual worker with perhaps already a couple of petty convictions.
    Instead to Theresa Painter had apparently