Free Kissing the Gunner's Daughter by Ruth Rendell

of lane running between high banks plunged into the start of the by-road where a sign said: tancred
    HOUSE ONLY. TWO MILES. NO THROUGH-ROAD.
    Wexford said, "When we think it's only one mile I'm going to get out and walk the rest of the way."
    "Right. They'd have had to know the place if
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    they came this way, sir."
    "They knew it. Or one of them did."
    He left the car at an auspicious moment, when he saw the sun come out. The woods would not begin to grow green for another month. There was not even a green haze to mist the trees which flanked this sandy path. All was bright brown, a sparkling vigorous colour that gilded the branches and turned the leaf buds to a glowing shade of copper. It was cold and dry. Late on the previous night, when the sky had cleared, a frost had come. The frost was gone now, not a silver streak of it remaining, but a chill hung in the clear still air. Above the dense or feathery treetops, through spaces in the groves, the sky was a light delicate blue, so pale as to be almost white.
    The Win Carver interview told him about these woods, when they had been planted, which parts dated from the thirties and which were older but augmented with planting from that time. Ancient oaks, and here and there a horse chestnut with looped boughs and glutinous leaf buds, towered above ranks of smaller neater trees, vase-shaped as if by a natural process of topiary. Wexford thought they might be hornbeams. Then he noticed a metal label secured to the trunk of one of them. Yes, common hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. The taller graceful specimens a little way along the path were the mountain ash, he read, Sorbus aucuparia. Identifying trees when bare of leaves must be a test for the expert.
    The groves gave place to a plantation of
    KGD6
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    Norway maples (Acer platanoides} with trunks like crocodile skin. No conifers were here, not a single pine or fir to provide a dark green shape among the shining leafless branches. This was the finest part of the deciduous woodland, manmade but a copy of nature, pristinely ordered but with nature's own neatness. Fallen logs had been left when they fell and were overgrown with bright fungus, frills and ruffs and knobbed stalks in yellow or bronze. Dead trees still stood, their rotting trunks weathered to silver, a habitation for owls or a feeding ground for woodpeckers.
    Wexford walked on, expecting each twist in the narrow road to bring him out to face the east wing of the house. But every new curve only afforded another vista of standing trees and fallen trees, saplings and underbrush. A squirrel, blue and silvery brown, snaked up the trunk of an oak, sprang from twig to twig, took a flying leap to the branch of a nearby beech. The road made a final ellipse, broadened and cleared and there was the house before him, dream-like in the veils of mist.
    The east wing rose majestically. From here the terrace could be seen and the gardens at the rear. Instead of the daffodils, which filled the public gardens in Kingsmarkham and the council flowerbeds, tiny scillas sparkling like blue jewels clustered under the trees. But the gardens of Tancred House had not yet wakened from their winter sleep. Herbaceous borders, rosebeds, paths, hedges, pleached walks, lawns, all still had the look of having been trimmed and manicured, coiffed and in some cases packaged, and put
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    away for hibernation. High hedges of yew and cypress made walls to conceal all outbuildings from sight of the house, dark screens cunningly planted for a privileged privacy.
    He stood looking for a moment or two, then made his way to where he could see the parked police vehicles. The incident room had been set up in what was apparently a stable block, though a stables that no horse had lived in for half a century. It was too smart for that and there were blinds at the windows. A blue-faced gilt-handed clock under a central pediment told him the time was twenty to eleven.
    His car was parked on the flagstones, so were