by Ruth Rendell
‘Reg, we shall have you fluent in Serbo-Croat yet.’
‘Alas, no. I must be back in London again tomorrow night.’
They were in Racic’s garden, halfway up the terraced hill behind Mirna, sitting in wicker chairs under his vine and his fig tree. Pink and white and red oleanders shimmered in the dusk, and above their heads bunches of small green grapes hung between the slats of a canopy. On the table was a bottle of Posip and the remains of a dinner of king prawns and Dalmatian buttered potatoes, salad and bread and big ripe peaches.
‘And now we have eaten,’ said Racic, ‘you will please tell me the tale of the important business that brought you back to Mirna so pleasantly soon. It concerns Mr and Mrs Nyman?’
‘Ivo, we shall have you a policeman yet.’
Racic laughed and re-filled Wexford’s glass. Then he looked serious. ‘Not a laughing matter, I think, not pleasant.’
‘Far from it. Iris Nyman is dead, murdered, unless I am much mistaken. This afternoon I accompanied the Dubrovnik police out into the bay and we took her body out of the cave on Vrapci.’
‘Zaboga! You cannot mean it! That girl who was at the Bosnia and who came out with her husband in my boat?’
‘Well, no, not that one. She’s alive and in Athens from where, I imagine, she’ll be extradited.’
‘I don’t understand. Tell me the tale from the beginning.’
Wexford leaned back in his chair and looked up through the vines at the violet sky where the first stars had begun to show. ‘I’ll have to start with the background,’ he said, and after a pause, ‘Iris Nyman was the daughter and only child of James Woodhouse, the chairman of a company called Sunsports Ltd which makes sports and beachwear and has a large export trade. She married when she was very young, less than twenty, a junior salesman in her father’s firm. After the marriage Woodhouse made a director of her, settled a lot of money on her, bought her a house and gave her a company car. To justify her company fees and expenses, she was in the habit of annually making a trip to holiday resorts in Europe with her husband, ostensibly to wear Sunsports clothes and note who else was wearing them, and also to study the success of rival markets. Probably, she simply holidayed.
‘The marriage was not a happy one. At any rate, Philip Nyman wasn’t happy. Iris was a typically arrogant rich girl who expected always to have her own way. Besides, the money and the house and the car were all hers. He remained a salesman. Then, a year or so ago, he fell in love with a cousin of Iris, a girl called Anna Ashby. Apparently, Iris knew nothing about this, and her father certainly didn’t.’
‘Then how can you . . . ?’ Racic interrupted.
‘These affairs are always known to someone, Ivo. One of Anna’s friends has made a statement to Scotland Yard,’ Wexford paused and drank some of his wine. ‘That’s the background,’ he said. ‘Now for what happened a month or so ago.
‘The Nymans had arranged to motor down as usual to the south of France, but this time to cross northern Italy and spend a week or ten days here on the Dalmatian coast. Anna Ashby had planned to spend part of the summer with friends in Greece so, at Iris’s invitation, she was to accompany the Nymans as far as Dubrovnik where she would stay a few days with them, then go on by air to Athens.
‘In Dubrovnik, after the three of them had been there a few days, Iris got hold of the idea of bathing off Vrapci. Perhaps she wanted to bathe in the nude, perhaps she had already been on the “topless” beach at St Tropez. I don’t know. Philip Nyman has admitted nothing of this. Up until the time I left, he was still insisting that his wife had returned to England with him.’
‘It was your idea, then,’ put in Racic, ‘that this poor woman’s body was concealed on the isle of sparrows?’
‘It was a guess,’ said Wexford. ‘I overheard some words, I was later told a lie. I’m a policeman. Whether they went to Vrapci on Saturday, June 18th, or Sunday, June 19th, I can’t tell you. Suffice that they did go – in that inflatable dinghy of theirs. The three of them went but only two came back, Nyman and Anna Ashby.’
‘They killed Mrs Nyman?’
Wexford looked thoughtful. ‘I think so, certainly. Of course there’s a possibility that she drowned, that it was an accident. But in that case wouldn’t any normal husband have immediately informed the proper authority? If he had recovered the body, wouldn’t he have brought it back with him? We’re awaiting the results of the post-mortem, but even if that shows no wounds or bruises on the body, even if the lungs are full of water, I should be very surprised to learn that Nyman and, or, Anna hadn’t hastened her death or watched her drown.’
Both were silent for a moment, Racic nodding slowly as he digested what Wexford had told him. Then he got up and fetched from the house a candelabrum, but thinking better of it, switched on an electric lamp attached to the wall.
‘Any light will attract the insects, but there at least they will not trouble us. So it was this Anna Ashby who came to Mirna, posing as Mrs Nyman?’
‘According to the manager of the hotel in Dubrovnik where the three of them had been staying, Nyman checked out and paid his bill early on the evening of the 19th. Neither of the women was with him. Iris was dead and Anna was at the hairdresser’s, having her hair cut and dyed to the same style and colour as her cousin’s. The police have already found the hairdresser who did the job.’
‘They came here next,’ said Racic. ‘Why didn’t they go straight back to England? And now I must ask, surely they did not intend to play this game in England? Even if the two women, as cousins, to a degree resembled each other, this Anna could not hope to deceive a father, close friends, Mrs Nyman’s neighbours.’
‘The answer to your first question is that to have returned to England a week earlier than expected would have looked odd. Why go back? The weather was perfect. Nyman wanted to give the impression they had both been well and happy during their holiday. No, his idea was to make sufficient people here in Yugoslavia believe that Iris was alive after June 19th. That’s why he latched on to us and got our name and home town out of us. He wanted to be sure of witnesses if need be. Anna was less bold, she was frightened to death. But Philip actually found himself two more English witnesses, though, thanks to your intervention, he never kept the appointment to dine with them.’
‘My intervention?’
‘Your excellent English. And now perhaps you’ll tell me what you overheard in the boat.’
Racic laughed. His strong white teeth gleamed in the lamplight. ‘I knew she was not Mrs Nyman, Reg, but that knowledge would not have helped you then, eh? You had seen the lady on the walls but not, I presume, her marriage document. I thought to myself, why should I tell this busybody of a policeman the secrets of my passengers? But now, to use an idiom, here goes. Reg, the lady said, “I feel so guilty, it is terrible what we have done,” and he replied, “Everyone here thinks you are my wife, and no one at home will suspect a thing. One day you will be and we shall forget all this.” Now, would you have supposed they were talking of murder or of illicit passion?’
Wexford smiled. ‘Nyman must have thought we’d confer, you and I, and jump to the former conclusion. Or else he’d forgotten what he’d said. He has rather a way of doing that.’
‘And after they left?’
‘Anna was to travel on Iris’s passport in the hope it would be stamped at at least one frontier. In fact, it was stamped at two, between Yugoslavia and Italy and again at Calais. At Dover Anna presumably left him and caught the first plane to Athens she could get. Nyman went home, reaching there in the night of the 28th, the precise date on which he and Iris had planned to return. On the following afternoon he told his father-in-law and the police that Iris was missing.’
‘He hoped the search for her or her body,’ said Racic, ‘would be confined to England because he had incontrovertible proof she had stayed with him in Mirna and had travelled back with him to England. No one would think of looking for her here, for it was known to many witnesses that she left here alive. Bu
t what did he hope to gain? Surely, if your laws are like ours, and I believe all laws are alike in this, without her body it would be years before he could inherit her money or marry again?’
‘You have to remember this wasn’t a premeditated murder. It must have happened on the spur of the moment. So conceal the body where it may never be found or not found until it’s beyond identification, announce that his wife has gone missing in England, and he gets the sympathy of his powerful father-in-law and certainly Iris’s house to live in and Iris’s car to drive. He keeps his job which he would have lost had he divorced Iris, and very likely gets all or some of her allowance transferred to him. Anna gets her hair back to its natural colour – brown, incidentally – lets it grow out, returns home and they resume their friendship. One day Iris will be presumed dead and they can marry.’
Racic cut himself a slice of bread and nibbled at an olive. ‘I see it all or nearly all. I see that, but for your presence here in Mirna, the conspiracy had every chance of success. What I don’t see is, if this woman made herself look so much like this woman you saw on the walls, if she had the same hair and clothes – but I am a fool! You saw her face.’
‘I didn’t see her face and I didn’t hear her voice. Dora and I saw her very briefly and then only from the back.’
‘It is beyond my comprehension.’
‘The legs,’ said Wexford. ‘The legs were different.’
‘But, my dear Reg, my dear policeman, surely the leg of one brown-skinned slender young woman is much like the leg of such another? Or was there a mole perhaps or a protruding vein?’
‘Not as far as I know. The only time I saw the true Iris Nyman she wore a skirt that covered her legs to mid-calf. In fact, I could see very little of her legs.’
‘Then I am flummoxed.’
‘Ankles,’ said Wexford. ‘There are two types of normal ankle in this world, and the difference between them can only be seen from the back. In one type the calf seems to join the heel with a narrowing but no distinct shaft. In the other, the type of beauty, the Achilles tendon makes a long slender shaft with deep indentations on either side of it beneath the ankle bones. I saw Iris Nyman’s legs only from behind and in her the Achilles tendon was not apparent. It was a flaw in her appearance. When I first noticed Anna Ashby’s legs from behind as she was getting off your boat, I observed the long shaft of the tendon leading up into the muscle of a shapely calf. She had no flaw in her legs, but you might call that perfection her Achilles Heel.’
‘Zaboga! Beauty, eh? Only two types in the world?’ Racic extended one foot and rolled up his trouser leg. Wexford’s was already rucked up. In the lamplight they peered down at each other’s calves from behind. ‘Yours are all right,’ said Racic. ‘In fact, they are fine. In the beauty class.’
‘So are yours, you old professor and boatman.’
Racic burst out laughing. ‘Tesko meni! Two elderly gentlemen who should know better, airing their limbs in an ankle competition! Whatever next?’
‘Well, I shouldn’t,’ said Wexford, ‘but next let’s finish up the Posip.’
When the Wedding Was Over
‘Matrimony,’ said Chief Inspector Wexford, ‘begins with dearly beloved and ends with amazement.’
His wife, sitting beside him on the bridegroom’s side of the church, whispered, ‘What did you say?’
He repeated it. She steadied the large floral hat which her husband had called becoming but not exactly conducive to sotto voce intimacies. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’
‘Thomas Hardy. He said it first. But look in your Prayer Book.’
The bridegroom waited, hang-dog, with his best man. Michael Burden was very much in love, was entering this second marriage with someone admirably suited to him, had agreed with his fiancée that nothing but a religious ceremony would do for them, yet at forty-four was a little superannuated for what Wexford called ‘all this white wedding gubbins’. There were two hundred people in the church. Burden, his best man and his ushers were in morning dress. Madonna lilies and stephanotis and syringa decorated the pews, the pulpit and the chancel steps. It was the kind of thing that is properly designed for someone twenty years younger. Burden had been through it before when he was twenty years younger. Wexford chuckled silently, looking at the anxious face above the high white collar. And then as Dora, leafing through the marriage service, said, ‘Oh, I see,’ the organist went from voluntaries into the opening bars of the Lohengrin march and Jenny Ireland appeared at the church door on her father’s arm.
A beautiful bride, of course. Seven years younger than Burden, blonde, gentle, low-voiced, and given to radiant smiles. Jenny’s father gave her hand into Burden’s and the Rector of St Peter’s began:
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together . . .’
While bride and groom were being informed that marriage was not for the satisfaction of their carnal lusts, and that they must bring up their children in a Christian manner, Wexford studied the congregation. In front of himself and Dora sat Burden’s sister-in-law, Grace, whom everyone had thought he would marry after the death of his first wife. But Burden had found consolation with a red-headed woman, wild and sweet and strange, gone now God knew where, and Grace had married someone else. Two little boys now sat between Grace and that someone else, giving their parents a full-time job keeping them quiet.
Burden’s mother and father were both dead. Wexford thought he recognized, from one meeting a dozen years before, an aged aunt. Beside her sat Dr Crocker and his wife, beyond them and behind were a crowd whose individual members he knew either only by sight or not at all. Sylvia, his elder daughter, was sitting on his other side, his grandsons between her and their father, and at the central aisle end of the pew, Sheila Wexford of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Wexford’s actress daughter, who on her entry had commanded nudges, whispers, every gaze, sat looking with unaccustomed wistfulness at Jenny Ireland in her clouds of white and wreath of pearls.
‘I, Michael George, take thee, Janina, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward . . .’
Janina. Janina? Wexford had supposed her name was Jennifer. What sort of parents called a daughter Janina? Turks? Fans of Dumas? He leaned forward to get a good look at these philonomatous progenitors. They looked ordinary enough, Mr Ireland apparently exhausted by the effort of giving the bride away, Jenny’s mother making use of the lace handkerchief provided for the specific purpose of crying into it those tears of joy and loss. What romantic streak had led them to dismiss Elizabeth and Susan and Anne in favour of – Janina?
‘Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put ansunder. Forasmuch as Michael George and Janina have consented together in holy wedlock . . .’
Had they been as adventurous in the naming of their son? All Wexford could see of him was a broad back, a bit of profile, and now a hand. The hand was passing a large white handkerchief to his mother. Wexford found himself being suddenly yanked to his feet to sing a hymn.
‘O, Perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne . . .’
These words had the effect of evoking from Mrs Ireland audible sobs. Her son – hadn’t Burden said he was in publishing? – looked embarrassed, turning his head. A young woman, strangely dressed in black with an orange hat, edged past the publisher to put a consoling arm round his mother.
‘O Lord, save Thy servant and Thy handmaid.’
‘Who put their trust in Thee,’ said Dora and most of the rest of the congregation.
‘O Lord, send them help from Thy holy place.’
Wexford, to show team spirit, said, ‘Amen,’ and when everyone else said, ‘And evermore defend them,’ decided to keep quiet in future.
Mrs Ireland had stopped crying. Wexford’s gaze drifted to his own daughters, Sheila singing lustily, Sylvia, the Women’s Liberationist, with less assurance as if she doubted the ethics of lending her support to so archaic and sexist a ceremony. His grandsons were b
eginning to fidget.
‘Almighty God, who at the beginning did create our first parents, Adam and Eve . . .’
Dear Mike, thought Wexford with a flash of sentimentality that came to him perhaps once every ten years, you’ll be OK now. No more carnal lusts conflicting with a puritan conscience, no more loneliness, no more worrying about those selfish kids of yours, no more temptation-of-St-Anthony stuff. For is it not ordained as a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency may marry and keep themselves undefiled?
‘For after this manner in the old time the holy women who trusted in God . . .’
He was quite surprised that they were using the ancient form. Still, the bride had promised to obey. He couldn’t resist glancing at Sylvia.
‘. . . being in subjection to their own husbands . . .’
Her face was a study in incredulous dismay as she mouthed at her sister ‘unbelievable’ and ‘antique’.
‘. . . Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.’
At the Olive and Dove hotel there was a reception line to greet guests, Mrs Ireland smiling, re-rouged and restored, Burden looking like someone who has had an operation and been told the prognosis is excellent, Jenny serene as a bride should be.
Dry sherry and white wine on trays. No champagne. Wexford remembered that there was a younger Ireland daughter, absent with her husband in some dreadful place – Botswana? Lesotho? No doubt all the champagne funds had been expended on her. It was a buffet lunch, but a good one. Smoked salmon and duck and strawberries. Nobody, he said to himself, has ever really thought of anything better to eat than smoked salmon and duck and strawberries unless it might be caviare and grouse and syllabub. He was weighing the two menus against one another, must without knowing it have been thinking aloud, for a voice said:
‘Asparagus, trout, apple pie.’
‘Well, maybe,’ said Wexford, ‘but I do like meat. Trout’s a bit insipid. You’re Jenny’s brother, I’m sorry I don’t remember your name. How d’you do?’