Put On By Cunning

by Ruth Rendell

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  'I guess that's her,' said Tom. 'It's kinda hard to say. She kinda wore her hair loose. She got this terrific tan and wore her hair loose. Right, Edie?'

  Edith Sessamy didn't seem too pleased by her husband's enthusiastic description of Natalie Arno. She said rather sharply, 'One man wasn't enough for her. She was two-timing that Ilbert the minute he was off to L.A. For instance, there used to be a young fella hung about here, kipped down on the beach, I reckon you'd have called him a beachcomber in olden times.'

  'Kinda hippie,' said Tom.

  'She carried on with him. I say he slept on the beach, that summer I reckoned he slept most nights in Natalie's chalet. Then there was an English chap, but it wasn't long before she left she met him, was it, Tom?'

  'Played the guitar at the Maison Suisse over to San Luis.'

  'Why did she leave?' Wexford asked.

  'Now that I can't tell you. We weren't here when she left. We were at home, we were in England.'

  'Visiting with her sister over to Harlow,' said Tom.

  'She was living here like she'd stay for the rest of her life when we left. That'd have been the end of July, I reckon. Tom's cousin from Ventura, she come up to run the place like she always does when we're off on our holidays. She

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  |in touch, I reckon we got a letter once a I remember her writing us about that who got drowned here, don't you, Tom? ie never mentioned that girl leaving. Why d she? There was guests coming and going

  time.'

  J0u weren't curious yourselves?' lith Sessamy heaved up her huge shoulders propped them again. 'So if we were? There i't much we could do about it, six thousand away. She wasn't going to tell Tom's why she upped and went, was she? When Mne back we heard that's what she'd done, jnlight flit like. Ilbert come up the next day ie bird was flown. She went off in her car, |?s cousin said, and she'd got a young chap 2her, and she left that poor mug Ilbert to Rhebill.'

  ford woke up very early the next morning, sun was perhaps the brightest and the 5st he had ever seen and the little town as if it had been washed clean in the Yet Edith Sessamy had told him that from a few showers the previous iber they had had no rain for a year. He and dressed and went out. Dora was still sleep. He walked down the narrow straight bordered with fan palms, feather dusters 191

  on long tapering handles, that led to Santa Xavierita state beach.

  The sky was an inverted pan of speckless blue enamel, the sea rippling blue silk. Along the silver sand a young man in yellow tee-shirt and red shorts was jogging. Another, in swimming trunks, was doing gymnastic exercises, sit-ups, press-ups, toe-touching. There was no one in the water. In the middle of the beach was a chair raised up high on stilts for the use of the lifeguard who would sit on it and halloo through his trumpet at over-venturesome swimmers.

  Wexford's thoughts reverted to the night before. There was a question he ought to have asked, that he had simply overlooked at the time, because of the crushing disappointment he had felt at the paucity of Edith Sessamy's information. Disappointment had made him fail to select from that mass of useless matter the one significant sentence. He recalled it now, picking it out as the expert might pick out the uncut diamond from a handful of gravel.

  Two hours later, as early as he decently could, he was waiting in the motel's reception area by the counter. Ringing the bell summoned Tom Sessamy in shortie dressing gown which left exposed hairless white legs and long white feet in sandals of plaited straw.

  'Hi, Reg, you wanna check out?'

  'I wanted to ask you and your wife a few more questions first if you'll bear with me.'

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  lEdie, are ya decent? Reg's here ta pick your is.'

  s Sessamy was rather more decent than her iband in an all-enveloping pink kimono ted with birds of paradise. She sat on the ite sofa drinking more strong black tea, and her lap on a tray were fried eggs and fried (eon and ha^h browns and English muffins " grape jelly, fit's been such a pleasure meeting you and , I can't tell you.' She had told him at least times already, but the repetition was ichow warming and pleasant to hear, xford returned the compliment with a few irds about how much they had enjoyed

  selves.

  You wanna cup of Edie's tea?' said Tom. P^exford accepted. 'You said last night a an was drowned here. While you were fay. D'you know any more than that? Who

  was? How it happened?' fNot a thing. Only what I said, a woman was

  �wned. Well, it was a young woman, a girl y, I do know that, and I reckon I heard she on holiday here from the East somewhere.'

  -You hafta talk to the cops over to San Luis,'

  Tom.

  Wait a minute, though�George Jan veer was ard here then, wasn't he, Tom? I reckon could talk to George.' S^hy don't I call George right now?' said

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  Tom.

  He was dissuaded from this by his wife since it was only just after eight. They would phone George at nine. Wexford wasn't pressed for time, was he? No, he wasn't, not really, he had all day. He had a 200 mile drive ahead of him, of course, but that was nothing here. Edith Sessamy said she knew what he meant, it was nothing here.

  He walked slowly back. At last a clear pattern was emerging from the confusion. The pieces fluttered and dropped into a design as the coloured fragments do when you shake a kaleidoscope. Camargue too had been drowned, bethought.

  Just after nine he went back and paid his bill. Tom said apologetically that he had phoned George Janveer's home and talked to Mrs Janveer who said George had gone to Grover City but she expected him back by eleven.

  'Oughta've called him at eight like I said,' said Tom.

  Wexford and Dora put the cases in the car and went to explore what they hadn't yet seen of Santa Xavierita. Wouldn't it be best, Wexford asked himself, to head straight for San Luis Obispo and call on the police there and see what facts he could get out of them? But suppose he couldn't get any? Suppose, before they imparted anything to him, they required proof of who he was and what he was doing there? He could

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  m his identity, of course, and present them bona fides but it would all take time and he

  I't much left. He had to be at Los Angeles lational airport by six in time for their

  it home at seven. Better wait for Janveer would know as much as the police did and Ijuld almost certainly talk to him.

  Janveer was as thin as Edith Sessamy was She was in her kitchen baking something called devil's food and her overweight black idor was sitting at her feet, hoping to lick the bowl.

  It was after eleven and her husband still I't come back from Grover City. Maybe he met a friend and they had got drinking. Mrs iveer did not say this in a shrewish or lemnatory way or even as if there were ing to be defensive about. She said it ly the same tone, casual, indifferent, even itly complacent, she would have used to say md met the mayor or gone to a meeting of Lions.

  pPexfbrd was driven to ask her if she lembered anything about the drowned Mrs Janveer put the tin of chocolate te mixture into the oven. The dog's tail began plump the floor. No, she couldn't say she lembered much about it at all, except the

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  woman's first name had been Theresa, she recalled that because it was hers too, and after the drowning some of her relations had come out to Santa Xavierita, from Boston, she thought it was, and stayed at the Ramada Inn. She put the mixing bowl under the tap and her hand to the tap. The dog let out a piteous squeal. Mrs Jan veer shrugged, looking upset, and slapped the bowl down in front of the dog with a cross exclamation.

  Wexford waited until half-past eleven. Janveer still hadn't come. 'Considering what I know now,' he said to Dora, 'they're bound to send me back here. It's only time I need.' 'It's a shame, darling, it's such bad luck.' He drove quickly out of the town, heading for the Pacific Highway.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The difference between California and Kingsmarkham was a matter of colour as well as temperature. The one was blue and gold, the sun burning the grass to
its own colour; the other was grey and green, the lush green of foliage watered daily by those massy clouds. Wexford went to work, not yet used to seeing grass verges instead of daisy lawns, shivering a little because the temperature was precisely

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  it Tom Sessamy had told him it could fall to Santa Xavierita in December. |Burden was waiting for him in his office. He

  id on a lightweight silky suit in a shade of ipe and a beige silk shirt. No one could ssibly have taken him for a policeman or even )liceman in disguise. Wexford, who had been isidering telling him at once what he had md out in California, now decided not to and

  stead asked him to close the window.

  *I opened it because it's such a muggy stuffy

  9ft of day,' said Burden. 'Not cold, are you?' 'Yes, I am. Very cold.'

  |*Jet lag. Did you have a good time?'

  tWexfbrd grunted. He wished he had the /e to start the central heating. It probably

  irtildn't start, though, not in July. For all he

  lew, the chief constable had to come over iself on 1 November and personally press" a tton on the boiler. 'I don't suppose there've ;n any developments while I was away?' he d.

  ^Burden sat down. 'Well, yes, there have, it's what I'm doing in here. I thought I ought tell you first thing. Jane Zoffany has ippeared.'

  tany had not reported her missing until she been gone a week. His story, said Burden,

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  was that he and his wife had been staying at Sterries with their friend Natalie Arno, and on the evening of Friday, 27 June his wife had gone out alone for a walk and had never come back. Zoffany, when pressed, admitted that immediately prior to this he and his wife had quarrelled over an affair he had had with another woman. She had said she was going to leave him, she could never live with him again, and had left the house. Zoffany himself had left soon after, taking the 10.05 p.m. train to Victoria. He believed his wife would have gone home by an earlier train.

  However, when he got to De Beauvoir Place she wasn't there. Nor did she appear the next day. He concluded she had gone to her sister in Horsham. This had apparently happened once before after a quarrel. But Friday 4 July had been Jane Zoffany's birthday, her thirty-fifth, and a birthday card came for her from her sister. Zoffany then knew he had been wrong and he went to his local police station.

  Where no one had shown much interest, Burden said. Why should they? That a young woman should temporarily leave her husband after a quarrel over his infidelity was hardly noteworthy. It happened all the time. And of course she wouldn't tell him where she had gone, that was the last thing she wanted him to know. Burden only got to hear of it when Zoffany also reported his wife's disappearance

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  la die Kingsmarkham police. He seemed finely worried. It would not be putting it too Migly to say he was distraught, hiilt,' said Wexford, and as he pronounced word he felt it himself. It was even possible iwas the last person�the last but one�to fe seen Jane Zoffany alive. And he had let her js. Because he was off on holiday, because he I't want to inconvenience Dora or upset igements. Of course she hadn't taken ige with her sister or some friend. She had no handbag, no money. He had let her go, ^wrought as she was, to walk away into the sk of Ploughman's Lane�to go back to "ies and Natalie Arno.

  had a feeling we ought to take it a bit more iously,' Burden said. 'I mean, I wasn't really led but I couldn't help thinking about poor Camargue. We've got our own ideas about it kind of a death that was, haven't we? I ced to Zoffany myself, I got him to give me names of people she could possibly have ie to. There weren't many and we checked on

  all.'

  ^And what about Natalie? Have you talked to f?'

  p thought I'd leave that to you.' fWe'll have to drag the lake,' said Wexford, Id dig up the garden if necessary. But I'll talk |iier first.'

  |The effect of her inherited wealth was now

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  displayed. A new hatchback Opel, mustardcoloured, automatic transmission, stood on the gravel circle outside the front door. Looking at her, staring almost, Wexford remembered the skirt Jane Zoffany had mended, the old blanket coat. Natalie wore a dress of some thin clinging jersey material in bright egg-yellow with a tight bodice and full skirt. Around her small neat waist was tied a belt of yellow with red, blue and purple stripes. It was startling and effective and very fashionable. Her hair hung loose in a glossy black bell. There was a white gold watch on one wrist and a bracelet of woven white gold threads on the other. The mysterious lady from Boston, he thought, and he wondered how you felt when you knew your relatives, parents maybe, and your friends thought you were dead and grieved for you while in fact you were alive and living in the lap of luxury.

  'But Mr Wexford,' she said with her faint accent�a New England accent? 'But, Mr Wexford, Jane never came back here that night.' She smiled in the way a model does when her mouth and not her eyes are to show in the toothpaste ad. 'Her things are still in the room she and Ivan used. Would you like to see?'

  He nodded. He followed her down to the spare rooms. On the carved teak chest stood a Chinese bowl full of Peace roses. They went into the room where he had once before seen Jane Zoffany standing before the long mirror and

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  Itening the collar of a Persian lamb coat. Her itcase lay open on the top of a chest of iwers. There was a folded nightdress inside it, f|>air of sandals placed heel to toe and a jrback edition of Daphne du Maurier's jbecca. On the black-backed hairbrush on the ssing table and the box of talcum powder lay ic scattering of dust. f|Has Mrs Hicks left you?' |In the spirit if not the flesh yet, Mr Wexfbrd. and Ted are going to Uncle Philip.' She ;d, as if in explanation to someone who Id not be expected to know intimate family ;e, 'Philip Gory, that is. He was just crazy to i?e them and it's made him so happy, iwhile this place is rather neglected while get ready to leave. They've sold their house I think I've sold this one at last. Well, ictically sold it. Contracts have been langed.' She chatted on, straightening the ion floral duvet, opening a window, for all world as if he too were a prospective rchaser rather than a policeman investigating ^ominous disappearance. 'I'm having some of furniture put in store and the rest will go to flat I've bought in London. Then I'm

  ig of going off on vacation somewhere.' Ie glanced into the adjoining bathroom. It evidently been cleaned before Muriel Hicks ' idrew her services. The yellow bath and were immaculate and fresh honey201 coloured towels hung on the rail. Without waiting for permission, he made his way into the next room, the one Natalie had rejected in favour of using Camargue's very private and personal territory.

  There were no immediately obvious signs that this room had ever been occupied since Camargue's death. In fact, it seemed likely that the last people to have slept here were Dinah Sternhold's parents when they stayed with Camargue at Christmas. But Wexford, peering quickly, pinched from the frill that edged one of the green and blue flowered pillows, a hair. It was black but it was not from Natalie's head, being wavy and no more than three inches long.

  This bathroom too lacked the pristine neatness and cleanliness of the other. A man no more than ordinarily observant might have noticed nothing, but Wexford was almost certain that one of the blue towels had been used. On the basin, under the cold tap, was a small patch of tide mark. He turned as Natalie came up softly behind him. She was not the kind of person one much fancied creeping up on one, and he thought, as he had done when he first met her, of a snake.

  That night,' he said, 'Mrs Zoffany ran out of the house and then afterwards her husband left. How long afterwards?'

  'Twenty minutes, twenty-five. Shall we say twenty-two and a half minutes, Mr Wexford, to

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  be. f Jier 111*0

  Considering what he knew of M uke Wexford doubted this statement l s^ ^ said your consent to our dragging trie lake, ,fe

  That's just a polite way of say*** going to drag it anyway, isn tit. if u

  T^ttv well.' he said. 'It'll save tH*

  life.'

  li
fe,

  e on the safe side?' sliced the He gave no sign that he had ^o did implicit mockery. 'He walked to the &

  he?'

  1 gave him a lift in my car. H^t he had

  Of course. Now he remembered tr* �aw Mrs

  seen them. 'And after that you never

  Zoffany again?' . V^exford,

  'Never.' She looked innocently at lashes

  'Pretty well,' he said give your permission

  her black eyes very large an^Tt,ar'be most lifted and motionless. At s u in my extraordinary thing I ever came acr^

  f,. lietweed,

  Out of the lake came a quantity of blari^ tyre� ^ a sour green and sour smelling; two ca> broken WrvHp lamr�. half a dozen cans and lnt of

  well as ^

  i n _

  Manuel was no

  wrought-iron gate as well as *oilsgind miscellaneous rubbish of the nuts and Manliei r nails variety. They also found Sir wag no I Camargue's missing glove, but thef^j if he i trace of Jane Zoffany. Wexfbrd wond^

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  had chosen the lake as the first possible place to search because of the other drownings associated with Natalie Arno.

  It was, of course, stretching a point to touch the garden at all. But the temptation to tell the men to dig up the flowerbed between the lake and the circular forecourt was very great. It was, after all, no more than three or four yards from the edge of the lake and the soil in it looked suspiciously freshly turned and the bedding plants as if they had been there no more than a day or two. Who would put out bedding plants in July? They dug. They dug to about three feet down and then even Wexford had to admit no body was buried there. Ted Hicks, who had been watching them for hours, now said that he had dug the bed over a week ago and planted out a dozen biennials. Asked why he hadn't said so before, he said he hadn't thought it his place to interfere. By then it was too late to do any more, nine on a typical English July evening, twilight, greyish, damp and cool.

  Wexford's phone was ringing when he got in. The chief constable. Mrs Arno had complained that he was digging up the grounds of her house without her permission and without a warrant.