A New Lease of Death

by Ruth Rendell

  But for himself and half a dozen elderly residents, the dining-room was deserted, but presently the door from the bar opened and the head waiter ushered in a man and a woman. Archery wondered if the management would object to the apricot poodle the woman fondled in her arms. But the head waiter was smiling deferentially and Archery saw him pat the tiny woolly head.

  The man was small and dark and would have been good-looking but for his glassy, red-rimmed eyes. Archery thought he might be wearing contact lenses. He sat down at the Dufy table, ripped open a packet of Peter Stuyvesant and poured the contents into a gold cigarette case. In spite of the man’s obvious polish – his sleek hair, svelte suit, taut bone-smooth skin – there was something savage in the way his white fingers tore the paper. A wedding ring and a big gold signet gleamed in the soft light as he tossed the mutilated packet on to the cloth. Archery was amused to see how much jewellery he wore, a sapphire tie pin and a watch as well as the rings.

  By contrast the woman wore none. She was plainly dressed in a cream silk suit that matched her hair, and everything about her from the gauzy hat and hair to her crossed ankles was the colour of faint sunlight, so that she seemed to glow with a pale radiance. Outside the cinema and the pictures in Mary’s magazines, she was the most beautiful woman he had seen for years. Compared to her Tess Painter was just a pretty girl. Archery was reminded of an ivory orchid or a tea rose which, when lifted from the florist’s cube of cellophane, still retains its patina of dew.

  He gave himself a little shake and applied himself determinedly to his Navarin. It had turned out to be two lamb chops in a brown sauce.

  Between Kingsmarkham High Street and the Kingsbrook Road lies an estate of ugly terraced houses covered with that mixture of mortar and grit builders call pebble dashing. On a hot day when the roads are dusty and flickering with heat mirage these rows of dun-coloured houses look as if they have been fashioned out of sand. A giant’s child might have built them, using his crude tools unimaginatively.

  Archery found Glebe Road by the simple and traditional expedient of asking a policeman. He was getting into the habit of asking policemen and this one was low in the hierarchy, a young constable directing traffic at the crossroads.

  Glebe Road might have been designed by the Romans, it was so straight, so long and so uncompromising. The sand houses had no woodwork about them. Their window frames were of metal and their porch canopies excrescences of pebbly plaster. After every fourth house an arch in the façade led into the back and through these arches sheds, coal bunkers and dustbins could be seen.

  The street was numbered from the Kingsbrook Road end and Archery walked nearly half a mile before he found twenty-four. The hot pavements running with melted tar made his feet burn. He pushed open the gate and saw that the canopy covered not one front door but two. The house had been converted into two surely tiny flatlets. He tapped the chromium knocker on the door marked 24A and waited.

  When nothing happened he tapped again. There was a grinding trundling sound and a boy on roller skates came out from under the arch. He took no notice at all of the clergyman. Could Mrs Crilling be asleep? It was hot enough for a siesta and Archery felt languid himself.

  He stepped back and looked through the arch. Then he heard the door open and slam shut. So somebody was at home. He rounded the sandy wall and came face to face with Elizabeth Crilling.

  At once he sensed that she had not answered, nor probably even heard, his knock. Evidently she was going out. The black dress had been changed for a short blue cotton shift that showed the outlines of her prominent hip bones. She wore backless white mules and carried a huge white and gilt handbag.

  ‘What d’you want?’ It was obvious she had no idea who he was. He thought she looked old, finished, as if somehow she had been used and wrecked. ‘If you’re selling something,’ she said, ‘you’ve come to the wrong shop.’

  ‘I saw your mother in court this morning,’ Archery said. ‘She asked me to come and see her.’

  He thought she had rather a charming smile, for her mouth was well-shaped and her teeth good. But the smile was too brief.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘was this morning.’

  ‘Is she at home?’ He looked helplessly at the doors. ‘I – er – which one is it, which flat?’

  ‘Are you kidding? It’s bad enough sharing a house with her. Only a stone-deaf paralytic could stick living underneath her.’

  ‘I’ll go in, shall I?’

  ‘Suit yourself. She’s not likely to come out here.’ The bag strap was hoisted on to the right shoulder, pulling the blue shift tight across her breasts. Without knowing why, Archery remembered the exquisite woman in the dining room of The Olive and Dove, her petal skin and her easy grace.

  Elizabeth Crilling’s face was greasy. In the bright afternoon light the skin had the texture of lemon peel. ‘Well, go on in,’ she said sharply, unlocking the door. She pushed it open and turned away, her mules flapping and clacking down the path. ‘She won’t bite you,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘At least, I shouldn’t think so. She bit me once, but there were – well, extenuating circumstances.’

  Archery went into the hall. Three doors led off it but they were all closed. He coughed and said tentatively, ‘Mrs Crilling?’

  The place was stuffy and silent. He hesitated for a moment, then opened the first of the doors. Inside was a bedroom divided into two by a hardboard partition. He had been wondering how the two women managed. Now he knew. The middle room must be where they lived. He tapped on the door and opened it.

  Although the French windows were ajar the air was thick with smoke and the two ashtrays on a gateleg table were filled with stubs. Every surface was covered with papers and debris and the debris with dust. As he entered a blue budgerigar in a tiny cage broke into a stream of high brittle chatter. The cage swung furiously.

  Mrs Crilling wore a pink nylon dressing gown that looked as if it had once been designed for a bride. The honeymoon, Archery thought, was long over, for the dressing gown was stained and torn and hideous. She was sitting in an armchair looking through the window at a fenced-in piece of land at the back. It could hardly be called a garden for nothing grew in it but nettles, three feet high, rose-pink fireweed, and brambles that covered everything with fly-infested tendrils.

  ‘You hadn’t forgotten I was coming, Mrs Crilling?’

  The face that appeared round the wing of the chair was enough to intimidate anyone. The whites of the eyes showed all the way round the black pupils. Every muscle looked tense, taut and corrugated as if from some inner agony. Her white hair, fringed and styled like a teenager’s, curtained the sharp cheekbones.

  ‘Who are you?’ She dragged herself up, clinging to the chair arm and came slowly round to face him. The vee at the dressing gown front showed a ridged and withered valley like the bed of a long-dried stream.

  ‘We met in court this morning. You wrote to me …’

  He stopped. She had thrust her face within inches of his and seemed to be scrutinizing it. Then she stepped back and gave a long chattering laugh which the budgerigar echoed.

  ‘Mrs Crilling, are you all right? Is there anything I can do?’

  She clutched her throat and the laugh died away in a rising wheeze. ‘Tablets … asthma …,’ she gasped. He was puzzled and shocked, but he reached behind him for the bottle of tablets on the littered mantelpiece. ‘Give me my tablets and then you can … you can get out!’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to distress you.’

  She made no attempt to take a tablet but held the bottle up against her quaking chest. The movement made the tablets rattle and the bird, fluttering its wings and beating against the bars, began a frenzied crescendo, half song and half pain.

  ‘Where’s my baby?’ Did she mean Elizabeth? She must mean Elizabeth.

  ‘She’s gone out. I met her in the porch. Mrs Crilling, can I get you a glass of water? Can I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea? What do I want with tea? T
hat’s what she said this morning, that police girl. Come and have a cup of tea, Mrs Crilling.’ A terrible spasm shook her and she fell back against the chair, fighting for breath. ‘You … my baby … I thought you were my friend … Aaah!’

  Archery was really frightened now. He plunged from the room into the dirty kitchen and filled a cup with water. The window ledge was stacked with empty chemist’s bottles and there was a filthy hypodermic beside an equally dirty eye dropper. When he came back she was still wheezing and jerking. Should he make her take the tablets, dare he? On the bottle label were the words: Mrs J. Crilling. Take two when needed. He rattled two into his hand and, supporting her with his other arm, forced them into her mouth. It was all he could do to suppress the shudder of distaste when she dribbled and choked over the water.

  ‘Filthy … nasty,’ she mumbled. He half-eased, half-rolled her into the chair and pulled together the gaping edges of the dressing gown. Moved with pity and with horror, he knelt down beside her.

  ‘I will be your friend if you want me to be,’ he said soothingly.

  The words had the opposite effect. She made a tremendous effort to draw breath. Her lips split open and he could see her tongue rising and quivering against the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Not my friend … enemy … police fiend! Take my baby away … I saw you with them … I watched you come out with them.’ He drew back from her, rising. Never would he have believed her capable of screaming after that spasm and when the scream came, as clear and ear-splitting as a child’s, he felt his hands go up to his face ‘… Not let them get her in there! Not in the prison! They’ll find it out in there. She’ll tell them … my baby … She’ll have to tell them!’ With a sudden galvanic jerk she reared up, her mouth open and her arms flailing. ‘They’ll find it all out. I’ll kill her first, kill her … D’you hear?’

  The French windows stood open. Archery staggered back into the sun against a stinging prickling wall of weeds. Mrs Crilling’s incoherent gasps had swollen into a stream of obscenity. There was a gate in the wire netting fence. He unlatched it, wiping the sweat from his forehead, and stepped into the cool dark cave of the sand-walled arch.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir. You don’t look very well. Heat affecting you?’

  Archery had been leaning over the bridge parapet, breathing deeply, when the detective inspector’s face appeared beside him.

  ‘Inspector Burden, isn’t it?’ He shook himself, blinking his eyes. There was comfort in this man’s steady gaze and in the shoppers who flowed languidly across the bridge. ‘I’ve just come from Mrs Crilling’s and …’

  ‘Say no more, sir. I quite understand.’

  ‘I left her in the throes of an asthma attack. Perhaps I should have got a doctor or an ambulance. Frankly, I hardly knew what to do.’

  There was a crumb of stony bread on the wall. Burden flicked it into the water and a swan dived for it.

  ‘It’s mostly in the mind with her, Mr Archery. I should have warned you what to expect. Threw one of her scenes on you, did she?’ Archery nodded. ‘Next time you see her I daresay she’ll be as nice as pie. That’s the way it takes her, up one minute, down the next. Manic-depressive is the term. I was just going into Carousel for a cup of tea. Why don’t you join me?’

  They walked up the High Street together. Some of the shops sported faded striped sunblinds. The shadows were as black as night, the light cruelly bright under a Mediterranean blue sky. Inside the Carousel it was darkish and stuffy and it smelt of aerosol fly spray.

  ‘Two teas, please,’ said Burden.

  ‘Tell me about the Crillings.’

  ‘There’s plenty to tell, Mr Archery. Mrs Crilling’s husband died and left her without a penny, so she moved into town and got a job. The kid, Elizabeth, was always difficult and Mrs Crilling made her worse. She took her to psychiatrists – don’t ask me where the money came from – and then when they made her send her to school it was one school after another. She was in St Catherine’s, Sewingbury for a bit but she got expelled. When she was about fourteen she came up before the juvenile court here as being in need of care and protection and she was taken away from her mother. But she went back eventually. They usually do.’

  ‘Do you think all this came about because she found Mrs Primero’s body?’

  ‘Could be.’ Burden looked up and smiled as the waitress brought the tea. ‘Thanks very much, miss. Sugar, Mr Archery? No, I don’t either.’ He cleared his throat and went on, ‘I reckon it would have made a difference if she’d had a decent home background, but Mrs Crilling was always unstable. In and out of jobs, by all accounts, until she ended up working in a shop. I think some relative used to give them financial assistance. Mrs Crilling used to take days off from work ostensibly on account of the asthma but really it was because she was crazy.’

  ‘Isn’t she certifiable?’

  ‘You’d be surprised how difficult it is to get anyone certified, sir. The doctor did say that if ever he saw her in one of her tantrums he could get an urgency order, but they’re cunning, you see. By the time the doctor gets there she’s as normal as you or me. She’s been into Stowerton once or twice as a voluntary patient. About four years ago she got herself a man friend. The whole place was buzzing with it. Elizabeth was training to be a physio-therapist at the time. Anyway, the upshot of it all was that the boy friend preferred young Liz.’

  ‘Mater pulchra, filia pulchrior,’ Archery murmured.

  ‘Just as you say, sir. She gave up her training and went to live with him. Mrs Crilling went off her rocker again and spent six months in Stowerton. When she came out she wouldn’t leave the happy couple alone, letters, phone calls, personal appearances, the lot. Liz couldn’t stand it so eventually she went back to mother. The boy friend was in the car trade and he gave her that Mini.’

  Archery sighed. ‘I don’t know if I ought to tell you this, but you’ve been very kind to me, you and Mr Wexford …’ Burden felt the stirring of guilt. It wasn’t what he would call kind. ‘Mrs Crilling said that if Elizabeth – she calls her baby – went to prison … it might mean prison, mightn’t it?’

  ‘It might well.’

  ‘Then she’d tell you something, you or the prison authorities. I got the impression she’d feel compelled to give you some information Mrs Crilling wanted kept secret.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir. We shall have to wait and see what time brings forth.’

  Archery finished his tea. Suddenly he felt like a traitor. Had he betrayed Mrs Crilling because he wanted to keep in with the police?

  ‘I wondered,’ he said, justifying himself, ‘if it could have anything to do with Mrs Primero’s murder. I don’t see why Mrs Crilling couldn’t have worn the raincoat and hidden it. You admit yourself she’s unbalanced. She was there, she had just as much opportunity as Painter.’

  Burden shook his head. ‘What was the motive?’

  ‘Mad people have motives which seem very thin to normal men.’

  ‘But she dotes on her daughter in her funny way. She wouldn’t have taken the kid with her.’

  Archery said slowly, ‘At the trial she said she went over the first time at twenty-five past six. But we’ve only her word for it. Suppose instead she went at twenty to seven when Painter had already been and gone. Then she took the child back later because no-one would believe a killer would wittingly let a child discover a body she knew was there.’

  ‘You’ve missed your vocation, sir,’ said Burden, getting up. ‘You should have come in on our lark. You’d have been a superintendent by now.’

  ‘I’m letting my fancy run away with me,’ Archery said. To avoid a repetition of the gentle teasing, he added quickly, changing the subject. ‘Do you happen to know the visiting times at Stowerton Infirmary?’

  ‘Alice Flower’s next on your list, is she? I’d give the matron a ring first, if I were you. Visiting’s seven till seven-thirty.’

  8

  The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so
strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow.

  Psalm 90. The Burial of the Dead

  ALICE FLOWER WAS eighty-seven, almost as old as her employer had been at the time of her death. A series of strokes had battered her old frame as tempests batter an ancient house, but the house was strong and sturdily built. No gimcrack refinements of decoration or delicacy had ever belonged to it. It had been made to endure wind and weather.

  She lay in a narrow high bed in a ward called Honeysuckle. The ward was full of similar old women in similar beds. They had clean pink faces and white hair through which patches of rose pink scalp showed. Every bed trolley held at least two vases of flowers, the sops to conscience, Archery supposed, of visiting relatives who only had to sit and chat instead of handing bedpans and tending bed-sores.

  ‘A visitor for you, Alice,’ said the sister. ‘It’s no use trying to shake hands with her. She can’t move her hands but her hearing’s perfectly good and she’ll talk the hind leg off a donkey.’

  A most un-Christian hatred flared in Archery’s eyes. If she saw it the sister took no notice.

  ‘Like a good gossip, don’t you, Alice? This is the Reverend Archery.’ He winced at that, approached the bed.

  ‘Good evening, sir.’

  Her face was square with deeply ridged rough skin. One corner of her mouth had been drawn down by the paralysis of the motor nerves, causing her lower jaw to protrude and reveal large false teeth. The sister bustled about the bed, pulling the old servant’s nightgown higher about her neck and arranging on the coverlet her two useless hands. It was terrible to Archery to have to look at those hands. Work had distorted them beyond hope of beauty, but disease and oedema had smoothed and whitened the skin so that they were like the hands of a misshapen baby. The emotion and the feel for the language of 1611 that was with him always welled in a fount of pity. Well done, thou good and faithful servant, he thought. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things …