by Ruth Rendell
"What exactly do you mean?" he said.
"It strikes me as being odd," said the chief inspector, "that in the entry for February 29th Ada Hurst says that her brother destroyed twenty rats with strychnine, yet in the entry for March 1st that Compton, whom I take to be the gardener, is still complaining about the rats. Why wasn't he told how effective the strychnine had been? Hadn't he been taken into Fenton's confidence about the poisoning? Or was twenty only a very small percentage of the hordes of rats which infested the place?"
"Right. It is odd. What else?"
"I don't know why, on March 6th, she mentions Fenton's returning for the cigar case. It wasn't interesting and she was limited for space. She doesn't record the name of a single guest at the dinner party, doesn't say what any of the women wore, but she carefully notes that her brother had left his cigar case in the Paraleash House dining room and had to go back for it. Why does she?"
"Oh, surely because by now she's nervous whenever Frank is alone with Florence."
"But he wouldn't have been alone with Florence, Winchurch would have been there."
They discussed the script throughout the meal, and later pored over it, Ireland with his brandy, Wexford with coffee. Dora had been wise not to come. But the outcome was that the new facts were really new and sound and that Carlyon Brent could safely publish the book in the spring. Wexford got home to find Dora sitting with a wobbly looking half-finished coil pot beside her and deep in the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars.
"Reg, did you know that for the Greeks the year began on Midsummer Day? And that the Chinese and Jewish calendars have twelve months in some years and thirteen in others?"
"I can't say I did."
"We avoid that, you see, by using the Gregorian Calendar and correct the error by making every fourth year a Leap Year. You really must read this book, it's fascinating."
But Wexford's preference was for the Vassili Vandrian and the farming trilogy, though with little time to read he hadn't completed a single one of these works by the time Burden returned on the following Monday week. Burden had a fine even tan but for his nose which had peeled.
"Have a good time?" asked Wexford with automatic politeness.
"What a question," said the inspector, "to ask a man who has just come back from his honeymoon. Of course I had a good time." He cautiously scratched his nose. "What have you been up to?"
"Seeing something of your brother-in-law. He got me to read a manuscript."
"Ha!" said Burden. "I know what that was. He said something about it but he knew Gandolph'd get short shrift from me. A devious liar if ever there was one. It beats me what sort of satisfaction a man can get out of the kind of fame that comes from foisting on the public stories he knows aren't true. All that about Paxton was a pack of lies, and I've no doubt he bases this new version of the Winchurch case on another pack of lies. He's not interested in the truth. He's only interested in being known as the great criminologist and the man who shows the police up for fools."
"Come on, Mike, that's a bit sweeping. I told Ireland I thought it would be OK to go ahead and publish."
Burden's face wore an expression that was almost a caricature of sophisticated scathing knowingness. "Well, of course, I haven't seen it, I can't say. I'm basing my objection to Gandolph on the Paxton affair. Paxton never confessed to any murder and Gandolph knows it."
"You can't say that for sure."
Burden sat down. He tapped his fist lightly on the comer of the desk. "I can say. I knew Paxton, I knew him well."
"I didn't know that."
"No, it was years back, before I came here. In Eastbourne, it was, when Paxton was with the Garfield gang. In the force down there we knew it was useless ever trying to get Paxton to talk. He never talked. I don't mean he just didn't give away any info, I mean he didn't answer when you spoke to him. Various times we tried to interrogate him he just maintained this total silence. A mate of his told me he'd made it a rule not to talk to policemen or social workers or lawyers or any what you might call establishment people, and he never had. He talked to his wife and his kids and his mates all right. But I remember once he was in the dock at Lewes Assizes and the judge addressed him. He just didn't answer—he wouldn't—and the judge, it was old Clydesdale, sent him down for contempt. So don't tell me Paxton made any sort of confession to Kenneth Gandolph, not Paxton."
The effect of this was to reawaken all Wexford's former doubts. He trusted Burden, he had a high opinion of his opinion. He began to wish he had advised Ireland to have tests made to determine the age of the ink used in the 29 February and 6 March entries, or to have the writing examined by a handwriting expert. Yet if Ada Hurst had had a stylised hand self-taught in adulthood . . . What good were handwriting experts anyway? Not much, in his experience. And of course Ireland couldn't suggest to Gandolph that the ink should be tested without offending the man to such an extent that he would refuse publication of Poison at Paraleash to Carlyon Brent. But Wexford was suddenly certain that those entries were false and that Gandolph had forged them. Very subtly and cunningly he had forged them, having judged that the addition to the diary of just thirty-four words would alter the whole balance of the Winchurch case and shift the culpability from Florence to her lover.
Thirty-four words. Wexford had made a copy of the diary entries and now he looked at them again. 29 February: F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief! 6 March: F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home. I hope and pray there is no harm. There were no anachronisms—men certainly used cigar cases in 1900—no divergence from Ada's usual style. The word "twenty" was written in letters instead of two figures. The writer, on 6 March, had written not about that day but about the day before. Did that amount to anything? Wexford thought not, though he pondered on it for most of the day.
That evening he was well into the last chapter of Put Money in Thy Purse when the phone rang. It was Jenny Burden. Would he and Dora come to dinner on Saturday? Her parents would be there and her brother.
Wexford said Dora was out at her pottery class, but yes, they would love to, and had she had a nice time in Crete?
"How sweet of you to ask," said the bride. "No one else has. Thank you, we had a lovely time."
He had meant it when he said they would love to, but still he didn't feel very happy about meeting Amyas Ireland again. He had a notion that once the book was published some as yet unimagined Warren or Burden would turn up and denounce it, deride it, laugh at the glaring giveaway he and Ireland couldn't see. When he saw Ireland again he ought to say, don't do it, don't take the risk, publish and be damned can have another meaning than the popular one. But how to give such a warning with no sound reason for giving it, with nothing but one of those vague feelings, this time of foreboding, which had so assisted him yet run him into so much trouble in the past? No, there was nothing he could do. He sighed, finished his chapter and moved on to the farmer's Fictionalised memoirs.
Afterwards Wexford was in the habit of saying that he got more reading done during that week than he had in years. Perhaps it had been a way of escape from fretful thought. But certainly he had passed a freakishly slack week, getting home most nights by six. He even read Miss Camilla Barnet's The Golden Reticule, and by Friday night there was nothing left but the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars.
It was a large party, Mr. and Mrs. Ireland and their son, Burden's daughter Pat, Grace and her husband and, of course, the Burdens themselves. Jenny's face glowed with happiness and Aegean sunshine. She welcomed the Wexfords with kisses and brought them drinks served in their own wedding present to her.
The meeting with Amyas Ireland wasn't the embarrassment Wexford had feared it would be—had feared, that is, up till a few minutes before he and Dora had left home. And now he knew that he couldn't contain himself till after dinner, till the morning, or perhaps worse than that—a phone call on Monday morning. He asked his hostess if she would think him very rude if he
spoke to her brother alone for five minutes.
She laughed. "Not rude at all. I think you must have got the world's most wonderful idea for a crime novel and Ammy's going to publish it. But I don't know where to put you unless it's the kitchen. And you," she said to her brother, "are not to eat anything, mind."
"I couldn't wait," Wexford said as they found themselves stowed away into the kitchen where every surface was necessarily loaded with the constituents of dinner for ten people. "I only found out this evening at the last minute before we were due to come out."
"It's something about the Winchurch book?"
Wexford said eagerly, "It's not too late, is it? I was worried I might be too late."
"Good God, no. We hadn't planned to start printing before the autumn." Ireland, who had seemed about to disobey his sister and help himself to a macaroon from a silver dish, suddenly lost his appetite. "This is serious?"
"Wait till you hear. I was waiting for my wife to finish dressing." He grinned. "You should make it a rule to read your own books, you know. That's what I was doing, reading one of those books you sent me and that's where I found it. You won't be able to publish Poison at Paraleash." The smile went and he looked almost fierce. "I've no hesitation in saying Kenneth Gandolph is a forger and a cheat and you'd be advised to have nothing to do with him in future."
Ireland's eyes narrowed. "Better know it now than later. What did he do and how do you know?"
From his jacket pocket Wexford took the copy he had made of the diary entries. "I can't prove that the last entry, the one for March 6th that says, F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home, I can't prove that's forged, I only think it is. What I know for certain is a forgery is the entry for February 29th."
"Isn't that the one about strychnine?"
"F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief!"
"How do you know it's forged?"
"Because the day itself didn't occur," said Wexford. "In 1900 there was no February 29th, it wasn't a Leap Year."
"Oh, yes, it was. We've been through all that before." Ireland sounded both relieved and impatient. "All years divisible by four are Leap Years. All century years are divisible by four and 1900 was a century year. 1897 was the year she began the diary, following 1896 which was a Leap Year. Needless to say, there was no February 29th in 1897, 1898 or 1899 so there must have been one in 1900."
"It wasn't a Leap Year," said Wexford. "Didn't I tell you I found this out through that book of yours, the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars? There's a lot of useful information in there, and one of the bits of information is about how Pope Gregory composed a new civil calendar to correct the errors of the Julian Calendar. One of his rulings was that every fourth year should be a Leap Year except in certain cases . . ."
Ireland interrupted him. "I don't believe it!" he said in the voice of someone who knows he believes every word.
Wexford shrugged. He went on, "Century years were not to be Leap Years unless they were divisible not by four but by four hundred. Therefore, 1600 would have been a Leap Year if the Gregorian Calendar had by then been adopted, and 2000 will be a Leap Year, but 1800 was not and 1900 was not. So in 1900 there was no February 29th and Ada Hurst left the space on that page blank for the very good reason that the day following February 28th was March 1st. Unluckily for him, Gandolph, like you and me and most people, knew nothing of this as otherwise he would surely have inserted his strychnine entry into the blank space of March 2nd and his forgery might never have been discovered."
Ireland slowly shook his head at man's ingenuity and perhaps his chicanery. "I'm very grateful to you. We should have looked fools, shouldn't we?"
"I'm glad Florence wasn't hanged in error," Wexford said as they went back to join the others. "Her marriage didn't begin with dearly beloved, but if she was afraid at the end it can't have been with any amazement."
Table of Contents
Author's Note
Contents
Means of Evil
Old Wives' Tales
Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle
Achilles Heel
When the Wedding Was Over
Table of Contents
Author's Note
Contents
Means of Evil
Old Wives' Tales
Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle
Achilles Heel
When the Wedding Was Over