by Ruth Rendell
‘But there was in fact no one after him?’
‘Not as I could see. Maybe they got fed up and turned back, knowing as they wouldn’t catch him.’
And then he had seen Dorothy Sanders who was later to scream and rattle the gates, walking up and down searching the car parks for something or someone, her anger contained but her affronted indignation vibrating as later a demented terror was to stream from her, making Archie Greaves shiver and shake and fear for his heart.
An incident room had been set up in Kingsmarkham Police Station on Thursday night to receive calls from anyone who might have been in the Barringdean Shopping Centre under ground car park between five and six-thirty. The local television station had broadcast an immediate appeal for possible witnesses to come forward and Wexford had managed to get a nationwide appeal on that night’s ten o’clock news going out on the network. Calls started coming in-at once - before the number to call had even disappeared from the screen, Sergeant Martin said - but of these the great majority were well-meant but misleading, or ill-meant and misleading, or were deliberate attempts to deceive. A call came from a young woman called Sarah Cussons who identified herself as the driver of the Vauxhall Cavalier which had followed Wexford’s out of the car park, and another from a man beside whose car Gwen Robson had parked her red Metro. He had seen her drive in and was able to give her time of arrival at the centre as about twenty to five.
Throughout Thursday night the calls continued to come in, many of them from drivers of cars parked on all the levels who had seen nothing untoward. They were interviewed just the same. Early on Friday morning came a call on behalf of the owner of the blue Lancia. Mrs Helen Brook, nine months pregnant, had gone into labour while in the health-food shop in the shopping centre at about five on the previous evening. An ambulance had been called and she had been taken to the maternity wing of Stowerton Royal Infirmary.
None of the obviously genuine and well-intentioned callers was able to describe anyone else they had seen while parking or fetching their cars, though plenty of fantastic descriptions came in from those jokers who enjoy teasing the police. Two assistants from the Barringdean Centre shops phoned in to say they had served Gwen Robson, one just before five and the other, Linda Naseem - a checkout assistant at the Tesco supermarket - half an hour later. But by that time two of Wexford’s officers were at the shopping centre questioning all the shop-workers, and Archbold had interviewed the man in charge of the fish counter in the Tesco superstore who confirmed he had had a row with a woman answering Dorothy Sanders’ description ‘at around six when they were closing up’. All that did was confirm her time of coming into the car park which Wexford could confirm himself.
That same morning Ralph Robson made a formal identification of his wife’s body; the neck had been discreetly covered during this ordeal. He hobbled in on his stick, looked at the horror-stricken face from which some of the blue colour had faded, nodded, said, ‘Yes,’ but didn’t cry this time. Wexford had not seen him on that occasion, hadn’t yet seen him. He had interviewed David Sedgeman, the car park supervisor, himself. The man should have been a valuable witness, yet he seemed to have seen nothing or to have registered nothing he had seen. He could recall waving to Archie Greaves because he did this every evening, and for the same reason could recall locking the gates. But his memory offered him no worried woman or running man, no fast-driven car or suspicious escaper. Everything had been normal, he said in his dull way. He had locked the gates and gone home just as he always did, collecting his own car from where he always left it in a bay in one of the open-air parking areas.
The November air felt raw and the sky was a leaden grey.
A reddish sun hung over the roof-tops, not very high in the sky but as high as it would get. Burden had on a padded jacket, a pale grey Killy, warm as toast and turning him from a thin man into a stout one. His wife was away, staying with her mother who was convalescent after an operation, and that disturbed Burden, making him jumpy and insecure. He would spend tonight with her and their little son in his mother-in-law’s house outside Myringham, but what he really wanted was his own family back home with him in his own house. His face took on a look both irritable and cynical as Wexford spoke.
‘Did Robson strike you,’ Wexford said in the car, ‘as the sort of man who would sit himself down and with deliberation fashion a wire implement with a handle at each end for the express purpose of garroting his wife?’
‘Now you’re asking. I don’t know what sort of a man that would be. He had no car, remember, his wife had the car. The centre’s a mile away from Highlands. .
‘I know. Is the arthritic hip genuine?’
‘Even if it isn’t, he had no car. He could have walked, or there’s the bus. But if he wanted to murder his wife, why not do it at home like most of them do?’
Wexford couldn’t keep from laughing at this insouciant acceptance of domestic homicide. ‘Maybe he did, we don’t know yet. We don’t know if she died in that car park or the body was only dumped there. We don’t even know if she drove the car.’
‘You mean Robson himself may have?’
‘Let’s see,’ said Wexford.
They arrived at Highlands and Lesley Arbel opened the front door to them. She didn’t remind Wexford of his own daughter; to him she bore no resemblence to Sheila. He saw only a pretty girl who struck him at once as being exceptionally well-dressed, indeed almost absurdly well-dressed for a weekend of mourning in the country with one’s recently bereaved uncle. She introduced herself, explained that she had not waited until the prearranged time for her visit but had come on Friday morning.
‘My uncle’s upstairs,’ she said. ‘He’s lying down. The doctor came and said he was to get as much rest as he could.’
‘That’s all right, Miss Arbel. We’d like to talk to you too.’
‘Me? But I don’t know anything about it. I was in London.’
‘You know about your aunt. You can tell us something of what sort of a person she was, better than your uncle can.’
She said in a rather pernickety way. ‘That’s right, he’s my real uncle. I mean, my mother was his sister; she was my aunt because she married him.’
Wexford nodded, aware that his impatience showed. Mentally he cautioned himself against deciding too soon that a witness was irredeemably stupid. She took them into the Robsons’ brightly furnished living room where a conflict of textile patterns dazzled Wexford - flowers on the carpet, flowers of a more formal design on the curtains, trees and fruits on the wallpaper, a rug with a sunburst pattern. The flames of a gas fire licked indestructible coals. The girl sat down and her own face smiled over her shoulder out of a silver frame. His question astonished her.
‘These curtain, are they new?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Let me rephrase it. Were there ever different curtains at these windows?’
‘I think Auntie Gwen once had red curtain, yes. Why do you want to know?’
Wexford made no answer but watched her while Burden asked about the telephone call her uncle had made to her on Thursday evening. Her clothes were remarkable, somehow evoking the unreal elegance of actresses in Hollywood comedies of the thirties, as sleek and as unsuitable for the wear and tear of living. A bunch of gold chains that looked too heavy for comfort hung against her cream silk shirt between the lapels of the coffee-coloured silk jacket. Crimson-nailed hands lay in her lap and she lifted one to her face, touching her cheek as she replied to his questions.
‘You intended coming down for the weekend of Saturday as you often did?’
She nodded.
‘But your uncle phoned you himself on Thursday evening and told you what had happened?’
‘He phoned me on Thursday, on Thursday night. I wanted to come then, but he wouldn’t have that. He had one of the neighbours, a Mrs Whitton, with him so I thought he’d be all right.’ She looked from one to the other of them. ‘You said you wanted me to talk about Auntie Gwen.’
‘In a
moment, Miss Arbel,’ Burden said. ‘Would you mind telling me what you were doing yourself on Thursday after noon?’
‘What do you want to know for?’ She was more than astounded; her manner was affronted as if she had encountered insolence. Her long elegant legs, the feet encased in high-heeled cream leather pumps, drew close together, were pressed together. ‘Why ever do you want to know that?’
Perhaps it was pure innocence.
Burden said blandly, ‘Routine questions, Miss Arbel. In a murder enquiry, it’s necessary to know people’s whereabouts.’ He attempted to help her along. ‘I expect you were at work, weren’t you?’
‘I went home early on Thursday, I wasn’t very well. Don’t you want me to tell you about Auntie Gwen?’
‘In a moment. You went home early because you weren’t well. You had a cold, did you?’
A vacuous stare was turned on Burden, but perhaps not entirely vacuous for it seemed to contain an element of earnestness. ‘It was my PMT, wasn’t it?’ she said as if she were famous for this disorder, as if all the world was aware of it. Wexford doubted if Burden even knew what those initials stood for, and now the girl seemed equally dubious. Frowning, she leaned towards Burden. ‘I always have PMT and there’s not a thing they can do about it.’
At this point the door opened and Ralph Robson came in, leaning on his stick. He had a dressing gown on, but with a shirt and pair of slacks underneath it. ‘I heard voices.’ His flat but beaky face was turned on Wexford with a puzzled look.
‘Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham CID.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Robson said, sounding anything but pleased. ‘You coming here has saved me a phone call. Maybe one of you can tell me what’s become of the shopping?’
‘The shopping, Mr Robson?’
‘The shopping Gwen got on Thursday, as was in the boot of the blessed car presumably. I can see I can’t have the car back yet awhile, but the shopping’s a different story. There’s meat in those bags, there’s a loaf and butter and I don’t know what else. I don’t say I’m poor, but I’m not so rolling in money as I can just let that lot go, right?’
Self-preservation or a tenacity for life overcame grief. Wexford knew this, but it never ceased mildly to surprise him just the same. It might be that this man felt no grief; it might be that he was responsible for his wife’s death, but it might only be that he had ceased to feel much emotion for anyone or anything. That sometimes happened to people as they aged and Wexford had noticed it dispassionately but with an inner shiver. Yet Burden said he had wept when first told.
‘We’ll get it back to you later today,’ was all Wexford said.
He had carefully gone over the contents of the shopping bag himself before having the perishable items placed in one of the police canteen fridges. There had been nothing among them to excite much interest: mostly food, but things from the chemist as well - toothpaste and talcum powder - and from the British Home Stores four light-bulbs; all of these contained in a BHS bag, indicating perhaps that she had stopped there first. Mrs Robson’s handbag, which would also soon be returned and which Burden had first looked into in the car park, contained her purse with twenty-two pounds in it, plus some small change and a chequebook from the Trustee Savings Bank. The credit cards were a Visa and the card which the Barringdean Shopping Centre supplied for its patrons. Her handkerchief and the two folded tissues were unused. The letters which had provided the police with her identity and address were from a sister in Leeds and the other - scarcely a letter in any sense - an invitation to a Christmas fashion show at the shop where Wexford had bought Dora’s sweater.
‘Are you missing a brown velvet curtain, Mr Robson?’
‘Me? No. What do you mean?’
‘A curtain which might have been kept in the boot of your car for the purpose, say, of covering up the windscreen in frosty weather?’
‘I use newspaper for that.’
Lesley Arbel said suddenly, ‘Could you eat a bit of lunch, Uncle? A little something light?’
He bad sat down and was leaning forward in the chair, pressing one hand on his thigh in what seemed genuine pain, his face twisted with it. ‘There’s nothing I fancy, dear.’
‘But you’re not still having those pills, are you? The ones that upset your tummy?’
‘Doctor took me off the blessed things. There’s some they don’t suit, he said; they can give you ulcers.’
‘You’ve got arthritis, have you, Mr Robson?’
He nodded. ‘You listen,’ he said, ‘and you can hear the hip joint grind.’ To Robson’s evident agony there came a shift of bone in socket and Wexford did hear it, heard with dismay an unhuman ratchet-like sound. ‘It’s a bit of bad luck for me that I’m allergic to the painkillers. Got to grin and bear it. I’m in line for one of those replacement ops, but there’s a waiting list round here of up to three years. God knows what sort of a state I’ll be in three years. It’d be a different story if I could have it done private.’
This was no news to Wexford, that hip replacements could be carried out almost at once if the patient were prepared to pay but that the waiting time for National Health Service surgery might be very protracted. The unfairness of this was not lost on him, but he was more intent on trying to assess the genuineness of Robson’s disability. He turned his eyes towards the girl and she looked at him artlessly, her face a beautiful blank.
‘Where do you work, Miss Arbel?’
‘Kim magazine.’
‘Could you give me the address, please, and your own address in London too? Do you live alone or share?’
‘I share with two other girls.’ She sounded peevish, muttering the north-west London address. ‘Kim’s office is at Orangetree House in the Waterloo Road.’
Wexford had only once seen the magazine when Dora had bought it for the sake of some mail-order bargain it featured. A semi-glossy weekly, it had seemed aimed at a not very youthful market but at the same time making little provision for women past forty or so. The issue Wexford had seen had carried articles he thought dreary but which the magazine itself vaunted as controversial and lively, under such headings as: ‘Is it OK to be a Lesbian?’ and ‘Your Daughter Your Own Clone?’
‘Could you eat some scrambled egg, Uncle, and a little thin bread and butter?’
Robson shrugged, then nodded. Burden began speaking to him of Mrs Whitton, the neighbour who had come to sit with him before Lesley Arbel arrived. Had he seen anyone, spoken on the phone to anyone, while his wife was out?
Lesley got up, said, ‘Well, if you’ll just excuse me . . .’
While Robson told Burden about the Hastings Road neighbours, speaking in a wretched halting monotone and separating virtually every sentence from the next with a phrase to the effect that Gwen had known them all better than he did, Wexford left the room. He found Lesley Arbel standing in front of an electric stove, a printed tea-towel rather than an apron tied round her waist to protect the coffee silk skirt. Two eggs reposed in a bowl, a beater beside them, but instead of preparing her uncle’s lunch she was examining her face in a handbag mirror and painting something on to it with a small, fat brush.
As soon as she saw Wexford she put brush and mirror away with extreme haste, as if this rapid manoeuvre would somehow render the prior activity invisible. She broke open the eggs, not very skilfully, got a piece of shell into the bowl and had to pick it out with a long red nail.
‘Why would anyone want to murder your aunt, Miss Arbel?’
She didn’t answer him for a moment, but reached up into a cabinet for a plate and put a cruet on to the tray she had laid with a cloth. Her voice when it came was nervous and irritable. ‘It was some crazy person, wasn’t it? There’s never any reason for murders, not these days. The ones you read about in the papers, they’re all people who say they don’t know why they did it or they’ve forgotten or had a blackout or whatever. The one who killed her will have been like that. I mean, who would have wanted to kill her for a reason? There wasn’t an
y reason.’ She turned away from him and started beating the eggs.
‘Everybody liked her?’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t have had enemies?’
In her left hand she held the pan in which butter was smoking too strongly, in her other the bowl with the egg mixture. But instead of pouring one into the other, she stood with the two vessels poised. ‘It’s a laugh really, hearing you talk like that. Or it would be if it wasn’t such a tragedy. She was a wonderful, lovely lady - don’t you understand that? Hasn’t anyone told you? Look at Uncle Ralph, he’s heart broken, isn’t he? He worshipped her and she worshipped him. They were just a lovely couple, like young lovers right up to when this happened. And this’ll be the death of him, I can promise you that - this’ll be the end of him. He’s aged about twenty years since yesterday.’
She swung round, tipped the eggs into the pan and began rapidly cooking them. Wexford had the curious feeling that for all the apparent sincerity of her words what she was really trying to do was impress him with a kind of caring competent maturity - an ambition that went wrong when she seemed to realize that though the eggs were cooked she had forgotten about the bread and butter. Rather harassed by now, she cut doorsteps of bread and covered them with wedges of butter chipped from the refrigerated block. He opened doors for her, feeling something very near pity with out exactly knowing what he pitied her for. The apron improvised from a tea towel fell off as she teetered into the living room on her stilt heels. But even so, as she passed the small wall mirror which hung between kitchen and living-room doorways, she was unable to resist a glance into it. Balanced on her pointed toes, holding the tray, flustered, she nevertheless took the opportunity of a narcissistic peep at her own face . . .
Robson was lying back in his armchair and had to be jolted out of his half-daze. This his niece did not only by propping him up with a cushion behind him and plumping the tray down on his lap, but also with the rough and some how shocking, ‘He asked me if Gwen had enemies! Can you credit it?’