Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Under the protection, presumably, of another of them?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Baker seriously. ‘But we might just as well stop speculating and go get us a spot of lunch. You can’t do any more. I can’t do any more. You can’t find him. I can’t find him. We leave him and his gear to the Yard, and that’s that. Now how about a snack at the Hospital Arms?’

  ‘Would you mind if we went to Vivian’s Vineyard instead, Michael?’

  With some casting up of eyes and pursing of lips. Baker agreed. His expression was that of a man who allows a friend with an addiction one last drink or cigarette. So on the way to Elm Green Wexford was obliged to argue it out with himself. It seemed apparent that West had booked into the Trieste to establish an alibi, but it was a poor sort of alibi since he had signed the register in his own name. Baker would have said that all criminals are fools. Wexford knew this was often not so, and especially not so in the case of the author of books praised by critics for their historical accuracy, their breadth of vision and their fidelity to their models.

  He had not meant to kill her, this was no premeditated crime. On the face of it, the booking into the Trieste looked like an attempt at establishing an alibi, but it was not. For some other purpose West had stayed there. For some other reason he had gone to Kingsmarkham. How had his car keys come into Rhoda Comfrey’s possession? And who was he? Who was he? Baker called that irrelevant, yet Wexford knew now the whole case and its final solution hung upon it, upon West’s true identity and his lineage.

  It was true that he couldn’t see the wood for the trees, but not that he preferred the latter. Here the trees would only coalesce into a wood when he could have each one before him individually and then, at last, fuse them. He walked in a whispering forest, little voices speaking to him on all sides, hinting and pleading - ‘Don’t you see now? Can’t you put together what he has said and she has said and what I am saying?’ Wexford shook himself. He wasn’t in a whispering wood but crossing Elm Green where the trees had all been cut down, and Baker was regarding him as if he had read in a medical journal that staring fixedly at nothing, as Wexford had been doing, may symptomize a condition akin to epilepsy.

  ‘You OK, Reg?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Wexford with a sigh, and they went into the brown murk of Vivian’s Vineyard. The girl with the pale brown face sat on a high stool behind the bar, swinging long brown legs, chatting desultorily to three young men in what was probably blue denim, though in here it too looked brown. The whole scene might have been a sepia photograph. Baker had given their order when Victor Vivian appeared from the back with a wine bottle in each hand.

  ‘Hallo, hallo, hallo!’ He came over to their table and sat down in the vacant chair. Today the T-shirt he wore was printed all over with a map of the vineyards of France, the area where his heart was being covered by Burgundy and the Auvergne. ‘What’s happened to old Gren, then? I didn’t know a thing about it, you know, till Rita here gave me the low-down. I mean, told me there was this hotel chap after him in a real tizz, you know.’

  Baker wouldn’t have replied to this but Wexford did. ‘Mr West didn’t go to France,’ he said. ‘He’s still in this country. Have you any idea where he might go?’

  Vivian whistled. He whistled like the captain of the team in the Boy’s Own Paper. ‘I say! Correct me if I’m wrong, you know, but I’m getting your drift. I mean, it’s serious, isn’t it? I mean, I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  From a physical point of view this was apparent, though less so from Vivian’s mental capacity. Not for the first time Wexford wondered how a man of West’s education and intelligence could have borne to spend more than two minutes in this company unless he had been obliged to. What had West seen in him? What had he seen, for that matter, in Polly Flinders, dowdy and desperate, or in the unprepossessing, graceless Rhoda Comfrey?

  ‘You reckon old Gren’s on the run?’

  The girl put two salads, a basket of rolls and two glasses of wine in front of them. Wexford said, ‘You told me Mr West came here fourteen years ago. Where did he come from?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you that, you know. I mean, I didn’t come here myself till a matter of five years back. Gren was here. In situ, I mean.’

  ‘You never talked about the past? About his early life?’

  Vivian shook his head, his beard waggling. ‘I’m not one to push myself in where I’m not wanted, you know. Gren never talked about any family. I mean, he may have said he’d lost his parents, I think he did say that, you know, I think so.’

  ‘He never told you where he’d been born?’

  Baker was looking impatient. If it is possible to eat ham and tomatoes with an exasperated air, he was doing so. And he maintained a total disapproving silence.

  Vivian said vaguely, ‘People don’t, you know. I mean, I reckon Rita here was born in Jamaica, but I don’t know, you know. I don’t go about telling people where I was born. Gren may have been born in France, you know, France wouldn’t surprise me.’ He banged his chest. ‘Old Gren brought me this T-shirt back from his last hols, you know. Always a thoughtful sort of chap. I mean, I don’t like to think of him in trouble, I don’t at all.’

  ‘Did you see him leave for this holiday of his? I mean . . .’ How easy it was to pick up the habit! ‘When he left here on Sunday, the seventh?’

  ‘Sure I did. He popped in the bar. About half-six it was, you know. “I’m just off, Vie,” he says. He wouldn’t have a drink, you know, on account of having a long drive ahead of him. I mean, his car was parked out here in the street, you know, and I went out and saw him off. “Back on September fourth,” he says, and I remember I thought to myself, his birthday’s round about then, I thought, eighth or the ninth, you know, and I thought I’d look that up and check and have a bottle of champers for him.’

  ‘Can you also remember what he was wearing?’

  ‘Gren’s not a snappy dresser, you know. I mean, he went in for those roll-neck jobs, seemed to like them, never a collar and tie if he could get away with it. His old yellow one, that’s what he was wearing, you know, and a sweater and kind of dark-coloured trousers. Never one for the gear like me, you know. I’d have sworn he went to France, I mean I’d have taken my oath on it. This is beyond me, frankly, you know. I’m lost. When I think he called out to me, “I’ll be in Paris by midnight, Vie,” in that funny high voice of his, and he never went there at all - well, I go cold all over, you know. I mean, I don’t know what to think.’

  Baker could stand no more. Abruptly he said, ‘We’ll have the bill, please.’

  ‘Sure, yes, right away. Rita! When he turns up - well, if there’s anything I can do, you know, any sort of help I can give, you can take that as read, you know. I mean, this has knocked me sideways.’

  It was evident that Baker thought the representatives of the Mid-Sussex Constabulary would return to their rural burrow almost at once. He had even looked up the time of a suitable train from Victoria and offered a car to take them there. Wexford hardened himself to hints - there were so many other hints he would have softened to if he had known how - and marched boldly back into the police station where Loring sat patiently waiting for him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, sir I’ve found him.’ Loring referred to his notes. ‘The birth was registered at Myringham. In the county,’ he said earnestly, ‘of Sussex. 9 September 1940. John Grenville West. His father’s name is given as Ronald Grenville West and his mother’s name as Lilian West, born Crawford.’

  Chapter 19

  Little John. Sweet affectionate little love, the way them mongols are . . . Mrs Parker’s voice was among the whisperers. He could hear it clearly in the receiver of his mind, and hear too Lilian Crown’s, brash and tough and uncaring. Been in a home for the backward like since he was so high . . .

  ‘I looked up the parents too, sir, just to be on the safe side. Ronald West’s parents were John Grenville West and Mary Ann West, and Ronald’s birth was also registered in Myringham in 1914
. The mother, Lilian West, was the daughter of William and Agnes Crawford, and her birth was registered in Canterbury in 1917. Ronald and Lilian West were married in Myringham in 1937.’

  ‘You’re sure there’s no other John Grenville West born on that date and registered at Myringham?’

  How could there be? Such a coincidence would evince the supernatural.

  ‘Quite sure, sir,’ said Loring.

  ‘I know who this man is. He’s mentally retarded. He’s been in an institution for the greater part of his life.’ Wexford was uncertain whom he was addressing. Not Baker or Loring or the baffled Clements. Perhaps only himself. ‘It can’t be!’ he said.

  ‘It is, sir,’ said Loring, not following, anxious only that his thoroughness should not be questioned.

  Wexford turned from him and buried his face in his hands. Burden would have called this hysterical or maybe just melodramatic. For Wexford, at this moment, it was the only possible way of being alone. Fantastic pictures came to him of a normal child being classified as abnormal so that his mother, in order to make a desired marriage, might be rid of him. Of that child somehow acquiring an education, of being adopted but retaining his true name. Then why should Lilian Crown have concealed it? He jumped up. ‘Michael, may I use your phone?’

  ‘Sure you can, Reg.’

  Baker had ceased to hint, had stopped his impatient fidgeting. Wexford knew what he was thinking. It was as if there had been placed before him, though invisible to others, a manual of advice to ambitious policemen. Always humour the whims of your chief’s uncle, even though in your considered opinion the old boy is off his rocker. The uses of nepotism must always be borne in mind when looking to promotion. Burden’s voice, from down there in the green country, sounded sane and practical and encouraging.

  ‘Mike, could you get over to the Abbotts Palmer Hospital? Go there, don’t phone. I could do that myself. They have, or had, an inmate called John Grenville West. See him if you can.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Burden. ‘Is he seeable? What I’m trying to say is, is he some sort of complete wreck or is he capable of communicating?’

  ‘If he’s who he seems to be, he’s more than capable of communicating, in which case he won’t be there. But I’m not sending you on a wild goose chase. You have to find out when he entered the institution, when he left and how. Everything you can about him, OK? And if you find he’s not there but was cured, if that’s possible, and went out into the world, confront the man’s mother with it, will you? You may have to get tough with her. Get tough. Find out if she knew he was Grenville West, the author, and why the hell she didn’t tell us.’

  ‘Am I going to find out who his mother is?’

  ‘Mrs Lilian Crown, 2 Carlyle Villas, Forest Road.’

  ‘Right,’ said Burden.

  ‘I’ll be here. I’d come back myself, only I want to wait in Kenbourne till Polly Flinders gets home this evening.’

  Baker accepted this last so philosophically as to send down for coffee. Wexford took pity on him.

  'Thanks, Michael, but I’m going to take myself off for a walk.’ He said to Loring, ‘You can get over to All Soul Grove and find out when the Flinders girl is expected home. If Miss Patel is taking another of her days off, I daresay you won’t find the work too arduous.’

  He went out into the hazy sunshine. Sluggishly people walked, idled on street corners. It seemed strange to him, as it always does to us when we are in a state of turbulence, that the rest of humanity was unaffected. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round. Giddiness exactly described his present condition, but it was a giddiness of the mind, and he walked steadily and slowly along Kenbourne High Road. At the cemetery gate he turned into the great necropolis. Along the aisles, between the serried tombs, he walked, and sat down at last on a toppled gravestone. On a warm summer’s day there is no solitude to be found on a green or in a park, but one may always be sure of being alone in the corner of a cemetery. The dead themselves seem to decree silence, while the atmosphere of the place and its very nature are repellent to most people.

  Very carefully and methodically he assembled the facts, letting the whispers wait. West had been cagey about his past, had made few friends, and those he had were somehow unsuitable and of an intellect unequal to his own. He gave his publishers and his readers his birthplace as London, though his passport and the registration of his birth showed he had been born in Sussex. His knowledge of the Sussex countryside and its great houses also showed a familiarity with that county. No one seemed to know anything of his life up to fourteen years before, and when he had first come to Elm Green and two years before his book was published.

  Not to his neighbour and intimate friend did he ever speak of his origins, and to one other bearer of the name Grenville West he had denied any connection with the family. Why? Because he had something to keep hidden, while Rhoda Comfrey was similarly secretive because she had her blackmailing activities to keep hidden. Put the two together and what do you get? A threat on the part of the blackmailer to disclose something. Not perhaps that West was homosexual - Wexford could not really be persuaded that these days this was of much significance - but that he had never been to a university (as his biography claimed he had), never been a teacher or a courier or a freelance journalist, been indeed nothing till the age of twenty-four when he had somehow emerged from a home for the mentally handicapped.

  As his first cousin, Rhoda Comfrey would have known it; from her it could never have been kept as it had been kept from others. Had she used it as a final weapon - Burden’s theory here being quite tenable - when she saw herself losing her cousin to Polly Flinders? West had overheard that phone call made by her to his own mother, even though she had called Lilian Crown ‘darling’ to put him off the scent. Had he assumed that she meant to see his mother and wrest from her the details of his early childhood, the opinions of doctors, all Mrs Crown’s knowledge of the child’s incarceration in that place and his subsequent release?

  Here, then, was a motive for the murder. West had booked into the Trieste Hotel because it was simpler to allow Polly Flinders and Victor Vivian to believe him already in France. But that he had booked in his own name and for three nights showed surely that he had never intended to kill his cousin. Rather he had meant to use those three days for argument with Rhoda and to attempt to dissuade her from her intention.

  But how had he done it? Not the murder, that might be clear enough, that unpremeditated killing in a fit of angry despair. How had he contrived in the first place such an escape and then undergone such a metamorphosis? Allowing for the fact that he might originally have been unjustly placed in the Abbotts Palmer or its predecessor, how had he surmounted his terrible difficulties? Throughout his childhood and early youth he must have been there, and if not in fact retarded, retardation would surely have been assumed for some years so that education would have been withheld and his intellect dulled and impeded by the society of his fellow inmates. Yet at the age of twenty-five or six he had written and published a novel which revealed a learned knowledge of the Elizabethan drama, of history and of the English usage of the period.

  If, that is, he were he.

  It couldn’t be, as Wexford had said to Loring, and yet it must be. For though John Grenville West might not be the author’s real name, though he might be a suitable pseudonym by chance have alighted on it - inventing it, so to speak, himself - other aspects were beyond the possibility of coincidence. True, the chance use of this name (instead, for example, of his real one which might be absurd or dysphonious) could have brought him and Rhoda together, the cousinship at first having been assumed on her part as Charles West had also assumed it. But he could not by chance have also chosen her cousin’s birthday and parentage. It must be that John Grenville West, the novelist, the francophile, the traveller, was also John Grenville West, the retarded child his mother had put away when he was six years old. From this dismal state, from this position in the world . . .

  He stopped. The
words he had used touched a bell and rang it. Again he was up in the spare bedroom with his daughter, and Sylvia was talking about men and women and time, saying something about men’s position in the world. And after that she had said this position could only be attained by practising something or other. Deism? No, of course not. Aeolism? Didn’t that mean being longwinded? Anyway, it wasn’t that, she hadn’t said that. What had she said?