by Ruth Rendell
‘The pub-orientated aunt should help us there. If this old boy’s compos mentis, we’ll get his daughter’s London address from him.’
‘We’ll also have to break the news,’ said Burden.
Departing visitors were queueing at the bus stop outside Stowerton Royal Infirmary. Had Rhoda Comfrey queued there on the previous night? It was ten past eight. A man in the porter’s lodge told them that James Albert Comfrey was a patient in Lytton Ward. They went along a corridor and up two flights of stairs. A pair of glass double doors, the entrance to Lytton Ward, were closed. As Wexford pushed them open, a young nurse of Malaysian or Thai origin popped up in their path and announced in a chirrup that they couldn’t come in now.
‘Police,’ said Burden. ‘We’d like to see the sister in charge.’
‘If you please, my dear,’ said Wexford, and the girl gave him a broad smile before hurrying off. ‘Do you have to be so bloody rude, Mike?’
She came back with Sister Lynch, a tall dark-haired Irishwoman in her late twenties. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ She listened, clicked her tongue as Wexford gave her the bare details. ‘There’s a terrible thing. A woman’s not safe to walk abroad. And Miss Comfrey in here only last night to see her father.’
‘We’ll have to see him. Sister.’
‘Not tonight you won’t. Chief Inspector. I’m sure I’m sorry, but I couldn’t allow it, not with the old gentlemen all settling down for the night. They’d none of them get a wink of sleep, and it’s going off duty I am myself in ten minutes. I’ll tell him myself tomorrow, though whether it’ll sink in at all I doubt.’
‘He’s senile?’
‘There’s a word, Chief Inspector, that I’m never knowing the meaning of. Eighty-five he is, and he’s had a major stroke. Mostly he sleeps. If that’s to be senile, senile he is. You’ll be wasting your valuable time seeing him. I’ll break it to him as best I can. Now would there be anything else?’
‘Miss Comfrey’s home address, please.’
‘Certainly.’ Sister Lynch beckoned to a dark-skinned girl who had appeared, pushing a trolley of drugs. ‘Would you get Miss Comfrey’s home address from records, Nurse Mahmud?’
‘Did you talk to Miss Comfrey last night. Sister?’
‘No more than to say hallo and that the old gentleman was just the same. And I said good-bye to her too. She was talking to Mrs Wells and they left together. Mrs Wells’s husband is in the next bed to Mr Comfrey. Here’s the address you were wanting. Thank you, nurse. Number one, Carlyle Villas, Forest Road, Kingsmarkham.’ Sister Lynch studied the card which had been handed to her. ‘No phone I see.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got Mr Comfrey’s address there,’ said Wexford. ‘It’s his daughter’s we want.’
‘But that is his daughter’s, his and his daughter’s.’
Wexford shook his head. ‘No. She lived in London.’
‘It’s the only one we have,’ said Sister Lynch, a slight edge to her voice. ‘As far as we know. Miss Comfrey lived in Kingsmarkham with her father.’
‘Then I’m afraid you were misled. Suppose you had had to get in touch with her – for instance, if her father had taken a turn for the worse – how would you have done so? Notified her by letter? Or sent a messenger.?
Sister Lynch had begun to look huffy. He was questioning her efficiency. ‘That wouldn’t have been necessary. Miss Comfrey phoned in almost every day. Last Thursday, now, she phoned on the very day her father had his stroke.’
‘And yet you say she hadn’t a phone? Sister, I need that address. I shall have to see Mr Comfrey.’
Her eyes went to her watch and noted the time. She said very sharply, ‘Aren’t I telling you, the poor old gentleman’s no more than a vegetable at all? As for giving you an address, you’d as likely get an answer out of my little dog.’
‘Very well. In the absence of Miss Comfrey’s address, I’ll have Mrs Wells’s please.’ This was provided, and Wexford said. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘You must suit yourselves. And now I’ll take my leave of you.’
Wexford murmured as they left, ‘There is nothing you could take from me that I would more willingly part withal,’ and then to Burden, who was smugly looking as if his early rudeness had been justified and he hoped his superior realized it, ‘We’ll get it from the aunt. Odd, though, isn’t it, her not giving her home address to the hospital?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Underhand, but not odd. These old people can be a terrible drag. And it’s always the women who are expected to look after them. I mean, old Comfrey’ll be let out some time and he won’t be able to live on his own any more. A single woman and a daughter is a gift to all those busybody doctors and social workers. They’d seize on her. Wouldn’t even consider expecting it of a son. If she gave them her real address they’d pounce on that as a convalescent home for the old boy.’
‘You’re the last person I thought I’d ever hear handing out Women’s Lib propaganda,’ said Wexford. ‘Wonders will never cease. But doesn’t it strike you that your theory only increases her chances of getting stuck with her father? They think she’s on the spot, they think she lives with him already.’
‘There’ll be an explanation. It isn’t important, is it?’
‘It’s a departure from the norm, and that makes it important to me. I think Mrs Wells next, Mike, and then back to Forest Road to wait for the aunt.'
Mrs Wells was seventy years old, slow of speech and rather confused. She had seen and spoken to Rhoda Comfrey twice before on her previous visits to the hospital, once in May and once in July. On the evening before they had got on the bus together outside the hospital at eight-fifteen. What had they talked about? Mrs Wells thought it had mostly been about her husband’s hip operation. Miss Comfrey hadn’t said much, had seemed a bit nervous and uneasy. Worried about her father, Mrs Wells thought. No, she didn’t know her London address, believed in fact that she lived in Forest Road where she had said she was returning. Mrs Wells had left the bus at the Kingsbrook Bridge, but her companion had remained on it, having a ticket to the next fare stage.
They returned to the police station. The weapon hadn’t been found, and the house-to-house inquiry made by Loring, Marwood and Gates had produced negative results. No one in the cottages or the bungalows had heard or seen anything untoward on the previous evening. The inhabitants of the single detached house were away on holiday, and nobody had been working on the allotments. Rhoda Comfrey had been slightly known to everyone the three men had questioned, but only one had seen her on the previous day, and that had been when she left her father’s house at six-twenty to catch the bus for Stowerton. Her London address was unknown to any of the residents of Forest Road.
‘I want you to get back there,’ Wexford said to Loring, ‘and wait for Mrs Crown. I’m going home for an hour to get a bite to eat. When she comes in, call me on my home number.’
Chapter 3
Dora had been sewing, but the work had been laid aside, and he found her reading a novel. She got up immediately and brought him a bowl of soup, chicken salad, some fruit. He seldom talked about work at home, unless things got very tough. Home was a haven – Oh, what know they of harbours that sail not on the sea? – and he had fallen in love with and married the kind of woman who would give him one. But did she mind? Did she see herself as the one who waited and served while he lived? He had never thought much about it. Thinking of it now reawakened the anxiety that had laid dormant for the past three hours, pushed out of mind by greater urgencies.
‘Hear any more from Sylvia?’ he said.
‘Neil came round for the teddy bear. Ben wouldn’t go to sleep without it.’ She touched his arm, then rested her hand on his wrist. ‘You mustn’t worry about her. She’s grownup. She has to cope with her own problems.’
‘Your son’s your son,’ said her husband, ‘till he gets him a wife, but your daughter’s your daughter the whole of your life.’
‘There goes the phone.’ She sighed, but
not rebelliously. ‘I have measured out my life in telephone bills.’
‘Don’t wait up for me,’ said Wexford.
It was dark now, ten minutes to eleven, the wide sky covered all over with stars. And the moonlight was strong enough to cast bold shadows of tree and gate and pillar box along the length of Forest Road. A single street lamp shone up by the stone wall, and lights were on all over 2, Carlyle Villas, though the other houses were in darkness. He rang the bell on the reeded glass and wrought-iron front door.
‘Mrs Crown?’
He had expected a negative answer because this woman was much younger than he had thought she would be. Only a few years older than he. But she said yes, she was, and asked him what he wanted. She smelt of gin and had about her the reckless air – no apparent fear of him or cautiousness or suspicion – that drink brings, though this might have been habitual with her. He told her who he was and she let him in. There, in a cluttered bizarre living room, he broke the news to her, speaking gently and considerately but all the time sensing that gentleness and consideration weren’t needed here.
‘Well, fancy,’ she said. ‘What a thing to happen! Rhoda, of all people. That’s given me a bit of a shock, that has. A drink is called for. Want one?’ Wexford shook his head. She helped herself from a gin bottle that stood on a limed oak sideboard whose surface was covered with drips and smears and ring marks. ‘I won’t make show of grief. We weren’t close. Where did you say it happened? Down the footpath? You won’t see me down there in a hurry, I can tell you.’
She was like the room they were in, small and overdressed in bright colours and none too clean. The stretch nylon covers on her chairs were of a slightly duller yellow than the tight dress she wore, and unlike it, they were badly marked with cigarette burns. But all were disfigured with the same sort of liquor splashes and food stains. Mrs Crown’s hair was of the same colour and texture as the dried grasses that stood everywhere in green and yellow vases, pale and thin and brittle but defiantly gold. She lit a cigarette and left it hanging in her mouth which was painted, as her niece’s had been, to match her fingernails.
‘I haven’t yet been able to inform your brother,’ Wexford said. ‘It would appear he’s not up to it.’
‘Brother-inlaw, if you don’t mind,’ said Mrs Crown. ‘He’s not my brother, the old devil.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Wexford. ‘Now, Mrs Crown, it’s getting late and I don’t want to keep you up, but I’d like to know what you can tell me of Miss Comfrey’s movements yesterday.'
She stared at him, blowing smoke through her sharp nose. ‘What’s that got to do with some maniac stabbing her? Killed her for her money, didn’t he? She was always loaded, was Rhoda.’ Horrifyingly, she added, with a Wife of Bath look, remembering the old dance, ‘Wouldn’t be for sex, not so likely.’
Wexford didn’t take her up on that one. He said repressively, ‘You saw her yesterday?’
‘She phoned me on Friday to say she’d be coming. Thought I might get bothered if I saw lights on next door, not expecting anyone to be there, if you see what I mean. God knows why she put herself out. I was amazed. Picked up the phone and she says, “Hallo, Lilian. I wonder if you know who this is?” Of course I knew. I’d know that deep voice of hers anywhere and that put-on accent. She never got that from her mum and dad. But you don’t want to know all that. She came in a taxi yesterday about one. All dressed-up she was, but miserable as sin. She was always down in the mouth when she came here, made no secret she hated the place, far cry from the way she sounded on the phone, all cocky, if you know what I mean. Sure you won’t have a drink? I think I’ll have a drop more.’
A good deal more than a drop of neat gin in her glass, Lilian Crown perched on the sofa arm and swung her legs. The calves were shapeless with varicose veins, but she still kept the high instep, the dancing foot, of one who has led a riotous youth. ‘She never came in here till a quarter past six. “Feel like coming with me, Lilian?” she said, knowing damn well I wouldn’t. I told her I’d got a date with my gentleman friend, which was the honest truth, but I could tell she didn’t like it, always was jealous. “When’ll you be back?” she said. “I’ll come in and tell you how he is.” “All right,” I said, doing my best to be pleasant, though I never had any time for him or her after my poor sister went. “I’ll be in by ten,” I said, but she never came and no lights came on. Gone straight back to London, I thought, knowing her, never dreaming a thing like that had happened.’
Wexford nodded. ‘I’ll very likely want to speak to you again, Mrs Crown. In the meantime, would you give me Miss Comfrey’s London address?’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘You mean you don’t know it?’
‘That’s what I mean. Look, I live next door to the old devil, sure I do, but that’s convenience, that is. I came here for my sister’s sake and after she went I just stopped on. But that doesn’t mean we were close. As a matter of fact, him and me, we weren’t on speaking terms. As for Rhoda – well, I won’t speak ill of the dead. She was my sister’s girl, when all’s said and done, but we never did get on. She left home must be twenty years ago, and if I’ve set eyes on her a dozen times since, that’s it. She’d no call to give me her address or her phone number, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have asked for it. Look, if I’d got it I’d give it you, wouldn’t I? I’d have no call not to.’
‘At least, I suppose, you know what she did for a living?’
‘In business, she was,’ said Lilian Crown. ‘Got her own business.’ Bitterness pinched her face. ‘Money stuck to Rhoda, always did. And she hung on to it. None of it came my way or his. He’s a proper old devil but he’s her dad, isn’t he?’
A woman who had said she wouldn’t speak ill of the dead… Wexford went home, building up in his mind a picture of what Rhoda Comfrey had been. A middle-aged, well-off, successful woman, probably self-employed; a woman who had disliked the town of her origins because it held for her painful associations; who liked her privacy and had kept, in so far as she could, her address to herself; a clever, cynical, hard-bitten woman, indifferent to this country world’s opinion, and owing to her unpleasant old father no more than a bare duty. Still, it was too early for this sort of speculation. In the morning they would have a warrant to search Mr Comfrey’s house, the address, the nature of her business, would be discovered; and Rhoda Comfrey’s life unfold. Already Wexford had a feeling – one of those illogical intuitive feelings the Chief Constable so much disliked – that the motive for her murder lay in that London life.
Kingsmarkham Police station had been built about fifteen years before, and the conservative townsfolk had been shocked by the appearance of this stark white box with its flat roof and wide picture windows. But a decade and a half had tripled the size of the saplings around it so that now its severity was half-screened by birches and laburnums. Wexford had his office on the second floor; buttercup-yellow walls with maps on them and a decorous calendar of Sussex views, a new blue carpet, his own desk of dark red rosewood that belonged to him personally and not to the Mid-Sussex Constabulary. The big window afforded him a fine view of the High Street, of higgledy-piggledy rooftops, of green meadows beyond. This morning, Wednesday, August tenth, it was wide open and the air-conditioning switched off.
Another lovely day, exactly what the clear sky and stars and bright moon of the previous night had promised. Since he had looked in first thing in the morning and left again for Stowerton Royal Infirmary, the clothes Rhoda Comfrey had been wearing had been sent up and left on the desk. Wexford threw down beside them the early editions of the evening papers he had just picked up. Middle-aged spinsters, even when stabbed to death, were apparently not news, and neither paper had allotted to this murder more than a couple of paragraphs on an inside page. He sat down by the window to cool down, for the front aspect of the police station was still in shade.
James Albert Comfrey. They had drawn cretonne curtains printed with flowers round the old man’s bed. His hands moved like
crabs, gnarled and crooked, across the sheet. Sometimes they plucked at a tuft of wool on the red blanket, then they parted and crawled back, only to begin again on their journey. His mouth was open, he breathed stertorously. In the strong, tough yet enfeebled face, Wexford had seen the lineaments of the daughter, the big nose, long upper lip and cliff-like chin.
‘Like I said,’ said Sister Lynch, ‘it never meant a thing to him when I passed on the news. There’s little that registers at all.’
‘Mr Comfrey,’ said Wexford, approaching the bed.
‘Sure, and you may as well save your breath.’
‘I’d like to have a look in that locker.’.
‘I can’t have that,’ said Sister Lynch.
‘I have a warrant to search his house.’ Wexford was beginning to lose his patience. ‘D’you think I couldn’t get one to search a cupboard?’
‘What’s my position going to be if there’s a comeback?’
‘You mean he’s going to complain to the hospital board?’
Without wasting any more time, Wexford had opened the lower part of the locker. It contained nothing but a pair of slippers and a rolled-up dressing-gown. Irish are making itself apparent behind him in sharp exhalations, he shook out the dressing-gown and felt in its pockets. Nothing. He rolled it up again. An infringement of privacy? he thought. The gown was made of red towelling with ‘Stowerton Infirmary’ worked in white cotton on its hem. Perhaps James Comfrey no longer possessed anything of his own. He did. In the drawer above the cupboard was a set of dentures in a plastic box and a pair of glasses. Impossible to imagine this man owning an address book. There was nothing of that sort in the drawer, nothing else at all but a scrap of folded tissue.
So he had come away, baulked and wondering. But the house itself would yield that address, and if it didn’t those newspaper accounts, meagre as they were, would rouse the London friends and acquaintances, employers of employees, who must by now have missed her. He turned his attention to the clothes. It was going to be a day of groping through other people’s possessions – such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!