A Sleeping Life

by Ruth Rendell

  There was one more Grenville West to see, the one who dragged out his life in the Abbotts Palmer Hospital. Wexford tried to picture what that man would be like now, and his mind sickened. Besides, he knew he had only contemplated going there to keep himself away from the police station, away from hearing that Laquin had nothing for him, that Griswold had called in the Yard over his head, for it was getting to the end of the week now, it was Thursday.That was no attitude for a responsible police officer to take. He went in. The weather was hot and muggy again, and he felt he had gone back a week in time, for there, waiting for him again, was Malina Patel.

  An exquisite little hand was placed on his sleeve, limpid eyes looked earnestly up at him. She seemed tinier and more fragile than ever. ‘I’ve brought Polly with me.’

  Wexford remembered their previous encounters. The first time he had seen her as a provocative tease, the second as an enchanting fool. But now an uneasiness began to overcome his susceptibility. She gave the impression of trying hard to be good, of acting always on impulse, of a dotty and delightful innocence. But was innocent dottiness compatible with such careful dressing, calculated to stun? Could that sweet guilelessness be natural? He cursed those susceptibilities of his, for they made his voice soft and gallant when he said:

  ‘Have you now? Then where is she?’

  ‘In the loo. She said she felt sick and one of the policemen showed her where the loo was.’

  ‘All right. Someone will show you both up to my office when she’s feeling better.’

  Burden was there before him. ‘It would seem, according to your pal, that the whole of France is now being scoured for our missing author. He hasn’t been in Annecy, whatever your little nursery rhyme friend may say.’

  ‘She’s on her way up now, perhaps to elucidate.’

  The two girls came in. Pauline Flinders’ face was greenish from nausea, her lower lip trembling under the ugly prominent teeth. She wore faded frayed jeans and a shirt which looked as if they had been picked out of a crumpled heap on a bedroom floor. Malina too wore jeans, of toffee-brown silk, stitched in white, and a white clinging sweater and gold medallions on a long gold chain.

  ‘I made her come,’ said Malina. ‘She was in an awful state. I thought she’d been really ill.’ And she sat down, having given Burden a shy sidelong smile.

  ‘What is it. Miss Flinders?’ Wexford said gently.

  ‘Tell him, Polly. You promised you would. It’s silly to come all this way for nothing.’

  Polly Flinders lifted her head. She said rapidly, in a monotone, ‘I haven’t had a card from Grenville. That was last year’s. The postmark was smudged and I thought you wouldn’t know, and you didn’t know.’

  The explosion of wrath she perhaps expected didn’t come. Wexford merely nodded. ‘You also thought I wouldn’t know he knew Rhoda Comfrey. But he had known her for years, hadn’t he?’

  Breathlessly, Polly said, ‘She helped him with his books. She was there in his flat a lot. But I don’t know where she lived. I never asked, I didn’t want to know. About the postcard, I…’

  ‘Never mind the postcard. Were you and Miss Comfrey in Mr West’s flat on the evening of August fifth?’ A nod answered him and a choking sound like a sob. ‘And you both overheard her make a phone call from there, saying where she would be on the Monday?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Tell him the truth, Polly. Tell him everything and it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Very well. Miss Patel, I’ll do the prompting.’ He hadn’t taken his eyes from the other girl, and now he said to her, ‘Have you any idea of Mr West’s present whereabouts? No? I think you told me the lie about the postcard because you were afraid for Mr West, believing him to have had something to do with Miss Comfrey’s death.’

  She gave him an eager pathetic nod, her hands clenched.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll talk any more now,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow evening. That will give you plenty of time to get into a calmer frame of mind.’ Malina looked disappointed, less so when he went on, ‘I shall want you to give me the name of the man with whom you spent that Monday evening. Will you think about that?’

  Again she said yes, a sorrowful and despairing monosyllable, and then Burden took them both away, returning to say, ‘Rhoda Comfrey was blackmailing West. I wonder why we didn’t think of that befere.’

  ‘Because it isn’t a very bright idea. I can see how someone might succeed in blackmailing her. She had a secret life she genuinely wanted kept secret. But West?’

  ‘West,’ said Burden repressively, ‘is almost certainly homosexual. Why else reject Polly? Why else mooch about Soho at night? Why hobnob with all those blokes in bars? And why, most of all, have a long-standing friendship with an older woman on a completely platonic basis? That’s the sort of thing these queers do. They like to know women, but it’s got to be safe women, married ones or women much older than they are.’

  Wexford wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Once again he had come up against Burden’s solid common sense. And hadn’t his own ‘feelings’ also been hinting at it when he read the letter to Charles West?

  He jeered mildly just the same. ‘So this long-standing friend suddenly takes it into her head to blackmail him, does she? After ten years? Threatens to expose his gay goings-on, I suppose.’ He had never liked the word ‘queer’. ‘Why should he care? It’s nothing these days. He probably advertises his – his inversion in Gay News.’

  ‘Does he? Then why doesn’t your Indian lady friend know about it? Why doesn’t his agent or Vivian or Polly? It mightn’t do him any good with his readership if ordinary decent people were to find what he gets up to in London at night. It wouldn’t with me, I can tell you.’

  ‘Since when have you been one of his readers?’

  Burden looked a little shamefaced as he always did when confessing to any even mild intellectual lapse. ‘Since yesterday morning,’ he admitted. ‘Got to do something while I’m being a phone operator, haven’t I? I sent Loring out to get me two of them in paperback. I thought they’d be above my head, but they weren’t. Quite enjoyable, lively sort of stuff, really, and the last thing you’d feel is that their author’s homosexual.’

  ‘But you say he is.’

  ‘And he wants to keep it dark. He’s queer but he’s still thinking of settling down with Polly – they do that when they get middle-aged – and Rhoda mightn’t have liked the idea of only being able to see him with a wife around. So she threatens to spill the beans unless he gives Polly up. And there’s your motive.’

  ‘It doesn’t account for how he happens to have the same name as a whole tribe of her aunt’s relatives.’

  ‘Look,’ said Burden, ‘your Charles West wrote to him, thinking he might be a cousin. Why shouldn’t Rhoda have done the same thing years ago, say after she’d read his first book? Charles West didn’t pursue it, but she may have done. That could be the reason for their becoming friends in the first place, and then the friendship was strengthened by Rhoda doing research for him for that book that’s dedicated to her. The name is relevant only in that it brought them together.’

  ‘I just hope,’ said Wexford, ‘that tomorrow will bring West and us together.’

  Robin came up and opened the car door for him.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Wexford. ‘You’re the new hall porter, are you? I suppose you want a tip.’ He handed over the ices he had bought on the way home. ‘One for your brother, mind.’

  ‘I’ll never be able to do it again,’ said Robin.

  ‘Why’s that? School starting? You’ll still get in before I do.’

  ‘We’re going home, Grandad. Daddy’s coming for us at seven.’

  To the child Wexford couldn’t express what he felt. There was only one thing he could say, and in spite of his longing to be alone once more with Dora in peace and quiet and orderliness, it was true. ‘I shall miss you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robin complacently. Happy children set a high
valuation on themselves. They expect to be loved and missed. ‘And we never saw the water rat.’

  ‘There’ll be other times. You’re not going to the North Pole.’

  The little boy laughed inordinately at that one. Wexford sent him off to find Ben and hand the ice over, and then he let himself into the house. Sylvia was upstairs packing. He put his arm round her shoulder, turned her face towards him.

  ‘Well, my dear, so you and Neil have settled your differences?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Not exactly. Only he’s said he’ll give me all the support I need in taking a degree if I start next year. And he’s – he’s bought a dishwasher!’ She gave a little half-ashamed laugh. ‘But that’s not why I’m going back.’

  ‘I think I know why.’

  She pulled away from him, turning her head. For all her height and her majestic carriage, there was something shy and gauche about her. ‘I can’t live without him. Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed him dreadfully.’

  ‘That’s the only good reason for going back, isn’t it?’

  ‘The other thing – well, you can say women are equal to men but you can’t give them men’s position in the world. Because that’s in men’s minds and it’ll take hundreds of years to change it,’ She came out with a word that was unfamiliar to her wellread father. ‘One would just have to practise aeonism,’ she said.

  What had she been reading now? Before he could ask her, the boys came in.

  ‘We could have a last try for the water rat, Grandad.’

  ‘Oh, Robin! Grandad’s tired and Daddy’s coming for us in an hour.’

  ‘An hour,’ said Robin with a six-year-old’s view of time, ‘is ever so long.’

  So they went off together, the three of them, over the hill and across the meadow to the Kingsbrook. It was damp and misty and still, the willows bluish amorphous shadows, every blade of grass glistening with water drops. The river had risen and was flowing fast, the only thing in nature that moved.

  ‘Grandad carry,’ said Ben somewhat earlier in the expedition than usual.

  But as Wexford bent down to lift him up, something apart from the river moved. A little way to the right of them, in the opposite bank, a pair of bright eyes showed themselves at the mouth of a hole.

  ‘Ssh,’ Wexford whispered. ‘Keep absolutely still.’

  The water rat emerged slowly. It was not at all rat-like but handsome and almost rotund with spiky fur the colour of sealskin and a round alert face. It approached the water with slow stealth but entered it swiftly and began to swim, spreading and stretching its body, towards the bank on the side where they stood. And when it reached the bank it paused and looked straight at them seemingly without fear, before scurrying off into the thick green rushes.

  Robin waited until it had disappeared. Then he danced up and down with delight. ‘We saw the water rat! We saw the water rat!’

  ‘Ben wants to see Daddy! Ben want to go home! Poor Ben’s feet are cold!’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased we saw the water rat, Grandad?’

  ‘Very pleased,’ said Wexford, wishing that his own quest might come to so simple and satisfying an end.

  Chapter 17

  Grenville West’s elusiveness could no longer be put down to chance. He was on the run and no doubt had been for nearly three weeks now. Everything pointed to his being the killer of Rhoda Comfrey, and by Friday morning Wexford saw that the case had grown too big for him, beyond the reach of his net. Far from hoping to dissuade the Chief Constable from carrying out his threat, he saw the inevitability of calling in Scotland Yard and also the resources of Interpol. But his call to the Chief Constable left him feeling a little flat, and the harsh voice of Michael Baker, phoning from Kenbourne Vale, made him realize only that now he must begin confessing failure…

  Baker asked him how he was, referred to their ‘red faces’ over the Farriner business, then said:

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re still interested in that chap Grenville West, are you?’

  To Wexford it had seemed as if the whole world must be hunting for him, and yet here was Baker speaking as if the man were still a red herring, incongruously trailed across some enormously more significant scent.

  ‘Am I still interested! Why?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Baker. ‘Better come up to the Smoke then. It’d take too long to go into details on the phone, but the gist is that West’s car’s been found in an hotel garage not far from here, and West left the hotel last Monday fortnight without paying his bill.’

  Wexford didn’t need to ask any more now. He remembered to express effusive gratitude, and within not much more than an hour he was sitting opposite Baker at Kenbourne Vale Police Station, Stevens having recovered from his flu or perhaps only his antipathy to London traffic.

  ‘I’ll give you a broad outline,’ said Baker, ‘and then we’ll go over to the Trieste Hotel and see the manager. We got a call from him this morning and I sent Clements up there. West checked in on the evening of Sunday, August seventh, and parked his car, a red Citroen, in one of the hotel’s lock-up garages. When he didn’t appear to pay his bill on Wednesday morning, a chambermaid told Hetherington – that’s the manager – that his bed hadn’t been slept in for two nights.’

  ‘Didn’t he do anything about it?’ Wexford put in.

  ‘Not then. He says he knew who West was, had his address and had no reason to distrust him. Besides, he’d left a suitcase with clothes in it in his room and his car in the garage. But when it got to the end of the week he phoned West’s home, and getting no reply sent someone round to Elm Green. You can go on from there, Sergeant, you talked to the man.’

  Clements, who had come in while Baker was speaking, greeted Wexford with a funny little half-bow. ‘Well, sir, this Hetherington, who’s a real smoothie but not, I reckon, up to anything he shouldn’t be, found out from the girl in that wine bar place where West was, and he wasn’t too pleased. But he calculated West would write to him from France.’

  ‘Which didn’t happen?’

  ‘No, sir. Hetherington didn’t hear a word and he got to feeling pretty sore about it. Then, he says, it struck him the girl had said a motoring holiday, which seemed fishy since West’s car was still at the Trieste. Also West had gone off with his room key and hadn’t left an ignition key with the hotel. Hetherington began to feel a bit worried, said he suspected foul play, though he didn’t get on to us. Instead he went through West’s case and found an address book. He got the phone numbers of West’s publishers and his agent and Miss Flinders and he phoned them all. None of them could help him, they all said West was in France, so this morning, at long last, he phoned us.’

  They were driven up to North Kenbourne, round Montfort Circus and down a long street of lofty houses. Wexford noted that Undine Road was within easy walking distance of Parish Oak tube station, and not far therefore from Princevale Road and Dr Lomond’s surgery. Formerly the Trieste Hotel had been a gigantic family house, but its balconies and turrets and jutting gables had been masked with new brickwork or weather-boarding, and its windows enlarged and glazed with plain glass. Mr Hetherington also seemed to have been smoothed out, his sleek fair hair, pink china skin and creaseless suit. He presented as spruce an appearance compared with the four policemen as his hotel did with its neighbours. His careful grooming reminded Wexford of Burden’s fastidiousness, though the inspector never quite had the look of having been sprayed all over with satin-finish lacquer.

  He took them into his office, a luxurious place that opened off a white-carpeted, redwood panelled hallway in which very large houseplants stood about on Corinthian columns.

  Neither Baker nor Clements were the sort of men to go in for specious courtesies or obsequious apology. In his rough way. Baker said, ‘You’ll have to tell the whole story again, sir. We’re taking a serious view.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ Hetherington flashed a smile that bore witness to his daily use of dental floss, and held it steadily as if for unseen cameras. ‘I’m feel
ing considerable concern about Mr West myself. I feel convinced something dreadful has happened. Do please sit down.’ He eyed Wexford’s raincoat uncertainly, ushered him away from the white upholstered chair in which he had been about to sit, and into a duncoloured one. He said, ‘You’ll be more comfortable there, I think,’ as to a caller of low social status directed to the servants’ entrance. ‘Now where shall I begin?’

  ‘At the beginning,’ said Wexford with perfect gravity. ‘Go on to the end and then stop.’

  This time he got an even more uncertain look. ‘The beginning,’ said Hetherington, ‘would be on the Saturday, Saturday the sixth. Mr West telephoned and asked if he could have a room for three nights, the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Naturally, that would usually be an impossible request in August, but it so happened that a very charming lady from Minneapolis who stays with us regularly every year had cancelled on account of…’ He caught Wexford’s eye, stern censor of snobbish digression. ‘Yes, well, as I say, it happened to be possible and I told Mr West he could have Mrs Gruber’s room. He arrived at seven on the Sunday and signed the register. I have it here.’

  Wexford and Baker looked at it. It was signed ‘Grenville West’ and the Elm Green address was given. Certain that the manager was incapable of obeying his injunction, Wexford said:

  ‘He had been here before, I think?’

  ‘Oh, yes, once before.’

  ‘Mr Hetherington, weren’t you surprised that a man who lived within what is almost walking distance of the hotel should want to stay here?’

  ‘Surprised?’ said Hetherington. ‘Certainly not. Why should I be? What business was it of mine? I shouldn’t be surprised if a gentleman who lived next door wanted to stay in the hotel.’

  He took the register away from them. While his back was turned Clements murmured with kindly indulgence, ‘It happens a lot, sir. Men have tiffs with their wives or forget their keys.’

  Maybe, Wexford thought, but in those cases they don’t book their night’s refuge some fifteen hours in advance. Even if the others didn’t find it odd, he did. He asked Hetherington if West had brought much luggage.