A Fatal Inversion

by Ruth Rendell

  “Have a drink, Adam. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Like a half-drowned kitten, Zosie looked, a rescued creature for whom there is yet no hope. She had her forefinger in her mouth, pulling down one corner of it. Vivien said, “Would one of you drive me to the village? I should like to phone Mr. Tatian.”

  Shiva looked angry. “You’re still insisting on that? You realize how you are letting the poor man down, don’t you? He is relying on you to come and be nurse to his children. What will he do? Have you thought of that?”

  “It’s impossible,” Vivien said. “I can’t go there. Anything is better than my going there.”

  “I shall leave here without you then. I have my future to think of even if you haven’t.”

  Adam could tell Vivien was waiting for him to say she could stay, that she would be welcome, but he wasn’t going to say it. The bread they were eating she had made. Because of her the house was clean and everything smooth-running. By her housekeeping and her management she had probably saved him from denuding the place of furniture but he couldn’t ask her to stay. Rufus hadn’t looked at him since that outburst over the clock but now he did and Adam thought he could read a lot into that glance, especially when Rufus said, addressing himself to Vivien: “I’ll take you back to London with me, if you like. If you want to go back to that squat you were living in, I don’t mind taking you over to Hammersmith.”

  But Catherine Ryemark? What was Rufus indicating here? That he would take the tiny body with him or that he, Adam, left alone, was somehow to conceal it?

  Rufus said, “Do you want to go into the village now?”

  “The sooner the better, I suppose.” Vivien looked troubled. She was making a decision to act quite against her personal desires, Adam could tell. She was doing this, as she did so many things, for an abstract principle. It mystified and mildly annoyed him. “I’ll just go up and get my shawl,” she said. “It’s got quite cold. We’ve forgotten it gets cold but it does.”

  It was at this point that the post girl came. Shiva was the first to hear her. He sat quite still at the table, his head turned.

  “What the hell’s that?” Adam said.

  They all thought it was the police, even Rufus. He got up and moved to a yard or two inside the window. The letterbox on the front door made its double rap and by that time Adam had been into the gun room and come back with Hilbert’s shotgun. Shiva jumped up.

  “My God!”

  The red bicycle passed the window, a flash of red and silver only, as a bird might have flown by or a flag been pulled out by the wind. Rufus came in from the hall with an envelope in his hand.

  “It was the mail,” he said. “A bill. Are you crazy?”

  “Jesus,” said Adam, “I thought it was the fuzz.”

  “We all thought it was the fuzz. What were you going to do if it was? Kill them?”

  “I don’t know. Did they see you?”

  “It was that girl again. How do I know if she saw me?” Rufus looked at the gun that Adam held pointing at the table. Limp, pale, wide-eyed, Zosie stared apathetically into the muzzle of it. “Put the bloody thing down. Christ, the sooner I get out of this madhouse the better.”

  From upstairs, a long way off, Vivien’s voice came to them in a strange, drawn-out cry. Not a scream or a howl but a round O sound immensely protracted, a cry of sorrow.

  They knew what had happened, what she had found. She had gone to look for her shawl. Adam, too late, remembered where that shawl was, that it had been used to cover the body in the tallboy drawer. Unable to find the shawl in her own room, Vivien had gone looking for it, recalling no doubt that she had lent it to Zosie for the baby.

  They found themselves moving closer together, taking up a united stand along the back and the head of the table. Zosie got up and held on to Adam. There was silence in the kitchen but for Shiva clearing his throat, a nervous, muffled sound. Adam thought of the post girl, still not far off, no doubt having to push her bike up the drift… .

  Vivien’s footsteps sounded, running, along the passage, down the back stairs. Zosie began to whimper.

  “Shut up,” Adam said. “Shut up or I’ll kill you.”

  Vivien opened the door and came in, her tanned face bleached as if she had jaundice. Her eyes had become big and staring, the whites showing all around the irises. She was goosefleshed and the down on her arms stood erect. He felt the hair rise on his own neck.

  Incongruously Vivien said, “What are you doing with that gun?” And then, “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  “It was cot death, Vivien.” Rufus took a step toward her but she recoiled from him. “It was no one’s fault. These things happen. It would probably have happened if the child had been in her own home.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why should I tell lies about it? We’re all in this together. There’s no point throwing the shit around.”

  “You’ve lied to me once. You said you’d taken the baby back.”

  It was unanswerable. “Okay,” Adam said. “We lied to you but we’re not lying now.” He wished he could keep his voice steady, he wished he could control the muscles of his mouth and throat. Rufus could. “D’you think Zosie would have hurt the baby? She loved her, you know that.”

  He had made a mistake in mentioning it. Zosie let out a wail, and rushing to the back door began pounding on it with her fists. If people are allowed to have guns, even in any sort of danger, people will use them. Adam had read this but never before put it to the test. He found himself raising the gun and pointing it at Zosie.

  “Put that down,” Rufus said.

  It was brave of him not to be deterred by Adam’s shout to mind his own business and keep out of this. He simply reached out and took the gun and laid it on the table. Vivien went over to Zosie and got hold of her arms, pulling her to her and holding her. She walked her back to the table, sat her down, sat beside her. Adam heard himself give a heavy sigh, a release of long-held breath.

  “You must be brave, Zosie,” Vivien said. “We’re going to the police to tell them about this. I think you know that, don’t you? The only thing now is to be open and honest about everything, tell them how you took the baby because you hadn’t been well, because you’d lost your own baby. They won’t be horrible to you and I’ll be there. We’ll all be there. We’ll tell them how good you were to the baby, how you looked after her but she died just the same. Rufus will tell them it was cot death she died of and they’ll listen to him because he knows about medical things.”

  “You have to be joking,” said Rufus.

  Vivien was measuring out drops from a little vial to give Zosie. They were her Bach rescue remedy. “There isn’t anything else to be done, Rufus,” she said gently. “We have to do it. We have to go to the village now and phone the police, or it might be better to drive to one of the towns. Yes, that might be best.” Zosie was looking at her in fear. She smiled at her, gave her the cup with colorless liquid in it, the panacea that was supposed to be a restorative in any emergency. “They won’t do anything bad to us, perhaps put us on probation at the worst. Zosie may have to have some sort of treatment, that’s all they can do. You see, we didn’t mean any harm, none of us did. The worst is that you three rather supported Zosie in keeping the baby, that’s all.”

  Rufus had been watching Vivien’s pouring of the rescue remedy with contemptuous distaste. “They’d kick me out of medical school, that’s all. I could say good-bye to all my prospects.”

  Shaking his head, swallowing, Shiva seemed to have difficulty in speaking, but he did speak, lifting his hands up to his neck in a curious gesture as if he were holding his head secure on his shoulders. “And what about me? My father? I am supposed to be getting to a teaching hospital.”

  “Do you really think those things important compared to what’s happened here? This was someone’s child, a precious child, and she’s dead.”

  “They’d think we’d done something to her. We could go to jail for
life,” Adam said flatly.

  Rufus shrugged. “Come on. Things are no different from what they were half an hour ago except that Vivien knows. So we go on as we planned. The first thing is for Shiva and Vivien to get ready and then I drive them to Colchester station. Right?”

  She wouldn’t have it. She stood firm. “No, it isn’t right. I can’t have anything to do with this, Rufus. I can’t go in with you all. If the rest of you won’t come with me, I shall go alone. There’s a police house at Sindon.”

  “You’re no driver, Vivien,” Rufus said, and he came up to her and took her by the arm, a tall strong man, her weight and half as much again.

  She shook him off. “I can walk.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t. There are four of us to one of you. We can keep you here even if that means manhandling you.”

  One of the terrible things was that Vivien had said no more after that about going to the police, about telling anyone at all. She had declared her intention but had not repeated it after Rufus said that about manhandling her. Perhaps she had changed her mind and would not have gone. Adam could hardly bear to think this, even now. At the time, if he had thought coherently about anything at all, he had thought only that she must not be allowed to leave. But it was possible she never would have gone to the police. Though she hated what they had done, or what she believed they had done, she would not have shopped them, she would have been loyal. Alone, she would not have stood against them.

  On the other hand, she had no bag with her. So in leaving the house she had not had the simple intention of escaping and making her way to London. Her clothes and her carpet bag were still upstairs, the box of flower remedies still on the table. But she prised off the hand Zosie had put out to clutch at her skirt and she pushed Rufus away. Her eyes lingered on Shiva, just looking at him without expression, but that blank gaze made him wince. She put up her hand and tore the Gestalt prayer down from the wall. Still holding the piece of paper, she opened the back door, but without a word, still not saying she would go to the police.

  Somehow or other Shiva had got between her and Rufus, so that to reach her Rufus would have had to push him aside, and did not in fact reach her, did not come within feet of her. There was a rush of cold damp air into the kitchen and Vivien was running out across the flagstones… .

  News from Wyvis Hall had disappeared underground. There had been nothing since Sunday. Adam thought he had observed this kind of thing before in the progress of a murder inquiry—or the progress that is made public knowledge—how day after day small paragraphs or a few lines would appear in newspapers to be followed by an ominous lull. A week might pass during which time guiltless readers would forget, dismiss the case completely from their minds. And then, suddenly, would come the short piece about the man helping police with their inquiries, succeeded the next day by the announcement of an arrest, a court hearing.

  Rufus phoned to tell him the police had not come or been in touch. Adam was aghast to hear of the visit to Nunes. He felt he could never have dared approach it or that an invisible wall surrounded it and kept him out. As to the police, it was not worth their while to seek confirmation, for they had never believed his story. It was the coypu man they were interested in. He imagined Winder or Stretton or both of them closeted for long hours with the coypu man and the post girl and the farmer and Rufus’s taxi driver while these people told them of the group of people living at Wyvis Hall, two girls among them, of the sounds of shotgun fire, of a baby heard crying, of a gardener peremptorily dismissed, of wine bottles, dozens of them, put out for the refuse collection each week, of a hasty departure, of new-cut turf in the clearing in the pinewood… .

  There was nothing in the papers on Thursday. It was Anne’s birthday and they were going out to dinner. She had asked his parents to baby-sit because she couldn’t find anyone else, she said, but Adam was annoyed by it. He didn’t want to go out because he was afraid of coming in and finding the police waiting for him.

  Lewis said, “Funny, that business at Wyvis Hall seems to have died a natural death.” He sounded disappointed.

  “Which is more than the people in the grave did,” said his wife.

  “Absolutely. You’re right. I don’t suppose we’ve heard the end of it.” He said that Adam could offer him a small sherry if he liked, very dry if possible, but amontillado would do. The sherry glass did not have a Greek key design around its rim but Lewis asked just the same if this was “by any chance one of my poor old uncle’s glasses.”

  Adam didn’t answer.

  “It’s a bad business, all of it, I don’t suppose that little cemetery will ever be restored. That little dog Blaze, a West Highland, you know, Anne—we had quite a funeral for him, do you remember, Beryl? I’ve a very strong notion you were there, too, Adam, but no more than a babe in arms. Your aunt Lilian read a piece of poetry, something of Whitman’s about wanting to live with animals, and we laid the poor little fellow in the earth. Your aunt Lilian was a strange woman.”

  “Why do you call her my aunt? If she was anyone’s aunt, she was yours.”

  Lewis went on as if he had not spoken. “Who would have imagined on that sentimental but rather charming occasion that the cemetery would be put to such a use?”

  Adam said recklessly, “A girl I knew saw that dog’s ghost on the back stairs.”

  Anne gave him a look of disgust. This time Lewis did reply. “Absolute rubbish. A load of twaddle. What girl?”

  “Come on,” Adam said to Anne. “We might as well go.”

  In the car she said to him, “Are you losing your mind or is there some purpose behind all this?”

  A movement of his shoulders was all the answer she got.

  “Why are we going out together like this? It’s a farce.”

  “We’re celebrating your birthday by quarreling in a restaurant instead of at home.”

  “I hate you,” said Anne.

  Those had been Zosie’s words to him too. He had forgotten, or thought he had forgotten, but those words were the key that when touched gave entry to the last file of all.

  “I hate you, I hate you …” as she tried to get hold of him, clutching at his clothes, tumbling over as he pushed her away.

  He parked the car, the engine died. He sat at the wheel with his eyes closed. Then he made a great effort. He didn’t want to remember any of this, he wanted to escape out of it to a blank screen. Anne had got out of the car and slammed the door. Adam also got out, lifting his face to the cold air, the thin sprinkling of rain.

  It was the post girl on her bicycle he had been afraid of, that she had not gone, or not gone far enough, or was there waiting, her mercy to be thrown upon, her bicycle to be borrowed, her consent obtained to be a witness… .

  But there was no one. He had seen no one. The drift was empty, windswept, under a gray tumbled sky. There was no one but the figure in the pale cotton dress running across the flagstones. And voices shouting and Zosie’s voice raised in a thin wail. Following Anne across the pavement toward the doors of the restaurant, he found the escape key failing, the past inescapable, the present lost. He had raised the gun to his shoulder, braced himself for the kickback, and fired. She screamed and he fired again and this time she whirled around, shot full of arrows, fountaining blood, blood exploding from the little body, breaking in great scarlet splashes all over the cream cotton.

  Now, as then, he stumbled, grabbing just in time the lintel of the door. In the dark entrance to the place he shook himself, opened his eyes wide, forced his mouth into a grin. Then after the third firing of the gun, he had fallen down, had lain spreadeagled on the stones, crying, “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”

  20

  WHEN HE CAME BACK from Nunes, or from his visit to his patient in a Colchester hospital, Rufus had found Marigold at home waiting unquestioningly for him. And he had not questioned her about her day either, though aware of how unnaturally they were behaving toward each other. It had been a precedent, he knew very well. Now she would never as
k him and he would never ask her, they would get into the habit of doing separate secret things, bland and smiling and calling each other darling more often than could be sincere. But that evening, eating supper with friends who were another young married couple, he could not help feeling that her behavior with the husband was constrained. They behaved, he fancied, as if they intended to seem indifferent to each other while last time they had all been together there had been flirtatiousness. It was probably all in his imagination.

  The days passed and he phoned Adam. He waited, as Adam waited, for more news from Wyvis Hall. As soon as he saw the name on the front page of the Standard he knew it was Shiva’s. Manjusri. He remembered now. It was Shiva’s house that had burned down and Shiva who had died trying to save his wife. A shop assistant, the newspaper called him, but it was the same one. Rufus, secret drink at hand, scoured the paper for what he had got into the habit of looking for every morning and every evening, and found nothing. But it was only a matter of time, he was sure of that now. Too many witnesses had been revealed for him to have much faith any longer in the possibility of escape. He had not begun making contingency plans, for there were none he could make, there were no options open to a doctor, a consultant, who had been concerned in murder and concealing deaths and concealing bodies. All he could do was psych himself up to behave with coolness and decorum when they came for him. But he was past feeling relief at the death or disappearance of witnesses, at the departure of Mary Gage, Bella’s death and Evan’s. For Shiva, looking once more at the photograph, he felt something almost alien to his nature, a kind of horrified pity. Yet in a way Shiva was better dead than facing what Rufus now saw as inevitable.

  For Shiva had been even more deeply concerned than he. Shiva had thought up the ransom idea and his, too, was the idea of burying the bodies in the woodland cemetery. Sitting silent with the paper before him, Rufus thought of it now. He was too silent and Marigold’s cheerful acceptance of his silence was almost unnerving. Weakening, Rufus had a vague absurd dream of being able to tell her, of weeping in her arms and of her weeping, too, and of love and commitment, but he steadied himself. That wasn’t what he had ever wanted, certainly not what he would get. Almost better to contemplate poor Shiva than an alternative life he didn’t have and never would… .