by Ruth Rendell
“Your hair’s all wet.” She touched his hair and the raindrops on his face. “I’m not drunk,” she said, “but I have been. That stuff is very nasty but it deadens you for a bit. I went out this afternoon to buy some food—I haven’t eaten for days—but I didn’t buy any, I couldn’t. When I came to the sweet counter I kept thinking of how John used to beg me to buy chocolate and I wouldn’t because it was bad for his teeth. And I wished I’d let him have it, all he wanted, because it wouldn’t have made any difference now, would it?”
She stared at him blankly, the tears pouring down her face.
“You mustn’t say that.”
“Why not? He’s dead. You know he’s dead. I keep thinking that sometimes I got cross with him and I smacked him and I wouldn’t let him have the sweets he wanted … Oh, Mike! What shall I do? Shall I drink that wine and take all Dr. Lomax’s tablets? Or shall I go out in the rain and just walk and walk till I die? What’s the use of living? I’ve got no one, no one.”
“You’ve got me,” said Burden.
For answer she clung to him again, but this time more tightly. “Don’t leave me. Promise you won’t leave me.”
“You ought to go to bed,” he said. There was, he thought, a sickening irony here. Wasn’t that what he had intended when he left the car in the next street? That he and she should go to bed? He had really imagined that this demented grief-stricken woman would welcome his love-making. You fool, he whispered harshly to himself. But he managed to say calmly, “Go to bed. I’ll make you a hot drink and you can take a tablet and I’ll sit with you till you go to sleep.”
She nodded. He wiped her eyes on a handkerchief Grace had ironed as carefully as Rosalind Swan ironed her husband’s shirts. “Don’t leave me,” she said again, and then she went, dragging her feet a little.
The kitchen was in a hideous mess. Nothing had been washed up or put away for days and there was a stale sweetish smell. He found some cocoa and some dried milk and did his best with these unsatisfactory ingredients, mixing them and heating them on a cooker that was black with burned-on fat.
She was sitting up in bed, the black-and-gold shawl around her shoulders, and that magic exotic quality, compounded of colour and strangeness and lack of inhibition, had to some extent returned to her. Her face was calm again, the large still eyes staring. The room was untidy, chaotic even, but its chaos was powerfully feminine, the scattered clothes giving off mingled sweet scents.
He tipped a sleeping pill out of the bottle and handed it to her with her drink. She gave him a wan smile and took his hand, lifting it first to her lips and then holding it tight.
“You won’t ever stay away from me like that again?”
“I am a poor substitute, Gemma,” he said.
“I need,” she said softly, “another kind of loving to make me forget.”
He guessed at what she meant but didn’t know what reply to make, so he sat silently with her, holding her hand, until at last her hand grew limp and she sank back against the pillows. He switched off the bed lamp and stretched himself beside her but on top of the covers. Presently her steady regular breathing told him that she was asleep.
The luminous dial of his watch showed half past ten. It seemed much later, as if a lifetime had passed since he left Grace and drove out here through the damp, rain-filled mist. The room was cold, perfumed and thick-aired and cold. Her hand lay loosely in his. He slid his hand away and edged across the bed to get up and leave.
Wary, even in sleep, she murmured, “Don’t leave me, Mike.” Thick with sleep, her voice held a note of terror, of dread that she might again be abandoned.
“I won’t leave you.” He made up his mind quickly and decisively. “I’ll stay all night.”
Shivering, he stripped off his clothes and got into bed beside her. It seemed quite natural to lie as he had lain beside Jean, his body curled about hers, his left arm around her waist, clasping the hand which again had grown possessive and demanding. Although cold to him, his body must have felt warm to her, for she sighed with a kind of happiness and relaxed against him.
He thought he would never sleep or, if he did, that he would fall immediately into one of those dreams of his. But the way they were lying, side by side, was what he had been used to in his happy years and had missed bitterly in the last wretched one. It brought him desire, but at the same time it lulled him. While wondering how he could bear this continuing continence, he fell asleep.
It was just beginning to get light when he awoke to find the other half of the bed empty but still warm. She was sitting by the window, wrapped in her shawl, a big album with gilt clasps open on her lap. He guessed that she was looking, in the first light of dawn, at pictures of her son, and he felt a powerful black jealousy.
For what seemed a long time he watched her, almost hating the child who came between them and drew his mother away with a ghostly subtle hand. She was slowly turning the pages, pausing sometimes to stare downwards with a passionate intensity. A resentment which he knew was totally unjust made him will her to look at him, to forget the child and remember the man who longed to be her lover.
At last she lifted her head and their eyes met. She said nothing and Burden didn’t speak, for he knew that if he did it would be to say cruel indefensible things. They gazed at each other in the pale grey morning light, and then, getting up silently, she drew the curtains. They were of brocade, old and frayed but still retaining their rich plum colour and, filtering through them, the light in the room looked purplish. She dropped the shawl and stood still in this coloured shadow-light so that he might look at her.
Her red hair seemed to have grown purple, but the colour hardly touched her body, which was dazzling white. He gazed at her in a kind of wonder, content for the moment to do nothing but gaze. This ivory woman, still and smiling now, was nothing like his lascivious dream woman, or did she resemble the distraught and weary creature he had comforted to sleep. The child had almost vanished from his jealousy and, he believed, from her thoughts. It was hardly possible to imagine that this exquisite firm body had ever borne a child.
Only a little stabbing doubt remained.
“Not out of gratitude, Gemma,” he said. “Not to reward me.”
She moved then and came close to him. “I never even thought of that. That would be to cheat.”
“To forget, then? Is that what you want?”
“Isn’t all love about forgetting?” she said. “Isn’t it always a lovely escape from—from hatefulness?”
“I don’t know.” He put out his arms to her. “I don’t care.” Gasping at the feel of her, here the slenderness and there the swell of flesh, he said breathlessly, “I shall hurt you. I can’t help it, it’s been so long for me.”
“And for me,” she said. “It will be like the first time. Oh, Mike, kiss me, make me happy. Make me happy for a little while.…”
12
“Not bad news?” said Dr. Crocker. “About the Lawrence boy, I mean?”
Morosely eyeing the pile of papers on his desk, Wexford said, “I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“You haven’t got a lead, then? I was sure there must be something when I passed Mike driving out of Chiltern Avenue at seven-thirty this morning.” He breathed heavily on one of Wexford’s window-panes and began drawing one of his recurrent diagrams. “I wonder what he was doing?” he said thoughtfully.
“Why ask me? I’m not his keeper.” Wexford glared at the doctor and at his drawing of a human pancreas. “I might ask you what you were doing, come to that.”
“A patient. Doctors always have an excuse.”
“So do policemen,” Wexford retorted.
“I doubt if Mike was ministering to a fellow who’d been struck down with stroke. Worst case I’ve come across since they called me out to that poor old boy who collapsed on Stowerton station platform back in February. Did I ever tell you about that? Chap had been staying here on holiday, got to the station and then found he’d left one of his cases behind
in this hotel or whatever it was. Went back for it, got in a bit of a flutter and the next thing …”
Wexford let out an angry bellow. “So what? Why tell me? I thought you were supposed to treat your patients in confidence. I’ll have a stroke myself if you go on like that.”
“It was just that possibility,” said Crocker sweetly, “that inspired my little narrative.” He dotted in the Islets of Langerhans with his little finger. “Want a fresh prescription for those tablets of yours?”
“No, I don’t. I’ve got hundreds of the damned things left.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” said Crocker, pointing a damp finger at him. “You can’t have been taking them regularly.”
“Go away. Get lost. Haven’t you anything better to do than deface my windows with your nasty anatomical studies?”
“Just going.” The doctor made a dancing exit, pausing in the doorway to favour the chief inspector with what seemed to Wexford a meaningless wink.
“Silly fool,” Wexford remarked to the empty room. But Crocker’s visit had left him with an uneasy feeling. To rid himself of it, he began to read the reports the Metropolitan Police had sent him on Gemma Lawrence’s friends.
For the most part they appeared to be in the theatrical profession or on its fringes, but hardly a name was familiar to him. His younger daughter had just left drama school and through her Wexford had heard of many actors and actresses whose names had never been in lights or the print of the Radio Times. None of them appeared in this list and he was aware of what they did only because “actor” or “assistant stage manager” or “model” was written after almost every name.
They were an itinerant crowd, mostly—in Wexford’s own official terminology—of no fixed abode. Half a dozen had been convicted on charges of possessing drugs or of allowing cannabis to be smoked on their premises; a further two or three fined for conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Demonstrating or taking their clothes off in the Albert Hall, Wexford supposed. None were harbouring John Lawrence; none showed by their past histories or their present tendencies a propensity to violence or perverted inclination. From reading between the lines, he gathered that, rather than desire the company of a child, they would go to almost any lengths to avoid having one.
Only two names on the list meant anything to him. One was a ballet dancer, her name at one time a household word, the other a television character actor whose face appeared so monotonously on Wexford’s screen that he was sick of the sight of him. He was called Gregory Devaux and he had been a friend of Gemma Lawrence’s parents. Particular interest had been taken in him because once, five years ago, he had attempted to smuggle out of the country, and the care of his estranged wife, their six-year-old son. The report promised that a watch would be kept on Gregory Devaux.
According to the porter of the Kensington block where she had a flat, Leonie West, the dancer, had been in the South of France since August.
Nothing there. No hint of any of them taking more than a casual friendly interest in Mrs. Lawrence and her son; no hint of a connection between any of them and Ivor Swan.
At ten Martin came in with Policewoman Polly Davies whom Wexford scarcely recognised under the red wig she wore.
“You look terrible,” he said. “Where in God’s name did you dig that up? A jumble sale?”
“Woolworth’s, sir,” said Martin, rather offended. “You’re always telling us to go easy on expenses.”
“No doubt it would look better if Polly hadn’t got black eyes and such a—well, Welsh complexion. Never mind. You’ll have to cover it, anyway. It’s pouring with rain.”
Sergeant Martin always took an old-womanish interest in the weather and its vagaries. Having first wiped off the doctor’s pancreas diagram, he opened the window and stuck out one hand. “I think it’ll stop, sir. I see a gleam of light.”
“I only wish you did,” said Wexford. “Pray cover your dismay as best you can. I’ve decided to come with you. I get sick of all this vicarious living.”
They went down the corridor in single file, to be stopped by Burden who opened the door of his own office. Wexford looked him up and down, looked him all over, hard.
“What’s got into you? Your Ernie bonds come up?”
Burden smiled.
“I am glad,” said Wexford sarcastically, “that someone sees fit to spread a little sunshine in this deluge, in this—er—town of terror. What d’you want, anyway?”
“I thought you might not have seen today’s paper. There’s an interesting story on the front page.”
Wexford took the paper from him and read the story as he went down in the lift. Under the headline. Landowner Offers £2,000 reward. New Move in Stella Hunt, he read: “Group Captain Percival Swan, wealthy landowner and uncle of Mr. Ivor Swan, Stella Rivers’ stepfather, told me last night that he was offering a reward of £2,000 for information leading to the discovery of Stella’s killer. ‘This is a devilish thing,’ he said as we chatted in the drawing room of his centuries-old mansion near Tunbridge Wells. ‘I was fond of Stella, though I had seen little of her. Two thousand pounds is a large sum, but not too large to sacrifice for the sake of seeing justice done.’”
There was a good deal more in the same vein. Not so very interesting, Wexford thought, as he got into his car.
True to Sergeant Martin’s prediction, the rain soon left off. Cheriton Forest was shrouded in thick white mist.
“You may as well take that thing off,” said Wexford to Polly Davies, “He won’t be able to see you if he does come.”
But nobody came. No car passed along the road and no one came down the Myfleet Ride which joined it. Only the mist moved sluggishly and the water which dripped from the boughs of the closely planted fir trees. Wexford sat on a damp log among the trees, thinking of Ivor Swan who rode in this forest and knew it well, who had ridden here on the day his stepdaughter died. Did he really suppose Swan would appear, walking on the wet sandy ride or mounted on the chestnut horse? With the child perched beside him or holding his hand? A hoax, a hoax, a cruel nonsense, he kept saying to himself, and at one, when the appointed time was an hour behind him and he was shivering with cold, he came out of his hiding place and whistled up the other two.
If Burden remained in his early mood he would, at any rate, have a cheerful lunch companion. There was no one behind the desk in the police-station foyer, an unheard-of dereliction of duty. With mounting rage Wexford stared at the empty stool on which Sergeant Camb should have been perched and was about to press a bell that had never, in all its years of existence, needed to be pressed before, when the Sergeant appeared, scuttling from the lift, the inevitable teacup in his hand.
“Sorry, sir. We’re so short-handed what with all these crazy calls coming in that I had to fetch my own tea. I’ve only been away half a tick. You know me, sir, I perish without my tea.”
“Next time,” said Wexford, “you perish. Remember, Sergeant, that the guard dies but it never surrenders.”
He went upstairs and looked for Burden.
“Mr. Burden went to lunch ten minutes ago, sir,” said Loring.
Wexford cursed. He badly wanted to engage with Burden in one of those acrimonious but rewarding conferences which both cemented their friendship and contributed to their work. Lunch alone at the Carousel would be a dismal affair. He opened the door of his own office and stopped dead on the threshold.
Seated in the chief inspector’s swivel chair at the chief inspector’s rosewood desk, the cigarette in his fingers scattering ash all over the lemon-coloured carpet, was Monkey Matthews.
“They might have told me,” said Wexford distantly, “that I’d been deposed. This kind of thing smacks of goings-on behind the Iron Curtain. What am I to do? Manage a power station?”
Monkey grinned. He had the grace to get up out of Wexford’s chair. “I’d never have believed,” he said, “it was so easy to get into a nick. I reckon that old geezer Camb must have dropped dead at last and they’ve all gone off
to bury him. Got in without a soul the wiser, I did. Bloody sight easier,” he added, “to get in this nick than get out of it.”
“You won’t find it hard today. You can get out now. And fast, before I do you for being found on enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose.”
“Ah, but my purpose is lawful.” Monkey stubbed out his cigarette in Wexford’s inkwell and surveyed the room with a pleased expression. “This is the first time I’ve ever been in a nick of what you might call my own accord.” A dreamy smile spread across his face and was abruptly quenched by a fit of coughing.
Wexford stood half in the office, half in the corridor, waiting unsympathetically.
“You may as well shut the door,” said Monkey when he had recovered. “We don’t want the whole place to hear, do we? I’ve got some info. The Lawrence case.”
Wexford closed the door but gave no other sign that Monkey’s remark had interested him. “You have?” he said.
“Friend of mine has.”
“I didn’t know you had any friends, Monkey, bar poor old Ruby.”
“You don’t want to judge everybody by yourself,” said Monkey, stung. He coughed and stubbed out his cigarette, immediately lighting another and regarding the discarded stub with resentment, as if some peculiarity of its construction or fault in its make-up were responsible for his choking attack, rather than the tobacco it contained. “I’ve got a lot of friends, picked up in me travels.”
“Picked up in cells, you mean,” said Wexford.
Monkey had long ago forgotten how to blush, but the wary look which crossed his face told Wexford the shot had gone home. “My friend,” he said, “come down here yesterday for a bit of a holiday with me and Rube. A bit of a rest, like. He’s an old feller and his health’s not what it was.”
“All those damp exercise yards, I daresay.”
“Oh, give over, will you? My friend has got some info as’ll open your eyes all right, re the antecedents of Mr. Ivor Bloody Swan.”
If Wexford was surprised, he didn’t show it. “He has no antecedents,” he said coldly, “or not what you mean by the term.”