by Ruth Rendell
Wexford shook himself out of these miserable reflections to concentrate on the report. One mystery, at any rate, was cleared up. He need no longer wonder why Swan had baulked at attending an inquest, particularly an inquest on another dead little girl.
The next step was to find Frensham, and this proved easy. Fourteen years had changed him from an undergraduate into a stock jobber, moved him from his parents’ flat but not from Kensington, and maintained him in his bachelor state. What had happened to that fiancée who had accompanied him on that Lake holiday?
Hardly a question which need concern him, Wexford decided. He made the requisite polite phone call to the Metropolitan Police and then prepared to set off for London. In the foyer he met Burden.
“Any lead on the missing men from the search party?”
Burden lifted troubled eyes and muttered, “Martin’s got it in hand, hasn’t he?”
Wexford went out into the rain, not looking back.
He alighted at Gloucester Road Tube station, got lost, and had to ask a policeman the way to Veronica Grove. At last he found it, a narrow little tree-lined lane which threaded its way from Stanhope Gardens down behind Queen’s Gate. Water dripped softly from the branches overhead, and, except that the trees were planes and not oaks, he felt that he might have been at home in Kingsmarkham. The environs of the Piebald Pony were much more his idea of what London should be.
Meditating on such anomalies, he came within a few minutes to Bernard Frensham’s house. It was tiny, a mews cottage, with neat but empty window boxes, and it looked very modest unless you happened to know that such properties were sold for twenty-five thousand pounds.
A manservant, small, lithe and dark, admitted him and showed him into the single living room the house contained. It was, however, a large room on three different levels and the furnishing gave an impression of varying textures, satiny polish, smooth velvet, delicate filigree work and highlighted china, rather than of solid masses. Much money had been spent on it. The years Swan has wasted had been turned to good account by his friend.
Frensham, who had risen from his chair at the far end of the room when Wexford entered it, had received prior warning of his coming. And “warning” rather than “notice” seemed the appropriate word, for it was very apparent that he had been drinking. Because the coming interview caused him disquiet? Wexford was forced to suppose so. A stock jobber could hardly be so successful as Frensham surely was if seven o’clock always saw him as drunk as he was tonight.
Not that he didn’t hold it well. It was only the brandy smell and the strangeness of Frensham’s eyes that told Wexford of his condition.
He was thirty-three and he looked forty, the black hair already thinning and the face marked with dark patches. On the other hand, Swan, his contemporary, looked twenty-seven. Slothfulness and placidity preserve youth; hard work and anxiety accelerates its passing.
Frensham wore a beautiful suit of charcoal grey with a coppery sheen to it, a black-and-copper tie, and, on the little finger of his left hand, an opal ring. What an impression of civilised distinction the man would have made, Wexford thought, but for the brandy on his breath which struck you full-blast in the face.
“Let me give you a drink, Chief Inspector.”
Wexford would have refused, was on the point of refusing, but there was so much subdued urgency in Frensham’s added, “Please do,” that he felt bound to consent.
Frensham opened the door and called a name that sounded like “Haysus.” Brandy was brought and various other bottles and decanters. When the manservant had gone, Frensham said, “Odd, aren’t they, the Spanish? Calling a boy Jesus.” He gave a short disconcerting giggle. “Most inappropriate, I can tell you. His parents are Maria and Joseph, or so he says.”
Taking a gulp of his drink, he pursued this theme, but Wexford decided he wouldn’t be sidetracked by Iberian nomenclature. It was impossible not to feel that Frensham was trying to postpone their discussion for as long as possible.
“May we talk about Mr. Ivor Swan, sir?”
Frensham left the subject of Spanish names abruptly and said in a clipped voice, “I haven’t seen Ivor for years, not since we both came down from Oxford.”
“That doesn’t matter. I have. Perhaps you can’t remember much about him?”
“I remember all right,” said Frensham. “I shall never forget.” He got up and walked across the room. At first Wexford thought he had gone to fetch a photograph or some document and then he realised that Frensham was in the grip of a powerful emotion. His back was towards the chief inspector and for some minutes he didn’t move. Wexford sat watching him in silence. He wasn’t easily embarrassed, but he wasn’t prepared for Frensham’s next words either. Wheeling round suddenly, staring oddly at Wexford, he said, “Has he vine leaves in his hair?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have never seen or read Hedda Gabler? It doesn’t matter. It’s the kind of question I feel natural to ask about Ivor.” The man was very drunk, with the intoxication that rids the tongue of inhibition without slurring speech. He came back to his chair and rested his elbows against the back of it. “Ivor was remarkably beautiful then, a pale golden-brown Antinous. I was very fond of him. No, that isn’t true. I loved him with—with all my heart. He was very lazy and—well, tranquil. He never seemed to know what the time was or to take any account of time at all.” Frensham spoke as if he had forgotten Wexford was there or forgotten what he was. He reached for his brandy standing up. “That kind of indifference to time, that sublime idleness, is very attractive. I often think it was this quality in her, rather than her religious zeal, that made Christ praise Mary and condemn Martha, the bustling busy worker.”
Wexford had not come to hear about the character of Ivor Swan, which he thought he already understood, but he was no more willing to interrupt Frensham in the midst of his discourse than a spiritualist would have been to cut short the outpourings of a medium in a trance. He felt somehow, as might the spiritualist also, that it would be dangerous to do so.
“He was always pursued by droves of girls,” Frensham went on. “Some of them were beautiful and all of them were intelligent. I am speaking, of course, of Oxford girls. He slept with some of them but he never took them out, not even for a drink. He couldn’t be bothered. He used to say he didn’t like clever women because they tried to make him talk.
“Once I told him the sort of woman he would marry, a feather-brained idiot who would adore him and fuss about him and demand only his presence. He wouldn’t marry her, she would marry him, drag him to the altar against all odds. I saw in the paper he is married. Is she like that?”
“Yes, she is,” said Wexford. “Exactly like that.”
Frensham sat down heavily. He looked ravaged now, as if overcome by painful memories. Wexford wondered if he and Swan had really been lovers, but decided against it. The willingness would have been there on Frensham’s part all right, but Swan just wouldn’t have been “bothered.”
“I never married,” said Frensham. “I was engaged to that girl, Adelaide Turner, but it never came to anything. I remember Ivor didn’t want her to go on holiday with us and I didn’t either, not really, not by then. He said she would get in the way.” He refilled his glass and said, “I can’t stop drinking, I’m afraid. I don’t drink much usually but once I start I can’t stop. I promise you I won’t make a fool of myself.”
Some would say he was doing that already. Wexford was less harsh. He felt sorry for Frensham, sorrier when he said suddenly:
“I don’t know whether I’m giving you a true picture of Ivor’s character or not. You see, although I haven’t seen him for twelve years, I dream about him a great deal, as much as three times a week. It must sound very silly, I haven’t ever told anyone before. I mention it now because I don’t know any more what is the real Ivor and the Ivor my own dreams have created. The two images are so confused they have run into each other and become one.”
Wexford said gently, “Tel
l me about the holiday. Tell me about Bridget Scott.”
“She was only eleven,” Frensham said, and his voice was saner and more even when he wasn’t speaking of Swan. “But she looked much older, at least fourteen. It sounds very absurd to say she fell in love with him at first sight, but she did. And, of course, at that age she hadn’t learned to hide her feelings. She used to pester Ivor all the time, ask him to go swimming with her, wanted him to sit next to her in the lounge. She even asked her mother in our hearing if he could go up and say good night to her when she was in bed.”
“And how did Swan deal with all that?”
“Simply by taking no notice. He treated Adelaide in the same way. He used to answer Adelaide if she spoke to him, but most of the time he didn’t speak to Bridget at all. He said she got in the way, and once, I remember, he told her so.”
Frensham leaned back and gave a heavy sigh. His eyes closed momentarily and he opened them as if with a great effort. “The coroner,” he said, “was an old man like a vulture. I didn’t want to betray Ivor. They made me tell them about his swimming. I hadn’t any choice.” The heavy lids fell again. “I felt like Judas,” he said.
“What happened that morning when Bridget was drowned?”
Still Frensham kept his eyes closed and now his speech had begun to thicken. “I never went out fishing with Ivor. I’ve never been an early riser. Ivor was. You’d think a man like—a man like him, would go to bed late and get up late. Ivor always used to be up by six. He’d sleep in the day, or course, if he got the chance. He could sleep anywhere. It was the early morning he liked and the countryside, the peace of it and the light.” Frensham made a funny little noise like a sob. “He used to quote those lines of W. H. Davies. ‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’”
“Go on about that morning.”
Frensham sat up, and half-toppled forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I woke up to hear people shouting in the corridor outside my room, running up and down and shouting. You can imagine. I went outside. The mother was there, screaming, and that poor old man, Scott.”
“Old? Bridget’s father?”
“Not really old, I suppose. About sixty. The mother was younger. They had older children, someone told me. Does it matter? I found Ivor in the dining room, drinking coffee. He was very white. He said, ‘It was nothing to do with me. Why involve me?’ and that was all he ever said about it.”
“You mean he never again mentioned the subject of Bridget Scott’s drowning to you? Not when you both had to attend the inquest?”
“He didn’t like it because we had to stay on over the end of our holiday,” remembered Frensham, and now a glaze had come across his eyes. Weariness? Tears? Or only the effect of the drink? “After—after the inquest he wouldn’t let me speak of it. I don’t know what he felt.” Very softly now, Frensham said, “It may have been callousness or that he was upset or just wanted to forget. There wasn’t much about the inquest in the daily papers and when we went up no one knew until—until Adelaide told them.”
“Why do you think he let her drown?” said Wexford.
“She got in his way,” said Frensham, and then he began to cry weakly. “When people annoyed him or began to—to bore him he just—just—just …” There was a sob between each word. “… Just—ignored—them—pretended—they—weren’t—there—didn’t—talk—didn’t—see—them—did—that—to—me—after—later …” He threw out a hand and the brandy glass went over, spreading a stain across the thick pale carpet.
Wexford opened the door and called, “Here, Jesus, or whatever your name is, your master wants you. You’d better get him to bed.”
The man came in, sidling and smiling. He put his arms under Frensham’s shoulders and whispered to him. Frensham lifted his head and said to Wexford in a normal clear tone, “Vine leaves in his hair …” Then he closed his eyes and slid into unconsciousness.
17
Friday’s edition of the Kingsmarkham Courier carried on its front page a double-column spread asking for the three missing men from the search party to come forward. Much good that would do, Wexford thought, as he read it. Hadn’t it occurred to Martin, when he asked Harry Wild for publicity, that an appeal of this kind would fetch forth only the innocents? And where was Burden in all this, Burden who was supposed to rule the place in Wexford’s absence, yet who seemed as much surprised by the newspaper appeal as he was?
When he got back from London he had phoned Burden’s house. He needed to discuss that interview with someone and he thought too that this might be a way of reawakening Burden’s interest. But Grace Woodville had told him her brother-in-law was out, she didn’t know where.
“I think he may just be sitting somewhere in his car, brooding about Jean and—and everything.”
“He’s supposed to leave a number where he can be found.”
“Cheriton Forest doesn’t have a number,” said Grace.
On Saturday afternoon two men walked into Kingsmarkham police station to say that they had read the Courier and believed they were two of the three missing men. They were brothers, Thomas and William Thetford, who lived in adjoining houses in Bury Lane, a half-slum, half-country road on the far side of Stowerton, not far from Sparta Grove. News of John Lawrence’s disappearance had been brought to them by William’s wife who cleaned for Mrs. Dean and who had reached home at five-thirty. The Thetford brothers were on shift work, had both finished for that day. Guessing a search party might be got up—hoping for a bit of excitement to brighten up their day, Wexford thought—they had got into William’s car and driven to Fontaine Road.
Neither man had a squeaky voice or even a voice Wexford could remember hearing before. They denied having passed the news on to anyone and said they had discussed it only with each other. Wexford supposed that routine demanded an interview with Mrs. Thetford. Monday would be time enough for that.
“Golf in the morning?” said Dr. Crocker, bouncing in after the Thetfords had gone.
“Can’t. I’m going to Colchester.”
“Whatever for?” Crocker said crossly, and then, without waiting for an answer, “I wanted to have a little chat with you about Mike.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t. I’d rather you saw him. You’re his doctor.”
“I think he’s found a better doctor than I,” said Crocker slyly. “I saw his car again last night.”
“Don’t tell me. In Cheriton Forest. And he was in it, brooding.”
“It wasn’t and he wasn’t. It was parked at the bottom of Chiltern Avenue at midnight.”
“You’re ubiquitous, you are,” Wexford grumbled. “You’re like the Holy Ghost.”
“It was at the bottom of Chiltern Avenue, next to Fontaine Road at midnight. Come on, Reg. I knew you were thick round the middle but not …” The doctor tapped his head “… not up here.”
“That’s not possible,” said Wexford sharply. His voice faltered. “I mean … Mike wouldn’t … I don’t want to talk about it.” And he cast upon the doctor a fierce glare. “If I don’t know about it,” he said with none of his usual logic, “it isn’t happening.”
“I know it would be like a miracle,” said Gemma, “but if—if John is ever found and comes back to me, I shall sell this house, even if I only get what the land’s worth, and go back to London. I could live in one room, I shouldn’t mind. I hate it here. I hate being in here and I hate going out and seeing them all look at me.”
“You talk like a child,” said Burden. “Why talk about what you know can’t happen? I asked you to marry me.”
She got up, still without answering, and began to dress, but not in the clothes she had taken off when she and Burden had come into the bedroom. He watched her hungrily, but puzzled as he always was by nearly every facet of her behaviour. She had pulled over her head a long black dress, very sleek and tight. Burden didn’t know whether it was old, a garment of her aunt’s, or the
latest fashion. You couldn’t tell these days. Over her shoulders and around her waist she wrapped a long scarf of orange and blue and green, so stiff and encrusted with embroidery that it crackled as she handled it.
“We used to dress up a lot, John and I,” she said, “dress up and be characters from the Red Fairy Book. He would have grown up to be a great actor.” Now she was hanging jewellery all over herself, long strings of beads draped from her neck and wound about her arms. “That sometimes happens when one of your parents, or both of them, has been a second-rate artist. Mozart’s father was a minor musician.” She swayed in the soft red light, extending her arms. There was a ring on every finger to weigh down her thin hands. She shook down her hair and it fell in a flood of fire, the light catching it as it caught all the stones in the cheap rings and made them flash.
Burden was dazzled and fascinated and appalled. She danced across the room, drawing out the scarf and holding it above her head. The jewels rang like little bells. Then she stopped, gave a short abrupt laugh, and ran to him, kneeling at his feet.
“‘I will dance for you, Tetrarch,’” she said. “‘I am awaiting until my slaves bring perfumes to me and the seven veils and take off my sandals.’”
Wexford would have recognised the words of Salome. To Burden they were just another instance of her eccentricity. Very distressed and embarrassed, he said, “Oh, Gemma …!”