The Monster in the Box

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘So when did Carroll come home?’

  ‘A good deal later than was expected. About ten forty-five. It looked to me as if it was a terrible shock for him but as Pendle said to me afterwards, whether he’d killed her or not finding the place a blaze of light and his home full of cops would have been a shock anyway. Fulford told him he could see his wife’s body if he wanted to but Carroll refused and began to cry. Fulford wasn’t sympathetic. He said brusquely that he’d like to ask him some questions and he wanted to do it now, that was unavoidable. He and Ventura questioned the man and Pendle and I were sent home.

  ‘If you’re interested you can read what Carroll said in Chambers’ book. You can have this photocopy I made for you. But the real thing of importance is that Carroll told Fulford he had spent the evening with a woman called Tina Malcolm. The term “girlfriend” wasn’t used so much then and Carroll told Fulford he was the woman’s “lover”. That put Fulford against him from the start. He was exceptionally strait-laced and puritanical – worse than you.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  Wexford laughed. ‘This woman, Carroll said, would confirm that he had been with her from seven thirty until ten and he was glad it had “all come out,” it was better this way with his wife knowing. Then he remembered his wife was dead and began crying again.’

  ‘My God,’ said Burden. ‘That’s a bit grim.’

  ‘Well, it was. I was glad to get out in the fresh air. The car we’d come in was parked outside. Pendle got into the driving seat – he lived fairly near me in Kingsmarkham High Street – and I went round to the passenger door. No remote opening of car doors then, of course …’

  ‘I had been born, you know – I even remember the moon landings.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Wexford. ‘Though why I should apologise to a man for treating him as if he were younger than he is I don’t know. Pendle had to reach across and lift up the thing – don’t know what it was called – that locked the door, and while he was doing that I noticed a man standing outside number 16. He had a dog with him on a lead and he was waiting while the dog took a pee up against a tree in the pavement. His name was Targo, Eric Targo, though I didn’t know it then. Mostly someone you encounter like that will immediately look away when he knows you’ve seen him. Especially when you’ve been watching his dog foul the pavement. Targo didn’t look away. He stared at me. You’ll think I’m exaggerating but I’m not. You know how you sometimes read that someone’s eyes pierced into your very soul?’ Burden plainly hadn’t read that and didn’t know it. ‘Well, never mind, but that’s what Targo’s did. He stared at me – it was under a street lamp – and then he nodded slightly. Oh, it was a very faint nod, not much more than a tremor, and as he turned away I saw the birthmark. He had a scarf round his neck – he always wears a scarf or he did – but it slipped a little because he turned his head. At first I thought it was some sort of shadow, a trick of the light, but when he moved I saw it for what it was. Cancer the crab crawling across his neck, shaped like a crab with pincers or an island with promontories.’ Wexford shrugged. ‘Take your pick.’

  They had been alone for the hour and a half it had taken to narrate all this but now three people came into the snug, a woman and two men. Although the room was small, it contained three tables, any one of which the newcomers might have chosen but they picked the one nearest to the policemen. Burden said quietly to Wexford, ‘Shall we go back to my place and you can go on with the story there?’

  Burden’s house was nearer to the Olive than his. The difficulty was that Jenny would be there, unable to leave her young son on his own, but as it happened she said nothing to Wexford beyond, ‘Can I come and see you about something, Reg? To the police station?’

  He named a day and a time more to keep her quiet for the present than because he wanted to hear what she had to say. He knew it already. Burden and he went into a little room the Burdens called the study, though as is so often the case, nothing was studied there but it was a place where one of them could watch a different television programme from that showing in the living room. Burden left him there while he went to fetch drinks and the snack he could eat but Wexford must not.

  Alone for a while, he reflected on that midnight so long ago. He had never forgotten that look, the light from the street lamp falling on the man’s thick fair hair and his rather rugged coarse face with the scarf not quite hiding the dark stain mantling his neck. Then, the faint nod, as if to say, ‘We know each other now. We are bound together now.’ Of course that was nonsense, a nod couldn’t mean all that.

  Next day had been his day off. He would have preferred to go in, he didn’t want to miss the next steps in the proceedings, but nor did he want to say that to Ventura. It sounded a bit – not overkeen but maybe presumptuous. He was too new in the job and too low down the scale to attract that sort of attention to himself. He spent the day with Alison instead, going for a drive (in her father’s car) and the evening in his room. That was the time when he’d been doing the next best thing to going to university: reading, reading, reading. It was Chaucer that evening, ‘The Squire’s Tale’. But later on he lay awake a long while and his mind went back to the old worry, how he could marry a woman he didn’t love and would soon, he was afraid, cease even to like any more.

  Burden reappeared with a bottle of sparkling water and for Wexford a glass of red wine, the last of his self-imposed ration for that day. He poured himself a tumbler of water. From the array of bowls of nuts and cheese biscuits, he took a handful of salted almonds.

  ‘You’d got to the bit where you and this Targo were staring at each other,’ he said, his tone sceptical if not exactly scathing.

  Wexford chose to ignore it. ‘The following morning,’ he began, ‘at what Fulford called his tasks-for-the-day round-up, Ventura said he wanted me to come with him to interview Tina Malcolm, girlfriend or “lover” of George Carroll. Back at the mortuary the pathologist was carrying out a post-mortem on his murdered wife. Ventura and I went to Powys Road. This woman Tina Malcolm lived in a two-room flat with kitchen. No bathroom but that wasn’t unusual in those days. There was a bath in the kitchen with a cover over it to make a table. It was neither shabby nor smart, just ordinary. It would have been interesting to a young person going in there today because, although the bedroom was quite a generous size, she slept in a single bed.’

  ‘Have some more nuts.’

  ‘You know I’d better not.’ Wexford sighed but inaudibly.

  ‘Tina Malcolm was about thirty-five, dyed blonde hair, heavily made up. Women wore much heavier make-up then than now. Lots of girls wouldn’t let themselves be seen outdoors without it. More of it on the lips than on the eyes, though. Her heels were so high that they made you wonder, then as now, how women could take more than a couple of steps in them without falling over. She knew we were coming and I think she’d dressed up for us, not because we were policemen but because we were men.

  ‘She took us into her sitting room and offered us tea which Ventura refused. You always think of Latins as being warm and effusive but he was a taciturn devil, dour and brusque. Accepting tea might have put her at ease. She was very nervous. As well she might have been in the circumstances.’

  ‘In the circumstances? You mean she was involved with Elsie Carroll’s death?’

  ‘Well, no, rather the reverse. Or so it seemed. What happened next was extraordinary, Mike. It was the first time I’d ever come across anything like it, but more to the point, it was the first time Ventura had. He told me so in the car afterwards and mostly he hardly opened his mouth with lowlife like me.’

  Burden laughed. ‘So what was it? I can’t bear the suspense.’

  ‘She hadn’t heard anything about the murder. Or said she hadn’t. You have to remember that there was nothing like the proliferation of news then that there is now. Radio, yes, and TV, of course, but only two channels and no breakfast television. Newspapers, but no use to you if you didn’t have one delivered by nine in the morning. It w
as half past when we got there and there was no paper to be seen. Ventura asked her if she had heard about the murder of Mrs Elsie Carroll and she just stared, her eyes went as big as saucers, and she whispered something about not knowing. Her hands had started to shake.

  ‘Ventura gave me a look which indicated I was to say something, so I asked her if Mr George Carroll was a friend of hers. She nodded and whispered yes and Ventura told her to speak up. No one used that term “relationship,” meaning “affair” in those days and Ventura asked her what was the nature of her friendship with Mr Carroll. This time she did speak up. “He’s a good friend,” she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong.” That was the way people spoke then when they meant there was nothing sexual. Neither of us had told her when Elsie Carroll’s death had taken place. Ventura asked her when she last saw George Carroll and she said she couldn’t be sure, not very long ago. “Did you see him two evenings ago?” Ventura said. She drew herself up and looked shocked. I suddenly began to see that she was no shy violet, she was a clever woman. Ventura ignored that stuff about not seeing Carroll in the evenings. “Did you see him between seven thirty and nine thirty?”

  ‘She shook her head quite calmly. “Please answer the question, Miss Malcolm,” Ventura said. With a slight smile she said, “I have already told you I never saw Mr Carroll in the evenings. That wasn’t the nature of our friendship. The answer’s no.” She was just a touch indignant by then. Another glance from Ventura and I said, “Are you absolutely sure of that, Miss Malcolm?” I got a nod and an impatient shrug.

  ‘Ventura believed her. What astonished him was what he called the barefaced effrontery of Carroll trying to set up an alibi with an entirely innocent woman whose loyalty he thought he could count on. I thought it was a classic case of a woman who was happy to be having an affair with a married man when all went smoothly but the sky changed when a bad storm came up. I didn’t say so, however. I knew it would be useless. Still, he was too good a policeman to leave this without further confirmation and I was left behind to call at all the flats in the block and ask if anyone had seen George Carroll on the previous night. In about three-quarters of the flats a woman was at home, a man in only one of them. I questioned them but no one had seen George Carroll or any man go into Tina Malcolm’s flat. Or maybe I should say no one said they had.

  ‘People like publicity these days, they’re hungry for it. But not then. That fifteen minutes of fame – or is it fifteen seconds? – no one wanted it then. Then they wanted to keep themselves to themselves, keep out of the public eye. Don’t get involved, was what mothers said to their children.

  ‘It was next day that we did the house-to-house in Jewel Road and I encountered Kathleen Targo and her son. But not Eric Targo. Nearly all the men were at work as he was. Hardly any women were. Those of the men Ventura thought we ought to see we went back to talk to in the evening. No one was fingerprinted – there was no evidence pointing to anyone except perhaps George Carroll. These days we’d no doubt have taken DNA from everyone, men and women, on both sides of that street and streets beyond as well, but not then, not possible then.’

  ‘So you saw Eric Targo in the evening?’

  It had been an ordinary, seemingly insignificant, meeting. While Pendle was talking to a man called Green at number 25 on the other side of Jewel Road, he was knocking on the door of 32 and being admitted to the house by Targo. Somewhere at the back, probably in the kitchen, a child was screaming and there was a sound of water running.

  ‘Don’t like his bath,’ said Targo.

  Those were the first words Wexford ever heard him speak. As was often the case in marriages, his accent was uglier and coarser than hers, the local mixture of old Sussex and south London cockney. The man was short, just coming up to Wexford’s shoulder, and had perhaps compensated for his lack of height by developing his body with weight-bearing exercises. Big muscles stood out on his arms and legs. He wore shorts – unheard of at that time of year in Kingsmarkham and its environs – which showed his thick thighs and bulging calves.

  ‘He opened the door to me and the minute he did he remembered his neck was bare. As soon as he saw me he snatched up a scarf which was hanging from a hook with a lot of coats and tied it round his neck. The scarf made it even more odd that he should be wearing shorts. A woman’s scarf it looked like, red and black and white. Then I had realised it was to hide the birthmark. Maybe I imagined it but I thought the look he gave me was full of hatred because I’d seen the birthmark.’

  ‘You imagined it,’ said Burden.

  ‘Maybe, but you weren’t there.’

  Wexford had been led into a living room which, like every living room in that street, in the whole town probably, was heated either by a coal fire or an electric two-element heater. In this case it was the latter and the room was cold. The spaniel was stretched out in front of the ‘fire’. Targo was the sort Wexford would have expected to be cruel to animals or at least callous with them, but to his surprise the man bent down and stroked the dog tenderly on its silky head before sitting down and asking him bluntly what he wanted.

  ‘I asked him how well he knew Mrs Elsie Carroll. “That the woman what was murdered? Never spoken to her,” he said. I didn’t feel like calling him sir but I’d been told I had to. My personal assessment of someone didn’t come into it. ‘May I ask you where you were on the eighteenth of February, sir, between 7 and 8 p.m.?’ I said.

  ‘Targo stared at me. It wasn’t the same sort of look he had given me under the street lamp, not a fleeting nod, but a brief stare of dislike and contempt. His eyes were a bright icy blue, still are, I dare say. “What d’you want to know for?” he said.

  ‘I’d learnt the formula by that time. “Just routine, sir. To eliminate you from our inquiries.”’

  Burden laughed. ‘What else?’

  ‘Targo said he was at home with his son. I’ll never forget his words. They were so expressive of the man’s character. “The wife had gone to her whatsit class – dressmaking. I don’t mind that –” incredibly, he winked “– teach her to make her own clothes and the kid’s, save my money.” The screaming and splashing from the kitchen had stopped. There were footsteps out in the passage and Kathleen Targo came in with her son.

  “Oh, pardon me.” She recognised him. “Is anything wrong?”’ It had amused him that people had begun to look on him, especially when on their home territory, as a harbinger of doom.

  ‘I told her nothing was wrong and then I asked him if he’d mind telling me what he was doing while he was at home with his son. There was just an outside chance, Mike, that she’d deny that he had been – but, no. Not a flicker of wonder or doubt. “I was doing press-ups and leg curls – if you know what they are – in the kitchenette.” They called kitchens kitchenettes then, even if they weren’t particularly small.

  ‘Mrs Targo told the boy to say goodnight to his dad and Alan went up to his father. He didn’t say anything but – well, to my surprise, kissed him on the cheek. Then he fondled the dog’s neck and that pleased Targo. He smiled and nodded. Alan went up to his mother and held up his arms but she shook her head. “Not the way I am now, Allie,” she said. “You’re too heavy.”

  ‘She was very unhappy with Targo. I guessed that then and what I thought was confirmed when I met her again by chance years later. She and Targo were divorced by that time and she’d remarried. That evening in Jewel Road I could see she was exhausted but he didn’t get up. “You can make yourself useful for once, Kath,” he said, “and show the officer out. I’m tired. Oh, wait, though,” he said to me. “There’s one thing you may want to know. I said I’d never spoken to that Elsie Carroll and I never did, but it’s well known down this street that her two-timing husband was carrying on with a woman in Kingsmarkham. Dirty bitch. No better than a streetwalker.”

  ‘“Eric! Not in front of the boy,” Kathleen said.

  ‘“He don’t understand. That Carroll’d have been happy as Larry to see the back of his wife, that I can tell you.” />
  ‘I thanked Targo and said he’d been very helpful, the way we were supposed to, though he hadn’t. All he’d done was teach me something about his own character. Kathleen took me out into the hall after that and sent the boy upstairs before she opened the front door and let the cold air in. I turned back on the doorstep and I asked her what she thought of the Tuesday-evening dressmaking class. I said my mother was thinking of signing up for it.

  ‘“Oh, it’s lovely,” she said, showing more enthusiasm than I’d seen from her before. “Eric’s so good staying here with Alan. I never miss.” I had the impression she only said that to make me think all was fine with them on the domestic front. It was all part of that pretend-everything-in-the-garden’s-lovely attitude people adhered to then. “Well, I’ll have to miss it for my confinement.”

  ‘They still said that then. Well, some of them did, the really old-fashioned ones, the sort who still put on a hat to go to the shops. There were women in the villages round here, in the cottages without running water or electricity, where they referred to their husbands as “my master”.’

  ‘OK,’ said Burden. ‘I can see that Targo could have left his son for ten minutes, say, and gone along the back lane to number 16 – 16 right?’

  Wexford nodded.

  ‘And gone through the gate into the back garden – maybe even concealed himself and watched George Carroll leave on his bike before going into the house. He finds poor Mrs Carroll upstairs and kills her, strangles her. Then he leaves the way he came where he is seen by Harold Johnson, who doesn’t recognise him in the dark. It could be done. Easily. But why, Reg? Why?’