The Monster in the Box

by Ruth Rendell

  In the fiction he read so voraciously a character like himself might have got somewhere but not in life. He quelled his disappointment by thinking how grim it would have been had he met her and she turned out to be all those things he had considered but dismissed, vulgar and vain and empty-headed, so that a book of verses would only evoke an ‘I’ve left school, thanks very much’. He had to forget her and get on with his work. It shouldn’t be too difficult to forget someone you had never met, whatever the song said, and he repeated to himself, ‘There is a lady sweet and kind, was ne’er a face so pleased my mind. I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die.’ Well, of course he didn’t. What nonsense. Never go back, he thought, otherwise he might have contacted Helen …But he had a flat in Kingsmarkham now, a quarter of a big house, and the girl who lived in the next flat on the same floor was attractive and unattached … Next time they met on the stairs he’d ask her in for coffee.

  Meanwhile, there had been a murder in Pomfret and he was busy night and day questioning suspects. It was his first murder since Elsie Carroll and though Targo was long gone it was the thickset sturdy little man, the stalker with the spaniel, whose image came into his mind. Impossible, of course. Lilian Gray had been murdered by her husband. He had learnt that most people who meet a violent death have been dealt it by one of their nearest and dearest. The exception was a Mrs Parsons who had died in strange circumstances, killed by an old school friend who was in love with her.

  ‘You were here by then, Mike,’ he said to Burden. ‘Do you remember the case?’

  ‘I’ll never forget it. People were still shocked by lesbianism then. I’m sorry to say I was a bit myself. You weren’t, you took it all in your stride.’

  ‘She wasn’t really a lesbian, was she? Just a poor woman puzzled by her desire for another woman.’

  ‘It’s a long time ago,’ said Burden.

  He said nothing about wanting to hear more of Targo. Perhaps, Wexford thought, he never would. There had been few unsolved crimes in those years and no repetitions of the Carroll case with a man enduring a trial, a conviction and an appeal only to be ostracised for what Wexford was certain someone else had done.

  By that time he had found the girl who was the quintessence of his type, married her and their children had been born. But he said nothing about that to Burden, that was his private thing, to be kept even from his best friends.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Moffats’ daughter phoned him. It was the last thing he expected. ‘This is Josephine Moffat,’ she said. ‘You came to our house and brought a book for Medora.’ She sounded nice and not much like her mother. ‘We met when I was on holiday down in Cornwall with my parents,’ she said. ‘I don’t see her very often because she lives so far away and mostly we just write. But she did come up to stay when we were going to that wedding, only I couldn’t on account of I got flu.’ Cornwall was thought of as far away then. The world had shrunk. ‘I sent her the book.’

  Now she would tell him Anne Finch’s poems weren’t Medora’s. He had made a mistake. But, no.

  ‘She was named after someone in a poem herself. She says she’d like to meet you but I told her you were a policeman in Sussex.’

  He hardly recognised his own voice, it was so shy and hesitant. ‘Would you give me her address? I don’t even know her surname.’

  ‘Don’t you? How funny.’ Suddenly the voice was coarser and less ladylike. ‘It’s Holland and she lives at 14 Denys Road, Port Ezra, Cornwall.’ She gave him a phone number and he wondered if he would dare to use it.

  No postcodes then. Just the town or village and the county. Writing that letter was difficult but he did it, suggesting he might call and see her when he had a week’s holiday in August. No answer came and he was deterred for a while. Then Ventura sent him to Cornwall to interview a man the Cornish police were holding on suspicion of his being involved in a bank robbery in Kingsmarkham. William Raw was taking refuge with his mother in St Austell when he was arrested and, with the interview fixed for the following morning, Wexford would have a free late afternoon and evening. Port Ezra was no more than seven miles away along the coast towards Plymouth.

  It was now or never. This was a long-distance call, costly and not to be made lightly. He could have done it from the police station but too many of his colleagues did that sort of thing and he wasn’t going to. Presumably, she lived with her parents. Most young girls did then and most young men too. But it was she who answered, her voice not quite what he had hoped for. What kind of a snob was he that he was daunted by a Cornish burr?

  ‘I’d like to meet you,’ she said. ‘Could you come about six? Mum and Dad will be home by then.’

  Meeting her parents wasn’t part of his plan but he made enthusiastic noises and said he would like to take her out to dinner. Was there a restaurant nearby?

  ‘Not in Port Ezra,’ she said and she giggled. ‘There’s the Pomeroy Arms but that’s just for drink.’ It was long before the days when pubs did food. ‘You could have supper here with us.’

  He said he’d be with her by six. That giggle was another point against her but he castigated himself for his rigidity.

  Port Ezra was a strange name, he said to his landlady before he left the boarding house where he and DC Bryson were staying. Not so strange for Cornwall, she said, where they had Cairo and Indian Queens, transliterations from the old Cornish language. The nearest English equivalent to Medora’s home town was Port Ezra, so that was how it was known.

  He and Bryson had come to St Austell by train. They had no car at their disposal. He took the bus that followed the coast road to Port Ezra and beyond. It was less a town than a village with two shops and a pub, a dour grey church, white cottages with fuchsia hedges in full red and purple blossom, newish bungalows in its half-dozen streets leading off the cliff road and a magnificent view of dark blue sea pierced by jagged black rocks like a thousand islands. Number 14 Denys Road was one of the bungalows. The small car called the Mini had been on sale in Britain for a year or two, in just two colours at first, pale blue and red, and the Hollands had a red one standing on their driveway. Now he was outside the house Wexford hadn’t the least idea as to what he would say. ‘I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die’ would hardly serve as an opening move with her mother or father.

  But it was she herself who opened the door.

  ‘So here you are then,’ she said in a broad Cornish accent, a burr as thick as a television actor might have with a part in Jamaica Inn. ‘I never thought you’d actually come.’

  He had to remind himself that he had a Sussex accent. For years he had thought he spoke the Queen’s English, pure BBC, and then he had heard a recording made of his own voice and been disillusioned.

  ‘Anyway, come on in,’ she said.

  She was wearing dark green trousers that they called slacks then and a low-cut green floral blouse. The clothes didn’t suit the girl he had previously seen in tight-waisted full-skirted pink. His mother would have thought that blouse daring and even close on indecent. But her skin was perfect and her dark hair as glossy as satin. By this time he had been in dozens of strangers’ living rooms and there was nothing out of the ordinary in this one, from the flying china mallards on the wall to the beige uncut moquette three-piece suite. Perhaps there were rather more framed photographs than usual. And which parent owned the Complete Works of Byron sitting among the cookery books and the Dennis Wheatleys? It comforted him to see it there, almost as if a sympathetic old friend were sitting in on their meeting.

  ‘You’re a cop, Josie says.’ She smiled invitingly.

  ‘Yes. A detective sergeant.’

  Her perfume was musky and suitable for a woman twice her age. He sat down in one of the armchairs but when she patted the sofa cushion beside hers he moved to sit next to her.

  ‘Fancy you seeing me and wanting to take me out. That’s very romantic.’ Now her face was quite close to his he could see how heavy was the make-up she wor
e. Had it been like that in the church but he not near enough to notice? Where were the parents? Not home yet? In another part of the house? ‘I never lost that book. That was just a way of getting to meet me, wasn’t it?’

  He nodded. Her rather aggressive tone disconcerted him.

  ‘Poems written by a woman hundreds of years ago. Not exactly my cup of tea.’

  ‘Whose is the Byron then?’ he had asked.

  ‘Oh, that. My dad’s. He’s a bit of an egghead or used to be. Shall we have a drink? We’ve got sherry, Bristol Cream or Dry Fly?’

  ‘Should we wait for your mother and father?’ He was still anxious to do everything right. She must be nervous and that would account for the way she spoke and the words she used. ‘They’ll be home soon, won’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re bothered about them. I thought you’d like to be alone with me.’

  Her face was very near to his now, the mouth half open. He edged backwards along the sofa, conscious of how this must look. It was no use any longer telling himself her behaviour was due to nerves. Then he heard a footstep overhead. So there was someone in the house, those parents or someone else? You’re a cop, she had said, and it was being a cop that stood him in good stead now. But instead of standing up, leaving without ceremony, he turned back to face her and as he did so, she took him by the shoulders and pulled him down on top of her. At some point she must have ripped the green blouse because he saw her naked breasts and, in spite of himself, was excited by them.

  It hardly mattered because she screamed, a shattering sound from strong young lungs. There was a pounding on the stairs, the door burst open and a man came in. Not her father, but a young man about his own age. He was big, burly and red-faced.

  ‘What’s going on here? Get off her.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Wexford said, extricating himself.

  ‘He assaulted me,’ the girl said. ‘Jumped on me and tore my blouse.’

  She was holding the two sides of it together. ‘Look at that, Jim. That’s what he did.’

  ‘You’re going to pay for this,’ Jim said.

  Wexford stood up. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘He’s my fiancé.’

  ‘I see. I’d strongly advise you not to marry her,’ he said to the man, ‘not unless you fancy visiting your wife in prison.’

  He expected this to have an inflammatory effect but instead a shifty look crossed Jim’s face. ‘Let’s talk about this,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to take it further. I mean, I was going to call the police …’ He stopped when Wexford began to laugh. ‘All right, all right. Only we’ll need paying. Or Meddy will. Her blouse is ruined for one thing and you’ve frightened her. We’ll say fifty quid and we’ll forget about it.’

  It was an old trick. Wexford had been told about it but never personally come across it before. Usually, he understood, the players in the game were a prostitute, her pimp and a client. Perhaps the situation wasn’t that different. ‘Forget about it, is right. For one thing I don’t carry fifty pounds about on me.’ It was a very large sum then. Laughable as the price for a blouse which might have cost two pounds. ‘And even if I did,’ he said. ‘I’d not hand it over to a thug like you when I’ve done nothing.’

  The two of them, Medora still clutching her blouse, had moved over to bar the door. The man called Jim pressed himself against it with arms outspread. The girl stood next to him, glowering at Wexford.

  ‘Open the door,’ he said.

  ‘Make me.’

  ‘All right, I will.’

  He grabbed Jim’s left arm to pull him away when the other arm came up and struck him a glancing slap across the face. That was it. Wexford was young and strong and could throw a hefty punch. He took a step back and struck the other man a blow to his jaw. It wasn’t all that hard, not half as hard as he could have made it, but Jim’s knees buckled and he fell to the floor. Medora was screaming, real heartfelt terrified screams, quite different from the sounds she made when claiming to be raped.

  ‘Stop that noise,’ Wexford said. ‘He’s not hurt.’ Jim was struggling to sit up. ‘Well, not much hurt.’

  ‘You’ve busted my jaw,’ said Jim. Wexford knew he couldn’t have if the man could speak. ‘You’ve not heard the last of this.’

  Wexford gave him a poke in the thigh with the toe of his shoe. ‘Goodnight,’ he said and let himself out of the front door. Down the garden path, past the parked Mini. Jim’s car? Out into the street, pulling the gate shut behind him. No one tried to stop him. He was quite sure he would hear no more about it and was in no doubt he had done the right thing in hitting Jim but he still felt all kinds of a fool. A fool for going there, a fool for not walking out when she said he’d like to be alone with her and most of all a fool for letting himself become obsessed with a girl he had never even spoken to just because she was pretty, wore a rose-pink hat and had a romantic name. Walking up Denys Road towards the beach and the bus stop, he resolved that he would never again let an obsession master him, not realising then that the peculiarities of our psyches are not so easily conquered and subdued. In those days, if he decided on something he was certain he would keep to it, for he was full of self-confidence. This particular resolution was doomed to failure from the start and even today Burden often cautioned him about another fixation. Hadn’t he, after all, been obsessed for half his life with Eric Targo?

  The buses from Port Ezra to St Austell were infrequent and he had walked for nearly two miles in sight of the sea before his reaching a bus stop coincided with the arrival of the bus. He had enjoyed walking in those days, walking fast and vigorously, in contrast to today when it was done purely for exercise and to offset the results of red wine and cashew nuts. In St Austell he found a pub and asked for a half of bitter. He took his drink to a table in the corner because he wanted to be alone to think. But when he was sitting down he realised that there was nothing to think about, he had done all the cogitation and recriminating that was necessary.

  ‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new,’ or in other words to interview William Raw and take him back to Kingsmarkham. He looked forward to another ride on the Cornish Riviera back to Paddington.

  His experience put him off Cornwall. Medora Holland and her boyfriend had tainted the county for him and when his mother wanted him to go on holiday to Newquay with her he contemplated a flat refusal. But his father had died six months before, her sister – the aunt who said she wouldn’t give someone or other the satisfaction – six weeks before, and she seemed puzzled, forlorn and lost. Anywhere else, he said at first. Lyme Regis was supposed to be very nice (and he could see where Jane Austen’s Louisa Musgrove jumped off the Cobb) or how about Teignmouth, where Keats had written about going over the hill and over the mead to Dawlish? Ultimately, he couldn’t refuse her. Newquay on the north coast was quite a long way from Port Ezra on the south.

  It was the first time in his life he had stayed in a hotel. Up till then it had been boarding houses which later on became B & Bs. The hotel wasn’t very big and not at all grand but it had a dining room with separate tables and at one of them, not on their first evening but on their second, sat a middle-aged man and woman with their son and daughter. He could tell they were the couple’s children because the boy looked exactly like the man and the girl very much like her mother. Doing Latin at school, he had come across the phrase, mater pulchra, filia pulchrior.

  He said it aloud, not really intending to.

  ‘What does that mean, dear?’ his mother asked.

  He laughed. ‘Beautiful mother, more beautiful daughter.’

  ‘Oh, yes. They are good-looking, aren’t they? The girl is lovely. But I would never have thought dark hair and blue eyes your type.’

  She was thinking of Alison, the last girlfriend of his he had thought it prudent for her to know about. ‘Exactly my type,’ he said, and then, as they were leaving the dining room he heard her mother call her Dora. That was enough to put him off for the night and half a day. The book he
had brought with him to read was David Copperfield. He was about halfway through it when he came upon a highly relevant sentence. ‘“Dora,” I thought. “What a beautiful name.”’ He had laughed, had his own version, ‘What an ugly name.’ He dreamt about Medora that night and her hateful embrace. Next day, while they were having lunch at a restaurant by the sea his mother told him she’d invited the couple, the boy and Dora to have a drink with them that evening.

  How decorous it all was! How different from how it would be today, even if you could imagine people of their age – in their twenties – going on holiday with their parents. Even then he found it deeply dull and pedestrian. In the unlikely event of this Dora – horrible name – being the girl for him, would he want to meet her, his fate, his future, in company with his mother, her mother and father and her brother, over Dry Fly sherry in a hotel bar in Newquay? Who knew then that Newquay would one day become fashionable as a surfing resort and rival Ibiza as a venue for young people’s raves and binge-drinking?

  She had a pretty voice as well as a beautiful face and figure. She was witty and sharp. He fell in love three days later, forgot the awfulness of the name and came to love it, took her away from her family and abandoned his mother to the – acceptable and perhaps preferred – company of Dora’s mother and father. It is said that we all have a peak experience, one day that is to be the best of our lives. Perhaps his was the fifth day since his meeting with Dora, when they were walking by the sea. When he told her he loved her she lifted her face to his and said she loved him too.

  To meet your future wife in a hotel where you are on holiday with your mother and she on holiday with her parents seems the reverse of romantic. He was learning that romance has little to do with location or the exotic or glamorous circumstances and everything to do with feelings. And learning too that you like a name because you love the person who is called by it.