by Ruth Rendell
He said, ‘Hi’, but in a dazed way and rather slowly. Seeming considerably taken aback, he looked past Wexford at the car outside, then back warily at his face.
‘Kingsmarkham CID. We’re looking for someone called Bib. Does she live here?’
He was studying Wexford’s warrant card with great interest. Or even anxiety. A lazy grin transformed his face, suddenly making him appear more masculine. He shook back the long lock of black hair that fell over his forehead.
‘Bib? No. No, she doesn’t. Next door. The one in the middle.’ He hesitated, said, ‘Is this about the Davina Flory killings?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Breakfast TV,’ he said, and added, as if Wexford was likely to be interested, ‘We studied one of her books at college. I minored in English Literature.’
‘I see. Well, thank you very much, sir.’ Kingsmarkham Police called everyone ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ or by their name and style until they were actually charged. It was for politeness’s sake and one of Wexford’s rules. ‘We won’t trouble you any further,’ he said.
If the young American had the look of a girl cross-dressing, Bib might have been a man, so few concessions had she or nature made to her gender. Her age was equally an enigma. She might have been thirty-five or fifty-five. Her dark hair was cropped short, her face was reddish and shiny as if scrubbed with soap, her fingernails square cut. In one ear lobe she wore a small gold ring.
When Vine had explained what they had come for, she nodded and said, ‘I saw it on telly. Couldn’t believe it.’ Her voice was gruff, flat, curiously expressionless.
‘May we come in?’
In her estimation the question was no mere formality. She seemed to be considering it from several possible angles before giving a slow nod.
Her bicycle she kept in the hall, resting against a wall papered in sweet peas faded to beige. The living room was furnished like the abode of a very old lady and it had that sort of smell, a combination of camphor and carefully preserved not very clean clothes, closed windows and boiled sweets. Wexford expected to encounter an ancient mother in an armchair but the room was empty.
‘For a start, could we have your full name, please,’ Vine said.
If she had been in court on a murder charge, brought there peremptorily and without counsel to defend her, Bib could not have behaved with greater caution. Every word must be weighed. She brought out her name with slow reluctance and a hesitation before each word.
‘Er, Beryl – er Agnes – er, Mew.’
‘Beryl Agnes Mew. I believe you work on a part-time basis at Tancred House and were there yesterday afternoon, Miss Mew?’
‘Mrs. Missus.’ She looked from Vine to Wexford and said it again, very deliberately. ‘Mrs Mew.’
‘I’m sorry. You were there yesterday afternoon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Doing what?’
It might be shock that affected her like this. Or a general distrust and suspicion of humanity. She seemed stunned by Vine’s question and looked at him stonily before lifting her heavy shoulders in a shrug.
‘What do you do there, Mrs Mew?’
Again she considered. She was still but her eyes moved rather more than most people’s. Now they moved quite wildly.
She said, incomprehensibly to Vine, ‘They call it the rough.’
‘You do the rough work, Mrs Mew,’ Wexford said. ‘Yes, I see. Scrubbing floors, washing paint and so on?’ He got a ponderous nod. ‘You were cleaning the freezer, I think.’
‘The freezers. They’ve got three.’ Her head swayed slowly from side to side. ‘I saw it on telly. Couldn’t believe it. They was all right yesterday.’
As if, Wexford thought, the inhabitants of Tancred House had succumbed to a visitation of plague. He said, ‘What time did you leave for home?’
If the imparting of her own name had caused such inner searching, a question such as this might be expected to give rise to whole minutes of pondering, but Bib answered fairly quickly. ‘They’d started on their meal.’
‘Mr and Mrs Copeland and Mrs Jones and Miss Jones had gone into the dining room, do you mean?’
‘I heard them talking and the door shut. I put me bits back in the freezer and switched it on. My hands was froze, so I put them under the hot tap for a bit.’ The effort of saying so much silenced her for a moment. She seemed to be recouping unseen forces. ‘I got me coat and then I went to fetch me bike as was in that bit round the back with hedges like round.’
Wexford wondered if she ever talked to the man next door, the American, and if she talked like this, would he understand a word? ‘Did you lock the back door after you?’
‘Me? No. It’s not my job to lock doors.’
‘So this would have been – what? Ten to eight?’
A long hesitation. ‘I reckon.’
‘How did you get home?’ said Vine.
‘On my bike.’ She was made indignant by his stupidity. He should have known. Everyone knew.
‘Which route did you take, Mrs Mew? Which road?’
‘The by-road.’
‘I want you to think very carefully before you answer.’ But she always did. That was why this was taking so long. ‘Did you see a car on your way home? Did you meet one or did one overtake you? On the by-road.’ More explanation was doubtless called for. ‘A car or a van or a – a vehicle like the one next door.’
For a moment Wexford feared he had made her think her American neighbour might be involved in this crime. She got up and looked out of the window in the direction of the Ford Transit. Her expression was confused and she bit her lip.
At last she said, ‘That one?’
‘No, no. Any one. Any vehicle at all. Did you meet any vehicle on your way home last evening?’
She thought. She nodded, shook her head, finally said, ‘No.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long does it take to get home?’
‘It’s downhill going home.’
‘Yes. So how long did it take you last evening?’
‘About twenty minutes.’
‘And you met no one? Not even John Gabbitas in the Land-Rover.’
The first flash of any sort of animation showed. It came in her restless eyes. ‘Does he say I did?’
‘No, no. It’s unlikely you would have if you were home here by, say, eight fifteen. Thank you very much, Mrs Mew. Would you like to show us the road you take from here to the by-road?’
A long pause and then, ‘I don’t mind.’
The road where the cottages were fell steeply down the side of the little river valley. Bib Mew pointed their way down this road and gave some vague instructions, her eyes straying to the Ford Transit. Wexford thought he must have ineradicably planted in her mind the notion that she should have met this van last night. As they drove off down the hill, she could be seen leaning over the gate, following their progress with those darting eyes.
At the foot of the hill the stream was not bridged but forded. A wooden footbridge spanned it for the use of foot passengers and cyclists. Vine drove through the water which was perhaps six inches deep and flowing very fast over flat brown stones. On the other side they came to what he insisted on calling a T-junction, though the extreme rusticity of the place, steep hedge banks, overhanging trees, deep meadows with cattle glimpsed beyond, made this a misnomer. Bib’s instructions, if such they could be called, were to turn left here and then take the first right. This was the Pomfret Monachorum way in to the by-road.
There came a sudden sight of forest. The hedge trees parted and there it was, a dark, bluish canopy hanging high above them. Half a mile up the road it appeared again, was quickly all round them, as the deep tunnel of lane running between high banks plunged into the start of the by-road where a sign said: TANCRED HOUSE ONLY. TWO MILES. NO THROUGH-ROAD.
Wexford said, ‘When we think it’s only one mile I’m going to get out and walk the rest of the way.’
&n
bsp; ‘Right. They’d have had to know the place if they came this way, sir.’
‘They knew it. Or one of them did.’
He left the car at an auspicious moment, when he saw the sun come out. The woods would not begin to grow green for another month. There was not even a green haze to mist the trees which flanked this sandy path. All was bright brown, a sparkling vigorous colour that gilded the branches and turned the leaf buds to a glowing shade of copper. It was cold and dry. Late on the previous night, when the sky had cleared, a frost had come. The frost was gone now, not a silver streak of it remaining, but a chill hung in the clear still air. Above the dense or feathery treetops, through spaces in the groves, the sky was a light delicate blue, so pale as to be almost white.
The Win Carver interview told him about these woods, when they had been planted, which parts dated from the thirties and which were older but augmented with planting from that time. Ancient oaks, and here and there a horse chestnut with looped boughs and glutinous leaf buds, towered above ranks of smaller neater trees, vase-shaped as if by a natural process of topiary. Wexford thought they might be hornbeams. Then he noticed a metal label secured to the trunk of one of them. Yes, common hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. The taller graceful specimens a little way along the path were the mountain ash, he read, Sorbus aucuparia. Identifying trees when bare of leaves must be a test for the expert.
The groves gave place to a plantation of Norway maples (Acer platanoides) with trunks like crocodile skin. No conifers were here, not a single pine or fir to provide a dark green shape among the shining leafless branches. This was the finest part of the deciduous woodland, man-made but a copy of nature, pristinely ordered but with nature’s own neatness. Fallen logs had been left when they fell and were overgrown with bright fungus, frills and ruffs and knobbed stalks in yellow or bronze. Dead trees still stood, their rotting trunks weathered to silver, a habitation for owls or a feeding ground for wood-peckers.
Wexford walked on, expecting each twist in the narrow road to bring him out to face the east wing of the house. But every new curve only afforded another vista of standing trees and fallen trees, saplings and underbrush. A squirrel, blue and silvery brown, snaked up the trunk of an oak, sprang from twig to twig, took a flying leap to the branch of a nearby beech. The road made a final ellipse, broadened and cleared and there was the house before him, dream-like in the veils of mist.
The east wing rose majestically. From here the terrace could be seen and the gardens at the rear. Instead of the daffodils, which filled the public gardens in Kingsmarkham and the council flowerbeds, tiny scillas sparkling like blue jewels clustered under the trees. But the gardens of Tancred House had not yet wakened from their winter sleep. Herbaceous borders, rosebeds, paths, hedges, pleached walks, lawns, all still had the look of having been trimmed and manicured, coiffed and in some cases packaged, and put away for hibernation. High hedges of yew and cypress made walls to conceal all outbuildings from sight of the house, dark screens cunningly planted for a privileged privacy.
He stood looking for a moment or two, then made his way to where he could see the parked police vehicles. The incident room had been set up in what was apparently a stable block, though a stables that no horse had lived in for half a century. It was too smart for that and there were blinds at the windows. A blue-faced gilt-handed clock under a central pediment told him the time was twenty to eleven.
His car was parked on the flagstones, so were Burden’s and two vans. Inside the stable block a technician was setting up the computers and Karen Malahyde was arranging a dais, lectern, microphone and half-circle of chairs for his press conference. They had scheduled it for eleven.
Wexford sat down behind the desk provided for him. He was rather touched by the care Karen had taken – he was sure it must be Karen’s work. There were three new ballpoint pens, a brass paperknife he couldn’t imagine he would ever use, two phones, as if he hadn’t got his Vodaphone, a computer and printer he had no idea how to work, and in a blue and brown glazed pot a cactus. The cactus, large, spherical, grey, covered in fur, was more like an animal than a plant, a cuddly animal, except that when he poked it a sharp thorn went into his finger.
Wexford shook his finger, cursing mildly. He could see he was honoured. These things seemingly went by rank and though there was another cactus on the desk evidently designated Burden’s, it had nowhere near the dimension of his, nor was it so hirsute. All Barry Vine got was an African violet, not even in bloom.
WPC Lennox had phoned in soon after she took over hospital duty. There was nothing to report. All was well. What did that mean? What was it to him if the girl lived or died? Young girls were dying all over the world, from starvation, in wars and insurrections, from cruel practices and clinical neglect. Why should this one matter?
He punched out Anne Lennox’s number on his phone.
‘She seems fine, sir.’
He must have misheard. ‘She what?’
‘She seems fine – well, heaps better. Would you like to talk to Dr Leigh, sir?’
There was silence at the other end. That is, there was no voice. He could hear hospital noise, footsteps and metallic sounds and swishing sounds. A woman came on.
‘I believe that’s Kingsmarkham Police?’
‘Chief Inspector Wexford.’
‘Dr Leigh. How can I help you?’
The voice sounded lugubrious to him. He detected in it the gravity which these people were perhaps taught to assume for some while after a tragedy had taken place. Such a death would affect the whole hospital. He simply gave the name, knowing that would be enough without enquiry.
‘Miss Flory. Daisy Flory.’
Suddenly all the gloom was gone. Perhaps he had imagined it. ‘Daisy? Yes, she’s fine, she’s doing very well.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘I said she’s doing well, she’s fine.’
‘She’s fine? We are talking about the same person? The young woman who was brought in last night with gunshot wounds?’
‘Her condition is quite satisfactory, Chief Inspector. She will be coming out of intensive care sometime today. I expect you’ll want to see her, won’t you? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t talk to her this afternoon. For a short while only, of course. We’ll say ten minutes.’
‘Would four o’clock be a good time?’
‘Four p.m., yes. Ask to see me first, will you? It’s Dr Leigh.’
The press came early. Wexford supposed he should really call them the ‘media’ as, approaching the dais, he saw from the window a television van arriving with a camera crew.
Chapter Six
‘Estate’ sounded like a hundred semi-detached houses crowded into a few acres. ‘Grounds’ expressed land only, not the buildings on it. Burden, unusually fanciful for him, thought ‘demesne’ might be the only word. This was the demesne of Tancred, a little world, or more realistically a hamlet: the great house, its stables, coachhouses, outbuildings, dwellings for servants past and present. Its gardens, lawns, hedges, pinetum, plantations and woods.
All of it – perhaps not the woods themselves – would have to be searched. They needed to know what they were dealing with, what this place was. The stables where the centre had been set up was only a small part of it. From where he stood, on the terrace which ran the length of the back of the house, scarcely anything of these outbuildings could be seen. Cunning hedge-planting, the careful provision of trees to hide the humble or the utilitarian, concealed everything from view but the top of a slate roof, the point of a weather vane. After all, it was winter still. The leaves of summertime would shield these gardens, this view, in serried screens of green.
As it was, the long formal lawn stretched away between herbaceous borders, broke into a rose garden, a clockface of beds, opened again to dip over a ha-ha into the meadow beyond. Perhaps. It was a possibility, though too far away to see from here. Things had been so arranged as to have the gardens blend gently into the vista beyond, the parklands wit
h its occasional giant tree, the bluish lip of woods. All the woods looked blue in the soft, misty late-winter light. Except the pinetum to the west with its mingled colours of yellow and smoky black, marble green and reptile green, slate and pearl and a bright copper.
Even in daylight, even from here, the pair of houses where the Harrisons and Gabbitas lived were invisible. Burden walked down the stone steps and along the path and through a gate in the hedge to the stables and coachhouses area where the search had begun. He came upon a row of cottages, dilapidated and shabby but not derelict, that had once no doubt housed some of the many servants the Victorians needed to maintain outdoor comfort and order.
The front door of one of them stood open. Two constables from the uniformed branch were inside, opening cupboards, investigating a hole of a scullery. Burden thought about housing and how there were never supposed to be enough houses, and he thought about all the homeless people, even on the streets of Kingsmarkham these days. His wife who had a social conscience had taught him to think this way. He never would have done before he married her. As it was, he could see that a surplus of accommodation at Tancred, at the hundreds and hundreds of houses like this there must be all over England, solved no problems. Not really. He couldn’t see how you could make the Florys and Copelands of this world give up their unused servants’ cottage to the bag lady who slept in St Peter’s porch, even if the bag lady would want it, so he stopped this line of thought and walked once more round the back of the house to the kitchen regions where he was due to meet Brenda Harrison for a tour.
Archbold and Milsom were examining the flagged areas here, looking no doubt for tyre marks. They had been working on the broad space at the front when he first arrived that morning. It had been a dry spring, the last heavy rain weeks ago. A car could come up here and leave no trace of its passage behind.