by Ruth Rendell
In the still waters of the pool, when he bent over to look, he had seen a pair of large goldfish, white with scarlet heads, swimming serenely in slow circles.
* * * *
White and scarlet . . . The blood was still there, though the tablecloth, along with a host of other items, had gone off in bags to the forensics laboratory at Myringham. Later on in the night the room had been filled with sealed plastic bags containing lamps and ornaments, cushions and table napkins, plates and cutlery.
With no qualms about what she might see in the hall, for sheets covered the foot of the stairs and the corner where the phone was, he had been steering Brenda clear of the dining room, when she sidestepped and opened the door. She was such a quick mover, it was a risk taking his eyes off her for an instant.
She was a small thin woman with the skinny figure of a young girl. Her trousers scarcely showed the outline of buttock and thigh. But her face was as deeply lined as if by knife cuts, her lips sucked in by a constant nervous pursing. Dry reddish hair was already thin enough to make it likely Mrs Harrison would need a wig in ten years’ time. She was never still. All night long she probably fidgeted in her fretful sleep.
Outside the bow window, gaping in, stood her husband. The night before they had sealed up the broken pane but not drawn the curtains. Brenda gave him a swift look, then surveyed the room, swivelling her head. Her eyes rested briefly on the worst spattered area of wall, for a longer time on a patch of carpet beside the chair where Naomi Jones had been sitting. Archbold had scraped off a bloodstained section of the pile here and it had gone to the lab with the other items and the four cartridges which had been recovered. Burden thought she was going to comment, to make some remark on the lines of police destroying a good carpet which cleaning would have restored to pristine condition, but she said nothing.
It was Ken Harrison who made – or mouthed, for inside the room it was nearly inaudible – the expected censure. Burden opened the window.
‘I didn’t quite catch that, Mr Harrison.’
‘I said that was eight-ounce glass, that was.’
‘No doubt it can be replaced.’
‘At a cost.’
Burden shrugged.
‘And the back door wasn’t even locked!’ exclaimed Harrison in the tone a respectable householder uses to refer to an act of vandalism.
Brenda, left to herself to examine this room for the first time, had turned very pale. That frozen look, that increasing pallor, might be the prelude to a faint. Her glazed eyes met his.
‘Come along, Mrs Harrison, there’s no point in remaining here. Are you all right?’
‘I’m not going to pass out, if that’s what you mean.’
But there had been a danger of it, he was sure of that, for she sat down on a chair in the hall and hung her head forward, trembling. Burden could smell blood. He was hoping she wouldn’t know what the stench was, a mixture of fishiness and iron filings, when she jumped up, said she was quite all right and should they go upstairs? She bounded quite jauntily over the sheet that covered the steps where Harvey Copeland had lain.
Upstairs, she showed him the top floor, a place of attics that were perhaps never used. On the first floor were the rooms he had already seen, those of Daisy and Naomi Jones. Three-quarters of the way along the passage to the west wing, she opened a door and announced that this was where Copeland had slept.
Burden was surprised. He had assumed that Davina Flory and her husband shared a bedroom. Though he didn’t say this, Brenda followed this thought. She gave him a look in which prudery was curiously mixed with lubriciousness.
‘She was sixteen years older than him, you know. She was a very old woman. Of course you wouldn’t have said that of her, if you know what I mean, she sort of didn’t seem to have much to do with age. She was just herself.’
Burden knew what she meant. Her sensitivity was unexpected. He gave the room a quick glance. No one had been in there, nothing was disturbed. Copeland had slept in a single bed. The furniture was dark mahogany but in spite of its warm rich colour, the room had an austere look with plain cream curtains, a cream carpet and the only pictures prints of old county maps.
The state of Davina Flory’s bedroom seemed to upset Brenda more than the dining room had. At least it stimulated her to an outburst of feeling.
‘What a mess! Look at the bed! Look at all that stuff out of the drawers!’
She ran about, picking things up. Burden made no attempt to stop her. Photographs would provide a permanent record of how the room had been.
‘I want you to tell me what’s missing, Mrs Harrison.’
‘Look at her jewel box!’
‘Can you remember what things she had?’
Brenda, as agile as a teenager and as thin, sat on the floor, reaching out all round her for scattered objects; a brooch, a pair of eyebrow tweezers, a suitcase key, an empty perfume bottle.
‘That brooch, for instance, why would they leave that?’
Her short laugh was like a snort. ‘It wasn’t worth anything. I gave it her.’
‘You did?’
‘For a Christmas present. We all gave each other presents, so I had to get something. What d’you give the woman who has everything? She used to wear it, maybe she liked it, but it was only worth three quid.’
‘What’s missing, Mrs Harrison?’
‘She didn’t have much, you know. I say “the woman who has everything” but there are things you can afford you don’t always want, aren’t there? I mean fur, even if you could afford it. Well, it’s cruel, isn’t it? She could have had diamonds galore but it wasn’t her style.’ She had got up and was rummaging through drawers. ‘I’d say the lot was gone, what there was. She had some good pearls. There was rings her first husband gave her; she never wore them, but they were here. Her gold bracelet’s gone. One of the rings had enormous diamonds in it, God knows what it was worth. You’d have thought she’d have kept it in the bank, wouldn’t you? She told me she thought of giving it to Daisy when she was eighteen.’
‘When would that be?’
‘Soon. Next week or the week after.’
‘Only “thought of”?’
‘I’m telling you what she said and that’s what she said.’
‘Do you think you could make me a list of the jewellery you think is missing, Mrs Harrison?’
She nodded, slammed the drawer shut. ‘Fancy, this time yesterday I was in here doing the room – I always did the bedrooms on a Tuesday – and she came in, Davina that is, and was talking ever so happily about going off to France with Harvey to do some programme on French TV, some very important book programme for her new book. Of course she spoke French like a native.’
‘What do you think happened here last night?’
She was walking ahead of him down the back stairs. ‘Me? How should I know?’
‘You must have had ideas. You know the house and you knew the people. I’d be interested to know what you think.’
At the foot of the stairs they met a large cat of a colour known to Burden as ‘Air Force blue’, which had come out of the opposite door and was crossing the back hall. When it saw them it stopped in its tracks, opened its eyes very wide, laid back its ears and began to swell until its dense fluffy smoky fur stood on end. Its attitude was of a brave animal menaced by hunters or some dangerous predator.
‘Don’t be silly, Queenie,’ said Brenda fondly. ‘Don’t be such a silly old girl. You know he won’t hurt you while I’m here.’ Burden felt a little affronted. ‘There’s some chicken livers for you on the back step.’
The cat turned tail and fled the way it had come. Brenda Harrison followed it through a door Burden had not entered on the previous evening, and along a passage which opened into the morning room. The sun-filled conservatory was as warm as summer. He had been in here briefly the night before. It looked different by day and he saw that this was the glazed building, of classical shape and curved roof, which protruded into the centre of the terrace where he
had stood surveying the lawns and the distant woods.
The scent of hyacinths was stronger, sweet and cloying. Sunlight had opened the narcissi to show their orange corollas. In here it was humid and warm and perfumed, the way you thought a rain forest might be, the air damply tangible.
‘She wouldn’t let me have a pet,’ Brenda Harrison said suddenly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Davina. Like I say, there was no side to her, all of us was equal – I mean, that’s what she said – but I wasn’t allowed to have a pet. I’d have liked a dog. Have a hamster, Brenda, she said, or a budgie. But I never liked the idea of that. It’s cruel keeping birds in cages, don’t you reckon?’
‘I shouldn’t fancy one myself,’ said Burden.
‘God knows what’ll become of us now, me and Ken. We’ve got no other home. The way property prices are we don’t have a chance – well, it’s a joke, isn’t it? Davina said this was our home for ever but when all’s said and done it’s a tied cottage, isn’t it?’ She bent down and picked up a dead leaf from the floor. Her expression became coy, a little wistful. ‘It’s not easy starting afresh. I know I don’t look my age, everyone says so, but when all’s said and done we’re not getting any younger, either of us.’
‘You were going to tell me what you think happened here last night.’
She sighed. ‘What do I think happened? Well, what does happen in these awful cases, I mean it’s not the first, is it? They got in and went upstairs, they’d heard about the pearls and maybe the rings. There’s always bits in the papers about Davina. I mean, anyone’d know there was money here. Harvey heard them, went to go upstairs after them and they came down and shot him. Then they had to shoot the others to stop them talking – I mean, telling people what they looked like.’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘What else?’ she said, as if there was no room for doubt. Then, briskly, astonishing him: ‘I’ll be able to have a dog now. Whatever becomes of us no one can stop me having a dog now, can they?’
Burden returned to the hall and contemplated the staircase. The more he thought of it the less he could match up the mechanics with the evidence.
Jewellery was missing. It might be very valuable jewellery, worth as much as a hundred thousand pounds, but kill three people for it and intend to kill a fourth? Burden shrugged. He knew that men and women have been murdered for fifty pence, for the price of a drink.
* * * *
The memory of his television appearance rankling a little, Wexford was still able to congratulate himself on the discretion he had maintained in the matter of Daisy Flory. Television was no longer a mysterious and frightening medium. He was getting used to it. This was his third or fourth appearance in front of the camera and if he was not blasé, he was at least assured.
One question only had ruffled him. It had seemed to have little or nothing to do with the Tancred House murders. Were they any more likely to find the men responsible for this than those guilty of the bank shooting? He had replied that he was certain both crimes would be solved and Sergeant Martin’s killer caught as the Tancred House killers would be. A small smile appeared on the face of his interrogator, which he tried to ignore, keeping calm.
The question had not been asked by the ‘stringer’ for the national papers, nor by either of the national paper representatives who were there, but by a reporter from the Kingsmarkham Courier. This was a very young man, dark-haired, rather handsome, cocky-looking. His was a public-school voice without trace of London accent or the local burr.
‘It’s getting on for a year since the bank killing, Chief Inspector.’
‘Ten months,’ said Wexford.
‘Isn’t it a fact that statistics show the longer time goes by, the less likely . . .’
Wexford pointed to another questioner with her hand up and the Courier reporter’s words were drowned by her enquiry. How was the young Miss Flory? Davina or Daisy, didn’t they call her?
Wexford meant to be discreet about that at this stage. He replied that she was in intensive care – possibly, at this hour, still true – that she was stable but seriously ill. She had lost a lot of blood. No one had told him this but it was bound to be true. The girl stringer asked him if she was on the ‘danger list’ and Wexford had been able to tell her that no hospital kept such a list and so far as he knew never had.
He would go alone to see her. He wanted no one accompanying him at this first questioning. DC Gerry Hinde, in his element, was feeding into his computer masses of collated information from which, he had mysteriously announced, he would produce a database to be distributed to every system in the stable block. Sandwiches had been brought in, fetched from the Cheriton High Road supermarket. Opening his own package with the paperknife, understanding how useful it would after all prove to be, Wexford wondered what the world had done before the arrival of the wedge-shaped plastic sandwich-container. Worthy to be ranked in the scale of blessed inventions, he thought with a glance of distaste at Gerry Hinde, at least on a level with facsimile machines.
Just as he was leaving, Brenda Harrison arrived with a list of Davina Flory’s missing jewellery. He only had time to give it a quick scan before passing it on to Hinde. That was a real snip for the database, that would give him something to mouse through his systems.
To his annoyance, the Courier reporter was waiting for him as he came out of the stables. He was sitting on a low wall, swinging his legs. Wexford made it a rule never to talk ‘cases’ to the press except at the arranged conferences. This man must have been hanging about for an hour, on the chance he must emerge sooner or later.
‘No. Nothing more to say today.’
‘That’s very unfair. You ought to give priority to us. Support your local sheriff.’
‘That means you supporting me,’ Wexford said, amused in spite of himself, ‘not me feeding facts to you. What’s your name?’
‘Jason Sherwin Coram Sebright.’
‘A bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? Too long for a by-line.’
‘I’ve not decided what to call myself for professional purposes yet. I only started at the Courier last week. The point is I’ve got a distinct advantage over the rest of them. I know Daisy, you see. She’s at my school, or where I was. I know her very well.’
All this was delivered with a confident brashness that was uncommon, even these days. Jason Sebright seemed entirely at ease.
‘If you’re going to see her I hope you’ll take me with you,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping for an exclusive interview.’
‘Then your hopes are doomed to be dashed, Mr Sebright.’
He shepherded Sebright out, waited there watching until he had got into his own car. Donaldson drove him down the main drive, the way they had come on the previous night. Sebright’s tiny Fiat followed close behind. A quarter of a mile on, in an area where there were many fallen trees, they passed Gabbitas operating something Wexford thought might be a planking machine. The hurricane of three years before had done damage here. Wexford noticed cleared areas where there had been recent planting, the two-feet-high saplings tied to posts and sheathed in animal guards. Here too seasoning sheds had been built to protect the planked wood and under tarpaulins were stacked boards of oak and sycamore and ash.
They came to the main gate and Donaldson got out to open it. Hanging from the left-hand gatepost was a bouquet of flowers. Wexford wound down the window to get a better look. This was no ordinary florist’s confection but a flower-filled basket with one side deeply curved over to afford the maximum display. Golden freesias, sky-blue scillas and waxen-white stephanotis spilled over the gilded lip of the basket. Attached to the handle was a card.
‘What does it say?’
Donaldson stumbled over the words, cleared his throat and began again. ‘“Now, boast thee, death, in thy possession lies, A lass unparallel’d.”’
He left the gate open for Jason Sebright, who, Wexford saw, had also got out to read the words on the card. Donaldson turned on to the B 2428
for Cambery Ashes and Stowerton. They were there in ten minutes.
* * * *
Dr Leigh, a tired-looking woman in her mid-twenties, met Wexford in the corridor outside MacAllister Ward.
‘I can understand it’s urgent to talk to her, but could you keep it down to ten minutes today? I mean, as far as I’m concerned and if it’s all right with her, you can come back tomorrow, but just at first I think it should be limited to ten minutes. That will be enough to get the essentials, won’t it?’
‘If you say so,’ said Wexford.
‘She has lost a lot of blood,’ she said, confirming what he had told the press. ‘But the bullet didn’t break the collarbone. More important, it didn’t touch the lung. A bit of a miracle, that. It’s not so much that she’s physically ill as that she’s very distressed. She’s still very very distressed.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Would you come into the office a moment?’
Wexford followed her into a small room which had ‘Charge Nurse’ on the door. It was empty and full of smoke. Why did hospital staff, who must hear more than most people of the evils and dangers of cigarettes, smoke more than anyone else? It was a mystery that often intrigued him. Dr Leigh clicked her tongue and opened the window.
‘A bullet was extracted from Daisy’s upper chest. Her shoulderblade prevented it from exiting. Do you want it?’
‘Certainly we do. She was only shot once?’
‘Only once. In the upper chest on the left side.’
‘Yes.’ He wrapped the lead cylinder in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. The fact that it had been in the girl’s body brought him a slight unexpected flutter of nausea.
‘You can go in now. She’s in a side room; we’re keeping her on her own because she’s a very unhappy girl. She doesn’t need company at the moment.’
Dr Leigh took him into MacAllister Ward. The corridor walls of the single rooms were panelled in frosted glass and each door had an insertion of clear glass. Outside the room with ‘2’ printed on the glass Anne Lennox sat on an uncomfortable-looking stool, reading a Danielle Steel paperback. She jumped up when Wexford appeared.