by Ruth Rendell
He had more important things to think about. Phone calls to John Chowney and Pamela Burns née Chowney had elicited only that they had no idea where their sister was and had not known she was going away. No neighbour had been told she would be absent. Her newsagent had not been alerted. Joanne Garland was not in the habit of taking a milk delivery. The manager of the card shop next door to Garlands in the Kingsbrook Centre had expected her to arrive and open the gallery on Thursday morning, one day’s grace having been allowed out of respect to Naomi Jones.
John Chowney named two women he called close friends of his sister. Neither was able to tell Burden anything of her whereabouts. Each was surprised to hear of her absence. She had not been seen since five forty on Tuesday evening when she left the Caenbrook Retirement Home and the warden on duty saw her get into her car she had parked on the forecourt. Joanne Garland had disappeared.
In different circumstances, the police would hardly have noticed it. A woman who goes away for a few days without telling her friends or relatives is not a missing woman. That arrangement to call at Tancred House at quarter past eight on Tuesday evening altered things. If Wexford was sure of anything it was that she had been there, she had kept her promise. Was her disappearance due to what she had seen at Tancred House or to what she had done?
He let himself into his house and immediately heard laughter from the dining room, Sheila’s laughter. Her coat was hanging up in the hall, it must be hers – who else would wear synthetic snow-leopard with a petrol-blue fake fox collar?
In the dining room they had had their soup and moved on to the main course. Roast chicken, not sole bonne femme. Why had he thought of that? It was an altogether different house, the whole of it would have got lost in Tancred House, they were very different people. He apologised to Dora for his lateness, kissed her, kissed Sheila and held out his hand to Augustine Casey for Casey to ignore it.
‘Gus has been telling us about Davina Flory, Pop,’ Sheila said.
‘You knew her?’
‘My publishers,’ said Casey, ‘don’t belong among those whose policy is to pretend to one author that they have no others on their list.’
Wexford hadn’t known he and the dead woman shared a publisher. He said nothing but went back to the hall and took his hat and coat off. He washed his hands, telling himself to be tolerant, to be magnanimous, to make allowances, be kind. When he was back in there and sitting down Sheila made Casey repeat everything he had said so far about Davina Flory’s books, much of it unedifying as far as Wexford was concerned, and repeat too an unbelievable story that Davina Flory’s editor had sent the manuscript of her autobiography to Casey for his opinion before they made her an offer for it.
‘I’m not usually thick,’ said Casey, ‘I’m not, am I, love?’
Wexford, wondering what was coming, winced at that ‘love’. Sheila’s response when appealed to nearly made him cringe, it was so adoring and at the same time so appalled that anyone, even the man himself, might deprecatingly suggest he was less than a genius.
‘I’m not usually thick,’ Casey repeated, presumably expecting a further chorus of incredulous denial, ‘but I really had no idea that all that happened down here and that you . . .’ he turned small pale eyes on Wexford ‘. . . I mean, Sheila’s father, were in – what’s the term, there must be a term – oh, yes, in charge of the case. I know nothing about these things, less than nothing, but Scotland Yard still exists, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t there something called a Murder Squad? Why you?’
‘Tell me your impressions of Davina Flory,’ Wexford said equably, swallowing a rage that filled his mouth with hot sourness and put up red screens before his eyes. ‘I’d be interested to hear from someone who had met her professionally.’
‘Professionally? I’m not an anthropologist. I’m not an explorer. I met her at a publisher’s party. And, no, thank you very much, I don’t think I will tell you my impressions, I don’t think that would be at all wise. I shall keep mum. It would only remind me of the time I was done for reckless driving and the funny little cop who chased me on his motorbike read back everything I said to him in court, the whole of it ineluctably distorted by the filtering process of semi-literacy.’
‘Have some wine, darling,’ said Dora smoothly. ‘You’ll like it, Sheila brought it specially.’
* * * *
‘You haven’t put them in the same room, have you?’
‘Reg, that’s the kind of remark I should be making, not you. You’re supposed to be the liberal one. Of course I’ve put them in the same room. I’m not running a Victorian workhouse.’
Wexford had to smile in spite of himself. ‘That’s typical unreason, isn’t it? I don’t mind my daughter sleeping under my roof with a man I like but I hate the whole idea when it’s a shit like him.’
‘I’ve never heard you use that word before!’
‘There has to be a first time for everything. Me throwing someone out of my house, for instance.’
‘But you won’t.’
‘No, I’m sure I won’t.’
Next morning Sheila said she and Gus would like to take her parents to dinner at the Cheriton Forest Hotel that evening. It had recently changed hands and had a new reputation for wonderful food at high prices. She had booked a table for four. Augustine Casey remarked that it would be amusing to see that sort of thing at first hand. He had a friend who wrote about places like that for a Sunday paper, in fact about manifestations of nineties’ taste. The series was called More Money Than Sense, a title which was his, Casey’s, brainchild. He would be interested not only in the food and the ambience, but in the kind of people who patronised it.
Unable to resist, Wexford said, ‘I thought you said last night you weren’t an anthropologist.’
Casey gave one of his mysterious smiles. ‘What do you put on your passport? Police officer, I suppose. I’ve always kept student. It’s ten years since I left my university but I still have student in my passport and I suppose I always shall.’
Wexford was going out. He was meeting Burden for a drink in the Olive and Dove. A rule, made to be broken, was that they never did this on a Saturday. He had to get out of the house for short spells, though he knew it was wrong of him. Sheila caught him up in the hall.
‘Dear Pop, is everything all right? Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. This Flory case is a bit of a strain. What are you going to do with yourselves today?’
‘Gus and I thought we’d go to Brighton. He’s got friends there. We’ll be back in heaps of time for dinner. You will be able to make it for dinner, won’t you?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’
She looked a little crestfallen. ‘Gus is marvellous, isn’t he? I’ve never known anyone like him.’ Her face brightened. It was such a lovely face, as perfect as Garbo’s, as sweet as Marilyn Monroe’s, as transcendentally beautiful as Hedy Lamarr’s. In his eyes, at least. He thought so. Where did the genes dredge up from to create that? She said, ‘He’s so clever. Half the time I can’t keep up with him. The latest thing is he’s going to be the writer-in-residence at a university in Nevada. They’re building up a library of his manuscripts there, it’s called the Augustine Casey Archive, they really appreciate him.’
Wexford had scarcely heard the end of this. He was stuck – and blissfully – in the middle of her remarks.
‘He’s going to live in Nevada?’
‘Yes – well, for a year. It’s a place called Heights.’
‘In the United States?’
‘He intends to write his next novel while he’s there,’ said Sheila. ‘It will be his masterwork.’
Wexford gave her a kiss. She threw her arms round his neck. Walking down the street, he could have burst into song. All was well, all was better than well, they were going to Brighton for the day and Augustine Casey was going to America for a year, the man was practically emigrating. Oh, why hadn’t she told him last evening and given him a good night’s sleep? It was useless worrying about
that now. He was glad he had decided to go to the Olive on foot, he could have a real drink now and celebrate.
Burden was there already. He said he had come from Broom Vale where, on a warrant sworn out two hours before, they were searching Joanne Garland’s house. Her car was in the garage, a dark-grey BMW. She kept no pets to be fed or walked. There were no houseplants to be watered, no flowers left dying in vases. The television set had been unplugged, but some people did this every night before they went to bed. It looked as if she had left the house of her own free will.
A desk diary, with engagements meticulously entered, told Burden only that Joanne Garland had been to a drinks party on the previous Saturday, to lunch on Sunday with her sister Pamela. Her visit to her mother was marked in for Tuesday 11 March – and that was that. The following spaces remained blank. Her handwriting was small, neat and very upright, and she had managed to squeeze quite a lot of information into the inch by three inches allowed for each entry.
* * * *
‘We’ve come across this sort of thing before,’ Wexford said, ‘someone apparently disappearing and it turns out they’ve been on holiday. But in neither of those cases had the missing persons a host of relatives and friends, people, mark you, who in the past had been quite used to being told whenever the missing person was going away. The facts are that Joanne was going to Tancred House at a quarter past eight on Tuesday evening. She was an overpunctual person, we’re told by Daisy Flory, in other words too early for appointments as a general rule, so we may take it she got to the house soon after eight.’
‘If she went there. What are you going to have?’
Wexford wasn’t going to say anything to him about celebrations. ‘I was thinking of Scotch but I’d better think again. The usual half of bitter.’
When he came back with the drinks, Burden said, ‘We’ve no reason to believe she went there.’
‘Only the fact that she always did on a Tuesday,’ Wexford retorted. ‘Only the fact that she was expected. If she hadn’t been going, wouldn’t she have phoned? There was no phone call received at Tancred House that evening.’
‘But look, Reg, what are we saying? It doesn’t add up. These are ordinary villains, aren’t they? Trigger-happy villains after jewellery? One of them a stranger, the other possibly with special knowledge of the house and its occupants. That presumably is why only the blond beast, as Mrs Chowney calls him, let himself be seen by the three he killed and the one he attempted to kill. The other, the familiar face, kept out of the way.
‘But they’re typical villains, they’re not the sort who carry off a possible witness and dispose of her elsewhere, are they? You see what I mean about it not adding up. If she came to the door why not shoot her too?’
‘Because the chamber of the Magnum was empty,’ Wexford said quickly.
‘All right. If it was. There are other means of killing. He’d killed three people and wouldn’t jib at killing a fourth. But, no, he and his pal carry her off. Not as some sort of hostage, not for information she may have, just to get rid of her elsewhere. Why? It doesn’t add up.’
‘OK. You’ve said that three times, you’ve made your point. If they killed her at Tancred House, what became of her car? They drove it home and put it neatly in her garage?’
‘I suppose she could be involved. She could be the other one. We only assume it was a man. But, Reg, is it even worth considering? Joanne Garland is a woman in her fifties, a prosperous, successful businesswoman – because, God knows how or why, that gallery is successful, it does work. She’s well enough off to be independent of it, anyway. Her car’s a last year’s BMW, she’s got a wardrobe of clothes I know nothing about but Karen says are top designers, Valentino and Krizia and Donna Karan. Have you ever heard of them?’
Wexford nodded.‘I do read the papers.’
‘She’s got every kind of equipment there you can think of. One of the rooms is a gym full of exercising gear. She’s obviously rich. What would she want with the sort of money some fence would give her for Davina Flory’s rings?’
‘Mike, I’ve thought of something. Is there an answering machine? What’s her phone number? There may be a message on it.’
‘I don’t know the number,’ Burden said. ‘Can you get Enquiries on that thing of yours?’
‘Sure.’ Wexford asked for the number and was quickly given it. At their table in a dim corner of the Olive’s lounge, he dialled Joanne Garland’s number. It rang three times, then clicked softly and a voice that was not at all what they expected came on. Not a strong self-assertive voice, not confident and strident, but soft, even diffident:
‘This is Joanne Garland. I am not available to speak to you now but if you would like to leave a message I will get back to you as soon as I can. Please speak after the tone.’
The routine statement of identity and availability recommended in most answering-machine literature.
‘We’ll check on what messages have been left, if any. I’m going to try it again and hope this time they realise and pick up the phone themselves. Is Gerry up there?’
‘DC Hinde,’ said Burden, keeping a straight face, ‘is busy working, but elsewhere. He has constructed what he calls a tremendous database of all the crime committed in this area in the past twelve months and he’s mousing away in it – I’ve probably got the terminology all wrong – looking for coincidences. Karen’s up there and Archbold and Davidson. You’d think one of them would have the sense to answer.’
Wexford dialled the number again. It rang three times and the message began to repeat itself. Next time, Karen Malahyde picked up the receiver after the second ring.
‘About time too,’ said Wexford. ‘You know who this is? Yes? Good. Play back the messages, would you? If you’re not familiar with the working of these things, you should look for a button marked PLAY. Do it once only, note what’s on it and take the tape out. It’s probably the kind that will only play the same thing back twice. All right? Call me back on my personal number.’ He said to Burden, ‘I don’t think she’s involved in Tuesday night’s murders, of course not, but I do think she saw them: Mike, I’m wondering if instead of searching her house we should be looking for her body up at Tancred.’
‘It’s not in the vicinity of the house. It’s not in the outbuildings. You know we’ve searched.’
‘We haven’t searched the woods.’
Burden gave a sort of groan. ‘D’you want the other half?’
‘I’ll get them.’
Wexford went up to the bar, holding the empty glasses. Sheila and Augustine Casey would be on their way to Brighton now. With satisfaction – because it would soon come to an end, soon only be heard under the shadow of the Sierra Nevada – he imagined the conversation in the car, the monologue rather, as Casey gave vent to streams of wit and brilliance, esoterica, malicious anecdotes and self-aggrandising tales, while Sheila listened enraptured.
Burden looked up. ‘They might take her away with them because she saw them or was a witness to the murders. But take her where and kill her how? And how did her car get back into her garage?’
Wexford’s phone bleeped. ‘Karen?’
‘I’ve taken the tape out like you said, sir. What would you like me to do with it?’
‘Have it copied, phone me and play the copy to me, then bring it to me. At my home. The tape and the copy. What were the messages?’
‘There are three. The first one’s from a woman calling herself Pam and I think that’s Joanne’s sister. I’ve written it down. It says to phone her about Sunday, whatever that means. The second’s a man, it sounds like a sales rep. He’s called Steve, no surname. He says he tried the shop but got no answer so he thought he’d phone her at home. It’s about the Easter decorations, he says, and would she call him at home. The third’s from Naomi Jones.’
‘Yes?’
‘This is it verbatim, sir: “Jo, this is Naomi. I wish it was you sometimes and not always that machine. Can you make it eight thirty tonight and not earlier?
Mother hates having dinner interrupted. Sorry about that but you understand. See you.”’
* * * *
Lunch at home, just the two of them.
‘He’s going to be writer-in-residence in the Wild West,’ said Wexford.
‘You oughtn’t to rejoice when it’s making her so unhappy.’
‘Is it? I don’t see any signs of unhappiness. More likely the scales are falling from her eyes and she sees what a good miss he’ll be.’
What Dora might have said in reply to these remarks was lost in the ringing of the phone. Karen said, ‘Here it is, sir. You asked me to play it.’
Like the murmur of a ghost, the dead woman’s voice spoke to him. ‘. . . Mother hates having dinner interrupted. Sorry about that but you understand. See you.’
He shivered. Mother had had her dinner interrupted. An hour or so after that message was left her life had been interrupted for ever. He saw the red cloth again, the seeping stain, the head lying on the table, the head flung back to hang over the back of a chair. He saw Harvey Copeland spreadeagled on the staircase and Daisy crawling past the bodies of her dead, crawling to the phone to save her own life.
‘You needn’t bring it, thanks, Karen. It’ll keep.’
At half past three he set off for Myfleet and the house where Daisy Flory had found her refuge.
Chapter Eleven
The first thing that came into his mind was that she was in the attitude of her dead grandmother. Daisy had not heard him come in, she had heard nothing, and she was slumped across the table with one arm stretched out and her head beside it. So had Davina Flory fallen across a table when the gun found its aim.
Daisy was abandoned to her grief, her body shaking though she made no sound. Wexford stood looking at her. He had been told where she was by Nicholas Virson’s mother but Mrs Virson had not accompanied him to the door. He closed it behind him and took a few steps into what Joyce Virson had called ‘the little den’. What names these people had for parts of their houses others would have designated ‘greenhouse’ or ‘sitting room’!