Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box

by Ruth Rendell

  Today I think we'd call him autistic, Wexford thought. He would go to a special school for people with 'learning difficulties' – at least, I hope he would. His IQ might not have been low at all but quite high, as was often true of those with the Asperser's type of autism. The neighbours' children on the Muriel Camden Estate where he lived with his mother called him 'loony' and it was said that Eileen Kenyon did nothing to defend her son. He had left school at fifteen, the then school-leaving age, though he had seldom attended, and that was something else which Eileen failed to concern herself about. Even in his schooldays Billy had spent more time in the gardens than he had in class. The superintendent, George Clark, and deputy superintendent and the staff all knew him and knew him for a harmless innocent. On wet days they would let him sit on a chair in the temperate house and the deputy superintendent, a man called Denis Gaskell, often invited him into the big brick shed where the staff assembled in their tea breaks. Gaskell gave him a notebook and asked him to write down the Latin names of all the plants in, say, the rock garden, and Billy would do so, never making an error in identification or a spelling mistake. It was a pity, Wexford thought, when he was investigating the murder, that his teachers had never witnessed this. But would they have done anything if they had? Would they have had the time?

  Billy was seventeen when he died. On the day of his death, in the hot summer of 1976, he left his mother's house in Leighton Close at nine in the morning, having made himself sandwiches of Mother's Pride and pre-sliced cheese. These with an overripe banana, which was the only item of fruit to be found, would be his lunch and mean he need not return till the gardens closed. His friend Denis Gaskell would give him a cup of tea. The dog came up to him, whining to be fed, but Billy left feeding him to his mother. The neighbours said she loved the dog much more than she loved him but if he knew this he gave no sign of it.

  He had left her in bed with her lover, Bruce Mellor. How much of their relationship Billy understood no one seemed to know. But Billy's powers of comprehension were far greater than the people close to him believed and when Bruce said, and said frequently, that he'd like to live with or even marry Eileen Kenyon but he wasn't taking on a loony, not he, Billy no doubt had a very good idea of what he meant. Bruce didn't mind the dog, he liked the dog. Eileen too was in the habit of telling the neighbours that it was 'unfair on her' that she was 'lumbered' with Billy and it stopped her leading what she called a normal life. She'd like to get married before it was 'too late'.

  It was the middle of June. The best of the flowers were past, they came in May, and the late-summer blooms had yet to blossom, but roses were still out and Billy made first for the rose garden. All the roses had their names in front of them on green metal tags pegged into the soil and Billy did his best to memories the names: Rose Guajardo, Peace, Toile d'Hollande, but when he forgot he checked with the green tag and wrote the name down in his notebook. One of the gardeners came along at about eleven – not that Billy wore a watch or had much idea of time – and told him Denis Gaskell had a cup of tea for him in the big shed they called the 'office'. Billy went along to the office, drank his tea and sat listening while the gardeners talked about football and snooker and what had been on TV the night before. He had another cup of tea in the office at three in the afternoon, by which time he had eaten his sandwiches and his banana. Another thing about Billy which endeared him to Denis Gaskell was his habit of taking his litter home with him or at least placing it in one of the waste bins. Too many visitors just dropped their food wrappings and fruit peel where they had been eating.

  Denis noticed the plastic bag and the banana skin when Billy opened his backpack to put away his notebook.

  'Let me dispose of that for you, Billy,' he said and Billy handed over the two items of rubbish without a smile and of course without a word. Denis had never seen him smile.

  No one was quite sure where Billy had been after that. One of the gardeners had seen him in the hothouse but he hadn't stayed long. It was hot outside, though at about five the sky clouded over and it began to rain, a freak shower in a dry summer. Heavy rain always emptied the gardens and it did so that day, but lasted only half an hour before fading to a mist. There was no reason for any of the staff to keep a special eye on Billy Kenyon. He was their most frequent visitor, was entirely harmless and had an almost reverential attitude to the place. So it was never to be known who was the last person to have seen him, apart from his murderer.

  George Clark, the superintendent, went round locking the gates at nine. It was still light, though going on dusk. George did as he always did and walked round the gardens, making sure that no one was left inside – occasionally a street sleeper would try to spend the night in there – and checking on the various designated areas that no damage had been done during the day. In Red Rocks he found Billy Kenyon's body, lying spread-eagled across the russet-coloured flat stones, one hand trailing in the water of a small pond, the other resting on his notebook. George felt for a pulse, laid his own face against the place where he thought the boy's heart must be. Then he looked more closely at his neck and the weal's round it, at his face where the eyes protruded and knew for certain that he was dead, guessed he had been strangled. A leather belt, obviously the murder weapon, lay across his forehead where it had seemingly been draped.

  No mobile phones then. George went back to his office and phoned the police, first taking a small swig from the miniature of brandy he kept there for emergencies. The little bottle was full because there had been no emergencies till now.

  'If this death had happened today,' Wexford said, 'the press would have made much of Billy's notebook with the names of the flowers in it. They'd have called him "the dumb genius" and the "boy wonder failed by the education system". There was nothing like that then. I don't remember anything in the papers about Billy being other than a normal teenager. His mother and the man who wouldn't marry her while that meant taking on Billy – they didn't appear on television saying how Billy lit up their lives or what a saint he was. People didn't do that then. Nor did the press refer to Eileen Kenyon's on-and-off lover as Billy's stepfather the way they would now.'

  'You're saying things were better then?' Burden raised his eyebrows.

  'Yes and no. In some ways and in some ways not. I expect that's true whenever you contrast one period of time with another period of time. We have far more sophisticated forensic methods these days, as you know. If we haven't yet perfected tracing perpetrators by means of DNA, we're fast getting there. The mobile phone makes communication a whole lot easier. Parents ought to be able to keep a closer eye on where their children are – but do they? I don't know.

  'To get back to Billy. He had been strangled with a leather belt. Those belts were on sale in the Saturday market but they were on sale in Pomfret market too and in Myringham market. Tracing it was impossible and there were no prints on it, though it could have taken prints. Our principal suspect was Bruce Mellor, the lover. But Eileen Kenyon ran him a close second.'

  'Because Bruce Mellor wouldn't marry her while Billy was alive?'

  'That's right. Neither of them had jobs and they were living on what in those days was called "assistance". They were both at home between 5 and 8 p.m. which according to the pathologist was when Billy died. Mellor took the dog out in the morning, returning after about an hour, and neither of them went out again. For the relevant time they alibied each other. But a next-door neighbour – I don't remember her name, Lucas or Lewis, I think – told me she had seen Bruce Mellor leave the house without the dog, this time at about six. This he denied, she had been mistaken, and Eileen denied it too.

  'I asked her if she wasn't concerned when Billy hadn't come home by ten. As I said, the garden closed at nine in summer. It still closes at nine – what's left of it. Eileen said he was seventeen and able to look after himself. Besides, the body had been found by then and she had been informed by ten thirty.

  'If Bruce Mellor had gone into the botanical gardens, no one remembered seein
g him. If the neighbour's evidence was true and he had left the house next door at six he would have reached the gardens by about twenty past, by which time the rain had slackened and become a drizzle. Most visitors would have gone by then, so if Mellor had entered by either gate it was not surprising that no one had seen him. He would have been hard to ignore for he was exceptionally tall and thin and wore his yellow hair long – it was an unusual tawny colour – and either loose or tied back with an elastic band. Gaskell and his immediate superior George Clark, who found the body, and all the gardeners were closely questioned. None of them admitted to seeing Mellor. They were all, to a lesser degree, suspects but not for long. They had alibis a lot more sound than Mellor's or Eileen's.'

  Burden had a question. 'Since you're going to say that you suspect Targo of this murder, how do you account for none of them seeing him? Or didn't you suspect him at that time?'

  'I didn't because I couldn't find the connection,' Wexford said. 'The link between Targo and Elsie Carroll was tenuous enough but at least he lived in the same street. When Billy Kenyon was killed Targo was living miles away in Myringham in a big house in two acres of land and had at least one prosperous business going. Eileen Kenyon lived on what she called "the dole" on a council estate with a mentally incapacitated son. There was no reason even to consider Targo and, you know, Mike, how you sometimes label me an obsessive – well, I'm not blind to that in myself –' Medora Holland in her torn green blouse flitted across his mind's eye '– and I told myself to stop it, stop even imagining it while I had two quite feasible suspects.'

  'There was the dog,' said Burden.

  'Indeed there was the dog. But I didn't know that. When I went to the kennels to ask about boarding, Targo didn't tell me he'd given a woman called Eileen Kenyon in Kingsmarkham a puppy. Why would he? This was a while before the murder, no one had ever heard of Eileen Kenyon and Targo had no possible reason to tell me such a thing.'

  'I came back,' said Burden, 'just about the time you gave up on the case. Sorry to put it like that.'

  'Well, we did give up eventually, only we went on saying we would never give up. We always do say that, no matter how hopeless things look, don't we? We would never rest until we'd brought Billy's murderer to justice et cetera, et cetera. But we knew we had given up. To recap a bit: the only evidence against Bruce Mellor was that he had possibly lied about going out that evening. But Mrs Lucas – she was called that, not Lewis – may have lied. She and he were at daggers drawn since there'd been some dispute about an all-night party the Lucas's had for a son's twenty-first birthday. It may have been spite that made her say she had seen Mellor go out. Mellor alibied Eileen and she alibied him. Both had a motive of sorts but you know how unimportant motive is in preparing a sound case. It was one of our few unsolved murders.'

  'When did you find out about the dog?'

  'You mean that the dog came from Targo's place? Not until after we gave up. We questioned Mellor and Eileen exhaustively. I don't remember an interrogation like it – not one that came to nothing, at any rate. They were inarticulate and far from bright but they stuck to their story, that they had been in all that day.

  'No one but Mrs Lucas claimed to have seen Mellor. Did we ever seriously suspect Eileen? Only perhaps as in cahoots with Mellor, supporting him, alibiing him, lying for him. She never denied wanting to be rid of Billy in order to marry Mellor but she said she only meant he should be in some sort of home. The trouble was that we had no evidence that Mellor had been in the gardens. No one had seen him and, as I've said, he was a memorable figure. Of course, we tried to trace the leather belt with which Billy was strangled. We failed. It might have belonged to Targo, may have been in his possession for years, but it might have come from any of those local markets. You try getting a market stallholder to identify something he's sold. All we did establish was that no shopkeeper in Kingsmarkham, Pomfret or Myringham had sold such a belt for years.'

  'But the dog, Reg. What about the dog?'

  'OK, I'm coming to that. Any case of strangling – and they were few – brought me back to Targo,' Wexford went on, 'as Billy's death did. I couldn't see any possible motive for his killing Billy. But then what motive was there in the case of Elsie Carroll? If it were just that Targo was a psychopath who killed at random, why those two? Why kill people when access is difficult if the place is full of loners, available as victims in the streets by night? Then I met him again.

  'He'd told me he had what he called a business. It was a travel agent in Myringham High Street, a tiny little place grandly called Transglobe, and its walls were papered with advertisements for exotic places. People had started going to India and China for their holidays and he was cashing in on a new trend.'

  'You mean you went there to book a holiday?'

  'No, no, of course not. I went in there in connection with someone we suspected of smuggling raw opium out of Hong Kong. Opium! Those were the days.'

  'I remember him. Berryman he was called. Raymond Berryman. He was sent down for a long time. So you went in there in all innocence and there was Targo.'

  'That's right. There he was, sitting at the receipt of custom. No one else there but his dog. Mind you, there wasn't much room for anyone else. I saw him and it gave me quite a shock so that for a moment I thought I must be seeing things, confusing him with someone else. I'd never associated him with anything but dogs and driving. He seemed delighted to see me. Unnaturally delighted, I mean. That was one of the rare occasions when I saw him smile. He got up and put out his hand but of course I wasn't going to shake hands with him. The dog was a corgi and there in that tiny place it had its water bowl on the floor and a dish full of some sort of cooked entrails. Targo said, "Meet Princess," but I ignored this command just as I'd ignored his hand. He didn't appear offended. I asked him a few questions about our opium-running suspect and he answered them. Truthfully, I'm sure. 'He was looking more prosperous than I'd ever seen him. Very nice suit, expensive shoes I could just see under the desk, an Omega watch. A scarf, of course, but not a woolen one. This was more like a sort of cravat, grey, black and pink silk, not quite adequate to cover the birthmark. He was aware of that and he kept fidgeting with it, pushing the edge of it up to his cheek with his fingers, and each time it slipped down again.

  'He hadn't put on weight, he was the same sturdy muscular type, unchanged except that his hair had receded a bit and there was more grey in it than fair. I was about to leave when he said, out of the blue as it seemed to me, "Funny how these cases fizzle out, isn't it? One week it's all over the papers and then when you people can't find the culprit it disappears and we never hear a word about it again." He fixed me with his staring eyes in that way he has. "I'm talking about the Billy Kenyon murder, of course."

  '"I can't discuss that, Mr Targo," I said, and I thought "culprit" a funny word to use about a killer, too feeble a word. But of course I wasn't going to leave at that point. My eyes looked into his and he said, "I knew them, you know, that Mrs Kenyon and her fancy man." Another strange, and in this case old-fashioned, word to use. "No, I didn't know," I said. '"Oh, yes," he said. "That dog she's got, that was one of my puppies. My Dust's young 'uns. I knew a dog would have a good home with her. Wouldn't like to say the same of anything human." And he laughed, Mike, he actually laughed. Laughing was something he did more than smiling. I can't quite say my blood ran cold because it never does but I had an idea what it would feel like.

  'I asked him why he called the dog Princess. "She's a corgi, isn't she? They're royal dogs." He laughed again and was still laughing when I went, chuckling in an unpleasant way while he stroked the royal dog's head.'

  'But you did nothing,' said Burden.

  'I did what I could. I went back to questioning the staff at the gardens. I managed to get hold of a photograph of Targo, showed it to Gaskell and the rest. None of them remembered seeing him on the relevant day or any other. Once more I had nothing to go on, nothing but a laugh and his saying Eileen Kenyon wouldn't be fit to have c
harge of anything human.'

  'He had an alibi?'

  'I've no doubt he would have fixed one up or already had one fixed up if I'd asked him. He'd married again by then, that woman called Adele. It only lasted about six months but she would have alibied him. I gave up, in your useful phrase, because I couldn't see a motive. What was in it for Targo? Who benefits from Billy's death? Not Targo. Only Eileen Kenyon. So he did it for Eileen Kenyon's sake? He hardly knew the woman.'

  'You're sure of that?'

  'I'm sure. Come to that, he hardly knew Elsie Carroll. Well, he didn't know her at all except maybe by sight. I talked to Eileen Kenyon and Bruce Mellor about him. That conversation was the only one I had with them when they were transparently honest, not prevaricating or defensive. Eileen had met Targo three times, the first when she went to the boarding kennels because someone had told her he had puppies he'd give away to a suitable owner. The puppies were too young to leave their mother then but she could choose which one she wanted in advance. Targo had a talk with her about the proper care of a dog and said he'd come and inspect her place after she'd had the puppy two weeks. She came back to fetch the dog when it was eight weeks old and on that occasion he only spoke a few words to her. His wife attended to Eileen, putting the puppy in the dog carrier she'd brought with her and getting the carrier into Mellor's car.

  'Two weeks later he called at the house in Leighton Close, was apparently satisfied with the dog's condition, its sleeping and feeding arrangements et cetera. He accepted a cup of tea and they chatted for a while, she said. I'd rather not imagine what having a chat with Targo would be like. Billy wasn't present. She didn't tell me what they talked about, she said she couldn't remember, but for Targo to have said she couldn't be trusted with the care of a human being has to mean that part of their talk was about the hardness of her lot in having a mentally incapacitated son and what a burden he was to her.