The Babes in the Wood

by Ruth Rendell

  Still, they would go. She was his daughter, whomsoever she took up with, and she had had a bad shock. Not for the first time he wished she would work for a less worthy cause.

  “I picture a handsome wimp,” said Wexford when he and Burden were being driven down the M3, his mind still on Callum Chapman. “And yet I don’t know why. Joanna Troy doesn’t seem to have been very conscious of appearance.”

  “Those clothes.” Burden uttered the two words in a monotone that expressed more of his feelings than an impassioned outburst would have done. He himself was wearing the slate-blue suit once more with a white shirt this time and a blue, emerald, and white patterned tie. Wexford fancied he had been reluctant to cover all this with his raincoat, but he conceded that this aspersion might be unfounded. “If you want to know how I picture him, I see a skinny little pip-squeak with big teeth.”

  “Nice word, pip-squeak,” said Wexford. “Old-fashioned now. In the First World War it’s what they called a shell distinguished for the sound it made in flight.”

  “I don’t see why that should apply to an insignificant sort of person.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Anyway, it’s useless speculating about what someone’s going to be like. People never are the way we expect. The law of averages ought to make us right sometimes but we never are.”

  “I don’t believe in the law of averages,” said Wexford.

  The café was indistinguishable from thousands like it all over the country. Vaguely high-tech with a lot of chrome, red vinyl floor, and black leather seating, it had booths for hiding or taking refuge in, circular tables for sitting around, and circular tables at chest height for standing at. They were early and Jennings wasn’t. There were no men on their own in the Ninety-Nine Café.

  “Why would anyone want coffee with walnuts?” Wexford asked after he and Burden had seated themselves in a booth and ordered respectively a large filter and a cappuccino.

  “Or almonds or cinnamon, come to that? God knows. It’s a gimmick.”

  Their coffee came. Wexford faced the door to spot Jennings when he came in. He wondered if it was obvious to the man behind the counter and the woman who served them that they were police officers. Probably in his case, if not in sartorially elegant Burden’s. It couldn’t be helped. Jennings had chosen to meet them here and not at his home. “Where is he, anyway?” Wexford said, looking at his watch. “It’s ten past and he was due here at eleven.”

  “Time doesn’t mean as much to people as it used. Haven’t you noticed? Especially the young. They put a sort of mental ‘about’ in front of an appointment time, so it’s ‘about ten’ or ‘about eleven’ and that can easily be half past, though you notice it’s never a quarter to.”

  Wexford nodded. “The trouble is we can’t stalk off in high dudgeon. We need him a good deal more than he needs us. ‘Dudgeon, ’ by the way, is a dagger hilt, so why it should mean resentment is something else I don’t know.” He finished his coffee, sighed and said, “You remember that pain in the arse Callum Chapman? Well, he’s . . . But here’s our reluctant witness, unless I’m much mistaken.”

  As Burden had forecast, he was very different from the way either of them had imagined him. Wexford had been right, though, in his belief that they were easily recognizable as policemen, for Jennings homed in on them immediately. It was a tallish thin man who sat down next to Burden and opposite Wexford. Joanna’s father had told them Jennings was thirty-two. Apart from a bald patch he had tried to conceal by combing his hair over it, he looked much younger than that age. His was one of those puckish or Peter Pan faces, almost babyish, large-eyed, the nose small and tip-tilted, the mouth not quite but nearly a rosebud. Fair hair, slightly wavy and copious in front, clustered round his temples and grew in little fringes above his ears.

  “What kept you, Mr. Jennings?” Wexford’s tone was pleasanter than his words.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get away.” The voice by contrast was rather deep and, though Jennings looked as if no razor had ever passed across those rosy cheeks, unmistakably masculine. “I had a bit of a tussle, actually. My, er, story wasn’t believed.”

  “Your story?” said Burden.

  “Yes, that’s what I said.” The waitress came. “I’ll have one of your lattes with cinnamon, please. Look, I’ve decided I have to explain to you. I know it looks odd. The fact is—Oh God, this is so embarrassing—the fact is my partner—she’s called Virginia—she’s madly jealous. I mean, pathologically jealous, though maybe it’s unkind to say so.”

  “We shan’t tell her,” said Wexford gravely.

  “No. No, I’m sure not. The fact is she can’t bear it that I’ve been married. I mean, if my wife had died I don’t suppose it would be so bad. But I was divorced, as you know, and I’ve been forbidden even to mention, er, Joanna’s name. Just to show you how bad it is, she can’t bear it if she reads the name Joanna in some other context and if she meets a Joanna . . . I suppose it’s flattering in a way—well, it is. I’m very lucky to be—well, loved like that.”

  “I was adored once,” murmured Wexford. “What you’re saying, if I understand you, Mr. Jennings, is that you stopped us coming to your home because your girlfriend would be there and would take exception to the subject of our conversation?”

  Jennings said admiringly, “You do put it well.”

  “And in order to come at all, you had to construct a cast-iron excuse for, er, going out on your own for an hour at eleven in the morning? Yes? Well, no doubt you know your own business best, Mr. Jennings.” A sensible man would run a mile from this Virginia, Wexford thought to himself. “And now perhaps we can get down to the purpose of our meeting. Tell us about your ex-wife, would you? What kind of a person she is, her interests, pursuits, her habits.” He added in the same grave tone, “Don’t worry. There is no one to overhear you.”

  Jennings wasn’t a sensible man. His prevarications and failure to stand up to tyranny proved that. But he didn’t make a bad job of character analysis, even though he sometimes looked over his shoulder while he talked, presumably fearing Virginia might materialize from the street door. Wexford, who had anticipated a “Well, she’s just like anyone else” approach, was pleasantly surprised.

  “We met at university. She was doing a postgraduate modern languages degree and I was doing one in business studies. I guess a lot of people would say we were too young to settle down together but that’s what we did. We were both twenty-three. She was after a job at a school in Kingsmarkham. Her father lives there. Her mother was dead.

  “Joanna’s very bright. She wouldn’t have got that job before she was twenty-four if she hadn’t been. Very, er, positive. I mean she’s got strong opinions about almost everything. Impulsive too, I’d say. If she wants something she’s got to have it and she’s got to have it now. I suppose I was in love, whatever that may mean—Aren’t I quoting some famous person?”

  “The Prince of Wales,” said Burden.

  “Oh, was it? Well, I must have been in love with Joanna because she’s not . . . What I’m trying to say is, I never actually liked her, she’s not very likeable. She can make herself pleasant if she wants something but alone with the person she’d chosen—well, presumably to spend her life with, she can be a bit of a pain. Nasty, if you know what I mean. When I first met her I noticed she hadn’t any friends. No, that’s not quite true. She had one or two but after we split up I realized they were both very weak types of people, they’d be the sort to let Joanna push them around. It’s like she can’t have an equal relationship.”

  Now he had embarked on his ex-wife’s nature and proclivities, Jennings was in full swing. He had even stopped starting each time anyone came into the Ninety-Nine Café. Wexford let him talk. Any questions could come later.

  “We decided to get married. I don’t know why. Looking back, I can’t imagine. I mean, I knew by then I’d be in serious trouble if I disagreed with her over anything. Her views were right and everyone else had to have them to
o, especially me. I suppose I thought, I’ll never find anyone else as clever and as dynamic as Joanna. I’d never find anyone with so much energy and—well, drive. She’s on the go all day and she’s an early riser, I mean like six thirty A.M., weekends and all, showered, dressed, but—well, you don’t want to hear all this. The upshot was I thought that no one else would do for me after her. Well, I was wrong, but I thought I was right.” That would make a good epitaph for a lot of people, Wexford thought, maybe most people. He was wrong but he thought he was right. “My dad bought us a house in Pomfret. He was dying, but he said I might as well have it then and there while he was still alive. He died about two months after we were married. Joanna had a job at a school in Kingsmarkham—Haldon Finch it was—and I was with a London firm. I used to commute.

  “D’you want some more coffee? I think I will.” Wexford and Burden both nodded. Each was afraid that if they didn’t choose this way to prolong things, Jennings might notice the time and be off. He waved to the waitress. “Where was I? Yes, right. I’ve heard people say you can get on perfectly well with someone you’re living with, but as soon as you get married it starts to go wrong. Maybe, but Joanna and I only really got on if I was a yes-man and she called the tune. Then there was the sex.” He broke off as the waitress came to take their order, glanced at his watch, said, “I told Virginia I’d not be more than an hour and a half, so I’ve still got a bit of time. Yes, the sex. You do want to hear this?” Wexford nodded. “Right. It had been quite good at first, I mean when we first met, but it went off long before we got married. By the time we’d been married six months it was almost nonexistent. Don’t think I just took this lying down.” An unfortunate phrase in the circumstances, Wexford thought, but Jennings didn’t seem aware of what he had said. “No, I tried to tell her what I thought. I did tell her. I mean, I was twenty-six years old, a normal healthy man. I will say for Joanna she didn’t pretend. She never did. She came straight out with it.‘I don’t fancy you anymore, ’ she said.‘You’re going bald.’ I said she must be mad. I mean, premature baldness runs in my family. So what? Apparently, my father was bald before he even met my mother and he was only thirty. They still had three kids.”

  Their coffee came. Jennings sniffed his, presumably to detect if it contained the appropriate amount of cinnamon. “To resume,” he said. “I thought there must be someone else. She’d just met this Katrina, the mother of those missing kids. They were always together. Now don’t get any ideas Joanna’s a lesbian. For one thing, I noticed she’d never let any woman touch her, she wouldn’t even let her stepmother kiss her and there’s nothing repulsive about Effie, far from it. Once or twice Katrina would put her hand on her arm or something but Joanna always retreated or actually took it off. Besides, I wasn’t the first man in her life, far from it. She’d had a lot of relationships before me, started at school. But they were all of the male sex. I did wonder if she was so keen on Katrina because she fancied her husband. He’s nothing to look at and a bit of a shit, but you never know with women, do you? I couldn’t think of any other reason for her going about with Katrina—well, yes, I suppose I could. She just agreed with everything Joanna said and did, and she was always telling her how clever and gifted she was. Joanna liked that, she basked in it. I still don’t know the answer. Anyway, soon after the arrival of the Dades on the scene she said she’d decided there’d be no more sex. Our marriage was to be a partnership, I quote, ‘for convenience and companionship.’”

  “It was you who left, Mr. Jennings?”

  “You bet it was and don’t let anyone tell you different. I sold the house and gave her half the proceeds. Anything to get clear of all that. I haven’t seen her since.”

  Burden said, “Was Ms. Troy ever violent toward you? In these arguments you had, if you disagreed with her, would she have struck you? And do you know of any incidents of violence in her past, perhaps before you met her but that she told you about?”

  “There was nothing like that. It was all verbal. Joanna’s very verbal. There’s only one . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Jennings?”

  “I was going to say one incident of—well, what you mean. Not to me. It was long before we met. She didn’t tell me, someone else did, someone I knew at university. I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, though I can’t say this chap told me in confidence, not really.”

  “I think you had better tell us, Mr. Jennings,” Wexford said firmly.

  “Well, yes. I will. When this chap heard I was going about with Joanna he said she’d been at school—Kingsmarkham Comprehensive, that was—with his cousin. They were both in their teens but she was older, two or three years older, I think. She beat this kid up, blacked both his eyes, actually knocked a tooth out. He was all over bruises but nothing was actually broken. It was all hushed up because his cousin recovered and no harm done but also because Joanna’s mother had just died and some counselor said that accounted for it. Of course, I asked Joanna about it and she said the same, her mum had died and she was in shock, she didn’t know what she was doing. The cousin denied it, by the way, but she said he’d said something rude about her mother. That’s what she told me, that he’d insulted her mother’s memory.

  “But there was a funny thing. Not really funny but you know what I mean. The kid died. Years later, leukemia, I think it was. He must have been twenty-one or twenty-two. It was Joanna who told me. It was before we were married, we were still doing our MAs. She said, ‘You know that Ludovic Brown—’ funny I remember the name but it’s a peculiar one, isn’t it? ‘—you know that Ludovic Brown, ’ she said. ‘He’s dead. Some sort of cancer.’ And then she said, ‘Some people do get what they deserve, don’t they?’ That was typical of her. The poor kid maybe said something rude and for that he deserved to die of leukemia. But that was Joanna. That’s what I meant when I said she wasn’t very likeable.”

  Ludovic Brown, thought Wexford. Kingsmarkham, I suppose, or environs. He went to Kingsmarkham Comprehensive, died young, his family shouldn’t be hard to find. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Jennings. Thank you.”

  “Better not say ‘my pleasure, ’ had I?” Again the watch was glanced at, to alarming effect. “My God, I’ve got five minutes to get back in. A cab, I think, if I can get one.”

  He ran. The waitress watched him go, a faint smile on her lips. Did he come in here with Virginia and she give public examples of her possessiveness?

  “Some people,” said Burden, when Wexford had paid the bill, “don’t seem to have a clue about self-preservation. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  “He’s weak and he’s attracted by strong women. Unfortunately, he’s so far picked two with the kind of strength that’s malevolent. You could persuade him into anything, sell his grandmother into slavery, swallow cyanide, I dare say. Still, from our point of view he’s an improvement on everyone else we’ve questioned in this case, isn’t he? He’s given us some good stuff.”

  Chapter 10

  BURDEN FELL ASLEEP IN THE CAR and Donaldson never spoke unless he was spoken to or felt obliged to intervene, so Wexford retreated into his own thoughts, mainly concentrated on Sylvia and their encounter the evening before. He and Dora had gone over to the Old Rectory after supper, ostensibly to check on their daughter’s condition after what she had witnessed at The Hide that morning. Chapman came to the door and seemed less than pleased to see them.

  “Sylvia didn’t say she was expecting you.”

  Dora had cautioned him to watch his tongue so Wexford remained silent. She asked how Sylvia was.

  “She’s okay. Why shouldn’t she be?”

  They found the boys occupied with their homework in what was known as the family room where the television was on, albeit turned very low, and where by the look of the half-full wineglass on the side table, the dent in the seat cushion of an armchair and the Radio Times on its arm, Chapman had been relaxing before their arrival. Wexford, who had put his head round the door and quickly absorbed all this, said he
llo to Robin and Ben and followed Dora to the kitchen. There they found Sylvia cooking the evening meal, pasta boiling in a saucepan, mushrooms, tomatoes, and herbs in another pan, the materials for a salad spread on the counter.

  “I’ve only just got home,” she said, as if self-defense or excuse was necessary. “Cal was going to do it, but there was this program on TV it was important for him to watch and now he’s helping the boys with their homework.”

  Again Wexford was silent—on that subject, at least. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I ought to be used to that kind of thing by now. I’ve seen enough of it. Only usually I’ve not witnessed the actual attack, just heard about it afterward. But I’m fine, had to be. Life goes on.”

  Any sort of man who called himself a man—Wexford was amazed at himself, using such an expression even in his thoughts—any decent sort of man would have sat her down with a drink, moved the kids elsewhere, got her to talk while he listened and sympathized.

  “It’s terribly late to eat, but I couldn’t get away. D’you want anything? Drink?”

  “We only came in for a minute,” Dora said soothingly. “We’ll go.”

  In the car, driving home, he’d said, “Wasn’t he supposed to be the New Man? I thought that was the point. What other point is there to him?”