by Ruth Rendell
And Dora, who usually put a curb on his excesses, had agreed with him. He’d often heard it said that it wasn’t a man’s appearance or character that kept a woman with him but his sexual performance, but he’d never believed it. Surely the sex was fine if you loved the other person or were powerfully attracted to them. Otherwise it made men and women into machines with buttons to press and switches to turn on. He’d ask Burden’s view if the man weren’t so prudish about things like this. Besides, he was asleep. Pondering on Sylvia and Chapman and Sylvia’s jobs and Neil, he let Burden sleep for another ten minutes and then woke him up.
“I wasn’t asleep,” said Burden like an old fogey in a club armchair.
“No, you were in a cataleptic trance. What’s the name of the head teacher of Kingsmarkham Comprehensive?”
“Don’t ask me. Jenny would know.”
“Yes, but Jenny’s not here. No doubt she’s at work in that very school.”
Donaldson, though he hadn’t been addressed, said, “Dame Flora Gregg, sir.”
“Dame?”
“That’s right,” said Burden. “She got it in the Birthday Honors.”
“For rescuing the school from the mess it was in. My fourteen-yearold’s a student there, sir.”
“Then she must be relatively new,” said Wexford. “This business with Joanna Troy happened—when? Fifteen years ago. Who came before Dame Flora?”
Donaldson didn’t know. “A man,” Burden said. “Let me think. He was there when I first met Jenny and she was teaching there. She used to say he was lazy, I particularly remember that, lazy and fussy about the wrong things. It’s coming back to me—Lockhart, that was his name. Brendon Lockhart.”
“I don’t suppose you know where we can find him.”
“You don’t suppose right, as Roger Dade would say. Wait a minute, though. It’s going to be five or six years since he retired and Flora Gregg took over. He’d have been sixty-five then. He may be dead.”
“Any of us might be dead at any old time. Where did he retire to?”
“He stayed in the district, that I do know.”
Wexford considered. “So who do we see first? Lockhart or the parents of poor Ludovic Brown?”
“First we’ve got to find them.”
Tracing Lockhart was the easier and done through the phone book. Wexford left Lynn Fancourt with the unenviable task of phoning every one of the fifty-eight Browns in the local directory and asking as gently and tactfully as she could which one of them had lost a son to leukemia at the age of twenty-one. He reflected, as he and Barry Vine were driven to Camelford Road, Pomfret, that the two possibly criminal incidents in Joanna Troy’s life were both school-related. First there was the assault on the fourteen-year-old, then the alleged theft. Was the school aspect significant? Or was it merely coincidence?
Brendon Lockhart was a widower. He told Wexford this within two minutes of the policemen entering the house. Perhaps it was only to account for his living alone, yet in almost chilling order and neatness. It was a cottage he had, Victorian, detached, surrounded by what would very likely be a calendar candidate garden in the summer. He showed them into a living room entirely free of clutter, a characterless place rather like the kind of photograph seen in Sunday supplements advertising loose covers. Instinctively, Wexford knew no tea would be offered. He sat down gingerly on pristine floral chintz. Vine perched on the edge of an upright chair, its arms polished like glass.
“The school, yes,” said Lockhart. “A woman took over from me, you know. I don’t usually care for new importations into our vocabulary but I make an exception for ‘pushy.’ A very good word, ‘pushy.’ It perfectly describes Dame Flora Gregg. What a farce, wasn’t it, giving a woman like that a title? I only met her once but I found her overbearing, didactic, distressingly left-wing, and pushy. But women rule the world now, don’t they? How they have taken over our schools! Haldon Finch also has a woman head now, I hear. In an amazingly short time women have completely taken over, they have pushed themselves into every sphere once prohibited to them. I am very glad to see two policemen calling on me.”
“In that case, Mr. Lockhart,” said Wexford, “perhaps you won’t mind answering some questions about two former pupils of yours, Joanna Troy and Ludovic Brown.”
Lockhart was a small man, thin and spry, his face pink and smooth for his age, his white hair more evenly distributed than Ralph Jennings’s. But as he spoke that face contorted and stretched, taking on a skull-like look. “So glad to hear you use that word. ‘Pupil, ’ I mean. ‘Student’ would be favored by the good Dame, no doubt.”
How very much Wexford would have liked to ask him if he’d thought of seeing someone about his paranoia. Of course he couldn’t. “Joanna Troy, sir. And Ludovic Brown.”
“That was the young lady who mounted a savage attack on the boy, wasn’t it? Yes. In the cloakroom, if I remember rightly. After the Drama Group, as I was expected to call the Dramatic Society. I believe she alleged afterward that he’d done something to annoy her while they were rehearsing some play. Yes, I recall. Androcles and the Lion, it was. A choice much favored by school dramatic societies, mostly, I believe, because it has such a large cast.”
“He was quite badly injured, wasn’t he, though no bones were broken?”
“He had two black eyes. He had a lot of bruises.”
“But the police weren’t called, nor an ambulance? I’ve been told it was hushed up.”
Lockhart looked a little uncomfortable. He twisted up his face into a gargoyle mask before answering. “The boy wanted it that way. We sent for the parents—well, the mother. I believe there was a divorce in the offing. There usually is these days, isn’t there? She agreed with her son. Let’s not have any fuss, she said.”
The boy had been only fourteen. Wexford tried to remember something about Androcles and the Lion but could only recall Ancient Rome and Christians thrown to wild beasts. “Ludovic would have been an extra, would he? A slave or minor Christian?”
“Oh, yes, something like that. I believe she said he tripped her up or made a face at her or something. I do know it was totally trivial. By the by, it wasn’t leukemia he died of. I think you said leukemia?”
Wexford nodded.
“No, no, no. He had leukemia, that part is true, but it was controlled by some drug or other. My dear late wife knew the boy’s grandmother. She was charwoman or some kind of servant to a friend. My wife told me what this woman told her. No, what happened was that he fell to his death off a cliff.”
Vine said, “Where was this, sir?”
“I’m coming to that. Let me finish. His mother and—well, stepfather, I suppose. He may have been Mrs. Brown’s paramour, I know nothing of these things. They took him on a holiday to somewhere on the south coast, not all that far. He went out alone one afternoon and fell off a cliff. It was really a very tragic business. There was an inquest but no suspicious circumstances, as you would put it. He was weak, he wasn’t able to walk far, and the suggestion was that he was too near the edge and he collapsed.”
Wexford got up. “Thank you, Mr. Lockhart. You’ve been very helpful.”
“I heard Joanna Troy had become a teacher. Can that be right? She was a most unsuitable woman to be in charge of children.”
“So where was Joanna while Ludovic Brown was in Eastbourne or Hastings or whatever?”
Wexford asked this rhetorical question of Burden while they shared a pot of tea in his office. “And how are we going to find that out?” said Burden. “It must have been—let’s see—eight years ago. I suppose she was teaching at Haldon Finch. Shacked up with Jennings, though not yet married to him. No reason why she shouldn’t have popped down to the south coast for a couple of hours. It wouldn’t be much of a drive.”
“There seems to be some doubt as to what Brown did to annoy her. Insulted her mother, says Jennings. Tripped her up or made a face, says Lockhart. Which is it? Or is it both? Did she still know Ludovic Brown? Had she ever really known him beyond being somehow insul
ted or affronted by him at a play rehearsal? When they were both teenagers?”
“There’s a possible yes to all that if she’s a criminal psychopath.”
“We’ve no evidence that she is. If you don’t want another cup we’ll make our way chez Brown. Lynn found her in a flat at Stowerton and she’s still called Brown in spite of the paramour.”
“The what?”
“It’s what that old dinosaur Lockhart called him.”
It looked as if Jacqueline Brown had done far less well out of her divorce than Joanna Troy had from hers. Her home was half a house in Rhombus Road, Stowerton, and the house had been small to start with. The front window overlooked the one-way traffic system. Thumps, a heavy beat, and the voice of Eminem penetrated the wall that divided this flat from next door. Jacqueline Brown thumped on it with her fist and the volume was very slightly reduced.
“I don’t know why she attacked Ludo.” Her voice was weary, grayish, like her appearance. Life had drained her of color and joy and energy, and it showed. “Silly name, isn’t it? It was his father’s choice. That girl Joanna, he didn’t even know her, she was a lot older than him. Well, it’s a lot older when you’re in your teens. She’d never done it before to anyone, or so they said. And all he’d done was make a face at her when she was acting that part. He put out his tongue, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, Mrs. Brown,” said Wexford. “I will try to make them as painless as possible. You took your son on holiday in 1993—to where exactly?”
“Me and my partner it was. He’s called Mr. Wilkins. It was his idea, he’s always kind. We went to Eastbourne, stayed with his sister.”
Burden intervened. “Neither you nor your son had ever encountered Ms. Troy since her assault on Ludovic?”
“No, never. Why would we? Ludo went for a walk most afternoons. The doctor said it was good for him. Mr. Wilkins usually went too, but that day he’d got a bad foot, couldn’t hardly put it to the ground, we don’t know what it was, never did know, but the upshot was he couldn’t walk so Ludo went alone. Most times he was only out twenty minutes at the most. This time he never came back.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, the door opened and a man came in. He was short and round, and he had several chins. He was introduced as “Mr. Wilkins.” Wexford wished Lockhart could see him. That might stop him describing this unromantic man as a “paramour.” “We were discussing Ludovic’s unfortunate death.”
“Oh, yes?”
At the arrival of her partner, Jacqueline Brown had brightened. Now she repeated what she had said earlier but in a far more cheerful voice. “Silly name, isn’t it? It was my husband’s choice.”
“You want to know where he got it from?” Wilkins sat down and took Jacqueline’s hand. “He’d been reading a book.” He spoke as if this was an esoteric activity, comparable perhaps to collecting sigmodonts or studying metaplasm. “A book called Ten Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy—see? Funny thing, that, calling your only child after the author of a book about a serial killer.”
Jacqueline achieved a tiny smile, shaking her head. “Poor Ludo. But it may have been all for the best. He wouldn’t have lasted long anyway, never have made old bones.”
“People don’t cease to amaze me,” said Wexford as they went down the steep dark staircase.
“Me too. I mean, me neither. There’s another set of parents to see and maybe the boy too. The one she may or may not have stolen the twenty-pound note from.”
“Not today. He’ll keep. I have to pay my usual visit to the Dades. You can come if you want. And while I’m there I want to look in on those Holloways. There’s been something niggling at the back of my mind for days, something the boy’s mother said and he denied.”
Roger Dade was at home. He answered the door, saying nothing but looking at them the way one might look at a couple of teenagers come to ask for their ball back for the fifth time. Katrina was lying down, her face buried in cushions.
“How are you?”
“How d’you expect?” said Dade. “Bloody miserable and out of our minds with worry.”
“I’m not worried,” came the muffled voice of Katrina. “I’m past that. I’m mourning.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Dade.
“Mr. Dade,” said Wexford. “We have been trying to reconstruct the events of that Saturday. Your son appears to have gone out in the afternoon on his own. Do you know where he might have gone?”
“How should I know? Shopping, probably. Taking advantage of my absence. These kids are always shopping when they get the chance. They don’t get much chance when I’m home, I can tell you. I can hardly think of a more time-wasting empty occupation.”
Wexford nodded. He fancied Burden looked a little awkward, shopping being a pastime he rather enjoyed. If Giles Dade had been to the shops, what had he bought? This was almost impossible to say. One didn’t know which of the objects in his room were old, newish, or brand-new and he was sure Dade wouldn’t.
“One of his friends, Scott Holloway, your neighbors’ son, left a message on your phone and phoned several times after that without getting a reply. He intended to come round and take Giles back to hear some new CDs. Was he a frequent visitor?”
Dade looked exasperated. “I thought I’d made it clear my children don’t have frequent visitors or go to other people’s houses. They don’t have time.”
Suddenly Katrina sat up. She seemed to have forgotten that she had recently called her “best and dearest friend” a murderer. “I was able to do Joanna a good turn there. I recommended her when Peter wanted someone to tutor Scott in French.”
“Peter?” said Burden.
“Holloway,” said Dade. “Giles, needless to say, didn’t need help with his French.”
“And she did tutor him?”
“For a while.” Katrina put on a schadenfreude face. “I felt so sorry for those poor Holloways. Joanna said Scott was hopeless.”
Dade’s insults, on the lines of how ineffectual and unprofessional they were, accompanied them to the door.
“Funny, really,” said Wexford as they walked the fifty yards to the Holloways, “I don’t mind what he says nearly as much as a milder gibe from Callum Chapman. It seems an inseparable part of his character, I suppose, the way,” he added mischievously, “shopping and natty dressing is of yours.”
“Thanks very much.”
The Holloways’ doorbell was virtually unreachable owing to the garland of red poinsettias, green leaves, and gold ribbon hanging in front of it. They were well in advance of others in the street with their Christmas decorations. A wreath of holly hung over the cast-iron door knocker but Burden managed to insert his fingers under it and give it a double bang.
“Goodness.” Mrs. Holloway looked severe. “What a noise that makes!” As if they were responsible for the poinsettias. “Did you want Scott again?”
The boy was coming down the stairs, ducking his head under a bunch of mistletoe, hung there no doubt to catch kissable callers. They all went into a living room as glittery and bauble-hung as the Christmas section of a department store.
“Doesn’t it look lovely?” said Mrs. Holloway. “Scott and his sisters did it all themselves.”
“Very nice,” said Wexford. It surely wasn’t his imagination that the boy appeared terrified. His hands were actually shaking and, to control them, he pressed the palms into his knees. “Now, Scott, there’s no need to be nervous. You only have to tell us the simple truth.”
Scott’s mother interrupted. “What on earth do you mean? Of course he’ll tell the truth. He always does. All my children are truthful.”
What a paragon he must be, thought Wexford, more than that, a superhuman being. Did anyone always tell the truth? “Did you call at Giles’s house that Saturday afternoon, Scott?” Giles shook his head and Mrs. Holloway fired up. “If he said he didn’t go he didn’t and that’s all there is to it.”
“I didn’t,” whispered Scott and, rather
more loudly, “I didn’t.”
Burden nodded. He said in a gentle tone, “It is only that we are trying to reconstruct what happened that day at the Dades’ house, who called, who came and went, and so on. If you had been there you might have been able to help us but since you say you didn’t . . .”
“I didn’t.”
“I expect you know that Miss Troy, Joanna Troy, is also missing. She gave you private coaching” —did they use that term anymore? “—in French?”
“Scott and my daughter, Kerry.” Mrs. Holloway had evidently decided, with some justification, that Scott was unfit to answer any more questions. “Scott only had three sessions with her, he couldn’t get on with her. Kerry didn’t like her—no one seemed to like her— but she got something from what she was taught. At any rate, she passed her exam.”
There was no more to be done. “I know the boy is lying,” Wexford said as they got back into the car. “I just wonder why. And what’s he so afraid of? We’ll go home now. What I want to do tonight is think about it all and see if I can come up with some reasonable idea of where that car can be. It’s been our stumbling block all the way. And yet, apart from every force in the country looking for it, we haven’t done much to construct a workable theory for its whereabouts.”
“We’ve heard about a boy falling off a cliff into the sea. Maybe she pushed him and later on maybe she pushed her car over.”
“Not on the south coast she didn’t,” said Wexford. “It’s not like the west coast of Scotland where you might drive a car right up to the edge. Can you imagine doing that somewhere around Eastbourne? I’ll think about it. I’m going to go home and think about it. Drop me off, will you, Jim?”
It is, in fact, very difficult to sit down in a chair, even if it’s quiet and you’re alone, and concentrate on one particular subject. As men and women trying to pray or meditate have found, there is much to distract your thoughts, a human voice from outside the room or in the street, traffic noise, “the buzzing of a fly,” as John Donne said. Wexford wasn’t trying to pray, only to find the solution to a problem, but after he had sat for half an hour, had once dozed off, once forced himself to stay awake, and twice felt his thoughts drift off toward Sylvia and the possibility of more flooding, he acknowledged his failure. Concentration is more easily achieved while going for a long walk. But it was raining, sometimes only lightly and sometimes lashing down, and the vagaries of the rain had been another factor in disrupting his train of thought. He had no more idea of what had happened to George Troy’s dark blue four-door VW Golf, index number LC02 YMY, than when he first sat down.