by Ruth Rendell
7
‘My name’s Joan Miall,’ she said, shaking hands in a very forthright manner. ‘An inspector came this morning and asked me a lot of questions. He said you’d want to see me and I thought I’d save you the trouble by coming to see you.’ She was dark with a very pretty intelligent face and deep blue eyes. She looked about twenty-four. ‘I still can’t believe Dawn’s dead. It seems so fantastic’
‘It’s good of you to come, Miss Miall. I shall have a great deal to ask you so I think we’ll go upstairs to my office where we can be more comfortable.’
In the lift she didn’t speak but she lit another cigarette. Wexford understood that this heavy smoking was an antidote to shock. He approved her plain knee-length skirt and scarlet shirt, the healthy fine-boned face which, scarcely touched with make-up, was framed in shining hair, long and parted in the centre. Her hands were ringless, the nails short and lacquered pale pink. The pleasant, semi-living room appointments of his office seemed to set her more at ease. She relaxed, smiled and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I smoke too much.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You were very fond of Dawn?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t know really. I shared a flat with her for four years. We saw each other every day. We worked together. It was a shock.’
‘You both worked at the Townsman Club?’
‘Yes, that was where we met. We’d both been through a bit of a bad time. Dawn had been living with a man who was almost pathologically jealous and I’d been sharing with my sister. My sister was terribly possessive. Dawn and I decided to take a flat together and we made a pact not to fuss each other and not to worry if the other one didn’t always come home. That’s why I wasn’t worried. Not until Saturday. Then, I …’
‘You’re running on a bit, Miss Miall,’ Wexford interrupted her. ‘Tell me about last Monday first.’
The slight strain this called for demanded a fresh cigarette. She lit one, inhaled and leant back in her chair. ‘Dawn had started a week’s holiday the Saturday before, Saturday, June fourth. She couldn’t make up her mind whether to go away or not. Her boy friend—he’s called Paul Wickford and he keeps a garage near us—he wanted her to go touring in Devon with him, but she still hadn’t decided by that Monday morning.’
‘You expected her back on Monday evening?’
‘Yes, in a way. She went off in the morning to catch the train for Kingsmarkham and she wasn’t very cheerful. She never was when she was going to see her mother, they didn’t get on. Dawn got on better with her grandmother.’ Joan Miall paused and seemed to consider. ‘Paul came round at about six, but when she hadn’t come by seven he drove me to the club and then he went back to our flat to wait for her. Well, when she wasn’t there on the Tuesday or the Wednesday and I didn’t see anything of Paul, I thought they’d gone off to Devon together. We never left notes for each other, you see. We had this non-interference pact.’
‘She told her mother she was working that night.’
Joan smiled slightly. ‘I expect she did. That would just be an excuse to get away. Four or five hours in her mother’s company would be as much as she could stand.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, flicking ash fastidiously from her fingers. ‘On Saturday—last Saturday, I mean—Paul appeared again. He hadn’t been in Devon. His mother died that very Monday night and he’d had to go up north to the funeral and to see about things. He didn’t know where Dawn was any more than I did.
‘Then yesterday when we were both getting really worried—Dawn was due back at work tonight—the police came and told me what had happened.’
‘Miss Miall, when Dawn was found she was wearing a dark red dress.’ He noted her quick glance of surprise but ignored it for the moment ‘Now we have that dress here,’ he said. ‘It’s rather badly stained. I’m going to ask you if you will be very brave and look at that dress. I warn you that you could find it upsetting. Will you look at it?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, if you think it’ll help. I can’t remember Dawn ever wearing red. It wasn’t her colour. But I’ll look at it.’
The dress was made of a dark red rayon fabric with cap sleeves, a shaped waist and self belt. Because of its colour, the stains didn’t show up except as a great stiff patch on the bodice.
The girl whitened and compressed her lips. ‘May I touch it?’ she said faintly.
‘Yes.’
Rather tremulously, she fingered the neck opening and looked at the label. ‘This is only a size twelve,’ she said. ‘Dawn was quite a big girl. She took a fourteen.’
‘But she was wearing this dress.’
‘It wasn’t hers and it must have been quite a tight fit on her.’ Abruptly she turned away and shivered. ‘Look, perhaps you don’t know much about fashion, but that dress is old, seven or eight years out of date, maybe more. Dawn was very fashion-conscious.’
Wexford led her back to his office. She sat down and the colour returned to her cheeks. He waited a little, marvelling at the friend’s distress, the mother’s indifference, and then he said, ‘Miss Miall, will you try to give me a sort of character sketch of Dawn? What sort of girl she was, whom she knew and how she reacted to other people?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Joan Miall.
‘I don’t want to give you the impression,’ the girl began, ‘that she wasn’t a nice person. She was. But there were some—well, rather peculiar things about her.’ She lifted her head and looked at him earnestly, almost aggressively.
‘I’m not asking for a character reference, you know. And what you say will be between us. I shan’t broadcast it about.’
‘No, of course not. But she’s dead and I have sort of old-fashioned ideas about not speaking ill of the dead. I expect you’ll think that a doll who serves drinks in a club hasn’t any right to get all upstage, sort of disapprove of other people’s behaviour?’
Wexford didn’t answer. He smiled gently and shook his head.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I didn’t exactly disapprove of Dawn. It was just that—well, it’s not always easy living with a compulsive liar. You don’t know where you are with people like that. You don’t know them and the relationship is sort of unreal. I know someone said that even a really bad liar tells more truth than lies, but you still can’t tell what are lies and what truth, can you?’
It was on the tip of Wexford’s tongue to ask what an intelligent girl like Joan Miall was doing at the Townsman Club, but he checked the impulse.
‘So Dawn was a liar?’ he said instead, reflecting that this wasn’t going to make his task easier. He looked into the frank, clear eyes of the girl opposite him, a girl he was sure would be transparently truthful. ‘What did she lie about?’
‘Well, it was boasting and name-dropping really. She’d had an awful childhood. Her father used to knock her about, and her mother sort of knocked her about mentally. She’d tell her she was immoral and no good in one breath and then in the next she’d say how she missed her and begged her to come home and marry and settle down. Mrs Stonor was always telling her they were—what was the phrase?—Oh, yes, “Just ordinary folk”, and Dawn had no business giving herself airs. Then she’d say the work she did was no better than being a tart.
‘It made her want to prove herself. Sorry if I’m talking like an amateur psychiatrist but I’m interested in that sort of thing. I tried to find out what made Dawn tick. When we first lived together I thought she really did know a lot of famous people. One day she brought a dog home and said she was going to look after it for a fortnight while its owner was away. She said the owner was a famous actor, a household word more or less. He’s always on television.
‘Then, after the dog had gone back, we were both in the club one night and this actor came in. Some member brought him as his guest. Of course I recognised him. He didn’t even know Dawn. It wasn’t that they’d quarrelled and weren’t speaking. You could tell he just didn’t know her.’ Joan shrugged. She put her cigarettes into her bag and closed the bag decisively. ‘She used to l
ook through the evening paper and she’d spot a photograph of some well-known guy and say she’d worked with him or had an affair with him. I never said much. It embarrassed me. The biggest name she ever dropped was a singer, terribly famous. She said she’d known him for years and every so often they’d go out together. She said. A couple of weeks ago the phone rang and she answered it. She looked at me and covered up the mouthpiece and said it was him, but when she started talking to him she never said his name, just “Yes” and “No” and “That’d be lovely”. She never actually called him Zeno. You can pretend a phone-caller is anyone, can’t you? Your flatmate’s not likely to go and listen on the extension.’
‘Zeno?’ said Wexford. ‘D’you mean she claimed acquaintance with Zeno Vedast?’
‘That’s rather the word, “claimed”. He never came to the flat. I never saw her with him. No, it was just the same as with the TV actor, name-dropping to impress, I’m afraid.’
‘Miss Miall, was Dawn the sort of girl who might pick up a stranger and spend the night with him?’
She hesitated and then said impulsively, ‘She might have. It sounds hateful but Dawn was very fond of money. She never had any money when she was a child, just a shilling a week or something ridiculous, and she was supposed to save half of that in a piggy bank you couldn’t open. And her parents can’t have been that poor—they both worked. I’m telling you this to explain why she might have picked someone up if she thought there was anything in it for her. When she first came to the club she was told like we all are that dating a customer means instant dismissal. The members know that but some of them try it on. Well, Dawn accepted an invitation from a member, in spite of the rule. He said if she’d go away for the weekend with him he’d buy her a fur coat. She did go and he gave her ten pounds. She never got the coat and I think she felt awfully humiliated because she never did that again. She liked admiration too and if a man wanted to sleep with her she thought … Oh, well, that it means a lot more than it does. Sometimes when she wasn’t working she’d be away for a night and I think she was with a man. She couldn’t bring him home, you see, in case Paul came round. But, as I told you, we didn’t ask each other questions.’
‘This Mr Wickford was a steady boy friend?’
She nodded. ‘They’d been going out together for two years. I think she’d have married Paul in the end. The trouble seemed to be that he wasn’t rich enough for her or famous or anything. He’s about thirty-five, divorced, very nice. He was frightfully upset when he heard what had happened to her and the doctor had to give him sedatives. I’m sure she would have married him if she could only have grown out of all those ideas about knowing famous people. She was a very nice girl really, generous, good fun, always ready to help anyone out. It was just that she couldn’t help telling lies …’
‘One last thing, Miss Miall. Dawn bought food in Kingsmarkham last Monday afternoon, a tin of soup, tinned chicken and two strawberry mousse things in cartons. Is it possible she bought it to take home for lunch for the two of you on Tuesday?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
‘For one thing—please don’t think I don’t like this place, it’s a very nice town—but no one who lives—er, lived—where Dawn did would buy food here to take home. We’re surrounded by delicatessen shops and big supermarkets. The other thing is, she wouldn’t buy food for the two of us. I’m a bit of a faddist when it comes to food. Health-conscious. You wouldn’t think so the way I smoke, would you?’ She gave a slight laugh. ‘I never eat food out of cans. Dawn knew that. We used to prepare our food quite separately unless one of us made a casserole or a salad. Dawn didn’t care what she ate. She hated cooking and she used to say she ate to live.’ Joan winced at the last word which had been used automatically, without thought. She lifted her eyes to Wexford and he saw that they shone with unshed tears. In a choking voice she said:
‘She didn’t live very long, did she?’
Michael Burden was a widower whose married life had been happy and who, as a result of this, tended to consider sexual relationships as ecstatically romantic or, when they were illicit, deeply sordid. But the solitary love affair he had had since his wife’s death had slightly broadened his mind. He was now prepared to admit that unmarried people might love each other and consummate that love without degradation. Sometimes these newly enlightened views of his gave rise to romantic theories and it was one of these which he propounded to Wexford as they drank their coffee together on Tuesday morning.
‘We’ve agreed,’ he began, ‘that her killer can’t have been a casual pick-up because of the food-shopping angle. And we know the food wasn’t bought for her and the Miall girl. Therefore, she knew the man and knew him well enough to arrange with him that she’d buy their meal and meet him after he’d finished work. The time of the meeting—surely between five-thirty and six?—indicates it was to be after he’d finished work. Right?’
‘Imagine so, Mike.’
‘Well, sir, I’ve been wondering if she and this bloke had one of those long close friendships extending over years.’
‘What long close friendships? What are you on about?’
‘You know my sister-in-law Grace?’ Wexford nodded impatiently. Of course he knew Grace, the sister of Burden’s dead wife who had looked after Burden’s children when they had first lost their mother and who he had later hoped would be the second Mrs Burden. That had come to nothing. Grace had married someone else and now had a baby of her own. ‘I mention her,’ said Burden, ‘because it was her experience that gave me the idea. She and Terry knew each other off and on for years before they got married. There was always a sort of bond between them, although they didn’t meet much and each of them had other—well, friends. Terry even got engaged to someone else.’
‘You’re suggesting this was the case with Dawn?’
‘She lived here till she was eighteen. Suppose she knew this bloke when they were both very young and they had an affair and then they both left Kingsmarkham to work elsewhere. Or he stayed here and she went to London. What I’m suggesting is that they kept in touch and whenever she came home or he went to London they had one of these dates, secret dates necessarily because he was married and she was more or less engaged to Wickford. Frankly, I think this covers every aspect of the case and deals with all the difficulties.’
Wexford stirred his coffee, looked longingly towards the sugar bowl and resisted the temptation to take another lump. ‘It doesn’t deal with that bloody red dress,’ he said viciously.
‘It does if they met in this chap’s house. We’d have to admit the possibility of coincidence, that she stained the mauve outfit and then put on a dress belonging to this man’s wife.’
‘The wife being out presumably. She goes there, he lets her in. What happens to the mauve garment? They had no drinks for her to spill, ate nothing for her to drop, made no love to—er, crush it. (I put it like that, Mike, to save your delicate sensibilities.) Maybe the violence of his welcoming embrace creased it up and she was so dainty about her appearance that she rushed upstairs and slipped into one of her rival’s ancient cast-offs. He was so upset about her thinking more of her clothes than of him that he upped and banged her with the bottle. Is that it?’
‘It must have been something like that,’ said Burden rather stiffly. Wexford was always pouring cold water on his flights of fancy and he never got used to it.
‘Where was this house of assignation, then?’
‘On the outskirts of Stowerton, the Forby side. She went by the fields because he was going to meet her there and take her back to his house. They arranged it that way just in case the wife changed her mind about going away.’ He made a moue of distaste, sordidness temporarily conquering romance. ‘Some people do go on like that, you know.’
‘You seem to know, anyway. So all we have to do now is find a bloke living in a house on the north side of Stowerton who’s known Dawn Stonor since they went to Sunday school together and whose wif
e was away Monday night. Oh, and find if the wife has missed a red dress.’
‘You don’t sound too enthusiastic, sir.’
‘I’m not,’ Wexford said frankly. ‘The people you know go on like that but the people I know don’t. They act like people, not characters in a second feature film that’s been thrown together for the sake of sensation rather than illustrating human nature. But since my mind is otherwise a blank, I reckon we’d better get asking Mrs Stonor who Dawn knew around Stowerton and who had a lifelong sentimental bond with her.’
8
‘The folks round here,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘weren’t good enough for Dawn. She was a proper little snob, though what she’d got to be snobbish about I never will know.’
For all her frankly expressed unmaternal sentiments, Mrs Stonor was dressed in deepest black. She and the old woman who was with her, and who had been introduced as ‘My mother, Mrs Peckham’, had been sitting in semi-darkness, for the curtains were drawn. When the two policemen entered the room a light was switched on. Wexford noticed that a wall mirror had been covered by a black cloth.
‘We think it possible,’ he said, ‘that Dawn went to meet an old friend on Monday night. I want you to try and remember the names of any boy friends she had before she left home or any name she may have mentioned to you on her visits here.’
Instead of replying, Mrs Stonor addressed the old woman who was leaning forward avidly, clutching the two sticks that supported her when she walked. ‘You can get off back to bed now, Mother. All this has got nothing to do with you. You’ve been up too long as it is.’
‘I’m not tired,’ said Mrs Peckham. She was very old, well over eighty. Her body was thin and tiny and her face simian, a maze of wrinkles. What sparse white hair she had was scragged on to the top of her head into a knot stuck full of pins. ‘I don’t want to go to bed, Phyllis. It’s not often I have a bit of excitement.’