Some Lie and Some Die

by Ruth Rendell

  John put his head round the door. ‘I’m going out, Dad.’

  Burden began to flap. ‘Where? Why? What d’you want to go out now for?’

  ‘Only down the Carousel.’

  Wexford said smoothly, ‘That’s fine, John, because we’re going out too. Your father won’t be back till ten-thirty, so you’d better have the key. You’re bound to be in before him, aren’t you?’

  Burden handed over the key in meek stupefaction and John took it as if it were something precious and wonderful. When the boy had gone—rapidly before there could be any changes of heart—Burden said suspiciously, ‘You talked to him exactly as if he were grown-up.’

  ‘Don’t have any more beer, Mike. I want you to drive us.’

  ‘To Cheriton Forest, I suppose?’

  ‘Mm-hm. Vedast’s dining in tonight. I checked.’ Wexford looked at his watch. ‘He ought to have just about finished his dinner.’

  ‘Oh God. I don’t know. Pat’s at Grace’s. John …’

  ‘The boy’s glad you’re going out. It was a relief. Couldn’t you see that? You won’t go out for his sake. D’you want him to get so he can’t go out for yours?’

  ‘I sometimes think human relationships are impossible. Communication’s impossible.’

  ‘And you’re a fool,’ said Wexford, but he said it affectionately.

  Cheriton Forest, a large fir plantation, lies some two miles to the south of Kingsmarkham. It is intersected by a number of sandy rides and one metalled road on which, in a big heathy clearing, is situated the Cheriton Forest Hotel.

  This is a newer and far more fashionable hotel than the Olive and Dove in Kingsmarkham. The original building, put up in the thirties, is supposed to be a copy of a Tudor manor house. But there are too many beams and studs, the plaster is too white and the beams too black, the woodwork a decoration rather than an integral part of the structure. And the whole thing which might have mellowed with time has been vulgarised by a vast glass cocktail bar and by rows of motel bungalows added on in the late sixties.

  When Wexford and Burden arrived at the hotel it was still broad daylight, a dull summer evening, windy and cool. The wind stirred the forest trees, ruffling them against a pale sky where grey clouds, rimmed in the west with pink, moved, gathered, lost their shapes, torn by the wind.

  On a Saturday night the forecourt would by this time have been crammed with cars and the cocktail bar full of people. But this was mid-week. Through a mullioned window a few sedate diners could be seen at tables, waiters moving unhurriedly with trays. This dining-room window was closed as were all the others in the building except one on the floor above, a pair of french windows giving on to a balcony which was quite out of keeping with the design of the hotel. The wind sent these diamond-paned glass doors banging shut and bursting open again, and from time to time it caught the velvet curtains, beating them, making them toss like washing on a line.

  There was plenty of room in the parking bays for the half-dozen vehicles which stood there. Only one was on the forecourt proper, a golden Rolls-Royce parked askew, the silver gable of its grid nosing into a flower-bed and crushing geranium blossoms.

  Wexford stared at this car from the windows of his own which Burden was steering, with rule-abiding propriety, into a vacant bay. He had heard of the fashion of covering the bodywork of cars in a furry coating to seem like skin or coarse velvet, but he had never yet seen this done in use, except in glossy advertisements. The Rolls wore a skin of pale golden fur, the vibrant sand colour of a lion’s pelt which gleamed softly and richly, and on its bonnet, just above the grid, was attached a statuette of a plunging lion that seemed to be made of solid gold.

  ‘This beast-of-prey motif keeps cropping up,’ he said. He approached the car to get a closer look and as he did so the driver’s door opened and a girl got out. It was Nell Tate.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘We’ve met before.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember.’ It was the voice of a person accustomed to defending a celebrity from intrusive fans.

  ‘At the festival.’ Wexford introduced himself and Burden. ‘I’d like a word with Mr Vedast.’

  Nell Tate looked seriously alarmed. ‘You can’t see Zeno. He’s resting. He’s probably asleep. We’re all trying to get a quiet evening. I only came down to get something out of the car.’

  She looked as if she were in need of rest. Beautifully dressed in a long clinging gown of silver lace under which she obviously wore nothing at all, heavy platinum ornaments at neck and wrists, she had a look of hag-ridden exhaustion. Under the silver and purple paint, her left eye was very swollen, the white of it bloodshot between puffy, painful lids. Studying it covertly, Wexford thought that considerable courage must have been needed to stick false lashes on to that bruised membrane.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ll wait. Are you in the motel?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She had a false poise that was growing brittle. ‘We’ve got what they call the Elizabethan suite. Can you give me some idea what it’s about?’

  ‘Dawn Stonor. Tell him we want to talk to him about Dawn Stonor.’

  She didn’t even go through the pretence of looking bewildered or asking who this was. ‘I’ll tell him. Couldn’t you come back tomorrow?’

  ‘I think we’ll wait,’ said Wexford. He and Burden followed her into the foyer of the hotel, a porter having sprung forward to open the door for her. Observing the way she swept past the man, her head going up and her shoulders wriggling, passing him without a word or a nod, Wexford hardened his heart. ‘We’ll give you a quarter of an hour and then we’ll come up.’

  She made for the lift. The spurned porter, not at all put out, watched her admiringly. Once in the lift, before the doors closed on her, she appeared multiplied three times by the mirrors which lined its walls. Four blonde girls in silver, four bruised eyes, glared at Wexford and then the doors closed and she was whisked upwards.

  ‘Lovely,’ said the porter feelingly.

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  ‘Mr Vedast’s here to purchase a country property, sir.’

  Anyone else, thought Wexford, would have just bought a house. He fished for a couple of coins and found only a fifty-pence piece. ‘Any luck, yet?’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir. They go out looking every day, sir, him and Mr and Mrs Tate. We’ve had a few fans outside but they didn’t have no joy on account of Mr Vedast takes all his meals in his suite.’

  ‘She was scared stiff when you said who we were,’ said Burden when the porter had gone out of earshot.

  ‘I know, but that may be only that she’s afraid of having him disturbed. I wonder if it was he who gave her that black eye?’

  ‘More likely her husband, poor devil. That’s a ménage à trois if ever there was one. D’you think there are two bedrooms or only one in that suite?’

  ‘For a self-avowed puritan, Mike, you take a very lubricious interest in these things. Here you are, get your nose into Nova and you can pass me The Fiela.’

  For fifteen minutes they leafed through the glossy periodicals provided in the Shakespeare Lounge. A very old couple came in and switched on the television. When they were satisfied that it was glowing with colour and braying forth football results, they ignored it and began to read novels. A Dalmatian entered, wandered about and fell into a despairing heap in front of the cold electric heater.

  ‘Right, time’s up,’ said Wexford. ‘Now for the lion’s den.’

  11

  The suite was on the first floor. They were admitted not by Nell but by a small dark man of about thirty who introduced himself as Godfrey Tate and who favoured them with a narrow smile. There was something spare and economical about him from his longish thin black hair and dab of moustache to his tiny feet in lace-up boots. He wore tube-like black slacks, a very tight skimpy black shirt, and the air of one who rations his movements, his speech and his manners to the starkest barrenness social usage permits.

&n
bsp; ‘Zeno can spare you ten minutes.’

  They were in a small entrance hall filled with flowers, displays of roses, sweet peas and stephanotis, whose perfume hung cloyingly on the air. Burden knocked a rosebud out of a vase and cursed softly. The living room was large and not at all Elizabethan, being done up in the style of a provincial casino with panels of pink mirror on the walls, niches containing more flowers in gilt urns, and french windows, hung with velvet and opening on to a balcony. In here the atmosphere was not stuffy or soporific. All the doors were open, showing a bathroom whose floor was cluttered with wet towels, and the interiors of two bedrooms, one containing a huge double bed and the other two singles. All had been occupied until recently as the rumbled bedclothes showed, but as to who had occupied which and with whom it was impossible to tell. Both bedrooms, like the living room, were littered all over with discarded clothes, magazines, records, and suitcases spilling out their contents. A lusty gale blew through the open windows, shaking the flowers and making the curtains billow and thrash.

  Nell Tate looked blue with cold, her arms spiky with goose-flesh. Not so her companion, who, bare-chested, sat at a table by the window eating roast duck with the enthusiasm of one who has been brought up on baked beans.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Vedast. I’m sorry to disturb your dinner.’

  Vedast didn’t get up, but his hairless, polished-looking face, all bones and almost Slavonic planes, split into a wide grin. ‘Hallo. Good evening. Have some coffee.’ His voice had no affectations. It was still what it must have always been, the local mixture of Sussex burr and mild cockney. ‘Make them send up more coffee, Nello, and take all this away.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating the two other plates on which the food had only been picked at, the covered dishes, the basket of melba toast. ‘Phone down now. Go on.’ No one had touched the cream trifle. Vedast took the whole bowl and set it in his lap.

  ‘Maybe they’d rather have a drink,’ said Godfrey Tate.

  ‘You mean you would, Goffo. Didn’t you know they’re not allowed to drink on duty?’ Spooning up trifle, Vedast grinned at Wexford. He had an ugly attractive face, joli laid, very white and oddly bare. His eyes were a light, clear brown that sometimes looked yellow. ‘The trouble with Nello and Goffo,’ he said, ‘is that they never read. They’re not informed. Get on with your phoning and drinking, dears.’

  Like discontented slaves, the Tates did his bidding. Tate took an almost empty bottle of brandy from a pseudo Louis Quinze cabinet and tipped what remained of it into a glass. He stood drinking it and watching his wife darkly while she phoned down for more coffee. Vedast laughed.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down? Not too cold in here, is it?’ He put out his hand to Nell and beckoned her, pursing his lips into a whistle shape. She came up to him eagerly, too eagerly. She was trembling with cold. It was all she could do to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘Fresh air is good for Nello and Goffo. If I didn’t look after their health they’d be like two little broiler chickens, shut up all day in hot hutches. I think we’ll do our house-hunting on foot tomorrow, Nello.’

  ‘Then you can count me out,’ said Tate.

  ‘Must we? You won’t mind if Nello comes with me, will you?’ Emaciated, starved-looking, Vedast finished the dessert which had been intended for three people. ‘Perhaps our visitors can tell us of all sorts of lovely houses going spare round here?’

  ‘We aren’t house agents, Mr Vedast,’ said Burden, ‘and we’ve come to ask you questions, not answer them.’

  The coffee arrived before Vedast could reply to this. Tate took one look at it, swallowed his drink and searched in the cupboard for a fresh bottle of brandy. While his wife poured coffee, he found a bottle tucked away at the back and quite full though already opened. A liberal measure in his glass, he took a long deep draught.

  Immediately he was convulsed, choking and clapping one hand over his mouth.

  ‘Christ!’ A dribble of liquid came out through his fingers. ‘That’s not brandy! What the hell is it?’

  Vedast laughed, his head on one side. ‘Meths and cold tea, Goffo. Just a little experiment to see if you could tell the difference.’ Nell giggled, squeezed close against Vedast’s side. ‘I poured the brandy down the loo. Best place for it.’

  Tate said nothing. He went into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  ‘Poor little man! Never mind, we’ll take him out to dinner tomorrow at that lovely place in Pomfret. Kiss, Nello? That’s right. No hard feelings because I like playing tricks on your old man? How is your coffee, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Well, it is coffee, Mr Vedast. Apparently one runs a risk drinking in your establishment.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare doctor your coffee. I’ve a great respect for the law.’

  ‘Good,’ said Wexford drily. ‘I hope you’ve enough respect to tell me what was your relationship with Dawn Stonor.’

  For a moment Vedast was silent but he didn’t seem disturbed. He was waiting while Nell poured cream into his cup and then added four lumps of sugar.

  ‘Thank you, Nello darling. Now you run away and paint something. Your poor eye, for instance.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ said Nell like a child who has been told she must go to the dentist.

  ‘Of course you do when Zeno says so. The quicker you go the sooner it will all be over. Run along.’

  She ran along. She wasn’t a child but a grown woman, shivering with cold and with a black eye. Vedast smiled indulgently. He walked to the bathroom door and paused, listening to Tate running taps and brushing his teeth. Then he came back, kicking shut the door of the drinks cabinet as he passed it, and stretched himself out full-length on the pink velvet sofa.

  ‘You wanted to ask me about Dawnie,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ve been talking to Mummy Stonor or even Granny Peckham?’

  ‘They say you were at school with Dawn.’

  ‘So I was. So were ever such a lot of other people. Why pick on me?’

  ‘Mr Vedast,’ said Wexford heavily, ‘Dawn told her flatmate that you and she had remained friends since you left school, and she told her grandmother that you took her out to dinner on the Friday before she died. We know that can’t have been true since you were in Manchester that day, but we’d like to know how well you knew Dawn and when you last saw her.’

  Vedast took a lump of sugar and sucked it. He seemed completely relaxed, one leg casually crossed over the other. Still in their raincoats, Wexford and Burden were not even comfortably warm, but Vedast, almost naked, showed no sign of being affected by the cold damp wind. The golden hairs on his chest lay flat under the light gold chain which hung against them.

  ‘When we both lived here,’ he said, ‘she was my girl friend.’

  ‘You mean you were lovers?’

  Vedast nodded, smiling pleasantly. ‘I was her first lover. We were sixteen. Rather moving, don’t you think? Martin Silk discovered me and all sorts of exciting things happened to me which wouldn’t interest you at all. Dawnie and I lost touch. I didn’t see her again till this year.’

  ‘Where did you see her?’

  ‘In the Townsman Club,’ said Vedast promptly. ‘Nello and Goffo and I went there as guests of a friend of mine, and there was Dawnie serving drinks. My poor little Dawnie in a yellow satin corset and tights! I nearly laughed but that would have been unkind. She came and sat down at our table and we had a long chat about old times. She even remembered what I like to drink, orange juice with sugar in it.’

  ‘Did you communicate with her after that?’

  ‘Just once.’ Vedast spoke very lightly, very easily, his fingers playing with the gold chain. ‘Nello and Goffo had gone away to see Goffo’s mum and I was rather lonely, all on my own and sad, you know.’ He smiled, the unspoilt star, the poor little rich boy. ‘Dawnie had written down her phone number for me at the club. Nello didn’t like that a bit, you can imagine. I thought, why not give Dawnie a ring?’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Of course I did.�
�� Now Vedast’s smile was apologetic, a little rueful, the smile of the unspoilt star who longs for the companions of his humbler days to treat him as the simple country boy he really is at heart. ‘But it’s very off-putting, isn’t it, when people sort of swamp you? D’you know what I mean? When they’re terribly enthusiastic, sort of fawning?’

  ‘You mean you got bored?’ said Burden bluntly.

  ‘It sounds unkind, put that way. Let’s say I thought it better not to revive something which was dead and gone. Sorry, that wasn’t very tactful. What I mean is I choked Dawnie off. I said it would be lovely if we could meet again sometime, but I was so busy at present.’

  ‘When did this telephone conversation take place, Mr Vedast?’

  ‘Three or four weeks ago. It was just a little chat, leading to nothing. Fancy Dawnie telling Granny Peckham we’d met! Nello and Goffo could tell you when it was they went away.’ He fixed his cat’s eyes, yellowish, narrow, on Wexford, opening them very wide suddenly, and again they had a sharp sly glint. ‘And they’ll tell you where I was on June sixth. I know that’ll be the next thing you’ll ask.’

  ‘Where were you, Mr Vedast?’

  ‘At my house in Duvette Gardens, South Kensington. Nello and Goffo and I were all there. We came back from Manchester during the Sunday night and just lazed about and slept all that Monday. Here’s Goffo, all clean and purified. He’ll tell you.’

  Godfrey Tate had emerged from the bathroom, blank-faced, contained, wary, but showing no grudge against Vedast for the humiliating trick to which the singer had subjected him.

  ‘Who’s taking my name in vain?’ he said with an almost pathetically unsuccessful attempt at jocularity.

  ‘Tell the officers where I was on June sixth, Goffo.’

  ‘With me and Nell.’ He responded so promptly, so glibly, that it was evident the stating of this alibi had been rehearsed. ‘We were all together in Duvette Gardens all day and all night. Nell can tell you the same. Nell!’