by Ruth Rendell
“Mrs. Strang’s name is Olga.”
“Pity no one told me that earlier. Still,” said Rachel with unusual graciousness “they weren’t to know, were they? Anyway, I did call her Vicky and we talked, and I suppose I didn’t take much notice of where we were going. If I had, it wouldn’t have helped. I don’t know those villages, I’ve never been to Framhurst, so I wouldn’t know where we went. It was country, I know that, fields and woods and whatever. I was talking to her, she wanted to know all about me.”
“What, she asked you to talk about yourself?”
“Yes, and you could say I fell for it. I told her my parents were divorced and I lived with my mother, and that I’d be nineteen in June and I was at university - oh, and all sorts of things about my friends and what I liked doing, and my interests and everything.” She laughed suddenly, an angry self-mocking sound. “Vicky was a good listener,” she said bitterly.
“Where did she take you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t take any of it in. You see, I simply trusted her to take me to her house and pick up Caroline. She talked about Caroline. Of course I see now that she could talk about Caroline because I’d talked about her first, said we’d met in our first term at Essex and then found out we lived near each other, and how Caroline ‘was doing Latin American studies and I was doing anthropology She talked about Caroline’s Spanish being so good because they’d lived in Spain for a year when she was a child, and I said I’d never known that, and of course it wasn’t true, it was all made up - but you can see why I trusted her, can’t you?”
“What happened when you got to where you were going?”
Rachel sighed. “I wish I could tell you where it was and describe the house, but I can’t. I have a vague impression of shingles on the front of the house and a fir tree - well, a sort of Christmas tree - but that’s all. I didn’t look, I didn’t know then that I’d have to remember. Vicky unlocked the front door and we went inside, and she called out ‘Caroline!’ as if Caroline was somewhere getting ready or something. My God, she was such a good actress I’d have sworn I heard Caroline answer.” Rachel looked at her mother. “Can I have a drink of water?”
Rosemary Holmes shot out of her chair, happy to obey any commands now she had her daughter back. Karen watched with carefully disguised disapproval as Rosemary came running back with a tall glass that, had ice in it and a bottle of Pettier.
Taking it without a word of thanks, Rachel tipped the ice into an ashtray and filled the glass with water. “I’ll go on now, shall I?”
“If you please,” said Wexford.
“Vicky asked me to sit down and I did, and she offered me a drink and I said yes, which was a big mistake, but I didn’t know that.”
“How a big mistake?” Karen asked.
“She put something in it. She must have . . .”
“Oh, Rachel!” It was a wail from Rosemary Holmes, a cry of anguish.
“I’ve told you they didn’t do anything to me!” Rachel was almost shouting. “Not what you mean, anyway. There’s no need to make a fuss.” She seemed to notice the effect her rage was having on the two police officers, their quiet awareness that might cover disapproval, and she lowered her voice. “I asked for vodka with tonic or lemonade or whatever, and she brought it. She wouldn’t have anything herself because she’d be driving Caroline and me to the Rotten Carrot. Oh, yes, I’d told her where we were going, she wasn’t a thought reader, My drink tasted like a normal vodka and tonic, and it didn’t have any weird effects, not at first.
“I did start wondering why Caroline was taking so long, as I must have been there ten minutes. We were sup posed to be at the Rotten Carrot by eight-thirty and it was past that. Vicky offered me another drink - ‘Freshen your glass?’ was what she said - but I wouldn’t, I was starting to feel a bit woozy And then this man came into the room. At first I thought he must be Caroline’s brother, though he’d have been old for that. He was maybe thirty, a small, thin guy with weird eyes.”
“What does weird mean?”
For a moment Karen thought Rachel was going to shout at her to consult a dictionary so contemptuous was her glance, but she only gave one of her impatient sighs. “Strange,” she said, “piercing but sort of dull. Like stones. He had rather a high voice and he didn’t look at you while he was talking.” She drank some of her sparkling water and set the glass down. “And after that I don’t remember, I don’t remember what happened till the middle of the next day, the middle of Sunday.”
“Oh, Rachel!” exclaimed Rosemary Holmes once more.
“Oh, Rachel,” her daughter mocked. “I’ve told you, I know I wasn’t . . . touched. What Granny would call ‘interfrred with.’ “She looked at Wexford as if she would include him in the Granny category. “I was lying on a bed and Vicky - I’m sure it was Vicky and not him - had taken off my jeans and my sweater. I was in my top and bra and pants, and nobody’d done anything else to me. Right? Is that clear? Vicky brought me a cup of tea and said to get up and have a bath and dress.” Rachel hesitated. “So I did. I mean, I argued, I said where was I and to take me home, but when I saw there was no way of getting out - she’d locked me in and wouldn’t let me out till I’d had a bath - I just did it. I suppose I thought I’d be better able to get away from there if I was clean and dressed and everything.
“Vicky had taken away my jeans and given me a skirt, a longish sort of A-line skirt it was, awful, but I wasn’t going to go out there in just my knickers, so I put it on and went out and he was there - she called him Jerry - and she told me to cook the lunch.”
“She told you to cook the lunch?” Wexford said in a neutral tone. The incredulity was in his face.
“I was to cook the lunch and clear it away and wash up. I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ and that I was going home, she was to take me home now. I knew it was a crime to take someone away and shut them up against their will, and I said that to them and Vicky said, ‘Too bad,’ or something like that. I tried to run to the front door - well, I did run to the front door but it was locked on three locks, so I tried a window but all the windows were locked and I think they were double-glazed too. I didn’t tell you I felt awfully ill, like an outsize hangover it was, a tremendous headache and sort of trembling and shivering. So in the end I just did what she said. I said could I have some paracetamol first and she gave me two capsules. I saw her take them out of the paracetamol pack, so I knew they were okay.”
Rachel laughed that same bitter laugh. “Then I peeled some potatoes and washed a cauliflower - I’m not much of a cook, I’ve never had to cook.” Rachel eyed her mother reproachfully just as she must have looked at her when, in the past, any tentative suggestions had been made that she might care to learn how to boil an egg or grill a chop. “They watched me all the time, Vicky and Jerry. Anyway, we ate the lunch and then I washed up and Vicky said to get the vacuum cleaner and clean the bedrooms, but not her bedroom, the door to that was locked. I said, ‘Can I go home if I do?’ and Vicky said, ‘We’ll see,’ so I cleaned the bedrooms and when I came back, she gave me a great pile of Jerry’s socks and said to mend them. ‘Darn’ them was what she said and I didn’t know what that meant.”
“Rachel,” said Wexford, interrupting her, for he could stand it no longer, “have you ever read a novel called The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey?”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “What?”
“It’s about a young girl who accuses two women of kidnapping her and forcing her to do their housework. The accusation is false. She has, in fact, been away with a man she picked up in a hotel. The novel is sometimes set as a GCSE text.”
The flush that spread across Rachel’s face was one of the most intense and glowing he had ever seen. But he knew that it is not only guilt and shame that make us blush. Being suspected of lying may be just as effective in causing a rush of blood to the face.
“Have you read it?” he asked, gently this time.
“Yes, I have.”
“Well?”
Rachel spoke in a high voice, near to hysteria. “You came here and - and wanted me to talk to you and I said yes - I said I’d tell you everything - and now I - I have – you - you don’t believe me! You accuse me of getting it out of a book!”
“Did you darn his socks?” asked Karen, barely concealing her amusement.
“No, because I can I don’t know howl I got supper instead and put my jeans and shirt in the washing machine and washed up, and all the time this Jerry never said a word, he just watched me. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Go on,” said Wexford.
“Not if that woman’s going to laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing,” said Karen. “Even you must have felt it was pretty ludicrous trying to get you to mend his socks. Did you try to escape?”
“They hadn’t a phone, or if they had, I couldn’t find it. I tried all the windows. I tried to attract someone’s attention but there wasn’t anyone, it was just a country lane. Cars went past but the drivers couldn’t see me. I got up in the night but Vicky’d locked my bedroom door. I could have broken the window if I’d really tried, but there were bars outside.”
“This was a bungalow?”
“No - yes, just two stories, yes. But big, a lot of rooms. On the Monday I felt better, the headache had worn off. Vicky got me up early and told me to defrost the fridge and clean the oven. Then I was to take Jerry his breakfast in bed. That was the only time Vicky touched me. She shook me to wake me up and slapped my face. I’d - no one had ever slapped me before. I didn’t know what to do, I don’t know how to fight people. It was a shock, being hit like that. I took Jerry’s breakfast in on a tray, it was cereal and toast and honey and an orange. He was sitting up in bed in striped pajamas, and he took the tray and said, ‘Thanks.’ That was the only time he spoke to me, though he spoke to Vicky.”
Rachel seemed to have forgotten her restraint. Now she was voluble, pouring it all out. “I did housework all day and cooked. I suppose I thought that if I did it, they’d let me go. I had plenty to eat and Vicky offered me drinks, but I wouldn’t have them in case she’d doctored them with whatever that was. But I did a silly thing. On Tuesday I started feeling ill, it was my period coming, and I asked Vicky for a paracetamol and again the pack came out. But she’d done something to it, put capsules with this drug in through the plastic so the foil seal wasn’t broken. And that deceived me, so I took two and they had the same effect as the first one, only worse, and I don’t know what I did for the rest of the day, I can’t remember anything, I may have done housework, had some food, I don’t know, but when I woke up it was midday today and I was lying there” - she looked dubiously in Wexford’s direction - “well, in a bit of a mess, and there was a packet of Tampax beside me and my jeans and sweater.”
“I felt dreadful but Vicky made me wash my sheets. She hung them on the line herself, she wouldn’t let me outside. And then, at about six, she said I could go home. I had such a hangover I could hardly see. Jerry wasn’t around. Vicky unlocked the front door and took me out to the car, the same one we’d come in. I could have run away then, but I felt so ill and besides I didn’t see the point. I let her bring me back here and she dropped me off where she’d picked me up.”
It was not Wexford or Karen Malahyde who eventually persuaded Rachel to be seen by a doctor, but Lynn Fancourt, who seemed to strike some chord with her or ignite some spark of affinity Perhaps it was only that Lynn was nearer her own age. Not that Devonshire, though, Rachel said, puffing a face as if she could smell something nasty. So it was Dr. Akande whom she saw and, after more grumbling and truculence, allowed to take a blood sample and peer into her eyes and down her throat.
“I think, she was given Rohypnol,” Wexford said. “Akande found no trace of it but it’s virtually undetectable anyway, and by now it would have passed out of her system.”
Burden raised his eyebrows. “Is that the stuff they call the rape drug? No smell, no taste, put in drink it sedates, and next day the subject has a massive hangover but can’t remember what’s happened to her?”
“More or less.”
“Then we find out who in the area’s been prescribed Rohypnol and Bob’s your uncle.”
“Not quite,” said Wexford. “Rohypnol’s only obtainable on prescription now and only, in fact, on private prescription, but until recently you could buy it over the counter, anyone could buy it.”
Burden, who had been walking up and down, not so much pacing as strolling while he considered, sat down on the edge of Wexford’s desk. “How much of this tale of hers do we believe? I mean, is it any less of a farrago of lies than Lizzie Cromwell’s story?”
Wexford was silent, thinking. He had begun by not believing it. The parallels with The Franchise Affair, a favorite book of his, had been responsible in part for his incredulity but gradually, as Rachel went on, he had doubted his own disbelief. Now he half believed. That a middle-aged woman had taken Rachel to a house some where in the countryside he could give credence to. And that she had been drugged and locked up, all that was possible. But the silent, stony-eyed Jerry and the demands that Rachel cook and do housework, most of all that she darn the man’s socks, these must be figments or fantasies. “What’s a farrago, anyway?” he said irrelevantly.
“God knows. It’s just a phrase, a figure of speech, a ‘farrago of lies’ is. You’re such a pedant, you are. You ought to have been a professor among the dreaming spires.”
“Maybe I should at that,” said Wexford wistfully.
“You talk about a tissue of lies - well, you don’t but I might - so I suppose a farrago is something like that, like sort of embroidered material or something.”
Wexford watched him resume his walking, take up a station at the window, against which a sudden shower was dashing hailstones. “She’s described those two people quite circumspectly,” Wexford said. “The woman in her fifties, gray-haired, blue wearing a wedding ring, overweight - but any normal person’s overweight to these girls.” Wexford tightened his belly, as people always do when talking of fatness or thinness in others. “The man about thirty, small, she says around five foot four, dark, receding hair, and the stony eyes. She sticks to these descriptions, she’s repeated them twice to me and given the same details to Lynn. I believe in them.”
Apparently fascinated by the hailstones that stung the glass, Burden didn’t turn his head. “Does it matter? No harm’s been done. She wasn’t hurt. It probably did her good, cooking and cleaning and all that, spoilt little madam.”
“You know better than that, Mike. I don’t have to tell you that taking someone away and detaining her against her will is a very serious offence. Not to mention drugging her. And now it’s happened to two young women. It’s false imprisonment. Of course it matters.”
“All right. Point taken. You mean you think this Vicky woman took Lizzie away too?”
“You remember she mentioned a woman offering her a lift, which she didn’t accept? Well, I think she did accept it and she too was taken to this house for the same purpose, whatever that was.”
“The woman and the man were mother and son, were they?”
“Don’t know. It’s possible.” Wexford thought of the strange relationships he came across in his work, the bizarre combinations of disparate types and the unlikely conjunctions of ages. He wasn’t going to draw any facile conclusions about this one. “What on earth are you gawping at?” he asked. “You’ve seen hailstones before, haven’t you?”
“Come and look at this.”
Wexford got up. Through the streaming window he could see two people sheltering from the hail in a shop doorway. Both wore sandwich boards, the woman’s cut out in the shape of a girl child, the man’s in the shape of a boy, faces and hair and clothes painted in quite realistically, one bearing the words SAVE OUR CHILDREN and the other PEDOPHILE OUT. The storm ceased as abruptly as it had started, and both of them stepped out onto the pavement and crossed the road, holding up hands to halt the traffic.
Taking no notice of the honking of horns and yells of motorists, they reached the police station side and stood looking up at the windows.
Wexford rubbed at the steam on the glass left by his breath. “The man’s Colin Crowne,” he said. “I don’t know the woman’s name, but she’s from the Muriel Campden Estate too, Oberon Road, I think.”
“Where Orbe returns tomorrow,” said Burden in fatalistic tones. “Shall we get on over there and kill two birds with one stone?”
“And have a word with those two first.”
But by the time they reached the forecourt the two people and their child-shaped sandwich boards had gone.
For no apparent reason, the Muriel Campden Estate was designed so that no house faced another, but all, looking inward from the three sides of the triangle, fronted on the squat tower in its center. Around this building, from all the windows on the second floor, at bedroom-window height in the houses, a banner had been hung, bearing the same legends in red and black paint as those on the sandwich boards. It girdled the tower like a belt, running almost all the way around and announcing to anyone looking out of windows or passing by: PEDOPHILE OUT. KEEP AWAY FROM OUR CHILDREN. Of the sandwich-board bearers there was no sign.
In the raised flower beds at the foot of the tower, hail had beaten the tulips to death. Orange-and-green-striped, feather-edged, they lay broken and crushed against the pale chalky soil. And the pink-blossoming street trees, cherries and prunus, had dropped all their petals in one mighty shedding under the hail’s onslaught. The pavements were slippery with them, bright mother-of-pearl under the blazing sun, which had suddenly come out. In the distance, beyond these charcoal-coloured houses, these anthracite walls and roofs, the green meadows shone brilliantly enough to hurt the eyes.
Wexford rang the bell at 16 Oberon Road. Standing on the doorstep, he had only to turn his head to receive the full force of that banner, some twenty yards away. But it would be the same wherever you lived on the triangle. The protesters had seen to that. Here, though, at this point, by careful design and strategic positioning, the single word PEDOPHILE stood out most assertively.