by Ruth Rendell
He had been to the funeral but played no active part. Forbidden to be a bearer by his doctor, on account of his weight and his age, he had watched Burden, with Vine, Donaldson, and Cox, carry Hennessy’s coffin on their shoulders from the grim black undertaker’s car up the aisle of St. Peter’s Church. The wreath from the Mid-Sussex Constabulary crowned it, a huge, gaudy thing of delphiniums, gazanias, and stephanotis, chosen by the assistant chief constable, while Laura Hennessy’s knot of white mock orange and her children’s pathetic twin pink roses lay at its head.
The giving of the address had been left to Southby, who had said all the usual things about gallant officers and exceptional devotion to duty and laying down one’s life for one’s friends, than which man has no greater love. But poor Ted Hennessy hadn’t really laid down his life for anyone. He had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Funerals depressed Wexford, not only for the obvious reasons, but because they brought out in men and women so much hypocrisy and false piety Just looking at Southby, half-sitting half on his knees, with his hands over his eyes, mouthing prayers he hadn’t uttered since primary school, sent up Wexford’s blood pressure. The rest of them could go back to Laura’s house for sherry and Dundee cake if they liked. He wouldn’t and he was pretty sure Burden wouldn’t either.
Pressmen and cameras were everywhere. A flash went off in his face as he came down St. Peter’s steps and for a moment the world went black. He squeezed his eyes shut and stood still in the sudden panic we all feel when threatened with blindness, real or imagined.
Burden touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. Do you ever dream there’s something badly wrong with your eyes? You’re going blind or will if you don’t do something about it fast?”
“Everyone dreams that,” Burden said surprisingly. “Everyone I’ve ever talked to at any rate.”
“Do they? I find that curiously comforting.”
A crowd had gathered in the High Street. As Wexford put it, God knew what they hoped to see. But perhaps it was in the same category as bringing the plastic-wrapped flowers and it made them feel they belonged, that they weren’t left out, but part of this drama, this human tragedy.
“Any man’s death diminishes me, is that why they’re here?”
“Bit high-flown, isn’t it?” Burden said. “They just want to see themselves on television.”
They walked back, stared at by passers-by as if they were policemen from Mars and not the familiar faces any of them could have seen any day. Wexford was silent, thinking about Fay Devenish. He must see her but not yet. A strange reluctance to meet her again had taken bold of him and he asked himself if all abused women had this effect on others. They weren’t wanted, they must be ostracized; in becoming victims of this kind, they put them selves outside ordinary human intercourse. These passive creatures were the ultimate objects of demonization. It was a terrible attitude and he confronted it only for a few seconds before thrusting it out of his mind. He was avoiding seeing her because he had to see someone else first.
“Come upstairs.” He and Burden picked their way through the lake of flowers. “I want to tell you a story see what you think.” Under the plastic glaze, roses and fuchsias and zinnias were dying now, petals curling up, brown at the edges, their scent undergoing strange chemical changes. “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
“I don’t see any lilies,” said prosaic Burden. “But I know what you mean.”
“An amazing number of people want to adopt children, don’t they?” Wexford said when they were in his office. “They get obsessed about it. Even normally law-abiding people, women particularly, though I hardly dare say it they forget their principles and the rules by which they’ve lived and break the law in all kinds of ways.”
“What, you mean like going to Romania and bringing back orphan babies, forging passports and birth certificates, that kind of thing?”
“That kind of thing. Do you remember Mrs. Louise Sharper “No. Should I?”
“For God’s sake, Mike, it’s only a couple of days ago. Jane Andrews’s sister.”
“Oh, her. What of it? And what about this story you’re going to tell me?”
“Wait a little. Would you be surprised to learn that Mrs. Sharpe has a record?”
“The life we lead,” said Burden, “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear anyone had a record. I wouldn’t be surprised to bear you had.”
“Thanks very much. Louise Sharpe is a widow. . .”
“Not a criminal offence unless she murdered her old man.”
“I’ve no reason to think she did that. He had a heart attack two years ago. He was a few months under forty, but he had a heart attack and it killed him. His name was James Michael Sharpe, and he was an accountant who had gone into computers in a big way and made a fortune. She was thirty-eight when he died and pregnant. The child, a girl, had to be kept on a life-support machine and finally only lived two months. She and her husband, believing themselves infertile, had been trying to adopt a child for five years before she finally conceived. A home study was done, two babies were candidates - or whatever the term is. In both cases the mothers changed their minds at the last moment. Then Louise Sharpe became pregnant . . .”
“How do you know all this?”
“Thanks to our wonderful computer system, a lot of info is available on anyone with a criminal record.”
“You haven’t said what the criminal record was for yet,” Burden grumbled.
“I’m coming to it. Her husband died and she lost her baby, a double tragedy. I don’t know what happened next because I only got facts, not emotions. That part I have to imagine. Anyway, at some time in the following year she renewed her application to adopt, but the situation was very different now. She was three years older, she was no longer in a long-lasting and stable marriage. Her chances of being acceptable as a potential adoptive parent were practically nil.”
The heavy throb of a diesel engine brought Wexford to the window. He looked down on the white-and-green truck owned by the local authority’s contractors and the green-and-white-uniformed men with Day-Glo armbands as they began gathering up the flowers. “Which today are,” he said, “and tomorrow are cast into the oven. Only they’re cast into that monstrous chewing machine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Wexford. “Ignore me. Back to Mrs. Sharpe. The first child was called Nicola and she was dead. Sharpe, as I’ve said, had made a lot of money and he left his widow very well-off, as the loquacious Mrs. Probyn has told us. Not being short of cash, she went off and bought a baby. To Albania, in fact, where apparently you can buy Gypsy babies. She was fortunate not to be caught there as God knows what would have become of her. I don’t imagine an Albanian prison is a very pleasant place to spend a couple of years in. Instead, she was caught here, having tried to use the passport she had for the dead child, Nicola.”
“She had a passport for a sick baby that only lived two months?”
“Rich people are always taking their children out of the country Maybe she planned to go abroad with the baby when she was better, only she didn’t get better, she died. Louise Sharpe was lucky not to go to prison for buying the Albanian child. They had a psychiatrist in court who said she was badly mentally disturbed, so she got off with a heavy fine and Nicola the Second went back to Albania.”
“I’m beginning to see your drift,” said Burden. “Here was a ready-made adoptive mother, a woman who longed for a child, even had a name all ready for her and a birth certificate and passport.”
“I think so.”
“Are you saying this woman, this Louise Sharpe, got into Woodland Lodge by night and abducted Sanchia Devenish? Where does Devenish himself come into all this? And what about Jane Andrews?”
“I can tell you all that too, I think”
Once more Jane Andrews was in her “unisex” attire, scrubbed face, trainers on her feet. She had willingly come to Kingsmark
ham because, Wexford suspected she was anxious, now the whole scheme was over, to tell the rest of it. Her boats were burnt, she could recant nothing, and now she had to do the best she could for the friend she felt she had betrayed and the sister she had perhaps irrevocably injured, albeit with the kindest intentions. The solicitor she had at first demanded she no longer wanted. In fact, as she said to Wexford, she hoped that not more outsiders that than absolutely necessary would be involved in this. Instead of an interview room, he took her upstairs into his office Barry Vine and Karen Malahyde had gone to Brighton to confront Louise Sharpe.
“And take Sanchia - Nicola away with us?” Karen had said.
“You must. The Social Services have been notified and a woman from Kingsmarkham Adoption Department will go with you. Sanchia must be restored to her parents as soon as possible.”
Wexford repeated this to Jane Andrews when he was seated at his desk and she was opposite him. She looked down.
She said quietly, “He will kill her.”
“Stephen Devenish will kill his own daughter?”
“He will kill Fay. You said you knew why Fay gave Sanchia away. Maybe you’ve an idea, but you don’t know the extent of it. You’re like all men, you think it’s okay for a man to give his wife a little tap. That’s the expression, isn’t it? ‘A little tap’? Well, that wasn’t the way it was with them. If he’d done to a man what he’s done to her, systematically, over the years, on and on and more and more violent and brutal, he’d have been put in prison for life.”
Choosing to ignore her placing him in much the same category, Wexford said, “Go on, please.”
“All right, I’ll go on. It’ll be a pleasure to go on. He hit her for the first time on their honeymoon. He caught her talking to a man who was staying in the same hotel. Just talking and maybe daring to laugh. Stephen asked her to come up to their room with him, she thought he wanted to make love, and when they were inside, he slapped her face so hard she fell over. In other words, he knocked her down. She wasn’t to be alone with another man, he said, and now she knew what would happen to her if she was. She cried so much, she couldn’t believe he’d do it, you see. It was, she thought, so unlike him that she cried and cried until he said he was sorry, it wouldn’t happen again, but he loved her so much he was insanely jealous, he couldn’t help it. Well, of course it happened again. Too many times to go into. Even I haven’t been told how many times or all the details. Her mother and father haven’t, though it wouldn’t be much good. Her mother never wants to hear about anything she calls ‘unpleasant’ and her father asks her what she does to provoke her husband.”
“He’s broken both her arms. He hit her so hard in the eye once they thought she’d lose her sight. He cuts her. He’ll take a knife from the kitchen and see to it she sees him take it, then he’ll call her into that ghastly study - it’s always for some imagined or invented misdemeanour - and he’ll tell her to hold out her hand, and he doesn’t smack it like teachers used to smack schoolchildren’s hands, he cuts it across the palm with the knife.”
“He’s all contrite and sorry afterwards, of course, and he always says it won’t happen again, but at the same time it’s always her fault, she makes him do it. She’s got a lover he overhears her talking to on the phone, or her skirt is too short, or she’s flirtatious. That’s why they haven’t any friends. He beats her if she talks to a man and he’s jealous of women she likes. At the same time he says she’s mad. I don’t know how many times he’s accused her of being a lesbian. She’s never had a job because she might meet other people, men and women, at work. Besides, she has to keep the house spotless and do all the cooking, that’s her function, and if she’s not perfect at it, or he decides she’s not perfect, he’s giving her what he calls ‘a little smack,’ which in fact means knocking her down and kicking her.”
Jane Andrews paused to draw breath. Her color had become high and her eyes glittered. Wexford saw that she was holding her fists clenched as if ready to strike someone, and he had no doubt who that someone would be.
“All right, Miss Andrews, take it easy. I’m beginning to understand. Where do the children come into all this?”
She didn’t reply. “It was quite funny, really, you thinking he might have a girlfriend. Stephen Devenish is the most faithful husband on earth. He loves his victim, she’s the one woman he can beat to death.” Her bitter laugh was unpleasant to hear. “She phoned that Women’s Aid helpline, you know, not long ago actually - well, it wasn’t Women’s Aid but one of those. He was in the garden with Sanchia, but he came in and accused her of talking to a lover. He hit her so hard she lost consciousness and she was out for five minutes.” She relaxed the fists and let he hands go limp, looked at him tiredly. “Don’t ask why she stayed, will you? Don’t ask why she didn’t leave him, call the police, whatever. I used to ask her that. Once.”
“Where do the children come in?”
“They’re there, aren’t they? He doesn’t stop because his sons are there. I don’t know what he tells them. That that’s what you have to do to women to keep them in line, I suppose. Or Mummy’s been naughty again. Something like that. Of course you can tell it’s affected them, they’re both disturbed in different ways.”
“And Sanchia?”
“Sanchia was the result of rape. We’re permitted to use that word now, aren’t we, about men forcing themselves on their wives? It’s not their right anymore, is it? Well, Stephen raped Fay when she was ill in bed because he’d beaten her so badly. She was in pain and she begged him to leave her alone but he didn’t, he was a man, he said, and he needed sex or his health would suffer. So she got pregnant. When she was four months pregnant he kicked her in the stomach. He didn’t want another child, he said. Fay would love the child more than him. Well, his kicking her didn’t have the desired effect and Sanchia was born. Undamaged too, which was a piece of luck. Fay begged him not to hit her anymore, she went down on her knees to him. If you behaved yourself like a responsible, grown up woman, I wouldn’t have to punish you, he said. Kneeling to your own husband, what kind of behaviour is that? And he kicked her over.”
Wexford interrupted her. “He beat her like this in front of the child? In front of Sanchia?”
“Of course he did. She and I were no longer allowed to be friends, but, as I told you, we spoke on the phone. I was all she had and that wasn’t much.” Jane Andrews cleared her throat, as if she feared the sudden hoarseness of her voice betrayed an overwhelming emotion. “I couldn’t confront him with this. All that would have happened was that he’d have taken it out on Fay. I knew that. I’d spoken to him before, when she first told me, which was about seven years ago. I’d told him I’d call the police, and d’you know what he said? He denied it, he said it was all in Fay’s imagination, that she was neurotic or worse and was lucky in that she had a husband who understood her. He wasn’t rude to me or angry or anything, he was quite calm and charming as ever, soothing really, almost paternal. He just took it out on her afterwards.”
“But finally you were banned from the house?”
“That was when I found out he was beating her in front of Robert. Robert was only three then, the same age as Sanchia is now. It was almost as if he did it on purpose, so that the child could see. Well, no, not almost, he did do it on purpose. He’d take the child out of Fay’s arms and lay him down, then he’d start on Fay with Robert watching. Now he’ll learn what happens to women who are stupid and disobedient, he said.
“Well, I went for him, I told him it couldn’t go on, I’d take Fay and the children away and have them live with me, God knows how, but I did mean it and he knew it. So he told me I wasn’t wanted around his family any more. That wouldn’t have stopped me seeing Fay, but he took his revenge on her, he took it out on her and I couldn’t stand that. We kept up our friendship on the phone, that was all we could manage, and even so Fay was afraid all the time that somehow he’d find out about the calls. I usually made the calls, and when that one-four-seven-one system
came in - you know, the number you dial and get the number of who made the last call - she was terrified he’d try that and find out if I’d made a call when she was out. She got me to promise only to phone at set times when he couldn’t be in and she wouldn’t be out.”
Wexford, who for the most part had sat silent, listening to this catalogue of suffering now said, “Whose idea was it to remove Sanchia?”
Jane Andrews said quickly, “Fay’s. Not mine. I never even thought of it. She told me it was either that or she’d kill herself.”
“And by ‘that’ you mean the giving away of Sanchia for adoption so that she might not see her mother constantly abused by her father? So that she might grow up in a happy home even though this meant Mrs. Devemsh would never see her daughter again?”
“That’s what I mean, yes. When she first suggested it, I thought it was madness and I didn’t see how it could work out. Then I thought of my sister, Louise. You have to understand this was months ago, it took a lot of planning. Louise had had a bad experience trying to adopt a baby from Eastern Europe, and I thought she’d given up all ideas of adoption, but far from it. She told me she was as keen as ever, keener, desperate in fact. And the problems I’d foreseen but Fay hadn’t, like getting Sanchia a birth certificate and a passport and whatever, that would all be taken care of because Louise had kept all the documents she’d had for her baby that died.”
“Was your mother in on this - this plot?”
“My mother knows nothing about it. She doesn’t even yet know that Louise has got a child - Louise has a nanny and a live-in maid - and now she won’t have to know, will she?” Jane Andrews paused, looking suddenly horror-stricken. “Oh, poor, poor Louise,” she cried, “this will kill her, to lose this one after all she’s been through. . .”