Murder Being Once Done

by Ruth Rendell

  Mrs Dearborn seemed to be pointing out the baby to her friend, if friend she was. From what he could see of her through the streaming rain as she pressed her face against the rear window, Wexford thought her an unlikely sort of acquaintance for a company chairman's wife. Her umbrella was a man's, of cheap uncompromising black, her shabby coat black, and underneath it she wore what looked like an overall. An old felt hat, jammed hard down on her head, partly hid her face but couldn't conceal the disfiguring mole between cheek and left nostril. He fancied he had seen her somewhere before.

  Just as he was wondering how long they could bear standing there and gossiping in a downpour which had become a tempest, the woman in black moved off and Mrs Dearborn jumped into the car, slicking back her wet hair with her wet hands.

  'I'm so sorry to have kept you. You must be wishing you'd taken that taxi. But you know how it is when you run into people and there's a very . . .' She stopped quite suddenly. 'Now, let's get you home,' she said.

  'You were going to show me St Mark and St John.'

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  'Oh, yes. Can you see that sort of round building right down there to the left? Just before you get to Stamford Bridge? That's St Mark's library. The college grounds go right through to the King's Road. Are you going to tank to Verity?'

  'I expect so,' Wexford said. 'At any rate, she can tell me where Isa went after she left her.'

  'I can do that,' Melanie Dearborn said quickly. 'Don't forget that's where Stephen found her. It's in Earls Court. I'll write down the phone number. I'd phone it myself, I'd try to talk to Verity, only . . .' She hesitated and added rather sadly, 'None of her friends would tell me anything.'

  Outside the house in Theresa Street they stopped and Mrs Dearborn wrote the number down for him. For half an hour her thoughts had been distracted from her daughter, but now he noticed that the hand which held the pen was shaking. She looked up at him, nervous again, her brow furrowed with anxiety.

  'Are you really going to try and trace her for me? I'm a bit I remember what happened when Stephen . . .'

  'I'll be discreet,' Wexford promised, and then he said goodbye, adding that he would see her without fail on Wednesday.

  The house was empty. Denise had left him a note, propped against a crystal vase of freesias, to say that they had gone out to buy a blackberry poncho. He wasn't sure whether this was something to wear or something to eat.

  He phoned the Holland Park number, but no one answered. Now for girl number two, the witness perhaps to Dearborn's clumsy and tactless trapping.

  A young man's voice said hello.

  'Who occupied the flat before you?' Wexford asked when he had explained who he was.

  'Don't know. I've been here four years.'

  'Four years? Louise Sampson was living there a couple of years ago.'

  'That's right. With me. Lulu and I lived here together for Oh, four or five months.'

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  'I see.' This little piece of information was doubtless one which Dearborn had thought it wise to keep from his wife. 'Can I come and see you, Mr. . . ?'

  'Adams. You can come if you like. Not today, though. Say tomorrow, about seven?'

  Wexford put the phone down and looked at his watch. Just gone five. The rain had dwindled to drizzle. What time did these college classes end for the day? With any luck, Verity Bate might just be leaving now or, better still, living in hall for her final year.

  He found the big gates of the college its students call Marjohn's without difficulty. There were a few boys and girls about on the forecourt, embryo teachers, who gave him the kind of glances his generation but not he reserved for them, the looks which ask, Why are you wearing those curious clothes, that hairstyle, that outlandish air? He was convinced that no one in the King's Road wore his kind of clothes or was as old as he. He went rather tentatively into the porter's lodge and asked where he could find Miss Verity Bate.

  'You've just missed her. She came in to see if there were any letters for her and then she went off home. Are you her dad?'

  Wexford felt rather flattered. Suppose he had been asked if he were the girl's grandfather? 'I'll leave a note for her,' he said.

  Before he went any further he really ought to tell Howard. His nephew had a force at his command, a force who could trace Louise Sampson in a matter of hours, match her with Loveday Morgan, or else show the two girls to be two girls. But how much more satisfying it would be if he on his own could present Howard with a fait accompli, the checking and tracing all done....

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  12 The truth shall sooner come to light . . . whiles he helpeth and beareth out simple wits against the false and malicious circumventions of crafty children.

  A NOTHER one of your women on the phone,' said Denise rather nastily.

  Wexford was just finishing his breakfast. He felt relieved that Howard, who had gone to the study to fetch his briefcase, and Dora, who was making beds, hadn't heard the remark. He went to the phone and a girl's voice, breathless with curiosity, said this was Verity Bate.

  It was only eight-fifteen. 'You didn't waste any time, Miss Bate.'

  'I had to go back to Marjohn's last evening to fetch something and I saw your message.' The girl went on smugly, 'I realised it must be very important and, as I've got a social conscience, I felt I should get in touch with you as soon as possible.'

  Couldn't wait to know what it's all about, more like, thought Wexford. 'I'm trying to trace someone you used to know.'

  'Really? Who? I mean, who can you possibly . . . ?'

  'When and where can we meet, Miss Bate?'

  'Well, I've got this class till eleven-thirty. I wish you'd tell me who it is.' She didn't express any doubts as to his identity, his authority. He might have been a criminal lunatic 102

  bent on decoying her away. 'You could come to my flat . . . No, I've got a better idea. I'll meet you at a quarter to twelve in Violet's Voice, that's a coffee place opposite Marjohn's.'

  Howard made no comment, asked no questions, when he said he wouldn't be in until after his lunch with Sergeant and Mrs Clements. Perhaps he was glad to be relieved of his uncle's company for the morning or perhaps he guessed that Wexford was pursuing a private line of enquiry, in current parlance, doing his own thing.

  He got to Violet's Voice ten minutes before time. It was a small dark cafe, almost empty. The ceiling, floor and furniture were all of the same deep purple, the walls painted in drug- vision swirls of violet and lavender and silver and black. Wexford sat down and ordered tea which was brought in a glass with lemon and mint floating about in it. From the window he could see St Mark's gates, and before he had begun to drink his tea he saw a diminutive girl with long red hair come out of these gates and cross the road. She was early too.

  She came unhesitatingly up to his table and said loudly, 'It's about Lou Sampson, isn't it? I've thought and thought and it must be Lou.'

  He got to his feet. 'Miss Bate? Sit down and let me get you something to drink. What makes you so sure it's Louise?'

  'She would disappear. I mean, if there's anyone I know who'd be likely to get in trouble or have the police looking for her, it's Lou.' Verity Bate sat down and stuck her elbows on the table. 'Thanks, I'll have a coffee.'' She had an aggressive, rather theatrical manner, her voice pitched so that everyone in the cafe could hear her. 'I haven't the faintest idea where Lou is, and I wouldn't tell you if I had. I suppose it's Mrs Sampson tracking her down again. Mrs Dearborn, I should say. One thing about that woman, she never gives up.'

  'You don't like Mrs Dearborn?'

  The girl was very young, very strict and very intolerant. 'I don't like deceit. If my mother did to me what she did to Lou I'd never speak to her again'

  'I'd like to hear about that,'said Wexford.

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  'I'm going to tell you. It's no secret, anyway.'~Verity Bate was silent for a moment and then she said very seriously, 'You do understand, don't you, that even if I knew where Lou was, I wouldn't tell you? I don't know, but if
I did I wouldn't tell you! '

  Equally seriously, Wexford said, 'I appreciate that, Miss Bate. Your principles do you credit. Let me get this quite straight. You don't know where Louise is, you've 40 idea, and you won't tell me because it's against your principles.'

  She looked at him uncertainly. 'That's right. I wouldn't help Mrs Samp Dearborn or him.'

  'Mr Dearborn?'

  Her white skin took a flush easily and now it burned fiery red, earnest and indignant. 'He was my dad's best friend. They were in partnership. Nobody ought ever to speak to him again. Don't you think the world would be a lot better place if we just refused to speak to people who behave badly? Then they'd learn bloody awful behaviour doesn't pay because society won't tolerate it. Don't you agree with me?'

  She was more like fifteen than twenty-one. 'We all behave badly, Miss Bate.'

  'Oh, you're just like my father! You're resigned. It's because you old people compromise that we're in the mess we're well, in. Now I say that we ought to stop sending people to prison for stealing things and start sending people to prison who destroy other people's lives. Like Stephen Bloody Dearborn.'

  Wexford sighed. What a little talker she was! 'He seems quite a pleasant man to me,' he said. 'I gather Louise didn't like him much, though.'

  'Like him?' Verity Bate pushed back her hair and thrust her face forward until little sharp nose and large blue eyes were perhaps six inches from him. 'Like him? You don't know anything, do you? Lou worshipped that man. She was just so crazy about Stephen Dearborn it wasn't true!'

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  This statement had the effect on him she had evidently hoped for. He was profoundly surprised, and yet, when he considered it, he wondered why he hadn't arrived at the truth himself. That it was the truth, he had no doubt. No normal clever girl leaves school at a crucial stage in her school career, throws up a university place and cuts herself off almost entirely from her mother just because her mother has made a proper and entirely suitable marriage with a man to whom the girl herself has introduced her.

  'She was in love with him?' he asked.

  Of course she was!' Verity Bate shook her head until her face was entirely canopied in red hair, but whether this was in continuing wonder at her own revelation or at Wexford's obtuseness, he couldn't tell. The hair flew back, driven by a sharp toss. 'I'd better tell you the whole story and mine will be an unbiassed account, at any rate. It's no use you talking to Stephen Dearborn, he's such a liar. He'd only say he never thought of Lou in that way because that's what he said to my dad. Ooh, he's disgusting!'

  'This er, unbiassed account of yours, Miss Bate?'

  'Yes, well, we were at school together, Lou and I, in Wimbledon. That's where my parents live, and Lou and Mrs Sampson lived in the next street. Stephen Dearborn was living up in ghastly Kenbourne Vale and Dad used to bring him home sometimes on account of him being what dad called a poor lonely widower.'

  'He was married before, then?'

  'His wife died and their baby died. That was all centuries ago. Stephen was supposed to be fond of kids and he used to take me out. Tower of London, Changing of the Guard, that sort of crap. Oh, and he dragged me around Kenbourne Vale too, showing me a lot of boring old architecture. It's a wonder I didn't catch something awful in that slum. When I got friendly with Lou, he took us both.'

  'How old were you?'

  'Sixteen, seventeen. I had to call him Uncle Steve. It makes me feel sick when I think of it, physically sick.' Her mouth

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  turned down at the corners. 'Lou's not like me, you know. She keeps everything below surface, but it's all there, emotion welling and churning like a . . .' The childish voice dropped thrillingly. '. . . a cauldron! Anyway, we all went out together but I was the odd one. Stephen and Lou well, it was like in the days when people had chaperones. I was their chaperone. And then one night when she was staying at my place she told me she was in love with him and did I think he loved her? It gave me quite a shock, Lou telling me anything about her personal life. I didn't know what to say, I didn't understand it. I mean, she was seventeen maybe eighteen by then and he was middle-aged. You can't imagine a girl of eighteen falling for a man of forty, can you?'

  'It happens.'

  'I think it's urky,' said Miss Bate with what looked like a genuine shudder. 'The next thing was she asked him back to her place. To meet,' she added darkly, 'her mother.'

  Wexford had almost forgotten that the purpose of this talk had been to discover Louise Sampson's whereabouts. He was seeing the little cameo again, the stranger entering the house alone because an unmannerly girl had left him to introduce himself then, searching for the girl's mother, had come upon a half-open door and seen in a kitchen a woman in a white apron engaged in an age-old feminine task. The girl's strident voice jerked him out of his daydream.

  'Lou and I were due to sit for our A's, but the week before they started Lou didn't come to school. I phoned her place and her mother said she wasn't well. Then one night my dad came in and said to Mummy, "What d'you think, Steve's going to marry the Sampson girl." Of course, I thought he meant Lou, but he didn't. Fancy calling a woman of thirtyseven a girl! Lou never took her A's. She was really ill, she had a sort of nervous breakdown'

  'A case of fiiiu pulckra, mater pulchrior,' said Wexford.

  'I wouldn't know. I never did Latin. They sent Lou down to her grandmother and then- they got married. I left school and started at Marjohn's and Daddy said he'd pay half the

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  rent of a flat for me if I could find another girl to share and I was sort of looking for someone when Lou rang up from this grandmother's and said she'd never go to those two in Chelsea, and could she share with me?'

  'How long did that last?'

  'About a year. Lou was more shut in than ever. She was heartbroken. Her bloody mother used to phone and pretend to me it was all rubbish about Lou fancying Stephen. Anyway, Lou got fed up being hunted and she went off to share with someone in Battersea. I'm not telling you the address, mind you.'

  'I wouldn't dream of asking you, Miss Bate.'

  'After that we sort of lost touch.'

  'You couldn't bear to see so much suffering, was that it?'

  'Exactly.' She seemed relieved at so pat a solution which perhaps avoided for her the necessity of explaining that she hadn't bothered to phone and never wrote letters. 'Louise Sampson,' she said dramatically, 'went out of my life. Perhaps she's found happiness, perhaps not. I shall never know.' She lifted her chin and stared intensely in the direction of the coffee machine, showing to Wexford a delicate and faintly quivering profile. He wondered if she had attended all or some of the films shown at the Garbo season, a recent offering, according to Denise, of the Classic Cinema up the road. 'That's all I can tell you,' she said, 'but if I knew any more I wouldn't reveal a single word.'

  Surely the sergeant's wife didn't go to all this trouble, a full dinner service, linen napkins, side plates and all, when her husband popped home alone for a bite to eat? Wexford was sure she didn't but he behaved as if all this ceremony was normal and even forgot his diet.

  He was aware that further pomp was to attach to the entry of the child, delayed until after their coffee, not only for the sake of suspense but to prove Mrs Clements' ability to be a gracious hostess though a mother. It was touching, he thought, the way she kept stoically to the theme of their conversation 107

  inevitably, with her husband taking part, the general decadence of modern life while listening surreptitiously for a squeak from the next room. At last, when Clements and Wexford had left the table and were standing at the picture window, contemplating Kenbourne Vale from twelve floors up, she ret entered the room with the baby in her arms.

  'He's got two teeth,' she said, 'and not a bit of trouble-cutting them.'

  'A fine boy,' said Wexford. He took the child from her and talked to him as he had talked to Alexandra Dearborn, but James responded less happily and his shining dark eyes grew uneasy. An adopted child, Wexford thoug
ht, might well show signs of insecurity, handled as he must have been since leaving his true mother by stranger after stranger. 'He's a credit to you,' he said, and then to his shame he found his voice thick with an unlooked-for emotion. It was out of his power to say more.

  But he had said enough, or his expression had told what he couldn't say. Mrs Clements beamed. 'I've waited fifteen years for this.'

  Wexford handed the boy back. 'And now you've got fifteen years of hard labour.'

  'Years and years of happiness, Mr Wexford.' The smile died. Her full, rather dull, face seemed on an instant to grow thinner. 'If if they'll let me keep him.'

  'She's signed an affidavit, hasn't she?' said the sergeant fiercely. 'She's promised to give him up.'

  His wife gave him a wifely look, part compassion, part gentle reproof. 'You know you're as worried about it as I am, dear. He was more worried than me at first, Mr Wexford. He wanted to well, find out who she was and give her some money. To sort of buy James, you see.'

  'I don't know much about adoption,' said Wexford, 'but surely it's illegal for money to pass in the course of these transactions?'

  'Of course it is,' said Clements huffily. He looked put out. 'I wasn't serious.' His next words rather belied this remark.

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  'I've always been a saver, I daresay I could have raised quite a bit one way and another, but I . . . You don't think I meant it, sir?'

  Wexford smiled. 'It would be a bit too risky, wouldn't it?'

  'Breaking the law, you mean, sir? You'd keep the child but you'd always have the fear of being found out hanging over you.'

  Clements was never very quick on the uptake, Wexford

  thought. He said, 'But would you have the child?

  'Of course you would, sir. You'd have brought it from the natural mother, in a manner of speaking, thought it doesn't sound very nice put that way. You'd offer her a thousand pounds, say, not to oppose the making of the order.'