by Ruth Rendell
She didn't argue or expostulate but told the girl to see to the shop and led him into a small room at the rear.
'I've been talking to Mrs Lyle,' he said.
The blood poured into her face and she pressed her ill-kept hands together. It was impossible to imagine her as the young girl, the Juliet, who had climbed down a ladder into her lover's arms. 'Mrs Lyle . . . Does she still live down there? Next door to my brother?'
'She's blind now. She knew nothing, only your address.'
'Blind,' said Mrs Foster. 'Blind. And I'm a widow and Rachel . . .' To his horror she began to cry. She cried as if she were ashamed of her tears, scrubbing them away as they fell. 'The world's all wrong,' she said. 'It ought to be changed.'
'Maybe. Tell me about Rachel.'
'I promised her . . .'
'Your promises mean nothing now, Mrs Foster. Rachel is dead.' He had broken it without preamble but he regretted nothing, for he could tell that her niece had very little to do with her grief. She had been crying for herself, perhaps a little for Mrs Lyle. Who had ever shed a tear for Loveday Morgan?'
'Dead,' she said as she had said 'blind'. 'How, dead?'
He explained and all the time he was speaking her face was stony. 'Now it's your turn,' he said.
'She came to my house in July, last July.' The voice grated on him. It was even, monotonous, without rise or fall. 'My brother turned her out when he found she was expecting. She was small and she didn't eat much and she didn't show till nearly the end. My brother told her to get out.'
He had guessed but he could hardly believe it. In these days? In London in the nineteen seventies? Although she had
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emancipated herself from her upbringin& Mrs Foster had about her something Victorian, and it was a Victorian situation. chronicled in a thousand novels, that she was describing.
'You can't credit it?' she said. 'You don't know what the Children are. She came to me because there was no one else. She'd never heard of people, societies, that look after girls like her. I'd have thought she was simple if I hadn't been like that myself once.'
'The baby?'
'She hadn't seen a doctor. I told her to go and see one. She wouldn't. She'd never been to a doctor in her life. The Children don't have doctors. She wouldn't go to the Assistance. I kept her. I had this job and two jobs cleaning. What else could I do? One day I got home from work and she'd had the baby all by herself in my bedroom.'
'Without any assistance?'
Mrs. Foster nodded. 'I made her have a doctor then. I sent for my own. He was very angry with me but what could I do? He sent in the midwife every day and I registered the baby in Chelsea, up in the King's Road.'
'Morgan was the father?'
'Yes. She said she was his wife and when he came out of prison they'd be married properly. I knew that wasn't true. He had a wife living. We looked after the baby between us and when she got work, cleaning work, sometimes I'd take it with me or she'd take it with her.'
'And then?'
Mrs Foster hesitated. The girl in the shop called her and she said, 'I'm coming. I'm coming in a minute.' She turned tiredly to*Wexford. 'It was adopted. Rachel loved it, but she agreed. She knew it wasn't possible for us to keep it all on our own. We had to work, both of us, and women don't like it if you take a baby with you. But Rachel was no worker, anyway. She wasn't used to it. She was crazy about television. It was new to her, you see. All she wanted was to sit about all day, watching the television with the baby on her lap. She said she'd like to be somewhere where she could watch
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it all day long. Then the baby went and being in my house without it got her down, so she left and got a room. I never heard from her. I thought maybe my brother had taken her back. All she'd been through hadn't stopped her wanting to be one of the Children . . .' Mrs Foster's voice tailed forlornly away.
'Who adopted the baby? Was it done through a society?'
'I can't tell you that. I promised. Rachel never knew. We thought it best she shouldn't know.'
'I must know.'
'Not through me. I promised.'
'Then I must go to the Children's Department,' said Wexford.
The phone book told him he would find it in Holland Park and he waited for a taxi to take him there. But he knew the answer already, the whole answer, and as he stood at the kerb he began carefully arranging mentally the complete sequence of events from Rachel Vickers' arrival in Biretta Street to her death as Loveday Morgan in Kenbourne Vale cemetery.
Poor Baker. Just for once he was to be cheated of his triumph, forestalled by the old fuddy-duddy from the country. Wexford felt gently amused to think of them all there in Kenbourne, pursuing lines which would lead to dead ends, running off at tangents, clinging obstinately to their need to pin it on a boy van driver. All there at the police station except Sergeant Clements. And he would be in court, getting his order. Or perhaps, even at this moment, failing to get it?
Howard and Baker were at the Yard. Everyone knew Clements was taking the day off and why he was. Pamela told Wexford she didn't expect the superintendent to put in a further ap- pearance that day.
The snapshot Pamela had found on Howard's desk was no longer there. Someone had taken it or put it away. Instead, Mrs Dearborn's blue scarf lay there, enclosed but not concealed by a case of clear plastic. It had the look of a pre174
wrapped Christmas gift but for the neat official label stuck to the side of the case.
Wexford shrugged, thanked Pamela and went out. To get to Elm Green tube station he made a detour through the cemetery. In the gathering fog the winged victory was ghostlike and the black horses, half-veiled in vapour, seemed to plunge on the air itself without support, without anchorage. Beneath them the royal tombs had lost their solidity as had the still trees, spectres of trees rather, floating, rootless and grey. Water drops, condensed mist, clung to the thready brambles. Obelisks, broken columns, angels with swords, a hunter with two dead lions at his feet . . .
'He who asks questions is a fool.
He who answers them is a greater fool . . .'
Wexford smiled.
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22 The murder being once done, he is in less fear and more hope that the deed shall not be betrayed or known, seeing the party is now dead and rid out of the way, which only might have uttered and disclosed it.
A LAST day well spent. Wexford was a poor typist but A he would have been glad of the use of a typewriter now. He had to write the whole thing out on sheet after sheet of Basildon Bond, using Dora's old fountain pen. It was after seven when he finished and then he went downstairs to wait for Howard.
His plan was to give Howard the report after dinner, and he envisaged their discussing it quietly in the study, but his nephew phoned to say he would be delayed and had replaced the receiver before Wexford had a chance to talk to him.
'You ought to go to bed, dear,' Dora said at ten.
'Why? So that I'll be strong enough to sit in the train? I've a good mind to stay up all night.'
He opened the book Denise had at last, in despair over his dilatoriness, fetched him from the library. 'To the Right Honourable and his Very Singular Good Master, Master William Cecil Esquire . . . Ralph Robinson wisheth continuance of good health with daily increase of virtue and honour.' That dedication, with different names substituted, might as well have served as an introduction to his own report as to Sir 176
Thomas's masterpiece. He had scarcely read the first paragraph when the phone rang again.
'He wants to talk to you, Uncle Reg. I said you were just off to bed.'
Wexford took the phone in a hand that trembled very slightly. 'Howard?'
Howard's voice was hard, a little disdainful. 'If you're on your way to bed it doesn't matter.' -
'I'm not. I was waiting up for you.' Now that the time had come, Wexford found himself strangely reluctant, his voice uncertain. 'There are a few points . . . Well, I've written a sort of report . . . Would you care to . . . ? I mea
n, my conclusions . . .'
'Could be the same as ours,' Howard finished the sentence for him. 'The scarf? Yes, I thought so. Baker and I have just been to see a friend of yours and what we really need now is a little help from you. If you'll hold the line, I'll put Baker on.'
'Howard, wait. I could come over.'
'What, now? To Kenbourne Vale?'
Wexford decided to be firm, not to argue at all. He saw clearly and coldly that he was failing for the second time, but he wouldn't give in without some sort of fight, not let Baker steal his last faint thunder. 'I'll take a taxi,' he said.
The expected wail came from Dora. 'Oh, darling! At this hour?'
'I said I was going to stay up all night.'
What amazed him was that some of the shops were still open at ten minutes to midnight and people were still buying groceries for strange nocturnal feasts. In the launderettes the bluish-white lights were on and the machines continued to turn. His cab took him through North Kensington where the night people walked, chatting desultorily, strolling, as if it were day. In Kingsmarkham anybody still out would be hastening home to bed. Here the sky wore its red, starless glow, above the floating lights, the sleepless city. They came into Kenbourne Lane. The cemetery was like a pitch-black cloud, only visible
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because its mass was darker than the sky. Wexford felt the muscles of his chest contract as he realised they were nearly there. Soon he would be facing Baker. If only there might be a chance of Howard reading his report first . . .
He had had a foolish feeling that there might be a sort of reception committee awaiting him, but there was no one in the foyer but the officers on duty. And when he tried to treat the place as if it was more familiar with him than he with it, walking casually towards the lift, a sergeant called him back to ask his name and his business.
'Mr Wexford, is it? The superintendent is expecting you, sir.'
That was a little better. His spirits rose higher when he stepped out of the lift and saw Howard standing alone in the corridor outside his office.
'You've been very quick.'
'Howard, I just want to say . . .'
'You want to know about Gregson. I guessed you would and I meant to mention it on the phone. Where d'you think he was on the 25th? Doing that housebreaking job, of all things. The girl who phoned him at Mrs Kirby's was Harry Slade's girl friend to tell him the job was on and give him all the gee. Come on in now, and see Baker. Shall I send down for coffee?'
Wexford didn't answer him. He walked into the office, met Baker's eyes and silently drew his report out of his pocket. The handwritten sheets looked very amateurish, very rustic.
Howard said awkwardly, 'We really only wanted some inside information, Reg. A few questions we had to put to you . . .'
'It's all in there. It won't take you more than ten minutes to read the lot.'
Wexford knew he was being hypersensitive, but a man would have had to be totally without perception not to see that resigned and indulgent glance which passed between Baker and Howard. He sat down, sliding his arms out of his raincoat and letting it fall over the back of the chair. Then he stared at the uncurtained window, the thick red sky and the black
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bulk of the bottling plant. While Howard phoned to order coffee, Baker cast his eyes over, rather than read, the report.
It was ten pages long. He got to page five and then he said, 'All this stuff about the gitl's background, it's very edifying, no doubt, but hardly . . .' He sought for a word. ' . . . Germane to this inquiry,' he said.
'Let me see.' Howard stood behind Baker, reading rapidly. 'You've put in a lot of work here, Reg. Congratulations. You seem to have reached the same conclusions as we have.'
'Taking all the evidence,' said Wexford, 'they are the only possible conclusions.'
Howard gave him a quick look. 'Yes, well . . . Maybe the best thing would be for you to sum up for us, Michael.'
The sheets of blue paper were growing rather crumpled now.
-Baker folded them and dropped them rather contemptuously on the desk top. But when he spoke it wasn't contemptuously. He cleared his throat and said in the uneasy tone of a man who is unaccustomed to graciousness, 'I owe you a bit of an apology, Mr Wexford. I shouldn't have said what I did about wild goose chases and red herrings and all that. But it did look like a red herring at first, didn't it?'
Wexford smiled. 'It looked like a heedless complication.'
'Not needless at all,' Howard said. 'Without it we should never have traced the ownership of the scarf. Here's our coffee. Put it down there, Sergeant, thank you. Well, Michael?'
'For a time,' Baker began, 'we were completely put off the scent by the confusion between Rachel Vickers and Dearborn's own stepdaughter. We neglected to bear in mind the- circumstantial evidence and we did not then, of course, know that his daughter Alexandra was not his own child.'
Wexford stirred his coffee, although it was black and sugarless. 'How do you know now?' he interrupted.
'Mrs Dearborn told us herself tonight. She was very frank, very open. When she realised the importance of the inquiry. she told us quite freely that Alexandra named, she believed, after her natural father is a child she and her husband had adopted privately. Two adoption societies had refused to con
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sider them on account of their age, and when the opportunity arose just before Christmas for them to take this baby they jumped at it. Dearborn acted very properly. He intended to adopt legally and through the proper channels. As soon as the child was received into his house in late December, he notified the Children's Department and the court of his intention to adopt. Did you want to say something Mr Wexford?'
'Only that you make it sound very cold. He loves that child passionately.'
'I don't think we should allow our emotions to be involved. Naturally, the whole thing is painful. Let me resume. Mrs Dearborn has never met Rachel Vickers. All she knew about her came from the girl's aunt, her former charwoman, Mrs Foster, and from the guardian ad [item-'
'The girl with the gloves,' said Wexford.
Baker took no notice of this. 'The guardian and Mrs Foster knew the girl as Rachel Vickers, never as Loveday Morgan. Until February 14t4 Dearborn also only knew the girl by her true name, he had never seen her and supposed everything would be plain sailing. On that day he cam, home and told his wife that while he had been showing Alexandra some property he intended to buy in Lammas Grove, Rachel Vickers came out of a shop and recognised her child.' Baker paused. 'I must admit I don't quite understand that, a man pointing out houses to a babe in arms, but I daresay it's irrelevant.' He glanced at Wexford and Wexford said nothing. 'According to Mrs Dearborn,' he went on, 'Rachel asked him if she might see Alexandra again and he agreed, though reluctantly, giving her his office phone number. Mrs Dearborn says and I believe she is speaking the truth that she knows of no more meetings between Rachel and her husband. As far as she knows, the girl showed no more interest in the child after that.'
'We, however,' put in Howard, 'have been told early in this inquiry that Rachel had an interview at Notbourne Properties sometime after February 14th, and I think we can conclude
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this interview had nothing to do with an application for a job. What are your views, Reg?'
'Dearborn,' said Wexford slowly, 'wanted to keep the child and Rachel, just as intensely, wanted her back. At that interview in his office she told him she would oppose the granting of his order and he took the highly illegal step of offering her five thousand pounds not to oppose it.'
'How can you possibly know that?'
Wexford shrugged. 'Finish reading my report and you'll know how. Without reading it, you can surely see that this is why Dearborn told his wife no more. He's unscrupulous but Mrs Dearborn isn't. She would never have gone along with him in any scheme to buy the child. When did they expect to get the order?'
'On March 24th,' said Baker with a certain triumph. 'If you don't know that, Mr We
xford, I don't see how . . . But let me get on with my ideas of what happened next. Rachel agreed to take the money some money, we can't say how much and promised to phone Dearborn to fix a date for this transaction. The date she chose was February 25th and she phoned Dearborn from Garmisch Terrace at one fifteen on that day. They met about an hour later in the cemetery.'
'You've identified the scarf as Mrs Dearborn's?'
'Certainly. That's why we went to see her in the first place. She told us she often wears her husband's sheepskin jacket and probably left the scarf in that jacket pocket. Dearborn met the girl as arranged, but when he was about to part with the money, thought how much easier it would be, how much safer he would be, to keep the money and kill the girl. He would never be sure otherwise that she wouldn't oppose the order just the same. So he strangled her with the scarf and put her body in the Montfort tomb.'
'You helped us again there, Reg.' said Howard. 'It was you who pointed out about its being Leap Year. Dearborn forgot that. He supposed that the last Tuesday of the month had gone by and that the tomb wouldn't be visited until after March 24th, by which time he would have his order.'
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Wexford reached for his report, fingered it hesitantly and then laid it down again. 'He's confessed all this?' he asked. 'You've talked to him and . . . Have you charged him?'
'He's away from home,' said Baker. 'Up in the north somewhere at some architects' conference.'
'We wanted your Opinion, Reg.' Howard said rather sharply. 'So much of this is conjecture. As you said yourself it's the only possible conclusion, but we thought you might have something more concrete for us.'
'I said that?'
'Well, surely. I understood you to . . . '
Wexford got up abruptly, pushing back his chair so that it almost fell over. He was suddenly frightened, but not of himself, not any more of failure. 'His wife will get in touch with him!'
'Of course she will. Let her. He's due back tomorrow morning.' Howard looked at his watch. 'This morning, rather. Once he knows he's in danger of not getting that order his wife will tell him that the court will suspend all action until the matter is cleared up he'll come hotfoot to us. My God, Reg. she doesn't know we suspect him of murder.'