by Ruth Rendell
‘Why? Oh, I see. Yes, of course I will. You mean he can’t very well refuse to see me but he could you?’
‘Something like that,’ Wexford said.
People change their mobile numbers and this was what Rod Horndon had done. Lucy wasn’t going to be defeated by a little difficulty like that. She explored phone books, electoral registers and finally found Horndon where she hadn’t really expected him, on his own website. He and a friend, it appeared, had started their own building company – ‘Small but Specialist’ being their way of describing themselves – which had weathered the recession. To his amusement and some admiration, Wexford saw that they traded and relied on the slogan, ‘We Keep our Promises’ and boasted that they never failed to come on the day and at the time they said they would.
‘I can see that would be a useful gimmick,’ Wexford said. ‘Original if not unique.’
‘I might even use them myself,’ Miles Crowhurst said. ‘Not to have to wait in all day for builders and then have them not come, that would be something. I could get them to put in my new bathroom.’
‘Never mind your bathroom,’ said Tom. ‘Just phone this Horndon. You’ve got three or four possible numbers there.’
But Rod Horndon, according to his teenage daughter, had gone on holiday with her mother to the Caribbean and wasn’t expected back for another two weeks.
‘I wish I could take my wife to the Caribbean,’ said Tom in a gloomy tone. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. Plumbers are always rolling in money. If I had my time over again I’d go in for the pipework. The Met wouldn’t see me for dust.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARY MADE A scene when Sylvia told her they were going home. She wanted to stay with her cousins and behaved uncharacteristically (according to her mother) when told they would be leaving on Friday afternoon with Grandma and Grandad. There was some crying and stamping of feet.
‘Why not leave her here?’
Sylvia hugged her sister. ‘Would that be all right? Wouldn’t you mind?’
‘Ask Gudrun. If she’s happy about it I shall be.’
So Mary was left behind with Amy and Anoushka in the care of their nanny who told them that it would be a pleasure as Mary was much less naughty than the other two. ‘Grandad,’ said Amy, ‘do you think she’ll learn to be as naughty as us in just one week?’
Wexford said he wouldn’t be surprised. He drove Sylvia back to Great Thatto, reaching there at about five in the afternoon, and he and Dora went into the house with her. Dora was trying, and had been trying during the last part of the journey, to persuade her to come home with them and stay for the three nights before they returned to London.
‘I really do want to be on my own for a while,’ Sylvia insisted. ‘Ben’s coming home just for Sunday, and on Monday I mean to start back at work. I’m perfectly well. I shouldn’t skive off any longer.’
Dora said rather petulantly, ‘You never told me social services expect you back so soon.’
‘They don’t. I hope they’ll be pleasantly surprised.’
Wexford was to remember those words. No Mary, no other Mary, no pre-school class head, no workplace chasing her. It would add up …
He dropped Dora at their own house and went to return the rented car to the car hire place in the High Street. Next morning Sylvia phoned to say all was well and she was fine. Wexford took the call and he thought she sounded very tired and rather nervous, but wasn’t that normal? She had been through a lot. He was due to meet Burden for a drink in the Olive and Dove at six and Dora was determined to spend the evening at the Old Rectory with Sylvia. She would cook their dinner and had suggested that her daughter should invite more people and make a small homecoming party of it. She had even named two or three old friends of Sylvia’s and had suggested – Wexford warned her not to – that Neil Fairfax, Sylvia’s ex-husband, might be among them. Wexford expected Sylvia to explode but her reaction was uncharacteristic. No, that wasn’t a good idea. No, thanks, no dinner would be needed, she wasn’t eating much, and really it would be better if her mother didn’t come at all. She meant to go to bed early and watch television.
Wexford left for the Olive and Dove, promising to get home early. He suspected that Dora would make a fresh onslaught on Sylvia once he was out of the way, and he understood. He could tell how worried she was and that perhaps she had reason to worry. She had always been a deeply concerned mother if rather too prone to interfere in her daughters’ lives. But he could understand that too.
Even though he had never been away from Kingsmarkham for long since his retirement, those five or sometimes twelve days in London at a stretch, he noticed each time he went home the small changes which had taken place in his absences. Last time, for instance, a big old house in York Street, not protected by listing, had been pulled down, leaving a desolate building site behind. This time a whole row of new trees, sturdy hornbeam saplings, had been planted along Orchard Road. He noticed these things particularly because of his new walking regimen. It scarcely occurred to him to use any other means of getting from his house to the Olive and Dove, whereas, once and not long ago, he would have had to make a determined effort not to take the car and to tell himself that he was only walking so that he need not avoid alcohol.
Burden was already there. Wexford sometimes thought how awkward it was for Englishmen to greet each other, even in the case of close friends. Continental Europeans would have shaken hands or even embraced. Arabs and many Asians would have embraced and kissed, even to that extraordinary fashion he had only seen on the screen, of kissing on one cheek, then the other and then the first one again. Secretly, in those wakeful, vaguely mad times of the night, he thought that he would quite like to embrace Burden when they met after an absence, though he drew the line at that triple kissing. Thinking of telling Burden this and his reaction – a kind of incredulous but well-veiled horror – made Wexford laugh out loud.
‘What’s funny?’ Burden brought their two red wines to the table.
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘My grandma who lived until I was about eight used to tell me about some comedian on the music halls when she was about eight herself. His name was Ernie Lotinga – isn’t it strange I can remember that, all those years ago? Anyway, his catchphrase when he’d cracked a joke was to put on this deadpan face and say, “I don’t see anything funny to laugh at.” Apparently it rocked them in the aisles.’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ Wexford said. ‘He was T. S. Eliot’s favourite comedian.’
Burden wasn’t interested in that, as Wexford had known he wouldn’t be. ‘How are you getting on with the bodies in the coal hole?’
‘Not very well. We can still only identify one of them and she was pretty obvious from the first. How would you find a woman who is probably about thirty, not particularly honest unless she’s changed a lot, most likely a Londoner, speaks French or is French, of the name of Francine?’
Burden suggested all the methods Tom Ede had used. ‘But I suppose there are a lot of them?’
‘Too many. You see, I’ve said she’s probably about thirty and she won’t be much younger, but she may be a lot older.’ He told Burden about La Punaise and the woman’s name written on the slip of paper. ‘Although the assumption is that he intended to ask this woman for a translation, there’s nothing to tell us that she was his sort of age. She might be his former teacher or a friend of his mother’s or a neighbour.’
‘She might be a murderer.’
‘It has crossed my mind.’
‘You could advertise for her. If she killed them she won’t reply, but you’ve no reason to think she did, have you?’
‘None. Advertise for her how? She would have to be – well, distinguished by her association with Orcadia Cottage on the lines of “Will Francine who had a connection with Orcadia Cottage, Orcadia Place, London NW8 twelve years ago, please get in touch with the Metropolitan Police …”? You can see what that could lead to, the real Francine not replying because although she was aske
d to translate something twelve years ago, she had never heard of Orcadia Cottage until the bodies were discovered in the vault and she read about it in the papers. And hundreds of false Francines making all sorts of crazy claims.’
‘You could mention the translation, but you don’t really know why her name was on the same piece of paper with that French word? You don’t really know that, do you? He, whoever he is or was, might have written La Punaise on the paper because he thought it was a restaurant and the number could be Francine’s phone number without the area code because he already knew those three digits.’
‘I’ve told you, Mike, we don’t really know. I can go and see this woman in Highgate, but she’s no more likely to be the Francine than any of those Tom has checked on.’
Burden helped himself to an olive, speared on the end of a cocktail stick. ‘So what are you doing? What will you be doing when you go back?’
‘What we’ve been doing all along,’ Wexford said. ‘Dodging between a bunch of architects, builders and plumbers and possible Francines. Paying yet another visit to Martin Rokeby and another to Anthea Gardner and Mildred Jones, though as far as I can see they have nothing else to tell us.’
‘Your Francine may be the young woman in – what do you call it? – the vault. Have you thought of that?’
‘She would have had to be about twelve when the other bodies were put in there.’
‘Why not?’
It had been a less rewarding encounter than he had expected. This was hardly Burden’s fault, Wexford reflected on the way home. There was so little to go on, nothing that he and Tom and Lucy with a whole team of investigators hadn’t already thrashed through. He had started with such high hopes and he believed Tom had had high hopes for him. Or perhaps that was something he imagined and Tom had never seen him as any more than someone to talk to about the case, to act as a kind of sounding board on which to bounce off ideas. All he had done was find a car and all Forensics could do was find that that car had transported the body of Keith or Kenneth Bray, Gray or Greig.
Rain had begun to fall, thin as a mist at first but gradually increasing, so that he asked himself why he hadn’t brought a raincoat or an umbrella. By the time he reached home he was soaked and he went straight upstairs to change before finding Dora.
‘Walking has its pitfalls,’ Wexford said, ‘when you don’t come to it till late in life. Have you spoken to Sylvia while I was out?’
‘She phoned. She said she’d go to bed early and watch television and that was what she was doing. It was a relief to hear from her.’
He took hold of her hand. ‘What have you been imagining now?’
She sighed a little. ‘Darling, you remember a few years back Sylvia had that – friend. I don’t want to say boyfriend and I just can’t say partner. And he was violent to her and sort of imprisoned her and you and I went over and you knocked him down and got rid of him.’
‘Of course I remember him.’
‘Well, I’ve been wondering if she sort of attracts men like that, even if she wants men like that and if this Jason might come to her again, might even be with her now. So her phoning was an enormous relief.’
‘If he came,’ Wexford said, ‘because she’s come back and he knows it, she won’t let him in.’
‘Yes, but there’s something I have to tell you. It’s what she told me on the phone just now.’ Dora freed her hand from his and closed it over the other one. ‘He’s got a key.’
Wexford said nothing. He sat very still.
‘It’s a front-door key. I asked her if the police know and she said, “What would be the point of telling them?” Having a key doesn’t mean he can get in if she keeps her front door locked and bolted, and apparently she does.’
Wexford picked up the phone and called Sylvia’s mobile number. The message answered him. He called it again and this time she answered.
‘Is your front door bolted on the inside, Sylvia?’
‘I think so. I’m in bed.’
‘Go down and check. Take your phone with you.’
She made exasperated noises, sighs and the kind of sound that accompanies the rolling of eyes. He heard her feet on the stairs. Her voice came after a brief silence. ‘All right, Dad. I’m going to bolt the door now.’
‘Let me hear it,’ he said.
First one bolt, then the other, ground across, the upper one with a squeak, the lower with a kind of growl.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you will have the lock changed. You won’t do it unless I make you, so I shall come over first thing in the morning and call a locksmith myself. See you at eight. Good night.’
‘Good night, Dad.’ She sounded very subdued.
‘D’you want to come?’ he said to Dora at seven.
‘I don’t think so, darling.’ She was still half-asleep. ‘Sylvia won’t want an invasion.’
Fog had been forecast and, looking out of the window, he thought at first it would be unwise to drive. It was possible to see to the other side of the road, but no further. Still, when he had made himself tea, taken a cup upstairs to Dora and eaten a slice of toast and Marmite, the mist had begun to clear and a weak sun appeared.
The road to Great Thatto passed through some of the prettiest countryside in this part of Sussex, a place of high hills and deep valleys, thickly wooded but dotted here and there with thatched cottages and newer houses. The older dwellings had that self-conscious look of cottages which have been half-timbered, exquisitely thatched with enduring reed and painted in the correct local colours of homes owned by middle-class householders with pretensions. There was little traffic, due perhaps to the fog which came and went, settling in pockets where least expected and suddenly disappearing altogether on the outskirts of Great Thatto. Mary Beaumont was in her front garden, picking asters and gypsophila. She recognised the car and waved to him.
The Old Rectory had been Sylvia’s home for years now, since her sons were little, and long before she and her husband separated and Neil left the house for her and their children. Wexford had been there innumerable times. Yet now, as he drove through the open gates and up the drive, as the untended trees and bushes gave place to a wide space, he seemed to see the house with new eyes. It was a very big house. Had he ever realised before quite how big it was? Built in the middle of the nineteenth century for the rector of a parish, it had needed to be large enough to accommodate the incumbent and his wife, five or six children and all the panoply of servants a Victorian household apparently required. Now it was home to one woman and a little girl. Occasionally, in holidays, when they weren’t off somewhere with friends or exploring foreign parts, to that little girl’s brothers.
She should sell it and move, he thought. Here, in beautiful countryside, a house of this size would fetch a fortune. But it wasn’t for him to tell her what she must know already. Children of any age never take advice from their parents. It was a rule of life and perhaps might stand as Wexford’s fifteenth law or something like that. He rang the doorbell and had the satisfaction of hearing her draw back the bolts.
‘Oh, Dad, you’re very punctual.’ She kissed him, something which was by no means inevitable with her. ‘I’d have got the locksmith myself, you know, if you’d told me to.’
‘Oh, really? You amaze me.’
She laughed. ‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘A bit of toast.’
‘Let me cook you breakfast. You’ve got so thin you can eat bacon and eggs sometimes, can’t you?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘That will be nice. I don’t suppose I can phone a locksmith before nine, but I can go and look some of them up in the Yellow Pages. Where are your phone books?’
It was rather an untidy house. Children, especially teenagers are seldom neat and orderly and Robin and Ben tended to leave their property all over the house. Where they had used an item, rather than where it was kept, was inevitably where it remained. But that, Wexford thought, would hardly apply to a phone directory, the last thing needed by
people in their late teens who conducted all their business on cellphones, BlackBerries or iPhones. He went back to the kitchen where Sylvia was breaking eggs into a pan on the Aga.
‘No, sorry, Dad. It was before Jason – well, you know what. There was a leaking pipe in Ben’s room and I took the Yellow Pages up there to phone a plumber and sort of describe what was happening. It’ll be up there still, I expect. I’ll get it when I’ve done your breakfast.’
Plumbers, thought Wexford, they got everywhere. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, destined to be enormously glad that he had insisted.
All the bedrooms in use but Ben’s were on the first floor, Sylvia’s very large and facing the front, Robin’s and Mary’s at the back and separated by a spare room, but Ben’s was on the top, on the second floor and at the end of the passage. The last time Wexford had been in Ben’s room was all of twelve years ago, maybe fourteen, when he had gone in to read the little boy a bedtime story. He opened the door.
He drew in his breath, but made no other sound. From a hook in the ceiling a man’s body was hanging, its feet about a yard from the floor. It was naked. Jason Wardle, Wexford thought. It had to be Jason Wardle. He had stood on a chair, adjusted the rope round his neck and kicked the chair away. It lay on its side beside the pendent central lamp, which he must have taken down in order to do the deed. Discarded clothes lay on Ben’s bed.
Sylvia’s voice called out, ‘Dad, what are you doing?’ and he heard her feet on the stairs.
Outside the room in a second, he slammed the door behind him and ran down to seize her in his arms. ‘Don’t go up there, don’t,’ was all he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MOBILE PHONES MAKE life a lot easier. This was Burden’s opinion, offered after they had managed to redirect the homecoming Ben to his grandparents’ house. ‘Yes and no,’ said Wexford, who privately believed that it was all right when the police had them but a restriction of freedom to other people.