Harm Done

by Ruth Rendell

  "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 Kingsmarkham 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 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 misdemeanor—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 even 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 her 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 behavior 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 anymore. 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 catalog 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. Devenish 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..."

  "Miss Andrews, the fact is you should have known this whole operation was bound to fail. It was wrong of you to raise Mrs. Sharpe’s hopes and encourage her in this way. You must know that."

  "I don’t see that. It could have worked, it nearly did."

  "And the effect on Sanchia has to be damaging."

  "Not half as damaging as living with a violent criminal." An upsetting thought struck her. "She won’t have to go back, will she?"

  "Of course she will have to go back," Wexford said with a sigh. "I understand, I appreciate the circumstances. But whatever Mr. Devenish may have done, he is her natural father, who is living in an apparently stable relationship with her natural mother." He held up his hand as Jane Andrews started forward in her chair. "Just minute, Miss Andrews. I hear what you say and I believe you. But if Mrs. Devenish makes no complaint to us about her husband, there is nothing we can do. And if she was going to make a complaint, she would have done so already, wouldn’t she? According to you, this has been going on for about thirteen years."

  "He has to know what Fay did? I mean, that she took Sanchia away herself?"

  There was something in the way she said it that sent a chill down Wexford’s spine. He wanted to be unaffected by her, to maintain detachment, but he was unable to control his body’s response, the shiver that ran through him.

  All he could do was conceal it and tell her as coolly as he could that of course Devenish would have to know, adding to himself that the man should already have been told, just as Sanchia should by now have been reclaimed and returned to her parents. These things had to be done at once. He didn’t want to look into Jane Andrews’s white, frightened face, but he had to.

  She repeated the words she had spoken before: "He will kill her."

  Restoring a missing child to her parents should be one of the pleasantest of a police officer’s tasks. Wexford had found missing children before; taking them home, seeing the bereft mother’s face, the father’s joy, had been enough to warm his heart. This time would be different and a happy occasion transformed into ... he hardly knew what. Horror? Dismay? Perhaps fearful danger. But it had to be done and he had to do it.

  It was useless Jane Andrews telling him she wanted as few people as possible to know of this. They had to know. Charges would have to be brought against Jane Andrews and Louise Sharpe, but it was a puzzle to know what charges. At any rate, there was no great hurry. Neither of them would run away. As for Fay Devenish, he couldn’t bring himself to think of punishing her further, and of her husband he couldn’t bear to think at all. Giving himself an unusual injunction, to play it by ear, he had Donaldson drive him to Ploughman’s Lane and Woodland Lodge.

  It was the first time he had been there since Sylvia’s, and then Jane Andrews’s, revelations. In the light of them, the idyllic place looked different, not a peaceful sylvan corner of Kingsmarkham lying snugly between the old market town and the downs, but sinister, covert, the beautiful trees there for the purpose of hiding what went on beneath their shelter. Yet no one would imagine, looking at the house that seemed on this fine sunny afternoon to nestle comfortably in a leafy dell, that inside it a continuous crime was perpetrated, an ongoing, perpetual assault on a defenseless creature. So delightful was the picture and so peaceful the atmosphere that for a moment he doubted. Jane Andrews had invented it, imagined it, contrived this story to cover the truth. There had been some other motive for Fay Devenish giving away her own child. But as soon as he saw her, for it was she who opened the door to him, he knew it was all true, and he was almost at a loss for words.

  At least Stephen Devenish was away from home. He was at Seaward Air in the Brighton office. She told him so, as if he couldn’t possibly have wanted to see her—it must be her husband he was in search of.

  "I’m glad to have the chance of seeing you alone, Mrs. Devenish."

  "My sons will soon be home."

  Did she think she needed protection from him? "I want to talk to you without your sons. On your own. I have something to tell you."

  She knew. She read it in his face and she went as white as the ivory linen blouse she wore. For a moment he thought she was going to faint and he wished he had brought Lynn with him or Wendy Brodrick. But she recovered, even managed a dreadful strained smile, and he thought how recovering from pain and shock was her life, she was used to it.

  He was going toward the study where, once before, he had talked to her as she lay on the hide sofa, her face marked and swollen, her speech impeded, but she laid a thin, light hand on his arm, said, "No, not in there. Please don’t let’s go in there."

  He remembered what Jane Andrews had said about that room, that male place, darkly paneled, leather-furnished, with the swords and the dagger on the wall, as the scene of many of her injuries. Instead, he followed her into a room designated her province, the kitchen.

  On the refectory table where Devenish had wept stood a large wooden bowl brimming with fruit, pale yellow apples, dark green pears, gleaming oranges, golden bananas, and grapes like jade beads. Everywhere was spotless, as if newly spring-cleaned. Two of the casement windows were open and the fresh white curtains fluttered in a breeze that ruffled the leaves of the herbs, basil and sage and savory and marjoram, in glazed earthenware pots on the sill. The little painted doors on the cuckoo clock were shut.

  He motioned to her to sit down
at the table and he took a chair opposite her. It was an immense relief to him, a comfort almost, that she had no bruises on her face, no marks or scars, so that he could tell himself that perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all, perhaps there had been exaggerations. Her eyes met his and she looked away. And then he told her. He told her that Sanchia was found, that she was safe and content in the home of a Mrs. Louise Sharpe, but that Mrs. Sharpe had not abducted her.

  "You did that yourself, Mrs. Devenish." It was a statement, not a question. "You need not tell me why. I know why."

  The whitening, the threatened fainting, was past. She only sighed. "Someone is bringing her back?"

  "In about half an hour’s time."

  She hesitated. She dreaded saying it but she was obliged to. The words were forced out painfully, like something stiff squeezed from a tube. "What am I to tell my husband?"

  The hard rejoinder would have been that she should have thought of that before. He wouldn’t have dreamt of saying it. "We’ll come to that in a minute. Your friend Miss Andrews has told me a lot of things about you and Mr. Devenish. I expect you can guess what they are. If they are true and you have been the—let’s say the victim of repeated assaults..."

  She stopped him and now the words poured out. "You’re going to say I could call you, the police that is, and bring charges against him and have him in court, and I could leave—but where could I go? And it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t, he would just be angrier, and wherever I went, he’d find me, I know he would. He says so, he says he’d find me wherever I went. There isn’t any escape, not while he’s alive and I’m alive, no escape at all."

  She put her fingers up to her eyes, touched her temples as if stimulating thought, then said, looking at him with pathetic bravery, with a forlorn hope, "The only thing is that he may change. I thought he was changing a year ago when he hadn’t... well, done anything to me for a whole four weeks. I mean, it didn’t last, but it wasn’t quite so bad for a while and then it started again, but I know he was stressed-out, there was trouble at work, and I’m—I’m not always—well, the wife he expected, the wife a man like him deserves, if you like. I know all that. He may change, do you think?"