by Ruth Rendell
They went into the study where, fifteen minutes before, perhaps only ten minutes before, Devenish had punished his wife for the heinous offense of failing to buy oranges by slashing her across the palm of her hand with a knife. What knife? The same knife? And where was it now? One thing was for sure, it wasn’t the dagger hanging up on the wall. The blade of that was corroded with rust, he saw when he took it down.
What had happened in this room, the male room that Fay so hated, the leather-padded, sword-hung room, between this man and Devenish? Threats? Demands? Refusals to comply or pay or what? Then out comes the knife and the man gives Devenish three stabs to the chest. Covered with Devenish’s blood—he would be covered with blood—he had left the house, taking the bloody knife with him, and run off down the street, seen by no one.
Who could believe such a story? Still, Wexford had heard of odder things. He must delay no longer but take himself to the Doddses’ home and talk to Edward and Robert Devenish.
The call came through to him on the car phone as Donaldson was driving him northward through the villages and along the Sewingbury-to-Myringham road. At first the line was fuzzy and the tone blurred, and he couldn’t make out who was speaking to him. Then suddenly the voice of Trevor Ferry came on clear and almost too loud. "I’ve remembered something. You know you asked if I could think of anyone who might have a grudge against Devenish? Well, there is someone."
"Really?"
"Oh, and before I forget, my wife has gone along to Kingsmarkham Police Station to tell them I was definitely at home and still in bed at eight this morning. Providing an alibi is what you call it, right?"
"That’s what we call it, Mr. Ferry," Wexford said, wondering why these people were quite so quick off the mark and if they had something to hide. "Who is this someone with a grudge?"
Wexford’s heart dipped a little when Ferry said, "I don’t remember the name," leapt when he went on, "but I can tell you the story. This guy said Devenish caused his brother-in-law’s death."
"I’ll call on you, if I may, early tomorrow morning."
"How early?" said Ferry.
"Don’t worry, you’ll be up. It won’t be before nine-thirty."
Trevor Ferry, saying good-bye and ringing off, sounded disappointed that Wexford wasn’t coming at once, rushing to him at top speed, to hear earthshaking revelations. But a hundred sensational tales of Devenish’s misdemeanors or provocations of injured fellow workers and dissatisfied customers couldn’t alter that Fay’s version of events remained incredible. Only corroboration of her story could make it believable, and what corroboration could there be?
The three-story town house was almost in the center of Myringham. Fay Devenish could hardly have grown up here, it was too recently built. Everything about it looked new, from its fresh white facade, bright paint, and gleaming glass to the young, struggling plants in its window box of a front garden. Even the car on the garage drive was new, an S-registered, two-door saloon in the latest shade of rose-pink.
There seemed nothing in particular here to interest boys of twelve and ten. Perhaps their grandparents took them out a lot. But not long after Wexford was inside, admitted by Fay Devenish’s father, a skinny, little old man whom she strongly resembled, he found himself revising his opinion. For the whole house seemed a boys’ paradise, and since this could hardly have been spontaneously contrived, merely on the chance of his asking Mrs. Dodds to invite her grandsons to stay, he supposed it must be like this all the time. One room they passed before ascending the stairs contained, indeed was entirely given over to, a train set. Most adults with a passion for trains have their railway hidden away on the top floor, but Mr. Dodds had his downstairs. He had armies on mantelpieces, toy menageries on windowsills, a video library of monsters, horrors, and outer space on the landing, and as far as Wexford could see through open doors, a television set in every room.
’’And a video," said Mr. Dodds. "Not much point without a video, is there? We’ve not long moved here, used to have a bigger place, but I’ve managed to squeeze all my stuff in. We’ve four bedrooms and the fourth’s entirely for my model aircraft. I used to have dogs and cats too. Can’t be done here, but we’ve fifteen guinea pigs in the back garden and the gerbils live in our bedroom."
The two Devenish boys were in the room Mr. Dodds called the lounge, each with a computer—"I’ve got six," their grandfather put in—Edward playing patience on his, Robert concentrating on a soccer game in which, from the colors the players wore, France seemed to be competing against Brazil. Mrs. Dodds, dressed in scarlet today with a short skirt, sat placidly by, reading Vogue. Wexford greeted her and said hello to the boys, who took absolutely no notice of him.
How had Fay reacted to this setup? The dogs and cats, guinea pigs and gerbils, were all right, but how about the toy soldiers and the trains? Perhaps it had been different when she was young and the Dodds family lived elsewhere. Dodds might have turned to these juvenile artifacts only as he entered his second childhood. Whatever it was, Edward and Robert obviously relished it all, and Wexford had some difficulty not only in persuading the boys but in prevailing upon Mr. and Mrs. Dodds to "exit from" or "shut down" the computers or whatever the jargon was. Mrs. Dodds even said it was a shame when they were enjoying themselves so much. Wexford couldn’t help thinking of Fay, who had told him her parents had dismissed her complaints of Devenish’s behavior as fussing about nothing.
One thing to be thankful for about this room was that, apart from the computers and the huge television with video recorder, there was no sign of Mr. Dodds’s preoccupations. Neither boy could be distracted by Lego, Godzilla, or a miniature motorway. Both grandparents elected to stay while Wexford talked to the boys and he was thankful for it. Afterward, no one should say that he had acted improperly. The tall, older boy sat in an armchair beside his grandmother, the younger on a sofa next to his grandfather. There was something uncanny about their resemblance to the dead man. Edward already had the face of a young Lord Byron, handsome, shapely, dark-eyed, with strong, full mouth and firm jawline. And then, as Robert turned to look at his grandfather for reassurance, Wexford caught in the angle of his head and the tilt of his nose a glimpse of Fay, and somehow this tiny flash of likeness, soon probably to fade, was the most saddening of all things ...
"I want you to tell me what happened yesterday morning," he began, "when you first got up and when you left for school to have your lift from Mrs. Daley." He waited until Edward nodded and Robert followed with a vigorous nodding. "Now, you got up and came downstairs for your breakfast. That would have been about half past seven. What did you have for breakfast?"
"We always have the same," Edward said. "Orange juice and cornflakes—well, he has Shreddies—and toast." He looked from one to the other of them, as if for approval. Am I doing it right? was unspoken but it was there. "My dad has—I mean, he used to have—a cooked breakfast. Eggs and bacon, and maybe a sausage and fried bread, and sometimes mushrooms." A shadow seemed to pass across Edward. Wexford saw, perhaps for the first time, what is really meant by the phrase his face fell. "Mum hadn’t got any oranges for the juice and Dad got furious, though she’d got frozen. He ate his breakfast and went into the study, he said he was going into the study and he did go in there." Edward looked at his grandfather and, getting an encouraging smile, went on in a way that elderly child had not perhaps expected, "Dad called Mum into the study and I—I shut the kitchen door, I ..."
Wexford said, "Go on, please, Edward. I understand what you’re saying. It’s all right for you to go on."
The child was desperate and Wexford felt for him to an extent he had never empathized with his own grandchildren; he had never needed to do so.
But it was Robert who butted in and saved his brother. He said almost harshly, "He was going to start bashing her around. I mean, Dad was. Beating or kicking her, he’s always doing it."
His grandmother gave a little scream. "Robert, you naughty boy, how dare you tell such wicked untruths!"
&
nbsp; Robert shrugged. Suddenly he looked decades older than his age, a little old man like his grandfather. "I’m glad he’s dead," he said flatly.
More shrieks followed this statement. Mr. Dodds shook his head sorrowfully. "They’ve got powerful imaginations at that age," he said.
Wexford intervened. "Perhaps we’ll let Edward continue now. Just one thing, Edward. Did your father take a knife with him from the block in the kitchen?"
"I don’t think so. No, he didn’t."
"While your mother and father were together in the study, did you hear either of them cry out?"
Had Wexford imagined that faint flash of alarm in Robert’s eyes? Edward said, "No. Nothing."
Then Robert said, "I didn’t hear anything."
"Then please go on, Edward."
"Mum came back," the boy said, more confident now, "with her hand wrapped up in a towel. It was the towel from our downstairs toilet and it was quite big, but the blood was coming through. He’d cut her. It’s no good making that face, Gran. I’m not telling lies and you know it. You don’t like hearing the truth, that’s all. D’you think we liked it?"
Edward didn’t wait for Mrs. Dodds’s reply. "She got a cloth and tied it up, then she told me and Robert it was time to go down to Mrs. Daley’s. Mrs. Daley does the school run when Mum doesn’t," he explained for the benefit of those who might not know it. "We went out into the hall just as someone rang the doorbell. I opened the door and it was someone to see Dad, a man. I told him to go into the study and he did, and Robert and I went off to Mrs. Daley’s house."
"Right," said Robert.
22
The two boys were both staring at him, then Robert looked away. If you witness your father repeatedly beat your mother, will you, in your turn, beat your wife when the time comes? They say such cruelties form a chain from generation to generation. Did Stephen Devenish’s father beat his mother? Wexford dismissed these ugly thoughts—there was no point in dwelling on them—and asked Edward if he could describe the man he had admitted to the house.
The boy frowned. He looked as if he were concentrating. "He was just a man. Not as tall as Dad. He was wearing jeans and a jacket, and a shirt. And he was wearing a tie."
"He had a briefcase," said Robert. "The dagger was in the briefcase."
His brother rounded on him. "How do you know? You can’t see through leather. You don’t know what he had in the briefcase."
"Can you make a guess at how old he was?" Wexford knew this was unlikely, almost hopeless. To a child of twelve everyone over twenty-five is old.
But Edward said promptly, "About the same age as Dad."
"I don’t suppose you saw what color his eyes were? Or his hair?"
Robert started laughing, throwing himself about in his chair and kicking his legs. "His hair was blue and his eyes were red!"
"You’re stupid," said Edward. "No one would think you were ten." He said to Wexford, suddenly very grown-up, "I don’t remember about his hair, and his eyes I didn’t notice. I mean, I didn’t know I was going to have to remember. He was just a man who came to see Dad."
Apparently, it had never occurred to either Mr. or Mrs. Dodds that their daughter might have been suspected of her husband’s murder, so they showed no signs of relief. Rather, they were bemused. Who would have thought the day before yesterday, they seemed to be saying to themselves, that the whole of life could be overturned like this so quickly and with no warning?
Mrs. Dodds appeared to be looking about her for some means of distraction, some way of lightening the atmosphere or removing the seriousness, and she came up with an idea commonplace enough, the universal panacea for the British, but she brought out her offer with an air of triumph. "Shall we all have a cup of tea?"
"I don’t like tea," said Robert.
And Wexford said, "Not just now, Mrs. Dodds, if you please. It’s important I ask Edward a few more questions." He turned to the boy. "Your mother was out in the kitchen when the man went into the study to see your father?"
"I suppose so. We left her there. She might have gone into the garden, but I don’t reckon she did. She was trying to stop her hand bleeding."
"Where was Sanchia?"
"In the kitchen with Mum. Mum has to help her eat things or she gets them all over the floor."
"Did this man come in a car?"
Robert starting laughing again. "He came in a highspeed train. It came up our driveway at a hundred and fifty miles an hour."
The child’s laughter was manic but without mirth or joy, or even amusement. It was the cackle of a parrot or a mynah bird. He opened his mouth, but unsmilingly, and the sound rattled out.
Wexford remembered uneasily how Jane Andrews had said all the children must be damaged by what they had witnessed and heard at home, not the little girl alone. "Edward?" he queried.
"He must have walked," the boy said. "I didn’t see a car. Or he could have left it in the road, I didn’t see. People don’t always bring a car up our drive, they don’t know if they’ll be able to park it."
"What did he say to you?"
The boy thought. "Something like ’I’ve come to see Mr. Devenish’ or ’I’ve come to see your father,’ one of those, I can’t remember."
"And you heard nothing from the study after he had gone in there?"
"I told you. I told him to go into the study, and then we went, my brother and me. I shut the front door behind us and we went down the road to Mrs. Daley’s."
"Daley, waley, scaley," sang Robert, and suddenly babyish, stuck one finger in his mouth and whined, "Can we go now? I want to go and play with the aeroplanes, Granddad."
"You can go," said Wexford.
When he got back to the station, he found Burden waiting for him, sitting in his, Wexford’s, office at his, Wexford’s, desk, drinking tea and eating, fastidiously and with the help of a paper napkin, a chocolate éclair.
"You won’t believe this, but that villain Monty Smith says someone videoed the whole of that bomb-throwing affair on a camcorder."
"The Mitchell woman—where does she live? Oberon Road? Next door to Orbe? Somewhere down there—she’s got a camcorder,"
Wexford said.
"She hasn’t now. She says she got rid of it and I can’t prove she didn’t. Anyway, she says she was in the middle of the crowd outside here and couldn’t have filmed it and she’s right. Monty Smith says he didn’t recognize whoever was filming the whole show. It was no one he knew. Colin Crowne is sticking to his story that he put Flay’s petrol bomb in a skip outside twenty-one Oberon Road—and there was a skip there. The builders had it, the ones that left the pile of bricks about for the Kingsmarkham Six to hurl through Orbe’s windows. If what Crowne says is true, someone found it there and helped himself."
"I doubt if Crowne would give anything away or, come to that, throw anything away if he could get money for it. Is there any more tea? No? Okay, I’ll phone down for some." Wexford sat down. He made his phone call. "We were wrong about Fay Devenish. This is the one case where the unknown assailant really did come to the door." He told Burden what had happened. "It’s a funny thing, when Fay told me about the man at the door, about hearing a man’s voice, I scarcely gave it credence. It was such a cliché thing to come up with. ’No, it wasn’t me, it was a mysterious stranger at the door.’ I knew we weren’t going to get confirmation, but we did."
"And you separated those boys from their mother, lest she get at them and tell them to lie for her."
Wexford grinned. He was feeling inexplicably happy. "I like your use of the subjunctive, Mike. Must be the effect of Mensa membership. Sure, that was my reason for separating them. I’m very glad I did. Robert confirmed it too. He said the man was carrying a briefcase."
"Containing the weapon and maybe a raincoat?"
"Presumably. So what I thought would turn out a waste of time, trying to discover who sent those threatening letters and whatever revelation Trevor Ferry has for us, is actually essential stuff. Someone had it in for Deveni
sh, and that someone accomplished his revenge or whatever it was."
"Let’s go and see him now. I’ll come with you."
"I do’t suppose there’s anything in it," Ferry said.
That phrase, or versions of it, always alerted Wexford. It invariably seemed to be used when the reverse was true and there was plenty "in it." He was far less anxious to hear accounts that were vaunted as sensational, hair-raising, or calculated, in the storyteller’s estimation, to lead to immediate arrests. He said what he always said in these circumstances. "We’ll be the judges of that."
It was three in the afternoon and they had been admitted to the house by Gillian Ferry. Burden asked her if she had got home early from work, and she said her school had broken up two days before. She was a thin, stringy woman with a prematurely lined face and silvering blonde hair, in all respects ordinary but for her large, angry green eyes. Once she had shown them into the living room, where her husband was again enjoying culinary banalities on television, she left them, shutting the door rather too sharply behind her.
The slam had made Ferry wince. He shook himself as if coming to, returning to the real world from Bolognese kitchens and Tuscan feasts. "You want to know about the guy Steve Devenish had the tussle with? I’ll tell you. It was about two years back. More than that, because I was still there and it was around the time Steve Devenish got that big raise. Mind you, I don’t reckon anyone would ever have heard of him if they hadn’t put that piece about him in the paper with all those photos."
"The Kingsmarkham Courier, you mean?"
"The local rag, yes. They called him a fat cat and had pictures of him and his house, and they even had one of his wife and baby—that was the baby that went missing, right? Well, round about the same time as that there was this chap flying on Seaward to Amsterdam—I think it was Amsterdam—only when he got to Gatwick he was told along with a couple of others that the flight was overbooked. We’d got more passengers than we had seats. It was the sixteen-ten flight, four-ten p.m. to the layman.