Harm Done

by Ruth Rendell

  "Within the next five minutes or so the boys go out into the hallway, use the lavatory, wash their hands, and prepare to leave the house. The doorbell rings. Edward opens the door and there on the doorstep is a man he has never seen before. This man is about the same age as his father—that is, middle to late thirties—is wearing jeans and a jacket, and carrying a briefcase. He says he has come to see Stephen Devenish.

  "Edward calls out something like, ’Dad, there’s someone to see you,’ and says to the man, ’He’s in there,’ indicating the slightly open study door. Fay, in the kitchen, also hears the man’s voice but not Edward’s. Possibly this is because a boy of twelve’s voice is naturally higher and lighter than a mature man’s. Moreover, though Edward can’t remember the man’s precise words, Fay can. She remembers he said, ’I’m here to see Mr. Devenish.’

  "Now, whether Devenish had come to the door by then or was still inside, unseen, we don’t know. Edward can’t remember and Robert is too young to be a reliable witness. But the man goes into the study, shutting the door behind him. Now, this is quite remarkable. If a stranger calls on you in your house and is shown into the room where you are, he only closes the door if asked to do so by you, doesn’t he? Unless he’s not a stranger but well known to you and is in fact someone accorded the privileges of a friend, at least of a familiar acquaintance."

  Burden nodded. "I’d put it more strongly than that. The person coming in would either be a friend of some duration or a person in authority. I mean, I close the door behind me when I come into your office, but Lynn wouldn’t. On the other hand, Southby would and the chief constable would."

  "That’s true. However, it’s not relevant here. I think there’s a third category. And in that category comes someone who is an acquaintance, not a friend. Indeed, it’s an acquaintance who has become an enemy and, as an enemy, need no longer observe customary social usage or even politeness. He or she wants seclusion and silence, so he closes the door without asking permission of the man inside.

  "The door shuts. The boys leave the house, closing the front door behind them. In the kitchen Fay is giving Sanchia her breakfast and trying to staunch the blood still coming from her hand. She has the breakfast dishes to put into the dishwasher and the day’s washing to do, not to mention housecleaning, bed—making, shopping, and the daylong care of a three-year-old.

  "She doesn’t hear Devenish’s visitor leave the house, and of course, she doesn’t hear Devenish leave. Devenish is dead, his body lying on the study floor, with three stab wounds in his chest, including the fatal one to the heart. Fay thinks he’s left for work. She tidies and cleans the kitchen, puts the breakfast things in the dishwasher and starts it, takes Sanchia out of her high chair, and gives her things to play with. At some point in the next hour or so she takes her into the playroom and puts on children’s television for her or a video. Then she goes upstairs, makes the beds, gathers up the dirty washing and, along with the towel in which she wrapped her hand, takes it into the utility room and puts it in the washing machine."

  "I suppose all these household management hints are necessary?" Burden grumbled.

  "I think they are." Wexford swallowed the last of his beer, set down the glass, wondering why a glass always leaves a damp ring on a surface even when it’s not wet. One of life’s little mysteries, only he had the big ones to solve. "At nine or thereabouts," he went on, "Fay checks on Sanchia in the playroom, perhaps puts on a new video. Then she goes into the study to clean it, carrying no doubt a duster and pushing a vacuum cleaner. She finds Devenish dead on the floor and calls us."

  "Yes, but look here," Burden objected, "are you saying there were two knives? The one Devenish had used to cut his wife’s hand and the one the man at the door brought with him? Because, if you’re not, you must be saying the man at the door brought no weapon with him, either because he didn’t intend to kill Devenish or because he knew the knife would be there waiting for him, which is absurd."

  "I might be saying that he only thought of killing Devenish when he saw his opportunity in the form of the knife. Perhaps because Devenish said something insupportable to him, he picked up the knife and stabbed him."

  "Well, okay, perhaps. But who was he, this mysterious man no one recognized but who had the authority or the familiarity to close Devenish’s study door behind him?"

  "First of all," said Wexford, "I’d like to talk about the knife—or, rather, the knives. But let’s have another drink, shall we? Ring the bell."

  Feeling like someone in a Victorian mystery story, literature his wife sometimes encouraged him to read, Burden picked up the brass bell and gave it three vigorous shakes. There should have been a candle on the table in one of those metal candlesticks with a snail-shaped handle, or at least an oil lamp. The snug looked as if it hadn’t seen a coat of paint on its grimy ocher walls and dark brown woodwork since such a story was first published. The barman came. He was a man who could only have lived at the end of the twentieth century, with the ring in his pierced lip, matted dreadlocks, and endangered-species tiger-face logo on the back of his hand.

  But he had a pleasant manner and an old-fashioned politeness, and he took their order cheerfully, returning in only a few moments with the two glasses and a free packet of cashews, compliments of the management.

  "I don’t suppose taking these smells of corruption, do you?" Wexford said after the man had gone. "It won’t make us look more favorably on him at the next Brewster Sessions." He laughed. "Now, the knives. We both know that the knife block is made to hold eight knives but it contained only seven. However, the remaining slot is too small and short to have contained a knife wide enough or long enough in the blade to have made Devenish’s wounds. There was no eighth knife, and when Fay told us there never had been an eighth knife because to insert one made the block too crowded and inhibited the removal of any of the others, she was speaking the truth."

  "We’ve been through that before."

  "All right. We have. Of those seven knives, all have horn handles, but five of the handles are dark brown and two a much lighter brown, almost a fawn color. Now this is the effect of putting horn handles into a dishwasher and through a very hot wash. I know. I’ve tried it and Dora wasn’t too pleased with me when she saw what I’d done."

  "Shame," Burden mocked, "and when it was all in the cause of justice and truth."

  Ignoring him, Wexford went on, "Edward Devenish has told me that he knew this happened to one of the knives in the block and Gillian Ferry has told me that for this— that is, putting a horn-handled knife through a hot wash—Devenish cut Fays hand. In fact, it seems this was the first time he cut Fay and the damage to the knife put the idea into his head."

  "But only one knife, not two?"

  "Edward spoke of just one. But there were two. So when was the second knife put through the hot wash? Not, surely, before Devenish’s death. Fay was often enough punished for nothing, she wasn’t going to stick her neck out committing an offense for which she was deliberately cut across the hand the first time."

  "Right. And why was it put through the dishwasher?" Burden answered his own question: "Presumably, because such a wash, extending over — what? Forty minutes?— would effectively have removed any blood and any prints that might be on it."

  "Certainly its blade matches Stephen Devenish’s wounds," Wexford said. "Don’t you want to know who the man at the door was?"

  "I know you well enough to be quite aware that you’ll only tell me when you’re ready."

  Wexford grinned. He drank from the new Adnams, nodded. "Remember, according to Edward, it was a man of about thirty-six or seven, tall but not so tall as his father, wearing jeans and a jacket, and carrying a briefcase. Now there is a woman involved in all this whom, when I first saw her, because of her hair and her lack of makeup and her height, and her thinness and her clothes, I took for a man. Very briefly, a matter of seconds rather than minutes, but I took her for a man."

  "Jane Andrews," said Burden.


  "Without being in the least unattractive or what used to be called ’mannish,’ she can make herself look like a man. She’s flat-chested, she’s tall, she has the right haircut. These days women’s jackets and men’s are scarcely different from one another. Jeans are the same for men and women. Let us suppose that Jane Andrews dressed herself in her jeans and jacket, and perhaps added some other masculine touches, men’s shoes in a size seven —her size, anyway, I’d guess-a white shirt? A tie? Edward says the man wore a tie. And the briefcase. Most people still associate briefcases with men, though the concept is slowly changing. That would be enough.

  "She leaves the house in Brighton at seven or seven-fifteen. Her mother is still in bed asleep and likely to remain so for a couple of hours. There is no one else to see her go or care whether she goes or not. She arrives in Ploughman’s Lane, a place she knows very well, though she hasn’t been there for years.

  "She parks somewhere. Maybe in Ploughman’s Close or even down the hill to where it meets Winchester Drive. She walks to Woodland Lodge, carrying her briefcase, in which she has a thin, lightweight raincoat and a weapon, for she intends to kill Stephen Devenish. That is the purpose of her visit."

  "Then what happened ...?"

  "To the other knife? The one used to cut Fay and which she afterwards put through the hot wash? Wait. Presumably Jane brought a knife with her or even a gun. Why she chose that time of day I don’t know. Perhaps she had already tried to set up a meeting alone with him outside the house but he had refused even to speak to her."

  "Her motive, of course, is her affection for and sympathy with Fay Devenish?"

  "That and the rage she felt, and has felt for years, against Devenish. Perhaps too, her empathy with her sister, Louise Sharpe ..."

  "It would be a very illogical empathy," Burden said hotly. "Devenish may have been a villain and a miscreant, but no one could say he was to blame for Louise Sharpe’s problems."

  Wexford sighed. "We’re talking about emotion, Mike, not logic." He paused, looked down at the table, then said, "Jane Andrews rang the doorbell and the door was opened almost immediately by Edward. She recognized him, of course, but he didn’t recognize her. Why would he? He hadn’t seen her for years, and when he last saw her, she had long hair. Mrs. Probyn told us that her daughter used to have ’lovely long hair.’ No doubt Jane deepened her voice for the few words she had to speak to Edward, not a very difficult undertaking. She already has a deep voice for a woman.

  "She goes into the study and for a moment he doesn’t know who this stranger is. He says hello or something and what can he do for her—well, him, as he thinks. She speaks in her normal voice and then he does recognize her ..."

  "Why doesn’t he throw her out?"

  "I don’t know, Mike. There are a few loose ends to tie up. The point is that he doesn’t. Maybe he welcomes a confrontation. He may suspect she and Fay were still in touch, he may know that they were and he wants to tell her what he’ll do if she doesn’t stop communicating with his wife. And we know what that might be, don’t we? More and severer punishment for Fay. Or he may prefer to deny what Jane says or tell her she’s mad, a favorite retort with him. One thing you can be sure of, he doesn’t think she’s come to kill him.

  "What he says drives her over the edge. A knife is lying on the desk. She has a weapon with her, but why use that when one is here to hand? She picks it up, catches Devenish unawares, and stabs him.

  "She wipes the knife—on what? Her own clothes perhaps, which in any case will already be splashed with blood—puts it back on the table, having guessed why it was there and what it was used for and knowing that in due course Fay will take it away and wash it. She knows her Fay.

  "She puts on the raincoat she has brought with her and leaves the house, picks up the car, drives home, where her mother is still in bed. How’s that? It covers everything, I think. "

  "Yes, it does. It’s the only solution that does." Burden lifted his glass. "Well, congratulations, if that’s appropriate."

  Wexford nodded. He didn’t drink. "The only drawback is that it isn’t true."

  26

  The new raincoat looked uncomfortably new. Yet it wasn’t uncomfortable but an excellent fit, the right breadth on the shoulders, the right length. Burden would have enjoyed wearing it. Mystifyingly, Burden loved new clothes, the pleasure of putting them on for the first time, of seeing himself look elegant. Wexford could never understand it. Part of the trouble for him was the newness, the looking new. He wasn’t a self-conscious man, nor shy, nor desirous of making an impression, but in new clothes he felt everyone was looking at him. With a kind of nostalgia, he thought of his old raincoat, so comfortable, so pleasantly worn, so mildly battered. He even loved the ineradicable small stain, the heart-shaped blotch of something unanalyzable that defied the efforts of dry cleaners.

  But once again it was raining. The warm, dryish weather had lasted no more than a day. He would have to wear it, make a start, break it in. The faint sheen on its fabric, the stiffness of its lapels, discomfited him.

  On the phone to Burden he said, "If we have even a week’s dry spell after all this rain, the water moguls will say we’re in drought and put on a hose-pipe ban. You see if I’m not right."

  "What are you really ringing me about, Reg?"

  "How well you know me."

  "Perhaps. So what’s new?"

  Wexford told him, in a somber voice and with a heavy heart. But Burden knew already. He’d see him later, and never mind, what must be, must be. Justice must be done.

  The rain was so heavy that Donaldson had to stop the car in Winchester Drive, pull under the trees, and wait for it to abate a little. Wexford, in the back, not even bothering to clear a space with his hand in the steamy window, sat thinking whether there was anything he could say, any hint he could give, any adumbration of the terrible risks involved, without jeopardizing his career and his very job. Through his head ran such phrases as "mandatory life sentence" and "provocation beyond bearing." The rain crashed on the car roof. Condensation trickled down the glass. "Give it another go, will you?" he said with unaccustomed roughness. "We can’t sit here all day."

  As he spoke, the rain diminished a little. The roar lessened. The wipers could just cope with the flow down the windscreen. Donaldson started the car and drove slowly up the hill, sending fountains of water onto the pavements as the wheels rolled through puddles. In the driveway, an overhanging branch brushed against the car and sent down a cascade of water.

  The rendering on the walls of Woodland Lodge was stained dark gray with water. A puddle lay at the foot of the front doorstep, and Wexford was faced either with an undignified jump or the prospect of inundated shoes. He jumped. Lynn Fancourt’s small leap was more elegant. The bell rang hollowly through the house. He must have rung this bell a dozen times, but he had never noted its loudness before, nor the echo that seemed to follow it. At any rate, he reflected while he waited, that cuckoo was gone.

  Jane Andrews came to the door with Sanchia close behind her. In a long skirt and silk jumper, she looked very unlike a man today. Her hair seemed longer, and a hairdresser had put blonde highlights in it. "She’s expecting you," she said, then, "She knows why you’ve come."

  "Thanks," he said because he didn’t know what else to say.

  "I’m going to take the children out. In the car somewhere. I’ll think of somewhere we can go in the rain."

  The house looked like a place people lived in, women and children lived in, no longer like a country-house-interiors museum. Someone’s cardigan hung over the banisters. The flowers in the big Chinese vase were dying. In the big living room where Fay Devenish sat alone, books were scattered on the coffee table among two or three days’ newspapers. She jumped up when he and Lynn came in.

  "Please sit down, Mrs. Devenish."

  In a slow, sad voice, not at all hysterical, she said calmly, "You know, don’t you? I knew you would. I just want you to know I wouldn’t have let anyone else take the blame for
this. I mean, if you’d arrested someone else, I’d have stopped it."

  "I’m sure you would."

  "I killed Stephen, of course I did. Didn’t you always know?"

  He wouldn’t admit to her that in his heart he had indeed always known. At any rate, had always feared. It was really that he hadn’t wanted to face up to it. Had he, of all people, been wasting police time these past few days?

  He said quietly, "There was no man, no stranger who came to the door. It was just the story that any frightened person would invent, it’s the first thing that comes into one’s head. It came into your head and into your son Edward’s—perhaps because you’re mother and son—only he went further than you did. He gave the mystery man an appearance: height and clothes and an age. You only gave him a voice." He cleared his throat. "Edward loves you, you see. He didn’t think twice about lying for you. That morning, when he was at school and the head teacher came and told him, I think he knew then that you’d killed his father. It was so obvious to him. He’d have done it himself—one day."

  Lynn made a small sound behind him, a little indrawing of the breath. Fay had been looking at him impassively, but when he spoke of her son, her lip trembled. He knew he was talking to postpone the incriminating confession she would soon make.

  "No one came to the door," he said. "Edward invented that, not knowing that you’d also invented it. He and Robert left for school, but by then, for ten minutes before that, your husband was dead. Your husband took the knife from the knife block after breakfast and took it into the study. That’s how you knew what he would do when he called you in. You killed him after he cut you with the knife."

  "Yes."

  "Did he cry out? Scream?" She wasn’t going to answer him. "It would have made no difference if he had. If Edward and Robert and Sanchia had all heard him. It would simply have been a change to hear a cry from him instead of from you."