by Ruth Rendell
“It feels like stepping out of the aircraft when you go away on holiday to Greece,” said Wexford. “You can’t believe it, it feels so good. In the middle of the night, as likely as not. But we hardly ever have warm nights here. Why don’t we?”
“Search me. Something to do with the Gulf Stream, I expect. Most weather things are.”
“The Gulf Stream makes things warm, not cold.”
This time there was no one to meet them. Wexford rang the doorbell and Diana Marshalson opened the door. Again the little boy was with her, managing to stand if he clutched at the side of her loose trousers.
“I took it for granted this morning that he was yours,” Wexford said to Diana. “But Amber was in fact his mother, wasn’t she?”
“I suppose I should have told you.”
Neither Wexford nor Burden made any comment on that.
“Is Brand short for anything or is that his actual name?” Wexford asked.
She made a face, wrinkling her nose and drawing her mouth down. “I’m afraid it’s his name. Still, considering the names that are available these days, it’s not too bad, is it? My husband has got up. He’ll speak to you—but go easy with him, won’t you? He’s had a terrible shock.”
She took them into the big living room where her husband was lying on the gray sofa, propped up with gray-and-white cushions. Wexford had discovered that he was not yet sixty. With his wispy white hair fringing a bald patch, his deeply lined face and sagging belly, he looked much older. Allowances must be made, of course. He had just suffered an appalling loss. When the policemen came in he turned his head, his eyes falling on the child.
“Oh, God, he’s so exactly like her,” he said. “Just as she was at that age.”
He was holding a framed photograph in his hands. He thrust it at Wexford. “Isn’t he the living image of his…his mother?”
Wexford looked at the pictured face of a young saint seeing visions. “Yes. Yes, he is. He’s a lovely little boy.” He added, “She was beautiful.” The expression on Diana Marshalson’s face almost shocked him. If he had had to describe it he would have called it exasperated. Perhaps she had heard rather too much lately of how beautiful Amber had been and how good-looking Brand was.
He introduced himself, and put in a word of sympathy. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions, Mr. Marshalson?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I must, I know that.”
“This is Detective Inspector Burden who is a senior officer in my team. Mrs. Marshalson, if you wouldn’t mind leaving us for, say, fifteen minutes and then I’ll come and talk to you, if I may.”
She picked up Brand and once more slung him onto her right hip. It was a very convenient way, Wexford thought, for a woman to carry a child—difficult for a straight-up-and-down man—but, unlike a hug or a piggyback, it allowed few opportunities for demonstrative affection. Sitting there, the little boy couldn’t lay his cheek against hers or she hold him close against her breast. Did he miss his mother? He must. Insofar as he could, he must have asked where she was. Then Wexford remembered from the morning his saying, “Mama, Mama.”
“Sit down, why don’t you?” said Marshalson in an empty voice.
“Thank you. I am sorry I have to question you at such a time but I’m afraid it’s inevitable. What time did you expect your daughter home last night, Mr. Marshalson?”
“I didn’t exactly expect her at any particular time,” he said. “I knew she’d get a lift home. Well, say, I thought she’d be in by two.”
Wexford struggled hard to stop himself showing violent disapproval. Burden didn’t struggle at all and showed it plainly. “Was this a frequent occurrence?”
“Amber had left school—well, sixth form college. She left after she’d done her A levels. She went back to school after Brand was born.” His voice wavered and cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Her A level results have come. They came in the post this morning, three As and a B. She could have gone to Oxford.” The tears came into his eyes and shone there. “I thought…I thought it was hard on her, stopping her going out to enjoy herself after what she’d been through.”
“Been through?”
Wexford shot his friend a warning look, which Burden took care not to see.
“Becoming pregnant, I mean, and having the baby. And then breaking up with her boyfriend. Well, seducer is what I call him. Corrupter.”
“Would that be Brand’s father, Mr. Marshalson?”
“Oh, yes, there was never anyone else,” said Marshalson, defending his dead daughter. “It’s my belief he raped her. Well, the…the first time—if there were other times, which I doubt.”
As if parents knew…“May we have his name?” This was Burden, struggling, Wexford could tell, to keep a puritanical distaste out of his voice. “Is he a local?”
“He’s called Daniel Hilland and he’s a student at Edinburgh University, but of course he won’t be up there now, as it’s the long vacation. His parents live locally, in Little Sewingbury. I’ve got their phone number somewhere.”
“Don’t trouble, sir. We’ll find it. Now how about the friends Amber met last night? And the one who brought her to the end of the road. If we could just have their names we’ll leave you in peace.”
“Peace!” said Marshalson and the floodgates of speech opened. Tears poured down his face and his voice shook. “Peace! I can’t remember what that was. A long long time ago. Maybe not since I married Diana. No fault of hers, I’m not saying that, no fault of hers at all. Amber—well, she got pregnant and that was terrible, a terrible shock. She had the baby and brought it home for us to care for. For Diana to care for. That’s what it amounted to.” His lip trembled, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “Diana had to leave her work at the studio. But all that was nothing, nothing, to this. How am I going to bear the sight of him now? He looks so like her. He looks like her when she was a little girl.”
Wexford thought Marshalson was going to begin sobbing, but he made a tremendous effort to control himself, breathing deeply and laying his head against the gray-and-white cushions. His eyes closed, he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll get a grip on myself. The friends—ask Diana. Diana will know.”
“You came out to look for Amber, sir,” Burden said. “Why was that?”
Marshalson shook his head, not in denial but perhaps in sorrow. “I never slept well while she was out. Never. And I was right not to sleep, wasn’t I? It wasn’t needless worry, as Diana said, was it? It was all justified.”
“Perhaps it was, sir,” Burden said. “but what did you hope to achieve by going out in the street at—five, was it?—at five in the morning?”
“I don’t know. Things you do at that hour are irrational. I thought I might see her getting out of that boy’s car. Time means nothing to them at that age. They don’t get tired. I thought I might walk her home, take her arm, my princess, my poor little angel…”
Burden said what Wexford felt he wouldn’t dare to say or wouldn’t, at this stage, have the ruthless single-mindedness to say. “Did you go out into the lane earlier? Did you go out at two, say, or three?”
If George Marshalson understood the purport of Burden’s questions, he didn’t show it. “Only once,” he said. “I only went out at five. I’d walked about the house earlier, I’d seen her bed was empty, but I only went out at five…” A sob cut off his last words.
Out in the hallway, Wexford looked around for signs of life. One of the doors, pale wood, flush and with a stainless steel tube handle, was ajar. From behind it Wexford suddenly heard the child’s voice saying, “Mama, mama.”
The words “they pierce my heart” came into his head and he told himself not to be a sentimental fool. He pushed the door wide open and went in, Burden following. Brand, who seemed to gain more walking skills by the hour, as children of his age do, turned around from the window where he was standing and, disappointed, repeated his sad mantra: “Mama, mama.”
Diana Marshalson was sitting on the floor amid wooden to
ys, a fluffy dog on wheels, a welter of colored bricks. “I hope it won’t go on. I mean, I hope he’ll forget her, for his own sake.”
Wexford waited to hear some show of sympathy for the little boy and sorrow for his mother, but none came. Brand dropped onto all fours and crawled toward her, his expression puzzled. It looked as if she would take him in her arms and comfort him, but she didn’t. She got up.
“Do sit down. What can I do for you?”
They were in a kind of study with a desk, a filing cabinet, a computer on a work station, but soft furniture too, upholstered in pale gray and orange tweed. The single glass door through which Brand had been looking, hoping to see his mother, gave on to a large garden, mostly lawn and shrubs. The excessive heat of the past weeks had turned the grass the yellow of California hills.
Burden asked Diana Marshalson the question he hadn’t cared to repeat to her grief-stricken husband.
“I only know her friends by their first names. Well, except the one who brought her to the end of the road. He’s called Ben Miller and I think he lives in Myfleet. Yes, he does, that’s right. Does that help?”
“Very much so,” said Wexford. “Perhaps you’ll tell us the friends’ names that you do know.”
“As I said, I don’t know any surnames. There was a Chris and a Megan and a Veryan. She came here once or twice. Oh, and Sam—I don’t know if that’s Samuel or Samantha—and Lara. I think Lara and Megan are sisters. Of course I can’t say if she met any of them last night. No, Brand, not now, Di’s busy.” She didn’t quite push the child away. Her hands on his shoulders, she bent down to him and shook her head several times. “No, Brand, do you hear me? Play with your dog. Take him for a walk around the room.” Her tone was cool, more the primary schoolteacher of Wexford’s own youth than the nursery nurse of today. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage,” she said to the policemen. “It’s been hard enough with Amber here for part of every day. It’s not even as if she was my daughter. It’s not fair on me, is it?”
Wexford was seldom lost for words, but he was then. He got up. Burden got up. Brand was walking around the room, using the furniture for support and pulling the dog on wheels behind him. Instead of “Mama” this time, he said, “Di,” and then, “Di, Di, Di.”
Probably it wasn’t the first time, but still Wexford expected delight to show in Diana Marshalson’s face. Unsmiling, she heard the little boy repeat the diminutive of her name, looked at him briefly and turned away.
“I’ve had most of the care of this child since he was born,” she said. “It’s not really fair, is it? Amber hated me from the start. She’d have hated anyone who married her father. Oh, I’m not saying she kept up a vendetta, she got used to me, she more or less accepted, but she always disliked me. Yet when he was born I was the one left to look after him when she was at school. After a while I left my job. I was in partnership with George, but I had to give up. She never asked me, she took it for granted. Because I’d no children of my own, I must want to look after hers. When she went out in the evening and half the night I was the one who had to get up to him when he cried. Still, it’s no good going on about it, is it? Worse than useless. Is there anything more you want to know?”
After a glance at Wexford, Burden said, “Not now, thank you, Mrs. Marshalson. We shall certainly want to see you again, though.”
In silence, they went out from a warm closeness into punishing heat, an August fast becoming the hottest on record. For a few moments, before it became stifling, Wexford felt the heat like comfort. He put up his face to the sun as Burden exploded.
“God help me, but I’ll have sleepless nights over that child. Poor little boy! His grandfather can’t bear to look at him because he reminds him of his dead daughter. His stepgrandmother makes no bones about finding him a nuisance. His mother is dead and by the sound of it she wasn’t winning any prizes for nurturing. And they’re not poor, they could afford a decent nanny, someone who might love him. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Calm down, Mike. I’m the emotional one, remember? We’ve got a reversal of roles here.”
They both got into the car. Standing for so long, it had warmed up inside. Donaldson started up the engine and switched on the air-conditioning. The searchers were still scouring the meadow.
“I’d go over and see if they’ve found anything,” Wexford said, “only I’ve got a press conference at six-thirty. And by the way, I entirely agree with you about those Marshalsons and the little boy.”
“Why did the girl keep him? If she doesn’t care for him she could have had him adopted. Plenty of people would—would treasure him. It’s so wrong. The whole thing is. The girl’s only just left school and she’s out clubbing till all hours. I don’t know what’s happened to people, and so fast. Twenty years and their whole attitude to life has changed.”
“Perhaps we need to know them a little better before we’re so judgmental.” Wexford felt sweat running down his chest and he wished he had a clean shirt to change into before the journalists came. “They’ve had about the worst shock they could have had. D’you know what affected me most? Brand calling for his mother.”
“It didn’t even seem to touch that Diana. It’s enough to break your heart, yet it didn’t even seem to touch her.” He looked at Wexford almost suspiciously. “What are you thinking now?”
Not often inclined to lie, Wexford saw no need to be truthful about his thoughts. “Just that I’d rather face the London papers anytime than that new guy on the Courier.”
He returned to what truly occupied his mind, his own daughter.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
The conference lasted only a short time. There was little for Wexford and Sergeant Vine to tell the press and for once Darren Lovelace, the new man on the Courier, failed to make a nuisance of himself. Wexford spoke for two minutes on BBC 1’s regional evening news and for three on Mid-Sussex Radio, and then it was over.
“Are you going to put Marshalson on to make an appeal?” Burden asked him.
“You know, I don’t think I’m ever going to do that with anyone again. For one thing, it happens so often these days, it’s so much routine, the public have got blasé about it. They probably switch off when the parent or lover or wife comes on, begging for the person who’s killed their loved one—as we’re supposed to call relatives—to come forward. Then there’s the awkward fact that the bereaved one often turns out to be the killer.”
“You don’t mean you suspect Marshalson?”
“At this point, Mike, I have no suspects.”
Resisting Burden’s urging him to a drink in the Olive and Dove, Wexford went home, thinking how he had said earlier that their roles were reversed that day, for it was usually he who persuaded the inspector to after-hours meals and drinks and seldom the other way about. He wanted very much to hear what his wife had to say about Sylvia.
That she was pregnant and without husband or partner he already knew, and that there was something wrong. Dora had told him that, had told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. Wrong with her or with the baby, neither knew, but Sylvia had promised to see her mother that day and tell her “the whole thing.”
“What does that mean?” he had asked.
“I don’t know, Reg. I wish she hadn’t told me that much. I keep thinking she’s found out the baby’s got one chromosome too many or not enough. I just wish we’d been left in ignorance.”
“So do I.”
Like all his neighbors’, and almost every private house in Kingsmarkham except those in Ploughman’s Lane, Wexford’s house was without air-conditioning. All the windows were open, including the French windows in the living room, and since the garden outside had lain in shadow for some hours, the room was a lot less hot than it might have been. A breeze had risen and fluttered the heavy-hanging leaves of lilacs.
“I’m going to have a drink,” Wexford said.
His wife’s reply he had never heard on her lips before. “Yes, I think you should
. And get me one, would you? There’s Sauvignon in the fridge and it should be icy cold by now.”
A fertile imagination is more trouble than it’s worth. So he often thought and did now as he poured the wine into two large glasses, envisaging a handicapped child, more painfully beloved than its brothers, a beautiful brain-damaged child, a child doomed to die at birth but never to be forgotten…He shook his head as if to negate these thoughts. A handful of fattening calorie-filled cashew nuts went into a bowl. He loved cashew nuts with what he sometimes thought was an unhealthy fixation. Now was no time for what his old dad had called “banting.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Dora said as he went back into the room. “If that’s what you’ve been thinking. I know I have. It’s fine. Sylvia’s four months pregnant and Neil’s the father.”
“What?”
“Yes, you did hear me. That’s what I said. Neil’s the father. There’s more to come, though. A lot more.”
Dora took an unladylike swig of her wine and sighed. “I hoped they’d get back together, she and Neil. I always hoped that, as you know. But that’s not it. He’s apparently very happy with his girlfriend—what’s she called?”
“Naomi.”
“He and Naomi are happy but for one thing. She can’t have children and it’s not a simple case of trying and failing. She’ll never be able to have any.”
“I see what’s coming,” said Wexford. “I see it in all its horror. She’s having this baby for them. She’s going to give it to them.” Suddenly the room was hot, the shade outside made no difference. It was hot and close and oppressive, and he was sweating again, beads of sweat breaking out on his face. “She’s got Neil on her conscience because she thinks, or both of them think, that she left him for no reason. Just because she got fed up or bored. So she’s making it up to him by having his baby as a present for him and his girlfriend. I know her. I know the way her mind works. Why can’t she confine her social-worker dogooding to her clients?”