No Man's Nightingale

by Ruth Rendell

  All that is past now and my mother has passed away. When I read in the newspaper about Sarah’s death I felt that my life was over. Everything I had hoped for was gone for the second time. I haven’t much experience of making someone else happy but I had thought I had found the secret. It was too late and that very day I decided to kill myself. Thank you for reading this.

  Gerald Watson

  ‘Poor devil,’ said Wexford.

  He said no more but maintained for a moment or two the minute’s silence requisite for an untimely death.

  Fiona believed Jeremy to be a teetotaller. She never saw him drink. She was the drinker, though more abstemious now the baby was coming, and knew nothing of the brandy flask and the vodka flask from which he took fortifying sips while out of the house.

  The purchase of 123 Ladysmith Road was to be completed in a week’s time and Jeremy felt all had gone well. He called at the house in Peck Road and asked Jason for a deposit of three months’ rent in advance. Confident and using a slightly bullying tone, he made a mistake there. Jason knew that whatever Jeremy might say, he, Jason, had the upper hand. He wanted somewhere to live, yes, but not at any price. Any threatening and two could play at that game, like an anonymous letter to the Housing Department.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Jason.

  ‘You’ll get it back when you leave the place.’

  ‘I’m not planning on leaving.’

  ‘Not for about twenty years,’ said Nicky.

  ‘Why don’t I drive you round there,’ said Jeremy ingratiatingly, ‘show you over the place? I know you’re going to love it.’

  ‘We’ll go under our own steam, thanks. You can let me have a key.’

  This went against the grain with Jeremy. He suggested they leave it ‘a day or two’ and reminded Jason he had asked for a deposit. Maxine was arriving as he departed. For some reason she had stopped speaking to him altogether and this unnerved him even further. She turned her head pointedly away. Jeremy got into his car, sat at the wheel without moving until she had gone into the house, and when the street was empty, took a small swig of vodka.

  Maxine told Wexford all about it next day. ‘You ever heard of such a thing, and them paying him rent all these years. He’s too honest, my Jason, that’s his trouble, while that fellow Legg, he’d sell his grandmother for 50p.’

  ‘He couldn’t do that,’ said Wexford. ‘His grandmother’s been in Meadowbank for the past ten years.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She stamped on the vacuum-cleaner switch but talked all the same. Her strident voice rose above its roar. ‘He’s had the place painted white all the way through. A bunch of East Europeans did it. You know why white, don’t you? It’s cheaper than colours. I was passing and one of them Poles called me in to look. Looks bigger from outside than it does in, he said, and he never spoke a truer word. That fellow Legg, he told them only to put two coats of paint on, keep the cost down.’

  ‘I’m going down the road to post a letter,’ said Wexford.

  ‘Now you’re the first person I’ve heard say that for a good couple of years. Letters are all them emails these days, aren’t they? And texts. Emails and texts and there’s even some as has faxes still, though they’re sort of fading out. Got a stamp, have you? The price they are, I’d rather not write . . .’

  But while her back was turned Wexford had slipped out. He had thought of little but Gerald Watson’s letter since Burden had put it into his hands and now, try as he would, he couldn’t get the man’s misery out of his head. Every line of that letter was pervaded by inhibition and distorted by repression. He felt too how much pain might have been avoided if Watson had been with Sarah that night rather than staying at home with his mother. For Sarah would never have been attacked if Watson had been with her, Clarissa would never have been born. All of Sarah’s life would have been different. Perhaps instead of eventually being ordained she would have become a headteacher, perhaps married Watson, had other children, gone to live in Hertfordshire, not been murdered and Watson not shot himself.

  Jason and Nicky hadn’t much furniture. Most of the contents of 11 Peck Road belonged to Jeremy Legg and must be left behind. Maxine was giving them what she called ‘some bits and pieces’ from her own home and Nicky had bought some from Marks & Spencer in Kingsmarkham. All this amounted to more than could be squeezed into Jason’s ancient Land Rover. He decided to hire a van which he would pick up after work on 25 November, Nicky and Isabella having been taken to Glebe Road in Jason’s car earlier in the day.

  Nothing seemed likely to go wrong with this plan. Jason and Nicky with Isabella in the pushchair had walked down to Ladysmith Road the previous Saturday where Jeremy was waiting for them with the key. He was still unwilling to surrender the key but promised to hand it over to Nicky on the day she and the baby were brought there. This peculiar behaviour put Jason in a bad temper. He said it still wasn’t too late for the Sams family to remain where they were and Jeremy need not think he didn’t know what game his landlord had been playing at.

  Nicky was delighted with the house and ran about the rooms taking photographs with her mobile phone. Isabella got out of her pushchair and took her first real steps without anyone holding on to her. Nicky said it was an omen and meant they were bound to be happy in the house. But still Jeremy didn’t hand over the key. He gave no explanation for this refusal. In fact he didn’t really know why retaining it for a few days meant so much to him. Perhaps it was only that it gave some amount of power over Jason Sams and driving home to Stringfield he told himself several times that once given that key, the man would take over the house at once and very likely take half a dozen pals in as tenants. The thought of this was quite upsetting and he pulled into a lay-by after three or four miles and took a swig of brandy from his flask.

  Back at home he told Fiona that he had carried out a successful showing-over of the house and by the end of the week the whole business would be off his hands. On the morning of the 20th the plan fell apart. Not an email but an old-fashioned letter, handwritten and altogether rather formal, arrived from Diane. It appeared that more plans had changed.

  Dear Jeremy,

  I doubt if it will affect you much if at all but I am coming back a few days early and I don’t want to have to go to a hotel. As I have a house in Kingsmarkham and you have been keeping an eye on it, it will be best for me to go straight there from Gatwick. My fiancé will be coming with me. I don’t suppose you will meet but if you do his name is Johann Heinemann, he is German and a property developer in Barcelona. My flight gets in at 15.25 on 23 November. Unless the lock has been changed on the front door I can let myself in as I have kept the key I took with me when I left.

  Yours,

  Diane

  Fiona had picked up the letter from the doormat and brought it up to him in bed. Jeremy didn’t particularly want to tell her what it was about, but if she didn’t recognise the handwriting, she knew the Spanish postmark.

  ‘Fiancé,’ Jeremy muttered and handed her the letter.

  ‘He can’t be much of a property developer if she’s going to take him to live in Peck Road.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’ll stop long,’ said Jeremy, too worried to care.

  No phoning for him and not much thinking either. He got up and dressed, got into his car and took a sip of vodka on an empty stomach. It took immediate effect which was what, of course, he wanted, though he would have preferred it not to have felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He drove more carefully than usual for the traffic was heavy on the little country lanes that variously led from the villages to the town centre, the big roundabout and Kingsmarkham station. What happened when he got to 11 Peck Road he could have done without. The front door was opened to him by Maxine Sams who greeted him with, ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I’d like to see Mr Sams.’

  ‘Well, you can’t. He’s gone to business.’

  This antediluvian phrase, dating from long before Maxine was born and pre
viously unheard of by Jeremy, had been dredged up from her memory as used by her grandfather when she was a small child. Why she uttered it she couldn’t have said except as having something to do with the dignity and prestige of her son’s job.

  ‘Mrs Sams, then,’ he said. ‘Nicky, I should say. She hasn’t gone to business, has she?’

  ‘Don’t you be cheeky with me.’ Maxine turned her head and yelled at the top of her voice, ‘Nicky! Here’s that fellow Legg wants to see you.’

  They didn’t ask him in. It was seldom that Nicky and Maxine were united but now they were. They listened in grim unison as Jeremy explained what had happened. Now able to walk with expertise, Isabella emerged from the room at the back and, immediately taking a dislike to their visitor, clutched at her mother’s jeans and screamed.

  ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Nicky. ‘You’d best take yourself like down to Questo and see him yourself. He won’t be pleased, that’s for sure.’

  Both women began naming at the tops of their voices all the tasks they would have to do, packing all the furniture and ‘bits and pieces’ they would be taking with them, how long it would take, how it could never be done in time. Jeremy retreated, got back into his car and drove to the Questo on the outskirts of the town. Half a mile outside he stopped and had recourse to his flask.

  As he moved into a vacant space in the car park the man he knew as Chief Inspector Wexford drew up alongside him. Jeremy watched Wexford get out and walk across the car park to the cash dispenser in the wall by the entrance. The chief inspector or whatever he now was turned round, looked without much interest in Jeremy’s direction and went into the store. Jeremy sneaked another sip and then another out of his flask. It gave him a surge of confidence, making him feel ready to face Jason Sams.

  But when he got out of the car and stood between it and Wexford’s Audi he found himself shaky on his feet. He grabbed hold of the Audi’s driver’s door handle and immediately snatched it away lest Wexford should choose to return just at that moment and see him trying to break into his car. Taking a few deep breaths, he made his way slowly and carefully to the entrance. His heart was now beating rapidly.

  But once inside the store he began to feel more confident, found a door marked Private: Store Manager, pushed it open and banged it shut behind him. None of the shoppers reacted to his appearance or departure into Jason’s office until the row erupted, shouts, abuse and the sound of one, then another, heavy metal object apparently hurled to the ground. A woman lifting a king-size bag of muesli from a top shelf was so startled that she let it fall to the floor where it burst and leaked grains and nuts all over the floor. Two babies in a twin-pram began to scream. Other shoppers stopped what they were doing and stood still, hoping for the trouble, whatever it was, to erupt beyond the confines of the office. Knowing he would no longer have to intervene, whatever happened, Wexford looked in the direction of the continuing noise with interest, then helped himself to the pack of Cumberland sausages Dora refused to buy him on health grounds but which he wanted to fry for his lunch, and took it to the checkout. The minute his back was turned Jeremy Legg issued from the office, not running but walking fast.

  Wexford was leaving his car when Jason emerged, hailed him with a half-hearted wave and set off in pursuit of Jeremy who by now was edging his car out of its slot next to Wexford’s. By this time both men appeared to have calmed down a little. It seemed that Jeremy, his head stuck out of the car window, was making some sort of request of Jason and this was now being grudgingly granted. Wexford knew neither man to speak to but as he approached, Jeremy said to him ingratiatingly, ‘So sorry, not hemming you in, am I?’

  His voice was thick and the words not clear so Wexford had to bend towards him to make sure he heard when Jeremy repeated them. ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ he said, and stepped back to escape the brandy fumes. Jason had also received a blast and Wexford could see he was one of those people who believe every policeman or ex-policeman, no matter how high-ranking in the CID, is also a traffic cop intent on breathalysing the public. But he said nothing on this subject, only terminating his altercation with Jeremy with, ‘OK, if I must. You take Nicky and Issy round there on Friday afternoon and I pick up the van with the bits and pieces after I finish here at six.’ He ended on a rougher note. ‘Give me the key then.’

  Jeremy put a hand, curled into a fist, through the open car window. Wexford, intent on watching and on appearing indifferent as he lifted his boot lid, saw the fist pulled back teasingly. ‘It has to be Thursday, not Friday. Thursday evening. I’ll take your family in the afternoon and you move the furniture in the evening. That’s best.’

  ‘What’s the deal on Friday then?’ Jason said in a very aggressive way.

  Jeremy didn’t even want to mention Diane’s name. An increasing nightmare was for Jason and Diane to meet. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the key to you later. I’ll bring it round. No worries. You go tomorrow and bill me for the removers taking the furniture in the evening. There’s an offer you can’t refuse.’

  Jason had gone red in the face. ‘I’m not taking no man’s charity. I’ll do it myself Friday morning. You can take Nicky and Issy and I’ll follow. Never mind I lose a morning’s wages.’

  Wexford drove home to decide how many fried sausages could be eaten for lunch without detriment to his figure.

  Detective Superintendent Burden was holding yet another team conference. Wexford was not invited. He had criticised, and not very politely, Burden’s fondness for such gatherings, calling them a waste of time and, in a currently favoured phrase rather with his tongue in his cheek, a misuse of the hard-working taxpayers’ money. Why repeatedly collect the team together when they are in the building already, take statements and reports from them, and the whole group together examine yet again the evidence for this man or that man being the rapist who was Clarissa’s father, and look once more at the behaviour of a gardener and a churchwarden? Wexford had suggested that instead of holding any more such conferences Thora Kilmartin should be visited and questioned more comprehensively because she of all the people associated with Sarah Hussain had known her best at a crucial time in her life.

  ‘What, spare a couple of people from my team for that?’ had been his response, to be followed by a defence of the conference policy, and in due course to rather pointedly not inviting Wexford to attend ‘as an observer’ the newest gathering of police officers who saw each other every day anyway.

  Wexford went to Reading. A journey by train would be too awkward, so he drove, having asked Thora Kilmartin if he could come and been invited to lunch. Before he left he found himself landed with Maxine’s company. Dora had gone out shopping, leaving the house with many whispered apologies for deserting him. Wexford told her not to worry as he would soon be leaving himself but he hadn’t allowed for Maxine’s being fresh and stimulated after the three days’ holiday she had taken for herself and bubbling over with things to talk about.

  The house looked perfectly clean to him but Maxine announced that everywhere was ‘grubby’ and would need ‘turning out’. Because the Wexfords didn’t possess one, she had brought with her a hand-held vacuum cleaner which when applied to upholstery made a high-pitched whine rather like the cry of a seagull. She talked over the top of it.

  ‘My Jason’s moving tomorrow. I don’t know what’s come over that Jeremy Legg, taking that Nicky and Isabella to the new place himself, but that’s what he’s doing so Jason can pick up the bits and pieces I’m giving them from my place and collect the three-piece suite they’ve bought. Kelli with an i will be there to let him in. Mind you, he’s having to take the morning off work to do it. He told Legg he’d lose a morning’s salary but that was a bit of a porky, Jason’s in too high a position for that.

  ‘Legg offered to pay for removals but Jason wouldn’t have that. “I don’t take no man’s charity,” he said, and it’s true, he wouldn’t.’ The nozzle of the vacuum cleaner, appropriately beak-shaped, thrust down between sofa
cushions, emitted a louder than usual squawk and Maxine screamed over the top of it, ‘They wasn’t supposed to move till the twenty-fifth, then tomorrow came out of the blue. I wonder what’s behind it. Must be something. That Legg never does nothing open and above-board . . .’

  ‘I’m going out,’ Wexford shouted. ‘See you later.’

  This was a phrase he had for years been accustomed to use as meaning he would see whoever it was in the next few hours, but everyone now – his grandchildren and their parents and friends – used it to mean see you any time in the weeks, months or years to come. It is so easy to pick up these habits and, really, why not? That was how the language grew or, at any rate, changed.

  She introduced him to her husband, a thin and weedy man, as spare as she was fat. His greeting to Wexford was cold, a limp handshake and a few muttered words. They had lunch, a much larger meal than Wexford had expected, soup, roasted ham with mashed potato and peas, a baked Alaska and cheese and biscuits. Thora Kilmartin wore a rather too tight green wool dress and the same sort of lacy stockings or tights she had had on last time he saw her. She ate well while Tony Kilmartin ate sparingly. They talked about the refurbishment they intended having done to their bungalow and the extension they planned, she enthusiastically, he in a more restrained way. Wexford had the impression, though nothing was said, that no reference was to be made to Sarah Hussain in Tony Kilmartin’s presence. Perhaps he was imagining it. But once the meal was over Thora got up and said to Wexford that she would like to show him round the neighbourhood a little. They could go out for ‘a bit of a walk’. It was as if he was a prospective house buyer.