by Ruth Rendell
‘There are three,’ Dora told him, coming from the computer. He was always lost in admiration for her when she found something or accomplished something online. Never mind that children of seven did as much and more every day. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said.
Pleased, she gave him a lovely smile. ‘One’s in Fort William, one’s in Mexborough and the third’s in London W8. Where’s W8?’
‘Kensington, I think. That’s the most likely. Now for the phone book. Have we got a London directory?’
‘I think so, an old one, but Victoria Steyner, if she’s the one, is very old too.’
She found a directory for west London dated 1996. It was under a pile of directories and catalogues in the cupboard under the stairs, the sort one never throws away. A V. B. Steyner was listed at a different address from the one Dora had found in the online electoral register. That looked like a flat while the address in the phone book was probably a house. She moved, Wexford thought, when she grew old and the house was too much for her. It meant the phone number might have changed too. He hesitated. Wait, he thought, think about it, sleep on it. For one thing, she could be the Mexborough Victoria Steyner. He didn’t even know where Mexborough was but it might be a select seaside resort full of comfortably off elderly ladies. Fort William was less likely. At least try Kensington first, he told himself, and think about what you’re comtemplating doing first. He phoned Burden and told him he’d given Clarissa permission to take her mother’s love letters.
‘Love letters?’
‘Well, letters from her husband. They were in the safe.’
‘Oh, right.’ Burden’s voice was heavy with boredom. ‘That’s OK. We saw them when we searched. Did you think I’d mind?’
Alone, Wexford shook his head for no one’s benefit but his own. Still, you never could tell with Mike and he must be careful. If he was going to set in train an investigation of his own he must consider what tactics he was going to employ. No deception, that was certain. In talking to people, Mrs Steyner, her son (obviously not the one who had called her by her given name), the other man, friends of Clarissa’s, even the pretty blonde waitress, he wouldn’t even think of giving a false name or inventing a false role in this murder case. He had once been a police officer, a detective chief inspector, but he was one no longer. They were not obliged to tell him anything, even to talk to him. They could say no and show him the door, always supposing he got past the door in the first place. This he must make clear to them, and when he looked at it from that angle, he couldn’t see why anyone would agree to talk to him. If they had anything to say, if they weren’t bored by the whole thing and incredulous. At this point he nearly gave up. It wasn’t his business, no one else would understand why he was doing it. Why not wake up tomorrow morning a free man, with nothing to do but relax and enjoy himself? It wasn’t an inviting prospect.
Dora was watching television. He sat beside her on the sofa, wondering why characters in British television dramas never looked as if they had really punched their adversary in the jaw but that their fist had landed in the air, and why they looked as if they never really smoked a cigarette but reluctantly took the smoke into their mouth and quickly expelled it. It was probably a matter of cost, it always was. And then, as the activity on the screen became wilder and even less convincing, a revelation took shape in front of his eyes: he must do this talking, he must find out more, and before 20 January. That date was less than three weeks away. Something would happen on that date. Sarah Hussain could no longer confess or admit or simply tell her daughter about her origin but someone else might. Someone, and he had no idea who, might honour a promise they had made to Sarah that, in her absence for whatever reason, they would on that day, her eighteenth birthday, enlighten Sarah’s daughter.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Like some nineteenth-century novel. Wilkie Collins maybe. But if it was an illusion it was one he couldn’t get out of his head.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHEN FOR YEARS you have had authority it is very hard to lose it, suddenly to find that powers you took for granted have disappeared overnight and, perhaps more to the point, stay disappeared. Once he was like the centurion – he was the centurion – who says to one come and he cometh, to another go and he goeth and to a third do this and he doeth it. Once he could have picked up the phone, dialled this woman’s number and told her his name and rank. She would have been overawed – most were – or frightened or, if she were legitimately in trouble, pleased. This one, this V. B. Steyner, was likely to be puzzled by his wanting to speak to her without authority. If she agreed to a talk she would question him more than he questioned her. Why? Why ask this, do that, be interested at all? He couldn’t say, as he often had in the past, ‘I ask the questions.’ The call hadn’t yet been made, he was still thinking, being indecisive, taking himself out of the house by walking down Queen Street to Kingsmarkham’s only remaining bookshop in quest of a new novel that had had good reviews.
The turn into the high street is a sharp one, rather less than a right angle, and you can’t tell whom you may meet or bump into as you negotiate the corner. Wexford walked round without thinking and almost crashed into Maxine Sams. He put out his hands to avoid their faces actually colliding. She leapt away with a shriek. ‘Take your hands off me!’
‘Maxine,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that business with Jason too. But I had no choice.’
‘Don’t you call us by our first names. We’re Mr and Mrs Sams to you.’
‘All right. If you like. How is – er, Mr Sams?’
‘Thanks to you he’s lost his job. He’s waiting to come up in court. Unlawful killing, it’s going to be, on January the twentieth. Pleased with yourself, are you? Oh, you make me sick.’
There was no point in lingering. Wexford walked off towards the bookshop, a stream of abuse following him and attracting a small crowd of onlookers. One thing, he thought, being a policeman for all those years, coming up through the ranks, inures you to insult, foul language, accusation and threat. The fear and ongoing disgust such abuse causes in others, and stays with them sometimes for weeks, passes over your head and leaves you to do no more than reflect on the unpleasantness of so many people. Anyway, that idiot Jason was going to get away with unlawful killing instead of manslaughter and he wouldn’t be separated from his beloved daughter for as long as he might have been. Wexford bought his book, walked home and picked up the phone.
An answering service told him that this was Victoria Steyner’s phone and asked him to leave a message after the tone. He couldn’t do that. What could he say? He would have to try again. But at least he knew it was the right number. Already he was forming in his mind a picture of what she would be like, this Victoria Steyner. Strong, perhaps domineering, used to having her own way, sharp and clever, mentally young for her age. There he stopped himself. He had never even spoken to her or heard her speak. At her age, the chances were that she would be at home in the evening and therefore likely to answer her phone, but not too late in the evening. Old people tended to go to bed early.
A few years ago, when he was still the centurion, he never had time for anything. He was always occupied. Now he hardly knew how to pass the time apart from reading and even he couldn’t read for hours on end. He thought of phoning Burden and telling him what he intended to do but he knew how that would go down. Crisp was on remand, Crisp had done it, there was no need to look further. The tart impatient note in Burden’s voice he could imagine and his attempt to hide it. At six when Dora had just come home they watched the BBC news. Appositely, an item on it was about people on remand having a worse time while in custody than convicted prisoners. Poor old Crisp, but perhaps he was treated better because of his age. Wexford didn’t hold out much hope. At seven he and Dora had a glass of wine and then the fish pie she had made because he liked it so much. He went to the phone again at eight and she answered.
It wasn’t anything like the voice he expected but rather high-pitched, very feminine, f
luttery and breathless. ‘Yes, this is Vicky Steyner. Who is it?’
Vicky. The driver of the Jaguar had called her Victoria. ‘Mrs Steyner,’ he said, ‘you don’t know me. My name is Wexford, Reginald Wexford. I was a police officer, I’m now retired. I wonder if we might meet and talk.’
‘Me? Do you really mean me?’ The voice was even more fluttery. ‘Oh, it’s such a long time since a man has rung me up and wanted to meet me.’
‘I assure you I’m harmless,’ he said, thinking that this was exactly what a man would say if he was not. ‘It’s in connection with the lady who was once your daughter-in-law. There are some inquiries I’d like to make.’
She laughed, a shrill giggle. ‘Oh, how delightful! Are you a private detective? I know that gentlemen who’ve been policemen do that. Will you take my fingerprints? I can lend you a magnifying glass. I’ve got a new one now my reading glasses aren’t quite up to the mark.’
‘Nothing like that, Mrs Steyner,’ he said, wondering if this avenue he had decided to go down was in fact a dead end, not worth entering. ‘If I could just come and see you or we could meet outside somewhere. In a cafe, say.’
‘Oh, no! I’d love you to come here. A real man coming to tea with little me! You will come to tea, won’t you? Tea at five and then a glass of sherry. That’s what I like. Will you do that?’
Her manner had become flirtatious and suddenly he felt sorry for her. ‘I’d love to,’ he said heartily and they fixed a date and a time. ‘Tomorrow at five then.’
Not a flat, as he had supposed, but a terraced house in a street not far from Holland Park, the only part of Kensington he knew. Though small, number 12 looked grand from outside but the interior small and poky when she opened the front door. Her own appearance might have been a surprise if he hadn’t previously spoken to her. As it was, he rather expected the pink flowery garment he thought might have been called a tea gown, the high-heeled pink satin shoes and the heavy make-up on her wrinkled face.
She let him in while he was still showing her various items of identification he had brought with him. ‘Oh, Mr Wexford, I’m so delighted to see you! I’m thrilled. Now, may I call you Reginald? Please don’t say it’s forward of me, though it is. But I can’t help it. When I meet someone new I just don’t want them to be new for more than five minutes.’ She showed him into a very small sitting room that anyone buying the house today would have combined with the next room by taking down a wall. Furniture was crowded together so that the chair she sat in seemed to be trying to push over the chair he sat in and his to be thrusting aside a spindly-legged sofa. ‘I’ll tell you something in the strictest confidence,’ she said in her bird’s voice. ‘If my son knew I’d let a strange man into my house he would have a fit so I won’t tell him! I won’t tell him! As if I can’t tell when a man is a gentleman, an absolute White Knight, a Galahad!’ She laid a wrinkled hand on his sleeve. The nails were not red as he would have expected but powder blue. ‘Now, we’ll have tea, shall we? Sugar and milkies?’
Wexford said tea would be nice but no milk or sugar.
‘But you don’t need to slim. You’re just right. A man shouldn’t be too thin. A person should have some meat on his bones.’
It was the kind of thing men said in defence of their fat wives. But Wexford didn’t think Tony Kilmartin would ever say it. Left alone, he peered at some photographs, framed in sculpted silver, of the pale man who had held Victoria Steyner’s arm at the memorial service. So this was her son. There were no photographs of the man who had held the car door open for her. She herself was a laughable figure but how cruel life was to the old. What would she have to do and how would she have to act not to be laughed at at her age? Wear sober dark clothes and flat black shoes, let her sparse but blonde hair go back to its natural white, reveal unpainted her creased-up sunken face? Then she would simply be ignored, so invisible as almost to be tripped over. The way she looked at him he thought she might be one of those elderly people who hoped that sex might not be over for them. He and Dora hadn’t yet left that behind them, but it was not a matter of the unthinkable distant future. This old woman, though, still saw younger men – for he was a good deal younger – as potential partners, lovers. He was feeling an overwhelming pity for her and knowing at the same time that he mustn’t show it. She came back with a laden tray which he took from her.
‘Mrs Steyner –’
‘Vicky, please, Vicky.’
It had immediately turned into a situation where the other person is from this point called nothing at all. ‘I believe you were very fond of your daughter-in-law Sarah,’ he began.
‘Oh, I adored her! She was the sweetest thing.’ He knew a good deal about Sarah Hussain by this time and that ‘sweetest’ was the last adjective to be applied to her. ‘I expect you know about the accident, don’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Of course I was devastated, my beloved husband, my darling son, but I was devastated for her too. Did you know darling Sarah?’
‘I never met her,’ he said.
‘She went completely mad, you know. After the accident she was a different person. Turning herself into a vicar! I couldn’t believe it when my son told me. But I said to him, the only explanation is that she went mad. When you know she lost her mind through grief you can understand everything. She used to come and visit me, she stayed once or twice, but she had changed, she was very strange. Obsessed with God. She lost all interest in her appearance and when a woman does that you know things are very serious. I wouldn’t have objected if she’d married again, you know, even though it was my son she’d been married to. I even – well, you’ll find this hard to believe, but I even thought she might marry my other son. Leo and Christian were twins, you know, the sweetest identical babies – I thought, why not? Nothing could have made it all right, but if they’d married, what they call the healing process might have started.’
‘But Sarah and Christian didn’t go along with that?’
‘Poor darlings, I don’t think they ever saw each other. Will you have some more tea? A piece of cake? It comes from Harrods.’
‘No, thank you,’ Wexford said firmly, though he liked the look of the cake. ‘Your son doesn’t live with you, does he?’
‘Oh, no, I’m all on my lonesome.’ Without actually moving her chair, she edged closer to him. ‘Did you think Christian was here?’
Starting to feel awkward, he shook his head, then shrugged.
‘He lives in Knightsbridge, he’s in business there and he’s got the most beautiful house he shares with his friend Mr Arkwright, Timon Arkwright. I expect you’ve heard of him, he’s in the fashion business, according to my son, whatever that may mean, but it sounds very grand, doesn’t it?’
Gay, Wexford thought. Not in the closet, though, not these days. Mother has been told but refuses to accept or even take it in. She laughed a shrill tinkling laugh.
‘I tell him – Christian, I mean – it’s such a waste of a good man, and so nice-looking, staying single, I mean, when the place is simply brimming with lovely young girls falling over themselves to marry him. Not Sarah any longer of course. She wouldn’t have suited Christian now. They’re the same sort of age but women grow older sooner, don’t they?’
And women like you, he thought, do their own sex no favours, selecting some thirty-year-old girl as a suitable mate for a near fifty-year-old, his contemporary having missed the boat.
‘And a vicar!’ said Victoria Steyner.
‘I expect you saw Sarah’s daughter Clarissa at the memorial service.’
‘Oh, yes. Very Indian-looking, isn’t she? I never seemed to mind that so much in Sarah. Sure you won’t have a piece of cake?’
‘Quite sure. I suppose it was Clarissa who invited you and your son.’
‘Heavens, no. I’ve never spoken to her and I’m sure my son hasn’t. It was a Mrs Bray who told me about it. She wrote. I wouldn’t say she invited me, she just said it was happening. I told you, I was absolutely devoted to Sarah and shattered when I heard what had
happened to her. My son only went to take care of me, he’s wonderful like that, so good, and he got his friend to drive us in that gorgeous old car.’
She had not once asked him what his interest in Sarah Hussain was, shown no curiosity in his reasons for asking these questions, barely looked at the ID he had shown her. She was a total egotist, so wrapped up in her own concerns to have no room for anyone else except a small corner for her son whom she probably regarded as part of herself. If he, Wexford, had asked her to hand over her credit card so that he could have some detail on it checked and said it would be returned to her in a week’s time, she would very likely have done so, with a smile and another fondling of his sleeve. He got up to go, knowing she would plead with him not to, and she did.
‘But you’ve only just come.’
‘Thank you for the tea,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
On the doorstep he thought she was going to kiss him. She brought her face within an inch of his but withdrew it at the last moment. ‘See you again soon, I hope.’
He doubted it but said nothing. She had been useless, he thought as he walked to South Kensington tube station. And yet there were one or two things. She had no interest in Clarissa but she had no interest in anyone. She knew Georgina Bray. How? Georgina must have known her address. He would ask Georgina about that. He hadn’t asked Victoria Steyner about Clarissa’s father because he was sure she wouldn’t know or if she knew she wouldn’t say. It was something she would have drawn a veil over, a love affair it would spoil her image of Sarah to admit to. Perhaps he would have to see her again . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY
A LETTER FROM Thora Kilmartin told him she was coming to Kingsmarkham to meet Clarissa and have lunch with her. The date would be 16 January. I didn’t want to intrude on her on her birthday. She went on to say that she thought this would be all right with Mrs Bray as she after all was Clarissa’s godmother. She evidently didn’t know that Clarissa had moved out and was now living in Sylvia’s house. Perhaps we could have tea, she wrote, as I remember we did once before. She might even stay the night, she suggested, in which case perhaps he and Mrs Wexford would have dinner with her.