A Guilty Thing Surprised

by Ruth Rendell

  How can I? I reckon we went on with our viewing after that. Yeah, it was Sammy Davis junior, that’s what it was.’The dark face lit suddenly with an almost religious awe. ‘My God, I’d like to be like him. I’d like to be him.’

  Chilled by Wexford’s eyes, he shifted his own and said rapidly, ‘I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to get on with my work. Old Will’11 be after me.’

  He sidled past Wexford, roughly bruising cactus spikes as he made his escape, Suddenly in the doorway Mrs Cantrip loomed.

  ‘Your dinner’s ready in the kitchen, Sean. I’ve been looking all over for you. Get cracking, do, or it’ll be stone cold.’ Thankfully Sean marched out of the hothouse and, when no one called him back, made for the kitchen at a run.

  ‘Odd, that,’ said Wexford. ‘Sammy Davis was booked to appear on television last night, but the programme was cancelled at the last moment. They put on an old film instead.’ He patted Burden’s shoulder. ‘Off you go to lunch now, Mike. I’ll join you when I can.’

  He watched Burden go, and then, almost running himself, he caught up with Mrs Cantrip, ‘Is there anyone else living in this house or employed here that I haven’t yet seen?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Her look told him that she was still bemused with shock, the reins of the household as yet unsteady in her hands. ‘Would you be wanting a bite to eat?’ she asked tremulously. ‘You and the other police gentlemen?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Wexford put a firm hand under her elbow as she tripped at the terrace steps. ‘You can tell me one thing, though. Who were Mrs Nightingale’s friends? Who came visiting to the Manor?’

  She seemed pleased at this tribute to her dignity as a valued and confidential servant. ‘Mrs Nightingale was never one of them as gossips, sir, or passes the day on the telephone. The ladies she saw was to do with business, like, arranging bazaars and gymkhanas, if you know what I mean. Then ..

  .’ Her voice took on a sad importance, ‘Then there was their friends as came here to dine, Sir George and Lady Larkin-Smith, and Mr and Mrs Primero, and all the county folks, sir.’

  ‘Gentlemen friends? Please don’t be offended, Mrs Cantrip. These days a lady can have men friends without there being anything—er, wrong.’

  Mrs Cantrip shook her head vigorously. ‘Her friends was their friends, sir,’she said, adding with a shade of sarcasm, ‘Would there be anything else you wanted to know?’

  ‘There is just one thing. A question of laundry. Whose job is it to change the linen in this house, the r, sheets and towels?’

  ‘Mine, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, surprised.

  ‘And did you remove any damp towels from Mr Nightingale’s bedroom this morning?’

  ‘No, sir, definitely not. I wasn’t looking for work this morning and that’s a fact.’ Mrs Cantrip gave a virtuous lift of her chin. ‘Besides, it’s not the day for that,’ she said. ‘I change the sheets Monday mornings, and the towels Mondays and Thursdays. Always have done, year in and year out since I’ve been here.’

  ‘Suppose someone else were to have ...?’ Wexford began carefully.

  ‘They couldn’t have,’ said Mrs Cantrip sharply. ‘The soiled linen’s kept in a bin in the back kitchen and no one’s been near it today. I can vouch for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ve got my lunch to serve. I’m sure I don’t know if Mr Nightingale’s feeling up to a snack but there’s the tray to go over to Mr Villiers as usual ... Oh, my dear God! Mr Villiers! I’d forgot all about Mr Villiers.’

  Wexford stared at her. ‘D’you mean to say Mr Nightingale’s brother-in-law lives in this house?’

  ‘Not to say “lives”, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, still wideeyed, a red hand frozen to her cheek. ‘He comes up every day to do his writing in the Old House. And, oh, sir, I don’t reckon no one’s told him!’

  ‘Mr Villiers must have seen all our comings and goings.

  ‘He wouldn’t, sir. You can’t see a thing from the Old House on account of all them trees, no more than you can see it from the outside. I’ll have to go and tell him.

  All I can say is, thank Cod they wasn’t close. He won’t take i * t hard, there’s one blessing.’

  She trotted off at a half-run. Wexford watched her disappear under an arch in the hed-c, an arch overhung with the leaves of lime trees turning gold.

  Above these all that showed of the Old House was a shallow roof against the white-spotted blue sky.

  He allowed her five minutes and then he followed the path she had taken. It led him into a little paved court in the centre of which was a small square pond. Carp swam in the dark clear water under the flat shining rafts of lily leaves.

  The court was heavily shaded by the trees which surrounded it. Their roots had sapped strength from the narrow borders, for nothing grew in them but a few attenuated and flowerless plants stretching desperately in the hope of reaching the sun. Mrs Cantrip must have entered the ancient house-to Wexford it appeared at least four hundred years old-by a black oak door which stood ajar. By the step stood a boot-scraper, a cock with spread wings made of black metal. Looking up past creeper-grown lattice windows, Wexford noticed its fellow, a crowing chanticleer on the weather vane.

  As he entered the Old House, he became aware that the wind had dropped.

  4

  THE place in which Wexford found himself was evidently used as a storeroom. Birch logs were stacked against the walls in pyramids; racks above them awaited the Manor harvest of apples and pears. It was all very clean and orderly.

  Since there was no other room down here and no sign of Denys Villiers’

  occupation, Wexford ascended the stairs. They were of black oak let into a kind of steeply sloping tunnel in the thick wall. From behind the single door at the top he heard low voices. He knocked. Mrs Cantrip opened the door a crack and whispered:

  ‘I’ve broke the news. Will you be wanting me any more?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Cantrip.’

  She came out, her face very red. A shaft of sunlight stabbed the shadows of the lower room as she let herself out. Wexford hesitated and then he went into Villiers’ writing room.

  The classics master remained sitting at his desk but he turned a grave cold face towards Wexford and said, ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector. What can I do for you?’

  ‘This is a bad business, Mr Villiers. I won’t keep you long. just a few questions, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly. Won’t you sit down?’

  A large, somewhat chilly room, darkly panelled. The windows were small and obscured by clustering leaves.

  There was a square of carpet on the floor. The furniture, a horsehair sofa, two Victorian armchairs with leather seats, a gateleg table, had apparently been rejected from the Manor proper. Villiers’ desk was a mass of papers, open works of reference, tins of paper clips, ballpoint pens and empty cigarette packets. At one end stood a stack of new books, all identical to each other and to the one Wexford had seen on Nightingale’s bedside table:

  Wordsworth in Love, by Denys Villiers, author of Wordsworth at Grasmere and Anything to Show More Fair.

  Before sitting down, Wexford picked up the topmost of these books just as he had picked up the one in the bedroom, but this time, instead of quickly scanning the text, he turned it over to eye the portrait of Villiers on the back of its jacket. It was a flattering photograph or else taken long ago.

  The man who faced him, coldly watching this brief perusal, seemed in his late forties. He had once, Wexford thought, been fair and handsome, strikingly like his dead sister, but time or perhaps illness had taken all that away. Yes, illness probably. Men dying of cancer looked like Villiers.

  In their faces Wexford had seen that same dusty parched look, yellowish-grey drawn features, blue eyes bleached a haggard grey. He was painfully thin, his mouth bloodless.

  ‘I realise this must have been a great shock to you,’ Wexford began. ‘It seems unfortunate that no one broke the news to you earlier.’

  Villiers’ thin colourless eyebrows rose a fra
ction. His expression was unpleasant, supercilious. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘it makes very little diftrence. My sister and I weren’t particularly attached to each other.’

  ‘May I ask why not?’

  ‘You may and I’ve no objection to answering you, The reason was that we had nothing in common. My sister was an empty-headed frivolous woman and I-well, I am not an empty-headed frivolous man.’

  Villiers glanced down at his typewriter. ‘Still, I hardly think it would be tactful for me to do any more work today, do you?’

  ‘I believe you and your wife spent last evening at the Manor, Mr Villiers?’

  ‘That is so. We played bridge. At ten-thirty we left, drove home and went to bed.’ Villiers’ voice was clipped and sharp with an edge of temper to it, a temper that could be quickly aroused. He coughed and pressed his hand to his chest. ‘I have a bungalow near Clusterwell. It took me about ten minutes to drive there from the Manor last night. My wife and I went straight to bed.’

  Very tidy and brief, thought Wexford. it might all have been rehearsed beforehand. ‘How did your sister seem last night, sir? Normal? Or did she appear excited?’

  Villiers sighed. More from boredom than sorrow, Wexford decided. ‘She was just as she always was, Chief Inspector, the gracious lady of the Manor whom everyone loved. Her bridge was always appalling, and last night it was neither more nor less appalling than usual.’

  ‘You knew she went for nocturnal walks in the forest?’

  ‘I knew she went for nocturnal walks in the grounds. Presumably it was because she was foolish enough to venture further that she met the end she did.’

  ‘Is that why,’ asked Wexford, ‘you weren’t surprised to hear of her death

  ?’

  ‘On the contrary, I was very surprised. Naturally, I was shocked. But now that I’ve considered it, no, I’m not very surprised any more. Women on their own in lonely places do get murdered. Or so I’m told. I never read the newspapers. Matters of that kind don’t interest me.’

  ‘You’ve certainly made it clear that you disliked your sister.’ Wexford glanced about the large quiet room. ‘Strange, under the circumstances, that you should have been among those who acceptcd her bounty.’

  ‘I accepted my brother-in-law’s, Chief Inspector.’ White with anger or with some other emotion Wexford couldn’t analyse, Villiers sprang out of his chair. ‘Good morning to you.’ He opened the door and the dark stair well yawned ahead of him.

  Wexford got up to leave. Halfway across the room he stopped and looked at Villiers, suddenly puzzled. It was impossible to believe the man could look worse, more ill, more corpselike, than when he had first seen him. But now as he stood in the doorway, one thin arm outflung, all vestige of colour, yellow-greyish pigment as it was, had drained from his skin.

  Alarmed, Wexford started forward. Villiers gave a strange little gasp and fainted into his arms.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ said Crocker, who was the police doctor and Wexford’s friend. ‘Elizabeth Nightingale was a well-nourished and extremely well-preserved woman of about forty.’

  ‘Forty-one,’ said Wexford, taking off his raincoat and hanging it on the peg behind his office door. A couple of rounds of beef sandwiches and a flask of coffee, sent down from the canteen, awaited him on the corner of his desk. He sat down in the big swivel chair and, after looking distastefully at the topmost sandwich which was beginning to curl at the edges, started on it with a sigh.

  ‘Death,’ said the doctor, ‘resulted from a fractured skull and multiple injuries to the brain. At least a dozen blows were struck by a not very blunt metal instrument. I don’t mean an axe or a knife, but something with sharper edges to it, for instance, than a lead pipe or a poker. Death occurred-well, you know how hard it is to estimatesay after eleven p.m. and before one a.m.’

  Burden was sitting against the wall. Above his head hung the official map of the Kingsmarkham district on which the dark mass of Cheriton Forest showed like the silhouette of a crouching cat. ‘Nothing’s come of our search of the grounds and the forest so far,’ he said. ‘What sort of a weapon had you in mind?’

  ‘Not my job, Mike old boy,’ said Crocker, moving to the window and staring down at the High Street below. Possibly he found this familiar sight boring, for he breathed heavily on the pane and began to draw on the breath film a pattern that might have been a pot plant or a diagram of the human respiratory system. ‘I just wouldn’t have a clue. Could be a metal vase or even a cooking utensil. Or a fancy ashtray or fire-tongs or a tankard.’

  ‘You think?’ said Wexford, munching scornfully. ‘A fellow goes into a wood to murder a woman armed with an egg-whisk, does he, or a saucepan? A bloke sees his wife carrying on with another man so he whips out the carved silver vase he happens to have in his pocket and bops her over the head with it?’

  ‘You don’t mean to say,’ said the doctor, shocked, ‘that you’ve got that pillar of society Quentin Nightingale lined up for this job?’

  ‘He’s human, isn’t he? He has his passions. Frankly, I’d rather plurnp for that brother of hers, that Villiers. Only he looks too ill to lift a knife and fork, let alone hit anyone with a frying pan.’ Wexford finished his sandwiches and replaced the cap on the thermos flask. Then he swivelled round and gazed thoughtfully at the doctor. ‘I’ve been talking to Villiers,’ he said. ‘He impressed me as a very sick man, among other things. Yellow skin, tremb—

  ling hands, the lot. just now, when I was leaving, he fainted dead away.

  For a minute I thought he was dead, but he came to all right and I got him over to the Manor.’

  ‘He’s a patient of mine,’ said Crocker, rubbing out his drawing with the heel of his hand and revealing to Wexford his favourite view of ancient housetops and old Sussex trees. ‘The Nightingales go privately to some big nob but Villiers has been on my list for years.’

  ‘And you,’ said Wexford sardonically, ‘being a true priest of the medical confessional, are going to keep whatever’s wrong with him locked up in your hippocratic bosom?’

  ‘Well, I would if there was anything to lock. Only it so happens that he’s as fit as you are.’ Crocker eyed Wexford’s bulk, the purple veins prominent on his forehead. ‘Fitter,’ he said critically.

  With an effort Wexford drew in the muscles of his abdomen and sat up straighter. ‘Ain’t that arnazernent?’ he said. ‘I thought it was cancer, but it must be some inner torment feeding on his damask cheek. Like guilt. How old is he?’

  ‘Now look . said the doctor, fidgeting in his seat.

  ‘Go on, strain yourself. A man’s age isn’t something he confides to his quack behind the aseptic green shades of the consulting room.’

  ‘He’s thirty-eight.’

  ‘Thirty-eight! He looks ten years older and damn’ ill with it. By God, Mike here is a stripling compared to him.’

  Two sets of ageing eyes focussed speculatively on Burden, who looked modestly away, not without a certain air of preening himself. The doctor said rather pettishly, ‘I don’t know why you keep on about him looking ill. He works himself too hard, that’s all. Anyway, he doesn’t look that ill or that old.’

  ‘He did today,’ said Wexford.

  ‘Shock,’ said the doctor. ‘What d’you expect when a man hears his sister’s been murdered?’

  ‘Just that, except that he evidently hated her guts. You should have heard the generous fraternal things he said about her. As nasty a piece of work as I’ve come across for a long time is Mr Villiers. Come on, Mike, we’re going to call on some ladies who will melt and tell all under the effect of your sexy and-may I say?-youthful charm.’

  They all went down together in the lift and the doctor left them at the station steps. The wind had dropped entirely but the High Street was still littered by the debris the gale had left in its wake, broken twigs, a tiny empty chaffinch nest blown from the crown of a tall tree, here and there a tile from an ancient roof.

  Bryant drove them out of town by the Pomfret road,
soon taking the left-hand fork for Myfleet. Their route led them past Kingsmarkham Boys’

  Grammar School, more properly known as the King Edward the Sixth Foundation for the Sons of Yeomen, Burgesses and Those of the Better Sort. The sons were at present home for the summer holidays and the brown-brick Tudor building bore a lonelier, more orderly, aspect than in term-time. A large new wing-a monstrosity, the reactionaries called it—had been added to the rear and the left side of the old school five years before, for the yeomen and burgesses, if not the better sort, had recently increased in alarming numbers.

  The school had a dignity and grace about it, common to large buildings of its vintage, and most Kingsmarkham parents sought places there for their sons, setting aside with contempt the educational and environmental advan—

  tages of Stowerton Comprehensive. Who wanted a magni—

  ficent steel and glass science lab, a trampoline room or a swimming pool of Olympic standard, when they could instead boast to their acquaintance of historic portals and worn stone steps trodden (though on one single occasion) by the feet of Henry the Eighth’s son? Besides, if your boy was at what everyone called the ‘King’s’ school you could quite convincingly pretend to those not in the know that he attended a public school and conceal the fact that the State paid.

  Burden, whose son had been admitted there one year before on passing a complex and subtle equivalent of the Eleven-plus, now said:

  ‘That’s where Villiers teaches.’

  ‘Latin and Greek are his subjects, aren’t they V

  Burden nodded. ‘He takes John for Latin. I reckon he teaches Greek to the older ones. John says he works there a lot after school hours, doing something in the library. That’s the library there in the new wing.’

  ‘Research for his books?’

  ‘Well, it’s a marvellous library. Not that I know much about these things, but I went round it on Open Day and it impressed me no end.’

  ‘John like him, does he?’

  ‘You know what these boys are, sir,’ said Burden. ‘Those little devils in John’s class call him Old Roman Villa. Good disciplinarian, I’d say.’ And the father who had that morning mollified his own son with a gratuitous half-crown added severely: ‘You have to be tough when you’re dealing with these young lads, if you ask me.’