Collected Short Stories

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘It was unfortunate that you rinsed those plates. Had you not done so and called a doctor, the remains of that stew would almost certainly have been sent for analysis, and if it was harmless as you say, all this investigation could have been avoided.’

  ‘It was harmless,’ Kingman said stonily.

  Out in the car Wexford said, ‘I’m inclined to believe him, Mike. And unless Hood or Corinne Last has something really positive to tell us, I’d let it rest. Shall we go and see her next?’

  The cottage Corinne had shared with Axel Kingman was on a lonely stretch of road outside the village of Myfleet. It was a stone cottage with a slate roof, surrounded by a well-tended pretty garden. A green Ford Escort stood on the drive in front of a weatherboard garage. Under a big old apple tree, from which the yellow leaves were falling, the shaggy caps, immediately recognisable, grew in three thick clumps.

  She was a tall woman, the owner of this house, with a beautiful, square-jawed, high-cheekboned face and a mass of dark hair. Wexford was at once reminded of the Klimt painting of a languorous red-lipped woman, gold-neckleted, half covered in gold draperies, though Corinne Last wore a sweater and a denim smock. Her voice was low and measured. He had the impression she could never be flustered or caught off her guard.

  ‘You’re the author of a cookery book, I believe?’ he said.

  She made no answer but handed him a paperback which she took down from a bookshelf. Cooking for Nothing, Dishes from Hedgerow and Pasture by Corinne Last. He looked through the index and found the recipe he wanted. Opposite it was a coloured photograph of six people eating what looked like brown soup. The recipe included carrots, onions, herbs, cream, and a number of other harmless ingredients. The last lines read: Stewed shaggy caps are best served piping hot with wholewheat bread. For drinkables, see page 171. He glanced at page 171, then handed the book to Burden.

  ‘This was the dish Mr Kingman made that night?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had a way of leaning back when she spoke and of half lowering her heavy glossy eyelids. It was serpentine and a little repellent. ‘I picked the shaggy caps myself out of this garden. I don’t understand how they could have made Hannah ill, but they must have done because she was fine when we first arrived. She hadn’t got any sort of gastric infection, that’s nonsense.’

  Burden put the book aside. ‘But you were all served stew out of the same tureen.’

  ‘I didn’t see Axel actually serve Hannah. I was out of the room.’ The eyelids flickered and almost closed.

  ‘Was it usual for Mr Kingman to rinse plates’ as soon as they were removed?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’ She moved her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I do know that Hannah was very ill just after eating that stew. Axel doesn’t like doctors, of course, and perhaps it would have – well, embarrassed him to call Dr Castle in the circumstances. Hannah had black spots in front of her eyes, she was getting double vision. I was extremely concerned for her.’

  ‘But you didn’t take it on yourself to get a doctor, Miss Last? Or even support Mr Hood in his allegations?’

  ‘Whatever John Hood said, I knew it couldn’t be the shaggy caps.’ There was a note of scorn when she spoke Hood’s name. ‘And I was rather frightened. I couldn’t help thinking it would be terrible if Axel got into some sort of trouble, if there was an inquiry or something.’

  ‘There’s an inquiry now, Miss Last.’

  ‘Well, it’s different now, isn’t it? Hannah’s dead. I mean, it’s not just suspicion or conjecture any more.’

  She saw them out and closed the front door before they had reached the garden gate. Farther along the roadside and under the hedges more shaggy caps could be seen as well as other kinds of fungi Wexford couldn’t identify – little mushroom-like things with pinkish gills, a cluster of small yellow umbrellas, and on the trunk of an oak tree, bulbous smoke-coloured swellings that Burden said were oyster mushrooms.

  ‘That woman,’ said Wexford, ‘is a mistress of the artless insinuation. She damned Kingman with almost every word, but she never came out with anything like an accusation.’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose Kingman’s brother-in-law will be at work?’

  ‘Presumably,’ said Burden, but John Hood was not at work. He was waiting for them at the police station, fuming at the delay, and threatening ‘if something wasn’t done at once’ to take his grievances to the Chief Constable, even to the Home Office.

  ‘Something is being done,’ said Wexford quietly. ‘I’m glad you’ve come here, Mr Hood. But try to keep calm, will you, please?’

  It was apparent to Wexford from the first that John Hood was in a different category of intelligence from that of Kingman and Corinne Last. He was a thick-set man of perhaps no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with bewildered, resentful blue eyes in a puffy flushed face. A man, Wexford thought, who would fling out rash accusations he couldn’t substantiate, who would be driven to bombast and bluster in the company of the ex-teacher and that clever subtle woman.

  He began to talk now, not wildly, but still without restraint, repeating what he had said to Burden, reiterating, without putting forward any real evidence, that his brother-in-law had meant to kill his sister that night. It was only by luck that she had survived. Kingman was a ruthless man who would have stopped at nothing to be rid of her. He, Hood, would never forgive himself that he hadn’t made a stand and called the doctor.

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Hood, but what exactly were your sister’s symptoms?’

  ‘Vomiting and stomach pains, violent pains,’ said Hood.

  ‘She complained of nothing else?’

  ‘Wasn’t that enough? That’s what you get when someone feeds you poisonous rubbish.’

  Wexford merely raised his eyebrows. Abruptly, he left the events of that evening and said, ‘What had gone wrong with your sister’s marriage?’

  Before Hood replied, Wexford could sense he was keeping something back. A wariness came into his eyes and then was gone. ‘Axel wasn’t the right person for her,’ he began. ‘She had problems, she needed understanding, she wasn’t . . .’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Wasn’t what, Mr Hood? What problems?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with all this,’ Hood muttered.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that. You made this accusation, you started this business off. It’s not for you now to keep anything back.’ On a sudden inspiration, Wexford said, ‘Had these problems anything to do with the money she was spending?’

  Hood was silent and sullen. Wexford thought rapidly over the things he had been told – Axel Kingman’s fanaticism on one particular subject, Hannah’s desperate need of an unspecified kind of support during the early days of her marriage. Later on, her alternating moods, and then the money, the weekly sums of money spent and unaccounted for.

  He looked up and said baldly, ‘Was your sister an alcoholic, Mr Hood?’

  Hood hadn’t liked this directness. He flushed and looked affronted. He skirted round a frank answer. Well, yes, she drank. She was at pains to conceal her drinking. It had been going on more or less consistently since her first marriage broke up.

  ‘In fact, she was an alcoholic,’ said Wexford.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Your brother-in-law didn’t know?’

  ‘Good God, no. Axel would have killed her!’ He realized what he had said. ‘Maybe that’s why. Maybe he found out.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Hood. Now I imagine that in the first few months of her marriage she made an effort to give up drinking. She needed a good deal of support during this time but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell Mr Kingman why she needed it. Her efforts failed, and slowly, because she couldn’t manage without it, she began drinking again.’

  ‘She wasn’t as bad as she used to be,’ Hood said with pathetic eagerness. ‘And only in the evenings. She told me she never had a drink before six, and after that she’d have a few more, gulping them down on the quiet so Axel wouldn’t know.’

  Burden said suddenly,
‘Had your sister been drinking that evening?’

  ‘I expect so. She wouldn’t have been able to face company, not even just Corinne and me, without a drink.’

  ‘Did anyone besides yourself know that your sister drank?’

  ‘My mother did. My mother and I had a sort of pact to keep it dark from everyone so that Axel wouldn’t find out.’ He hesitated and then said rather defiantly, ‘I did tell Corinne. She’s a wonderful person, she’s very clever. I was worried about it and I didn’t know what to do. She promised she wouldn’t tell Axel.’

  ‘I see.’ Wexford had his own reasons for thinking she hadn’t done so. Deep in thought, he got up and walked to the other end of the room where he stood gazing out of the window. Burden’s continuing questions, Hood’s answers, reached him only as a confused murmur of voices. Then he heard Burden say more loudly, ‘That’s all for now, Mr Hood, unless the chief inspector has anything more to ask you.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Wexford abstractedly, and when Hood had somewhat truculently departed, ‘Time for lunch. It’s past two. Personally, I shall avoid any dish containing fungi, even psalliota campestris.’

  After Burden had looked that one up and identified it as the common mushroom, they lunched and then made a round of such wineshops in Kingsmarkham as were open at that hour. At the Wine Basket they drew a blank, but the assistant in the Vineyard told them that a woman answering Hannah Kingman’s description had been a regular customer, and that on the previous Wednesday, the day before her death, she had called in and bought a bottle of Courvoisier Cognac.

  ‘There was no liquor of any kind in Kingman’s flat,’ said Burden. ‘Might have been an empty bottle in the rubbish, I suppose.’ He made a rueful face. ‘We didn’t look, didn’t think we had any reason to. But she couldn’t have drunk a whole bottleful on the Wednesday, could she?’

  ‘Why are you so interested in this drinking business, Mike? You don’t seriously see it as a motive for murder, do you? That Kingman killed her because he’d found out, or been told, that she was a secret drinker?’

  ‘It was a means, not a motive,’ said Burden. ‘I know how it was done. I know how Kingman tried to kill her that first time.’ He grinned. ‘Makes a change for me to find the answer before you, doesn’t it? I’m going to follow in your footsteps and make a mystery of it for the time being, if you don’t mind. With your permission we’ll go back to the station, pick up those shaggy caps and conduct a little experiment.’

  Michael Burden lived in a neat bungalow in Tabard Road. He had lived there with his wife until her untimely death and continued to live there with his sixteen-year-old daughter, his son being away at university. But that evening Pat Burden was out with her boy friend, and there was a note left for her father on the refrigerator. Dad, I ate the cold beef from yesterday. Can you open a tin for yourself? Back by 10.30. Love, P.

  Burden read this note several times, his expression of consternation deepening with each perusal. And Wexford could precisely have defined the separate causes which brought that look of weariness into Burden’s eyes, that frown, that drooping of the mouth. Because she was motherless his daughter had to eat not only cold but leftover food, she who should be carefree was obliged to worry about her father, loneliness drove her out of her home until the appallingly late hour of half-past ten. It was all nonsense, of course, the Burden children were happy and recovered from their loss, but how to make Burden see it that way? Widowhood was something he dragged about with him like a physical infirmity. He looked up from the note, screwed it up and eyed his surroundings vaguely and with a kind of despair. Wexford knew that look of desolation. He saw it on Burden’s face each time he accompanied him home.

  It evoked exasperation as well as pity. He wanted to tell Burden – once or twice he had done so – to stop treating John and Pat like retarded paranoiacs, but instead he said lightly, ‘I read somewhere the other day that it wouldn’t do us a scrap of harm if we never ate another hot meal as long as we lived. In fact, the colder and rawer the better.’

  ‘You sound like the Axel Kingman brigade,’ said Burden, rallying and laughing which was what Wexford had meant him to do. ‘Anyway, I’m glad she didn’t cook anything. I shouldn’t have been able to eat it and I’d hate her to take it as criticism.’

  Wexford decided to ignore that one. ‘While you’re deciding just how much I’m to be told about this experiment of yours, d’you mind if I phone my wife?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  It was nearly six. Wexford came back to find Burden peeling carrots and onions. The four specimens of coprinus comatus, beginning to look a little wizened, lay on a chopping board. On the stove a saucepanful of bone stock was heating up.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Making shaggy cap stew. My theory is that the stew is harmless when eaten by non-drinkers, and toxic, or toxic to some extent, when taken by those with alcohol in the stomach. How about that? In a minute, when this lot’s cooking, I’m going to take a moderate quantity of alcohol, then I’m going to eat the stew. Now say I’m a damned fool if you like.’

  Wexford shrugged. He grinned. ‘I’m overcome by so much courage and selfless devotion to the duty you owe the taxpayers. But wait a minute. Are you sure only Hannah had been drinking that night? We know Kingman hadn’t. What about the other two?’

  ‘I asked Hood that when you were off in your daydream. He called for Corinne Last at six, at her request. They picked some apples for his mother, then she made him coffee. He did suggest they call in at a pub for a drink on their way to the Kingmans’, but apparently she took so long getting ready that they didn’t have time.’

  ‘OK. Go ahead then. But wouldn’t it be easier to call in an expert? There must be such people. Very likely someone holds a chair of fungology or whatever it’s called at the University of the South.’

  ‘Very likely. We can do that after I’ve tried it. I want to know for sure now. Are you willing too?’

  ‘Certainly not. I’m not your guest to that extent. Since I’ve told my wife I won’t be home for dinner, I’ll take it as a kindness if you’ll make me some innocent scrambled eggs.’

  He followed Burden into the living room where the inspector opened a door in the sideboard. ‘What’ll you drink?’

  ‘White wine, if you’ve got any, or vermouth if you haven’t. You know how abstemious I have to be.’

  Burden poured vermouth and soda. ‘Ice?’

  ‘No, thanks. What are you going to have? Brandy? That was Hannah Kingman’s favourite tipple apparently.’

  ‘Haven’t got any,’ said Burden. ‘It’ll have to be whisky. I think we can reckon she had two double brandies before that meal, don’t you? I’m not so brave I want to be as ill as she was.’ He caught Wexford’s eye. ‘You don’t think some people could be more sensitive to it than others, do you?’

  ‘Bound to be,’ said Wexford breezily. ‘Cheers!’

  Burden sipped his heavily watered whisky, then tossed it down. ‘I’ll just have a look at my stew. You sit down. Put the television on.’

  Wexford obeyed him. The big coloured picture was of a wood in autumn, pale blue sky, golden beech leaves. Then the camera closed in on a cluster of red-and-white-spotted fly agaric. Chuckling, Wexford turned it off as Burden put his head round the door.

  ‘I think it’s more or less ready.’

  ‘Better have another whisky.’

  ‘I suppose I had.’ Burden came in and re-filled his glass. ‘That ought to do it.’

  ‘What about my eggs?’

  ‘Oh, God, I forgot. I’m not much of a cook, you know. Don’t know how women manage to get a whole lot of different things brewing and make them synchronize.’

  ‘It is a mystery, isn’t it? I’ll get myself some bread and cheese, if I may.’

  The brownish mixture was in a soup bowl. In the gravy floated four shaggy caps, cut lengthwise. Burden finished his whisky at a gulp.

  ‘What was it the Christians in the arena used to s
ay to the Roman Emperor before they went to the lions?’

  ‘Morituri, te salutamus,’ said Wexford. ‘“We who are about to die salute thee.”’

  ‘Well . . .’ Burden made an effort with the Latin he had culled from his son’s homework. ‘Moriturus, te saluto. Would that be right?’

  ‘I daresay. You won’t die, though.’

  Burden made no answer. He picked up his spoon and began to eat. ‘Can I have some more soda?’ said Wexford.

  There are perhaps few stabs harder to bear than derision directed at one’s heroism. Burden gave him a sour look. ‘Help yourself. I’m busy.’

  Wexford did so. ‘What’s it like?’ he said.

  ‘All right. It’s quite nice, like mushrooms.’

  Doggedly he ate. He didn’t once gag on it. He finished the lot and wiped the bowl round with a piece of bread. Then he sat up, holding himself rather tensely.

  ‘May as well have your telly on now,’ said Wexford. ‘Pass the time.’ He switched it on again. No fly agaric this time, but a dog fox moving across a meadow with Vivaldi playing. ‘How d’you feel?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Burden gloomily.

  ‘Cheer up. It may not last.’

  But it did. After fifteen minutes had passed, Burden still felt perfectly well. He looked bewildered. ‘I was so damned positive. I knew I was going to be retching and vomiting by now. I didn’t put the car away because I was certain you’d have to run me down to the hospital.’

  Wexford only raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You were pretty casual about it, I must say. Didn’t say a word to stop me, did you? Didn’t it occur to you it might have been a bit awkward for you if anything had happened to me?’

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t. I said to get a fungologist.’ And then Wexford, faced by Burden’s aggrieved stare, burst out laughing. ‘Dear old Mike, you’ll have to forgive me. But you know me, d’you honestly think I’d have let you risk your life eating that stuff? I knew you were safe.’