by Ruth Rendell
‘I suppose I am,’ said Wexford.
He sent Loring to keep the Roland Road flat under observation, and then he and Burden went to lunch in the police station canteen. Polly Davies came up to Wexford while he was eating his dessert.
‘I looked in at Bystall Lane, sir, and saw young Ginger. They said, did we think of making other arrangements for him or were they to keep him for a bit?’
‘My God, they haven’t had him twenty-four hours yet.’
‘That’s what I said, sir. Well, I sort of said that. I think they’re short-staffed.’
‘So are we,’ said Wexford. ‘Now then, I don’t suppose anyone saw Karen Bond being put on that doorstep?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir. No one I’ve spoken to, anyway, and no one’s come forward. Mrs Bream who housekeeps for the priest, she says the cardboard box – the Smith’s Crisps box, you know – was there when she came at nine only she didn’t look at it. She thought it was something someone had left for the father and she was going to take it in once she’d got the kitchen cleared up and his bed made. Father Glanville says he went out at ten to nine and he’s positive the box wasn’t there then, so someone must have put it there in those ten minutes. It looks like someone who knows their habits, the father’s and Mrs Bream’s, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘One of his flock, d’you mean?’
‘It could be. Why not?’
‘If you’re right,’ said Wexford dryly, ‘whoever it was is probably confessing it at this moment and Father Glanville will, of course, have to keep her identity locked in his bosom.’
He went off up to his office to await word from Loring. There, sitting at his desk, thinking, he remembered noticing in Susan Rains’s flat, honoured on a little shelf fixed there for the purpose, a plaster statuette of the Virgin with lilies in her arms. The Leightons were perhaps a Catholic family. He was on the point of deciding to go back to Greenhill Court for a further talk with Susan Rains when a phone call from Sergeant Camb announced the arrival of Stephen Pollard.
The stockbroker and his wife had been on holiday in Scotland and had driven all the way back, non-stop, all five hundred and forty miles, starting at six that morning. Wexford had met Pollard once before and remembered him as a choleric person. Now he was tired from the long drive but he still rampaged and shouted with as much misery as Pippa Bond had shown over the loss of her baby. The safe, it appeared, had contained a sapphire and platinum necklace and bracelet, four rings, three cameos and a diamond cross which Pollard said were worth thirty thousand pounds. No, of course no one knew he had a safe in which he kept valuables. Well, he supposed the cleaning woman did and the cleaning woman before her and all of the series of au pair girls, and maybe the builders who had painted the outside of the house, and the firm who had put up the bars.
‘It’s ludicrous,’ said Burden when he had gone. ‘All that carry-on when it’s a dead cert his insurance company’ll fork out. He might as well go straight back to Scotland. We’re the people who’ve got the slog and we’ll get stick if those villains aren’t caught, while it won’t make a scrap of difference to him one way or the other. And I’ll tell you another thing that’s ludicrous,’ he said, warming to a resentful theme. ‘The ratepayers of Sussex could have the expense of young Ginger’s upbringing for eighteen years because his mother’s too scared to come and claim him.’
‘What shall I do about it? Hold a young wives’ meeting and draw them a chalk circle?’
Burden looked bewildered.
‘Haven’t you ever heard of the Chinese chalk circle and Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle? You have to draw a circle in chalk on the ground and put the child in it, and of the mothers who claim him the one who can pull him out of the circle is his true mother and may have him.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Burden after a pause, ‘but in this case, it’s not mothers who want him, it’s he who wants a mother. No one seems to want him.’
‘Poor Ginger,’ said Wexford, and then the phone rang. It was Loring on his radio to say Paddy Jasper had come into Roland Road and gone up the stairs to Leilie Somers’s flat.
By the time Wexford and Burden got there Tony Jasper had arrived as well. The brothers were both tall, heavily built men but Tony’s figure still had a youthfully athletic look about it while Paddy had the beginnings of a paunch. Tony’s otherwise handsome appearance was ruined by a broken nose which had never been put right and through which he had difficulty in breathing. The repulsive and even sinister air he had was partly due to his always breathing through his mouth. Paddy and he were sitting facing each other at Leilie’s living-room table. They were both smoking, the air in the room was thick with smoke, and Tony was dealing a pack of cards. Wexford thought the cards were the inspiration of the moment, hastily fetched out when they heard the knock at the downstairs door.
‘Put the cards away, Tone,’ said Paddy. ‘It’s rude to play when we’ve got company.’ He was always polite in a thoroughly offensive way. ‘Leilie here,’ he said, ‘has got something in her head about you wanting to know where I was last evening. Like what sort of time did you have in mind?’
Wexford told him. Paddy smiled. Somehow he managed to make it a paternal smile. He was stopping a few days with Leilie, he said, and his son. He hadn’t seen much of his son since the child was born on account of having this good job up north but not a chance of accommodation for a woman and a kid, no way. So he’d come down for his holidays the previous Saturday and what does he hear but that Leilie’s got this evening job up the Andromeda. Well, she’d taken Monday night off to be with him and done an exchange with another girl for Tuesday, but when it got to last night she couldn’t very well skive off again so he said not to worry, he’d babysit, him and Tony here, and they’d have some of their old mates round. Johnny Farrow and Pip Monkton, for a beer and a hand of solo.
‘Which is what we did, Mr Wexford.’
‘Right,’ said Tony.
‘Leilie put Matthew in his cot and then the boys came round and she got us a bite to eat. She’s a good girl is Leilie. She went off to work about half seven, didn’t you, love? Then we did the dishes and had our game. Oh, and the lady next door came round to check up if four grown men could look after baby OK, very kind of her, I’m sure. And then at half eleven Pip went off home on account of his missus being the boss round his place, and at quarter past twelve Leilie came back. She got a lift so she was early. That’s right, isn’t it, love?’
Leilie nodded. ‘Except you never did no dishes.’
Wexford kept looking at the man’s huge feet which were no longer under the table but splayed out across the cheap bright bit of carpet. He wondered where the shoes were that had made those prints. Burnt, probably. The remains of the safe, once they had blown it open, might be in any pond or river in the Home Counties. Johnny Farrow was a notorious peterman or expert with explosives. He turned to Leilie and asked a question perhaps none of them had expected.
‘Who usually looks after the baby when you’re working?’
‘Julie next door. That girl you were talking to when you came earlier. I used to take him to my mum, my mum lives up Charteris Road, it’s not very far, but he started getting funny in the evenings, crying and screaming, and he got worse if I took him out and left him in a strange place.’ Wexford wondered if she was giving him such a detailed answer to his question because she sometimes left the baby unattended and thought she might be breaking the law. He remembered the other boy, the one with the fractured skull and broken arm, and he hardened towards her. ‘Then Mum had to go into hospital, anyway, she only came out yesterday. So Julie said to leave him here and she’d pop in every half hour, and she’d hear him anyway if he cried. You can hear a pin drop through these walls. And Julie never goes out on account of she’s got a baby of her own. She’s been very good has Julie because I reckon Matthew does cry most evenings, and you can’t just leave them to cry, can you?’
‘I’m glad to inform you, my dear,’ said Paddy with ou
trageous pomposity, ‘that my son did not utter a squeak last evening but was as good as gold,’ and on the last word he looked hard at Wexford and stretched his lips into a huge humourless smile.
Julie Lang confirmed that Paddy Jasper, Tony Jasper, Pip Monkton and Johnny Farrow had all been in the flat next door when she called to check on the safety and comfort of Matthew at eight-thirty. She had a key to Leilie’s flat but she hadn’t used it, knowing Mr Jasper to be there. She wouldn’t have dreamt of doing that because it was Mr Jasper’s home really, wasn’t it? So she had knocked at the door and Mr Jasper had let her in and not been very nice about it actually, and she had felt very awkward especially when he’d said, go in and see for yourself if I’m not to be trusted to look after my own child. He had opened the bedroom door and made her look and she had just glanced at the cot and seen Matthew was all right and sleeping.
‘Well, I felt so bad about it,’ said Julie Lang, ‘that I said to him, perhaps he’d like the key back, and he said, yes, he’d been going to ask me for it as they wouldn’t be needing my services any longer, thanks very much. He was quite rude really but I did feel bad about it.’
She had given Paddy Jasper the key. As far as she knew, the four men had remained in the flat with Matthew till Leilie got back at twelve-fifteen. By then, anyway, her husband had come home and they were both in bed asleep. No, she had heard no footsteps on the stairs, not even those of Pip Monkton going home at eleven-thirty. Of course she had had the television on so maybe she wouldn’t have heard, but she was positive there hadn’t been a sound out of Matthew.
Wexford and Burden went next to the home of Pip Monkton. Johnny Farrow’s confirmation of the alibi would amount to very little, for he had a long criminal record for safebreaking, but Monkton had never been convicted of anything, had never even been charged with anything. He was an ex-publican, apparently perfectly respectable, and the only blot on his white innocent life was his known friendship with Farrow with whom he had been at school and whom he had supported and stuck to during Farrow’s long prison sentences and periods of poverty-stricken idleness. If Monkton said that the four of them had been together all that evening babysitting in Leilie Somers’s flat, Wexford knew he might as well throw up the sponge. The judge, the jury, the court, would believe Pip Monkton just as they would believe Julie Lang.
And Monkton did say it. Looking Wexford straight in the eye (so that the chief inspector knew he must be lying) he declared boldly that he and the Jaspers and Johnny had been in Roland Road, playing solo and drinking beer, until he left for home at half-past eleven. Wexford had him down to the police station and went on asking him about it, but he couldn’t break him down. Monkton sounded as if he had learnt by heart what he had to say, and he went on saying it over and over again like a talking bird or a record on which the needle has got stuck.
When it got to six Wexford had himself driven to the Andromeda where the manager, who had an interest in keeping on the right side of the police, answered his questions very promptly. He got back to the station to find Burden and Polly discussing the one relevant piece of information Burden had succeeded in finding out about Monkton – that he had recently had an extension built on to his house. To cover the cost of this he had taken out a second mortgage, but the costs had come to three thousand pounds more than the builder’s estimate.
‘That’ll be about what Monkton’s getting for perjury,’ said Burden. ‘That’ll be his share. Tony drove the van, Paddy and Johnny did the job while Monkton covers for them. I imagine they left Leilie’s place around nine and got to Ploughman’s Lane by a quarter past. They’ll have got the safe out in an hour and got to the gate in the fence with it by ten-thirty, which was just about the time Willoughby spotted the van. Tony drove off, ditched the van in Myringham, came back to Stowerton on the last bus, the one that leaves Myringham at ten past eleven and which would have got him to Stowerton High Street by ten to twelve. God knows how the others got that safe back. My guess is that they didn’t. They hid it in one of the meadows at the back of Ploughman’s Lane and went back for it this morning – with Johnny Farrow’s car. Then Johnny blew it. They used the wheels again and Johnny blew it somewhere up on the downs.’
Wexford hadn’t spoken for some minutes. Now he said, ‘When Leilie Somers was charged with this baby-battering thing, did she plead guilty or not guilty?’
Rather surprised by the apparent irrelevance of this question, Burden said. ‘Guilty. There wasn’t much evidence offered apart from the doctor’s. Leilie pleaded guilty and said something about being tired and strained and not being able to stand it when the baby cried. Damned disgraceful nonsense.’
‘Yes, it was damned disgraceful nonsense,’ said Wexford quietly, and then he said, ‘The walls in those flats are very thin, aren’t they? So thin that from one side you can hear a pin drop on the other.’ He was silent and meditative for a moment. ‘What was Leilie Somers’s mother’s maiden name?’
‘What?’ said Burden. ‘How on earth do you expect me to know a thing like that?’
‘I just thought you might. I thought it might be an Irish name, you see. Because Leilie is probably short for Eileen, which is an Irish name. I expect she called herself Leilie when she was too young to pronounce her name properly.’
Burden said with an edge of impatience to his voice, ‘Look, do I get to know what all this is leading up to?’
‘Sure you do. The arrest of Paddy and Tony Jasper and Johnny Farrow. You can get down to Roland Road and see to it as soon as you like.’
‘For God’s sake, you know as well as I do we’ll never make it stick. We couldn’t break Monkton and he’ll alibi the lot of them.’
‘That’ll be OK,’ said Wexford laconically. ‘Trust me. Believe me, there is no alibi. And now, Polly, you and I will turn our attention to the matter of young Ginger and the Kingsmarkham Chalk Circle.’
Wexford left Polly sitting outside in the car. It was eight o’clock and still light. He rang the bell that had fetched Leilie down that afternoon, and when she didn’t come he rang the other. Julie Lang appeared.
‘She’s upset. I’ve got her in with me having a cup of tea.’
‘I’d like to see her, Mrs Lang, and I’ll need to see her alone. I’ll go and sit in my car for five minutes and then if she’ll . . .’
Leilie Somers’s voice from the top of the stairs cut off the end of his sentence. ‘You can come up. I’m OK now.’
Wexford climbed the stairs towards her, Julie Lang following him. Leilie stood back to let him pass. She seemed smaller than ever, thinner, meeker, her hennaed hair showing a paler red at the roots, her face white and deeply sad. Julie Lang put her hand on her arm, squeezed it, went off quickly into her own flat. Leilie put the key into the lock of her front door and opened the door and stood looking at the empty neat place, the passage, the open doors into the other rooms, now all made more melancholy by the encroaching twilight. Tears stood in her eyes and she turned her face so that Wexford should not see them fall.
‘He’s not worth it, Leilie,’ said Wexford.
‘I know that, I know what he’s worth. But you won’t get me being disloyal to him, Mr Wexford, I shan’t say a word.’
‘Let’s go in and sit down.’ He made his way to the table where it was lightest and sat down in the chair Tony Jasper had sat in. ‘Where’s the baby?’
‘With my mum.’
‘Rather much for someone who’s just come out of hospital, isn’t it?’ Wexford looked at his watch. ‘You’re going to be late for work. What time is it you start? Eight-thirty?’
‘Eight,’ she said. ‘I’m not going. I couldn’t, not after what’s happened to Paddy. Mr Wexford, you might as well go. I’m not going to say anything. If I was Paddy’s wife you couldn’t make me say anything, and I’m as good as his wife, I’ve been more to him than most wives’d have been.’
‘I know that, Leilie,’ said Wexford, ‘I know all about that,’ and his voice was so loaded with meaning that she stared
at him with frightened eyes whose whites shone in the dusk. ‘Leilie,’ he said, ‘when they drew the chalk circle and put the child in it the girl who had brought him up refused to pull him out because she knew she would hurt him. Rather than hurt him she preferred that someone else should have him.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.
‘I think you do. It’s not so different from Solomon’s judgement of cutting the baby in half. The child’s mother wouldn’t have that happen, better let the other woman have him. You pleaded guilty in court to crimes against your first son you had never committed. It was Jasper who injured that child, and it was Jasper who got you to take the blame because he knew you would get a light sentence whereas he would get a heavy one. And afterwards you had the baby adopted – not because you didn’t love him but because like the chalk circle woman you would rather lose him than have him hurt again. Isn’t it true?’
She stared at him. Her head moved, a tiny affirmative bob. Wexford leaned across to the window and opened it. He waved his hand out of the window, withdrew it and closed the casement again. Leilie was crying, making no attempt to dry her tears.
‘Were you brought up as a Catholic?’ he said.
‘I was baptized,’ she said in a voice not much above a whisper. ‘Mum’s a Catholic. Her and Dad, they got married in Galway where Mum comes from, and Dad had to promise to bring the kids up Catholic.’ A sob caught her throat. ‘I haven’t been to mass for years. Mr Wexford, please go away now and leave me alone. I just want to be left alone.’
He said, ‘I’m sorry to hear you say that because I’ve got a visitor for you, and he’ll certainly be staying the night.’ He switched on lights, the living-room light, the light in the hall and one over the top of the door, and then he opened the door and Polly Davies walked in with young Ginger in her arms.
Leilie blinked at the light. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and then she lifted it and opened her eyes and made a sort of bound for Polly, nearly knocking Wexford over. But she didn’t snatch Ginger. She stood trembling, looking at Polly, her hands moving slowly forward until, with an extreme gentle tenderness, they closed over and caressed the baby’s downy red-gold head.
