Collected Short Stories

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Come on, Mike, that’s a bit sweeping. I told Ireland I thought it would be OK to go ahead and publish.’

  Burden’s face wore an expression that was almost a caricature of sophisticated scathing knowingness. ‘Well, of course, I haven’t seen it, I can’t say. I’m basing my objection to Gandolph on the Paxton affair. Paxton never confessed to any murder and Gandolph knows it.’

  ‘You can’t say that for sure.’

  Burden sat down. He tapped his fist lightly on the corner of the desk. ‘I can say. I knew Paxton, I knew him well.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No, it was years back, before I came here. In Eastbourne, it was, when Paxton was with the Garfield gang. In the force down there we knew it was useless ever trying to get Paxton to talk. He never talked. I don’t mean he just didn’t give away any info, I mean he didn’t answer when you spoke to him. Various times we tried to interrogate him he just maintained this total silence. A mate of his told me he’d made it a rule not to talk to policemen or social workers or lawyers or any what you might call establishment people, and he never had. He talked to his wife and his kids and his mates all right. But I remember once he was in the dock at Lewes Assizes and the judge addressed him. He just didn’t answer – he wouldn’t – and the judge, it was old Clydesdale, sent him down for contempt. So don’t tell me Paxton made any sort of confession to Kenneth Gandolph, not Paxton.’

  The effect of this was to reawaken all Wexford’s former doubts. He trusted Burden, he had a high opinion of his opinion. He began to wish he had advised Ireland to have tests made to determine the age of the ink used in the 29 February and 6 March entries, or to have the writing examined by a handwriting expert. Yet if Ada Hurst had had a stylized hand self-taught in adulthood . . . What good were handwriting experts anyway? Not much, in his experience. And of course Ireland couldn’t suggest to Gandolph that the ink should be tested without offending the man to such an extent that he would refuse publication of Poison at Paraleash to Carlyon Brent. But Wexford was suddenly certain that those entries were false and that Gandolph had forged them. Very subtly and cunningly he had forged them, having judged that the addition to the diary of just thirty-four words would alter the whole balance of the Winchurch case and shift the culpability from Florence to her lover.

  Thirty-four words. Wexford had made a copy of the diary entries and now he looked at them again. 29 February: F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief! 6 March: F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home. I hope and pray there is no harm. There were no anachronisms – men certainly used cigar cases in 1900 – no divergence from Ada’s usual style. The word ‘twenty’ was written in letters instead of two figures. The writer, on 6 March, had written not about that day but about the day before. Did that amount to anything? Wexford thought not, though he pondered on it for most of the day.

  That evening he was well into the last chapter of Put Money in Thy Purse when the phone rang. It was Jenny Burden. Would he and Dora come to dinner on Saturday? Her parents would be there and her brother.

  Wexford said Dora was out at her pottery class, but yes, they would love to, and had she had a nice time in Crete?

  ‘How sweet of you to ask,’ said the bride. ‘No one else has. Thank you, we had a lovely time.’

  He had meant it when he said they would love to, but still he didn’t feel very happy about meeting Amyas Ireland again. He had a notion that once the book was published some as yet unimagined Warren or Burden would turn up and denounce it, deride it, laugh at the glaring giveaway he and Ireland couldn’t see. When he saw Ireland again he ought to say, don’t do it, don’t take the risk, publish and be damned can have another meaning than the popular one. But how to give such a warning with no sound reason for giving it, with nothing but one of those vague feelings, this time of foreboding, which had so assisted him yet run him into so much trouble in the past? No, there was nothing he could do. He sighed, finished his chapter and moved on to the farmer’s fictionalized memoirs.

  Afterwards Wexford was in the habit of saying that he got more reading done during that week than he had in years. Perhaps it had been a way of escape from fretful thought. But certainly he had passed a freakishly slack week, getting home most nights by six. He even read Miss Camilla Barnet’s The Golden Reticule, and by Friday night there was nothing left but the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars.

  It was a large party, Mr and Mrs Ireland and their son, Burden’s daughter Pat, Grace and her husband and, of course, the Burdens themselves. Jenny’s face glowed with happiness and Aegean sunshine. She welcomed the Wexfords with kisses and brought them drinks served in their own wedding present to her.

  The meeting with Amyas Ireland wasn’t the embarrassment Wexford had feared it would be – had feared, that is, up till a few minutes before he and Dora had left home. And now he knew that he couldn’t contain himself till after dinner, till the morning, or perhaps worse than that – a phone call on Monday morning. He asked his hostess if she would think him very rude if he spoke to her brother alone for five minutes.

  She laughed. ‘Not rude at all. I think you must have got the world’s most wonderful idea for a crime novel and Ammy’s going to publish it. But I don’t know where to put you unless it’s the kitchen. And you,’ she said to her brother, ‘are not to eat anything, mind.’

  ‘I couldn’t wait,’ Wexford said as they found themselves stowed away into the kitchen where every surface was necessarily loaded with the constituents of dinner for ten people. ‘I only found out this evening at the last minute before we were due to come out.’

  ‘It’s something about the Winchurch book?’

  Wexford said eagerly, ‘It’s not too late, is it? I was worried I might be too late.’

  ‘Good God, no. We hadn’t planned to start printing before the autumn.’ Ireland, who had seemed about to disobey his sister and help himself to a macaroon from a silver dish, suddenly lost his appetite. ‘This is serious?’

  ‘Wait till you hear. I was waiting for my wife to finish dressing.’ He grinned. ‘You should make it a rule to read your own books, you know. That’s what I was doing, reading one of those books you sent me and that’s where I found it. You won’t be able to publish Poison at Paraleash.’ The smile went and he looked almost fierce. ‘I’ve no hesitation in saying Kenneth Gandolph is a forger and a cheat and you’d be advised to have nothing to do with him in future.’

  Ireland’s eyes narrowed. ‘Better know it now than later. What did he do and how do you know?’

  From his jacket pocket Wexford took the copy he had made of the diary entries. ‘I can’t prove that the last entry, the one for March 6th that says, F left cigar case in the dining room, went back after seeing me home, I can’t prove that’s forged, I only think it is. What I know for certain is a forgery is the entry for February 29th.’

  ‘Isn’t that the one about strychnine?’

  ‘F destroyed twenty rats with strychnine from his dispensary. What a relief!’

  ‘How do you know it’s forged?’

  ‘Because the day itself didn’t occur,’ said Wexford. ‘In 1900 there was no February 29th, it wasn’t a Leap Year.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was. We’ve been through all that before.’ Ireland sounded both relieved and impatient. ‘All years divisible by four are Leap Years. All century years are divisible by four and 1900 was a century year. 1897 was the year she began the diary, following 1896 which was a Leap Year. Needless to say, there was no February 29th in 1897, 1898 or 1899 so there must have been one in 1900.’

  ‘It wasn’t a Leap Year,’ said Wexford. ‘Didn’t I tell you I found this out through that book of yours, the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars? There’s a lot of useful information in there, and one of the bits of information is about how Pope Gregory composed a new civil calendar to correct the errors of the Julian Calendar. One of his rulings was that every fourth year should be a Leap Year except in certa
in cases . . .’

  Ireland interrupted him. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said in the voice of someone who knows he believes every word.

  Wexford shrugged. He went on, ‘Century years were not to be Leap Years unless they were divisible not by four but by four hundred. Therefore, 1600 would have been a Leap Year if the Gregorian Calendar had by then been adopted, and 2000 will be a Leap Year, but 1800 was not and 1900 was not. So in 1900 there was no February 29th and Ada Hurst left the space on that page blank for the very good reason that the day following February 28th was March 1st. Unluckily for him, Gandolph, like you and me and most people, knew nothing of this as otherwise he would surely have inserted his strychnine entry into the blank space of March 2nd and his forgery might never have been discovered.’

  Ireland slowly shook his head at man’s ingenuity and perhaps his chicanery. ‘I’m very grateful to you. We should have looked fools, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘I’m glad Florence wasn’t hanged in error,’ Wexford said as they went back to join the others. ‘Her marriage didn’t begin with dearly beloved, but if she was afraid at the end it can’t have been with any amazement.’

  The Fever Tree

  For Catherine, Pam and Brett Jones

  Author’s Note

  The following stories have already appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine:

  The Fever Tree; A Glowing Future (published under the title ‘A Present for Patricia’); An Outside Interest (published under the title ‘The Man Who Frightened Women’); A Case of Coincidence; Thornapple (published under the title ‘The Boy Who Collected Poison’); May and June (published under the title ‘The Strong and the Weak’); A Needle for the Devil; Front Seat (published under the title ‘Truth Will Out’); Paintbox Place (published under the title ‘The Paintbox Houses’); The Wrong Category (published under the title ‘On the Path’)

  The Fever Tree

  Where malaria is, there grows the fever tree.

  It has the feathery fern-like leaves, fresh green and tender, that are common to so many trees in tropical regions. Its shape is graceful with an air of youth, as if every fever tree is still waiting to grow up. But the most distinctive thing about it is the colour of its bark which is the yellow of an unripe lemon. The fever trees stand out from among the rest because of their slender yellow trunks.

  Ford knew what the tree was called and he could recognize it but he didn’t know what its botanical name was. Nor had he ever heard why it was called the fever tree, whether the tribesmen used its leaves or bark or fruit as a specific against malaria or if it simply took its name from its warning presence wherever the malaria-carrying mosquito was. The sight of it in Ntsukunyane seemed to promote a fever in his blood.

  An African in khaki shorts and shirt lifted up the bar for them so that their car could pass through the opening in the fence. Inside it looked no different from outside, the same bush, still, silent, unstirred by wind stretching away on either side. Ford, driving the two miles along the tarmac road to the reception hut, thought of how it would be if he turned his head and saw Marguerite in the passenger seat beside him. It was an illusion he dared not have but was allowed to keep for only a minute. Tricia shattered it. She began to belabour him with schoolgirl questions, uttered in a bright and desperate voice.

  Another African, in a fancier, more decorated, uniform, took their booking voucher and checked it against a ledger. You had to pay weeks in advance for the privilege of staying here. Ford had booked the day after he had said goodbye to Marguerite and returned, for ever, to Tricia.

  ‘My wife wants to know the area of Ntsukunyane,’ he said.

  ‘Four million acres.’

  Ford gave the appropriate whistle. ‘Do we have a chance of seeing a leopard?’

  The man shrugged, smiled, ‘Who knows? You may be lucky. You’re here a whole week so you should see lion, elephant, hippo, cheetah maybe. But the leopard is nocturnal and you must be back in camp by six p.m.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I advise you to get on now, sir, if you’re to make Thaba before they close the gates.’

  Ford got back into the car. It was nearly four. The sun of Africa, a living presence, a personal god, burned through a net of haze. There was no wind. Tricia, in a pale yellow sundress with frills, had hung her arm outside the open window and the fair downy skin was glowing red. He told her what the man had said and he told her about the notice pinned inside the hut: It is strictly forbidden to bring firearms into the game reserve, to feed the animals, to exceed the speed limit, to litter.

  ‘And most of all you mustn’t get out of the car,’ said Ford.

  ‘What, not ever?’ said Tricia, making her pale blue eyes round and naive and marble-like.

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Silly old rules!’

  ‘They have to have them,’ he said.

  In here as in the outside world. It is strictly forbidden to fall in love, to leave your wife, to try to begin anew. He glanced at Tricia to see if the same thoughts were passing through her mind. Her face wore its arch expression, winsome.

  ‘A prize,’ she said, ‘for the first one to see an animal.’

  ‘All right.’ He had agreed to this reconciliation, to bring her on this holiday, this second honeymoon, and now he must try. He must work at it. It wasn’t just going to happen as love had sprung between him and Marguerite, unsought and untried for. ‘Who’s going to award it?’ he said.

  ‘You are if it’s me and I am if it’s you. And if it’s me I’d like a presey from the camp shop. A very nice pricey presey.’

  Ford was the winner. He saw a single zebra come out from among the thorn trees on the right-hand side, then a small herd. ‘Do I get a present from the shop?’

  He could sense rather than see her shake her head with calculated coyness. ‘A kiss,’ she said and pressed warm dry lips against his cheek.

  It made him shiver a little. He slowed down for the zebra to cross the road. The thorn bushes had spines on them two inches long. By the roadside grew a species of wild zinnia with tiny flowers, coral red, and these made red drifts among the coarse pale grass. In the bush were red ant hills with tall peaks like towers on a castle in a fairy story. It was thirty miles to Thaba. He drove on just within the speed limit, ignoring Tricia as far as he could whenever she asked him to slow down. They weren’t going to see one of the big predators, anyway not this afternoon, he was certain of that, only impala and zebra and maybe a giraffe. On business trips in the past he’d taken time off to go to Serengeti and Kruger and he knew. He got the binoculars out for Tricia and adjusted them and hooked them round her neck, for he hadn’t forgotten the binoculars and cameras she had dropped and smashed in the past through failing to do that, and her tears afterwards. The car wasn’t air-conditioned and the heat lay heavy and still between them. Ahead of them, as they drove westwards, the sun was sinking in a dull yellow glare. The sweat flowed out of Ford’s armpits and between his shoulder blades, soaking his already wet shirt and laying a cold sticky film on his skin.

  A stone pyramid with arrows on it, set in the middle of a junction of roads, pointed the way to Thaba, to the main camp at Waka-suthu and to Hippo Bridge over the Suthu River. On top of it sat a baboon with her grey fluffy infant on her knees. Tricia yearned for it, stretching out her arms. She had never had a child. The baboon began picking fleas out of its baby’s scalp. Tricia gave a little nervous scream, half-disgusted, half-joyful. Ford drove down the road to Thaba and in through the entrance to the camp ten minutes before they closed the gates for the night.

  The dark comes down fast in Africa. Dusk is of short duration; no sooner have you noticed it than it has gone and night has fallen. In the few moments of dusk, pale things glimmer brightly and birds make a soft murmuring. In the camp at Thaba were a restaurant and a shop, round huts with thatched roofs and wooden chalets with porches. Ford and Tricia had been assigned a chalet on the northern perimeter and from their porch, beyond the high, wire fence, you could
see the Suthu River flowing smoothly and silently between banks of tall reeds. Dusk had just come as they walked up the wooden steps, Ford carrying their cases. It was then that he saw the fever trees, two of them, their ferny leaves bleached to grey by the twilight but their trunks a sharper, stronger yellow than in the day.

  ‘Just as well we took our anti-malaria pills,’ said Ford as he pushed open the door. When the light was switched on he could see two mosquitoes on the opposite wall. ‘Anopheles is the malaria carrier but unfortunately they don’t announce whether they’re anopheles or not.’

  Twin beds, a table, lamps, an air conditioner, a fridge, a door, standing open, to lavatory and shower. Tricia dropped her make-up case, without which she went nowhere, on to the bed by the window. The light wasn’t very bright. None of the lights in the camp were because the electricity came from a generator. They were a small colony of humans in a world that belonged to the animals, a reversal of the usual order of things. From the window you could see other chalets, other dim lights, other parked cars. Tricia talked to the two mosquitoes.

  ‘Is your name Anna Phyllis? No. Darling, you’re quite safe. She says she’s Mary Jane and her husband’s John Henry.’

  Ford managed to smile. He had accepted and grown used to Tricia’s facetiousness until he had encountered Marguerite’s wit. He shoved his case, without unpacking it, into the cupboard and went to have a shower. Tricia stood on the porch, listening to the cicadas, thousands of them. It had gone pitch dark while she was hanging up her dresses and the sky was punctured all over with bright stars.

  She had got Ford back from that woman and now she had to keep him. She had lost some weight, bought a lot of new clothes and had had highlights put in her hair. Men had always made her feel frightened, starting with her father when she was a child. It was then, when a child, that she had purposely began playing the child with its winning little ways. She had noticed that her father was kinder and more forbearing towards little girls than towards her mother. Ford had married a little girl, clinging and winsome, and had liked it well enough till he had met a grown woman. Tricia knew all that, but now she knew no better how to keep him than she did then; the old methods were as weary and stale to her as she guessed they might be to him. Standing there on the porch, she half-wished she were alone and didn’t have to have a husband, didn’t, for the sake of convention and of pride, for support and society, have to hold tight on to him. She listened wistfully for a lion to roar out there in the bush beyond the fence, but there was no sound except the cicadas.