Wolf to the Slaughter

by Ruth Rendell

  'I think it's Mrs Anstey's husband.'

  ‘Smith? My God, Mike, we've been through that. He's dead.'

  'Smith is, but Anstey isn't. At any rate, we've no reason to suppose so.' Burden lowered his voice as someone passed their table. 'I think it could be Anstey. Shall I tell you why?'

  Wexford's spiky eyebrows went up. it had better be good,' he said. 'We don't know anything about the fellow. She hardly mentioned him.'

  'And didn't you think that was funny?'

  'Perhaps it was,' Wexford said thoughtfully. 'Perhaps it was.' He seemed to be about to go on. Burden did hot wish to have the wind taken out of his own sails and he said hastily:

  'Who does she give the impression of being more fond of, the man who divorced her five years ago or the man she's married to now? She regrets that divorce, sir, and she doesn't mind making it clear to three strangers who didn't even want to know. "It's nice to have been loved and remember it when it's gone," she said. Are those the words of a happily married woman? Then what was all that about being alone a lot? She's a teacher. A married woman with a job isn't alone a lot. She'd hardly be alone at all.'

  'You think she and7 Anstey are separated?'

  ‘I do,' said Burden with decision. Wexford showed no inclination to laugh and he began to gather confidence.

  'We don't believe she lost the lighter, but she believes it. If she didn't lose it but just left it lying about or in her handbag, who's the most likely person to have it in his possession? The errant husband. Very probably Smith divorced her on Anstey's account. That means adultery, and a man who'll commit it once will commit it again.'

  'Thus speaks the stern moralist,' said Wexford, smiling; ‘I don't know that I'd go along with that. Your point is, of course, that Anstey took up with Anita and gave her the lighter. Mike, it's all right as far as it goes, but you haven't got any real reason for thinking Anstey's left her. Don't forget the Easter holidays are on and a married woman teacher would be alone a lot in the holidays.'

  'Then why does she say she's only got her salary to live on?' Burden asked triumphantly, it's quite true what she says about selling jewellery. I saw her in Knobby Clark's shop.'

  'I'll buy you a drink,' said Wexford, and now he looked pleased.

  'Scotch,' said Burden when he came back. 'Very nice. Cheers.'

  'To detection.' Wexford raised his glass. 'Where's Anstey now?'

  Burden shrugged.'Around here somewhere. Just getting on with whatever job he does.'

  'Since you're so clever, you'll no doubt be able to tell me why a man called Anstey gives the name of his wife's former husband when he goes out on the tiles with another girl? Not just Smith, mind, Geoff Smith.’

  'I can't tell you that.' Burden said, less happily.

  'Or why he killed the girl. "What was his motive?'

  'When we suspected Kirkpatrick, we assumed the motive was jealousy. We lost sight of the five hundred pounds Anita was carrying in her handbag.'

  'In that case, Mike, why didn't he wait until they were back in the car, drive to some lonely place and kill her there? You don't murder a woman in someone else's house by a method which leaves incriminating traces behind, when you could do it, for example, in Cheriton Forest. Which brings me to another point. Ruby and Monkey both thought he'd go back. It was because they wanted him caught before he could go back that Monkey wrote to me. Why didn't he?'

  'Scared, I suppose. We don't know where he is. For all we know he may have gone home at least for a time.'

  Burden shook his head regretfully, ‘I don't know,' he said, and he added, repeating himself, 'I can't tell you that.'

  'Perhaps Mrs Anstey can. Drink up. They're closing.'

  Out in the street Wexford sniffed the soft April air. The sky which had been clear was now becoming overcast and clouds crossed the moon. They came to the bridge. A swan sailed out from the tunnel, into lamplight and then into their twin shadows. Wexford surveyed the almost empty High Street, the pearly white and yellow lamps and the dark holes made by the unlit alleys.

  In the high wall that reared ahead of them an open window twenty feet up disclosed a girl leaning out, her arm dangling as over the rail of a stage balcony. On a bracket below was a lamp in an iron cage, and half in its light, half in velvet shadow, stood a man gazing upwards.

  'Ah, moon of my delight,' Wexford quoted softly, 'who know'st no wane ...'

  With a sourness he did not bother to hide, Burden said, 'Drayton was told to leave her alone,' and he scowled at the yellow, cloud-scarred moon.

  Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

  Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong:

  Have drowned my Honour in a shallow cup,

  And sold my reputation for a Song.

  15

  In the morning the rain came back. From the look of the sky it seemed to be one of those mornings when it rains from streaming dawn to dripping, fog-filled dusk. Wexford, dialling Sewingbury, held the receiver gripped under his chin and reached out to lower the Venetian blind. He was listening to the ringing tone when Drayton came in.

  'That Mrs Anstey to see you, sir. I passed her as I came in.'

  Wexford put the phone down. 'For once the mountain has come to Mahomet.' 'Shall I bring her up?'

  'Just a minute, Drayton.' It was a command, rather sharp and with a hint of admonition. The young man stopped and turned obediently. 'Enjoy yourself last night?'

  If possible, Drayton's face became more than ever a cipher, secret, cautious, but not innocent. 'Yes, thank you, sir.' The rain drummed against the window. It had grown quite dark in the office as if night was coming at nine-thirty in the morning.

  ‘I don't suppose you've got to know many young people around here yet?' The question demanded an avuncular heartiness but Wexford made it sound menacing.

  'Not many, sir.'

  'Pity. God knows, my young daughter seems to know enough. Always having a' — No, not a jam session. Burden had corrected him on that. — A get-together at our place.

  Quite a decent bunch if you don't mind noise. I daresay you don't.' Drayton stood, silence incarnate.

  'You must join in one of these nights.' He gave the young man a grey cold stare. 'Just you on your own,' he said. 'Yes, sir. I'd like that.'

  'Good, I'll get Sheila to give you a tinkle.' Severity had gone and urbanity replaced it. 'Now for Mrs Anstey,' said the Chief Inspector.

  The rain gave him a sensation of almost claustrophobic confinement as if he were enclosed by walls of water. He could hear it streaming from the sills and pouring over the naked stone bodies on the frescoes. Pity it never seemed to wash them properly but just left grey trails on shoulders and haunches. He switched on the lights as Burden came in with Mrs Anstey in his wake, each as Wet as creatures from the depths of the sea. Mrs Anstey's umbrella hung from her arm and dripped water in a trickle at her heels.

  ‘I had to come,' she said, ‘I had an impulse. After you'd gone I got to thinking what on earth you could have meant about some girl you mentioned.' Her laughter sounded itself like water, fresh bubbling, yet a little hesitant, ‘I got the first bus.' She shed her grey mackintosh and stripped a hideous plastic hood from her brown hair. There were raindrops on her nose and she wrinkled it as might a little dog. 'Geoff and a girl. I didn't like that. Dog in a manger, aren't I? The fact is, I just have to see him. I've waited long enough. I'm going there now, but I thought I ought to see you first.' Without explanation, she laughed again and this time her laugh held a nervous break. 'Has he got a girl?' she asked and that explained.

  The first bringer of unwelcome hews, thought Wexford, has but a losing office. How did it go on? Something about his voice sounding ever after as a sullen warning bell. That didn't matter. Only the present pain mattered. For the first time since he and Burden had discussed Smith's death, his particular duty was brought home to him. He was going to have to tell her. That she was only an ex-wife would, he was sure, make no difference.

  'Has he?' she said again and now sh
e was pleading.

  ‘I wasn't able to see him, Mrs Anstey.'

  No lying, no prevaricating. None of that would be possible with this woman. Burden had turned his back.

  'What is it? There's something bad ' She got up, the plastic thing from her head stretched taut in her fingers. 'He's ill, he's ...'

  'He's dead.' No matter how prepared you were, it was still a shock. You could never be sufficiently prepared. Until the words were said, hope was invincible, ‘I'm sorry,' he said quickly, ‘I'm very very sorry. It was a coronary, bit over a year ago. I'm sure it was quick.'

  'He can't be dead!' The words were an echo of Burden's. He could not have been dead for Burden because that made nonsense of a theory; he could not be dead for her because she had a theory too, a theory of re-shaping her life?

  ‘I'm afraid he is.'

  'Not dead!' Wexford heard the thin thread of hysteria, the burning electric shock wire.

  'Please sit down. I'll get you something to drink.'

  With a kind of horror, he watched her feel blindly behind her for the chair she had satin, find it, kick it away and lurch at the wall. Her fists clenched, she struck her head against the plaster, then the fists themselves came up, pounding and beating on the hard surface.

  Wexford took a step towards her. 'Better get one of the W.P.Cs,' he said to Burden. Then she began to scream with a throaty frenzy.

  The policewoman took the tea cup from her and replaced the sodden handkerchief with a clean one of her own. 'Bit better now?'

  Noreen Anstey nodded. Her face was pink and swollen and her hair, though wet from rain, gave the illusion of being, like her cheeks, soaked with tears. She was all tears, all grief. .

  Suddenly she said quite coherently, ‘I can never ask him to forgive me now.' For a moment she had breath enough only for this. Sobs succeeded it. They were like blood pumping from a vein, ‘I won't cry any more.' The sobs were involuntary. Eventually they would subside. ‘I’ll go to my grave,' she said, 'knowing he never knew I was sorry.' Wexford nodded to the policewoman and she went out with the tea cup and the wet handkerchief.

  'He forgave you,’ he said. 'Didn't he give you the flat?'

  She hardly seemed to hear him. 'He died and I didn't even know.' Wexford thought of the two women at Smith's funeral, the old neighbour and the girl who did his typing. 'You don't even know what I did to him, do you? We'd been married eight years, the perfect couple, the happy couple. That's what everyone said and it was true.' The sobs made a rattle in her throat. 'He used to buy me presents. Unbirthday presents, he called them. You couldn't have that many birthdays. You'd get old too fast.’ She covered her eyes, shaking her head from side to side. 'We lived in a house with his office in it. There was a garage next door. I could see it from my window. I'd given up work, teaching was my work. No need when I had Geoff to look after me.' The sentences jerked out, short, ragged, staccato. Wexford moved his chair ^lose and sat looking down into his lap. 'Ray Anstey worked at the garage. I used to watch him. You know the way they lie on their backs with their heads thrown back? My God!' She shivered. 'You don't want to hear all this. I'd better go.' Her things were still wet, the raincoat, the umbrella that had dripped and made a puddle on the floor like a blister. She dabbed feebly at the sides of the chair, feeling for her handbags

  'We'll take you home, Mrs Anstey,' Wexford said gently. 'But not quite yet. Would you like to have a rest? Two questions only and then you can rest.'

  'He's dead. Beyond your reach. Why did you want him?'

  ‘I think,' Wexford said slowly, 'that it's your second husband we want.'

  'Ray?'

  'Where is he, Mrs Anstey?'

  'I don't know,' she said, tiredly. ‘I haven't seen him for months. He left me at the end of last year.'

  'You said he worked in a garage. Is he a mechanic?'

  ‘I suppose he is. What else could he do?' Her gloves were on the floor at her feet. She picked them up and looked at them as at two wet dead things, dredged up from the bottom of a pond. 'You wanted him all along?' Her face went a sickly white and she struggled up out of the chair. 'It was my husband you wanted, not Geoff?' Wexford nodded. 'What's he done?' she asked hoarsely. 'A girl is missing, probably dead

  'The knife,' she said. Her eyes went out of focus. Wexford took a step towards her and caught her in his arms.

  'Where did your sister get her car serviced?' Burden said. Margolis looked up from his late breakfast of coffee, orange juice and unappetizing hard-boiled eggs, his expression helplessly apathetic.

  'Some garage,' he said, and then, 'It would be Cawthorne's, wouldn't it?'

  'Come, Mr Margolis, you must know. Don't you have your own car seen to?'

  'Ann looked after that side of things. When it wanted doing, she'd see to it.' The painter turned the eggshells upside down in their cups like a child playing April Fool tricks. 'There was something, though ...' His long fingers splayed through his hair so that it stood up in a spiky halo. 'Some trouble. I have a remote recollection of her saying she was going to someone else.' He put the tray on the sofa arm and got up to shake crumbs from his lap. 'I wish I could remember,' he said.

  'She took it to that Ray, Mr M.,' said Mrs Penistan sharply. 'You know she did. Why don't you pull yourself together?' She shrugged at Burden, turning her little eyes heavenwards. 'He's gone to pieces since his sister went. Can't do nothing with him.' She settled herself beside Margolis and gave him a long exasperated stare. Burden was reminded of a mother or a nanny taking a recalcitrant child to a tea party, especially when she bent over him and, with a sharp clucking of her tongue, pulled his dressing gown over to hide his pyjama legs.

  'Ray who?'

  'Don't ask me, dear. You know what she was like with her Christian names. All I know is she come in here a couple of months back and says, "I've had about as much as I can stand of Russell's prices. I've a good mind to get Ray to do the cars for me." "Who's Ray?" I says, but she just laughed. "Never you mind, Mrs P. Let's say he's a nice boy who thinks the world of me. If I tell you who he is he might lose his job."'

  ‘Did he come here to service the cars?'

  'Oh, no, dear. Well, he wouldn't have the facilities, would he?' Mrs Penistan surveyed the studio and the window as if to. imply that nothing of practical use to a sane human being could be found in cottage or garden. 'She always took them to him. He lived local, you see. Somewhere local. I'd see her go off but I'd always gone when she got back. He'd have been here.' She shoved her elbow into Margolis's thin ribs. 'But he don't listen to what folks tell him.'

  Burden left them together, sitting side by side, Mrs Penistan coaxing Margolis to finish his coffee. The heavy rain had made the path slippery and there were wet petals everywhere underfoot. The garage doors were open and for the first time Burden saw Margolis's own car and saw that it was green.

  He was beginning to discern a pattern, a way that it could all have been done. Now he thought he could understand why a black car and a green car had been used and where Anita's white car had been until the small hours. A new excitement made him walk jauntily to the cottage gate. He opened it and the hawthorn bush showered him with water as effectively as if someone had put a tilted bucket in its branches.

  This is how it must feel to be a psychiatrist, Wexford thought. Noreen Anstey lay on the couch in the rest room, staring at the ceiling, and he sat beside her, letting her talk.

  'He always had a knife,' she said, ‘I saw it that first day, the first time he came up from the garage. Geoff was working downstairs. I used to take coffee down to him and then I started taking it to Ray as well. One day he came up instead.' For a while she was silent, moving her head from side to side. 'God, he was beautiful. Not handsome, beautiful, perfect. Like people ought to be, like I never was. Not very tall, black-haired, red mouth like a flower ...' He didn't want to interrupt, but he had to. He wasn't a real psychiatrist.

  'How old is he?'

  'Ten years younger than me,' she said and he knew it hurt her to say
it. 'He came up that day. We were quite alone and he had this knife, a little flick knife. He took it out of his pocket and put it on the table. I'd never seen one before and I didn't know what it was. We didn't talk much. What was there for us to talk about? We didn't have anything in common. He sat there smiling, making little sort of sly innuendoes.' She almost laughed but it was a gasp Wexford heard, ‘I was sick with wanting him.' Her face turned to the wall, she went on, ‘I'd had that lighter a few months arid I remember lighting a cigarette for Ray. He said, "No, light it in your mouth''. He looked at the lighter and he said, "He give you this? Does he give you toys because he can't give you anything else?" That wasn't true, but it must have been the way it looked, the way I looked. I've got a toy too, he said, and he picked up the knife and held it against my throat. The blade came out. I kept still or it would have cut me. My God, I was a teacher of French in a girls' school. I'd never been anywhere or done anything. You'd have thought I'd have screamed. D'you know, I'd have let him kill me, then? Afterwards, after he'd gone, there was blood on my neck from a little scratch and I knew he'd been looking at it all the time he was making love to me.'