Put On By Cunning

by Ruth Rendell

  ic to do that tonight when he felt so tired that fcven on his feet, even with this icy air stinging pis face, he could feel drowsiness closing in on iiim.

  'Nancy! Nancy, where are you?'

  He could easily go back into the house and phone Ted and ask him to come over and await

  le dog's return. Ted wouldn't mind. On the

  13

  other hand, wasn't that yielding to the very helplessness he was always striving against? What business had he to be getting married, to be setting up house again, even recommencing a social life, if he couldn't do such a little thing for himself as letting a dog out before he went to bed? What he would do was return to the house and sit in the chair in the hall and wait for Nancy to come back. If he fell asleep her scraping at the front door would awaken him.

  Even as he decided this he did the very opposite. He followed the track she had made down the slope to the lake, calling her, irritably now, as he went.

  The marks Ted had made when he broke the ice at the water's edge were already obliterated by snow, while Nancy's fresh tracks were fast becoming covered. Only the stacked ice showed where Ted had been. The area he had cleared was again iced over with a thin grey crust. The lake was a sombre sheet of ice with a faint sheen on it that the clouded moon made, and the willows, which by daylight looked like so many crouched spiders or daddy-long-legs, were laden with snow that clung to them and changed their shape. Camargue called the dog again. Only last week she had done this to him and then had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and come skittering across the ice towards him.

  He began breaking the new ice with his stick. Then he heard the dog behind him, a faint

  14

  idling on the snow. But when he turned id, ready to seize her collar in the hook of walking-stick, there was no dog there, there nothing there but the gnome conifers and light shining down on the white sheet of the rcular courtyard. He would break up the rest the thin ice, clear an area a yard long and a >t wide as Ted had done, and then he would back into the house and wait for Nancy ioors.

  i Again the foot crunched behind him, the tree ted. He stood up and turned and, raising his ick as if to defend himself, looked into the face 'the tree that moved.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ic music met Chief Inspector Wexford as he himself into his house. A flute playing with orchestra. This was one of Sheila's dramatic stures, he supposed, contrived to time with is homecoming. It was beautiful music, slow, leasured, secular, yet with a religious sound. His wife was knitting, on her face the msed, dry, very slightly exasperated Expression it often wore while Sheila was round. And Sheila would be very much around the next three weeks, having unaccountably :ided to be married from home, in her own

  15

  parish church, and to establish the proper period of residence beforehand in her father's house. She sat on the floor, between the log fire and the record player, her cheek resting on one round white arm that trailed with grace upon a sofa cushion, her pale gold water-straight hair half covering her face. When she lifted her head and shook her hair back he saw that she had been crying.

  'Oh, Pop, darling, isn't it sad? They've had this tremendous obituary programme for him on the box. Even Mother shed a tear. And then we thought we'd mourn him with his own music.'

  Wexford doubted very much if Dora, a placid and eminently sensible woman, had expressed these extravagant sentiments. He picked up the record sleeve. Mozart, Concerto for Flute and Harp, K 229; the English Chamber Orchestra, conductor, Raymond Leppard; flute, Manuel Camargue; harp, Marisa Robles.

  'We actually heard him once,' said Dora. 'Do you remember? At the Wigmore Hall it was, all of thirty years ago.'

  Tes.'

  But he could scarcely remember. The pictured face on the sleeve, too sensitive, too mobile to be handsome, the eyes alight with a kind of joyous humour, evoked no image from the past. The movement came to an end and now the music became bright, liquid, a singable tune, and Camargue, who was dead, alive again

  16

  his flute. Sheila wiped her eyes and got up to fejss her father. It was all of eight years since he :d she had lived under the same roof. She had ome a swan since then, a famous lady, a tele Hace. But she still kissed him when he came and twenty , putting her arms around his neck like a lUnervous child. Wryly, he liked it.

  He sat down, listening to the last movement ijlwhile Dora finished her row in the Fair Isle and JJpwent to get his supper. Andrew's regular livening phone call prevented Sheila from getting full dramatic value out of her memorial fjpjo Camargue, and by the time she came back ?into the room the record was over and her father

  ' was eating his steak-and-kidney pie.

  'You didn't actually know him, did you, llSheila?'

  She thought he was reproaching her for her pears. 'I'm sorry, Pop, I cry so easily. It's a

  matter of having to learn how, you know, and |then not being able to unlearn.'

  He grinned at her. Thus on the fatal bank of file weeps the deceitful crocodile? I didn't Jfpttean that, anyway. Let me put it more directly. |Did you know him personally?'

  She shook her head. 'I think he recognized I me in church. He must have known I come from Jround here.' It was nothing that she should be ^recognized. She was recognized wherever she fwent. For five years the serial in which she Jplayed the most beautiful of the air hostesses

  17

  had been on television twice a week at a peak viewing time. Everybody watched Runway, even though a good many said shamefacedly that they 'only saw the tail-end before the news' or 'the kids have it on'. Stewardess Curtis was famous for her smile. Sheila smiled it now, her head tilted reflectively. 'I know his wife-thatwasto-be personally,' she said. 'Or I used to. We were at school together.'

  'A young girl?'

  'Thank you kindly, father dear. Let's say young to be marrying Sir Manuel. Mid twenties. She brought him to see me in The Letter last autumn but I didn't talk to them, he was too tired to come round afterwards.'

  It was Dora who brought them back from gossip to grandeur. 'In his day he was said to be the world's greatest flautist. I remember when he founded that school at Wellridge and Princess Margaret came down to open it.'

  'D'you know what its pupils call it? Windyridge.' Sheila mimed the blowing of the woodwind, fingers dancing. Then, suddenly, the tears had started once more to her eyes. 'Oh, to die like that!'

  Who's Who is not a volume to be found in many private houses. Wexford had a copy because Sheila was in it. He took it down from the shelf, turned to the C's and read aloud:

  'Camargue, Sir Manuel, Knight. Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire,

  18

  TSi"

  *valier of the Legion of Honour. British jteplayer. Born Pamplona, Spain, 3 June, )2, son of Aristide Camargue and Ana Parral. Jucated privately with father, then at rcelona Conservatoire. Studied under Louis

  leury.

  'Professor of Flute, Madrid Conservatoire, )24 to 1932. Fought on Republican side Spanish Civil War, escaped to England 1938. ried 1942 Kathleen Lister. One daughter. Naturalized British subject 1946. Concert mtist, has toured Europe, America, Australia, lew Zealand and South Africa. Founded 1964 t Wellridge, Sussex, the Kathleen Camargue

  100! of Music in memory of his wife, and in the Kathleen Camargue Youth Orchestra.

  :reations apart from music: walking, reading, )gs. Address: Sterries, Ploughman's Lane,

  igsmarkham, Sussex.' fe'They say it's a dream of a house,' said Sheila.

  wonder if she'll sell, that one daughter? rcause if she does Andrew and I might really msider... Wouldn't you like me living just

  the road, Pop?'

  'He may have left it to your friend,' said fexford.

  'So he may. Well, I do hope so. Poor Dinah, sing her first husband that she adored and then second that never was. She deserves some )mpensation. I shall write her a letter of

  ipathy. No, I won't. I'll go and see her. I'll

  19

  phone h
er first thing in the morning and I'll...'

  'I'd leave it a day or two if I were you,' said her father. 'First thing in the morning is going to be the inquest.'

  'Inquest?' Sheila uttered the word in the loaded, aghast tone of Lady Bracknell. 'Inquest? But surely he died a perfectly natural death?'

  Dora, conjuring intricately with three different shades of wool, looked up from her pattern. 'Of course he didn't. Drowning, or whatever happened to him, freezing to death, you can't call that natural.'

  'I mean, he didn't do it on purpose and no one did it to him.'

  It was impossible for Wexford to keep from laughing at these ingenuous definitions of suicide and homicide. 'In most cases of sudden death,' he said, 'and in all cases of violent death there must be an inquest. It goes without saying the verdict is going to be that it was an accident.'

  Misadventure.

  This verdict, which can sound so grotesque when applied to the death of a baby in a cot or a patient under anaesthetic, appropriately described Camargue's fate. An old man, ankle deep in snow, had lost his foothold in the dark,

  20

  ppmg over, sliding into water to be trapped der a lid of ice. If he had not drowned he uld within minutes have been dead from othermia. The snow had continued to fall, literating his footprints. And the frost, ten ees of it, had silently sealed up the space to which the body had slipped. Only a glove-- was of thick black leather and it had fallen mi his left hand--remained to point to where ||e lay, one curled finger rising up out of the

  s. Misadventure.

  Wexford attended the inquest for no better son than to keep warm, the police station ntral heating having unaccountably broken wn the night before. The venue of the inquest gsmarkham Magistrates' Court, Court we , Upstairs) enjoyed a reputation for being t in winter at a temperature of eighty rees. To this it lived up. Having left his bber boots just inside the door downstairs, he t at- the back of the court, basking in warmth, eptitiously peeling off various disreputable yers, a khaki green plastic mac of muddy ^ranslucency, an aged black-and-grey herringbone-tweed overcoat, a stole-sized scarf of matted fawnish wool.

  Apart from Ethe Kingsmarkham Courier girl in one of the press seats, there were only two women present, and these two sat so far apart as to give the impression of choosing each to ostracize the other. One would be the daughter,

  21

  he supposed, one the bride. Both were dressed darkly, shabbily and without distinction. But the woman in the front row had the eyes and profile of a Callas, her glossy black hair piled in the fashion of a Floating World geisha, while the other, seated a yard or two from him, was a little mouse, headscarfed, huddled, hands folded. Neither, as far as he could see, bore the remotest resemblance to the face on the record sleeve with its awareness and its spirituality. But when, as the verdict came, the geisha woman turned her head and her eyes, dark and brilliant, for a moment met his, he saw that she was far older than Sheila, perhaps ten years older. This, then, must be the daughter. And as the conviction came to him, the coroner turned his gaze upon her and said he would like to express his sympathy with Sir Manuel's daughter in her loss and a grief which was no less a personal one because it was shared by the tens of thousands who had loved, admired and been inspired by his music. He did not think he would be exceeding his duty were he to quote Samuel Johnson and say that it matters not how a man dies but how he has lived.

  Presumably no one had told him of the dead man's intended re-marriage. The little mouse got up and crept away. Now it was all over, the beauty with the black eyes got up too�to be enclosed immediately in a circle of men. This of course was chance, Wexford told himself, they

  22

  re the escort who had brought her, her

  icr's doctor, his servant, a friend or two. Yet felt inescapably that this woman would lys wherever she was be in a circle of men,

  itched, admired, desired. He got back into his jverings and ventured out into the bitter cold

  Kingsmarkham High Street.

  Here the old snow lay heaped at the pavement Iges in long, low mountain ranges and the new

  >w, gritty and sparkling, dusted it with fresh

  dteness. A yellowish-leaden sky looked full of low. It was only a step from the court to the )lice station, but a long enough step in this

  ither to get chilled to the bone.

  On the forecourt, between a panda car and the lief constable's Rover, the heating engineer's was still parked. Wexford went tentatively nigh the swing doors. Inside it was as cold-as

  :r and Sergeant Camb, sitting behind his piunter, warmed mittened hands on a mug of ig tea. Burden, Wexford reflected, if he id any sense, would have taken himself off

  lewhere warm for lunch. Very likely to the

  rousel Cafe, or what used to be the Carousel

  fore it was taken over by Mr Haq and became ie Pearl of Africa.

  us was a title or sobriquet given (according to Haq) to Uganda, his native land. Mr Haq

  23

  claimed to serve authentic Ugandan cuisine, what he called 'real' Ugandan food, but since no one knew what this was, whether he meant food consumed by the tribes before colonization or food introduced by Asian immigrants or food eaten today by westernized Ugandans, or what these would be anyway, it was difficult to query any dish. Fried potatoes and rice accompanied almost everything, but for all Wexford knew this might be a feature of Ugandan cooking. He rather liked the place, it fascinated him, especially the plastic jungle vegetation.

  Today this hung and trembled in the steamy heat and seemed to sweat droplets on its leathery leaves. The windows had become opaque, entirely misted over with condensation. It was like a tropical oasis in the Arctic. Inspector Burden sat at a table eating Nubian chicken with rice Ruwenzori, anxiously keeping in view his new sheepskin jacket, a Christmas present from his wife, which Mr Haq had hung up on the palm tree hatstand. He remarked darkly as Wexford walked in that anyone might make off with it, you never could tell these days.

  'Round here they might cook it,' said Wexford. He also ordered the chicken with the request that for once potatoes might not come with it. 'I've just come from the inquest on Camargue.'

  'What on earth did you go to that for?'

  'I hadn't anything much else on. I reckoned it

  24

  juld be warm too and it was.'

  'All right for some,' Burden grumbled. 'I iuld have found a job for you.' Since their iendship had deepened, some of his old

  ference to his chief, though none of his

  spect, had departed. 'Thieving and break-ins,

  ;'ve never had so much of it. That kid old dnson let out on bail, he's done three more s in the meantime. And he's not seventeen �t, a real little villain.' Sarcasm made his tone

  ithering. 'Or that's what I call him. The

  fchiatrist says he's a pathological leptomaniac with personality-scarring caused fy traumata broadly classifiable as paranoid.' [e snorted, was silent, then said on an altered

  )te, 'Look, do you think you were wise to do

  it?'

  'Do what?'

  'Go to that inquest. People will think ... I lean, it's possible they might think...'

  'People will think!' Wexford scoffed. 'You kind like a dowager lecturing a debutante.

  mt will they think?'

  *I only meant they might think there was Mnething fishy about the death. Some hankycy. I mean, they see you there and know Wio you are and they say to themselves, he Wouldn't have been there if it had all been as

  raightforward as the coroner...'

  was saved from an outburst of Wexford's iper by an intervention from outside. Mr

  25

  Haq had glided up to beam upon them. He was small, smiling, very black yet very Caucasian, with a mouthful of startlingly white, madly uneven, large teeth.

  'Everything to your liking, I hope, my dear?' Mr Haq called all his customers 'my dear', irrespective of sex, perhaps supposing it to be a genderless term of extreme
respect such as 'excellency.' *I see you are having the rice Ruwenzori.' He bowed a little. 'A flavourful and scrumptious recipe from the peoples who live in the Mountains of the Moon.' Talking like a television commercial for junk food was habitual with him.

  'Very nice, thank you,' said Wexford.

  'You are welcome, my dear.' Mr Haq smiled so broadly that it seemed some of his teeth must spill out. He moved off among the tables, ducking his head under the polythene fronds which trailed from polyethylene pots in polystyrene plant-holders.

  'Are you going to have any pudding?'

  'Shouldn't think so,' said Wexford, and he read from the menu with gusto, 'Cake Kampala or ice cream eau-de-Nil�does he mean the colour or what it's made of? Anyway, there's enough ice about without eating it.' He hesitated. 'Mike, I don't see that it matters what people think in this instance. Camargue met his death by misadventure, there's no doubt about that. Surely, though interest in the man will

  26

  lure for years, the manner of his death can ly be a nine days' wonder. As a matter of fact,

  coroner said something like that.' ^Burden ordered coffee from the small, shiny, son-eyed boy, heir to Mr Haq, who waited their table. 'I suppose I was thinking of icks.'

  'The manservant or whoever he was?' 'He found that glove and then he found the ly. It wasn't really strange but it might look ige the way he found the dog outside his :k door and took her back to Sterries and put inside without checking to see where rgue was.'

  'Hicks's reputation won't suffer from my mce in court,' said Wexford. 'I doubt if ;re was a soul there, bar the coroner, who mized me.' He chuckled. 'Or if they did only be as Stewardess Curtis's dad.' pfhey went back to the police station. The pernoon wore away into an icy twilight, an fening of hard frost. The heating came on with )p just as it was time to go home. Entering living room, Wexford was greeted by a large, >nze-coloured alsatian, baring her teeth and iging her tail. On the sofa, next to his liighter^ sat the girl who had crept away from inquest, Camargue's pale bride.

  27

  CHAPTER THREE

  He had noticed the Volkswagen parked in the ruts of ice outside but had thought little of it. Sheila got up and introduced the visitor.