by Ruth Rendell
Try 1122 on the opposite side, he was jd. In an ever-changing population, the jde'at 1122, the Romeros, had been in ince longest.
italie's cousin once more, he tried at 1122. Pou English?' said Mrs Donna Romero, a who looked even more Spanish than ie and whose jet-black hair was wound on
plastic rollers, ifexford nodded.
latalie's English. She went home to her in London. That's all I know. Right now somewhere in London, England.' 159
'How long have you been living here?'
'I just love your accent,' said Mrs Romero. 'How long have we been here? I guess it'd be four years, right? We came the summer Natalie went on that long vacation up the coast. Must've been the summer of '76. I guess I just thought the house was empty, no one living there, you know, you get a lot of that round here, and then one day my husband says to me, there's folks moved into 1121, and that was Natalie.'
'But she'd lived there before?'
'Oh, sure she lived there before but we didn't, did we?' Donna Romero said this triumphantly as if she had somehow caught him out. 'She had these roomers, you know? There was this guy she had, he was living here illegally. Well, I guess everyone knew it, but my husband being in the Police Department�well, he had to do what he had to do, you know?'
'You mean he had him deported?'
'That's what I mean.'
Wexford decided he had better make himself scarce before an encounter threatened with the policeman husband. He contented himself with merely asking when this deportation had taken place. Not so long ago, said Mrs Romero, maybe only last fall, as far as she could remember.
It was now noon and growing fiercely hot. Wexford reflected that whoever it was who had first described the climate of California as
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:tual spring hadn't had much experience of pEnglish April. He went back across the road. The presence on the drive of 1123 of a four r-old maneuvering a yellow and red truck a six-year-old riding a blue bicycle told him Dobrowski was back. She greeted him so msiastically and with such glistening if not |ite tearful eyes that he felt a thrust of guilt ien he thought of her conferring later with the at 1121 and with Patrolman (Lieutenant? rtain?) Romero. But it was too late now to idon the role of Tina's uncle. He was jiged to listen to a catalogue of Tina's virtues le Mrs Dobrowski, small and earnest and ring a tee-shirt campaigning for the ovation of the sea otter, pressed Tina jtvenirs on him, a brooch, a pair of antique scissors, and a curious object she said was a
ashtray.
lit last he succeeded in leading the Iversation to Natalie by saying with perfect that he had seen her in London before he It was immediately clear that Mrs wrowski hadn't approved of Natalie. Her way fe had not been what Mrs Dobrowski was to or expected from people in a nice ibourhood. Turning a little pink, she said le from a family of Baptists, and when |had children you had standards to maintain, rly she felt that she had said enough on the :t and reverted to Tina, her prowess as 161
what she called a stenographer, the sad fact of her childlessness, the swift onset of the disease which had killed her. Wexford made a second effort.
'I've often wondered how Tina came to live here.'
'I guess Natalie needed the money after Rolf Ilbert moved out. Johnny was the one who told Tina Natalie had a room for rent.'
Wexford made a guess. 'Johnny was Natalie's--er, friend?'
Mrs Dobrowski gave him a grim smile. 'I've heard it called that. Johnny Fassbender was her lover.'
The name sounded German but here might not be. When Wexford asked if he were a local man Mrs Dobrowski said no, he was Swiss. She had often told Tina that one of them should report him to the authorities for living here without a residence permit, and eventually someone must have done so, for he was discovered and deported.
'That would have been last autumn,' Wexford said.
'Oh, no. Whatever gave you that idea? It was all of three years ago. Tina was still alive.'
There was evidently a mystery here, but not perhaps one of pressing importance. It was Natalie's identity he was primarily concerned with, not her friendships. But Mrs Dobrowski seemed to feel that she had digressed too far for
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*
Iteness and moved rapidly on to her visitor's ;ise relationship to Tina. Was he Her true -le or uncle only by marriage? Strangely, had never mentioned him. But she had itioned no one but the brother who came^ when she died. She, Mrs Dobrowski, Id have liked Ivan to have stayed at her while he was in Los Angeles but hadn't jown how to broach this as she had hardly iged a Word with Natalie all the years they lived there. Wexford pricked up his ears at it* No, it was true, she had never set foot pie 1121 or seen Natalie closer than across the
L
fexford noted that what she called the yard li by Kingsmarkham standards, a large len, dense with oleanders, peach trees and cacti. In order not to offend Mrs rowski, he was obliged to carry off with him pbrooch as a keepsake. Perhaps he could pass
to the Zoffanys. |t's been great meeting you,' said Mrs jrowski. 'I guess I can see a kind of look of about you now. Around the eyes.' She red the four-year-old up in her arms and to Wexford from the porch. 'Say hello to formed .'
the heat of the day he drove back to the ir and took Dora out to lunch in a restaurant down by the boardwalk. He ly knew how to tell her he was going to have
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to leave her alone for the afternoon as well. But he did tell her and she bore it well, only saying that she would make another attempt to phone the Newtons. In their room she dialled their number again while he consulted the directory, looking for Ilberts. There was no Rolf Ilbert in the Los Angeles phone book or in the slimmer Santa Monica directory, but in this latter he did find a Mrs Davina Lee Ilbert at a place called Paloma Canyon.
Dora had got through. He heard her say delightedly, 'Will you really come and pick me up? About four?' Considerably relieved, he touched her shoulder, got a wide smile from her, and then he ran out to the lift, free from guilt at least for the afternoon.
It was too far to walk, half-way to Malibu. He found Paloma Canyon without difficulty and encouraged the car up an impossibly steep slope. The road zig-zagged as on some alpine mountainside, opening up at each turn bigger and better views of the Pacific. But otherwise he might have been in Ploughman's Lane. All super residential areas the world over are the same, he thought, paraphrasing Tolstoy, it is only the slums that differ from each other. Paloma Canyon was Ploughman's Lane with palms. And with a bluer sky, daisy lawns and an architecture Spanish rather than Tudor.
if 164
fwasn't the wife but the ex-wife of the man Rolf Ilbert. No, she didn't mind him ig, she would be only too glad if there was ig she could do to get back at Natalie Would he mind coming around to the I? They always spent their Sunday
icons by the pool, fexford followed her along a path through a ibbery of red and purple fuchsias taller than self. She was a tall thin woman, very tanned Iwith bleached blonde hair, and she wore a )lue terry-cloth robe and flat sandals. He Idered what it must be like to live in a ite where you took it for granted you spent Sunday afternoon round the pool. It was icly hot, too hot to be down there on the i, he supposed.
le pool, turquoise blue and rectangular with itain playing at the far end, was in a patio led by the balconied wings of the lemon ired stucco house. Davina Lee Ilbert had |ently been lying in a rattan lounging chair, There was a glass of something with ice in it �& pair of sunglasses on the table beside it. A |bf about sixteen in a bikini was sitting on the of the fountain and a boy a bit younger was ting lengths. They both had dark curly |and Wexfbrd supposed they must resemble father. The girl said 'Hi' to him and *d into the water.
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'You care for iced tea?' Mrs Ilbert asked him.
He had never tasted it but he accepted. While she was fetching it he sat down in one of the cane peacock chairs, looking over the parapet to the highway and the beaches below.
'You want to know where Rolf met her?' Davina Ilbert took off her robe and stretch
ed out on the lounger, a woman of forty with a good if stringy figure who had the discretion to wear a one-piece swimsuit. 'It was in San Francisco in '76. Her husband had died and she was staying with friends in San Rafael. The guy was a journalist or something and they all went into the city for this writers' conference that was going on, a cocktail party, I guess it was. Rolf was there.'
'Your former husband is a writer?'
'Movie and TV scripts,' she said. 'You wouldn't have heard of him. Whoever heard of script writers? You have a serial called Runway on your TV?'
Wexford said nothing, nodded.
'Rolf's done some of that. You know the episodes set at Kennedy? That's his stuff. And he's made a mint from it, thank God.' She made a little quick gesture at the balconies, the fountain, her own particular expanse of blue sky; 'It's Natalie you want to know about, right? Rolf brought her back to LA and bought that house on Tuscarora for her.'
The boy came out of the pool and shook
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iself like a dog. His sister said something to and they both stared at Wexford, looking when he met their eyes, le lived there with her?' he asked their ler.
e kind of divided his time between me and She drank from the tall glass. 'I was really b in those days, I trusted him. It took me years to find out and when I did,I flipped. L t over to Tuscarora and beat her up. No
*-' exford said impassively, 'That would have
in 1976?'
ght. Spring of '76. Rolf came back and ;d her all bruised and with two black eyes he got scared and took her on a trip up the t to get away from me. It was summer, I 't suppose she minded. She was up there-- , three months? He'd go up and join her
*i he could but he never really lived with her She gave a sort of tough chuckle. 'I'd >wn him out too. All he had was a hotel room
del Key.'
e sun was moving round. Wexford shifted the shade and the boy and girl walked fly away into the house. A humming bird, ;er than an insect, was hovering on the red 'et threshold of a trumpet flower. Wexford never seen one before. He said: bu said "up the coast". Do you know
e?'
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She shrugged. They didn't tell me their plans. But it'd be somewhere north of San Simeon and south of Monterey, maybe around Big Sur. It could have been a motel, but Rolf was generous, he'd have rented a house for her.' She changed her tone abruptly. 'Is she in trouble? I mean, real trouble?'
'Not at the moment,' said Wexford. 'She's just inherited a very nice house and a million from her father.'
'Dollars?'
'Pounds.'
'Jesus, and they say cheating never pays.'
'Mrs Ilbert, forgive me, but you said your former husband and Mrs Arno never lived together again after the summer of '76. Why was that? Did he simply get tired of her?'
She gave her dry bitter laugh. 'She got tired of him. She met someone else. Rolf was still crazy about her. He told me so, he told me all about it.'
Wexford recalled Jane Zoffany. Husbands seemed to make a practice of confiding in their wives their passion for Natalie Arno. 'She met someone while she was away on this long holiday?'
'That's what Rolf told me. She met this guy and took him back to the house on Tuscarora� it was hers, you see, she could do what she wanted�and Rolf never saw her again.'
'He never saw her again?
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iliat's what he said. She wouldn't see him or to him. I guess it was because he still I't divorced me and married her, but I don't jw. Rolf went crazy. He found out this guy was with was living here illegally and he got deported.'
fexford nodded. 'He was a Swiss called sbender.'
)h, no. Where d'you get that from? I don't 11 his name but it wasn't what you said. He English. Rolf had him deported to jland.'
iDidjyott ever see her again?' le? No, why would I?' "hank you, Mrs Ilbert. You've been very
and I'm grateful.'
rou're welcome. I guess I still feel pretty le towards her for what she did to me and kids. It wouldn't give me any grief to hear I'd lost that house and that million.' Oxford drove down the steep hill, noticing :hed to a house wall something he hadn't on the way up. A printed notice that said Solicitors'. He chuckled. He knew very well this was an American equivalent of the 'suburb's injunction to hawkers or people pvering circulars, but it still made him laugh. would have liked to prise it off the wall and it home for Symonds, O'Brien and Ames. >0ra was out when he got back to the and there was a note for him telling 169
him not to wait for dinner if she wasn't back by seven-thirty. Rex Newton, whom he had rather disliked in the days when they had been acquaintances, he now blessed. And tomorrow he would devote the whole day exclusively to Dora.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
From the map it didn't look as if there was much in the way of habitation in the vicinity of Big Sur, and Wexford's idea that Natalie Arno's trail might therefore easily be followed was confirmed by an elderly lady in the hotel lobby. This was a Mrs Lewis from Denver, Colorado, who had spent, it appeared, at least twenty holidays in California. There was hardly a house, hotel or restaurant, according to Mrs Lewis, between San Simeon in the south and Carmel in the north. The coast was protected, Wexford concluded, it was conserved by whatever the American equivalent might be of the National Trust.
The Miramar's enormous lobby had carpet sculpture on the walls. Although it was probably the grandest hotel Wexford had ever stayed in, the bar was so dark as to imply raffishness or at least that it would be wiser not to see what one was drinking. In his case this was white wine,
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pleasant, innocuous, rather weak chablis ich must be produced here by the millions of Long considering the number of people he had swilling it down. What had become of the cy sours and dry martinis of his reading? sat alone--Dora and Mrs Lewis were jping family snaps and anecdotes-- lecting that he should try to see Rolf Ilbert fore he began the drive northwards. Ilbert surely by now over Natalie and would have Objection to telling him the name of the place �re she had stayed in the summer of 1976. ford finished his second glass of wine and ced down past the sculptured carpet palms )hone Davina Ilbert, but there was no reply, the morning, when he tried her number she told him her ex-husband was in ion. He had been in London for two iths, researching for a television series about irican girls who had married into the lish aristocracy. Wexford realized he would re to trace Natalie on what he had. They ive off at lunchtime and stopped for the night motel in Santa Maria. It was on the tip of ford's tongue to grumble to Dora that there nothing to do in Santa Maria, miles from ; coast and with Route 101 passing through it. then it occurred to him that a visitor might exactly that about Kingsmarkham. Perhaps was only ever something obvious to do in centre of cities or by the sea. Elsewhere
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there was ample to do if you lived there and nothing if you didn't. He would have occupation soon enough and then his guilt about Dora would come back.
Over dinner he confided his theory to her.
'If you look at the facts you'll see that there was a distinct change of personality in 1976. The woman who went away with Ilbert had a different character from the woman who came back to Los Angeles. Think about it for a minute. Camargue's daughter had led a very sheltered, cared-for sort of life, she'd never been out in the world on her own. First there was a secure home with her parents, then elopement with and marriage to Arno, and when Arno died, Ilbert. She was always under the protection of some man. But what of the woman who appears after the summer of '76? She lets off rooms in her house to bring in an income. She doesn't form long steady relationships but has casual love affairs�with the Swiss Fassbender, with the Englishman who was deported, with Zoffany. She can't sell the house Ilbert bought for her so she lets it out and comes to England. Not to creep under her father's wing as Natalie Camargue might have done, but to shift for herself in a place of her own.'
'But surely it was a terrible risk to go to Natalie's own house and live there as Natalie? The neighbours would
have known at once, and then there'd be her friends....'
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>d fences make good neighbours,' said ford. 'There's a lot of space between those ises, it's a shifting population, and if my idea ight Natalie Camargue was a shy, reserved of woman. Her neighbours never saw much I her. As to friends�if a friend of Natalie's Hied she had only to say Natalie was still iy. If a friend comes to the house she has only |say that she herself is a friend who happens to staying there for the time being. Mrs Ilbert fs Ilbert never saw her after she came back. >w if the real Natalie came back it's almost |possible Ilbert never saw her. Never was le with her maybe, never touched her, but ?er saw her? No, it was the impostor who jbed him off every time he called with ises, with apologies, and at last with direct isals, allegedly on the part of the real Natalie, ir to see him again.' |But, Reg, how could the impostor know so
about the real Natalie's past?' Ee took her up quickly. 'You spent most of evening talking to Mrs Lewis. How much ;you know about her from, say, two hours' iversation?'
giggled. 'Well, she lives in a flat, not a se. She's a widow. She's got two sons and a ;hter. One of the sons is a realtor, I don't >w what that is.' state agent.'
state agent, and the other's a vet. Her
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daughter's called Janette and she's married to a doctor and they've got twin girls and they live in a place called Bismarck. Mrs Lewis has got a four-wheel drive Chevrolet for the mountain roads and a holiday house, a log cabin, in the Rockies and...'
'Enough! You found all that out in two hours and you're saying the new Natalie couldn't have formed a complete dossier of the old Natalie in�what? Five or six weeks? And when she came to England she had a second mentor in Mary Woodhouse.'
'All right, perhaps she could have.' Dora hesitated. He had had a feeling for some hours that she wanted to impart�or even break� something to him. 'Darling,' she said suddenly, 'You won't mind, will you? I told Rex and Nonie we'd be staying at the Redwood Hotel in Carmel and it so happens, I mean, it's a complete coincidence, that they'll be staying with Nonie's daughter in Monterey at the same time. If we had lunch with them once or twice� or I did�well, you won't mind, will you?'
