Put On By Cunning

by Ruth Rendell

  'True,' said Wexford, because it was and it seemed easier to confess than to get involved in the ramifications of explaining. A scalding lecture exploded at him from the mouthpiece. Once again he was overstepping the bounds of

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  Icluty and his rights, once again he was ig an obsession to warp his judgement.

  this time the obsession looked as if it were ig the form of a vindictive campaign against ?Arno.

  id her voice on the phone achieved this? Or

  she been to Griswold in person, in the )w dress, holding him with her glowing eyes, moving her long pretty hands in led distress? For the second time he

  lised to persecute Natalie Arno no more, in I to act as if he had never heard her name.

  it changed the chief constable's mind must

  been the systematic searching of the ic. Two neighbours of Ivan Zoffany went

  indently to the police, one to complain Zoffany had been lighting bonfires in his ten by night, the other to state that she had

  ly seen Jane in the vicinity of De Beauvoir

  on the night of Sunday, 29 June, ic house and the shop were searched lout result. Zoffany admitted to the

  res, saying that he intended to move away take up some other line of work, and it was stock of science-fiction paperbacks he had

  burning. Wexford applied for a warrant to -h the inside of Sterries and secured one

  days after the dragging of the lake. 205

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The house was empty. Not only deserted by its owner but half-emptied of its furnishings. Wexford remembered that Natalie Arno had said she would be going away on holiday and also that she intended having some of the furniture put in store. Mrs Murray-Burgess, that inveterate observer of unusual vehicles, told Burden when he called at Kingsfield House that she had seen a removal van turn out of the Sterries drive into Ploughman's Lane at about three on Tuesday afternoon. It was now Thursday, 17 July.

  With Wexford and Burden were a couple of men, detective constables, called Archbold and Bennett. They were prepared not only to search but to dismantle parts of the house if need be. They began in the double garage, examining the cupboards at the end of it and the outhouse tacked on to its rear. Since Sterries Cottage was also empty and had been since the previous day, Wexford intended it to be searched as well. Archbold, who had had considerable practice at this sort of thing, picked the locks on both front doors.

  The cottage was bare of furniture and carpets. Like most English houses, old or new, it was provided with inadequate cupboard space. Its

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  were of brick but were not cavity walls, at some recent period, perhaps when Sir iuel and the Hickses had first come, the at ground level had been relaid with tiles |i concrete base. No possibility of hiding a there and nowhere upstairs either. They ied their attention to the bigger house, �fere, at first, there seemed even less .ood of being able safely to conceal the |y of a full-grown woman. It was for no more form's sake that they cleared out the cloaks jboard inside the front door, the kitchen >m cupboard and the small room off the .en which housed the central-heating boiler a stock of soap powders and other cleansers, the first floor a great many pieces had including the pale green settee and ihairs, the piano and all the furniture from gue's bedroom and sitting room." here there seemed to be blank spaces or of discolouration on the walls where this at piece had stood. The Chinese vase of :e roses, wilted now, had been stuck on the up against a window.

  innett, tapping walls, discovered a hollow between the right-hand side of the ig cupboard and the outside wall in gue's bedroom. And outside there were that it had been the intention on someone's to use this space as a cupboard for garden or perhaps to contain a dustbin, for an arch 207

  had been built into which to fit a door and this arch subsequently filled in with bricks of a slightly lighter colour.

  From the inside of the hanging cupboard Bennett set about unscrewing the panel at its right-hand end. Wexford wondered if he were getting squeamish in his old age. It was with something amounting to nausea that he stood there anticipating the body falling slowly forward as the panel came away, crumpling into Bennett's arms, the tall thin body of Jane Zoffany with a gauzy scarf and a red and yellow dress of Indian cotton for a winding sheet. Burden sat on the bed, rubbing away fastidiously at a small powder or plaster mark that had appeared on the hem of his light fawn trousers.

  The last screw was out and the panel fell, Bennett catching it and resting it against the wall. There was nothing inside the cavity but a spider which swung across its webs. A little bright light and fresh air came in by way of a ventilator brick. Wexford let out his breath in a sigh. It was time to take a break for lunch.

  Mr Haq, all smiles and gratified to see Wexford back, remarked that he was happy to be living in a country where they paid policemen salaries on which they could afford to have holidays in California. With perfect sincerity, he said this made him feel more secure. Burden ordered for both of them, steak Soroti, an

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  ibcuous beef stew with carrots and onions. ien Mr Haq and his son were out of earshot said he often suspected that the Pearl of ica's cook hailed from Bradford. Wexford nothing.

  pt's no good,' said Burden, 'we aren't going ifind anything in that place. You may as well sign yourself. You're too much of an optimist ictimes for your own good.' I'D'you think I want the poor woman to be id?' Wexford retorted. 'Optimist, indeed.' id he quoted rather crossly, 'The optimist :laims that we live in the best of all possible Srlds. The pessimist fears this is true.' pYou want Natalie Arno to be guilty of |fnething and you don't much care what,' said rden. 'Why should she murder her?' 'Because Jane Zoffany knew who she really is. icr that or she found out how the murder of mrgue was done and who did it. There's a Inspiracy here, Mike, involving a number of ispirators and Jane Zoffany was one of them. it there's no more honour among conspirators there is among thieves, and when she scovered how Natalie had betrayed her she no reason to be discreet any longer.' He told rden what had happened when he icountered Jane Zoffany in Ploughman's Lane 27 June. 'She had something to tell me, she mid have told me then only I didn't realize, I Idn't give her a word of encouragement.

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  Instead she went back to Sterries and no doubt had the temerity to threaten Natalie. It was a silly thing to do. But she was a silly woman, hysterical and unstable.'

  The steak Soroti came. Wexford ate in silence. It was true enough that he wanted Natalie Arno to have done something, or rather that he now saw that charging her with something was almost within his grasp. Who would know where she had gone on holiday? Zoffany? Philip Gory? Would anyone know? They had the ice cream eau-de-nil to follow but Wexford left half of his.

  'Let's get back there,' he said.

  It had begun to rain. The white walls of Sterries were streaked with water. Under a lowering sky of grey and purple cloud the house had the shabby faded look which belongs particularly to English houses built to a design intended for the Mediterranean. There were lights on in the upper rooms.

  Archbold and Bennett were working on the drawing room, Bennett having so thoroughly investigated the chimney as to clamber halfway up inside it. Should they take up the floor? Wexford said no, he didn't think so. No one could hope to conceal a body for long by burying it under the floor in a house which was about to change hands. Though, as Wexford now told himself, it wasn't necessarily or exclusively a body they were looking for. By six

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  |jlock they were by no means finished but sxford told them to leave the rest of the house next day. It was still raining, though slightly i, little more than a drizzle. Wexford made way down the path between the conifers to :k that they had closed and locked the door ^terries Cottage.

  ||n the wet gloom the alsatian's face looking It of a ground-floor window and almost on a pel with his own made him jump. ft evoked ige ideas, that there had been a time shift it was six months ago and Camargue still I. Then again, from the way some kind of lite
cloth seemed to surround the dog's id....

  IfNow I know how Red Riding Hood felt,' said lexfbrd to Dinah Sternhold.

  1''

  She was wearing a white raincoat with its turned up and she had been standing id the dog, surveying the empty room. A ip cotton scarf was tied under her chin. She died. The sadness that had seemed racteristic of her had left her face now. It aned fuller, the cheeks pink with rain and rhaps with running.

  'They've gone,' she said, 'and the door was in. It was a bit of a shock.' 'They're working for Philip Gory now.' She shrugged. 'Oh well, I suppose there was reason they should bother to tell me. I'd got ito the habit of bringing Nancy over every few

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  weeks just for them to see her. Ted loves Nancy.' She took her hand from the dog's collar and Nancy bounded up to Wexford as if they were old friends. 'Sheila said you'd been to California.'

  'For our summer holiday.'

  'Not entirely, Mr Wexford, was it? You went to find out if what Manuel thought was true. But you haven't found out, have you?'

  He said nothing, and she went on quickly, perhaps thinking she had gone too far or been indiscreet. 'I often think how strange it is she could get the solicitors to believe in her and Manuel's old friends to believe in her and the police and people who'd known the Camargues for years, yet Manuel who wanted to believe, who was pretty well geared up to believe anything, saw her on that one occasion and didn't believe in her for more than half an hour.' She shrugged her shoulders again and gave a short little laugh. Then she said politely as was her way, 'I'm so sorry, I'm keeping you. Did you want to lock up?' She took hold of the dog again and walked her out into the rain. 'Has she sold the house?' Her voice suddenly sounded thin and strained.

  Wexford nodded. 'So she says.'

  'I shall never come here again.'

  He watched her walk away down the narrow lane which led from the cottage to the road. Raindrops glistened on the alsatian's fur. Water

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  Id off the flat branches of the conifers and ipped on to the grass. Uncut for more than a �k, it was already shaggy, giving the place an tempt look. Wexford walked back to the car. IBurden was watching Dinah Sternhold loving Nancy on to the rear seat of the jlkswagen. 'It's a funny thing,' he said. ;nny's got a friend, a Frenchwoman, comes )m Alsace. But you can't call her an Alsatian,

  you? That word always means a dog.' 'You couldn't call anyone a Dalmatian either,' lid Wexford.

  Burden laughed. 'Americans call alsatians :rman Shepherds.'

  'We ought to. That's their proper name and I slieve the Kennel Club have brought it in When they were brought here from armany after the First World War there was a It of anti-German feeling--hence we used the iphemism "alsatian". About as daft as refusing play Beethoven and Bach at concerts because ley were German.'

  'Jenny and I are going to German classes,' lid Burden rather awkwardly. 'What on earth for?' 'Jenny says education should go on all one's

  text morning it was heavy and sultry, the sun

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  covered by a thick yellow mist. Sterries awaited them, full of secrets. Before he left news had come in for Wexford through Interpol that the woman who drowned in Santa Xavierita in July 1976 was Theresa or Tessa Lanchester, aged thirty, unmarried, a para-legal secretary from Boston, Massachusetts. The body had been recovered after having been in the sea some five days and identified a further four days later by Theresa Lanchester's aunt, her parents both being dead. Driving up to Sterries, Wexford thought about being sent back to California. He wouldn't mind a few days in Boston, come to that.

  Archbold and Bennett got to work on the spare bedrooms but without positive results and after lunch they set about the study and the two bathrooms.

  In the yellow bathroom they took up the honey-coloured carpet, leaving exposed the white vinyl tiles beneath. It was obvious that none of these tiles had been disturbed since they were first laid. The carpet was replaced and then the same procedure gone through in the blue bathroom. Here there was a shower cabinet as well as a bath. Archbold unhooked and spread out the blue and green striped shower curtain. This was made of semi-transparent nylon with a narrow machine-made hem at the bottom. Archbold, who was young and had excellent sight, noticed that the machine stitches for most

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  phe seam's length were pale blue but in the reme right-hand corner, for about an inch, were not blue but brown. He told ford.

  fjWexford, who had been sitting on a window in the study, thinking, watching the cloud idows move across the meadows, went into blue bathroom and looked at the curtain and �lt down. And about a quarter of an inch the floor, on the panelled side of the bath, lich had been covered for nearly half an inch the carpet pile, were two minute reddish >wn spots.

  jpTake up the floor tiles,' said Wexfbrd. fWould they find enough blood to make a test sible? It appeared so after two of the tiles had m lifted and the edge of the one which had m alongside the bath panelling showed a :k dark encrustation.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  j|L

  fou might tell me where we're going.' IfWhy? You're a real ignoramus when it comes | London.' Wexfbrd spoke irritably. He was fous because he might be wrong. The chief istable had said he was and had frowned and ten his head and talked about infringements rights and intrusions of privacy. If he was

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  wrong he was going to look such a fool. He said to Burden, 'If I said we were going to Thornton Heath, would that mean anything to you?'

  Burden said nothing. He looked huffily out of the window. The car was passing through Croydon, through industrial complexes, estates of small red terraced houses, shopping centres, big spreadeagled roundabouts with many exits. Soon after Thornton Heath station Wexford's driver turned down a long bleak road that was bounded by a tall wire fence on one side and a row of sad thin poplars on the other. Thank God there were such neighbours about as Mrs Murray-Burgess, thought Wexford. A woman endowed with a memory and a gimlet eye as well as a social conscience.

  'An enormous removal van,' she had said, 'a real pantechnicon, and polluting what's left of our country air with clouds of the filthiest black diesel fumes. Of course I can tell you the name of the firm. I sat down and wrote to their managing director at once to complain. William Dorset and Company. I expect you've seen that slogan of theirs, "Dorset Stores It", it's on all their vans.'

  The company had branches in north and south London, in Brighton, Guildford, and in Kingsmarkham, which was no doubt why both Sheila and Natalie Arno had employed them. Kingsmarkham people moving house or storing furniture mostly did use Dorset's.

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  [Here and there along the road was the |casional factory as well as the kind of long, virtually windowless building whose jfssible nature or use it is hard for the passerby ^guess at. Perhaps all such buildings, Wexfbrd jught as they turned into the entrance drive to

  |e of them, served the same purpose as this if*

  M^

  It was built of grey brick and roofed with red ieet iron. What windows it had were high up ider the roof. In the concrete bays in front of ie iron double doors stood two monster vans,

  rk red and lettered 'Dorset Stores It' in

  low.

  'They're expecting us,' Wexford said. 'I

  :kon that's the office over there, don't you?'

  It was an annexe built out on the far side. )meone came out before they reached the

  >r. Wexford recognized him as the younger of b two men who had moved Sheila's furniture, ie one whose wife had not missed a single asode of Runway. He looked at Wexford as if thought he had seen him somewhere before it knew just the same that he was mistaken.

  'Come in, will you please? Mr Rochford's are, our deputy managing director. He

  :koned he ought to be here himself.'

  Wexford's heart did not exactly sink but it Hindered a little. He would so much rather ive been alone, without even Burden. Of mrse he could have stopped all these people

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/>   coming with him, he had the power to do that, but he wouldn't. Besides, two witnesses would be better than one and four better than two. He followed the man who said his name was George Prince into the office. Rochford, a man of Prince's age and in the kind of suit which, while perfectly clean and respectable, looks as if it has been worn in the past for emergency manual labour and could be put to such use again if the need arose, sat in a small armchair with an unopened folder on his knees. He jumped up and the folder fell on the floor. Wexford shook hands with him and showed him the warrant.

  Although he already knew the purpose of the visit, he turned white and looked nauseous.

  'This is a serious matter,' he said miserably, 'a very serious matter.'

  'It is.'

  'I find it hard to believe. I imagine there's a chance you're wrong.'

  'A very good chance, sir.'

  'Because,' said Rochford hopefully and extremely elliptically, 'in summertime and after�well, I mean, there's been nothing of that sort, has there, George?'

  Not yet, thought Wexford. 'Perhaps we might terminate this suspense,' he said, attempting a smile, 'by going and having a look?'

  'Oh yes, yes, by all means. This way, through here. Perhaps you'll lead the way, George. I

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  you're wrong, Mr Wexford, I only hope >u're wrong.' The interior of the warehouse was cavernous id dim. The roof, supported by girders of red mi, was some thirty feet high. Up there rows flitted about and perched on these i-made branches. The sunlight was greenish, Itering through the tinted panes of high, metalicd windows. George Prince pressed a titch and strip lighting came on, setting the jarrows in flight again. It was chilly inside the rehouse, though the outdoor temperature had it morning edged just into the seventies. The place had the air of a soulless and shabby >wnship erected on a grid plan. A town of ivans, placed symmetrically a yard or two >art and with streets crossing each other at it angles to give access to them. It might have m a camp for refugees or the rejected spillrer of some newly constituted state, or the idea such a place in grim fiction or cinema, a fttlement in a northern desert without a tree or blade of grass. Wexford felt the fantasy and look it off, for there were no people, no labitants of this container camp but himself id Burden and George Prince and Rochford idding softly up the broadest aisle. Of these rectangular houses, these metal iboids ranked in rows, iron red, factory green, louflage khaki, the one they were making for at the end of the topmost lane to debouch 1 219