Put On By Cunning

by Ruth Rendell

  'No.' She shook her head vehemently. 'I only posted it. My sister had bought a card for me and written in it and done the envelope and everything. She said, here, you'd better have this now, save the postage. I went out at night and posted it.' She gave a watery vague smile. 'I liked hiding, I enjoyed it.'

  He could understand that. The virtue for her would be twofold. To some extent she would lose her identity, that troubling self, she would have hidden here from herself as successfully as she had hidden from others. And there would be the satisfaction of becoming for a brief while important, of causing anxiety, for once of stimulating emotions.

  'What I don't see,' he said, 'is how you managed when the police came here making inquiries.'

  She giggled. 'That was funny. They took me for my sister.'

  'I see.'

  'They just took it for granted I was my sister and they kept on talking about Mrs Zoffany.

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  id I have any idea where Mrs Zoffany might ? When had I last seen her? I said no and I 't know and they had to believe me. It was y, it was a bit like...' She put her fingers iver her mouth and looked at him over the top if them. 'I shall have to tell your husband where you

  He's been very worried about you.' 'Has he? Has he really? Had she, during her semi-incarceration, atched television, heard a radio, seen a icwspaper? Presumably not, since she had not icntioned Natalie's death. He wouldn't either, he was safe enough here, he thought, with the ister coming back. Zoffany himself would no toubt come down before that. Would they xhaps get her back into a mental hospital tween them? He had no faith that the kind of tment she might get would do her good. He 'anted to tell her to have a bath, eat a meal, �pen the windows, but he knew she would take to advice, would hardly hear it. 'I thought you'd be very angry with me.' He treated that no more seriously than if the 'ounger of his grandsons had said it to him. and I are going to have to have a talk, Mrs ffany. When you've settled down at home and I've got more time. Just at present I'm p'ery busy and I have to go abroad again.'

  She nodded. She no longer looked sullen. He himself out into Bayeux Green's little high

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  street, and when he glanced back he saw her gaunt face at the window, the eyes following him. In spite of what he had said, he might never see her again, he might never need to, for in one of those flashes of illumination that he had despaired of ever coming in this case, he saw the truth. She had told him. In a little giggly confidence she had told him everything there still remained for him to know.

  In the late afternoon he drove out to the home of the chief constable, Hightrees Farm, Millerton. Mrs Griswold exemplified the reverse of the Victorian ideal for children; she was heard but not seen. Some said she had been bludgeoned into passivity by forty years with the colonel. Her footsteps could sometimes be heard overhead, her voice whispering into the telephone. Colonel Griswold himself opened the front door, something which Wexford always found disconcerting. It was plunging in at the deep end.

  'I want to go to the South of France, sir.' 'I daresay,' said Griswold. 'I shall have to settle for a cottage in north Wales myself.'

  In a neutral voice Wexford reminded him that he had already had his holiday. The chief constable said yes, he remembered, and Wexford had been somewhere very exotic,

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  idn't he? He had wondered once or twice how lat sort of thing would go down with the public /hen the police started screaming for wage icreases.

  'I want to go to the South of France,' Oxford said more firmly, 'and I know it's :gular but I would like to take Mike Burden irith me. It's a little place inland--' Griswold's ips seemed silently to be forming the syllables Jt Tropez, '--and there's a woman there who inherit Camargue's money and property. She's Camargue's niece and her name is Therese sremy.' *A French citizen?' 'Yes, sir, but...'

  'I don't want you going about putting >ple's backs up, Reg. Particularly foreign icks. I mean, don't think you can go over there id arrest this woman on some of your thin ispicions and...'

  But before Wexford had even begun to deny it this was his intention he knew from the loody truculent look which had replaced obduracy in Griswold's face that he was going to ilent.

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  CHAPTER TWENTY

  From the city of the angels to the bay of the angels. As soon as they got there the taxi driver took them along the Promenade des Anglais, though it was out of their way, but he said they had to see it, they couldn't come to Nice and just see the airport. While Wexford gazed out over the Baie des Anges, Burden spoke from his newly acquired store of culture. Jenny had a reproduction of a picture of this by a painter called Dufy, but it all looked a bit different now. It was still only late morning. They had come on the early London to Paris flight and changed planes at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Now their drive took them through hills crowned with orange and olive trees. Saint-Jeande-1'Eclaircie lay a few miles to the north of Grasse, near the river Loup. A bell began to chime noon as they passed through a ivy-hung archway in the walls into the ancient town. They drove past the ochre-stone cathedral into the Place aux Eaux Vives where a fountain was playing and where stood Picasso's statue 'Woman with a Lamb', presented to the town by the artist (according to Wexford's guide book) when he lived and worked there for some months after the war. The guide book also said that there was a Fragonard in the cathedral, some incomparable

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  jvres porcelain in the museum, the Fondation

  5use, and a mile outside the town the well

  ;served remains of a Roman amphitheatre.

  le taxi driver said that if you went up into the

  ithedral belfry you could see Corsica on the

  jrizon.

  Wexford had engaged rooms for one night-- the advice of his travel agent in the igsbrook Precinct--at the Hotel de la Rose iche in the place. Its vestibule was cool and i, stone-walled, stone-flagged, and with that ^definable atmosphere that is a combination of Mnplacency and gleeful anticipation and which ies that the food is going to be good. The lef's in his kitchen, all's right with the world.

  lenneth Ames had known nothing more about lemoiselle Leremy than her name, her Idress and her relationship to Camargue. It is also known that her parents were dead and le herself unmarried. Recalling the photograph the two little girls shown him by Mrs Iquntnessing, Wexford concluded she must be the age of Camargue's daughter. He looked ir up in the phone book, dialled the number >prehensively because of his scanty French, it got no reply.

  They lunched off seafood, bread that was rly all crisp crust, and a bottle of

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  Monbazillac. Wexford said in an abstracted sort of voice that he felt homesick already, the hors d'oeuvres reminded him of Mr Haq and antipasto Ankole. He got no reply when he attempted once more to phone Therese Leremy, so there seemed nothing for it but to explore the town.

  It was too hot to climb the belfry. On 24 July Saint-Jean-de-1'Eclaircie was probably at its hottest. The square was deserted, the narrow steep alleys that threaded the perimeter just inside the walls held only the stray tourist, and the morning market which had filled the Place de la Croix had packed up and gone. They went into the cathedral of St Jean Baptiste, dark, cool, baroque. A nun was walking in the aisle, eyes cast down, and an old man knelt at prayer. They looked with proper awe at Fragonard's 'Les Pains et Les Poissons', a large hazy canvas of an elegant Christ and an adoring multitude, and then they returned to the bright white sunshine and hard black shadows of the place.

  'I suppose she's out at work,' said Wexford. 'A single woman would be bound to work. It looks as if we'll have to hang things out a few hours.'

  'It's no hardship,' said Burden. 'I promised Jenny I wouldn't miss the museum.'

  Wexford shrugged. 'O.K.'

  The collection was housed in a sienna-red stucco building with Fondation Yeuse lettered

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  a black marble plaque. Wexford had ;cted it to be deserted inside but in fact they ;t other tourists in the rooms and on the idin
g marble staircase. As well as the Sevres, rden had been instructed to look at some icient jewellery discovered in the Condamine, id Wexford, hearing English spoken, asked for rections from the woman who had been making correctly but haltingly to an American sitor. She seemed to be a curator, for she wore one of the lapels of her dark red, nearform dress an oval badge inscribed mdation Yeuse. He forced himself not to re�and then wondered how many thousands gfore him had forced themselves not to stare, ic lower part of her face was pitted densely id deeply with the scars of what looked like Ipox but was almost certainly acne. In her" reful stumbling English she instructed him jhere to find the jewellery. He and Burden jent upstairs again where the American woman id arrived before them. The sun penetrating iwn Venetian blinds shone on her flawless |ory skin. She had hands like Natalie Arno's, ig, and slender, display stands for rings as ivy and roughly made as those on the linen ider the glass.

  'We may as well get on up there,' said fexford after they had bought a flacon of isse perfume for Dora and a glazed stoneware in a Picasso design for Jenny. 'Get on up

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  there and have a look at the place.'

  The two local taxis, which were to be found between the fountain and the hotel de la Rose Blanche, were not much in demand at this hour. Their driver spoke no English but as soon as Wexford mentioned the Maison du Cirque he understood and nodded assent.

  On the north-eastern side of the town, outside the walls, was an estate of depressing pale grey flats and brown wooden houses with scarlet switchback roofs. It was as bad as home. Worse? ventured Burden. But the estate was soon left behind and the road ran through lemon groves. The driver persisted in talking to them in fast, fluent, incomprehensible French. Wexford managed to pick out two facts from all this, one that Saint-Jean-de-1'Eclaircie held a lemon festival each February, and the other that on the far side of the hill was the amphitheatre.

  They came upon the house standing alone at a bend in the road. It was flat-fronted, unprepossessing but undoubtedly large. At every window were wooden shutters from which most of the paint had flaked away. Big gardens, neglected now, stretched distantly towards olive and citrus groves, separated from them by crumbling stone walls.

  'Mariana in the moated grange,' said Wexford. 'We may as well go to the circus while we're waiting for her.'

  The driver took them back. The great circular

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  which was the base of the amphitheatre is strangely green as if watered by a hidden ^ring. The tiers of seating, still defined, still listakable, rose in their parallel arcs to the Iside, the pines, the crystalline blue of the Wexford sat down where some prefect or isul might once have sat. 'I hope we're in time,' he said. 'I hope we can ;t to her before any real harm has been done, ic woman has been dead nine days. He's been re, say, eight....'

  'If he's here. The idea of him being here is all 5ed on your ESP. We don't know if he's here id, come to that, we don't know who he is or piat he looks like or what name he'll be using.' 'It's not as bad as that,' said Wexford. 'He )uld naturally come here. This place, that girl, juld draw him like magnets. He won't want to

  the money now, Mike.' 'No, not after plotting for years to get it. How ig d'you reckon we're going to be here?' Wexford shrugged. The air was scented with le herbs that grew on the hillsides, sage and lyme and rosemary and bay, and the sun was very warm. 'However long it may be,' he lid enigmatically, 'to me it would be too short.' fe looked at his watch. 'Martin should have m Williams by now and done a spot of

  :king up for me at Guy's Hospital.' 'Guy's Hospital?'

  *In the course of this case we haven't ? 243

  remembered as often as we should that Natalie Arno went into hospital a little while before Camargue died. She had a biopsy.'

  'Yes, what is that?'

  'It means to look at living tissue. It usually describes the kind of examination that is done to determine whether certain cells are cancerous or not.'

  Once this subject would have been a highly emotive one for Burden, an area to be avoided by all his sensitive acquaintances. His first wife had died of cancer. But time and his second marriage had changed things. He responded not with pain but only with an edge of embarrassment to his voice.

  'But she didn't have cancer.'

  'Oh, no.'

  He sat down in the tier below Wexford. 'I'd like to tell you what I think happened, see if we agree.' On the grass beside him the shadow of Wexford's head nodded. 'Well, then. Tessa Lanchester went on holiday to that place in California, Santa�what was it?'

  ' Santa Xavierita.'

  'And while she was there she met a man who played the guitar or whatever in a restaurant in the local town. He was living in America illegally and was very likely up to a good many other illegal activities as well. He was a con man. He had already met Natalie Arno and found out from her who her father was and what her

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  :tations were. He introduced Tessa to latalie and the two women became friends. 'He persuaded Tessa not to go back home to >ston but to remain longer in Santa Xavierita ig all she could about Natalie's life and ist. Then he took Natalie out swimming by ight and drowned her and that same night left rith Tessa for Los Angeles in Natalie's car with Jatalie's luggage and the key to Natalie's house, from then on Tessa became Natalie. The iges Natalie's body had undergone after five iys in the sea made a true identification ipossible and, since Tessa was missing, the jrpse was identified as that of Tessa. Tessa and her accomplice then set about their |lan to inherit Camargue's property, though is was somewhat frustrated by Ilbert's itervening and the subsequent deportation, tessa tried in vain to sell Natalie's house. I at this time she rather cooled off the plan, lerwise I don't know how to account for a lay of more than three years between making J plan and putting it into practice. I think she )led off. She settled into her new identity, ide new friends and, as we know, had two icr love affairs. Then one of these lovers, ran Zoffany, wrote from London in the itumn of 1979 to say he had heard from his ister-in-law who lived near Wellridge that rgue was about to re-marry. That alerted ;r and fetched her to England. There she was

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  once more able to join forces with the man who had first put her up to the idea. They had the support and help of Zoffany and his wife. How am I doing so far?'

  Wexford raised his eyebrows. 'How did they get Williams and Mavis Rolland into this? Bribery?'

  'Of course. It would have to be a heavy bribe. Williams's professional integrity presumably has a high price. I daresay Mrs Woodhouse could be bought cheaply enough.'

  'I never took you for a snob before, Mike.'

  'It's not snobbery,' said Burden hotly. 'It's simply that the poorer you are the more easily you're tempted. Shall I go on?'

  The shadow nodded.

  'They hesitated a while before the confrontation. Tessa was naturally nervous about this very important encounter. Also she'd been ill and had to have hospital treatment. When she finally went down to Sterries she blundered, not in having failed to do her homework�she knew every fact about the Camargue household she could be expected to, she knew them like she knew her own family in Boston�but over the pronunciation of an Italian name. Spanish she knew�many Americans do�French she knew, but it never occurred to her she would have to pronounce Italian.

  'The rest we know. Camargue told her she

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  juld be cut out of his will, so on the following iday she made a sound alibi for herself by

  ^ing to a party with Jane Zoffany. He went

  3�wn to Sterries, waited for Camargue in the

  rden and drowned him in the lake.'

  iWexfbrd said nothing.

  Well?'

  As befitted a person of authority sitting in the lery of an amphitheatre, Wexford turned his thumbs. 'The last bit's more or less

  it, the drowning bit.' He got up. 'Shall we >

  I Burden was still muttering that it had to be it way, that all else was impossible, when they ived back at the Maison du Ci
rque. Ahead of an a bright green Citroen 2CV had just led into the drive.

  iiThe woman who got out of it, who came luiringly towards them, was the curator of the

  mdation Yeuse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  le sun shone cruelly on that pitted skin. She done her best to hide it with heavy make>, but there would never be any hiding it. And as she approached these two strangers she

  it one hand up, half covering a cheek. Close she had a look of Camargue, all the less

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  attractive traits of the Camargue physiognomy were in her face, too-high forehead, too-long nose, too-fleshy mouth, and added to them that acne-scarred skin. She was sallow #nd her hair was very dark. But she was one of those plain people whose smiles transform them. She smiled uncertainly at them, and the change of expression made her look kind and sweet tempered.

  Wexford introduced them. He explained that he had seen her earlier that day. He* surprise at being called upon by two English policemen seemed unfeigned. She was astonished but not apparently nervous.

  'This is some matter concerning the musee-- the museum?' she asked in her heavily accented English.

  'No, mademoiselle,' said Wexfofd, 'I must confess I'd never heard of the Fondation Yeuse till this morning. You've worked there long?'

  'Since I leave the university--that is, eighteen years. M. Raoul Yeuse, the Paris art dealer, he is, was, the brother of my father's sister. He has founded the museum, you understand? Excuse me, monsieur, I fear my English is very bad.'

  'It is we who should apologize for having no French. May we go into the house, Mademoiselle Leremy? I have something to tell you.'

  Did she know already? The announcement of the discovery of the body at Dorset's would have

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  rcely appeared in the French newspapers itil three days ago. And when it appeared irould it have merited more than a paragraph on inside page? A murder, in England, of an ^bscure woman? The dark eyes of Camargue's liece looked merely innocent and inquiring. She ;d them into a large high-ceilinged room and jpened latticed glass doors on to a terrace. From ic back of the Maison du Cirque you could see le green rim of the amphitheatre and smell the icented hillsides. But the house itself was labby and neglected and far too big. It had >