Sins of the Fathers

by Ruth Rendell

  The door gave a slight whine as he closed it. Now, as he turned, he could see the funeral cars, three of them, outside the other gate. He went to look again at Grace's grave, passed the newly dug trench where this latest coffin was to be laid, and finally sat down on a wooden seat in a shady corner. It was a quarter to twelve. Give it half an hour, he thought, and then he would have to go for his bus. Presently he dozed.

  The sound of gentle footfalls awakened him. He opened his eyes and saw that they were carrying the coffin out of the church. It was supported by four bearers, but it was a small coffin, a child's perhaps or a short woman's. On it were a few bunches of flowers and a huge wreath of madonna lilies.

  The bearers were followed by a dozen people, the procession being headed by a man and a woman walking side by side. Their backs were towards Archery and besides that the woman, dressed in a black coat, wore a large black hat whose brim curved about her face. But he would have known her anywhere. He would have known her if he were blind and deaf, by her presence and her essence. They could not see him, had no idea they were watched, these mourners who had come to bury Alice Flower.

  The other followers were mostly old, friends of Alice's perhaps, and one woman looked as if she must be the matron of the Infirmary. They gathered at the graveside and the vicar began to speak the words that would finally commit the old servant to the ground. Primero bent down and, taking rather fastidiously a handful of black earth, cast it on to the coffin. His shoulders shook and a little hand in a black glove reached out and rested on his arm. Archery felt a savage stab of jealousy that took away his breath.

  The vicar spoke the Collect and blessed them. Then Primero went a little way apart with him, they spoke together and shook hands. He took his wife's arm and they walked slowly towards the gate where the cars were. It was all over.

  When they were out of sight Archery got up and approached the gradually filling grave. He could smell the lilies five yards off. A card was attached to them and on it someone had written simply: "From Mr. and Mrs. Roger, with love."

  "Good day," he said to the sexton.

  "Good day, sir. Lovely day."

  It was gone a quarter past twelve. Archery hurried towards the kissing gate, wondering how often the buses ran. As he came out from under the arch of trees, he stopped suddenly. Charles was striding towards him up the sandy lane.

  "Good thing you didn't come," Charles called. "The place was shut for redecorating. Can you beat it? We thought we might as well drift back and pick you up."

  "Where's the car?"

  "Round the other side of the church."

  They would be gone by now. Just the same Archery wished he were safely back at the Olive and Dove eating cold beef and salad. As they rounded the yew hedge a black car passed them. He forced himself to look towards the gate. The Primeros were still there, talking to the matron. His throat grew suddenly dry.

  "Let's cut across the green," he said urgently.

  "Mr. Kershaw happens to be waiting on this side."

  They were now only a few yards from the Primeros. The matron shook hands and stepped into a hired limousine. Primero turned and his eyes met those of Charles. He grew first white, then a curious vinegary purple. Charles went on walking towards him and then Primero too began to move. They were approaching each other menacingly, ridiculously, like two gunmen in a Western.

  "Mr. Bowman, of the Sunday Planet, I believe?"

  Charles stopped and said coolly. "You can believe what you like."

  She had been talking to the women in the car. Now she withdrew her head and the car began to move off. They were alone, the four of them, in the centre of the fifth prettiest village in England. She looked at Archery first with embarrassment, then with a warmth that conquered her awkwardness.

  "Why, hallo, I..."

  Primero snatched at her arm. "Recognise him? I shall need you for a witness, Imogen."

  Charles glared. "You what?"

  "Charles!" said Archery sharply.

  "Do you deny that you made your way into my home under false pretences?"

  "Roger, Roger..." She was still smiling, but her smile had grown stiff. "Don't you remember we met Mr. Archery at the dance? This is his son. He's a journalist, but he uses a pseudonym, that's all. They're here on holiday."

  Charles said rigidly, "I'm afraid that isn't quite true, Mrs. Primero." She blinked, her lashes fluttering like wings, and her gaze came to rest softly on Archery's face. "My father and I came here with the express purpose of collecting certain information. That we have done. In order to do it we had to make our way into your confidence. Perhaps we have been unscrupulous, but we thought the end justified the means."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand." Her eyes were still on Archery and he was unable to draw his own away. He knew that his face registered a tremendous plea for forgiveness, a disclaimer of Charles's statement, and also registered the agony of love. There was, however, no reason why she should read there anything but guilt. "I don't understand at all. What information?"

  "I'll tell you..." Charles began, but Primero interrupted him.

  "Since you're so frank, you won't have any objection to coming down to the police station right now and laying your 'information' before Chief Inspector Wexford."

  "None at all," Charles drawled, "except that it happens to be my lunchtime and in any case I have an appointment with the Chief Inspector already. At two sharp. I intend to tell him, Mr. Primero, just how opportunely for you your grandmother died, how—oh, perfectly legally, I admit—you managed to cheat your sisters out of their inheritance, and how you concealed yourself in Victor's Piece on a certain evening in December sixteen years ago."

  "You're out of your mind!" Primero shouted.

  Archery found his voice. "That's enough, Charles."

  He heard her speak, a tiny disembodied sound. "It isn't true!" And then, terribly afraid. "It isn't true, is it?"

  "I'm damned if I'll argue it out in the street with this crook!"

  "Of course it's true."

  "It was all aboveboard." Primero suddenly broke. They were all hot, standing there in the noon sun, but only Primero's face showed actual sweat, water drops on the cheesy sallow skin. "Hell it was a matter of law," he blustered. "What's it got to do with you, anyway? Who are you?"

  Without taking her gaze from Archery, she took her husband's arm. All the gaiety had left her face and she looked almost old, a faded blonde who was effaced by her black clothes. Because she had become ugly she suddenly seemed for the first time within Archery's reach, yet she had never been farther from it. "Let's go home, Roger." Her mouth trembled and cobweb lines had appeared at its corners. "In the course of your enquiries, Mr. Archery," she said, "I hope you managed to combine pleasure with business."

  Then they were gone. Charles gave a great gasp.

  "I must say I rather enjoyed that. I suppose by pleasure she meant the lunch they gave me. You can rely on these tycoons' wives to tot up every egg in the caviare. Still it was hard on her. You needn't look so shattered, Father. It's awfully middle-class to have a phobia about scenes."

  *13*

  I deal with the thing that is lawful and right ... and all false ways I utterly abhor. —Psalm 119, appointed for the Twenty-sixth Day

  "Public General Acts and Measures, 1950." Wexford took the book—was it a White Paper? Archery was ashamed to confess that he did not know—and read the title aloud. "There's something here you want me to look at?"

  Charles found the page for him. "Here." Wexford began to read. The silence was tense, almost agonised. Archery looked surreptitiously at the others, Charles who was flushed with eagerness, Kershaw trying to sit casually, but whose bright darting eyes betrayed his anxiety, Tess who looked confident, serene. Was it her mother in whom she trusted so completely or was it Charles? A good deal of Charles's poise had deserted him when, on entering the office five minutes before, he had had to introduce Tess to the Chief Inspector.

  "Miss Kershaw," he had said, "my ... t
he girl I'm going to marry. I..."

  "Ah, yes." Wexford had been very urbane. "Good afternoon, Miss Kershaw, Mr. Kershaw. Won't you sit down? Heatwave's coming to an end at last, I'm afraid."

  And indeed a change had come over the bright blue un-English sky. It had begun just after lunch with the appearance of a cloud that was truly no bigger than a man's hand, and this cloud had been followed by more, driven by a sudden wind. Now, as Wexford, frowning a little, read steadily, Archery contemplated the window from which the yellow blind had been fully raised, and through it the lumpy blotchy mass of cumulus, hollowed and pock-marked with grey.

  "Very interesting," said Wexford, "and new to me. I didn't know the Primero sisters were adopted. Convenient for Primero."

  "Convenient?" said Charles. Archery sighed within himself. He could always tell when his son was going to be rude or what Charles himself called forthright. "Is that all you've got to say?"

  "No," said Wexford. Few people have the confidence and the restraint to say "yes" or "no" without qualification. Wexford was big and heavy and ugly; his suit had seen better days, too many wet ones and too many hot dusty ones, but he radiated strength. "Before we go any further on this tack, Mr. Archery," he said to Charles, "I'd like to say that I've had a complaint about you from Mr. Primero."

  "Oh, that."

  "Yes, that. I've been aware for some days that your father had made the acquaintance of the Primeros. Perhaps it wasn't a bad idea and I'm sure it wasn't an unpleasant one to do so through Mrs. Primero." Archery knew his face had become white. He felt sick. "And let me say in all fairness," Wexford went on, "that I told him it was all right as far as I was concerned to make contact with the people concerned in the Primero case." He glanced briefly at Tess who didn't move. "Make contact, I said, not make trouble. Your little escapade on Friday is what I call making trouble and that I won't have!"

  Charles said sulkily, "All right, I'm sorry." Archery saw that he had to justify himself before Tess. "You're not going to tell me that your people don't occasionally invent a cover story to get what they want."

  "My people," Wexford snapped, "happen to have the law on their side." He added grandiloquently, "They are the law." The frown thawed. "Now we've got the lecture over you'd better tell me just what you and your father have found out."

  Charles told him. Wexford listened patiently, but as the evidence against Primero mounted, instead of surprise, his face registered a strange blankness. The heavy features had become brutish, like those of an old bull.

  "Of course, you'll say he had an alibi," said Charles. "I realise your people would have checked his alibi and after all these years it's going to be difficult to crack, but..."

  "His alibi was not checked," said Wexford.

  "What did you say?"

  "His alibi was not checked."

  "I don't understand."

  "Mr. Archery..." Wexford got up and rested his massive hands on the desk, but he didn't move away from behind it. "I am quite happy to discuss this whole matter with you, answer any questions you may like to ask." He paused. "But not in the presence of Miss Kershaw. If I may say so, I think you were unwise to bring her with you."

  Now it was Charles's turn to get to his feet. "Miss Kershaw is going to be my wife," he said hotly. "Anything you say to me you can say to her. I won't have any secrets from her in this."

  Casually Wexford sat down again. He drew a bunch of papers from a desk drawer and began to study them. Then he lifted his eyes slowly and said: "I'm sorry this has been a fruitless interview for you. With a little co-operation I think I could have saved you a lot of useless enquiry. But, if you'll forgive me, I'm a very busy man so I'll say good afternoon."

  "No," said Tess suddenly. "I'll go. I'll wait in the car."

  "Tess!"

  "Of course I'm going, darling. Don't you see? He can't talk about my father in front of me. Oh, darling be your age!"

  He is being his age, thought Archery miserably. Wexford knew something—something that was going to be horrible. But why was he playing this pouncing cat and mouse game with them all, why had he played it with Archery all along? Confidence and strength—but did it cover a fierce inverted snobbism, a fear that the Archeries might shake his authority and trouble the still waters of his district? And yet the man held such sway and was, beyond a doubt, a good, just man. He would never lie or even shift truth to cover a lapse. "His alibi was not checked..." If only they would stop fencing!

  Then, suddenly, Wexford stopped it.

  "No need to leave the building, Miss Kershaw," he said. "If your—your father would care to take you upstairs—straight along the corridor and turn left when you come to the double doors—you'll find we've got quite a reasonable canteen, even for a lady. I suggest a cup of strong tea and an eccles cake."

  "Thanks." Tess turned and just touched Kershaw's shoulder. He rose at once. Wexford closed the door after them.

  Charles took a deep breath, and making a brave attempt to lounge casually in his chair, said, "All right, then. What about this alibi that for some mysterious reason was never investigated?"

  "The reason," said Wexford, "was not mysterious. Mrs. Primero was killed between six-twenty-five and seven o'clock on the evening of Sunday, September 24th, 1950." He paused to allow Charles's inevitable interruption of "Yes, yes", uttered with fierce impatience. "She was killed in Kingsmarkham and at six-thirty Roger Primero was seen in Sewingbury five miles away."

  "Oh, he was seen, was he?" Charles scoffed, crossing his legs. "What do you think, Father? Does it seem remotely possible to you that he could have fixed it beforehand that he'd be 'seen'? There's always some shifty mate who'll perjure himself and say he's seen you for twenty quid."

  "Some shifty mate, eh?" Wexford was now hardly bothering to conceal his amusement.

  "Somebody saw him. All right. Who saw him?"

  Wexford sighed and the smiled was erased. "I saw him," he said.

  It was a blow in the face. Archery's love for his son, dormant over the past days, rose within his breast in a hot tide. Charles said nothing, and Archery who had been doing this sort of thing rather a lot lately, tried hard not to hate Wexford. He had taken an unconscionable time coming to the point, but this, of course, was his revenge.

  The big elbows rested on the desk, the fingers meeting and pressing together in an implacable pyramid of flesh. The law incarnate. If Wexford had seen Primero that night, there was no gainsaying it, for here was incorruptibility. It was almost as if God had seen him. Horrified, Archery pulled himself up in his chair and gave a dry painful cough.

  "You?" said Charles at last.

  "I," said Wexford, "with my little eye."

  "You might have told us before!"

  "I would have," said Wexford mildly and, oddly enough, believably, "if I'd had the remotest idea you suspected him. Chatting up Primero about his grandmother was one thing, pinning murder on him quite another."

  Polite now, stiff and very formal, Charles asked, "Would you mind telling us the details?"

  Wexford's courtesy matched his. "Not at all. I intend to. Before I do, however, I'd better say that there was no question of hindsight. I knew Primero. I'd seen him in court with his chief on a good many occasions. He used to go along with him to learn the ropes." Charles nodded, his face set. Archery thought he knew what was going on in his mind. Loss was something he knew about, too.

  "I was in Sewingbury on a job," Wexford continued, "and I'd got a date to meet a man who sometimes gave us a bit of information. What you might call a shifty mate, but we never got twenty quidsworth out of him. The appointment was for six at a pub called the Black Swan. Well, I had a word with my—my friend, and I was due back in Kingsmarkham at seven. I walked out of the public bar at just on half past six and ran slap bang into Primero.

  " 'Good evening, Inspector,' he said, and I thought he looked a bit lost. As well he might. I found out afterwards that he'd been going to meet some pals, but he'd got the wrong pub. They were waiting for him at The Bl
ack Bull. 'Are you on duty?' he said. 'Or can I buy you a short snort?' "

  Archery nearly smiled. Wexford had given a very fair imitation of the absurd slang Primero still affected after sixteen years of affluence.

  " 'Thanks all the same,' I said 'but I'm late as it is.' 'Good night to you, then,' he said and he went up to the bar. I'd only been in Kingsmarkham ten minutes when I got called out to Victor's Piece."

  Charles got up slowly and extended a stiff, mechanical hand. "Thank you very much, Chief Inspector. I think that's all anyone can say on the subject, don't you?" Wexford leaned across the desk and took his hand. A faint flash of compassion softened his features, weakened them, and was gone. "I'm sorry I wasn't very polite just now," Charles said.

  "That all right," said Wexford. "This is a police station, not a clerical garden party." He hesitated and added, "I'm sorry, too." And Archery knew that the apology had nothing to do with Charles's ill manners.

  Tess and Charles began to argue even before they had all got into the car. Certain that they had said it all or something very like it before, Archery listened to them indifferently. He had kept silent for half an hour and still there was nothing he could say.

  "We have to be realistic about it," Charles was saying. "If I don't mind and Mother and Father don't mind, why can't we just get married and forget you ever had a father?"

  "Who says they don't mind? That's not being realistic, anyway. I'm being realistic. One way and another I've had a lot of luck..." Tess flashed a quick watery smile at Kershaw. "I've had more than anyone would have thought possible, but this is one bit I have to dip out on."

  "And what does that mean exactly?"

  "Just that—well, it was ridiculous ever to imagine we could be married, you and I."

  "You and I? What about all the others who'll come along and fancy you? Are you going to go through the same melodrama with them or d'you think you'll weaken when the thirties rear their ugly heads?"

  She winced at that. Archery thought Charles had almost forgotten they were not alone. He pushed her into the back seat of the car and banged the door. "I'm curious, you see," Charles went on, bitterly sarcastic. "I'd just like to know if you've taken a vow of perpetual chastity. O God, it's like a feature in the Sunday Planet—Condemned to lonely spinsterhood for father's crime! Just for the record, since I'm supposed to be so far above you morally, I'd like to know the qualifications the lucky man has to have. Give me a specification, will you?"