by Ruth Rendell
‘Would it upset you to talk to me about Mrs Primero, Miss Flower?’ He asked gently, easing himself into a bentwood chair.
‘Of course it wouldn’t,’ said the sister, ‘she loves it.’
Archery could bear no more. ‘This is rather a private matter, if you don’t mind.’
‘Private! It’s the whole ward’s bedtime story, believe me.’ She flounced away, a crackling navy and white robot.
Alice Flower’s voice was cracked and harsh. The strokes had affected her throat muscles and her vocal cords. But her accent was pleasant and correct, learnt, Archery supposed, in the kitchens and nurseries of educated people.
‘What was it you wanted to know, sir?’
‘First tell me about the Primero family.’
‘Oh, I can do that. I always took an interest.’ She gave a small rattling cough and turned her head to hide the twisted side of her mouth. ‘I went to Mrs Primero when the boy was born …’
‘The boy.’
‘Mr Edward, her only child he was.’
Ah, thought Archery, the father of rich Roger and his sisters.
‘He was a lovely boy and we always got on a treat, him and me. I reckon it really aged me and his poor mother when he died, sir. But he’d got a family of his own by then, thanks be to God, and Mr Roger was the living spit of his father.’
‘I suppose Mr Edward left him pretty well off, did he?’
‘Oh, no, sir, that was the pity of it. You see, Old Dr Primero left his money to madam, being as Mr Edward was doing so well at the time. But he lost everything on something in the city and when he was taken Mrs Edward and the three kids were quite badly off.’ She coughed again, making Archery wince. He fancied he could see a terrible vain effort to raise those hands and cover the rattling lips. ‘Madam offered to help – not that she had more than she needed – but Mrs Edward was that proud, she wouldn’t take a penny from her mother-in-law. I never shall know how she managed. There was the three of them, you see. Mr Roger he was the eldest, and then there was the two little mites, ever so much younger than their brother, but close together if you take my meaning. No more than eighteen months between them.’
She rested her head back on the pillows and bit at her lip as if trying to pull it back into place. ‘Angela was the oldest. Time flies so I reckon she’d be twenty-six now. Then there was Isabel, named after madam. They was just babies when their Daddy died and it was years before we saw them.
‘It was a bitter blow to madam, I can tell you, not knowing what had become of Mr Roger. Then one day just out of the blue he turned up at Victor’s Piece. Fancy, he was living in digs just over at Sewingbury, studying to be a solicitor with a very good firm. Somebody Mrs Edward knew had got him in. He hadn’t no idea his granny was still alive, let alone in Kingsmarkham, but he was looking up somebody in the phone book, in the line of business, sir, and there it was: Mrs Rose Primero, Victor’s Piece. Once he’d come over there was no stopping him. Not that we wanted to stop him, sir. Pretty nearly every Sunday he came and once or twice he fetched his little sisters all the way from London and brought them with him. Good as gold they were.
‘Mr Roger and madam, they used to have some laughs together. All the old photographs they’d have out and the tales she used to tell him!’ She stopped suddenly and Archery watched the old face swell and grow purple. ‘It was a change for us to have a nice gentlemanlike young fellow about the place after that Painter.’ Her voice changed to a shrill whistling shriek. ‘That dirty murdering beast!’
Across the ward another old woman in a bed like Alice Flower’s smiled a toothless smile as of one hearing a familiar tale retold. The ward’s bedtime story, the sister had said.
Archery leaned towards her. ‘That was a dreadful day, Miss Flower,’ he said, ‘the day Mrs Primero died.’ The fierce eyes flickered, red and spongey blue. ‘I expect you feel you’ll never forget it …’
‘Not to my dying day,’ said Alice Flower. Perhaps she thought of the now useless body that had once been so fine an instrument and was already three-quarters dead.
‘Will you tell me about it?’
As soon as she began he realized how often she must have told it before. It was likely that some of these other old women were not absolutely bedridden, that sometimes in the evenings they got up and gathered round Alice Flower’s bed. A tale, he thought, paraphrasing, to draw children from play and old women from the chimney corner.
‘He was a devil,’ she said, ‘a terror. I was scared of him but I never let him know it. Take all and give nothing, that was his motto. Six pounds a year, that was all I got when I first went out into service. Him, he had his home and his wages, a lovely motor to drive. There’s some folks want the moon. You’d think a big strong young fellow like that’d be only too glad to fetch the coal in for an old lady, but not Mr Bert Painter. Beast Painter was what I called him.
‘That Saturday night when he never come and he never come madam had to sit all by herself in the icy cold. Let me go over and speak to him, madam, I said, but she wouldn’t have it. The morning’s time enough, Alice, she said. I’ve said to myself over and over again, if he’d come that night I’d have been in there with them. He wouldn’t have been able to tell no lies then.’
‘But he did come the next morning, Miss Flower …’
‘She told him off good and proper. I could hear her giving him a dressing down.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Me? When he come in first I was doing the vegetables for madam’s lunch, then I popped on the oven and put in the meat tin. They asked me all that at the court in London, the Old Bailey it was.’ She paused and there was suspicion in the look she gave him. ‘You writing a book about all this, are you, sir?’
‘Something like that,’ said Archery.
‘They wanted to know if I was sure I could hear all right. My hearing’s better than that judge’s, I can tell you. Just as well it is. If I’d been hard of hearing we might have all gone up in smoke that morning.’
‘How was that?’
‘Beast Painter was in the drawing room with madam and I’d gone into the larder to get the vinegar for the mint sauce, when all of a sudden I heard a kind of plop and sizzle. That’s that funny old oven, I said, and sure enough it was. I popped back quick and opened the oven door. One of the potatoes had kind of spat out, sir, and fallen on the gas. All in flames it was and sizzling and roaring like a steam engine. I turned it off quick and then I did a silly thing. Poured water on it. Ought to have known better at my age. Ooh, the racket and the smoke. You couldn’t hear yourself think.’
There had been nothing about that in the trial transcript. Archery caught his breath in the excitement. ‘You couldn’t hear yourself think …’ While you were choked with smoke and deafened by hissing you might not hear a man go upstairs, search a bedroom and come down again. Alice’s evidence in this matter had been one of the most important features of the case. For if Painter had been offered and had taken the two hundred pounds in Mrs Primero’s presence in the morning, what motive could he have had for killing her in the evening?
‘Well, we had our lunch and Mr Roger came. My poor old leg was aching from where I’d bruised it the night before getting a few lumps in on account of Beast Painter being out on the tiles. Mr Roger was ever so nice about it, kept asking me if there was anything he could do, wash up or anything. But that isn’t man’s work and I always say it’s better to keep going while you can.
‘It must have been half past five when Mr Roger said he’d have to go. I was up to my neck what with the dishes and worrying if Beast would turn up like he’d promised. “I’ll let myself out, Alice,” Mr Roger said, and he come down to the kitchen to say good-bye to me. Madam was having a little snooze in the drawing room, God rest her. It was the last she had before her long sleep.’ Aghast, Archery watched tow tears well into her eyes and flow unchecked down the ridged sunken cheeks. ‘I called out, “Cheeri-by, Mr Roger dear, see you next Sunday”, and then I hear
d him shut the front door. Madam was sleeping like a child, not knowing that ravening wolf was lying in wait for her.’
‘Try not to upset yourself, Miss Flower.’ Doubtful as to what he should do – the right thing is the kind thing, he thought – he pulled out his own clean white handkerchief and gently wiped the wet cheeks.
‘Thank you, sir, I’ll be all right now. You do feel a proper fool not being able to dry your own tears.’ That ghastly cracked smile was almost more painful to witness than the weeping. ‘Where was I? Oh yes. Off I went to church and as soon as I was out of the way along comes Madam Crilling, poking her nose in …’
‘I know what happened next, Miss Flower,’ Archery said very kindly and quietly. ‘Tell me about Mrs Crilling. Does she ever come to see you in here?’
Alice Flower gave a kind of snort that would have been comical in a fit person. ‘Not she. She’s kept out of my way ever since the trial, sir. I know too much about her for her liking. Madam’s best friend, my foot! She’d got one interest in madam and one only. She wormed that child of hers into madam’s good books on account of she thought madam might leave her something when she went.’
Archery moved closer, praying that the bell for the end of visiting would not ring yet.
‘But Mrs Primero didn’t make a will.’
‘Oh, no, sir, that’s what worried Mrs Clever Crilling. She’d come out into my kitchen when madam was sleeping. “Alice,” she’d say, “we ought to get dear Mrs Primero to make her last will and testament. It’s our duty. Alice, it says so in the Prayer Book.”’
‘Does it?’
Alice looked both shocked and smug. ‘Yes, it does, sir. It says, “But men should often put in remembrance to take order for the settling of their temporal estates whilst they are in health.” Still I don’t hold with everything that’s in the Prayer Book not when it comes to downright interference – saving your presence, sir. “It’s in your interest too, Alice,” she says. “You’ll be turned out into the streets when she goes.”
‘But madam wouldn’t have it, anyway. Everything was to go to her natural heirs, she said, them being Mr Roger and the little girls. It’d be theirs automatically, you see, without any nonsense about wills and lawyers.’
‘Mr Roger didn’t try to get her to make a will?’
‘He’s a lovely person is Mr Roger. When Beast Painter had done his murdering work and poor madam was dead Mr Roger got his bit of money – three thousand it was and a bit more. “I’ll take care of you, Alice,” he said, and so he did. He got me a nice room in Kingsmarkham and gave me two pounds a week on top of my pension. He was in business on his own then and he said he wouldn’t give me a lump sum. An allowance, he called it, bless his heart, out of his profits.’
‘Business? I thought he was a solicitor.’
‘He always wanted to go into business on his own, sir. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but he came to madam one day – must have been two or three weeks before she died – and he said a pal of his would take him in with him if he could put up ten thousand pounds. “I know I haven’t got a hope,” he said, speaking ever so nice. “It’s just a castle in the air, Granny Rose.” “Well, it’s no good looking at me,” says madam. “Ten thousand is all I’ve got for me and Alice to live on and that’s tucked away in Woolworth’s shares. You’ll get your share when I’m gone.” I don’t mind telling you, sir, I thought then, if Mr Roger liked to do his little sisters down he could try getting round madam to make that will and leave him the lot. But he never did, never mentioned it again, and he’d always made a point of bringing the two mites just whenever he could. Then Beast Painter killed madam and the money went like she said it would, to the three of them.
‘Mr Roger’s doing very well now, sir, very well indeed, and he comes to see me regular. I reckon he got the ten thousand from somewhere or maybe another pal came up with something else. It wasn’t for me to ask, you see.’
A nice man, Archery thought, a man who had needed money perhaps desperately, but would do nothing underhand to get it; a man who provided for his dead grandmother’s domestic while he was struggling to get a business going, who still visited her and who doubtless listened patiently over and over again to the tale Archery had just heard. A very nice man. If love, praise and devotion could reward such a man, he had his reward.
‘If you should see Mr Roger, sir, if you want to see him about the story you’re writing, would you give him my best respects?’
‘I won’t forget, Miss Flower.’ He put his hand over her dead one and pressed it. ‘Good-bye and thank you.’ Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
It was gone eight when he got back to The Olive and Dove. The head waiter glared at him when he walked into the dining-room at a quarter past. Archery stared about him at the empty room, the chairs arranged against the walls.
‘Dance on tonight, sir. We did make a point of asking residents to take their dinner at seven sharp, but I expect we can find you something. In here, if you please.’
Archery followed him into the smaller of the two lounges that led off the dining-room. The tables had been crammed in and people were hastily gobbling their meal. He ordered, and through the glass doors, watched the band take its place on the dais.
How was he to spend this long hot summer evening? The dancing would probably go on until half-past twelve or one and the hotel would be unbearable. A quiet stroll was the obvious thing. Or he could take the car and go and look at Victor’s Piece. The waiter came back with the braised beef he had ordered, and Archery, resolutely economical, asked for a glass of water.
He was quite alone in his alcove, at least two yards from the next table, and he jumped when he felt something soft and fluffy brush against his leg. Drawing back, he put his hand down, lifted the cloth and met a pair of bright eyes set in a golden woolly skull.
‘Hallo, dog,’ he said.
‘Oh I’m sorry. Is he being a nuisance?’
He looked up and saw her standing beside him. They had evidently just come in, she, the man with the glassy eyes and another couple.
‘Not a bit.’ Archery’s poise deserted him and he found himself almost stammering. ‘I don’t mind, really. I’m fond of animals.’
‘You were here at lunch, weren’t you? I expect he recognized you. Come out, Dog. He doesn’t have a name. We just call him Dog because he is one and it’s just as good a name as Jock or Gyp or something. When you said, “Hallo, dog,” he thought you were a personal friend. He’s very intelligent.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
She gathered the poodle up in her arms and held him against the creamy lace of her dress. Now that she wore no hat he could see the perfect shape of her head and the high unshadowed brow. The head waiter minced over, no longer harassed.
‘Back again, Louis, like the proverbial bad pennies,’ said the glassy-eyed man heartily. ‘My wife took a fancy to come to your hop, but we must have a spot of dinner first.’ So they were married, these two. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before, what business was it of his and, above all, why should it cause him this faint distress? ‘Our friends here have a train to catch, so if you can go all out with the old speed we’ll be eternally grateful.’
They all sat down. The poodle mooched between diners’ legs, scavenging for crumbs. Archery was faintly amused to see how quickly their dinner was brought to them. They had all ordered different dishes, but there was little delay and at the same time little hustle. Archery lingered over his coffee and his bit of cheese. Surely he was no bother to anyone in his small corner. People were coming in to dance now, passing his table and leaving in their wake the faint scent of cigars and floral perfume. In the dining room, a ballroom, now, the garden doors had been opened and couples stood on the terrace listening to the music in the tranquillity of the summer night.
The poodle sat on the threshold, bored, watching the dancers.
‘Come here, Dog,’ said his owner. Her husband got up.
‘I’ll take you to the stat
ion, George,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got ten minutes, so get a wiggle on, will you?’ He seemed to have a variety of expressions to imply the making of haste. ‘You don’t have to come, darling. Finish your coffee.’
The table was veiled in smoke. They had smoked throughout the courses. He would be gone perhaps only half an hour but he bent over and kissed his wife. She smiled at him, lit another cigarette. When they had gone, she and Archery were alone. She moved into her husband’s chair from where she could watch the dancers, many of whom she seemed to know, for she waved occasionally and nodded as if promising she would soon join them.
Archery suddenly felt lonely. He knew no one in this place except two rather hostile policemen. His stay might be for the whole fortnight. Why hadn’t he asked Mary to join him? It would be a holiday for her, a change, and – heaven knew – she needed a change. In a minute, when he had finished his second cup, he would go upstairs and telephone her.
The girl’s voice startled him. ‘Do you mind if I have your ashtray? Ours are all full.’
‘Of course not, take it.’ He lifted the heavy glass plate and as he handed it to her the tips of her cool dry fingers touched his own. The hand was small, childlike, with short unpainted nails. ‘I don’t smoke,’ he added rather foolishly.
‘Are you staying here long?’ Her voice was light and soft, yet mature.
‘Just a few days.’
‘I asked,’ she said, ‘because we come here so often and I hadn’t seen you before today. Most of the people are regulars.’ She put out the cigarette carefully, stubbing it until the last red spark was dead. ‘They have these dances once a month and we always come. I love dancing.’
Afterwards Archery wondered what on earth had induced him, a country vicar nearly fifty years old, to say what he did. Perhaps it was the mingled scents, the descending twilight or just that he was alone and out of his environment, out of his identity almost.
