A New Lease of Death

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Would you like to dance?’

  It was a waltz they were playing. He was sure he could waltz. They waltzed at church socials. You simply had to make your feet go one, two, three in a sort of triangle. And yet, for all that, he felt himself blush. What would she think of him at his age? She might suppose he was doing what Charles called ‘picking her up’.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

  Apart from Mary and Mary’s sister, she was the only woman he had danced with in twenty years. He was so shy and so overcome by the enormity of what he was doing, that for a moment he was deaf to the music and blind to the hundred or so other people who circled the floor. Then she was in his arms, a light creature of scent and lace whose body so incongruously touching his had the fluidity and the tenuousness of a summer mist. He felt that he was dreaming and because of this, this utter unreality, he forgot about his feet and what he must make them do, and simply moved with her as if he and she and the music were one.

  ‘I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ he said when he found his voice. ‘You’ll have to overlook my mistakes.’ He was so much taller than she that she had to lift her face up to him.

  She smiled. ‘Hard to make conversation when you’re dancing, isn’t it? I never know what to say but one must say something.’

  ‘Like “Don’t you think this is a good floor?”’ Strange, he remembered that one from undergraduate days.

  ‘Or “Do you reverse?” It’s absurd really. Here we are dancing together and I don’t even know your name.’ She gave a little deprecating laugh. ‘It’s almost immoral.’

  ‘My name’s Archery. Henry Archery.’

  ‘How do you do, Henry Archery?’ she said gravely. Then as they moved into a pool of sunset light, she looked steadily at him, the glowing colour falling on her face. ‘You really don’t recognize me, do you?’ He shook his head, wondering if he had made some terrible faux pas. She gave a mock sigh. ‘Such is fame! Imogen Ide. Doesn’t it ring a bell?’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘Frankly, you don’t look as if you spend your leisure perusing the glossy magazines. Before I married I was what they call a top model. The most photographed face in Britain.’

  He hardly knew what to say. The things that came to mind all had some reference to her extraordinary beauty and to speak them aloud would have been impertinent. Sensing his predicament, she burst out laughing, but it was a companionable laugh, warm and kind.

  He smiled down at her. Then over her shoulder he caught sight of a familiar face. Chief Inspector Wexford had come on to the floor with a stout pleasant-looking woman and a young couple. His wife, his daughter and the architect’s son, Archery supposed, feeling a sudden pang. He watched them sit down and just as he was about to avert his eyes, Wexford’s met his. The smiles they exchanged were slightly antagonistic and Archery felt hot with awkwardness. Wexford’s expression held a mocking quality as if to say that dancing was a frivolity quite out of keeping with Archery’s quest. Abruptly he looked away and back to his partner.

  ‘I’m afraid I only read The Times,’ he said, feeling the snobbishness of the remark as soon as the words were out.

  ‘I was in The Times once,’ she said. ‘Oh, not my picture. I was in the High Court bit. Somebody mentioned my name in a case and the judge said, “Who is Imogen Ide?”’

  ‘That really is fame.’

  ‘I’ve kept the cutting to this day.’

  The music that had been so liquid and lullaby-like suddenly jerked into a frightening tempo with a stormy undertone of drums.

  ‘I haven’t a hope of doing this one,’ Archery said helplessly He released her quickly, there in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Never mind. Thank you very much, anyway. I’ve enjoyed it.’

  ‘So have I, very much indeed.’

  They began to thread their way between couples who were shuddering and bounding about like savages. She was holding his hand and he could hardly withdraw it without rudeness.

  ‘Here’s my husband back,’ she said. ‘Won’t you join us for the evening if you’ve nothing better to do?’

  The man called Ide was coming up to them, smiling. His evenly olive face, dead black hair and almost feminine standard of grooming gave him the look of a waxwork. Archery had the absurd notion that if you came upon him at Madame Tussaud’s the old joke of the naïve spectator mistaking a model for a flesh and blood attendant would be reversed. In this case you would pass the real man by, thinking him a figure in wax.

  ‘This is Mr Archery, darling. I’ve been telling him he ought to stay. It’s such a beautiful night.’

  ‘Good idea. Perhaps I can get you a drink, Mr Archery?’

  ‘Thank you, no.’ Archery found himself shaking hands, astonished because of his fantasy of the warmth of Ide’s hand. ‘I must go. I have to phone my wife.’

  ‘I hope we shall see you again,’ said Imogen Ide. ‘I enjoyed our dance.’ She took her husband’s hand and they moved away into the centre of the floor, their bodies meeting, their steps following the intricate rhythm. Archery went upstairs to his bedroom. Earlier he had supposed that the music would annoy him but here in the violet-coloured dusk it was enchanting, disturbing, awakening in him forgotten, undefined longings. He stood at the window, looking at the sky with its long feathery scarves of cloud, rose pink as cyclamen petals but less substantial. The strains of the music had softened to match this tranquil sky and now they seemed to him like the opening bars of an overture to some pastoral opera.

  Presently he sat down on the bed and put his hand to the telephone. It rested there immobile for some minutes. What was the point of ringing Mary when he had nothing to tell her, no plans even for what he would do in the morning? He felt a sudden distaste for Thringford and its small parochial doings. He had lived there so long, so narrowly, and outside all the time there had been a world of which he knew little.

  From where he sat he could see nothing but sky, broken continents and islands on a sea of azure. ‘Here will we sit and let the sound of music creep in our ears …’ He took his hand from the telephone and lay back, thinking of nothing.

  9

  The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having war in his heart: his words were smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords.

  Psalm 55, appointed for the Tenth Day

  ‘I SUPPOSE THERE isn’t anything in it?’

  ‘In what, Mike. Liz Crilling having some dark secret her mother doesn’t want extorted from her under the third degree?’

  Burden lowered the blinds against the brazen morning sky.

  ‘Those Crillings always make me uneasy,’ he said.

  ‘They’re no more kinky than half our customers,’ Wexford said breezily. ‘Liz’ll turn up at the Assizes all right. If not for any other reason simply because Mrs Crilling doubts her ability to get a thousand quid out of her brother-in-law, or whoever it is supports them. And then if she’s got something to tell us, she’ll tell us.’

  Burden’s expression, though apologetic, was obstinate.

  ‘I can’t help feeling it’s got some connection with Painter,’ he said.

  Wexford had been leafing through a thick orange-coloured trade directory. Now he dropped it on the desk with a deliberate bang.

  ‘By God, I won’t have any more of this! What is it, anyhow, some sort of conspiracy to prove I can’t do my job?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you know I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I don’t know a damn’ thing, Mike. I only know the Painter case was an open and shut affair, and nobody’s got a hope in hell of showing he didn’t do it.’ He began to calm down slowly, and he spread his hands in two large implacable fans on the directory cover. ‘Go and question Liz by all means. Or tell Archery to do it for you. He’s a fast worker that one.’

  ‘Is he? What makes you say so?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ve got work to do if you haven’t and …’ said Wexford, splendidly co-ordinating his metaphors, ‘I’m fed
up to my back teeth with having Painter rammed down my throat morning, noon and night.’

  Archery had slept deeply and dreamlessly. It occurred to him that he had done all his dreaming while he was awake and there was none left for sleep. The telephone roused him It was his wife.

  ‘Sorry it’s so early, darling, but I’ve had another letter from Charles.’

  There was a cup of cold tea by the bed. Archery wondered how long it had been there. He found his watch and saw that it was nine.

  ‘That’s all right. How are you?’

  ‘Not so bad. You sound as if you’re still in bed.’

  Archery grunted something.

  ‘Now, listen. Charles is coming down tomorrow and he says he’s coming straight over to Kingsmarkham.’

  ‘Coming down?’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, Henry. He’s going to cut the last three days of term. Surely it can’t matter much.’

  ‘As long as it isn’t the thin edge of the wedge. Is he coming to The Olive?’

  ‘Well, naturally. He’s got to stay somewhere. I know it’s expensive, darling, but he’s got himself a job for August and September – something in a brewery. It sounds awful but he’s going to get sixteen pounds a week and he says he’ll pay you back.’

  ‘I hadn’t realized I made such an avaricious impression on my son.’

  ‘You know he doesn’t mean that. You are touchy this morning …’

  After she had rung off he still held the receiver for some moments in his hand. He wondered why he hadn’t asked her to join him as well. He had meant to last night and then … Of course, he had been so drowsy while she was speaking that he hardly knew what he was saying. The operator’s voice broke in.

  ‘Have you finished or did you want to make a call?’

  ‘No thank you. I’ve finished.’

  The little sandy houses in Glebe Road seemed to have been bleached and dried up by the sun. This morning they looked even more like desert dwellings each surrounded by its own scanty oasis.

  Burden went first to number a hundred and two. An old acquaintance of his lived there, a man with a long record and a nasty sense of humour called by some ‘Monkey’ Matthews. Burden thought it more than likely that he was responsible for a home-made bomb, a bizarre affair of sugar and weed killer stuffed into a whisky bottle that a blonde woman of easy virtue had received that morning through her letter box. The bomb had done no more than wreck the hall of her flat, she and her current lover being still in bed, but Burden thought it might amount to attempted murder just the same.

  He knocked and rang but he was sure the bell didn’t work. Then he went round the back and found himself ankle-deep in garbage, pram wheels, old clothes, newspapers and empty bottles. He looked through the kitchen window. There was a packet of weed killer – sodium chlorate crystals – on the window sill and the top had been torn off. How confident could you get, or how stupid? He went back up the street to a call box and told Bryant and Gates to pick up the occupant of a hundred and two Glebe Road.

  Twenty-four was on the same side. Now he was so near there would be no harm in having a chat with Liz Crilling. The front door was closed but the latch was down. He coughed and walked in.

  In the back room a plastic transistor was playing pop music. Elizabeth Crilling sat at the table reading the Situations Vacant in last week’s local paper and she was wearing nothing but a slip, its broken shoulder strap held together with a safety pan.

  ‘I don’t remember inviting you in.’

  Burden looked at her distastefully. ‘D’you mind putting something on?’ She made no move but kept her eyes on the paper. He glanced around the dismal, untidy room, and from the various miscellaneous heaps of clothes, selected something that might have been a dressing gown, a pink floppy thing whose flounces recalled withered petals. ‘Here,’ he said, and he wondered if she were not quite well, for she shuddered as she put the dressing gown round her. It was far too big, obviously not her own.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. Gone out somewhere. I’m not her keeper.’ She grinned suddenly, showing her beautiful teeth. ‘Am I my mother’s keeper? That’s good, don’t you think? Which reminds me …’ The smile died and she exclaimed sharply, ‘What’s that clergyman doing here?’

  Burden never answered a question if he could help it.

  ‘Looking for a new post, are you?’

  She gave a sulky pout. ‘I phoned my firm yesterday when I got back from that bloody court and they gave me the push. I’ve got you lot to thank for that.’ Burden inclined his head politely. ‘Well, I’ve got to have a job, haven’t I? They want girls at the raincoat factory and they say you can pick up twenty quid a week with overtime.’

  Burden remembered her education, the expensive schools the Crilling relatives had paid for. She stared at him boldly.

  ‘I may as well go and see them,’ she said. ‘What’s the harm? Life’s hell anyway.’ She gave a strident laugh, walked to the mantelpiece and leaned against it, looking down at him. The open dressing gown, the tatty underclothes were provocative in a raw, basic way, that seemed to go with the hot weather and the dishevelled room. ‘To what do I owe the honour of this visit? Are you lonely, Inspector? I hear your wife’s away.’ She took a cigarette and put it between her lips. Her forefinger was rusty with nicotine, the nail yellow, the cuticle bitten. ‘Where the hell are the matches?’

  There was something in the quick wary look she gave over her shoulder that impelled him to follow her to the kitchen. Once there, she turned to face him, grabbed a box of matches and stood as if barring his way. He felt a thrill of alarm. She thrust the matches into his hand.

  ‘Light it for me, will you?’

  He struck the match steadily. She came very close to him and as the flame shrivelled the tobacco, closed her fingers over his hand. For a split second he felt what his rather prudish nature told him was vile, then that nature, his duty and a swift suspicion took over. She was breathing hard, but not he was certain, because of his nearness to her. From long practice he side-stepped neatly, freeing the long bare leg from between his own, and found himself confronting what she perhaps had hoped to hide from him.

  The sink was crammed with dirty crocks, potato peelings, tea leaves, wet paper, but the Crillings were long past middle-class concealment of squalor.

  ‘You could do with a few days off, I should think,’ he said loudly. ‘Get this place in some sort of order.’

  She had begun to laugh. ‘You know, you’re not so bad-looking on the other side of a smoke-screen.’

  ‘Been ill, have you?’ He was looking at the empty pill bottles, the one that was half full and the syringe. ‘Nerves, I daresay.’

  She stopped laughing. ‘They’re hers.’

  Burden read labels, saying nothing.

  ‘She had them for her asthma. They’re all the same.’ As he put out his hand to find the hypodermic she seized his wrist. ‘You’ve no business to turn things over. That amounts to searching and for searching you need a warrant.’

  ‘True,’ said Burden placidly. He followed her back to the living room and jumped when she shouted at him:

  ‘You never answered my question about the clergyman.’

  ‘He’s come here because he knows Painter’s daughter,’ said Burden guardedly.

  She went white and he thought she looked like her mother.

  ‘Painter that killed the old woman?’

  Burden nodded.

  ‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see her again.’ He had a queer feeling she was changing the subject, and yet her remark was not inconsequential. She turned her eyes towards the garden. But it wasn’t, he thought, the nettles, the brambles and the mean wire fence she could see. ‘I used to go over to the coach house and play with her,’ she said. ‘Mother never knew. She said Tess wasn’t my class. I couldn’t understand that. I thought, how can she have a class if she doesn’t go to school?’ She reached up and gave the birdcage a vicious
push. ‘Mother was always with the old woman – talk, talk, talk, I’ll never forget it – and she used to send me into the garden to play. There wasn’t anything to play with and one day I saw Tessie, mucking about with a heap of sand … Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Does she know about her father?’ Burden nodded. ‘Poor kid. What does she do for a living?’

  ‘She’s some kind of a student.’

  ‘Student? My God, I was a student once.’ She had begun to tremble. The long worm of ash broke from her cigarette and scattered down the pink flounces. Looking down at it, she flicked uselessly at old stains and burn marks. The movement suggested the uncontrollable jerking of chorea. She swung round on him, her hate and despair striking him like a flame. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ she shouted. ‘Get out! Get out!’

  When he had gone she grabbed a torn sheet from a stack of unironed linen and flung it over the birdcage. The sudden movement and the gust of breeze it had caused fluttered the thing her mother called a negligee but that she had never feared until it touched her own skin. Why the hell did he have to come here and rake it all up again. Perhaps a drink would help. True, it hadn’t done so the other day … There never was a drink in this house, anyway.

  Newspapers, old letters and unpaid bills, empty cigarette packets and a couple of old laddered stockings tumbled out when she opened the cupboard door. She rummaged in the back among dusty vases, Christmas wrapping paper, playing cards with dog-eared corners. One vase had an encouraging shape. She pulled it out and found it was the cherry brandy Uncle had given her mother for her birthday. Filthy, sweet, cherry brandy … She squatted on the floor among the debris and poured some of it into a grimy glass. In a minute she felt a lot better, almost well enough to get dressed and do something about the bloody job. Now she had begun she might as well finish the bottle – it was wonderful how little it took to do the trick provided you started on an empty stomach.

  The neck of the bottle rattled against the glass. She was concentrating on keeping her hand steady, not watching the liquid level rise and rise until it overbrimmed, spilt and streamed over the spread pink flounces.