A New Lease of Death

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘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 September 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 above board.’ 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 26th 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 agonized. 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 to introduce Tess to the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Miss Kershaw,’ he had said, ‘my … the 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? Heat-wave’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 realize 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? Doesn’t 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 smile 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 Black 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’s 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. Oh 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?’

  Her mother had built up her faith, but the Archery family with their doubts had knocked it down; still it had lived until Wexford had killed it. Her eyes were fixed on Kershaw who had given her reality. Archery was not surprised when she said hysterically:

  ‘I suppose he’d have to have a murderer for a father.’ She gasped, for she was admitting it to herself for the first time. ‘Like me!’

  Charles tapped Archery’s back. ‘Just nip out and knock someone off,’ he said outrageously.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Kershaw. ‘Give it a rest, Charlie, will you?’

  Archery touched his arm. ‘I think I’ll get out, if you don’t mind. I need some air.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Tess. ‘I can’t stand being boxed up in here any longer and I’ve got a ghastly head. I want some aspirins.’

  ‘Can’t park here.’

  ‘We’ll walk back to the hotel, Daddy. If I don’t get out I’ll pass out.’

  Then they were all three on the pavement, Charles’s face as black as thunder. Tess swayed a little and Archery caught her arm to steady her. Several passers-by gave them curious looks.

  ‘You said you wanted aspirins,’ said Charles.

  It was only a few yards to the nearest chemist’s, but Tess was shivering in her thin clothes. The air was heavy and cloying. Archery noticed that all the shopkeepers had furled their sunblinds.

  Charles seemed about to begin again but she gave him a pleading look, ‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more. We’ve said it all. I needn’t see you again till October, not then if we’re careful …’

  He frowned silently, made a little gesture of repudiation. Archery held the shop door open for Tess to pass through.

  There was no one inside but the assistant and Elizabeth Crilling.

  She did not appear to be buying anything, just waiting and gossiping with the shopgirl. It was the middle of a wee
kday afternoon and here she was shopping. What had become of the job in the ‘ladies’ wear establishment? Archery wondered if she would recognize him and how he could avoid this happening, for he did not want to have to introduce her to Tess. It gave him a little thrill of awe when he realized what was happening in this small town shop, a meeting after sixteen years of the child who was Painter’s daughter and the child who had discovered Painter’s crime.

  While he hovered near the door, Tess went up to the counter. They were so close together that they were almost touching. Then Tess reached across in front of Liz Crilling to select one of the aspirin bottles, and in doing so brushed her sleeve.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘That’s O.K.’

  Archery could see Tess had nothing smaller than a ten shilling note. His trepidation, his fears for the effect of illumination on Tess at this moment were so great, that he almost cried aloud, ‘Never mind. Leave it! Only, please God, let us all get away and hide ourselves!’

  ‘Haven’t you anything smaller?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll just go and see if we’ve got any change.’

  The two young women stood side by side in silence. Tess stared straight in front of her, but Liz Crilling was playing nervously with two little scent bottles displayed on a glass shelf, moving them about as if they were chessmen.

  Then the pharmacist in his white coat came out from the back.

  ‘Is there a Miss Crilling waiting for a prescription?’

  Tess turned, her face flooded with colour.

  ‘This is a repeat prescription, but I’m afraid it’s no longer valid …’

  ‘What d’you mean, no longer valid?’

  ‘I mean that it can only be used six times. I can’t let you have any more of these tablets without a fresh prescription. If your mother …’

  ‘The old cow,’ said Liz Crilling slowly.

  The swift animation on Tess’s face died as if she had been struck. Without opening her purse she tumbled the change loose into her handbag and hurried out of the shop.