by Ruth Rendell
A petulant cloud crossed her face briefly. ‘He was born in Germany,’ she said. Then, when the war came, they lived in America After they came back to this country they used to come and see us sometimes. Patrick was terribly spoiled, coddled really. They used to make him wrap up warm even in the summer and I had swimming lessons but they wouldn’t let him. I always thought it was because they’d lived in California.’ She paused, frowning. ‘He was always all right when he was grown-up. The only time he went to Dr. Howard was when he couldn’t sleep.’
‘I think you will have to prepare yourself,’ Greenleaf said, ‘for the possibility of an inquest, or, at any rate, a post-mortem.’
She nodded earnestly.
‘Oh, quite,’ she said. ‘I understand. That’ll be absolutely all right.’ She might have been agreeing to cancel an engagement, so matter-of-fact was her tone.
After that they sat in silence, waiting for Dr. Howard to come. The Weimaraner went upstairs and they heard her claws scraping, scraping at the closed door of the balcony room.
As things turned out, it never came to an inquest Greenleaf stood in at the post-mortem because he was interested and because the Selbys had been friends of his. Patrick had died, like all the dead, of heart failure. The death certificate was signed and he was buried in Chantflower cemetery on the following Thursday.
Greenleaf and Bernice went to the funeral. They took Marvell with them in Bernice’s car.
‘Blessed are the dead,’ said the Rector, a shade sardonically, ‘which die in the Lord.’ Since coming to Linchester Patrick had never been to church.
Patrick’s parents were dead; Tamsin had been an orphan since she was four. They had both been only children. Consequently there were no relatives at the graveside. Apart from the Linchesterites, only three friends came to support the widow: the two other directors of Patrick’s firm of glass manufacturers and old Mrs. Prynne.
Tamsin wore a black dress and a large hat of glossy black straw. Throughout the service she clung to Oliver Gage’s arm. On the other side Nancy, sweating in the charcoal worsted she had bought for her February honeymoon, sat with a handkerchief ready. But she never had to hand it to Tamsin who sat rigid and dry-eyed.
It was only when the coffin was being lowered into the ground that a small disturbance occurred. Freda Carnaby tore herself from Mrs. Saxton’s arm and, sobbing loudly, fell to her knees beside the dark cavity. As he said afterwards to Greenleaf, Marvell thought that like Hamlet she was going to leap into the grave. But nothing dramatic happened. Mrs. Saxton helped her to her feet and drew her away.
When it was all over Tamsin slung two suitcases into the back of the black and white Mini (SIN A1) and with Queenie in the seat beside her, drove away to stay with Mrs. Prynne.
PART TWO
8
Two days later the weather broke with a noisy spectacular thunderstorm and a man died when a tree under which he was sheltering on Chantflower golf course was struck by lightning. The silly season had begun and this was national news. For the Linchester housewives kept indoors by continuous rain, it was for days the prime topic of conversation—until something more personal and sensational took over.
The young Macdonalds had taken their baby to Bournemouth; the Willises and the Millers, each couple finding in the other the perfect neighbours and friends, were cruising together in the Canaries. Tamsin was still away. With four empty houses on Linchester Nancy was bored to tears. When Oliver came home for the week-ends, tired and uneasy, he found his evening programmes mapped out for him.
Tonight the Greenleafs and Crispin Marvell were invited for coffee and drinks. Opening his sideboard, Oliver found that Nancy had laid in a stock of cheap Cyprus sherry and bottles of cocktails as variously coloured as the liquid that used to be displayed in the flagons of old-fashioned pharmacy windows. He cursed, clinging to the shreds of his pride and remembering the days that were gone.
The mantelpiece was decorated with postcards. Nancy had given pride of place to a peacock-blue panorama from Clare Miller, relegating two monochrome seascapes to a spot behind a vase. He read Sheila Macdonald’s happy scrawl irascibly. Tamsin was at the seaside too, but Tamsin had sent nothing …
From where he stood, desultorily watching the rain, he could hear Nancy chattering to Linda Gaveston in the kitchen. Occasionally something clearly audible if not comprehensible arose above the twittering.
‘I said it was dead grotty’ or ‘How about that, doll?’ conflicted inharmoniously with Nancy’s ‘You are awful, Linda.’
Oliver grunted and lit a cigarette. These visits of Linda’s, ostensibly made to deliver Nancy’s order of tablets of soap or a packet of Kleenex, always put him in a bad temper. They invariably led to petulance on Nancy’s part, to dissatisfaction and a carping envy. It amazed Oliver that a village chemist like Waller could stock such an immense and catholic variety of luxury goods, all of which at some time or another seemed so desirable to his wife and at the same time so conducive to the saving of money. The latest in Thermos flasks, automatic tea-makers, thermostatically controlled electric blankets, shower cabinets, all these had in the year they had lived in Linchester, been recommended to Nancy and coveted by her.
‘It would be such a saving in the long run,’ she would say wistfully of some gimmick, using the suburban colloquialisms Oliver hated.
Moreover it was surprising that behind Waller’s counter there stood concealed the most expensive ranges of cosmetics from Paris and New York, scent and creams which were apparently exclusive to him and not to be found in Nottingham or, for that matter, London. He was therefore pleasantly astonished when the door had closed on Linda to see Nancy come dancing into the room, contented, gay and in a strange way, gleeful.
‘What’s got into you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘For a poor house-bound, forsaken child bride,’ he said, recalling earlier complaints, ‘you’re looking very gay.’
Indeed she appeared quite pretty again in the honeymoon skirt and a pink sweater, not a hand-knitted one for a change but a soft fluffy thing that drew Oliver’s eyes and reminded him that his wife had, after all, an excellent figure. But his words, sharp and moody, had altered her expression from calm to secretiveness.
‘Linda told me something very peculiar.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘Surprise me.’
She pouted.
‘Not if you’re going to talk to me like that.’ For a moment, a transient moment, she looked just as she had when he had first seen her dancing with the man she had been engaged to. It had been such fun stealing her from him, especially piquant because the fiancé had also been Shirley’s cousin. ‘Nasty Oliver! I shall save it all up till the Greenleafs get here.’
‘I can see,’ said Oliver in his best co-respondent’s voice, ‘I can see I shall have to be very nice to you.’
‘Very, very nice,’ said Nancy. She sat on the sofa beside him and giggled. ‘You are awful! It must be the country air.’ But she didn’t say anything after that and presently Oliver forgot all about Linda Gaveston.
When Marvell rang the door-bell she didn’t bother to tidy her hair or put on fresh make-up. There was something of a bacchante about her, exhibitionistic, crudely female. Suddenly Oliver felt old. Her naiveté embarrassed him. He went to dispense drinks from his own stock, leaving the bright mean bottles in the sideboard.
Greenleaf and Bernice had barely sat down when she said brightly:
‘Has anyone heard from Tamsin?’
Nobody had. Oliver fancied that Marvell was looking at him quizzically.
‘I don’t suppose she feels like writing.’ Bernice was always kind and forbearing. ‘It’s not as if we were any of us close friends.’
‘What would she have to write about?’ Greenleaf asked. ‘She’s not on holiday.’ And he began to talk about his own holiday, planned for September this year, and to ask about the Gages’.
Holidays were a sore point with Oliver who hoped to do without one altogether.
He need not have worried. Nancy was obviously not going to let the subject go as easily as that.
‘Poor Tamsin,’ she said loudly, drowning the doctor’s voice. ‘Fancy being a widow when you’re only twenty-seven.’
‘Dreadful,’ said Bernice.
‘And in such—well, awkward circumstances.’
‘Awkward circumstances?’ said Greenleaf, drawn unwillingly from his dreams of the Riviera.
‘I don’t mean money-wise.’ Oliver winced but Nancy went on: ‘The whole thing was so funny, Patrick dying like that. I expect you’ll all think I’ve got a very suspicious mind but I can’t help thinking it was …’ She paused for effect and sipped her gin. ‘Well, it was fishy, wasn’t it?’
Greenleaf looked at the floor. The legs of his chair had caught in one of the Numdah rugs. He bent down and straightened it.
‘I don’t know if I ought to say this,’ Nancy went on. ‘I don’t suppose it’s common knowledge, but Patrick’s father …’ She lowered her voice. ‘Patrick’s father committed suicide. Took his own life.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Bernice comfortably.
‘I really don’t know who it was told me,’ Nancy said. She picked up the plate of canapés and handed it to Marvell. To his shame Oliver saw that only half a cocktail onion topped the salmon mayonnaise on each of them. ‘Do have a savoury, won’t you?’
Marvell refused. The plate hovered.
‘Somebody told me about it. Now who was it?’
‘It was me,’ Oliver said sharply.
‘Of course it was. And Tamsin told you. I can’t imagine why.’
All childish innocence, she looked archly from face to face.
Marvell said: ‘I’m afraid I’m being obtuse, but I can’t quite see what Patrick’s father’s suicide had to do with his son dying of heart failure.’
‘Oh, absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. You mustn’t think I was insinuating anything about Patrick. It’s just that it’s one of the funny circumstances. On its own it would be nothing.’
Oliver emptied his glass and stood up. He could cheerfully have slapped Nancy’s face. ‘I think we’re boring our guests,’ he said, bracketing himself with his wife and trying to make his voice sound easy. ‘Another drink, Max? Bernice?’ Marvell’s glass was still full. ‘What about you, darling?’
‘Oh, really!’ Nancy burst out laughing. ‘You don’t have to be so discreet. We’re all friends. Nothing’s going to go beyond these four walls.’
Oliver felt himself losing control. These people were discreet. Would it, after all, ruin his career, damn him as a social creature, if in front of them he were to bawl at Nancy, strike her, push her out of the room?
He stared at her, pouring sherry absently until it topped over the glass and spilled on the tray.
‘Damnation!’ he said.
‘Oh, your table!’ Bernice was beside him, mopping with a tiny handkerchief.
‘Linda Gaveston was here today,’ Nancy said. ‘She told me something very peculiar. No I won’t shut up, Oliver. I’m only repeating it because I’d be very interested in having an opinion from a medical man. You know that funny little man who’s a commercial traveller? The one who lives in the chalets?’
‘Carnaby,’ said Marvell.
‘That’s right, Carnaby. The one who was so difficult at the party. Well, the day before Patrick died he came into Waller’s shop and what d’you think he tried to buy?’ She waited for the guesses that never came. ‘Cyanide! That’s what he tried to buy.’
Greenleaf stuck out his lower lip. They had only been in the house half an hour but he began to wonder how soon he could suggest to Bernice that it was time to leave. His drink tasted thin. For the first time since he had given up smoking as an example to his patients he longed for a cigarette.
‘Waller wouldn’t sell anyone cyanide and maybe he managed to get it …’ She drew breath. ‘Elsewhere,’ she said with sinister emphasis. ‘Now why did he want it?’
‘Probably for killing wasps,’ said Marvell. ‘It’s an old remedy for getting rid of wasps.’
Nancy looked disappointed.
‘Linda overheard the conversation,’ she said, ‘and that’s just what this fellow Carnaby said. He said he wanted it for wasps. Linda thought it was pretty thin.’
Thumping his fist on the table, Oliver made them all jump.
‘Linda Gaveston is a stupid little trouble-maker,’ he said furiously.
‘I suppose that goes for me too?’
‘I didn’t say so,’ said Oliver, too angry to care. ‘But if the cap fits … I hate all this under-hand gossip. If you’re trying to say Carnaby gave Patrick cyanide you’d better come straight out with it.’ He drank some whisky too quickly and choked. ‘On the other hand, perhaps you’d better not. I don’t want to pay out whacking damages for slander.’
‘It won’t go any further. Anyway, it’s my duty as a citizen to say what I think. Everyone knows Edward Carnaby had a terrific motive for getting Patrick out of the way.’
There was an appalled silence. Nancy had grown red in the face and her plump breasts rose and fell under the clinging pink wool.
‘You’re all crazy about Tamsin. I know that. But Patrick wasn’t. He didn’t care for her a bit. He was having an affair with that awful little Freda. Night after night he was round there while her brother was out at evening classes. He used to tie that great dog of theirs up to the gate. It was just a horrid sordid little intrigue.’
As much as Oliver, Greenleaf wanted to stop her. He was immeasurably grateful for Bernice’s rich cleansing laughter.
‘If it was just a little intrigue,’ Bernice said lightly, ‘it can’t have been important, can it?’
Nancy allowed her hand to rest for a moment beneath Bernice’s. Then she snatched it away.
‘They’re twins, aren’t they? It means a lot, being twins. He wouldn’t want to lose her. Patrick might have gone off with her.’
But the tension was broken. Marvell, who had taken a book from the fireside shelves and studied it as if it were a first edition, now relaxed and smiled. Oliver had moved over to the record player and the red glaze had left his face.
‘Well, what does Max think?’ Nancy asked.
How wise Bernice had been, laughing easily, refusing to catch his eye! Greenleaf didn’t really want to do a Smith-King and flee at the scent of trouble. Besides, Oliver had some good records, Bartok and the wonderful Donizetti he wanted to hear again.
‘You know,’ he said in a quiet gentle voice, ‘it’s amazing the way people expect the worst when a young person dies suddenly. They always want to make a mystery.’ He wondered if Bernice and, for that matter Marvell, noticed how dismay was evoking his guttural accent. ‘Real life isn’t so sensational.’
‘Fiction stranger than truth,’ Marvell murmured.
‘I can assure you Patrick didn’t die of cyanide. You see, of all the poisons commonly used in cases of homicide cyanide is the most easily detected. The smell, for one thing …’
‘Bitter almonds,’ Nancy interposed.
Greenleaf smiled a smile he didn’t feel.
That among other things. Believe me, it’s fantastic to talk of cyanide.’ His hands moved expressively. ‘No, please,’ he said.
‘Well, what do you really think, then?’
‘I think you’re a very pretty girl with a vivid imagination and Linda Gaveston watches too much television. I wonder if I might have some more of your excellent whisky, Oliver?’
Oliver took the glass gratefully. He looked as if he would gladly have given Greenleaf the whole bottle.
‘Music,’ he said, handing records to the discerning Marvell.
‘May we have the Handel?’ Marvell asked politely. Nancy made a face and flung herself back among the cushions.
The sound of the rain falling steadily had formed throughout the conversation a monotonous background chorus. Now, as they became silent, the music of The Faithful Shepherd Suite filled the room. Greenleaf listened to the orch
estra and noted the repetition of each phrase with the appreciation of the scientist: but Marvell, with the ear of the artist manqué, felt the absurd skimped room transformed about him and, sighing within himself for something irrevocably lost, saw a green grove as in a Constable landscape and beneath the leaves a lover with the Pipes of Pan.
9
The rain ceased as darkness fell and the sky cleared suddenly as if washed free of cloud. It was a night of bright white stars, so many stars that Greenleaf had to point out and admire—although he did not know their names—the strung lights of Charles’s Wain and Jupiter riding in the south.
‘Patines of bright gold,’ said Marvell. ‘Only they’re not gold, they’re platinum. Patines of bright platinum doesn’t sound half so well, does it?’
‘It’s no good quoting at me,’ said the doctor. ‘You know I never read anything but the B.M.F.’ He drew a deep breath, savouring the night air. ‘Very nice,’ he said inadequately. ‘I’m glad I summoned up the energy to walk back with you.’
‘It was a sticky evening, wasn’t it?’ Marvell went first, holding back brambles for Greenleaf to pass along the path.
‘Silly little woman,’ Greenleaf said, harshly for him. ‘I hope Gage can stop her gossiping.’
‘It could be awkward.’ Marvell said no more until the path broadened and the doctor was walking abreast of him. Then suddenly, ‘May I ask you something?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to offend you.’
‘You won’t do that.’
‘You’re a doctor, but Patrick wasn’t your patient.’ Marvell spoke quietly. ‘I asked you if I would offend you because I was thinking of medical etiquette. But—look, I’m not scandal mongering like Nancy Gage—weren’t you very surprised when Patrick died like that?’
Greenleaf said guardedly, ‘I was surprised, yes.’
‘Thunderstruck?’
‘Like that poor fellow on the golf course? Well, no. You see a lot of strange things in my job. I thought at first Patrick had taken an overdose of sodium amytal. I’d given him an anti-histamine, two hundred milligrammes Phenergan, and one would potentiate …’ He stopped, loath to give these esoteric details to a layman. ‘He had the sodium amytal and I advised him to take one.’
