To Fear a Painted Devil

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘You left the bottle with him?’

  ‘Now, look.’ Greenleaf had said he wouldn’t be offended. ‘Patrick wasn’t a child. Howard had prescribed them. In any case, he didn’t take any more. That was the first thing Glover looked for at the post-mortem.’

  Marvell opened the orchard gate and Greenleaf stepped from the forest floor on to turf and the slippery leaves of wild daffodils. The petals of a wet rose brushed his face. In the darkness they felt like a woman’s fingers drenched with scent.

  ‘The first thing?’ Marvell asked. ‘You mean, you looked for other things? You suspected suicide or even murder?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Greenleaf said impatiently. ‘A man had died, a young, apparently healthy man. Glover had to find out what he died of. Patrick died of heart failure.’

  ‘Everybody dies of heart failure.’

  ‘Roughly, yes. But there were signs that the heart had been affected before. There was some slight damage.’

  They had come to the back door. The kitchen smelt of herbs and wine. Greenleaf thought he could detect another less pleasant scent. Mildew. He had never seen mushrooms growing but Marvell’s kitchen smelt like the plastic trays of mushrooms Bernice bought at the village store. Marvell groped for the lamp and lit it.

  ‘Well, go on,’ he said.

  ‘If you must know,’ Greenleaf said, ‘Glover made some enquires at Patrick’s old school. Tamsin didn’t know anything and Patrick’s parents were dead. He’d never complained to Howard about feeling ill. Only went to him once.’

  ‘May I ask if you got anything from the school?’

  ‘I don’t know if you may,’ Greenleaf said severely. ‘I don’t know why you want to know. But if there’s going to be a lot of talk.… Glover wrote to the headmaster and he got a letter back saying Patrick had had to be let off some of the games because he’d had rheumatic fever.’

  ‘I see. So you checked with the doctor Patrick had when he was a child.’

  ‘We couldn’t do that.’ Greenleaf smiled a small, bitter and very personal smile. ‘Patrick was born in Germany. His mother was German and he lived there till he was four. Glover talked to Tamsin’s Mrs. Prynne. She’s one of these old women with a good memory. She remembered Patrick had had rheumatic fever when he was three—very early to have it, incidentally—and that the name of his doctor had been Goldstein.’

  Marvell was embarrassed.

  ‘But Dr. Goldstein had disappeared. A lot of people of his persuasion disappeared in Germany between 1939 and 1945.’

  ‘Stopping for a quick drink?’ Marvell asked.

  Five minutes passed before he said anything more about Patrick Selby. Greenleaf felt that he had been stiff and pompous, the very prototype of the uppish medical man. To restore Marvell’s ease he accepted a glass of carrot wine.

  The brilliance of the white globe had increased until now only the corners of the parlour remained in shadow. A small wind had arisen, stirring the curtains and moving the trailing violet and white leaves of the Tradescantia that stood in a majolica pot on the window sill. It was rather cold.

  Then Marvell said: ‘I was curious about Patrick.’ He sat down and warmed his hands at the lamp. Greenleaf wondered if Bernice, at home in Shalom, had turned on the central heating. ‘Perhaps I have a suspicious mind. Patrick had a good many enemies, you know. Quite a lot of people must be glad he’s dead.’

  ‘And I have a logical mind,’ said Greenleaf briskly. ‘Nancy Gage says Carnaby tried to buy cyanide. Patrick Selby dies suddenly. Therefore, she reasons, Patrick died of cyanide. But we know Patrick didn’t die of cyanide. He died a natural death. Can’t you see that once your original premise falls to the ground there’s no longer any reason to doubt it? No matter how much Carnaby hated him—if he did, which I doubt—no matter if he succeeded in buying a ton of cyanide, he didn’t kill Patrick with it because Patrick didn’t die of cyanide. Now, just because one person appears to have a thin motive and access—possible access—to means that were never used at all, you start reasoning that he was in fact murdered, that half a dozen people had motives and that one of them succeeded.’ He drank the carrot wine. It was really quite pleasant, like sweet Bristol Cream. ‘You’re not being logical,’ he said.

  Marvell didn’t reply. He began to wind the clock delicately as if he was being careful not to disturb the sultan and his slave whose fingers rested eternally on the silent zither. When he had put the key down he blew away a monkey spider that was creeping across the sultan’s gondola-shaped shoe. Then he said:

  ‘Why wasn’t there an inquest?’

  Greenleaf answered him triumphantly. ‘Because there wasn’t any need. Haven’t I been telling you? And that wasn’t up to Glover and Howard. That’s a matter for the coroner.’

  ‘No doubt he knows his own business.’

  ‘You don’t have inquests on people who die naturally.’ Greenleaf got up, stretching cold stiff legs, and changed the subject. ‘How’s the hay fever?’

  ‘I’ve run out of tablets.’

  ‘Come down to the surgery sometime and I’ll let you have another prescription.’

  But Marvell didn’t come and Greenleaf saw nothing of him for several days. Greenleaf began to think that he would hear no more of Patrick’s death—until surgery time on Wednesday morning.

  The first patient to come into the consulting room through the green baize door was Denholm Smith-King. He was on his way to his Nottingham factory and at last he had summoned the courage to let Greenleaf examine him.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the doctor said as Smith-King sat up on the couch buttoning his shirt. ‘Only a gland. It’ll go down eventually.’

  ‘Then I suppose I shall just have to lump it.’ He laughed at his own joke and Greenleaf joined in politely.

  ‘I see you’ve cut down on the smoking.’

  He was startled and showed it, but his eyes followed the doctor’s down to his own right forefinger and he grinned.

  ‘Quite the detective in your own way, aren’t you?’ Greenleaf had only noticed that the sepia stains had paled to yellow and this remark reminded him of things he wanted to forget. ‘Yes, I’ve cut it down,’ Smith-King said and he gave the doctor a heavy, though friendly buffet on the back. ‘You quacks, you don’t know the strains a business man has to contend with. You don’t know you’re born,’ but his hearty laugh softened the words.

  ‘Things going better, are they?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Smith-King.

  He went off jauntily and Greenleaf rang the bell for the next patient. By ten he had seen a dozen people and he asked the last one, a woman with nettle rash, if there were any more to come.

  ‘Just one, Doctor. A young lady.’

  He put his finger on the buzzer but no one came so he began to tidy up his desk. Evidently the young lady had got tired of waiting. Then, just as he was picking up his ignition key, the baize door was pushed feebly open and Freda Carnaby shuffled in wearily like an old woman.

  He was shocked at the change in her. Impatience died as he offered her a chair and sat down himself. What had become of the bright birdlike creature with the practical starched cotton dresses and the impractical shoes? Even at the funeral she had still looked smart in trim shop-girl black. Now her hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed for weeks, her eyes were bloodshot and puffy and there was a hysterical downward quirk at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What exactly is the trouble, Miss Carnaby?’

  ‘I can’t sleep. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since I don’t know how long.’ She felt in the pocket of the mock suede jacket she wore over her crumpled print dress. The handkerchief she pulled out was crumpled too. She pressed it with pathetic gentility against her lips. ‘You see, I’ve had a great personal loss.’ The linen square brushed the corner of one eye. ‘I was very fond of someone. A man.’ She gulped. ‘He died quite recently.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Greenleaf began to wonder what was coming.

  ‘I don’t
know what to do.’

  He had observed before that it is this particular phrase that triggers off the tears, the breakdown. It may be true, it may be felt, but it is only when it is actually uttered aloud that its full significance, the complete helpless disorientation it implies, brings home to the speaker the wretchedness of his or her plight.

  ‘Now you mustn’t say that,’ he said, knowing his inadequacy. ‘Time does heal, you know.’ The healer passing the buck, he thought. ‘I’ll let you have something to make you sleep.’ He drew out his prescription pad and began to write. ‘Have you been away yet this year?’

  ‘No and I am not likely to.’

  ‘I should try. Just a few days would help.’

  ‘Help?’ He had heard the hysterical note so often but not from her and he didn’t like it. ‘Help a—a broken heart? Oh, Doctor, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’ She dropped her head on to her folded arms and began to sob.

  Greenleaf went to the sink and drew her a glass of water.

  ‘I’d like to tell you about it.’ She sipped and wiped her eyes. ‘Can I tell you about it?’

  He looked surreptitiously at his watch.

  ‘If it would make you feel better.”

  ‘It was Patrick Selby. You knew that didn’t you?’ Greenleaf said nothing so she went on. ‘I was very fond of him.’ They never say ‘love’, he thought, always ‘very fond of’ or ‘devoted to.’ ‘And he was very fond of me,’ she said defiantly. He glanced momentarily at her tear-blotched face, the rough skin. When she said out of the blue, ‘We were going to be married,’ he jumped.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say he was already married. Tamsin didn’t care for him. He was going to divorce her.’

  ‘Miss Carnaby …’

  But she rushed on, the words tumbling out.

  ‘She was having an affair with that awful man Gage. Patrick knew all about it She used to meet him in London during the week. Patrick knew. She said she was going to see some old friend of her grandmother’s, but half the time she was with that man.’

  Sympathy fought with and finally conquered Greenleaf’s distaste. Keeping his expression a kindly blank, he began to fold up the prescription.

  Misinterpreting his look, she said defensively:

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. But I wasn’t carrying on with Patrick. It wasn’t like that We never did anything wrong. We were going to be married. And Nancy Gage is going about all over Linchester saying Edward killed Patrick because … because …’ Her sobs broke out afresh. Greenleaf watched her in despair. How was he to turn this weeping hysterical woman out into the street? How stem the tide of appalling revelations?

  ‘And the terrible thing is I know he was killed. That’s why I can’t sleep. And I know who killed him.’

  This was too much. He shook her slightly, wiped her eyes himself and held the glass to her lips.

  ‘Miss Carnaby, you must get a grip on yourself. Patrick died a perfectly natural death. This is certain. I know it You’ll do your brother and yourself a lot of harm if you go about saying things you can’t substantiate.’

  ‘Substantiate?’ She stumbled over the word. ‘I can prove it. You remember what it was like at that awful party. Well, Oliver Gage went back by himself when it was all over. I saw him from my bedroom window. It was bright moonlight and he went over by the pond. He was carrying something, a white packet. I don’t know what it was, but, Doctor, suppose—suppose it killed Patrick!’

  Then he got her out of the surgery, bundled her into his own car and drove her back to Linchester.

  Three letters plopped through the Gage letter box when the post came at ten. Nancy was so sure they weren’t for her that it was all of half an hour before she bothered to come down from the bathroom. Instead, her hair rolled up in curlers, wet and evil-smelling with home-perm fluid, she sat on the edge of the bath waiting for the cooking timer to ping and brooding about what the letters might contain.

  Two bills, she thought bitterly, and probably a begging letter from Jean or Shirley. A saturated curler dripped on to her nose. By this time the whole of the first floor of the house smelt of ammonia and rotten eggs. She would have to use masses of that air freshener stuff before Oliver came home. Still, that was a whole two days and goodness knew how many hours away. Surely Oliver would scarcely notice the smell when he saw how wonderful her hair looked, and all for twenty-five bob.

  The timer rang and she began unrolling excitedly. When the handbasin was filled with a soggy mess of curlers and mushy paper she put a towel round her shoulders, a mauve one with Hers embroidered on it in white; His, the other half of the wedding present, was scrupulously kept for Oliver—and went downstairs.

  The first letter she picked up was from Jean. Nancy knew that before she saw the handwriting. Oliver’s first wife was their only correspondent who saved old envelopes and stuck new address labels on them. The second was almost certainly the telephone bill. It might be as well to lose that. Now, who could be writing to her from London?

  She opened the last envelope and saw the letter heading, Oliver’s newspaper, Fleet Street. It was from Oliver. She looked at the envelope and the slanted stamp. To her that meant a kiss. Did it mean that to Oliver or had it occurred by chance?

  ‘My darling …’ That was nice. It was also unfamiliar and unexpected. She read on. ‘I am wondering if you have forgiven me for my unkindness to you at the week-end. I was sharp with you, even verging on the brutal …’ How beautifully he wrote! But that was to be expected. It was, after all, his line. ‘Can you understand my sweet, that this was only because I hate to see you cheapening yourself? I felt that you were making yourself the butt of those men’s wit and this hurt me more bitterly than I can tell you. So for my sake, darling Nancy, watch your words. This is Tamsin’s business and she is nothing to us …’ Nancy could hardly believe a letter would make her so happy. ‘… She is nothing to us. We each possess one world. Each hath one and is one.’ Hath, she decided, must be typing error, but the thought was there. ‘The merest suggestion that I might be …’ Then there was a bit blanked out with x’s ‘… associated with a scandal of this kind has caused me considerable disquiet. We were not close friends of the Selbys …’

  There was a great deal more in the same vein. Nancy skipped some of it, the boring parts, and lingered over the astonishing endearments at the end. She was so ecstatically happy that, although she caught sight of her elated face in the hall mirror, she hardly noticed that her hair was hanging in rats’ tails, dripping and perfectly straight.

  Marvell was determined to get Greenleaf interested in the circumstances of Patrick’s death and he thought it would do no harm to confront him with a list of unusual poisons. To this end he had been to the public library and spent an instructive afternoon reading Taylor. He was so carried away that he was too late for afternoon surgery—his ostensible mission, he decided, would be to collect another prescription—so he picked a bunch of acanthus for Bernice and walked up to Shalom.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Bernice said. Her husband touched the brownish-pink flowers. ‘What are they?’ Diffidently he suggested: ‘Lupins or something?’

  ‘Acanthus,’ said Marvell. ‘The original model for the Corinthian capital.’

  Bernice filled a white stone vase with water. ‘You are a mine of information.’

  ‘Let’s say a disused quarry of rubble.’ The words had a bitter sound but Marvell smiled as he watched her arrange the flowers. ‘And the rubble, incidentally, is being shaken by explosions. I’ve been sneezing for the past three days and I’ve run out of those fascinating little blue pills.’

  Bernice smiled. ‘If this is going to turn into a consultation,’ she said, ‘you’d better go and have a drink with Max.’

  She began on the washing up and Marvell followed Greenleaf into the sitting room. Greenleaf pushed open the glass doors to the garden and pulled up chairs in the path of the incoming cooler air. The sky directly above was a pu
re milky blue and in the west refulgent, brazen gold, but the long shadow of the cedar tree lapped the walls of the house. The room was a cool sanctuary.

  ‘It might be worth finding out exactly what you’re allergic to, have some tests done,’ the doctor said. ‘It need not be hay, you know. You can be allergic to practically anything.’

  Marvell hadn’t really wanted to talk about himself but now as if to give colour to his excuse, a tickle began at the back of his nose and he was shaken by a vast sneeze. When he had recovered he said slyly:

  ‘Well, I suppose it can’t kill me.’

  ‘It could lead to asthma,’ Greenleaf said cheerfully. ‘It does in sixty to eighty per cent of cases if it isn’t checked.’

  ‘I asked,’ said Marvell, re-phrasing, ‘if an allergy could kill you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t And I know exactly what you’re getting at, but Patrick wasn’t allergic to wasp stings. He had one a few days before he died and the effect was just normal.’

  ‘All right,’ Marvell said and he blew his nose. ‘You remember what we were talking about the other night?’

  ‘What you were talking about.’

  ‘What I was talking about, then. Don’t be so stiff-necked, Max.’

  They had known each other for two or three years now and at first it had been Dr. Greenleaf, Mr. Marvell. Then, as intimacy grew, the use of their styles had seemed too formal and Greenleaf who hadn’t been to a public school baulked at the bare surname. This was the first time Marvell had called his friend by his first name and Greenleaf felt a strange warmth of heart, the sense of being accepted, this usage brings. It made him weak where he had intended to be strong.

  ‘Suppose,’ Marvell went on, ‘there was some substance, perfectly harmless under normal circumstances, but lethal if anyone took it when he’d been stung by a wasp.’

  Reluctantly Greenleaf recalled what Freda Carnaby had told him about the white package carried by Oliver Gage.