To Fear a Painted Devil

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Suppose, suppose. There isn’t such a substance.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘As sure as anyone can be.’

  ‘I’m bored with Chantefleur Abbey, Max, and I’ve a mind to do a spot of detecting—with your help. It obviously needs a doctor.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Greenleaf unhappily. ‘I’m going to give you a drink and write out that prescription.’

  ‘I don’t want a drink. I want to talk about Patrick.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, since I last saw you I’ve been swotting up forensic medicine …’

  ‘In between the sneezes, I imagine.’

  ‘In between the sneezes, as you say. As a matter of fact I’ve been reading Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence.’

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ Greenleaf said, in spite of himself. He added quickly: ‘It won’t tell you a thing about wasp stings or rheumatic fever.’

  ‘No, but it tells me a hell of a lot about poisons. A positive Borgias’ Bible. Brucine and thallium, lead and gold. Did you know there are some gold salts called Purple of Cassius? But of course you did. Purple of Cassius! There’s a name to conjure death with.’

  ‘It didn’t conjure Patrick Selby’s death.’

  ‘How do you know? I’ll bet Glover didn’t test for it.’

  ‘No, and he didn’t test for arsenic or hyoscine or the botulinus bacillus, for the simple reason that there wasn’t the slightest indication in Patrick’s appearance or the state of the room to suggest that he might remotely have taken any of them.’

  ‘I have heard,’ Marvell said, ‘that a man can die from having air injected into a vein. Now there’s a very entertaining novel by Dorothy Sayers …’

  ‘Unnatural Death.’

  ‘So you do read detective stories!’ Marvell pounced on his words.

  ‘Only on holiday.’ Greenleaf smiled. ‘But Patrick hadn’t any hypodermic marks.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Marvell mocked. ‘Max, you’re a hypocrite. How do you know Patrick hadn’t any hypodermic marks unless you looked for them? And if you looked for them you must have suspected at the least suicide.’

  For a few moments Greenleaf didn’t answer him. What Marvell said was near the truth. He had looked and found—nothing. But had he been in possession of certain facts of which he was now cognisant, would he have acted as he had? Wouldn’t he instead have tried to dissuade Howard and Glover from signing the death certificate? He had done nothing because Patrick had not been his patient, because it would have been unprofessional to poach on Howard’s preserves, because, most of all, Patrick had seemed a reasonably happily married man leading a quite normal life. Happily married? Now, of course, it sounded an absurd description of the mess he and Tamsin had made for themselves, but then … You had to make allowances for the uninhibited way people behave at parties, Tamsin’s close dancing with Gage, Patrick’s flirtation with Freda Carnaby. The possibility of murder had never crossed his mind. Why, then, had he looked? Just to fill in the time, he thought, almost convincing himself, just for something to do.

  And yet, as he answered Marvell, he was fully aware that he was skirting round the question.

  ‘I looked,’ he said carefully, ‘before Glover began his examination. At the time there seemed nothing to account for the death. It was afterwards that Glover found the heart damage. There were no punctures on Patrick’s body apart from those made by wasps. And he didn’t die from wasps’ stings, unless you might say he had a certain amount of shock from the stings.’

  ‘If by that you mean the shock affected his heart, wouldn’t you have expected him to have a heart attack at once, even while he was on the ladder, not three or four hours later?’

  The damage caused by the rheumatic fever had been slight. Patrick must have had it very mildly. But in the absence of Patrick’s parents and Dr. Goldstein, who could tell? ‘Yes, I would,’ Greenleaf said unhappily.

  ‘Max, you’re coming round to my way of thinking. Look, leaving the cause of death for a moment, wasn’t there something very—to use Nancy’s word—fishy about that party?’

  ‘You mean the picture?’

  ‘I mean the picture. I went upstairs to get the citronella and there was the picture. Now, it wasn’t covered up. It was in a room in Patrick’s house. But he didn’t know it was there. Did you see his face when he saw it?’

  Greenleaf frowned. ‘It was a horrible thing,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come. A bit bloodthirsty. By a pupil of Thornhill, I should say, and those old boys didn’t pull their punches. But the point is, Patrick was terrified. He couldn’t have been more upset if it had been a real head in a real pool of blood.’

  ‘Some people are very squeamish,’ said Greenleaf who was always coming across them.

  ‘About real wounds and real blood, yes. But this was only a picture. Now, I’ll tell you something. A couple of weeks before he died Patrick was in my house with Tamsin and I showed them some Dali drawings I’ve got. They’re only prints but they’re much more horrifying than Salome, but Patrick didn’t turn a hair.’

  ‘So he didn’t like the picture? What’s it got to do with his death? He didn’t die from having his head chopped off.’

  ‘Pity,’ Marvell said cheerfully. ‘If he had we’d only have two-thirds of our present problem. No longer How? but simply Why? and Who?’

  He got up as Bernice came in to take him on a tour of the garden.

  ‘I need the advice of someone with green fingers.’ She raised her eyebrows at their serious faces. ‘Max, you’re tired. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He watched them go, Bernice questioning, her companion stooping toward the border plants, his head raised, listening courteously. Then Bernice went up to the fence and he saw that Nancy Gage had come into the garden next door. She evidently had some news to impart, for she was talking excitedly with a kind of feverish desire for the sound of her own voice that women have who are left too much alone. Greenleaf could only remember the last time she had looked like that, but today there was no Oliver to stop her.

  His wife’s voice floated back to him. ‘Tamsin’s home, Max.’

  Was that all?

  He had hardly reached the lawn and heard Bernice say, ‘Should we go over?’ when Nancy caught him.

  ‘Don’t look at my hair,’ she said, attracting his attention to it by running her fingers through the strawy mass. ‘Something went wrong with the works.’

  ‘Did you say Tamsin was home?’

  ‘We ought to go over, Max, and see if she’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right Brown as a berry,’ said Nancy, and she made a mock-gesture of self-reproach, protruding her teeth over her lower lip. There I go. Come back all I said. Oliver says I mustn’t talk about the Selbys to anyone, not anyone at all because of you-know-what.’

  Marvell tried to catch Greenleaf’s eye and when the doctor refused to co-operate, said, ‘And what are we supposed to know?’

  ‘Oliver says I mustn’t go about saying Patrick didn’t die naturally because it wouldn’t do him any good.’ She giggled. ‘Oliver, I mean, not Patrick. He wrote it in a letter so it must be important.’

  ‘Very prudent,’ said Marvell.

  Greenleaf opened his mouth to say something, he hardly knew what, and closed it again as the telephone rang. When he came back to the garden Nancy had gone.

  ‘Little boy with a big headache,’ he called to Bernice. ‘Boys shouldn’t have headaches. I’m going to see what it’s all about and I’ll look in on Tamsin on my way back.’

  He went to get the car and nearly ran over Edith Gaveston’s dog as he was backing it out. After he had apologised she picked up the Scottie and stuck her head through the car window.

  ‘I like your new motor,’ she said archaically. ‘Only don’t blood it on Fergus, will you?’

  Fox-hunting metaphors were lost on the doctor. He made the engine rev faintly.

  ‘I see the merry widow’s back.’ She pointed across Th
e Green. At first Greenleaf saw only Henry Glide exercising his Boxer; then he noticed that the Hallows’ windows had all been opened, flung wide in a way they never were when Patrick was alive. The Weimaraner was standing by the front doors, still as a statue carved from creamy marble.

  ‘Poor girl,’ he said.

  ‘Tamsin? I thought you meant Queenie for a minute. Poor is hardly the word I’d choose. That house, the Selby business and a private income! In my opinion she’s well rid of him.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Greenleaf said. ‘I must go. I have a call.’ The car slid out on to the tarmac. The Scottie yapped and Edith bellowed:

  ‘Let’s hope she hasn’t come back to another scandal. One’s enough but two looks like …’

  Her last words were lost in the sound of the engine but he thought she had said ‘enemy action’. He had no idea what she was talking about but he didn’t like it. I’m getting as bad as Marvell, he thought uneasily, compelling his eyes to the road. Then he made himself think about headaches and children and meningitis until he came to the house where the sick boy was.

  10

  The dog Queenie traversed the lawn of Hallows, reacquainting herself by scent with the home she had returned to after a fortnight’s absence. She assured herself that the squirrels’ dray still remained in the elm by the gate, that the Smith-King’s cat had on several occasions crossed the wattle fence and come to the back door, and that a multitude of birds had descended upon the currants, leaving behind them famine and evidence that only a dog could find.

  When she had visited the locked garage and peered through the window, whining a little by now, she knew that the man she sought was not on Hallows land. She went back to the house, her tail quite still, and found the woman—her woman as he had been her man—sitting in a bedroom singing and combing her hair as she sang. The dog Queenie placed her head in the silk lap and took a little comfort from the combings that fell upon her like thistledown.

  At first Greenleaf thought that the singing came from the wireless. But then, as he came up to the front doors, he realised that this was no professional but a girl who sang for joy, vaguely, a little out of tune. He rang the bell and waited.

  Tamsin was browner than he had ever seen her and he remembered someone saying that Mrs. Prynne lived at the seaside. She wore a bright pink dress of the shade his mother used to call a wicked pink and on her arms black and white bangles.

  ‘I came,’ he said, very much taken aback, ‘to see if there was anything I could do.’

  ‘You could come in and have a drink with me,’ she said and he had the impression she was deliberately crushing the gaiety from her voice. She had put on weight and she looked well. The harsh colour suited her. ‘Dear Max.’ She took both his hands. ‘Always so kind.’

  ‘I saw you were back,’ he said as they came into the lounge. ‘I’ve been to see a patient in the village and I thought I’d look in. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She seemed to realise this was wrong. ‘Well, what is it you people say? As well as can be expected. You’ve had awful weather, haven’t you? It was lovely where I was. Hours and hours of sun. I’ve been on the beach every day.’ She stretched her arms high above her head. ‘Oh Max!’

  Greenleaf didn’t know what to say. He looked about him at the room which Bernice used to say was like a set-piece in a furniture store or a picture in House Beautiful. Now it was a mess. Tamsin could scarcely have been home more than two hours but there were clothes on the sofa and on the floor, magazines and newspapers on the hearthrug. She had covered the stark mantelpiece with shells, conches, winkles, razor shells, and there was a trail of sand on the parquet floor.

  ‘How’s everyone? How’s Bernice? If you’ve been thinking I neglected you, I didn’t send a single postcard to anyone. How’s Oliver? And Nancy? What have you all been doing?’

  Talking, he thought, about your husband. Aloud he said:

  ‘We’ve all been going on in the same way. No news. Crispin Marvell’s with Bernice now giving her some tips about gardening.’

  ‘Oh, Crispin.’ There was scorn in her voice. ‘Don’t you think he rather overdoes this country thing of his?’ She caught his astonished eye. ‘Oh, I’m being mean, I know. But I just don’t care about anyone any more—not you and Bernice, Max—I mean the others. The first thing I’m going to do is sell this place and go far far away.’

  ‘It’s a nice house,’ he said for something to say.

  ‘Nice?’ Her voice trembled. ‘It’s like a great hothouse without any flowers.’ He had never thought her mercenary and he was surprised when she said, ‘I ought to get eight or nine thousand for it. Then there’s the Selby business.’

  ‘What exactly …?’

  ‘Oh, glass,’ she said vaguely. ‘Test tubes and things like that. It never did terribly well until recently. But a couple of months ago they got a marvelous contract making stuff for Harwell. The money’s rolling in. I don’t know whether to stay or sell out to the other directors. Really, Max, I’m quite a rich woman.’

  There were such a lot of things he longed to ask her but could not. Where, for instance, if the business hadn’t been doing well, had the money come from to buy Hallows? Why had Patrick’s father committed suicide? What of Oliver Gage? And why, most of all, was she, a widow of three weeks’ standing, singing for joy when she returned to the house where Patrick had died? It struck him suddenly that in their conversation so intimately concerned with him, resulting as it did solely from his death, she had never once mentioned his name.

  She took a shell from the mantelpiece and held it to her ear. ‘The sound of the sea,’ she said and shivered. ‘The sound of freedom. I shall never marry again, Max, never.’ Freedom, he thought, unaware he was quoting Madame Roland, what crimes are committed in your name!

  ‘I must go,’ he said.

  ‘Just a minute, I’ve something to show you.’

  She took his hand in her left one and he sensed at the back of his mind that there was an unfamiliar bareness, something missing. But he forgot about it as they entered the dining room. The french windows were open and beyond them the wicker furniture on the patio was damp from many rains. This room, he remembered, had always been the most austere in the house, its walls painted white, its window hung with white blinds, so that it looked like a ward in a new hospital. But above the long sleek radiator there had once been a plaque of smoky blue pottery, a tiny island in an ocean of ice. It had been removed to lie rejected and dusty on the table, and in its place hung the picture that had frightened Patrick, dominating the room and emphasising its barrenness by contrast with its own crusted gilt, its blue and gold and bloody scarlet.

  ‘The gardener was here when I got back,’ Tamsin said. ‘He helped me to hang it. Too absurd, but I thought he was going to be sick.’ She smiled and stroked the mother-of-pearl conch. His gaze, withdrawn for a moment from Salome, followed the movement of her hand and he saw what he had sensed. Tamsin had discarded her wedding ring.

  ‘She always seems to be looking at you,’ Tamsin said, ‘like the Mona Lisa.’

  It was true. The painter had contrived that Salome’s eyes should meet yours, no matter in what part of the room you were standing.

  ‘Is it valuable?’ he asked, thinking of the thousands rich men would pay for monstrosities.

  ‘Oh, no. Mrs. Prynne said it’s only worth about twenty pounds.’

  She was still looking at the picture but with neither gloating nor horror. As he turned curiously to look at her he thought he saw in her eyes only the same pride of possession one of his sons might feel for a tape recorder or an electric guitar. One woman’s meat, one man’s poison …

  ‘Patrick …’ he tried to begin, but he could not speak the name aloud to her.

  ‘What’s the matter, darling? Not the little boy?’

  ‘No, no, he’ll be all right. I’m looking in again tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ve been so long.’

  Instead of sitting down Greenleaf began to pace
the room. The circumstances of Patrick’s death were beginning to worry him a lot. If in fact there were sufficient grounds to suspect homicide, wasn’t it his duty as the first medical man to have seen Patrick’s body, as one of those present at the post-mortem, to see justice done? And if he only suspected shouldn’t he, as discreetly as possible, probe just enough to discover whether suspicion was well-founded? Some of the information he had was given in confidence and he couldn’t tell Marvell about it. But there was one person he could tell, one from whom he had never felt it necessary to keep the secrets of the consulting room. He could tell his wife.

  Bernice might well laugh away his fears and this, he had to confess, was what he wanted. She would tell him he was tired, that he needed a holiday.

  The television was on, dancers in some grotesque ballet gyrating like demons. He touched the knob. ‘D’you want this?’ She shook her head. He switched it off and told her.

  She didn’t laugh but said thoughtfully:

  ‘Tamsin and Oliver. Yes, I can believe that.’

  ‘You can?’

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing the way they danced together at Tamsin’s party. I never thought Tamsin and Patrick were very happy together. Except—except until a few days before he died. It was when I called on them collecting for the Cancer Campaign. Tamsin kept calling Patrick darling—she was very sweet to him. I remember thinking how odd it was.’

  ‘But apparently Patrick was in love with Freda Carnaby. Freda Carnaby after Tamsin?’

  Bernice lit a cigarette and said shrewdly, ‘Did you ever notice how very Teutonic Patrick was? The first four years of his life must have influenced him a lot Of course, his mother was German. He was an awfully Kinder, Küche, Kirche sort of person, house-proud, passionately neat and tidy. But Tamsin’s a sloppy girl. Not in her appearance, she’s vain about that, but about the house. You could see it narked Patrick.’

  Greenleaf’s mind went back half an hour. Again he saw the untidy rooms, the shells dribbling sand.

  ‘Now, Freda Carnaby, she’d be different again. Very brisk and practical—or she used to be. All the time they’ve been here I’ve never seen her in slacks or without stockings, Max. Time and time again I’ve noticed it, women who wear those tight little pointed shoes are mad keen on polishing and turning out rooms. Patrick was cruel, too, you know, Max, but I don’t think cruelty would get very far with Tamsin. She’s too vague and self-sufficient. But Freda Carnaby! There’s a masochist if ever I saw one.’