Wexford 14 - The Veiled One

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Now I’m grown-up, I’ve sometimes thought it was wrong of my father to abandon his mother. I mean, it was wrong of him to go anyway, but doubly wrong really to leave his mother with Dodo. Of course I didn’t think about that when I was a child. I never thought much about my grandmother and what her feelings were. My mother put her into an old people’s home; it wasn’t long after my father left, only a few days. She didn’t say goodbye either, just went out and never came back. I asked my mother how she managed it - I mean, I asked years later when I was in my teens. Somebody had said how hard it was to get old people into those council homes. My mother told me about it, she was proud of it. She had a hired car come round - it was when minicabs first started - and told my grandmother they were going for a drive. When they got to this home, she took her in and just said to the matron or whoever it was that she was leaving her there and they’d have to look after her. Dodo doesn’t mind what she says to people, you see; that’s one of the things that gives her power. People say to her, “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life” or “How dare you?” but it doesn’t bother her; she just looks at them and says something else awful. She’s got through the inhibition barrier, you see, the inhibition on being rude.’

  ‘My grandmother lived another ten years, all the time in that home and then in a geriatric ward. The social services tried to get my mother to take her back but they couldn’t force her to, could they? She just refused to let them in the house. But before that, as soon as the minicab brought her back in fact, she moved all the furniture upstairs. Mr Carroll, the farmer - he and his wife were the only people I remember we ever saw. They weren’t friends but they were people we knew, the only people. My mother got him to help her take all that furniture up into the attics and then when -‘

  ‘What’s all this leading up to, Clifford?’ Burden put in.

  Clifford ignored him, or appeared to ignore him. Perhaps he responded only to what he wanted to hear. His eyes were on the window. The rain had slackened and the streaming water separated into trickling droplets between which a green-grey blur could be seen and a lowering overcast. But perhaps he saw nothing and the sense of sight was shut. Burden felt uncomfortable and his discomfort increased with every sentence Clifford spoke. All the time he was expecting some sort of climax or explosion, expecting Clifford to jump up and begin screaming. But for the present the man on the other side of the table seemed locked in an unnatural calm.

  He went on in a lighter, more conversational tone, ‘When I was disobedient or offended her in some way, she’d lock me up in one of those attics. Sometimes it would be the one with all the photos in and sometimes with the beds and mattresses. But I got to know I’d always be let out before it got dark. She wouldn’t go up there in the dark because she’s afraid of ghosts. I think the supernatural is the only thing my mother is afraid of. There are bits of our garden she won’t go near after dark - well, in the daytime, too, come to that. I used to sit in the attic looking at all those faces.’

  ‘Faces?’ repeated Burden in a hollow tone.

  ‘In the photos,’ Clifford said patiently. He was silent for a moment and the inspiration came to Burden to do as Serge Olson did, to take off his watch and lay it on the table in front of him. Clifford’s eyes flickered as he observed the movement. ‘I used to study the faces of my ancestors and think to myself, all those ladies in long skirts and big hats and all those men with dogs, and guns, all of them had just ended up in me, that’s all they’d come to in the end - me. I’d watch the light fade till I couldn’t see the faces clearly any more and when that happened I knew she’d come. When she came it would be quite slowly, taking her time, and then the door would slide open and in a nice quiet pleasant sort of way, just as if nothing had happened, she’d tell me to come down and that my tea was ready.’

  Burden said wearily, picking up the watch, ‘Time’s up, Clifford.’

  He rose obediently. ‘Shall I come back this afternoon?’

  ‘You’ll hear from us.’ Burden almost said, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’, and then, standing alone in the room after Clifford had been taken away, asked himself with near-disbelief what he thought he was doing. Didn’t he expect an admission of guilt? Wasn’t that what it was all about? He went up to his own office and began looking through the reports which were the result of seemingly fruitless efforts on the part of Archbold and Marian Bayliss to find evidence of unsolved murder in Clifford’s past. Both grandmothers had died natural deaths, or so it seemed. Old Mrs Sanders had died after a heart attack in the council home where her daughter-in-law had dumped her; old Mrs Clifford had been found by a neighbour dead in her bed at home. Elizabeth McPhail had died in hospital after months of incapacity caused by a stroke.

  Still, he must keep on questioning him - that afternoon if necessary, and next day and the day after, every day until Clifford reached the present and finally told him in that monotonous voice that he had killed Gwen Robson.

  Wexford was in the Midland Bank in Queen Street. It was four-thirty and the bank had been closed to customers for the past hour. The manager had been cooperative and answered all his questions without protest. Yes, Mr Robson had an account at the branch but no, Mrs Robson - who hadn’t banked there anyway - had nothing on safe deposit. Wexford hadn’t really expected it. Whatever Lesley Arbel had been searching for was hidden elsewhere - or Lesley had already found it. The manager was plainly unwilling to tell him anything about Mrs Sanders’ account, also at the branch, presumably because she wasn’t dead.

  He came out into grey drizzle, into early dusk. The green grocer’s display looked glistening wet even though the awning was up, a sheen like dew on green leaves and citrus rind. Behind the bow window of the boutique skimpy clothes in fruit-salad colours shimmered. Into the tawny-lit warmth of the wine market Serge Olson was disappearing, passing in the doorway a man who was also known to Wexford: John Whitton, Ralph Robson’s neighbour. His baby nestled’ fast asleep against his chest in a carrying sling; the older child, muffled to the eyes in knitted wraps and quilted nylon, grasped with a gloved hand the hem of his Barber jacket, for Whitton’s arms were fully occupied with his two carrier bags of wine. He looked at Wexford without recognizing him and made for the Peugeot estate car parked at the kerb. The meter had no more than a couple of minutes to run and a traffic warden was already bearing down.

  Whitton put the baby into a cot on the back seat, the wine, on to the floor, and had no sooner straightened up than the crying began. The three-year-old clambered in, viewing its brother or sister with that dispassionate mild interest children often show towards a younger sibling in distress. Wexford watched because he was wondering how poor Whitton was going to extricate the car without touching the one in front or the one behind, though ‘touching’ was hardly the word for what had recently been done to the Peugeot; its offside headlamp had been smashed and the metal surround; buckled. Nevertheless he would have turned away, knowing the dreadful irritation of being watched while one is manoeuvring a car, had Whitton - now in the driving-seat - not called out to him.

  ‘I say, would you mind awfully telling me how near I am?’

  Those people who stand in front of drivers, beckoning’ and holding up a warning hand - Wexford had often been exasperated by them, had long ago resolved never to join their number. It was different, though, when one was invited. The car crawled forward and he signalled to Whitton to stop when within an inch of the rear mudguard of the Mercedes in front.

  ‘You ought to make it on the next lock,’ he said as Whitton reversed.

  And then Whitton did recognize him, speaking above the baby’s frenetic yells: ‘You came to talk to me about Mrs Robson.’ The engine stalled and he swore, made an effort, smiled. ‘I shouldn’t lose my cool like that. That’s what happens when you do.’ A thumb cocked towards the left side of the car’s bonnet indicated what he meant. ‘My wife had a bit of a contretemps with a parking meter here three weeks ago.’

  Wexford knew Whitton
was telling him this because he was a policeman, because like so many of the public he thought all policemen, whatever branch of the force they belonged to and whatever their rank, were equally preoccupied by traffic offences. In a moment he would be defending his wife lest Wexford whipped out a notebook . . .

  ‘Mind you, she didn’t so much as scratch another vehicle, which was a miracle considering the way this young fellow in a Metro got at her.’

  A polite, ‘Really?’ and a short preamble to saying goodbye were on the tip of Wexford’s tongue. Instead he said rather quickly, though knowing it was a long shot, ‘When exactly was this, Mr Whitton?’

  Whitton liked talking. Without being exactly garrulous, he liked a chance to talk and naturally he would, having taken over the role long assigned exclusively to women where he was locked into a daily relationship with children too young for conversation. First, however, he reached into the back of the car and picked up the baby off the back seat, its cries at once fading to whimpers. Amused, Wexford saw that he was settling down for a long, companionable talk . . . and then he wasn’t amused any more, but excited.

  ‘Three weeks ago, as I said. Well, as a matter of fact, it must have been the day Mrs Robson was killed. Yes, it was. Rosemary had the car that day and she was picking up our fruit and veg on the way home. A quarter-to-six maybe, ten-to . . .?’

  Chapter 15

  It was Burden’s idea to have him up in his office rather than in either of the interview rooms. He couldn’t stand any more of those vinyl tiles and the blank walls and the metal rim round the table. It wasn’t any less warm down there than up here, but there was a sense of chill, a feeling that draughts crept in between plaster and window frame and under the unpanelled door with its corroded metal handle. So Clifford was brought upstairs and he came in as if paying a social call - smiling, hand outstretched. Burden wouldn’t have been surprised if he had asked him how he was, but Clifford didn’t do that.

  The blinds were down and the lights were on. They were soft lights though, coming from an angled lamp on the desk, and two spots on the ceiling. Burden sat down behind the desk and Clifford in front of it, in a chair with padded seat and wooden arms which Diana Pettit pulled out for him. She was still in the room, sitting near the door, but he seemed unaware of her presence. He was wearing a different grey shirt, this one with a button-down collar, and his pullover was of a darker grey with a cable pattern but errors had been made in the knitting of the cables. Burden found himself compulsively staring at one of these flaws up near the left shoulder, where the knitter in twisting the cable had passed the rib over instead of under the work.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me about your relations with your other grandmother,’ Burden began. ‘Mrs Clifford, I your mother’s mother. Did you see much of her?’

  Instead of answering, Clifford said, ‘My mother’s not all bad. I’ve given you a bad impression of her. She’s really like everyone else, a mixture of bad and good, only her Shadow’s very powerful. Can I tell you a story? It’s a romantic story really; my grandmother Clifford told it me.’

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged Burden.

  ‘When my mother was a little girl they lived in Forbydean, her and her mother and father. She used to go to school past Ash Farm on her bicycle and she got to know my father, who was a bit younger. Well, they played together; they got to play together whenever they could, which was mostly in the holidays because my father was away at his prep school. When she was thirteen and my father was twelve, his parents found out about the friendship and put a stop to it. You see, they thought their son was a lot too good for my mother even to play with: they said a farm labourer’s daughter wasn’t good enough for their son. And my father didn’t put up any sort of resistance; he agreed with them, he hadn’t understood before, and when my mother came round next time he wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t even look at her. And then my grandmother came out and told my mother she must go home and not come any more.’

  Burden nodded abstractedly, wondering how long all this was going to take. It wasn’t an unusual story for this part of the world at that period. Similar things had happened to his own contemporaries, forbidden for reasons of social snobbery to ‘play in the Street’.

  Clifford went on, ‘I’m really telling you this to show you the good side of my mother. I said it was romantic. Later on, you see, she went to work for them and they didn’t recognize the little girl they’d prevented from playing with their Charles. And he didn’t until she told him after he’d married her. I wonder what they all thought then?’

  Burden was not sufficiently interested to hazard guesses. ‘Did your grandmother Clifford come to see you when you were a child? Did you visit her with your mother?’

  Clifford sighed. Perhaps he would have preferred to continue his speculations about the romantic story. ‘I sometimes think I spent my childhood walking. I walked through my childhood, if you know what I mean. It was the only way to get anywhere. I must have walked hundreds of miles, thousands. My mother doesn’t walk that fast but I was always breathless, trying to keep up with her.’

  ‘You walked to your grandmother’s, then?’

  Clifford sighed again. ‘When we went, we walked. There was the bus, but my mother wouldn’t pay bus fares. We didn’t go to my grandmother’s very much. You have to understand that my mother doesn’t like people and she didn’t particularly like her mother. You see, my grandfather died very suddenly, then when my father walked out and my grandmother Sanders went into a home we were left alone with the house to ourselves. I think she liked that.’ He hesitated, looked down at his bitten nails, said half-slyly, ‘And she likes me, so long as I’m obedient. She moulded me into a slave and a protector. She made me like Frankenstein made the monster, to go wrong.’ A small shrill laugh, which might have moderated those words, somehow made them the more terrible.

  Burden looked at him with a kind of uneasy impatience. He was framing a question about Mrs Sanders’ mother, a wild idea coming to him of Gwen Robson possibly having once been to her as a home help, when Clifford went on:

  ‘Once when I wouldn’t do what she wanted, she locked me in the attic with the photographs and she lost the key to the room. I don’t know how she lost it - she never told me, she wouldn’t - but I expect she dropped it down the plughole or it fell down a crack in the floor or something. She’s accident-prone, you see, because she doesn’t think about what she’s doing; her mind’s always on something else. So I expect that’s how she lost the key. She’s very strong even though she’s small and she tried to break down the door by putting her shoulder to it, but she couldn’t. I was inside, listening to her crashing at the door. It was winter and starting to get dark and she was frightened; I know she was frightened, I could feel her fear through the door. Maybe the ghosts were creeping up the stairs after her.’

  He smiled, then laughed on a high shrill note, wrinkling up his nose as if in a mixture of pleasure and pain at the memory. ‘She had to go and get help. I was scared when I heard her go away, because I thought I was going to be left there for ever. It was cold and I was only a little kid, in there in the half-dark with that old furniture and all those faces. She took the bulbs out of the sockets, you see, so that I couldn’t put the light on. But that meant she couldn’t put the light on either . . .’ Another smile and rueful shake of the head. ‘She went to get Mr Carroll and he came back with her and put his shoulder to the door and burst it open. I never got put in there again, because the door wouldn’t lock after that. Mrs Carroll came with him and I remember what she said; she turned on my mother and said she’d a good mind to tell the prevention of cruelty to children people, but if she did they never did anything.’

  ‘Mrs Carroll went away six months ago. She ran away from her husband - with another man, my mother said. It was Dodo who had to tell Mr Carroll. She sort of hinted to him that there was this other man and then she told him straight out. I thought he was going to attack her but people don’t attack her, or they never have yet
. He broke down and sobbed and cried. Do you know what I thought? What I hoped? I thought, my father left my mother and now Mrs Carroll’s left her husband. Suppose Mr Carroll was to marry Dodo? That would be the best escape, wouldn’t it, the cleanest way to get free? I wonder if I’d be jealous, though, I wonder if I’d mind . .. ?’

  He was interrupted by a tap at the door, followed by the appearance of Archbold to tell Burden that Wexford would like to see him.

  ‘Now, do you mean?’

  ‘He said it was urgent.’

  Burden left Clifford with Diana. Perhaps it was no bad thing to take a break here. He wasn’t interested in Clifford’s boyhood, but he valued the mood these reminiscences seemed to bring him to, a mood of open revelation and frankness. All these stories of his youth (which was precisely how Burden saw them) would lead Clifford, though by a crazy path, to the final incriminating outburst.

  Instead of taking the lift, he walked upstairs. The door to Wexford’s office stood a little ajar. Wexford was nearly always to be found either behind his desk or standing at the window thinking, while apparently contemplating the High Street. But this morning he stood abstractedly looking at the plan of greater Kingsmarkham which hung on the left-hand wall. He turned his eyes as Burden came in.