Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘No wonder she wanted us to keep an eye on it,’ said Baker, and Clements began on a little homily, needless in this company, on the imprudence of householders, the flimsiness of locks and the general fecklessness of people who had more money than they knew what to do with.

  Wexford cut him short. ‘That’s what I’m interested in.’ He pointed to a long teak writing desk in which were four drawers and on top of which stood a white telephone. He pictured Rhoda Comfrey phoning her aunt from there, her companion coming in from the kitchen perhaps with ice for drinks. Dr Lomond had warned her to keep off alcohol. There was plenty of it here in the sideboard, quite an exotic variety, Barcardi and Pernod and Campari as well as the usual whisky and gin. He opened the top drawer in the desk. A cardboard folder marked ‘Car’ held an insurance policy covering the Citroen, a registration document and a manufacturer’s handbook. No driving licence. In another, marked ‘House’, a second policy and a mass of services bill counterfoils. There was a third folder, marked ‘Finance’, but it held only a paying-in book from Barclays Bank, Montfort Circus, W19.

  ‘And yet she didn’t have a cheque-book or a credit card on her,’ Wexford remarked more or less to himself.

  Writing paper in the second drawer, with the address of the house on it in a rather ornate script. Under the box was a personal phone directory. Wexford turned to C for Comfrey, F for father, D for dad, H for hospital, S for Stowerton, and back to C for Crown. Nothing.

  Burden said in a curiously high voice, ‘There’s some more stuff here.’ He had pulled out the drawer in a low table that stood under the window. Wexford moved over to him. A car door banged outside in the street.

  ‘You ought to look at this,’ Burden said, and he held out a document. But before Wexford could take it there was a sound from below as of the front door being pushed open.

  ‘Not expecting any more of your people, are you?’ Wexford said to Baker.

  Baker didn’t answer him. He and the sergeant went to the head of the stairs. They moved like burglars surprised in the course of robbery, and ‘burglars’ was the first word spoken by the woman who came running up the stairs and stopped dead in front of them. ‘Burglars! Don’t tell me there’s been a break-in!’

  She looked round her at the open drawers, the disarranged ornaments. ‘Mrs Cohen said the police were in the house. I couldn’t believe it, not on the very day I come home.’ A man had followed her. ‘Oh, Bernard, look, my God! For heaven’s sake, what’s happened?’

  In a hollow voice, Baker said, ‘It’s quite all right, madam, nothing has been taken, there’s been no break-in. I’m afraid we owe you an apology.’

  She was a tall well-built woman who looked about forty but might have been older. She was handsome, dark, heavily made-up, and she was dressed in expensively tailored denim jeans and waistcoat with a red silk shirt. The man with her seemed younger, a blond burly man with a rugged face.

  ‘What are you doing with my birth certificate?’ she said to Burden.

  He handed it to her meekly along with a certificate of a divorce decree. Her face registered many things, mainly disbelief and nervous bewilderment. Wexford said: ‘You are Mrs Rose Farriner?’

  ‘Well, of course I am. Who did you think I was?’ He told her. He told her who he was and why they were there.

  ‘Lot of bloody nonsense,’ said the man called Bernard. ‘If you want to make an issue of this, Rosie, you can count on my support. I never heard of such a thing.’

  Mrs Farriner sat down. She looked at the photograph of Rhoda Comfrey, she looked at the newspaper Wexford gave her. ‘I think I’d like a drink, Bernard. Whisky, please. I thought you were here because burglars had got in and now you say you thought I was this woman. What did you say your name was? Wexford? Well, Mr Wexford, I am forty-one years old, not fifty, my father has been dead for nine years and I’ve never been to Kingsmarkham in my life. Thanks, Bernard. That’s better. It was a shock, you know. My God, I don’t understand how you could make a mistake like that.’ She passed the documents to Wexford who read them in silence.

  Rosemary Julia Golbourne, born forty-one years before in Northampton. The other piece of paper, which was a certificate making a decree nisi absolute, showed that the marriage which had taken place between Rosemary Julia Golbourne and Godfrey Farriner at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, in April 1959 had been dissolved fourteen years later at Kenbourne County Court.

  ‘Had you delayed another week,’ said Mrs Farriner, ‘I should have been able to show you my second marriage certificate.’ The blond man rested his hand on her shoulder and glowered at Wexford.

  ‘I can only apologize very profoundly, Mrs Farriner, and assure you we have done no damage and that everything will be restored as it was.’

  ‘Yes, but look here, that’s all very well,’ said Bernard. ‘You come into my future wife’s home, break in more or less, go through her private papers, and all because . . .’

  But Mrs Farriner had begun to laugh. ‘Oh, it’s so ridiculous! A secret life, a mystery woman. And that photograph! Would you like to see what I looked like when I was thirty? For God’s sake, there’s a picture in that drawer.’ There was. A pretty girl with dark brown curls, a smiling wide-eyed face only a little softer and smoother than the same face now. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t laugh. That poor creature. But to mix me up with some old spinster who got herself mugged down a country lane!’

  ‘I must say you take it very well, Rosie.’ Mrs Farriner looked at Wexford. She stopped laughing.

  He thought she was a nice woman, if insensitive. ‘I shan’t take it further, if that’s what you’re worrying about,’ she said. ‘I shan’t complain to the Home Secretary. I mean, now I’ve got over the shock, it’ll be something to dine out on, won’t it? And now I’ll go and make us all some coffee.’

  Wexford wasn’t over the shock. He refused Baker’s offer of a lift to Victoria. Burden and he walked slowly along the pavement. Well-mannered as were the residents of Princevale Road, a good many of Mrs Farriner’s neighbours had come out to watch their departure. What some of them were afterwards to call a ‘police raid’ had made their weekend, though they pretended as they watched that they were clipping their hedges or admonishing their children. The sun shone strongly on Kenbourne Tudor, on subtly coloured paintwork and unsubtly coloured flowers, petunias striped and quartered like flags, green plush lawns where sprinklers fountained. Wexford felt hollow inside. He felt that hollow sickness that follows exclusively the making of some hideous howler or faux pas.

  'There’ll be an awful row,’ said Burden unhelpfully, using the very words Robin had used two days before,

  ‘I suppose so. I should have listened to you.’

  ‘Well . . . I didn’t say much. It was just that I had this feeling all the time, and you know how I distrust “feelings”.’

  Wexford was silent. They had come to the end of the street where it joined Montfort Hill. There he said, ‘What was the feeling? I suppose you can tell me now.’

  ‘You’ve asked me at exactly the right point, OK, I’ll tell you. It struck me the first time we passed this spot.’ Burden led the chief inspector a little way down Montfort Hill, away from the bus stop they had been making for. ‘We’ll suppose Rhoda Comfrey is on her way to Dr Lomond’s, whose name she’s got out of the phone book. She isn’t exactly sure where Midsomer Road is, so she doesn’t get the bus, she walks from Parish Oak station. For some reason which we don’t know she doesn’t want to give Dr Lomond her true address, so she has to give him a false one, and one that’s within the area of his practice. So far she hasn’t thought one up. But she passes these shops and looks up at that tobacconist, and what’s the first thing she sees?’

  Wexford looked up. ‘A board advertising Wall’s ice cream. My God, Mike, a hanging sign for Player’s Number Six cigarettes. Was that what your feeling was about. Was that why you kept looking back that first time we came in the car? She sees the number six, and then that black and white street sign for Princevale R
oad?’

  Burden nodded unhappily.

  ‘I believe you’re right, Mike. It’s the way people do behave. It could happen almost unconsciously. Dr Lomond’s receptionist asks her for her address when she comes to register and she comes out with number six, Princevale Road.’ Wexford struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I ought to have seen it! I’ve come across something like it before, and here in Kenbourne Vale, years ago. A girl called herself Loveday because she’d seen the name on a shop.’ He turned on Burden. ‘Mike, you should have told me about this, you should have told me last week.’

  ‘Would you have believed me if I had?’

  Hot-tempered though he might be, Wexford was a fair man. ‘I might’ve - but I’d have wanted to get into that house just the same.’

  Burden shrugged. ‘We’re back to square one, aren’t we?’

  Chapter 13

  There was no point in delaying. He went straight to Hightrees Farm. Griswold listened to him with an expression of lip-curling disgust. In the middle of Wexford’s account he helped himself to a brandy and soda, but he offered nothing to his subordinate. When it was ended he said, ‘Do you ever read the newspapers?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course.’

  ‘Have you ever noticed how gradually over the past ten years or so the Press have been ramming it home to people that their basic freedoms are constantly under threat? And who comes in for most of the shit-throwing? The police. You’ve just given them a big helping of it on a plate, haven’t you? All ready for throwing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I don’t believe Mrs Farriner will tell the Press, sir.’

  ‘She’ll tell her friends, won’t she? Some busy-body do-gooder will get hold of it.’ The Chief Constable, who referred to Mid-Sussex as the General had been in the habit of referring to la belle France, with jealousy and with reverence, said, ‘Understand, I will not have the hitherto unspotted record of the Mid-Sussex Constabulary smeared all over by the gutter Press. I will not have it endangered by one foolish man who acts on psychology and not on circumstantial evidence.’

  Wexford smarted under that one. ‘Foolish man’ was hard to take. And he smarted more when Griswold went on, even though he now called him Reg which meant there would be no immediate retribution.

  ‘This woman’s been dead for two weeks, Reg, and as far as you’ve got, she might as well have dropped from Mars. She might as well have popped off in a space ship every time she left Kingsmarkham.’ I’m beginning to think she did, Wexford thought, though he said nothing aloud. ‘You know I don’t care to call the Yard in unless I must. By the end of this coming week I’ll have to if my own men can’t do better than this. It seems to me . . .’ and he gave Wexford a ponderous bull-like glare ‘. . . that all you can do is get your picture in the papers like some poove of a film actor.’

  Sylvia sat in the dining room, the table covered with application forms for jobs and courses.

  ‘You’ve picked the wrong time of year,’ her father said, picking up a form that applied for entry to the University of London. ‘Their term starts next month.’

  ‘The idea is I get a job to fill in the year and start doing my degree next year. I have to “get a grant, you see.’

  ‘My dear, you don’t stand a chance. They’ll assess you on Neil’s salary. At least, I suppose so. He’s your husband.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t be by then. Oh, I’m so sick of you men ruling the world! It’s not fair just taking it for granted my husband pays for me like he’d pay for a child.’

  ‘Just as fair as taking it for granted the taxpayers will. I know you’re not interested in my views or your mother’s, but I’m going to give you mine just the same. The way the world still is, women have to prove they’re as capable as men. Well, you prove it. Do an external degree or a degree by correspondence and in something that’s likely to lead to a good job. It’ll take you five years and by that time the boys’ll be off your hands. Then when you’re thirty-five you and Neil will be two professional people with full-time jobs and a servant you both pay for. Nobody’ll treat you like a chattel or a furniture polisher then. You’ll see.’

  She pondered, looking sullen. Very slowly she began filling in the section of a form headed ‘Qualifications’. The list of them, Wexford noted sadly, was sparse. She scrawled a line through Mr/Mrs/Miss and wrote Ms. Her head came up and the abundant hair flew out.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve got boys. I’d feel sick with despair for them if they were girls. Didn’t you want a son?’

  ‘I suppose I did before Sheila was born. But after she was born I didn’t give it another thought.’

  ‘Didn’t you think what we’d suffer? You’re aware and sensitive. Dad. Didn’t you think how we’d be exploited and humiliated by men and used?’

  It was too much. There she sat, tall and powerful, blooming with health, the youthful hue sitting on her skin like morning dew, a large diamond cluster sparkling on her hand, her hair scented with St Laurent’s Rive Gauche. Her sister, described by critics as one of England’s most promising young actresses, had a big flat of her own in St John’s Wood where, it had often seemed to her father, she sweetly exploited and used all the men who frequented it.

  ‘I couldn’t send you back, could I?’ he snapped. ‘I couldn’t give God back your entrance ticket and ask for a male variety instead. I know exactly what Freud felt when he said there was one question that would always puzzle him. What is it that women want?’

  ‘To be people,’ she said. He snorted and walked out. The Crockers and a couple of neighbours were coming in for drinks. The doctor hustled Wexford upstairs and produced his sphygmomanometer.

  ‘You look rotten, Reg. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘That’s for you to say. How’s my blood pressure?’

  ‘Not bad. Is it Sylvia?’

  He hated explaining why his daughter and the children were in the house. People categorize others into the limited compartments their imaginations permit. They assumed that either Sylvia or her husband had been unfaithful or that Neil had been cruel. He couldn’t spell it all out, but just had to watch the speculating gleam in their eyes and take their pity.

  ‘Partly,’ he said, ‘and it’s this Comfrey case. I dream about her, Len. I rack my brains, such as they are, about her. And I’ve made a crazy mistake. Griswold half-crucified me this afternoon, called me a foolish man.’

  ‘We all have to fail, Reg,’ said Crocker like a liberal headmaster.

  ‘There was a sort of sardonic gleam in her eyes when we found her. I don’t know if you noticed. I feel as if she’s laughing at me from beyond the grave. Hysterical, eh? That’s what Mike says I am.’

  But Mike didn’t say it again. He knew when to tread warily with the chief inspector, though Wexford had become a little less glum when there was nothing in the papers on Monday or Tuesday about the Farriner fiasco.

  ‘And that business wasn’t all vanity and vexation of spirit,’ he said. ‘We’ve learnt one thing from it. The disappearance of Rhoda Comfrey, alias whatever, may not have been remarked by her neighbours because they expect her to be away on holiday. So we have to wait and hope a while longer that someone from outside will still come to us.’

  ‘Why should they at this stage?’

  ‘Exactly because it is at this stage. How long do the majority of people go on holiday for?’

  ‘A fortnight,’ said Burden promptly.

  Wexford nodded. ‘So those friends and neighbours who knew her under an assumed name would have expected her back last Saturday. Now they wouldn’t have been much concerned if she wasn’t back by Saturday, but by Monday when she doesn’t answer her phone, when she doesn’t turn up for whatever work she does? By today?’

  ‘You’ve got a point there.’

  ‘God knows, every newspaper reader in the country must be aware we still don’t know her London identity. The Press has rammed it home hard enough. Wouldn’t it be nice, Mike, if at this very moment some public-spirited citizen were
to be walking into a nick somewhere in north or west London to say she’s worried because her boss or the woman next door hasn’t come back from Majorca?’

  Burden always took Wexford’s figurative little flights of fancy literally. ‘She couldn’t have been going there, wouldn’t have had a passport.’

  ‘As Rhoda Comfrey she might have. Besides, there are all sorts of little tricks you can get up to with passports. You’re not going to tell me a woman who’s fooled us like this for two weeks couldn’t have got herself a dozen false passports if she’d wanted them.’

  ‘Anyway, she didn’t go to Majorca. She came here and got herself stabbed.’ Burden went to the window and said wonderingly, ‘There’s a cloud up there.’

  ‘No bigger than a man’s hand, I daresay.’

  ‘Bigger than that,’ said Burden, not recognizing this quotation from the Book of Kings. ‘In fact, there are quite a lot of them.’ And he made a remark seldom uttered by Englishmen in a tone of hope, still less of astonishment. ‘It’s going to rain.’

  The room went very dark and they had to switch the light on. Then a golden tree of forked lightning sprang out of the forest, splitting the purple sky. A great rolling clap of thunder sent them retreating from where they had been watching the beginnings of this storm, and Burden closed the windows. At last the rain came, but sluggishly at first in the way rain always does come when it has held off for weeks, slow intermittent plops of it. Wexford remembered how Sylvia, when she was a tiny child, had believed until corrected that the rain was contained up there in a bag which someone punctured and then finally sliced open. He sat down at his desk and again phoned the Missing Persons Bureau, but no one had been reported missing who could remotely be identified as Rhoda Comfrey.

  It was still only the middle of the afternoon. Plenty of time for the public-spirited citizen’s anxiety and tension to mount until . . . Today was the day, surely, when that would happen if it was going to happen. The bag was sliced open and rain crashed in a cataract against the glass, bringing with it a sudden drop in the temperature. Wexford actually shivered; for the first time in weeks he felt cold, and he put on his jacket. He found himself seeing the storm as an omen, this break in the weather signifying another break. Nonsense, of course, the superstition of a foolish man. He had thought he had had breaks before, hadn’t he? Two of them, and both had come to nothing.