Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Aren’t you pleased we saw the water rat, Grandad?’

  ‘Very pleased,’ said Wexford, wishing that his own quest might come to so simple and satisfying an end.

  Chapter 17

  Grenville West’s elusiveness could no longer be put down to chance. He was on the run and no doubt had been for nearly three weeks now. Everything pointed to his being the killer of Rhoda Comfrey, and by Friday morning Wexford saw that the case had grown too big for him, beyond the reach of his net. Far from hoping to dissuade the Chief Constable from carrying out his threat, he saw the inevitability of calling in Scotland Yard and also the resources of Interpol. But his call to the Chief Constable left him feeling a little flat, and the harsh voice of Michael Baker, phoning from Kenbourne Vale, made him realize only that now he must begin confessing failure . . .

  Baker asked him how he was, referred to their ‘red faces’ over the Farriner business, then said:

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re still interested in that chap Grenville West, are you?’

  To Wexford it had seemed as if the whole world must be hunting for him, and yet here was Baker speaking as if the man were still a red herring, incongruously trailed across some enormously more significant scent.

  ‘Am I still interested! Why?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Baker. ‘Better come up to the Smoke then. It’d take too long to go into details on the phone, but the gist is that West’s car’s been found in an hotel garage not far from here, and West left the hotel last Monday fortnight without paying his bill.’

  Wexford didn’t need to ask any more now. He remembered to express effusive gratitude, and within not much more than an hour he was sitting opposite Baker at Kenbourne Vale Police Station, Stevens having recovered from his flu or perhaps only his antipathy to London traffic.

  ‘I’ll give you a broad outline,’ said Baker, ‘and then we’ll go over to the Trieste Hotel and see the manager. We got a call from him this morning and I sent Clements up there. West checked in on the evening of Sunday, August seventh, and parked his car, a red Citroen, in one of the hotel’s lock-up garages. When he didn’t appear to pay his bill on Wednesday morning, a chambermaid told Hetherington - that’s the manager - that his bed hadn’t been slept in for two nights.’

  ‘Didn’t he do anything about it?’ Wexford put in.

  ‘Not then. He says he knew who West was, had his address and had no reason to distrust him. Besides, he’d left a suitcase with clothes in it in his room and his car in the garage. But when it got to the end of the week he phoned West’s home, and getting no reply sent someone round to Elm Green. You can go on from there, Sergeant, you talked to the man.’

  Clements, who had come in while Baker was speaking, greeted Wexford with a funny little half-bow. ‘Well, sir, this Hetherington, who’s a real smoothie but not, I reckon, up to anything he shouldn’t be, found out from the girl in that wine bar place where West was, and he wasn’t too pleased. But he calculated West would write to him from France.’

  ‘Which didn’t happen?’

  ‘No, sir. Hetherington didn’t hear a word and he got to feeling pretty sore about it. Then, he says, it struck him the girl had said a motoring holiday, which seemed fishy since West’s car was still at the Trieste. Also West had gone off with his room key and hadn’t left an ignition key with the hotel. Hetherington began to feel a bit worried, said he suspected foul play, though he didn’t get on to us. Instead he went through West’s case and found an address book. He got the phone numbers of West’s publishers and his agent and Miss Flinders and he phoned them all. None of them could help him, they all said West was in France, so this morning, at long last, he phoned us.’

  They were driven up to North Kenbourne, round Montfort Circus and down a long street of lofty houses. Wexford noted that Undine Road was within easy walking distance of Parish Oak tube station, and not far therefore from Princevale Road and Dr Lomond’s surgery. Formerly the Trieste Hotel had been a gigantic family house, but its balconies and turrets and jutting gables had been masked with new brickwork or weather-boarding, and its windows enlarged and glazed with plain glass. Mr Hetherington also seemed to have been smoothed out, his sleek fair hair, pink china skin and creaseless suit. He presented as spruce an appearance compared with the four policemen as his hotel did with its neighbours. His careful grooming reminded Wexford of Burden’s fastidiousness, though the inspector never quite had the look of having been sprayed all over with satin-finish lacquer.

  He took them into his office, a luxurious place that opened off a white-carpeted, redwood panelled hallway in which very large houseplants stood about on Corinthian columns.

  Neither Baker nor Clements were the sort of men to go in for specious courtesies or obsequious apology. In his rough way. Baker said, ‘You’ll have to tell the whole story again, sir. We’re taking a serious view.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ Hetherington flashed a smile that bore witness to his daily use of dental floss, and held it steadily as if for unseen cameras. ‘I’m feeling considerable concern about Mr West myself. I feel convinced something dreadful has happened. Do please sit down.’ He eyed Wexford’s raincoat uncertainly, ushered him away from the white upholstered chair in which he had been about to sit, and into a duncoloured one. He said, ‘You’ll be more comfortable there, I think,’ as to a caller of low social status directed to the servants’ entrance. ‘Now where shall I begin?’

  ‘At the beginning,’ said Wexford with perfect gravity. ‘Go on to the end and then stop.’

  This time he got an even more uncertain look. ‘The beginning,’ said Hetherington, ‘would be on the Saturday, Saturday the sixth. Mr West telephoned and asked if he could have a room for three nights, the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Naturally, that would usually be an impossible request in August, but it so happened that a very charming lady from Minneapolis who stays with us regularly every year had cancelled on account of . . .’ He caught Wexford’s eye, stern censor of snobbish digression. ‘Yes, well, as I say, it happened to be possible and I told Mr West he could have Mrs Gruber’s room. He arrived at seven on the Sunday and signed the register. I have it here.’

  Wexford and Baker looked at it. It was signed ‘Grenville West’ and the Elm Green address was given. Certain that the manager was incapable of obeying his injunction, Wexford said:

  ‘He had been here before, I think?’

  ‘Oh, yes, once before.’

  ‘Mr Hetherington, weren’t you surprised that a man who lived within what is almost walking distance of the hotel should want to stay here?’

  ‘Surprised?’ said Hetherington. ‘Certainly not. Why should I be? What business was it of mine? I shouldn’t be surprised if a gentleman who lived next door wanted to stay in the hotel.’

  He took the register away from them. While his back was turned Clements murmured with kindly indulgence, ‘It happens a lot, sir. Men have tiffs with their wives or forget their keys.’

  Maybe, Wexford thought, but in those cases they don’t book their night’s refuge some fifteen hours in advance. Even if the others didn’t find it odd, he did. He asked Hetherington if West had brought much luggage.

  ‘A suitcase. He may have had a handbag as well.’ Although Hetherington was strictly correct in employing this word, the rather quaint usage made Wexford want to repeat, in Lady Bracknell’s outraged echo, ‘A handbag?’ But he only raised his eyebrows, and Hetherington said, ‘He asked if he could garage his car - he didn’t want to leave it on the hardtop parking - so I let him have number five which happened to be vacant. He put the car away himself.’ There was a small hesitation. ‘As a matter of fact, it was a little odd now I come to think of it. I offered to get the car garaged for him and asked for his key, but he insisted on doing it himself.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Baker asked.

  ‘I never saw him again. He ordered breakfast in his room on the Monday morning. No one seemed to have seen him go out. I expected him to vacate his room by noon on Wednesda
y but he didn’t appear to pay his bill.’ Hetherington paused, then went on to tell the story broadly as Wexford had heard it from Clements. When he had finished Wexford asked him what had become of West’s room key.

  ‘Heaven knows. We do stress that our guests hand in their keys at reception when they go out, we make them too heavy to be comfortably carried in a pocket, but it’s of no avail. They will take them out with them. We lose hundreds. I have his suitcase here. No doubt you will wish to examine the contents.’

  For some moments Wexford had been regarding a suitcase which, standing under Hetherington’s desk, he had guessed to be the luggage West had left behind him. It was of brown leather, not new but of good quality and stamped inside the lid with the name and crest of Silk and Whitebeam, Jermyn Street. Baker opened it. Inside were a pair of brown whipcord slacks, a yellow roll-neck shirt, a stone-coloured lightweight pullover, a pair of white underpants, brown socks and leather sandals.

  ‘Those were the clothes he arrived in,’ said Hetherington, his concern for West temporarily displaced by distaste for anyone who would wear trousers with a shiny seat and a pullover - with a frayed cuff.

  ‘How about this address book?’ said Baker.

  ‘Here.’

  The entries of names, addresses and phone numbers were sparse. Field and Bray, Literary Agents; Mrs Brenda Nunn’s personal address and phone number; several numbers and extensions for West’s publishers; Vivian’s Vineyard; Polly Flinders; Kenbourne Town Hall; a number for emergency calls to the North Thames Gas Board; London Electricity; the London Library and Kenbourne Public Library, High Road Branch; some French names and numbers and places - and Crown, Lilian, with the Kingsmarkham telephone number of Rhoda Comfrey’s aunt.

  Wexford said, ‘Where’s the car now?’

  ‘Still in number five garage. I couldn’t move it, could I? I hadn’t the means.’

  I wonder if I have, thought Wexford. They trooped out to the row of garages. The red Citroen looked as if it had been well maintained and it was immaculately polished. The licence plates showed that it was three years old. The doors were locked and so was the boot.

  ‘We’ll get that open,’ Baker said. ‘Should have a key to fit, or we’ll get one. It won’t take long.’

  Wexford felt through the jangling mass in his pocket. Two keys marked with a double chevron. ‘Try these,’ he said. The keys fitted. There was nothing inside the car but a neat stack of maps of Western Europe on the dashboard shelf. The contents of the boot were more rewarding. Two more brown leather suitcases, larger than the one West had left in his room, and labelled ‘Grenville West, Hotel Casimir, Rue Victor Hugo, Paris’. Both were locked, but the opening of suitcases is child’s play.

  ‘To hell with warrants,’ Wexford said out of range of Hetherington’s hearing. ‘Can we have these taken back to the nick?’

  ‘Surely,’ said Baker, and to Hetherington in the grating tones of admonition that made him unpopular with the public and colleagues alike, ‘You’ve wasted our time and the taxpayers’ money by delaying like this. Frankly, you haven’t a hope in hell of getting that bill paid.’

  Loring drove the car back with Baker beside him, while Wexford went with Clements. A lunchtime traffic jam held the police car up, Clements taking this opportunity during a lull in events to expound on lack of public cooperation, laxity that amounted to obstruction, and Hetherington’s hair which he averred had been bleached. At last Wexford managed to get him off this - anyone whose conversation consists in continual denunciation is wearying to listen to - and on to James and Angela. By the time they got to the police station both cases had been opened and were displayed in the centre of the floor of Baker’s drab and gloomy sanctum.

  The cases were full of clothes, some of which had evidently been bought new for West’s holiday. In a leather bag was a battery-operated electric shaver, a tube of suntan cream and an aerosol of insect repellant, but no toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, sponge or flannel, cologne or after-shave.

  ‘If he’s a homosexual,’ said Wexford, ‘these are rather odd omissions. I should have expected a fastidious interest in his personal appearance. Doesn’t he even clean his teeth?’

  ‘Maybe he’s got false ones.’

  ‘Which he scrubs at night with the hotel nailbrush and the hotel soap?’

  Baker had brought to light a large brown envelope, sealed.

  ‘Ah, the documents.’ But there was something else inside apart from papers. Carefully, Baker slit the envelope open and pulled out a key to which was attached a heavy wood and metal tag, the metal part engraved with the name of the Trieste Hotel and the number of the room West had occupied for one night.

  ‘How about this?’ said Baker. ‘He isn’t in France, he never left the country.’

  What he handed to Wexford was a British passport, issued according to its cover to Mr J. G. West.

  Chapter 18

  Wexford opened the passport at page one.

  The name of the bearer was given as Mr John Grenville West and his national status as that of a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Page two gave West’s profession as a novelist, his place of birth as Myringham, Sussex, his date of birth 9 September 1940, his country of residence as the United Kingdom, his height as five feet nine, and the colour of his eyes as grey. In the space allotted to the bearer’s usual signature, he had signed it ‘Grenville West’.

  The photograph facing this description was a typical passport photograph and showed an apparent lunatic or psychopath with a lock of dark hair grimly falling to meet a pair of black-framed glasses. At the time it was taken West had sported a moustache. Page four told Wexford that the passport had been issued five years before in London, and on half a dozen of the subsequent pages were stamps showing entries to and exists from France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States, and there was also a visa for the United States. West, he noted, had left the country at least twelve times in those five years.

  ‘He meant to go this time,’ said Baker. ‘Why didn’t he go? And where is he?’

  Wexford didn’t answer him. He said to Loring:

  ‘I want you to go now, as fast as you can make it, to the Registry of Births and look this chap West up. You get the volume for the year 1940, then the section with September in, then all the Wests. Have you got that? There’ll be a lot of them but it’s unlikely there’ll be more than one John Grenville West born on 9 September. I want his mother’s name and his father’s.’

  Loring went. Baker was going through the remaining contents of the envelope. ‘A cheque-book,’ he said, ‘a Eurocard and an American Express card, travellers’ cheques signed by West, roughly a thousand francs . . . He meant to come back for this lot all right, Reg.’

  ‘Of course he did. There’s a camera here under some of these clothes, nice little Pentax.’ Suddenly Wexford wished Burden were with him. He had reached one of those points in a case when, to clear his mind and dispel some of this frustration, he needed Burden and only Burden. For rough argument with no punches pulled, for a free exchange of insults with no offence taken if such words as ‘hysterical’ or ‘prudish’ were hurled in the heat of the moment. Baker was a very inadequate substitute. Wexford wondered how he would react to some high-flown quotation, let alone to being called a pain in the arse. But needs must when the devil drives. Choosing his words carefully, toning down his personality, he outlined to Baker Burden’s theory.

  ‘Hardly germane to this inquiry,’ said Baker, and Wexford’s mind went back years to when he and the inspector had first met and when he had used those very words. ‘All this motive business. Never mind motive. Never mind whether West was this Comfrey woman’s second cousin or, for that matter, her grandmother’s brother-in-law.’ A bigtoothed laugh at this witticism. ‘It’s all irrelevant. If I may say so, Reg - ’ Like all who take offence easily, Baker never minded giving offence to others or even noticed he was giving it - 'if I may say so, you prefer the trees to the wood. Ought to have been
one of these novelist chappies yourself. Plain facts aren’t your cup of tea at all.’

  Wexford took the insult - for it is highly insulting to be told that one would be better at some profession other than that which one has practised for forty years - without a word. He chuckled to himself at Baker’s mixed metaphors, sylvan and refective. Was refective the word? Did it mean what he thought it did, pertaining to mealtimes? There was another word he had meant to look up. It was there, but not quite there, on the tip of his tongue, the edge of his memory. He needed a big dictionary, not that potty little Concise Oxford which, in any case, Sheila had appropriated long ago . . .

  ‘Plain facts, Reg,’ Baker was saying. ‘The principal plain fact is that West scarpered on the day your Comfrey got killed. I call that evidence of guilt. He meant to come back to the Trieste and slip off to France but something happened to scare him off.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like being seen by someone where he shouldn’t have been. That’s like what. That’s obvious. Look at that passport. West wasn’t born in London, he was born somewhere down in your neck of the woods. There’ll be those around who’ll know him, recognize him.’ Baker spoke as if the whole of Sussex were a small rural spot, his last sentence having a Wind in the Willows flavour about it as if West had been the Mole and subject to the scrutiny of many bright eyes peering from the boles of trees. ‘That’s where these second cousins and grandmother’s whatsits come in. One of them saw him, so off into hiding he went.’