by Ruth Rendell
From the drawers which had been re-filled with their muddled and apparently useless assortment of string and pins and mothballs and coins he collected all the keys that lay amongst it. Fifteen, he counted. Three Yale keys, one Norlond, one stamped RST, one FGW Ltd., seven rusted or otherwise corroded implements for opening the locks of back doors or privy doors or garden gates, a car ignition key and a smaller one, the kind that is used for locking the boot of a car. On both of these last were stamped the Citroen double chevron. They had not been together in the same drawer and to neither of them was attached the usual leather tag. A violent pounding on the front door made him jump. He went out and opened it and saw Lilian Crown standing there.
‘Oh, it’s you’, she said. ‘Thought it might be kids got in. Or squatters. Never know these days, do you?’
She wore red trousers and a T-shirt which would have been better suited to Robin. Brash fearlessness is not a quality generally associated with old women, especially those of her social stratum. Timidity, awe of authority, a need for selfeffacement so often get the upper hand after the climacteric – as Sylvia might have pointed out to him with woeful examples – but they had not triumphed over Mrs Crown. She had the boldness of youth, and this surely not induced by gin at ten in the morning.
‘Come in, Mrs Crown,’ he said, and he shut the door firmly behind her. She trotted about, sniffing.
‘What a pong! Haven’t been in here for ten years.’ She wrote something in the dust on top of the chest of drawers and let out a girlish giggle.
His hands full of keys, he said, ‘Does the name Farriner mean anything to you?’
‘Can’t say it does.’ She tossed her dried grass hair and lit a cigarette. She had come to check that the house hadn’t been invaded by vandals, come from only next-door, but she had brought her cigarettes with her and a box of matches. To have a companionable smoke with squatters? She was amazing.
‘I suppose your niece had a car,’ he said, and he held up the two small keys.
‘Never brought it here if she did. And she would’ve. Never missed a chance of showing off.’ Her habit of omitting pronouns from her otherwise not particularly economical speech irritated him. He said rather sharply, ‘Then whom do these keys belong to?’
‘No good asking me. If she’d got a car left up in London, what’s she leave her keys about down here for? Oh, no, that car’d have been parked outside for all the world to see. Couldn’t get herself a man, so she was always showing what she could get. Wonder who’ll get her money? Won’t be me though, not so likely.’ She blew a blast of smoke into his face, and he retreated, coughing.
‘I’d like to know more about that phone call Miss Comfrey made to you on the Friday evening.’
‘Like what? said Mrs Crown, smoke issuing dragon-like from her nostrils.
‘Exactly what you said to each other. You answered the phone and she said, “Hallo, Lilian. I wonder if you know who this is.” Is that right?’ Mrs Crown nodded. ‘Then what?’ Wexford said. ‘What time was it?’
‘About seven. I said hallo and she said what you’ve said. In a real put-on voice, all deep and la-di-da. “Of course I know,” I said. “If you want to know about your dad,” I said, “you’d best get on to the hospital,” “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “I’m going away on holiday,” she said, “but I’ll come down for a couple of days first.” '
‘You’re sure she said that about a holiday?’ Wexford interrupted.
‘Course I’m sure. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Tell you another thing. She called me darling. I was amazed. “I’ll come down for a couple of days first, darling,” she said. Mind you, there was someone else with her while she was phoning. I know what she was up to. She’d got some woman there with her and she wanted her to think she was talking to a man.’
‘But she called you Lilian.'
‘That’s not to say the woman was in there with her when she started talking, is it? No, if you want to know what I think, she’d got some friend in the place with her, and this friend came in after she’d started talking, so she put in that “darling” to make her think she’d got a boy-friend she was going to see. I’m positive, I knew Rhoda. She said it again, or sort of “My dear”, she said. “Thought you might be worried if you saw lights on, my dear. I’ll come in and see you after I’ve been to the infirmary.” And then whoever it was must have gone out again, I heard a door slam. Her voice went very low after that and she just said in her usual way, “See you Monday then. Good-bye.” ‘
‘You didn’t wish her Many Happy Returns of the day?’
If a spider had shoulders they would have looked like Lilian Crown’s. She shrugged them up and down, up and down, like a marionette. ‘Old Mother Parker told me afterwards it was her birthday. You can’t expect me to remember a thing like that. I knew it was in August sometime. Sweet fifty and never been kissed!’
‘That’s all, Mrs Crown,’ said Wexford distastefully and escorted her back to the front door. Sometimes he thought how nice it would be to be a judge so that one could boldly and publicly rebuke people. With his sleeve he rubbed out of the dust the arrowed heart – B loves L – she had drawn there, wondering as he did so if B were the ‘gentleman friend’ she went drinking with, and wondering too about incidence of adolescent souls lingering on in mangy old carcases.
He made the phone call from home.
‘I can tell you that here and now,’ said Baker. ‘Dinehart happened to mention it. Rose Farriner runs a Citroen. Any help to you?’
‘I think so, Michael. Any news of my Chief Constable’s get-together with your Super?’
‘You’ll have to be patient a bit longer, Reg.’ Wexford promised he would be. The air was clearing.
Rhoda Comfrey Farriner had made that call to her aunt from Princevale Road on the evening of her birthday when, not unnaturally, she had had a friend with her. A woman, as Lilian Crown had supposed? No, he thought, a man. Late in life, she had at last found herself a man whom she had been attempting to inspire with jealousy. He couldn’t imagine why. But never mind. That man, whoever he was, had indeed been inspired, had heard enough to tell him where Rhoda Rose Comfrey Farriner was going on Monday. Wexford had no doubt that that listener had been her killer.
It had been a crime of passion. Adolescent souls linger on, as Mrs Crown had shown him, in ageing bodies. Not in everyone does the heyday in the blood grow tame. Had he not himself even recently, good husband though he tried to be, longed wistfully for the sensation of being again in love? Hankered for the feeling of it and murmured to himself the words of Stendhal – though it might be with the ugliest kitchen-maid in Paris, as long as he loved her and she returned his ardour.
The girl who sat in the foyer of Kingsmarkham Police Station was attracting considerable attention. Sergeant Camb had given her a cup of tea, and two young detective constables had asked her if she was quite comfortable and was she sure there was nothing they could do to help her? Loring had wondered if it would cost him his job were he to take her up to the canteen for a sandwich or the cheese on toast Chief Inspector Wexford called Fuzz Fondue. The girl looked nervous and upset. She had with her a newspaper at which she kept staring in an appalled way, but she would tell no one what she wanted, only that she must see Wexford.
Her colouring was exotic. There is an orchid, not pink or green or gold, but of a waxen and delicate beige, shaded with sepia, and this girl’s face had the hue of such an orchid. Her features looked as if drawn in charcoal on oriental silk, and her hair was black silk, massy and very finely spun. For her country-women the sari had been designed, and she walked as if she were accustomed to wearing a sari, though for this visit she was in Western dress, a blue skirt and a white cotton shirt.
‘Why is he such a long time?’ she said to Loring, and Loring who was a romantic young man thought that it was in just such a tone that the Shunamite had said to the watchman: Have ye seen him whom my soul loveth?
‘He’s a busy man,’ he said.’b
ut I’m sure he won’t be long.’
And for the first time he wished he were ugly old Wexford who could entertain such a visitor in seclusion. And then, at half past twelve, Wexford walked in.
‘Good morning. Miss Patel.’
‘You remember me!’
Loring had the answer to that one ready. Who could forget her, once seen? Wexford said only that he did remember her, that he had a good memory for faces, and then poor Loring was sharply dismissed with the comment that if he had nothing to do the chief inspector could soon remedy that. He watched beauty and the beast disappear into the lift.
‘What can I do for you, Miss Patel?’
She sat down in the chair he offered her. ‘You’re going to be very angry with me. I’ve done something awful. No, really, I’m afraid to tell you. I’ve been so frightened ever since I saw the paper. I got on the first train. You’re all so nice to me, everyone was so nice, and I know it’s going to change and it won’t be nice at all when I tell you.’
Wexford eyed her reflectively. He remembered that he had put her down as a humorist and a tease, but now her wit had deserted her. She seemed genuinely upset. He decided to try a little humour himself and perhaps put her more at ease. ‘I haven’t eaten any young women for months now,’ he said, ‘and, believe me, I make it a rule never to eat them on Fridays.’
She didn’t smile. She gave a gulp and burst into tears.
Chapter 11
He could hardly comfort her as he would have comforted his Sylvia or his Sheila whom he would have taken in his arms. So he picked up the phone and asked for someone to bring up coffee and sandwiches for two, and remarked as much to himself as to her that he wouldn’t be able to get angry when he had his mouth full.
Crying did nothing to spoil her face. She wiped her eyes, sniffed and said, ‘You are nice. And I’ve been such an idiot. I must be absolutely out of my tree.’
‘I doubt it. D’you feel like beginning or d’you want your coffee first?’
‘I’ll get it over.’
Should he tell her he was no longer interested in Grenville West, for it must have been he she had come about, or let it go? Might as well hear what it was.
‘I told you a deliberate lie,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You aren’t the first to do that by a long chalk. I could be in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who’s had more deliberate lies told him than anyone else on earth.’
‘But I told this one. I’m so ashamed.’
The coffee arrived and a plate of ham sandwiches. She took one and held it but didn’t begin to eat. ‘It was about Polly,’ she said. ‘Polly never goes out in the evenings alone, but never. If she goes to Grenville’s he always runs her home or puts her in a taxi. She had a horrible thing happen about a year back. She was walking along in the dark and a man came up behind her and put his arms round her. She screamed and kicked him and he ran off, but after that she was afraid to be out alone in the dark. She says if people were allowed to have guns in this country she’d have one.’
Wexford said gently, ‘Your deliberate lie. Miss Patel? I think you’re stalling.’
‘I know I am. Oh, dear. Well, I told you Polly was at home with me that Monday evening, but she wasn’t. She went out before I got home from work and she came back alone – oh, I don’t know, after I was in bed. Anyway, the next day I asked her where she’d been because I knew Grenville was away, and she said she’d got fed up with Grenville and she’d been out with someone else. Well, I knew she’d been unhappy about him for a long time, Grenville, I mean. She wanted to go and live with him. Actually, she wanted to marry him, but he wouldn’t even kiss her.’ Malina Patel gave a little shudder. ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t have wanted him to kiss me! There’s something really funny about him, something queer – I don’t mean gay-queer, or I don’t think so but something sort of hard to…’
‘On with your story, please, Miss Patel!’
‘I’m sorry. So what I was going to say was that Polly had met this man who was married and that Monday they’d been to some motel and had a room there for the evening. And she said this man of hers was afraid of his wife finding out, she’d put a private detective on him, and if that detective came round, would I say she’d been at home with me?’
‘You thought I was a private detective!'
‘Yes! I told you I was mad. I told Polly I’d do what she said if a detective came, and a detective did come. It didn’t seem so very awful, you see, because it’s not a crime, sleeping with someone else’s husband, is it? It’s not very nice but it’s not a crime. I mean, not against the law.’
Wexford did his best to suppress his laughter and succeeded fairly well. Those remarks of hers, then, which he had thought witty and made at his expense, had in fact come from a genuine innocence. If she wasn’t so pretty and so sweet, he would have been inclined to call her – it seemed sacrilege – downright stupid. She ate a sandwich and took a gulp of coffee.
‘And I was glad Polly had got someone after being so miserable about Grenville. And I thought private detectives are awful people, snooping and prying and getting paid for doing dirty things like that. So I thought it didn’t really matter telling a lie to that sort of person.’
This time Wexford had to let his laughter go. She looked at him dubiously over the top of her coffee cup. ‘Have you ever known any private detectives. Miss Patel?’
‘No but I’ve seen lots of them in films.’
‘Which enabled you to identify me with such ease? Seriously, though…’ He stopped smiling. ‘Miss Flinders knew who I was. Didn’t she tell you afterwards?’
It was the crucial question, and on her answer depended whether he accompanied her at once back to Kenbourne Vale or allowed her to go alone.
‘Of course she did! But I was too stupid to see. She said you hadn’t come about the man and the motel at all, but it was something to do with Grenville and that wallet he’d lost and she was going to tell me a whole lot more, but I wouldn’t listen. I was going out, you see, I was late already, and I was sick of hearing her on and on about Grenville. And she tried again to tell me the next day, only I said not to go on about Grenville, please, I’d rather hear about her new man, and she hasn’t mentioned him – Grenville, I mean – since.’
He seized on one point. ‘You knew before that the wallet had been lost, then?’
‘Oh, yes! She’d been full of it. Long before she told me about the motel and the man and the private detective. Poor Grenville had lost his wallet on a bus and he’d asked her to tell the police but she hadn’t because she thought they wouldn’t be able to do anything. That was days before she went to the motel.’
He believed her. His case for indentifying Rhoda Comfrey as Rose Farriner was strengthened. What further questions he asked Malina Patel would be for his amusement only.
‘May I asked what made you come and tell me the awful truth?’
‘Your picture in the paper. I saw it this morning and I recognized you.’ From that picture? Frivolous inquiries may lead to humiliation as well as amusement.
'Polly had already gone out. I wished I’d listened to her before. I suddenly realized it had all been to do with that murdered woman, and I realized who you were and everything. I felt awful. I didn’t go to work. I phoned and said I’d got gastro-enteritis which was another lie, I’m afraid, and I left a note for Polly saying I was going to see my mother who was ill, and then I got the train and came here. I’ve told so many lies now I’ve almost forgotten who I’ve told what.’
Wexford said, ‘When you’ve had more practice you’ll learn how to avoid that. Make sure to tell the same lie.’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘No, Miss Patel, I don’t. And don’t tell lies to the police, will you? We usually find out. I expect we should have found this one out, only we’re no longer very interested in that line of inquiry. Another cup of coffee?’
She shook her head. ‘You’ve been awfully nice to me.’
‘You don’t go to prison till next time,’ said Wexford. ‘What they call a suspended sentence. Come on, I’ll take you downstairs and we’ll see if we can fix you up with a lift to the station. I have an idea Constable Loring has to go that way.’
Large innocent eyes of a doe or calf met his. ‘I’m afraid I’m being an awful lot of trouble.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Wexford said breezily. ‘He’ll bear it with the utmost fortitude, believe me.’
Once again he got home early with a free evening ahead.
Such a thing rarely happened to him in the middle of a murder case. There was nothing to do but wait and wonder. Though not to select or discard from a list of suspects, for he had none, nor attempt to read hidden meanings and calculated falsehoods between the lines of witnesses’ statements. He had no witnesses. All he had were four keys and a missing car; a wallet that beyond all doubt now had been lost on a bus; and a tale of a phone call overheard by a man who, against all reasonable probability, loved withered middle-aged gawky Rhoda Comfrey so intensely that he had killed her from jealousy, not a very promising collection of objects and negativities and conjectures.
The river was golden in the evening light, having on its shallow rippling surface a patina like that on beaten bronze. There were dragonflies in pale blue or speckled armour, and the willow trailed his hoar leaves in the grassy stream.
