by Ruth Rendell
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘I mean that if he was very seriously incapacitated she would know that her greatest fear, that her father might have to be parked on her one day, would be groundless and she could go off to France with a light heart. But she had to go down there and find out, even though this would mean putting off her holiday for a day or two. Never mind. That was no great inconvenience. She phoned her aunt to tell her she would be coming and when she did so Polly Flinders was in the flat, but not all the time in the room.'
‘Now, if no one else did, Polly knew that Grenville West had once or twice before disappeared mysteriously at weekends. I think we can assume that Rhoda rather enjoyed keeping her in the dark about that, and guessed she was giving her cause for jealousy. On that Friday evening Polly had very likely been troublesome – she may, for instance, have wanted West to take her away on holiday with him and Rhoda vented her annoyance by calling Lilian Crown “darling”. Polly overheard, as she was meant to overhear, and believed that West was involved with another woman living in the country. No doubt she asked questions, but was told it was no business of hers, so she determined to go to Stowerton on the Monday and find out for herself what was going on.’
Burden interrupted him. ‘Why didn’t Rhoda or West or whatever we’re going to call him or her – it gets a bit complicated – go to Kingsmarkham that day? Then there wouldn’t have been any need to postpone the holiday. Where does the Trieste Hotel come in?’
‘Think about it,’ said Wexford. ‘Walk out of Elm Green in make-up and high-heeled shoes and a dress?’
‘I should have thought a public lavatory…’ Burden stopped himself proceeding further with this gaffe, but not in time to prevent Griswold’s hoot of laughter.
‘How does he manage to go in the Gents’ and come out of the Ladies’, Mike?’
Wexford didn’t feel like laughing. He had never been amused by drag or the idea of it, and now the humorous aspects of this particular case of cross-dressing seemed to him quenched by its consequences. ‘She used hotels for the changeover,’ he said rather coldly, ‘and usually hotels in some distant part of London. But this time she had left it too late to pick and choose, especially with the tourist season at its height. On that Saturday she must have tried to book in at a number of hotels without success. The only one which could take her was the Trieste which she had used once before – on the occasion of the visit to Dr Lomond. You can see, Mike, how she walked out of the Trieste on that day, crossed Montfort Circus, went up Montfort Hill, and chose an address from a street name and an advertisement.'
‘So back to the Trieste she went, with her car packed up for the French holiday and allowing Vivian to believe she was leaving directly for France. The car was left in a garage at the hotel with her passport and French currency locked up in the boot. On her person she retained the car keys and her new wallet, and these went into her handbag when on the following day she left the hotel as Rhoda Comfrey.’
‘That must have been as bad as walking out of Elm Green. Suppose she’d been seen?’
‘By whom? An hotel servant? She says she’s calling on her friend, Mr West. It would have been easy enough to mingle with the other guests or conceal herself in a cloakroom, say, if Hetherington had appeared. As a respectable middle-aged lady, she’d hardly have been suspected of being there for what you’d call an immoral purpose.’
‘Hotels don’t take much notice of that these days,’ said the Chief Constable easily. Forgetting perhaps that it was he who had told Wexford to get back to the nitty-gritty, he said, ‘This passport, though. I’m still not clear about it. I see she had to have a man’s name and a man’s identity, but why that one? She could have changed her name by deed poll or kept Comfrey and used one of those Christian names that will do for either sex. Leslie, for instance, or Cecil.’
‘Deed poll means a certain amount of publicity, sir. But I don’t think that was entirely the reason. She needed a passport. Of course she could have used some ambiguous Christian name for that. And with her birth certificate and her change of name document she could have submitted to the Passport Office a photograph that gave no particular indication of whether she was male or female…’
‘Exactly,’ said Griswold. ‘A British passport isn’t required to state the holder’s home address or marital status or,’ he added with some triumph, ‘the holder’s sex.’
‘No, sir, not in so many words. If the holder is accompanied by a child, that child must be declared as male or female, but not the holder. Yet on the cover and on page one the holder’s style is shown. It wouldn’t have helped her much, would it, to have a man’s Christian name and a man’s photograph but be described as Miss Cecil Comfrey?’
‘You’re a shrewd man, Reg,’ said the Chief Constable.
Wexford said laconically, ‘Thanks,’ and remembered that it wasn’t long since that same voice had called him a foolish one. ‘Instead she chose to acquire and submit the birth certificate of a man who would never need a passport because he would never, in any conceivable circumstances, be able to leave this country. She chose to assume the identity of her mentally defective and crippled first cousin. And to him, I discovered yesterday, she left everything of which she died possessed and her royalties as long as they continue.’
‘They won’t do poor John West much good,’ said Burden.
‘What happened when Polly encountered Rhoda on the Monday evening?’
Not much caring what reaction he would get, Wexford said, ‘At the beginning of Apes in Hell, two lines are quoted from Beaumont and Fletcher’s play:
Those have most power to hurt us, that we love;
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.
‘Rhoda wrote that book long before she met Polly. I wonder if she ever thought what they really meant or ever thought about them again. Possibly she did. Possibly she understood that Polly had laid her sleeping life within her arms, and that though she might have to repudiate the girl, she must never let her know the true state of affairs. For eonists, Ellis tells us, are often “educated, sensitive, refined and reserved”.
‘On that Monday evening Polly came to the gates of Stowerton Infirmary prepared to see something which would make her upset and unhappy. She expected to see West either with another woman or on his way to see another woman. At first she didn’t see West at all. She joined the bus queue, watching a much bedizened middle-aged woman who was in conversation with an old woman. When did she realize? I don’t know. It may be that at first she took Rhoda for some relative of West’s, even perhaps a sister. But one of the things we can never disguise is the way we walk. Rhoda never attempted to disguise her voice. Polly got on the bus and went upstairs, feeling that the unbelievable was happening. But she followed Rhoda and they met on that footpath.'
‘What she saw when they confronted each other must have been enough to cause a temporary loss of reason. Remember she had come, prepared to be distressed, but nothing had prepared her for this. Marie Cole’s shock would have been nothing to hers. She saw, in fact, a travesty in the true meaning of the word, and she stabbed to death an abomination.’
Griswold looked embarrassed. ‘Pity she couldn’t have seen it for what it was, a lucky escape for her.’
‘I think she saw it as the end of the world,’ Wexford said sombrely. ‘It was only later on that she came to feel anything would be preferable to having it known she’d been in love with a man who was no man at all. And that’s why she agreed to my story.’
‘Cheer up, Reg,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘We’re used to your breaking the rules. You always do.’ He laughed, adding, ‘The end justifies the means,’ as if this aphorism were invariably accepted by all as pithy truth instead of having for centuries occasioned controversy. ‘Let’s all have another drink before they shut up shop.’
‘Not for me, sir,’ said Wexford. ‘Good night.’
And he walked out into the dark and went home, leaving his superior planning reprisals and
his subordinate affectionately incensed.
Ruth Rendell
***
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