by Ruth Rendell
“Have you got any brandy in this—er—place?”
“In the dining room.” She managed a damp, weak smile. “It belonged to my great-aunt. This—er—place, as you call it, was hers. Brandy keeps for years and years, doesn’t it?”
“Years and years make it all the better,” said Burden.
The dining room was cavernous, cold and smelling of dust. He wondered what combination of circumstances had brought her to this house and why she stayed. The brandy was in a sideboard that looked more like a wooden mansion than a piece of furniture, it was so ornamented with carved pillars and arches and niches and balconies.
“You have some too,” she said.
He hesitated. “All right. Thank you.” He made his way back to the armchair he had occupied before going to the dining room, but she sat down on the floor, curling her legs under her and staring up at him with a curious blind trust. Only one lamp was alight, making a little golden glow behind her head.
She drank her brandy and for a long time they sat without talking. Then, warmed and calmed, she began to speak about the lost boy, the things he liked doing, the things he said, his little precocious cleverness. She spoke of London and of the strangeness of Stowerton to herself and her son. At last she fell silent, her eyes fixed on his face, but he had lost the embarrassment which this trusting childlike stare had at first occasioned in him and it didn’t return even when, leaning forward with quick impulsiveness, she reached for his hand and held it tightly.
He wasn’t embarrassed, but the touch of her hand electrified him. It brought him such a shock and such sudden turbulence that instead of the normal reactions of a normal man enclosing the hand of a pretty woman in his own he had the illusion that his whole body was holding her body. The effect of this was to make him tremble. He loosened his fingers and said abruptly, breaking the now heavy and languorous silence, “You’re a Londoner. You like London. Why do you live here?”
“It is rather ghastly, isn’t it?” All the harshness and terror had gone from her voice and once more it was soft and rich. Although he had known she was bound to speak in answer to his question, the sound of her beautiful voice, quite normal now, disturbed him almost as much as the touch of her hand. “A dreadful old white elephant of a house,” she said.
“It’s no business of mine,” he muttered.
“But it’s no secret either. I didn’t even know I had this great-aunt. She died three years ago and left this house to my father, but he was dying himself of cancer.” With a peculiarly graceful but unstudied movement she raised her hand and pushed away the mass of hair from her face. The full embroidered sleeve of the strange tunic she wore fell away from her arm and the skin glowed whitely, faint golden down gleaming in the lamplight. “I tried to sell it for my father, but no one wanted it, and then he died and Matthew—my husband—left me. Where else could I go but here? I couldn’t afford the rent of our flat and Matthew’s money had run out.” It seemed like hours since those eyes had first begun staring at him, but now at last she turned them away. “The police,” she said very softly, “thought Matthew might have taken John.”
“I know. It’s something we always have to check on when the child of—er—estranged or divorced parents is missing.”
“They went to see him, or they tried to. He’s in hospital, having his appendix out. I believe they talked to his wife. He married again, you see.”
Burden nodded. With more than a policeman’s natural curiosity he passionately wanted to know whether this Matthew had divorced her or she him, what he did for a living, how it had all come about. He couldn’t ask her. His voice felt strangled.
She edged a little closer towards him, not reaching out for his hand this time. Her hair curtained her face. “I want you to know,” she said, “how you’ve helped me. What a comfort you’ve been. I should have broken down completely tonight if you hadn’t come. I should have done something dreadful.”
“You mustn’t be alone.”
“I’ve got my sleeping tablets,” she said, “and Mrs. Crantock is coming in at ten.” Slowly she got to her feet, reached out and switched on the standard lamp. “She’ll be here in a minute. It’s five to now.”
Her words and the sudden brightness brought Burden sharply back to reality. He blinked and shook himself.
“Five to ten? I’ve just remembered, I’m supposed to be taking my family to the pictures.”
“And I’ve stopped you? Would you like to phone? Please do. Use my phone.”
“Too late, I’m afraid.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry.”
“I think my being here was more important, don’t you?”
“It was important to me. But you must go now. Will you come again tomorrow? I mean you yourself.”
He was standing in the doorway as she spoke. She put her hand lightly on his arm and they were close together, their faces only a foot apart. “I—yes … Yes, of course.” He was stammering badly. “Of course I’ll come.”
“Inspector Burden … No, I can’t keep calling you that. What’s your first name?”
“I think it will be best if you …” he began, and then, almost desperately, “It’s Michael. People call me Mike.”
“Mike,” she said, and at that moment, as she dwelt on the name, repeating it softly, Mrs. Crantock rang the bell.
Grace was curled up on the sofa and he could see that she had been crying. The enormity of what he had done for a moment overcame that other enormity, the urgency of his body.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, going over to her. “The phone box was full and later …”
She lifted her head and faced him. “We sat here and we waited for you. When you hadn’t come by eight we had our meal, though it was ruined. I said, “Let’s go just the same,” and John said, “We can’t go without Dad. We can’t let him come home and find us gone.”
“I said I’m sorry,” said Burden.
“You could have phoned!” Grace said passionately. “I wouldn’t say a word if you’d phoned. Don’t you realise, if you go on like this, you’ll—you’ll destroy those children!”
She went out and the door closed behind her, leaving Burden to thoughts that were neither of her nor his children.
5
Burden looked at the sheet of paper Wexford had handed him. Written on it in a bold, large but childlike hand were the names of every man, woman and child Gemma Lawrence had known during the past ten years.
“When did she write all that out?”
Wexford eyed him briefly and narrowly. “This morning with Loring’s help. You aren’t her exclusive private eye, you know.”
Burden flushed. What hundreds of people she knew and what extraordinary names they had! Artists and models and theatre folk, he supposed, suddenly bad-tempered. “Have we got to interview all this lot?”
“The Met are going to help us there. I asked Mrs. Lawrence to write down every name because I want to show the list to the Swans.”
“You are connecting the two cases, then?”
Wexford didn’t answer directly. He took the list from Burden, gave him another piece of paper and said, “This came. It’s been gone over for fingerprints, so you needn’t worry about touching it. Of course there weren’t any prints.”
“John Lawrence is safe and well with me,” Burden read. “He is happy playing with my rabbits on the farm. To show you this is not a hoax, I am enclosing a lock of his hair.” The note, written in block capitals on a sheet of lined paper, was correctly spelt and punctuated. “His mother can have him back on Monday. I will bring him to the southern end of Myfleet Ride in Cheriton Forest at 9 a.m. If anyone tries to collect him before nine-thirty, I will know and I will shoot John dead. This is a serious warning. I will not break my promise if you co-operate.”
Burden dropped it in disgust. Used as he was to such things, he could still not read them without a shudder. “Was there a lock of hair?” he asked.
“Here.”
It had been twisted into
a smooth neat circle like a woman’s pin curl. Burden lifted it in tweezers, noting the delicacy of each red-gold strand, the absence of those kinks and ridges which occur in adult hair.
“It’s human,” said Wexford. “I got Crocker on to it at once. He says it’s the child’s hair, but, of course, we shall have to have more expert tests.”
“Has Mrs. Lawrence been told?”
“Thank God he’s safe,” she said when she had read the first lines. She held the letter momentarily to her breast but she didn’t cry. “He’s safe and well on a farm somewhere. Oh my God, and what agonies I’ve been through! Imagine, all that for nothing and he’ll be back with me on Monday.”
Burden was appalled. He had already told her not to bank on the letter at all, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred such letters are cruel hoaxes. For all the notice she took, he might not have spoken.
“Let me see the hair,” she said.
Reluctantly he took the envelope which contained it from his briefcase. She gasped when she saw the small golden curl. So far it had been handled carefully with tweezers, but she took it, stroked it and pressed it to her mouth. “Come upstairs.”
He followed her into John’s bedroom, noticing that the child’s bed hadn’t been made since his disappearance. It was a nice bedroom, though, full of toys and with a beautiful expensive wallpaper of Dürer animals reproduced in line and wash. However much she might neglect the rest of the house, she had cared for this room and probably done the papering herself. Burden’s opinion of her as a mother rose.
She went over to a small blue-painted chest of drawers and picked up John’s hairbrush. A few fine blond hairs were caught in its bristles and, with an earnest concentrated expression, she compared them with the lock in her hand. Then she turned and smiled radiantly.
Burden had never seen her really smile before. Until then her smiles had been brief and watery, reminding him, he thought suddenly, of a faint sun coming out after rain. Such metaphors were very unusual with him, fanciful and not in his line. But he thought it now as he received the full force of her brilliant happy smile and saw again how beautiful she was.
“It is the same, isn’t it?” she said, the smile fading as she almost pleaded, “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” There was certainly a strong similarity, but Burden didn’t know whether he wanted the hairs to be the same or not. If this man really had John and if he had really cut that lock from John’s head, was it likely that he would let the boy go otherwise unharmed? Would he risk the boy’s identifying him? On the other hand, he had demanded no money … “You’re his mother,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t like to say.”
“I know he’s safe,” she said. “I feel it. I’ve only got to get through two more days.”
He hadn’t the heart to say any more then. Only a brute, he thought, would destroy such shining happiness. So that she shouldn’t read the last lines he wanted to take the letter from her, but she read it to the end.
“I’ve heard about cases like this,” she said, a little fear returning to her voice as she gazed at him, “and what the police do. You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t do—do what he says you’re not to do? You wouldn’t try to trap him? Because then John …”
“I promise you,” he said, “that we shall do nothing which might in any way endanger John’s life.” She had said nothing vindictive about the writer of the letter, he noticed. Other women in her position would have raged and screamed for revenge. She had merely been filled with joy. “We shall go there on Monday morning, at nine-thirty, and if he is there we shall bring him back to you.”
“He’ll be there,” she said. “I trust this man. I’ve got a feeling he’s genuine. Really, I have, Mike.” Her use of his Christian name brought colour into his face. He felt his cheeks burn. “He’s probably dreadfully lonely,” she said gently. “I know what it is to be lonely. If John has given him a few days’ respite from his loneliness I don’t grudge John to him.”
It was incredible and Burden couldn’t understand. If it had been his child, his John, he would have wanted to kill the man, to see him die a lingering death. As it was, his feelings towards the letter-writer were so violent that they frightened him. Let me get at him, he thought, give me five minutes alone in the cell with him and, by God, if I lose my job for it … He pulled himself up with a jerk and saw that her eyes were on him, kind, sweet and compassionate.
In his haste to see Gemma, Burden had forgotten the Swans, but now he remembered Wexford saying the note helped to establish a connection between the two cases. The chief inspector was still in his office.
“Swan lives on a farm,” he said. “I phoned but he’s out till three.”
“Does he keep rabbits?”
“Don’t mention rabbits to me. I’ve only just got over an hour with the secretary of the local rabbit club. Rabbits! The place is crawling with them, Old English, Blue Beverens, you name ’em, we got ’em. I tell you, Mike, it’s like the Apocrypha says, ‘The coneys are a feeble folk, but they make their houses in the rocks!’”
“And every fancier being checked?” said Burden, unsmiling.
Wexford nodded. “And I know the bloody thing’s a hoax,” he said. “I shall spend the best part of my weekend—and so will dozens of other policemen—chasing rabbits and farmers and checking shot-gun licences and being polite to human hair experts, but I know very well it’s a hoax and what I’m doing is an utter waste of time.”
“But it has to be done.”
“Of course it has to be done. Let’s go to lunch.”
At the Carousel Cafe only ham and salad was left on the menu. Wexford picked without enthusiasm at the salad in which lettuce leaves were economically eked out with shreds of cabbage and carrot. “Can’t get away from rabbits,” he muttered. “Want me to tell you about Swan and his wife?”
“I suppose I ought to have a bit of background.”
“Usually,” Wexford began, “you feel too much sympathy with the parents of a lost child. You find your emotions getting involved.” He shifted his gaze from his plate to Burden’s face and pursed his lips. “Which doesn’t help,” he said. “I didn’t feel particularly sorry for them. You’ll see why not in a minute.” Clearing his throat, he went on, “After Stella disappeared, we did more research into the life and background of Ivor Swan than I can ever remember doing with anyone. I could write his biography.
“He was born in India, the son of one General Sir Rodney Swan, and he was sent home to school and then to Oxford. Being in possession of what he calls small private means, he never took up any particular career but dabbled at various things. At one time he managed an estate for someone, but he soon got the sack. He wrote a novel which sold three hundred copies, so he never repeated that experiment. Instead he had a spell in P.R. and in three months lost his firm an account worth twenty thousand a year. Utter ingrained laziness is what characterises Ivor Swan. He is indolence incarnate. Oh, and he’s good-looking, staggeringly so, in fact. Wait till you see.”
Burden poured himself a glass of water but said nothing. He was watching Wexford’s expression warm and liven as he pursued his theme. Once he too had been able to involve himself as raptly in the characters of suspects.
“Swan rarely had any settled home,” Wexford said. “Sometimes he lived with his widowed mother at her house in Bedfordshire, sometimes with an uncle who had been some sort of big brass in the Air Force. And now I come to an interesting point about him. Wherever he goes he seems to leave disaster behind him. Not because of what he does but because of what he doesn’t do. There was a bad fire at his mother’s house while he was staying there. Swan had fallen asleep with a cigarette burning in his fingers. Then there was the loss of the P.R. account because of what he didn’t do; the sacking from the estate management job—he left a pretty mess behind him there—on account of his laziness.
“About two years ago he found himself in Karachi. At that time he was calling himself a free-lance journalist and the purpose of
his visit was to enquire into the alleged smuggling of gold by airline staff. Any story he concocted would probably have been libellous, but, as it happened, it was never written or, at any rate, no newspaper printed it.
“Peter Rivers worked for an airline in Karachi, not as a pilot but among the ground staff, meeting aircraft, weighing baggage, that sort of thing, and he lived with his wife and daughter in a company house. In the course of his snooping Swan made friends with Rivers. It would be more to the point to say he made friends with Rivers’ wife.”
“You mean he took her away from him?” Burden hazarded.
“If you can imagine Swan doing anything as active as taking anyone or anything away from anyone else. I should rather say that the fair Rosalind—’From the East to Western Ind, no jewel is like Rosalind’—fastened herself to Swan and held on tight The upshot was that Swan returned to England plus Rosalind and Stella and about a year later Rivers got his decree.
“The three of them all lived in a poky flat Swan took in Maida Vale, but after they were married Swan, or more likely Rosalind, decided the place wasn’t big enough and they came out here to Hall Farm.”
“Where did he get the money to buy a farm?”
“Well, in the first place it isn’t a farm any more but a chichi tarted-up farmhouse with all the land let off. Secondly, he didn’t buy it. It was part of the property held under a family trust. Swan put out feelers to his uncle and he let him have Hall Farm at a nominal rent.”
“Life’s very easy for some people, isn’t it?” said Burden, thinking of mortgages and hire purchase and grudgingly granted bank loans. “No money worries, no housing problems.”
“They came here last October, a year ago. Stella was sent to the convent at Sewingbury—uncle paid the fees—and Swan let her have these riding lessons. He rides himself and hunts a bit. Nothing in a big way, but then he doesn’t do anything in a big way.
“As to Rivers, he’d been having it off on the quiet with some air hostess and he also has married again. Swan, Rosalind and Stella plus an au pair girl settled down quite comfortably at Hall Farm, and then, bang in the middle of all this bliss, Stella disappears. Beyond a doubt, Stella is dead, murdered.”
