by Ruth Rendell
“It seems clear,” said Burden, “that Swan can have had nothing to do with it.”
Wexford said obstinately, “He had no alibi. And there was something else, something less tangible, something in the personality of the man himself.”
“He sounds too lazy ever to commit an aggressive act.”
“I know, I know.” Wexford almost groaned the words. “And he had led, in the eyes of the law, a blameless life. No history of violence, mental disturbance or even bad temper. He hadn’t even the reputation of a philanderer. Casual girl friends, yes, but until he met Rosalind he had never been married or engaged to be married or even lived with a woman. But he had a history of a sort, a history of disaster. There’s a line in rather a sinister sonnet—‘They that have power to hurt and yet do none.’ I don’t think that means they don’t do any hurt but that they do nothing. That’s Swan. If he didn’t do this killing it happened because of him or through him or because he is what he is. D’you think that’s all airyfairy moonshine?”
“Yes,” said Burden firmly.
St. Luke’s Little Summer maintained its glory, at least by day. The hedges were a delicate green-gold and frost had not yet bitten into blackness the chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies in cottage gardens. The year was growing old gracefully.
The farm was approached by a narrow lane scattered with fallen leaves and overhung by hedges of Old Man’s Beard, the vapourish, thistledown seed heads of the wild clematis, and here and there, behind the fluffy masses, rose Scotch pines, their trunks a rich coral pink where the sun caught them. A long low building of stone and slate stood at the end of this lane, but most of its stonework was obscured by the flame and scarlet Virginia creeper which covered it.
“Du coté de chez Swan.” said Wexford softly.
Proustian references were lost on Burden. He was looking at the man who had come round from the back of the house, leading a big chestnut gelding.
Wexford left the car and went up to him. “We’re a little early, Mr. Swan. I hope we’re not putting you out?”
“No,” said Swan. “We got back sooner than we expected. I was going to exercise Sherry but that can wait.”
“This is Inspector Burden.”
“How do you do?” said Swan, extending a hand. “Very pleasant, all this sunshine, isn’t it? D’you mind coming round the back way?”
He was certainly an extremely handsome man. Burden decided this without being able to say in what his handsomeness lay, for Ivor Swan was neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, and his eyes were of that indeterminate colour men call grey for want of a more accurate term. His features had no special regularity, his figure, though lean, no sign of athletic muscular development. But he moved with an entirely masculine grace, exuded a vague lazy charm and had about him an air of attractiveness, of making himself immediately noticed.
His voice was soft and beautiful, the words he used slowly enunciated. He seemed to have all the time in the world, a procrastinator who would always put off till tomorrow what he couldn’t bring himself to do today. About thirty-three or thirty-four, Burden thought, but he could easily pass for twenty-five to a less discerning observer.
The two policemen followed him into a kind of lobby or back kitchen where a couple of guns and an assortment of fishing tackle hung above neat rows of riding boots and Wellingtons.
“Don’t keep rabbits, do you, Mr. Swan?” Wexford asked.
Swan shook his head. “I shoot them, or try to, if they come on my land.”
In the kitchen proper two women were engaged on feminine tasks. The younger, an ungainly dark girl, was preparing—if the heaps of vegetables, tins of dried herbs, eggs and mincemeat spread on the counter in front of her were anything to go by—what Burden chauvinistically thought of as a continental mess. Well away from the chopping and splashing, a minute doll-like blonde was ironing shirts. Five or six had already been ironed. There were at least that number remaining. Burden noticed that she was taking extreme care not to cause a horizontal crease to appear under the yoke of the shirt she was at present attending to, an error into which hasty or careless women often fall and which makes the removal of a jacket by its wearer an embarrassment.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Swan. I wonder if I may trouble you for a few minutes?”
Rosalind Swan had a girlish air, a featherlight “bovver” haircut and nothing in her face or manner to show that eight months before she had been deprived of her only child. She wore white tights and pink buckled shoes, but Burden thought she was as old as he.
“I like to see personally to all my husband’s laundry,” she declared in a manner Burden could only describe as merry, “and Gudrun can’t be expected to give his shirts that little extra wifely touch, can she?”
From long experience Burden had learnt that if a man is having an affair with another woman and, in that woman’s presence, his wife makes a more than usually coquettish and absurd remark, he will instinctively exchange a glance of disgust with his mistress. He had no reason to suppose Gudrun was anything more than an employee to Swan—she was no beauty, that was certain—but, as Mrs. Swan spoke, he watched the other two. Gudrun didn’t look up and Swan’s eyes were on his wife. It was an appreciative, affectionate glance he gave her and he seemed to find nothing ridiculous in what she had said.
“You can leave my shirts till later, Rozzy.”
Burden felt that Swan often made remarks of this nature. Everything could be put off till another day, another time. Idleness or chat took precedence over activity always with him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Mrs. Swan said gaily:
“Shall we go into the lounge, my lover?”
Wexford just looked at him, his face impassive.
The “lounge” was furnished with chintzy chairs, doubtful antiques, and, hanging here and there, brass utensils of no apparent use to a modern or, come to that, ancient household. It reflected no particular taste, had no individuality, and Burden remembered that Hall Farm, doubtless with all its contents, had been supplied to Swan by an uncle because he had nowhere else to live.
Linking her arm into her husband’s, Mrs. Swan led him to a sofa where she perched beside him, disengaged arms and took his hand. Swan allowed himself to be thus manipulated in a passive fashion and seemed to admire his wife.
“None of these names mean anything to me, Chief Inspector,” he said when he had looked at the list. “What about you, Roz?”
“I don’t think so, my lover.”
Her lover said, “I saw in the paper about the missing boy. You think the cases have some connection?”
“Very possibly, Mr. Swan. You say you don’t know any of the people on this list. Do you know Mrs. Gemma Lawrence?”
“We hardly know anyone around here,” said Rosalind Swan. “You might say we’re still on our honeymoon, really.”
Burden thought this a tasteless remark. The woman was all of thirty-eight and married a year. He waited for her to say something about the child who had never been found, to show some feeling for her, but Mrs. Swan was looking with voracious pride at her husband. He thought it time to put his own spoke in and he said flatly:
“Can you account for your movements on Thursday afternoon, sir?”
The man wasn’t very tall, had small hands, and anyone could fake a limp. Besides, Wexford had said he hadn’t had an alibi for that other Thursday afternoon …
“You’ve quite cast me for the role of kidnapper, haven’t you?” Swan said to Wexford.
“It was Mr. Burden who asked you,” Wexford said imperturbably.
“I shall never forget the way you hounded me when we lost poor little Stella.”
“Poor little Stella,” Mrs. Swan echoed comfortably.
“Don’t get upset, Rozzy. You know I don’t like it when you’re upset. All right, what was I doing on Thursday afternoon? Every time you add anyone to your missing persons list I suppose I must expect this sort of inquisition. I was here last Thursday. My wife was in London and Gudrun had t
he afternoon off. I was here all alone. I read for a bit and had a nap.” A flicker of temper crossed his face. “Oh, and at about four I rode over to Stowerton and murdered a couple of tots that were making the streets look untidy.”
“Oh, Ivor, darling!”
“That sort of thing isn’t amusing, Mr. Swan.”
“No, and it’s not amusing for me to be suspected of making away with two children, one of them my own wife’s.”
No more could be got out of him. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Burden as they drove back, “did she go on calling herself Rivers after her mother re-married?”
“Sometimes she was one, sometimes the other, as far as I could gather. When she became a missing person she was Stella Rivers to us because that was her real name. Swan said he intended to have the name changed by deed poll, but he hadn’t taken any steps towards it. Typical of him.”
“Tell me about this non-existent alibi,” said Burden.
6
Martin, Loring and their helpers were still interviewing rabbit-keepers, Bryant, Gates and half a dozen others continuing a house-to-house search of Stowerton. During the chief inspector’s absence Constable Peach had brought in a child’s plimsoll which he had found in a field near Flagford, but it was the wrong size, and, anyway, John Lawrence hadn’t been wearing plimsolls.
Wexford read the messages which had been left on his desk, but most were negative and some needed immediate attention. He scanned the anonymous note again, then put it back in its envelope with a sigh.
“We had enough letters in the Stella Rivers case to paper the walls of this office,” he said, “and we followed them all up. We had five hundred and twenty-three phone calls. The fantasies that go on in people’s minds, Mike, the power of their imaginations! They were nearly all well intentioned. Ninety per cent of them really thought they had seen Stella and …”
Burden interrupted him. “I want to hear about Swan’s alibi.”
“Swan drove Stella to Equita at two-thirty. Silly sort of name, isn’t it? Whether it’s supposed to mean all the pupils are equal or the only thing they teach is horse-riding, I wouldn’t know.”
Burden was always impatient with these digressions. “What kind of a car does he drive?”
“Not a red Jag. An oldish Ford shooting brake. He left Stella at the gates, believing, he said, that friends would bring her home, and went back home himself. At three-thirty he also got on a horse, that Sherry thing, and rode to Myfleet to see, believe it or not, a man about a dog.”
“You’re joking.”
“Would I, about a thing like this? There’s a fellow in Myfleet called Blain who breeds pointers. Swan went to look at some puppies with an eye to buying one for Stella. Of course, he didn’t buy one, any more than he ever got her the pony he promised or got her name changed. Swan’s always ‘just going to do something.’ One of the Four Just Men, he is.”
“But he did call on this man?”
“Blain told us Swan was with him from ten to four until four-fifteen, but he didn’t get back to Hall Farm until five-thirty.”
“Where did he say he had been in that hour and a quarter?”
“Just riding round. The horse, he said, needed exercise. Maybe it also needed a wash, for both rider and mount must have been wet through when Swan got home. But odd though this sounds, it is the kind of thing Swan would do. He would moon about on horseback in the rain. His ride, he said, took him through Cheriton Forest, but he couldn’t produce a single person to corroborate this. On the other hand, he could have got to Mill Lane in the time and killed Stella. But if he did, why did he? And what did he do with her body? His wife hasn’t an alibi either. She says she was at Hall Farm and she can’t drive. At any rate, she hasn’t a driving licence.”
Burden digested all this carefully. Then, he decided, he wanted to know more about Stella’s departure from Equita. He wanted the details Wexford hadn’t had time to give him when they had sat together in the car in Fontaine Road.
“The children,” said Wexford, “had an hour’s riding lesson and a further hour they spent messing about with the horses. Miss Williams, the owner of Equita, who lives in that house adjoining the stables, saw Stella that afternoon but says she didn’t speak to her and we have no reason to doubt her word. It was Mrs. Margaret Fenn who took the children out for their ride. She’s a widow of about forty and she lives in what used to be the lodge to Saltram House. Know it?”
Burden knew it. Ruined Saltram House and its grounds, now turned to wilderness, had been a favorite resort of his and Jean’s. For them it had been a place of romance, a lost domain, where they had gone for evening walks in the early days of their marriage and where they had later returned many times to bring their children on picnics.
All that day he had hardly thought about Jean and his happy past with her. His misery had been suspended by the present tumultuous events. But now again he saw her face before him and heard her call his name as they explored the gardens that time had laid waste and, hand in hand, entered the dark cold shell of the house. He shivered.
“You all right, Mike?” Wexford gave him a brief anxious glance and then he went on. “Stella said good-bye to Mrs. Fenn and said that as her step-father—incidentally, she always referred to him as her father—hadn’t yet arrived, she would walk along Mill Lane to meet him. Mrs. Fenn didn’t much like letting the girl go alone, but it was still light and she couldn’t go with her as she still had another hour and a half at Equita in which to clear up. She watched Stella go through the gates of Equita, thus becoming the last person but one to see her before she disappeared.”
“The last but one?”
“Don’t forget the man who offered her a lift. Now for the houses in Mill Lane. There are only three between Equita and Stowerton, all widely separated, Saltram Lodge and two cottages. Before Hill offered her the lift she had passed one of these cottages, the one that is occupied only at week-ends, and, this being a Thursday, it was empty. We know no more of what happened to her after she was seen by Hill, but if she walked on unmolested she would next have come to the second cottage which has a tenant, not an owner occupier. This tenant, a single man, was out at work and didn’t return until six. Again this was carefully checked because both this cottage and Saltram Lodge have telephones and one of the possibilities which occurred to me was that Stella might have called at a house and asked to phone Hall Farm. The third and last house, Saltram Lodge, was also empty until Mrs. Fenn got home at six. She had had some relatives staying with her, but they had left for London by the three-forty-five train from Stowerton. A taxi-driver confirmed that he had picked them up at the lodge at twenty past three.”
“And was that all?” Burden said. “No more leads?”
Wexford shook his head. “Not what you’d call leads. The usual flock of people came forward with unhelpful evidence. A woman had picked up a child’s glove outside one of the cottages but it wasn’t Stella’s. There was another of those free-lift merchants who said he had picked up an elderly man near Saltram Lodge at five-thirty and driven him into Stowerton, but this driver was a shifty sort of fellow and he impressed me as a sensation-monger rather than someone whose word you could rely on.
A van-driver claimed to have seen a boy come out of the back door of the rented cottage and perhaps he did. They all leave their back doors unlocked in this part of the world. They think there’s no crime in the country. But the van-driver also said he heard screams coming from behind the hedge just outside Equita, and we know Stella was alive and unharmed until she had refused Hill’s offer. I doubt if we shall ever find out any more.”
Wexford looked tired, his jowly face heavier and more drooping than usual. “I shall take a couple of hours off tomorrow morning, Mike, and I advise you to do the same. We’re both dead-beat. Have a lie-in.”
Burden nodded abstractedly. He didn’t say that there is no point in lying-in when there is no one to lie in with, but he thought it. Wearily he found himself recalling as he went out
to his car those rare but delightful Sunday mornings when Jean, usually an early riser, consented to remain in bed with him until nine. Lying in each other’s arms, they had listened to the sound of Pat making tea for them in the kitchen, and had sat bolt upright, jerking away from each other when she came in with the tray. Those had been the days, but he hadn’t known it at the time, hadn’t appreciated and treasured each moment as he should have done. And now he would have given ten years of his life for one of those mornings back again.
His memories brought him a dull misery, his only consolation that soon he would be in the company of someone as wretched as himself, but when he walked up to the always open door he heard her call out to him gaily and as intimately as if they were old friends, “I’m on the phone, Mike. Go in and sit down. Make yourself at home.”
The telephone must be in the dining room, he thought. He sat down in the other room, feeling uncomfortable because untidiness always made him ill-at-ease. He wondered how anyone as beautiful and as charming as she could bear to live in such disorder and wondered more when she came in, for she was a changed woman, brilliantly smiling, almost elegant.
“You needn’t have run off on my account,” he said, trying not to stare too hard at the short kingfisher-blue dress she wore, the long silver chains, the silver comb in her high-piled hair.
“That was Matthew,” she said. “They brought him a phone and he phoned me from his bed. He’s terribly worried about John, but I told him it was all right. I told him everything would be all right on Monday. He has so many worries, poor boy. He’s ill and his wife’s expecting a baby and he’s out of work and now this.”
“Out of work? What sort of work does he do?”
She sat down opposite him and crossed the best pair of legs Burden thought he had ever seen. He stared at a patch of floor some inches from her feet.
