by Ruth Rendell
9
Monkey Matthews had been born during the First War in the East End of London and had been educated for the most part in Borstal institutions. His marriage at the age of twenty to a Kingsmarkham girl had brought him to her home town where he had lived—when not in gaol—with his wife in her parent’s house. Violence was foreign to him, but only perhaps because he was a coward, not from principle. He stole mostly. He stole from private houses, from his own wife and her aged parents and from those few people who were foolish enough to employ him.
The second war absorbed him into the Army, where he stole stores, officers’ uniforms and small electrical equipment. He went to Germany with the army of occupation; he became an expert in the black market and, on his return home, was probably Kingsmarkham’s first spiv. Patiently, his wife took him back each time he came out of prison.
In spite of his looks, he was attractive to women. He met Ruby Branch in Kingsmarkham magistrates’ court as she was leaving it after being put on probation and he entering between two policemen. They didn’t, of course, speak. But Monkey sought her out when he was free again and became a frequent visitor to her house in Charteris Road, Stowerton, especially when Mr. Branch was on night work. He suggested to her that she wasn’t getting the most out of her job at the underwear factory and soon, on his advice, she was clocking out most Fridays wearing three bras, six slips and six suspender belts under her dress. An ardent lover, Monkey was waiting for her when she came back from Holloway.
Since those days Wexford had put Monkey away for shop-breaking, larceny as a servant, attempting to blow up one of Ruby’s rivals with a home-made bomb, and stealing by finding. Monkey was nearly as old as Wexford, but there was as much life left in him as in the chief inspector, although he smoked sixty cigarettes a day, had no legitimate means of support and, since his wife had finally thrown him out, no fixed abode.
Returning to his office, Wexford wondered about him. Monkey could never be free for long without getting into trouble. Busy as he was, Wexford decided to do the checking he had resolved on outside the newsagent’s.
His notion that Monkey had been in Walton was soon confirmed. He had been released in September. The conviction had been for receiving, knowing it to have been stolen, so huge a quantity of tights, nylon briefs, body stockings and other frippery which, had it ever been sold, would surely have supplied the entire female teenage population of Liverpool for months to come.
Shaking his head, but smiling rather wryly, Wexford dismissed Monkey from his mind and concentrated on the pile of reports that awaited his attention. He had read through three of them when Sergeant Martin came in.
“No one turned up, of course?” he said, looking up.
“I’m afraid not, sir. We separated, according to instructions. It’s out of the question we could have been spotted, the forest’s so thick there. The only person to come along the road was the receptionist at the Cheriton Forest Hotel. No one came down the ride. We stayed there till ten.”
“I knew it would be a dead loss,” said Wexford.
Burden shared his chief’s antipathy to Ivor and Rosalind Swan but he found it impossible to view them with Wexford’s cynicism. They had something, those two, the special relationship of two people who love each other almost exclusively and who mean their love to survive until death parts them. Would he ever again find a love like that for himself? Or was to have it once all that any man could expect, knowing that few ever found it at all? Rosalind Swan had lost her only child in a hideous way but she could bear that loss without too much pain while she had her husband. He felt that she would have sacrificed a dozen children to keep Swan. How had Stella fitted into this honeymoon life? Had either or both of them felt her a hindrance, a shadowy and undesired third?
Wexford had been questioning them for half an hour and Mrs. Swan looked tired and pale, but she seemed to feel the enormity of her husband’s interrogation more keenly than its cause. “Ivor loved Stella,” she kept saying, “and Stella loved him.”
“Come, Mr. Swan,” Wexford said, ignoring this, “you must often since then have thought about that ride of yours and yet you can’t name to me a single person, apart from Mr. Blain, who might have seen you.”
“I haven’t thought about it much,” Swan said, holding his wife’s hand closely in both his own. “I wanted to forget it. Anyway, I do remember people, only not what they looked like or their car numbers. Why should I go about taking car numbers? I didn’t know I’d have to give anyone an alibi.”
“I’ll get you a drink, my lover.” She took as much trouble over it as another woman might over the preparation of her baby’s feed. The glass was polished on a table napkin, Gudrun was applied to for ice. “There. Have I put too much soda in?”
“You’re good to me, Rozzy. I ought to be looking after you.”
Burden saw her grow pink with pleasure. She lifted Swan’s hand and kissed it as if there was no one there to see. “We’ll go away somewhere,” she said. “We’ll go away tomorrow and forget all this beastliness.”
The little scene which had brought a pang of envy to Burden’s heart had no softening effect on Wexford. “I’d rather you didn’t go anywhere until we’ve got a much clearer picture of this case,” he said. “Besides, there will be an inquest which you must attend and, presumably,” he added with stiff sarcasm, “a funeral.”
“An inquest?” Swan looked aghast.
“Naturally. What did you expect?”
“An inquest,” Swan said again. “Will I have to attend it?”
Wexford shrugged impatiently. “That’s a matter for the coroner, but I should say, yes, certainly you will.”
“Drink up your drink, my lover. It won’t be so bad if we’re together, will it?”
“There’s a mother for you!” Wexford exploded.
Burden said nothing for a moment. He was wondering if most of the ideas he held on mother lover were perhaps fallacious. Until now he had supposed that to a woman the death of her child would be an insupportable grief. But maybe it wouldn’t. People were very resilient. They recovered fast from tragedy, especially when they had someone to love, especially when they were young. Rosalind Swan had her husband. Whom would Gemma Lawrence have when she was fetched away to view a body in a mortuary?
It was three days since he had seen her, but hardly an hour had passed without his thinking of her. He relived that kiss and each time he experienced it again in retrospect he felt a shivering thrill of excitement. Telling himself to stop dwelling on it and on her was useless, and there was no question for him of out of sight, out of mind. She was almost more vivid to him in her absence than her presence, her body softer and fuller, her hair more thick and brilliant, her childlike sweetness sweeter. But while he kept away he felt that he was safe. Time would dull the memory if only he had the strength to stay away.
In the back of the car Wexford’s probing eyes were on him. He had to say something.
“What about the father, Rivers?” he managed at last. “You must have got on to him way back in February.”
“We did. Immediately after the divorce he married again and his airline sent him to San Francisco. We did more than get on to him. We checked him very closely. There was always the chance that he had popped over and smuggled the child into the States.”
“What, just like that? Hopped on a plane, grabbed her and flown off again? He can’t be a rich man.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Wexford retorted, “but he could have done it just as easily as if he were a millionaire with a private aircraft. Don’t forget he works for an airline and like any of their employees travels at only a small surcharge. The same applies within reason to any dependent he might take with him. Also he’d have access to any aircraft, provided there was a vacant seat. Gatwick’s only about thirty miles from here, Mike. If he had found out the girl’s movements, fiddled a passport and a ticket, he could have done it all right.”
“Only he didn’t.”
“No, he did
n’t. He was at work in San Francisco all day on February 25th. Naturally, he came over when he was told Stella had disappeared and, no doubt, he’ll be over again now.”
Detailed reports from forensics had come in during Wexford’s absence. They confirmed Crocker’s diagnosis and, for all the expertise of those who had compiled them, added little to it. Eight months had elapsed since the child’s death, but the conclusion was that she had died from manual pressure on her throat and mouth. Her mildewed and tattered clothes afforded no clues and neither did the slab which had covered the cistern.
More phone calls had come in from people who claimed to have seen John, to have seen Stella alive and well in September, to have seen them alive and well and together. A woman holidaying in the Isle of Mull wrote to say a girl answering Stella’s description had spoken to her on a beach and asked to be shown the road to Tobermory. The little boy with her had fair hair and the girl said his name was John.
“I wish they wouldn’t waste our time,” said Wexford, knowing it would have to be followed up, picking up the next envelope. “What’s this, then? Another communication from our rabbit-keeper, I think.”
“I warned you not to wait for me. Did you think I would not know what was in your minds? I know everything. Your men are not very skilful at hiding. John was disappointed at not going home on Monday. He cried all night. I will return him only to his mother. She must be waiting alone on Friday at twelve noon at the same place. Remember what I did to Stella Rivers and do not try any more tricks. I am sending a copy of this letter to John’s mother.”
“She won’t see it, that’s one blessing. Martin’s collecting all her mail unopened. If we don’t catch this joker before Friday we’ll have to dress one of the policewomen up in a red wig.”
The idea of this travesty of Gemma waiting for a boy who wouldn’t come made Burden feel rather sick. “I don’t like that bit about Stella Rivers,” he muttered.
“Doesn’t mean a thing. He’s just read the papers, that’s all. My God, don’t say you’re going to fall for his line. He’s just a hoaxer. Here’s Martin now with Mrs. Lawrence’s mail. I’ll take those, thank you, Sergeant Ah, here’s our joker’s effusion in duplicate.”
Burden couldn’t stop himself. “How is she?” he said quickly.
“Mrs. Lawrence, sir? She was a bit the worse for wear.”
Blood came into Burden’s cheeks. “What d’you mean, worse for wear?”
“Well, she’d been drinking, sir.” Martin hesitated, letting his face show as much exasperation as he dared. The inspector’s eyes were cold, his face set, a prudish blush on his cheeks. Why did he always have to be so darned straitlaced? Surely a bit of sorrow-drowning was permitted in a woman as mad with anxiety as Mrs. Lawrence? “You can understand it. I mean to say …”
“I often wonder what you do mean to say, Martin,” Burden snapped. “Believe me, it’s not clear from your words.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I suppose she’s got someone with her?” Wexford raised his eyes from the letter and its copy which he had been perusing.
“The friend didn’t turn up,” said Martin. “Apparently, she took offence because the Met had been on to her, asking if she or some boy friend of hers had seen John lately. I gather they weren’t too tactful, sir. The boy friend’s got a record and he’s out of work. This girl who was coming to stay with Mrs. Lawrence teaches at drama school and acts a bit. She said that if it got about, the police questioning her, it wouldn’t do her any good in her profession. I did offer to fetch a neighbour to be with Mrs. Lawrence but she wouldn’t have any. Shall I pop back and …?”
“Pop anywhere as long as you get out of here!”
“Break it up,” said Wexford mildly. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He turned to Burden when Martin had gone. “You’ve been in a state, Mike, ever since we left Hall Farm. Why bite his head off? What’s he done?”
If Burden had realised how haggard his own face was, how it mirrored all his pain and his turbulent feelings, he wouldn’t have lifted it numbly to stare at the chief inspector. Thoughtfully, Wexford returned his gaze, but for a moment neither man spoke. Why don’t you get yourself a woman? Wexford was thinking. D’you want to drive yourself into a nervous collapse? He couldn’t say those things aloud, not to Mike Burden.
“I’m going out,” Burden muttered. “See if they need any help searching the forest.”
Wexford let him go. He shook his head gloomily. Burden knew as well as he did that they had completed their search of Cheriton Forest on Monday afternoon.
10
The inquest on Stella Rivers was opened and adjourned until further evidence should come to light. Swan and his wife were there and Swan stumbled brokenly through his evidence, impressing the coroner as a shattered parent This was the first sign Wexford had seen of any real grief in Stella’s stepfather and he wondered why it had taken the inquest to bring it out. Swan had heard the news of Burden’s discovery stoically and had identified Stella’s body with no more physical nausea. Why break down now? For he had broken down. Leaving the court, Wexford saw that Swan was weeping, a lost soul, clinging to his wife’s arm.
Now, if ever, was the time to verify Rosalind Swan’s statement that she couldn’t drive. Wexford watched eagerly as they got into the shooting brake. And it was she, he saw, who got into the driving seat But after a while, when they had whispered together and Rosalind had briefly laid her cheek against her husband’s, they changed places. Odd that, Wexford thought.
Swan took the wheel wearily and they drove off in the direction of the Myfleet road.
She would get him home and comfort him with her drinks and her kisses and her love, Wexford thought. “Come, come, come, come, give me your hand,” he said to himself. “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.” But Rosalind Swan was no Lady Macbeth to counsel murder or even connive at it. As far as he knew. Certainly she would cover up any crime Swan might commit, even the killing of her own child, for the sake of keeping him with her.
The fine weather had broken. It was raining now, a fine drizzle dispersing the fog which had settled on Kingsmarkham since early morning. Pulling up his raincoat collar, Wexford walked the few yards that separated the court from the police station. No one at the inquest had mentioned John Lawrence, but the knowledge that a second child was missing had underlain, he felt, everything that was said. There was not a soul in Kingsmarkham or Stowerton who didn’t connect the two cases, not a parent who doubted that a child killer stalked their countryside. Even the policemen who stood about the entrances to the court wore the grave aspect of men who believed a madman, a pathological criminal who killed children simply because they were children, went free and might attack again. He couldn’t recall any inquest at which these hardened men had looked so dour and so downcast.
He stopped in his tracks and viewed the length of the High Street. The primary school’s half-term was over and all the younger children back at work. The big ones hadn’t yet broken up. But was it imagination or fact that he could hardly see a single four-year-old out with its mother this morning, scarcely a toddler or a baby in its pram? Then he spotted a pram which its owner was parking outside the supermarket. He watched her lift out the baby and its older sister, take the one in her arms and propel the other, who could only just walk, ahead of her into the shop. That such care should have to be exercised in the town whose guardian he was brought him a deep depression.
Why not Ivor Swan? Why not? It meant nothing that the man had no record. He had no record perhaps because no one had ever found him out. Wexford decided that he would again review Swan’s life with particular reference to the districts he had lived in since he left Oxford. He would find out if any children had disappeared while Swan was in their vicinity. If Swan had done this, he swore to himself, he would get Swan.
But before making further investigations into the antecedents of her stepfather he had to see Stella’s father. Their appointment was for twelve and when Wexf
ord reached his office Peter Rivers had already been shown in.
A woman is often attracted by the same type of man and Rivers was not unlike his supplanter. Here was the same dapper quality, the same groomed look, neat small head, finely cut, almost polished, features and womanish tapering hands. But Rivers lacked Ivor Swan’s indolent air, the impression he gave that sexually he would be far from indolent. There was something bustling about him, a fussy restiveness combined with a nervous manner, that might not endear itself to a silly romantic woman like Rosalind Swan.
He jumped up when Wexford came into the room and embarked on a long explanation of why he hadn’t attended the inquest followed by an account of the tiresomeness of his journey from America. Wexford cut him short.
“Will you be seeing your former wife while you are here?”
“I guess so.” Sponge-like, Rivers, although domiciled for less than a year in America, had already picked up a transatlantic phraseology. “I guess I’ll have to. Needless to say, I can’t stand that Swan. I should never have let Stell go to him.”
“Surely you had no choice, Mr. Rivers?”
“Where did you get that idea? I never opposed her mother’s application for custody, that’s all, on account of Lois—that’s the present Mrs. Rivers—not wanting to be lumbered with a big kid like that Rosie wasn’t keen on getting custody either, come to that. Swan egged her on. I can tell you why, if you want to know.”
Sickened by all this, Wexford merely looked his assent.
“Swan knew he wouldn’t have a bean after he’d paid the costs, nowhere to live, nothing. The three of them were pigging it in a crummy furnished place in Paddington. His uncle told him he’d let him have that Hall Farm place if Rosie kept Stell. I know it for a fact. Rosie told me.”
“But why? Why should his uncle care?”
“He wanted Swan to settle down, raise a family and do a bit of good for himself. Some hopes! Swan was supposed to take an agricultural course at the college here so that he could farm the land. As soon as he got here he let the whole lot off to a farmer who had his eye on it. I don’t know why the uncle doesn’t kick them both out. He’s got pots of money and no one to leave it to but Swan.”
