No More Dying Then

by Ruth Rendell

  “If you’re going to insult me,” said Monkey, snorting out smoke indignantly, “we may as well have done, and me and my friend’ll go to Mr. Griswold. I’m doing this as a favour to you, like to advance you in your profession.”

  Mr. Casaubon nodded sagely and made a noise like a bluebottle drowsing over a joint of beef. But Monkey was seriously put out. Temporarily forgetting the respect due to age and golden geese, he snapped in the tone usually reserved for Mrs. Branch, “Give over that buzzing, will you? You’re getting senile. Now you can see,” he said to Wexford, “why the silly old git needs me to prop him up.”

  “Go on, Monkey. I won’t interrupt again.”

  “To get to the guts of the business,” said Monkey, “Mr. Casaubon told me—and showed me his paper to prove it—that fourteen years back your Ivor Bloody Swan—listening, are you? Ready for a shock?—your Ivor Swan killed a kid. Or, to put it more accurate, caused her death by drowning her in a lake. There, I thought that’d make you sit up.”

  Rather than sitting up, Wexford had slumped into his chair. “Sorry, Monkey,” he said, “but that’s not possible. Mr. Swan hasn’t a stain on his character.”

  “Hasn’t paid the penalty, you mean. I’m telling you, this is fact, it’s gospel. Mr. Casaubon’s own niece, his sister’s girl, was a witness. Swan drowned the kid and he was up in court, but the judge acquitted him for lack of evidence.”

  “He can’t have been more than nineteen or twenty,” Wexford said ruminatively. “Look here, I’ll have to know more than that. What’s this paper you keep on about?”

  “Give it here, mate,” said Monkey.

  Mr. Casaubon fumbled among his layers of clothing, finally bringing out from some deep recess beneath mackintosh, coat and matted wool a very dirty envelope inside which was a single sheet of paper. He held it lovingly for a moment and then handed it to his go-between who passed it on to Wexford.

  The paper was a letter with neither address nor date.

  “Before you read it,” said Monkey, “you’d best know that this young lady as wrote it was chambermaid in this hotel in the Lake District. She had a very good position, lot of girls under her. I don’t know exactly what she was but she was the head one.”

  “You make her sound like the madame in a brothel,” said Wexford nastily, and cut short Monkey’s expostulation with a quick, “Shut up and let me read.”

  The letter had been written by a semi-literate person. It was ill-spelt, almost totally lacking in punctuation. While Mr. Casaubon hummed with the complacency of a man showing off to an acquaintance the prize-winning essay of some young relative, Wexford read the following.

  “Dear Uncle Charly.

  “We have had a fine old fuss up hear that you will want to know of there is a young Colledge feller staying in the Hotel and what do you think he as done he as drowned a little girl swimmin in the Lake in the morning befor her Mum and Dad was up and they have had him up in Court for it Lily that you have herd me speak of had to go to the Court and tell what she new and she tell me the Judge give it to him hot and strong but could not put him away on account of Nobody saw him do the deed the young fellers name is IVOR LIONEL FAIRFAX SWAN i got it down on paper when Lily said it gettin it from the Judge on account i new you would wish to know it in ful.

  “Well Uncle that it all for now i will keep in touch as ever hoping the news may be of use and that your Leg is better Your Affect. Niece

  “Elsie”

  The pair of them were staring eagerly at him now. Wexford read the letter again—the lack of commas and stops made it difficult to follow—and then he said to Mr. Casaubon, “What made you keep this for fourteen years? You didn’t know Swan, did you? Why keep this letter in particular?”

  Mr. Casaubon made no reply. He smiled vaguely as people do when addressed in a foreign language and then he held out his glass to Monkey, who promptly refilled it and, once more taking on the task of interpreter, said, “He kept all her letters. Very devoted to Elsie is Mr. Casaubon, being as he never had no kiddies of his own.”

  “I see,” said Wexford, and suddenly he did. He felt his features mould themselves into a scowl of rage as the whole racket worked by Mr. Casaubon and his niece grew clear to him. Without looking again at the letter he recalled certain significant phrases. “A fine old fuss that you will want to know of” and “hoping the news may be of use” sprang to mind. A chambermaid, he thought, a chiel among us taking notes … How many adulterous wives had Elsie spotted? Into how many bedrooms had she blundered by the merest chance? How many homosexual intrigues had she discovered when homosexual practice was still a crime? Not to mention the other secrets to which she would have had access, the papers and letters left in drawers, the whispered confidences between women, freely given at night after one gin too many. The information about Swan, Wexford was sure, was just one of many such pieces of news retailed to Uncle Charly in the knowledge that he would use them for the extortion of money of which Elsie, in due course, would claim her share. A clever racket, though one which, to look at him now, had not finally worked to Mr. Casaubon’s advantage.

  “Where was this Elsie working at the time?” he snapped.

  “He don’t remember that,” said Monkey. “Somewhere up in the Lakes. She had a lot of jobs one way and another.”

  “Oh, no. It was all one way and a dirty way at that. Where is she now?”

  “South Africa,” mumbled Mr. Casaubon, showing his first sign of nervousness. “Married a rich yid and went out to the Cape.”

  “You can hang on to the letter.” Monkey smiled ingratiatingly. “You’ll want to do a bit of checking up. I mean, when all’s said and done, we’re only a couple of ignorant fellers, let’s face it, and we wouldn’t know how to go about getting hold of this judge and all that.” He edged his chair towards Wexford’s. “All we want is our rightful dues for setting you on the track. We don’t ask for no more than the reward, we don’t want no thanks nor nothing….” His voice faltered and Wexford’s baleful face finally silenced him. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and appeared to decide that at last it was time to offer hospitality to his other guest “Have a drop of Scotch before you go?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wexford said pleasantly. He eyed Mr. Casaubon. “When I drink I’m choosey about my company.”

  14

  Nervous bliss, Wexford decided, best described Inspector Burden’s current state of mind. He was preoccupied, often to be found idle and staring distantly into space, jumping out of his skin over nothing, but at least it was a change from that bleak irritable misery everyone had come to associate with him. Very likely the cause of the change was a woman, and Wexford, encountering his friend and assistant in the lift on the following morning, remembered Dr. Crocker’s words.

  “How’s Miss Woodville these days?”

  He was rewarded, and somewhat gratified, by the uneven burning blush that spread across Burden’s face. It confirmed his suspicion that recently there had been something going on between those two and something a good deal more exciting than discussions about whether young Pat ought to have a new blazer for the autumn term.

  “My wife,” he went on, pressing his point home, “was only saying yesterday what a tower of strength Miss Woodville has been to you.” When this evoked no response, he added, “All the better when the tower of strength has an uncommonly pretty face, eh?”

  Burden looked through him so intensely that Wexford suddenly felt quite transparent. The lift halted.

  “I’ll be in my office if you want me.”

  Wexford shrugged. Two can play at that game, he thought. You won’t get any more friendly overtures from me, my lad. Stiff-necked prude. What did he care about Burden’s dreary love life, anyway? He had other things on his mind and because of them he hadn’t slept much. Most of the night he had lain awake thinking about that letter and Monkey Matthews and the old villain who was Monkey’s guest, and he had pondered on what it all meant.

  Elsie was as sharp as a
needle but bone ignorant To a woman like her any J.P. was a judge and she wouldn’t know the difference between assizes and a magistrates’ court. Was it possible that all those years ago the young Swan had appeared before a magistrate, charged with murder or manslaughter, and the case been dismissed? And if that was so had the facts of that hearing somehow escaped being included in Wexford’s dossier of Swan?

  Night is a time for conjecture, dreams, mad conclusions; morning a time for action. The hotel had been somewhere in the Lake District and as soon as he was inside his office Wexford put through calls to the Cumberland and Westmorland police. Next he did a little research into the antecedents of Mr. Casaubon, working on the assumption that he had been in Walton at the same time as Monkey, and this conclusion and the investigations it led to proved fruitful.

  His name was Charles Albert Catch and he had been born in Limehouse in 1897. Pleased to discover that all his guesswork had been correct, Wexford learned that Catch had served three terms of imprisonment for demanding money with menaces but since reaching the age of sixty-five had fallen on evil days. His last conviction was for throwing a brick through the window of a police station, a ploy to secure—as it had done—a bed and shelter for the blackmailer who had become an impoverished vagrant.

  Wexford wasted no sympathy on Charly Catch but he did wonder why Elsie’s information had led her uncle to take no steps against Swan at the time. Because there really was no evidence? Because Swan had been innocent with nothing to hide or be ashamed of? Time would show. There was no point in further conjecture, no point in taking any steps in the matter until something came in from the Lakes.

  With Martin and Bryant to keep watch from a discreet distance, he sent Polly Davis, red-wigged, off to her assignation at Saltram House. It was raining again and Polly got soaked to the skin, but nobody brought John Lawrence to the park of Saltram House or to the Italian garden. Determined not to speculate any further on the subject of Swan, Wexford racked his brains instead about the caller with the shrill voice, but still he was unable to identify that voice or to remember any more about it but that he had heard it somewhere before.

  Holding her in his arms in the dark, Burden said, “I want you to tell me that I’ve made you happier, that things aren’t so bad because I love you.”

  Perhaps she was giving one of her wan smiles. He could see nothing of her face but a pale glow. The room smelt of the scent which she used to use when she was married and had, at any rate, a little money. Her clothes were impregnated with it, a stale musty sweetness. He thought that tomorrow he would buy her a bottle of scent.

  “Gemma, you know I can’t stay the night. I only wish to God I could, but I promised and …”

  “Of course you must go,” she said. “If I were going to my—to my children, nothing would keep me. Dear kind Mike, I won’t keep you from your children.”

  “You’ll sleep?”

  “I shall take a couple of those things Dr. Lomax gave me.”

  A little chill touched his warm body. Wasn’t satisfied love the best soporific? How happy it would have made him to know that his love-making alone could send her into sweet sleep, that thoughts of him would drive away every dread. Always the child, he thought, always the boy who had secured for himself all his mother’s care and passion. And he imagined the miracle happening and the lost dead boy, restored to life and to home, running into the darkened bedroom now, bringing his own light with him, throwing himself into his mother’s arms. He saw how she would forget her lover, forget that he had ever existed, in a little world made just for a woman and a child.

  He got up and dressed. He kissed her in a way that was meant to be tender only but became passionate because he couldn’t help himself. And he was rewarded with a kiss from her as long and desirous as his own. With that he had to be satisfied; with that and with the crumpled chiffon scarf he picked up as he left the room.

  If only he would find his bungalow empty, he mused as he drove towards it. Just for tonight, he told himself guiltily. If only he could go into emptiness and solicitude, free of Grace’s gentle brisk demands and Pat’s castles in the air and John’s mathematics. But if he were going home to an empty house he wouldn’t be going home at all.

  Grace had said she wanted to discuss something with him. The prospect was so dreary and so tedious that he forebore speculating about it. Why endure an agony twice over? He held the scented chiffon against his face for comfort before entering the house but instead of comfort it brought him only longing.

  His son was hunched over the table, ineptly grasping a compass. “Old Mint Face,” he said when he saw his father, “told us that ‘mathema’ means knowledge and ‘pathema’ means suffering, so I said they ought to call it pathematics.”

  Grace laughed a little too shrilly. She was flushed, Burden noticed, as if with excitement or perhaps trepidation. He sat down at the table, neatly drew the diagram for John and sent him off to bed. “May as well have an early night myself,” he said hopefully.

  “Spare me just ten minutes, Mike. I want—there’s something I want to say to you. I’ve had a letter from a friend of mine, a girl—a woman—I trained with.” Grace sounded extremely nervous now, so unlike herself that Burden felt a small disquiet. She was holding the letter and seemed about to show it to him, but she changed her mind and stood clutching it. “She’s come into some money and she wants to start a nursing home and she …” The words tumbled out in a rush, “… she wants me to come in with her.”

  Burden was beginning on a bored, “Oh, yes, that’s nice,” when suddenly he did a double-take and what she was actually saying came home to him. The shock was too great for thought or politeness or caution. “What about the children?” he said.

  She didn’t answer that directly. She sat down heavily like a tired old woman. “How long did you think I would stay with them?”

  “I don’t know.” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Till they’re able to look after themselves, I suppose.”

  “And when will that be?” She was hot now and angry, her nervousness swamped by indignation. “When Pat’s seventeen, eighteen? I’ll be forty.”

  “Forty’s not old,” said her brother-in-law feebly.

  “Maybe not for a woman with a profession, a career she’s always worked at. If I stay here for another six years I won’t have any career, I’d be lucky to get a job as a staff nurse in a country hospital.”

  “But the children,” he said again.

  “Send them to boarding school,” she said in a hard voice. “Physically, they’ll be just as well looked after there as here, and as for the other side of their lives—what good do I do them alone? Pat’s coming to an age when she’ll turn against her mother or any mother substitute. John’s never cared much for me. If you don’t like the idea of boarding school, get a transfer and go to Eastbourne. You could all live there with Mother.”

  “You’ve sprung this on me, all right, haven’t you, Grace?”

  She was almost in tears. “I only had Mary’s letter yesterday. I wanted to talk to you yesterday, I begged you to come home.”

  “My God,” he said, “what a thing to happen. I thought you liked it here, I thought you loved the kids.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said fiercely, and her face was suddenly Jean’s, passionate and indignant, during one of their rare quarrels. “You never thought about me at all. You—you asked me to come and help you and when I came you turned me into a sort of house-mother and you were the lofty superintendent who condescended to visit the poor orphans a couple of times a week.”

  He wasn’t going to answer that. He knew it was true. “You must do as you please, of course,” he said.

  “It isn’t what I please, it’s what you’ve driven me to. Oh, Mike, it could have been so different! Don’t you see? If you’d been with us and pulled your weight and made me feel we were doing something worth while together. Even now if you … I’m trying to say … Mike, this is very hard for me. If I thought you might
come in time to … Mike, won’t you help me?”

  She had turned to him and put out her hands, not impulsively and yearningly as Gemma did, but with a kind of modest diffidence, as if she were ashamed. He remembered what Wexford had said to him that morning in the lift and he recoiled away from her. That it was almost Jean’s face looking at him, Jean’s voice pleading with him, about to say things which to his old-fashioned mind no woman should ever say to a man, only made things worse.

  “No, no, no!” he said, not shouting but whispering the words with a kind of hiss.

  He had never seen a woman blush so fierily. Her face was crimson, and then the colour receded, leaving it chalk white. She got up and walked away, scuttling rather, for on a sudden she had lost all her precise controlled gracefulness. She left him and closed the door without another word.

  That night he slept very badly. Three hundred nights had been insufficient to teach him how to sleep without a woman and, after them, two of bliss had brought back with savagery all the loneliness of a single bed. Like a green adolescent he held, pressed against his face so that he could smell it, the scarf of the woman he loved. He lay like that for hours, listening through the wall to the muffled crying of the woman he had rejected.

  15

  The lock of hair did not belong to Stella Rivers either. Enough of her own blond curls remained on what remained of her for them to make comparison. “A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,” Wexford thought, shuddering.

  That proved nothing, of course. It was only to be expected, it was known, that the fur man—Wexford thought of his correspondent and his caller as the “fur man” now—was a liar. There was nothing for him to do but wait for news from the Lakes, and his temper grew sour. Burden had been unbearable for the last couple of days, hardly answering when you spoke to him and not to be found when most he was wanted. The rain fell unceasingly too. Everyone in the police station was irritable and the men, depressed by the weather, snapped at each other like wet, ill-tempered dogs. The black-and-white foyer floor was blotched all day by muddy footmarks and trickles from sodden rain capes.