by Ruth Rendell
“Never mind, my lover. I’ll see to it. Now I’m going to make you some nice tea. Were you lonely without me?”
“Yes, I was. Very.”
She had hardly noticed Wexford. He was investigating the murder of her only child but she had hardly noticed him. Her eyes, her attention, were solely for her husband. It was he who, now there was someone to prepare it, rather grudgingly suggested that Wexford might care to stay and share their tea.
“No, thank you,” said the chief inspector. “I wouldn’t want to be in your way.”
The lock of hair had belonged neither to John Lawrence nor to Stella Rivers, but it was a child’s hair. Someone had cut it from a child’s head. That meant whoever had written the letters had access to a golden-headed child. And more than just access. No one could go up to a child in the street and chop off a piece of his or her hair without getting into trouble. Technically, it would be assault. Therefore, the letter-writer, the “fur man,” must be in such close association with a golden-headed child as to be able to cut off a lock of its hair either while it was asleep or with its permission.
But how far did that get him? Wexford pondered. He couldn’t interview every golden-haired child in Sussex. He couldn’t even ask for such children to come forward, for the person “in close association”—father? uncle?—would prevent the one significant child from answering his appeal.
Although it wasn’t the prescribed time, Wexford swallowed two of his blood-pressure tablets, washing them down with the dregs of his coffee. He’d need them if he was going to spend the rest of the day scouring Stowerton. Mrs. Thetford first, to see if there was any chance she had broadcast the news of John’s disappearance around the town. Then perhaps Rushworth. Sit down with Rushworth for hours if necessary, make him remember, make him describe his fellow searchers, get to the bottom of it today.
The climate in which Burden and his sister-in-law now lived wasn’t conducive to confidences. It was nearly a week since she had smiled at him or said any more than “Colder today” or “Pass the butter, please.” But he would have to tell her about his forthcoming marriage, and tell the children too, perhaps even ask their permission.
He thought his opportunity had come when, thawing a little, Grace said, “Aren’t you having next weekend off?”
Guardedly, he said, “Supposed to be. We’re very busy.”
“Mother’s asked all four of us down for the weekend.”
“I don’t think …” Burden began. “I mean, I couldn’t manage it. Look here, Grace, there’s something …”
Grace jumped up. “There’s always something. Don’t bother to make excuses. I’ll go alone with the children, if you’ve no objection.”
“Of course I’ve no objection,” said Burden, and he went off to work, or what would have been work if he had been able to concentrate.
He had half-promised to have his lunch in Fontaine Road. Bread and cheese, he supposed it would be, in that loathsome kitchen. Much as he longed to be with Gemma in the night, the meals she prepared had no attraction for him. The police-station canteen was almost preferable. And suddenly it occurred to him that soon every meal he ate at home would be prepared by Gemma.
Wexford had gone out somewhere. Time was when the chief inspector would never have gone out without leaving a message for him, but all that was changed now. He had changed it and the change in him had lost him Wexford’s esteem.
Descending in the lift, he hoped he wouldn’t encounter Wexford, and when the door opened he saw that there was no one in the foyer but Camb and Harry Wild, who these days had become almost a fixture, as much a part of the furnishings as the counter and the little red chairs. Burden treated him like a chair, accepting his presence but otherwise ignoring him. He was nearly at the swing doors when they burst open and Wexford appeared.
Except when he was with Gemma, muttering had become Burden’s normal mode of speech. He muttered a greeting and would have gone on his way. Wexford stopped him with the “Mr. Burden!” he habitually used in the presence of such as Camb and Wild.
“Sir?” said Burden with equal formality.
Speaking in a lower tone, Wexford said, “I’ve spent the morning with that fellow Rushworth, but I couldn’t get a thing out of him. Strikes me as a bit of a fool.”
With an effort, Burden tried to fix his mind on Rushworth. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t have considered him as a possible suspect myself, but he does wear a duffel coat and there was that business when he nearly frightened the wits out of the Crantock girl.”
“He did what?”
The words had been spoken in a sharp hiss. “I told you,” Burden said. “It was in my report.” Hesitating, muttering again, he recounted to the chief inspector his experience of the encounter in Chiltern Avenue. “I must have told you,” he faltered. “I’m sure I …”
Wexford forgot about Wild and Camb. “You never did!” he shouted. “You never made any bloody report. D’you mean to tell me now—now—that Rushworth molested a child?”
Burden had no words. He felt his face grow crimson. It was true—he remembered now—he had made no report, the whole thing had vanished from his mind. Love and involvement had driven it away, for that night, while Stowerton was wrapped in mist, had been his first night with Gemma.
Things might have come to a head then between him and Wexford but for the intervention of Harry Wild. Insensitive to atmosphere, quite incapable of ever supposing himself to be de trop, Wild turned round and said loudly:
“D’you mean to tell me you’ve got Bob Rushworth lined up for this job?”
“I don’t mean to tell you anything,” Wexford snapped.
“There’s no need to be like that. Don’t you want any help in your enquiries?”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, I do know Rushworth,” said Wild, pushing himself between the two policemen. “And I know he’s a nasty customer. Friend of mine rents a cottage from him down in Mill Lane, but Rushworth keeps a key to it and pops in and out just whenever the fancy takes him. He went through all my friend’s private papers one day without so much as by your leave and his boy goes in and takes apples out of the garden, pinched a pint of milk once. I could tell you things about Bob Rushworth as’d make …”
“I think you’ve told me enough, Harry,” said Wexford. Without extending the usual invitation to lunch, without even looking at Burden again, he swung out of the police station the way he had come.
Because he was sure that if he went to the Carousel Burden would only follow him and ruin his lunch with mealy-mouthed excuses, Wexford drove home and surprised his wife, who seldom saw him between nine and six, with a peremptory demand for food. He couldn’t remember when he had last been in such a bad temper. Angry-looking black veins were standing out on his temples and this alarmed him so that he took two anti-coagulant tablets with the beer Mrs. Wexford produced off the ice. Burden ought to know better than to upset him like that. Fine thing if he ended up like poor old Scott.
Somewhat calmer by three o’clock, he drove off to see Mrs. Thetford. According to a neighbour, she was out at her job of cleaning for Mrs. Dean. Wexford hung about till she got back and saw no reason to refuse her offer of a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake. The Rushworths were both out all day, anyway, and he wanted to see them together rather than endure another interview with Rushworth in his estate agent’s office, their conversation constantly interrupted by phone calls from clients.
But tea and cake were all he got out of Mrs. Thetford. She repeated the story he had already heard from her husband. Mrs. Dean had given her the news about John Lawrence at five o’clock but she declared she had passed it on to no one except her husband and her brother-in-law.
He drove slowly up the lane and entered Sparta Grove. Lomax’s patient, Mrs. Foster, was his only hope now. She must have told someone what she had overheard at the doctor’s. Or been overheard herself? It was a possibility, perhaps the only one remaining. Number 14 was her house. Wexford parke
d outside it and then he saw the boy. He was swinging on the gate of the house next door, number 16, and his rather long hair was bright gold.
By now all the children were home from school and Sparta Grove was full of them. Wexford beckoned to a girl of about twelve and she approached the car suspiciously.
“I’m not supposed to talk to strange men.”
“Very proper,” said Wexford. “I’m a policeman.”
“You don’t look like one. Show me your warrant card.”
“By gum, you’ll go far if you don’t come to a bad end.” He produced his card and the child scrutinised it with huge delight. “Satisfied?”
“Mmm.” She grinned. “I learnt how to do that off the telly.”
“Very educational, the telly. I wonder they bother to keep the schools open. You see that boy with the fair hair? Where does he live?”
“Where he is. That house he’s on the gate of.”
Ungrammatical but explanatory. “You needn’t tell him I was asking.” Wexford produced a coin which he knew he wouldn’t get back out of expenses.
“What shall I say, then?”
“Come, come. You’re a resourceful girl. Say I was a strange man.”
Now was not the time. He must wait until all the children were in bed. When the Piebald Pony opened he went into the saloon bar and ordered sandwiches and half a bitter. Any minute now, he thought, Monkey and Mr. Casaubon would come in. Delighted to see him in their local, they would try to ascertain how near they were to getting their hands on that two thousand, and it would give him much pleasure to tell them they had never been farther from it. He would even be indiscreet and reveal his innermost conviction, that Swan was guiltless of any crime but that of indifference.
But nobody came. It was seven when Wexford left the Piebald Pony and walked three-quarters of the length of quiet, dimly-lit Sparta Grove.
He tapped on the door of number 16. No lights showed. Every one of those children must now be safely in bed. In this house the golden-headed boy would be sleeping. From the look of the place—no blue-white glow of a television screen showed behind the drawn curtains—his parents had gone out and left him alone. Wexford had a low opinion of parents who did that, especially now, especially here. He knocked again, harder this time.
To a sensitive astute person an empty house has a different feel from a house which simply appears to be empty but which, in reality, contains someone who is unwilling to answer a door. Wexford sensed that there was life somewhere in that darkness, conscious tingling life, not just a sleeping child. Someone was there, a tense someone, listening to the sound of the knocker and hoping the knocks would cease and the caller go away. He made his way carefully through the side entrance and round to the back. The Fosters’ house next door was well lit but all the doors and windows were shut. A yellow radiance from Mrs. Foster’s kitchen showed him that number 16 was a well-kept house, its path swept and its back doorstep polished red. The little boy’s tricycle and a man’s bike leaned against the wall and both were covered by a sheet of transparent plastic.
He hammered on the back door with his fist. Silence. Then he tried the handle very stealthily, but the door was locked. No getting in here without a warrant, he thought, and there was no hope of getting one on the meagre evidence he had.
Treading softly, he began to move round to the back of the house, feeling moist turf under his feet. Then, suddenly, a flare of light caught him from behind and he heard Mrs. Foster say, as audibly as if she were standing beside his ear, “You won’t forget to put the bin out, will you, dear? We don’t want to miss the dustmen two weeks running.”
Just as he thought. Every word spoken in the garden of number 14 could be heard in this garden. Mrs. Foster hadn’t seen him. He waited until she had retreated into her kitchen before moving on.
Then he saw it, a thin shaft of light, narrower than the beam from a pencil torch, stretching across the grass from a french window. Tiptoeing, he approached the source of this light, a tiny gap between drawn curtains.
It was difficult to see anything at all. Then he saw that right in the middle of the window the edge of the curtain had been caught up on a bolt. He squatted down but still he couldn’t see in. There was nothing for it but to lie down flat. Thank God there was no one to see him or observe how hard he found it to perform what should have been one of man’s most natural actions.
Flat on his belly now, he got one eye up against the un-curtained triangle. The room unfolded itself before him. It was small and neat and conventionally furnished by a house-proud wife with a red three-piece suite, a nest of tables, wax gladioli and carnations whose petals were wiped each day with a damp cloth.
The man who sat writing at a desk was quite relaxed now and intent on his task. The importunate caller had gone away at last and left him to the special peace and privacy he demanded. It would show in his face, Wexford thought, that concentration, that terrible solitary egotism, but he couldn’t see his face, only the bare legs and feet, and sense the man’s rapt absorption. He suspected that under the fur coat he wore he was quite naked.
Wexford watched him for some minutes, watched him pause occasionally in his writing and pass the thick furry sleeve across nose and mouth. It made him shiver, for he knew he was eavesdropping on something more private than secret speech or love-making or the confessional. This man was not alone with himself, but alone with his other self, a separate personality which perhaps no one else had ever seen until now.
To witness this phenomenon, this intense private fantasising in a room which epitomised conformity, seemed to Wexford an outrageous intrusion. Then he remembered those fruitless trysts in the forest and Gemma Lawrence’s hope and despair. Anger drove out shame. He pulled himself on to his feet and rapped hard on the glass.
19
In his anxiety to reach the lift, Burden shoved Harry Wild out of the way.
“Manners,” said the reporter. “There’s no need to push. I’ve a right to come in here and ask questions if I …”
The sliding door cut off the rest of his remarks which would perhaps have been to the effect that, but for his modesty and fondness for the quiet life, he would have been exercising his rights in loftier portals than those of Kingsmarkham police station. Burden didn’t want to hear. He only wanted Harry’s statement, that they had found the boy, confirmed or denied.
“What’s this about a special court?” he demanded, bursting into Wexford’s office.
The chief inspector looked tired this morning. When he was tired his skin took on a grey mattness and his eyes looked smaller than ever, but still steel-bright, under the puffy lids.
“Last night,” he said. “I found our letter-writer, a certain Arnold Charles Bishop.”
“But not the boy?” Burden said breathlessly.
“Of course not the boy.” Burden didn’t like it when Wexford sneered like that. His eyes seemed to be drilling two neat holes into the inspector’s already aching head. “He’s never even seen the boy. I found him at his home in Sparta Grove where he was occupied in writing another letter to me. His wife was out at her evening class, his children were in bed. Oh, yes, he has children, two boys. It was from the head of one of them that he cut the hair while the kid was asleep.”
“Oh God,” said Burden.
“He’s a fur fetishist. Want me to read his statement?”
Burden nodded.
“‘I have never seen John Lawrence or his mother. I did not take him away from the care of his mother, his legal guardian. On October 16, at about 6 p.m., I overheard my neighbour, Mrs. Foster, tell her husband that John Lawrence was missing and that search parties would probably be arranged. I went to Fontaine Road on my bicycle and joined one of these search parties.
“‘On three subsequent occasions in October and November I wrote three letters to Chief Inspector Wexford. I did not sign them. I made one telephone call to him. I do not know why I did these things. Something came over me and I had to do them. I am a happily marri
ed man with two children of my own. I would never harm a child and I do not own a car. When I wrote about the rabbits I did this because I like fur. I have three fur coats but my wife does not know this. She knows nothing of what I have done. When she goes out and the children are asleep I often put one of my coats on and feel the fur.
“‘I read in the paper that Mrs. Lawrence had red hair and John Lawrence fair hair. I cut a piece of hair from the head of my son Raymond and sent it to the police. I cannot explain why I did this or any of it except by saying that I had to do it.’”
Burden said hoarsely, “The maximum he can get is six months for obstructing the police.”
“Well, what would you charge him with? Mental torture? The man’s sick. I was angry too last night, but not any more. Unless you’re a brute or a moron you can’t be angry with a man who’s going through life with a sickness as grotesque as Bishop’s.”
Burden muttered something about it being all right for those who weren’t personally involved, but Wexford ignored it. “Coming over to the court in about half an hour?”
“To go through all that muck again?”
“A great deal of our work consists of muck, as you call it. Clearing muck, cleaning up, learning what muck is and where it lives.” Wexford rose and leaned heavily on his desk. “If you don’t come, what are you going to do? Sit here mooning all day? Delegating? Passing the buck? Mike, I have to say this. It’s time I said it. I’m tired. I’m trying to solve this case all on my own because I can’t count on you any more. I can’t talk to you. We used to thrash things out together, sift the muck, if you like. Talking to you now—well, it’s like trying to have a rational conversation with a zombie.”
Burden looked up at him. For a moment Wexford thought he wasn’t going to answer or defend himself. He just stared, a dead empty stare, as if he had been interrogated for many days and many sleepless nights and could no longer sort out the painful twisted threads that contributed to his unhappiness. But he knew, for all that, that the time for fobbing Wexford off was long gone by, and he brought it all out in a series of clipped sentences.
