Tigerlily's Orchids

by Ruth Rendell

  If it hadn’t been three o’clock in the morning but a couple of hours later, Blakelock would have got up, dressed and driven back to Lichfield House to question this Walter Scurlock. As it was he lay sleepless, thinking about it. When he did get up, he went straight to the Bel Esprit Centre and had another look at the bag, hoping it would tell him more. It didn’t. He was wondering whether Scurlock had been in trouble before, in which case his fingerprints might be on record, but that hardly mattered. If the bag was Scurlock’s the tools most likely would be. Unfortunately, no knife had been in the bag. He was interrupted by the arrival of a woman who looked fourteen in the distance but forty close to.

  She introduced herself as Amanda Copeland. ‘It was my friend Daphne Jessop who reported to you she’d found a body on Kenilworth Green.’

  Blakelock nodded. A woman had phoned them, said she had been exercising her dog and called them on her mobile when she came upon Stuart Font’s body.

  ‘There was something she didn’t tell you. She said she didn’t want to get the man into trouble.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘I knew who it was all right. She saw him bending over the body but he ran away when he saw her coming.’

  And Amanda proceeded to tell him everything she knew about Wally Scurlock and a lot she had imagined.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was about seven on the previous evening that Wally Scurlock realised he had left his bag in St Ebba’s churchyard. His first thought was that he must abandon the bag. No one could identify it as his. Initials were nothing, thousands of people must have the initials WS. For all that, he might go up to St Ebba’s and check that it was still there. If it was he could retrieve it. He was eating – or picking at – the meal Richenda called ‘tea’, though no tea was served and the food consisted of a lamb chop with Bisto gravy, rather hard, once frozen Brussels sprouts and salt-and-vinegar-flavour potato crisps.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Richenda said, breaking off from the account she was giving of her encounter with the two policemen. ‘Something wrong with your tea? You’re lucky not to get one of those ready meals.’

  Wally sounded quite dignified. ‘I have no appetite,’ he said. ‘I’ve been feeling off colour ever since I heard about poor Stuart.’

  ‘Well, that’s funny, considering you couldn’t stand the sight of him when he was alive.’

  Wally wasn’t going to get into an argument. Later on, saying he needed some fresh air, he walked up to the roundabout. Several police had passed him, including a van full of uniformed officers, but when he reached Kenilworth Green, the last car was moving away.

  The place where Stuart’s body had lain was still cordoned off with crime tape, but no tape was in the churchyard. He made his way in there just as St Ebba’s clock was chiming nine. Where had he left the bag? Up beside a gravestone near the fence, he seemed to remember. But perhaps not, perhaps he had left it on the opposite side, by the grave that overlooked the primary-school playground. There was no sign of it anywhere but Wally began a systematic search of the place, even pushing aside bushes and fumbling about underneath their branches. Then it occurred to him that someone might have found it and put it in the church for safe keeping. Some thoughtful parishioner or sexton, whatever that was. He expected St Ebba’s to be locked but it wasn’t. The door, blackened wood, thickly studded, creaked open when he pushed it. It swung shut after him but almost soundlessly.

  The church was little and very, very old. Wally thought it was in need of a paint, for one of the walls had pale red and grey patches that looked as if they might once have been drawings. It was still and silent, unlit except by the greenish roof light which filtered through the small windows which Wally had expected to be of stained glass but were not. Standing in the nave, looking up at the beamed roof, he felt as if he was in some country place, not a mere quarter-mile from an arterial road in a city. The silence seemed to him unnatural and when he began to walk up towards the chancel he found himself moving on tiptoe. He was very conscious of the lack of any living thing, but not quite a deadness, for he could feel a kind of ancient strength in the place and – though it was nonsense, it was stupid to think this way – something condemnatory, something that frowned upon him and told him, if not in words, that he should leave. He wasn’t welcome.

  God it couldn’t be, he didn’t believe in God and never had. But he did believe in the supernatural, he did believe in ghosts and bad spirits and even demons. It must be one of those. He had seen things on television that lived in old churches or came out of graves or stood, waiting, in dark corners. Don’t be a fool, he told himself, and searched around for his bag, pushing aside hassocks, smelling the sweetish dusty smell. It wasn’t here, he had been sure enough from the start that it wouldn’t be. Time to get out, for it was no longer a frown that pursued him but a stare, invisible eyes boring into him, driving him away.

  Someone had taken his bag, that was clear, but not necessarily the police. Still, he had to admit that the police, who had been searching the place, were the most likely. Would it be a wise move on his part to go to them in the morning, say, play the innocent and ask them if they’d found his bag he’d left in the churchyard? He knew he wouldn’t dare do that, not while there was a chance they didn’t know he was the WS of the initials. They had already talked to him, they knew his name. Would they make the connection? Walking home as the sun was setting, he looked with fear rather than interest at the police van and the police car parked outside the Bel Esprit Centre. The place was in darkness. Had he known his bag was even at that moment inside the murder room at the centre, already labelled with an exhibit number, he might have contemplated breaking in and taking it. But he didn’t know and, in any case, he felt his nerves were at snapping point, for now he remembered something watching him inside the church, some silent entity.

  ‘You’ve been hours,’ said Richenda. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ve been for a walk,’ Wally said.

  ‘You can put the recycling out before you go to bed.’

  The bins, one for paper and cardboard, one for cans and bottles, had to be carried upstairs and put by the entrance gate.

  ‘Can’t it wait till the morning? They’re supposed to come at eight but they never do.’

  ‘Just this once they will, you’ll see. So do it now.’

  ‘You could say please.’

  ‘I could,’ said Richenda, ‘but you’re not doing me no favours. That recycling is as much your rubbish as mine. More. It’s you reads the Sun, not me.’

  Once he was sure she was in bed and the light off, Wally went into the bathroom. He unscrewed the nuts on the bath panel and removed the printouts he had made. Ten sheets of A4 paper, printed with delectable pictures which, to look at, made the blood rush to his head and his heart pound. He turned them over so that he could only see the blank sides. Once, and not so long ago, it would have been easy to destroy them but no longer. There were certainly no matches in the flat and no gas hob or room heaters to emit blue flames. Nor did he possess a shredder. He dared not put the sheets down the lavatory pan lest he block the drains. So he tore them into small pieces and put the pieces in the paper recycling bin. That bin would be gone and its contents lost by, if not eight, nine in the morning.

  He carried the bins upstairs. There was no one about and it was dark in the street. He had once seen a programme on television where a man went into a church and saw something and the thing, whatever it was, followed him back to where he lived. A movement among the cars made him jump, but it was only that girl Noor getting out of her boyfriend’s Lexus. He muttered a goodnight to her.

  Richenda was asleep. He got in beside her and slept fitfully, to be awakened at eight in the morning by his doorbell ringing. The only time anyone rang that bell was when it was the postman with a parcel that wouldn’t go into a pigeonhole, a rare event. He decided to ignore it but it rang again, more persistently. He got up. Two policemen in plain clothes and two in uniform
stood outside. Wally’s legs felt the way they had when he had seen Rose Preston-Jones talking to that woman with the two little girls, weak and fragile, scarcely able to hold him up.

  They came into his flat, pushed their way in just in case he had tried to stop them. Blakelock and Bashir were the plain clothes and the uniformed ones were called Smith and Leach. For the first few minutes they called him ‘sir’.

  ‘Am I right in thinking this is your bag, sir?’ This was Blakelock.

  Wally nodded. He was nodding rather too enthusiastically when Richenda came into the room in a red satin dressing gown, her hair wound round an ancient set of Carmen rollers. She looked at the bag and then at the policemen. ‘It’s his all right,’ she said. ‘Where did you find it?’ Without waiting for a reply, she said to her husband, ‘You never told me you’d lost that bag.’

  Wally didn’t answer. He took hold of the bag and tried to stand up straight.

  ‘We’ll just hold on to that for the time being, thank you,’ said Bashir, and then, ‘Did you touch Stuart Font’s body? Did you turn him over?’

  Less frightened than he would have been by the enquiry he truly feared, Wally admitted it. He hadn’t meant any harm, he hadn’t done anything.

  Then the question came.

  ‘Have you got a computer, sir?’

  ‘Of course he has,’ said Richenda.

  ‘We’ll have a look at that,’ Blakelock said. ‘We’ll do it while we’re searching the place.’

  Richenda opened her eyes very wide. ‘Searching?’

  ‘If you’ll permit it,’ said Bashir. ‘We can get a warrant if you won’t, so it comes to the same thing in the end.’

  Wally felt faint. This was real terror and somehow quite different from the fear of the supernatural he had experienced the night before. This was reality. He lowered himself into an armchair and slumped into its depths like a sick man. Richenda said something to him but he didn’t hear her. The policemen walked about the flat, opening drawers, looking inside cupboards. When they came to his desk, the one called Bashir switched on his computer and asked him for his password.

  With the single spark of defiance that remained to him, Wally said, ‘I don’t have to tell you that.’

  ‘We shall draw our own conclusions if you don’t, Walter.’

  It was when they used his first name that Wally knew it was all up. ‘Barbie,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘That’s my password, Barbie – well, Barbie 1.’

  No comment was made. Wally got up and went into the bedroom. He couldn’t bear to stay in the living room any longer. He lay down on the unmade bed and buried his face in the pillows as if he could find oblivion that way. Richenda was talking to Blakelock. Wally heard the word ‘recycling’ and then he heard her say it had been put out the night before but the council collectors wouldn’t be here for hours yet.

  The front door opened and closed. Richenda came into the bedroom and pulled at him roughly by the shoulder.

  ‘Get up. I want to make the bed.’

  Wally didn’t move.

  ‘What are they looking for?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know.’

  ‘If it’s what I think it is, they’ll take your computer away and then they’ll take you. When you come back – if you do – I won’t be here. Just so you know.’

  An hour later, Rose and Marius were still in bed in Marius’s flat. It was the drip-drip-drip of falling water which awoke Rose. Could he or she have left a tap running in the bathroom or kitchen the night before? She was always very careful about things like that and she was sure he would be too. She got up and the movement woke him. Marius was never drowsy in the mornings. He was alert as soon as his eyes opened and he knew immediately what was happening.

  ‘That’s water coming through the ceiling.’

  They both got up. Marius went first into the living room. Water was coming in but in a spreading stream trickling under the door while the dripping went on. It was Rose who opened the door to the kitchen. A shallow lake covered the tiled floor, its level slowly increased by the drips which fell not into Marius’s sink but on to the overflowing draining board and splashed into the lake itself.

  ‘It’s coming from Olwen’s,’ said Rose. ‘I know I’m a bit silly sometimes, Marius. I do know that. I asked Michael at Stuart’s party if women had more ribs than men because of Adam and Eve and I could see he thought I was an idiot –’

  ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Yes, well, I am sometimes. What I was going to say was, you know what happens to that old man in Bleak House, he’s drunk so much he sort of explodes – what’s it called?’

  ‘Spontaneous combustion,’ said Marius, already laughing.

  ‘And he sort of liquefies – well, you don’t think Olwen …?’

  ‘No, darling Rose, I don’t. This is water. She’s left a tap running. I’ll phone Scurlock and then we’ll go up there, try to get in.’

  Richenda answered. She sounded triumphant. ‘He’s not here. The police have taken him away and his computer and an envelope full of bits of dirty pictures come out of the recycling. You want him, you get on to them. I’ll see you later.’ She slammed down the phone.

  Rose and Marius got dressed and went up to the top floor. They expected to see water coming under the front door but there was nothing. Marius rang Olwen’s bell and when there was no answer rang it again. Rose took off one of her shoes and hammered on the door with it.

  ‘We’re going to have to break it down.’

  ‘Oh, darling, can you do that? It looks so easy in those detective serials but I’m sure it isn’t, in real life.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t too, but I can try.’

  Marius tried. He took a running jump at the door, giving it a kick which did more harm to him than the door. As he retreated, clutching hold of the small of his back, a door slammed on the floor below and Michael Constantine came bounding up the stairs.

  ‘Has something happened to her?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Marius. ‘All I know is she’s flooding my flat and she doesn’t answer the door.’

  ‘Let me have a go.’

  Marius and Rose both knew (they told each other afterwards) that Michael would succeed at first try and so he did. The door flew open. Olwen was sitting on the sofa. She tried to get up but failed and sank back on to the dirty red cushions, staring at them with clouded eyes, her mouth half open. Marius opened the door to the kitchen. He released a flood and quickly closed it again. Taking off his shoes and socks, he rolled up his trousers, plunged once more into the kitchen and turned off the cold tap from which water had been pouring into the already overflowing sink.

  ‘We’ll have to bale it out or the lot will come through,’ he said, pulling out the sink plug.

  The three of them began baling out the water, using whatever utensils came to hand, a fruit bowl, a vase and a small milk saucepan. Olwen was ill-equipped with pans and possessed no buckets. It took a long time and the final inch had to be soaked up with cloths. Michael opened a cupboard and found it full of rags. One of these, something which had once been a skirt, black with coloured flowers, Rose used to complete the drying of the floor.

  Marius quoted ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and said that there was water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink, and when they looked about them they noticed the absence of the expected vodka and gin bottles. Olwen was staring at the window. Afterwards Rose said to Marius that the look on her face reminded her of a character in a television sitcom gazing at something out of shot that the viewer can’t see but knows, because of her expression, must be terrible. And then Olwen did speak. She spoke the longest sentence any of them had ever heard from her.

  ‘They’re climbing up the window again, a whole gang of them, like they were crawling over the sink when I turned the tap on, more of them now, too many of them to count.’

  On the other side of the room Rose said to Michael, ‘What does she mean?’ They withdrew
into the still damp kitchen. ‘What is it she sees?’

  ‘God knows. But I know what it is. It’s called “delirium tremens”. It happens to alcoholics, they have hallucinations of animals or people or anything. I’ve never seen it before.’

  ‘We shall have to do something,’ said Marius.

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’ Michael thought he might write about the DTs for his next article, as a warning to binge-drinking teenagers.

  *

  Richenda had no notion of the nature of the pornography Wally had been watching and no clear idea of what was legal to watch and what illegal. Whatever it might be, it was enough to drive her to leave him, something she had been contemplating for a long time now. She intended not to go far. Working all day and every day except Sunday, cleaning flats in the four blocks, she was making a good income and had decided to rent one of the flats herself, a studio probably, of which there were two in Ludlow House, one presently vacant.

  The estate office wouldn’t open for another half-hour. She packed the two largest suitcases, stuffing into them, among her clothes, Wally’s camera, her hairdryer and their radio. The television she put back into the box it had come in and loaded it on to a shopping trolley she had filched from the Tesco. She considered leaving her front-door key behind but decided to keep it. You never knew what else she might want to come back for.

  Getting all this stuff up the stairs was a struggle but after three journeys she had the lot up in the hallway. Standing there, thinking what her next move was to be, she saw the lift open and two paramedics emerge with Olwen on a stretcher. They carried her out and loaded the stretcher into the back of their ambulance. Richenda left her bags where they were but took the trolley and the television set with her.

  The letting manager had just opened the office. He knew Richenda well, could almost have called himself a friend, and was happy to offer her a six-month lease of Flat 6, the vacant studio in Ludlow House. Richenda gave him a cheque for a large deposit and by ten o’clock she had moved in. In half an hour she was due at her first job, cleaning Marius Potter’s flat.