[Wexford 01] From Doon & Death

by Ruth Rendell

  Drury's house had a yellow front door with a lot of neatly tied climbing roses on the trellis round the porch. In the middle of the lawn was a small pond made from a plastic bath and on its rim stood a plaster gnome with a fishing rod. Someone had evidently been polishing the Ford Popular on the garage drive. As a vehicle for clandestine touring Mrs Katz would probably have despised it, but it was certainly shiny enough to have dazzled Margaret Parsons.

  The door-knocker was a cast-iron lion's head with a ring in its mouth. Wexford banged it hard, but no one came, so he pushed open the side gate and they entered the back garden. On a vegetable plot by the rear fence a man was digging potatoes.

  Wexford coughed and the man turned round. He had a red glistening face, and although it was warm, the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt were buttoned. His sandy hair and the whiteness of his wrists confirmed Wexford's opinion that he was probably sensitive to sunburn. Not the sort of man. Burden thought, to be fond of poetry and send snippets of verse to the girl he loved, surely not the sort of man to buy expensive books and write delicate whimsical messages in their fly-leaves.

  'Mr Drury?' Wexford asked quietly.

  Drury looked startled, almost frightened, but this could simply be alarm at the invasion of his garden by two men much larger man himself. There was sweat on his upper lip, again probably only the result of manual toil

  'Who are you?'

  It was a thin highish voice that sounded as if its development towards a greater resonance had been arrested in puberty.

  'Chief Inspector Wexford, sir, and Inspector Burden. County Police.'

  Drury had looked after his garden. Apart from a couple of square yards from which potatoes had been lifted, there were various freshly turned patches all over the flower-beds. He stuck the prongs of the fork into the ground and wiped his hands on his trousers.

  Is this something to do with Margaret?' he asked.

  ‘I think we'd better go into the house, Mr Drury.'

  He took them in through a pair of french windows, considerably less elegant than Mrs Missal's, and into a tiny room crowded with post-war utility furniture.

  Someone had just eaten a solitary meal. The cloth was still on the table and the dirty plates had been half-heartedly stacked.

  "My wife's away’ Drury said. 'She took the kids to the seaside this morning. What can I do for you?’

  He sat down on a dining chair, offered another to Burden and, observant of protocol, left the only armchair to Wexford.

  'Why did you ask if it was something to do with Margaret, Mr Drury?'

  ‘I recognized her photograph in the paper. It gave me a bit of a turn. Then I went to a do at the chapel last night and they were all talking about it. It made me feel a bit queer, I can tell you, on account of me meeting Margaret through the chapel.'

  That would have been Flagford Methodist Church, Burden reflected. He recalled a maroon-painted hut with a corrugated-iron roof on the north side of the village green.

  Drury didn't look scared any longer, only sad. Burden was struck by his resemblance to Ronald Parsons, not only a physical likeness but a similarity of phrase and manner. As well as the undistinguished features, the thin sandy hair, this man had the same defensiveness, the same humdrum turn of speech. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. Anyone less like Douglas Quadrant would have been difficult to imagine.

  Tell me about your relationship with Margaret Godfrey,' Wexford said.

  Drury looked startled.

  It wasn't a relationship’ he said.

  What did he think he was being accused of? Burden wondered.

  'She was one of my girl friends. She was just a kid at school I met her at chapel and took her out... what, a dozen times’

  'When did you first take her out, Mr Drury?'

  'It's a long time ago. Twelve years, thirteen years ... I can't remember’ He looked at his hands on which the crusts of earth were drying. 'Will you excuse me if I go and have a bit of a wash?'

  He went out of the room. Through the open serving hatch Burden saw him run the hot tap and swill his hands under it. Wexford moved out of Drury's line of vision and towards the bookcase. Among the Penguins and the Reader's Digests was a volume covered in navy-blue suede. Wexford took it out quickly, read the inscription and handed it to Burden.

  It was the same printing, the same' breathless loving style. Above the title - The Picture of Dorian Gray - Burden read:

  Man cannot live on wine alone, Minna, hut this is the very best bread and butter. Farewell. Doon, July, 1951.

  Chapter 11

  They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee, Better men fared thus before thee.

  Matthew Arnold,

  The Last Word

  Drury came back, smiling cautiously. He had rolled up his sleeves and his hands were pink. When he saw the book Wexford was holding the smile faded and he said aggressively:

  ‘I think you're taking a liberty’

  'Where did you get this book, Mr Drury?'

  Drury peered at the printing, looked at Wexford and blushed. The tic returned, pumping his chin.

  'Oh dear’ he said, 'she gave it me. I'd forgotten I'd got it.'

  Wexford had become stern. His thick lower lip stood out, giving him a prognathous look.

  'Look here, she gave me that book when I was taking her out. It says July here and that’s when it must have been. July, that’s right' The blush faded and he went white. He sat down heavily. 'You don't believe me, do you? My wife’ll tell you. If s been there ever since we got married.'

  'Why did Mrs Parsons give it to you, Mr Drury?'

  I'd been taking her out for a few weeks.' He stared at Wexford with eyes like a hare's caught in the beam of headlights. ‘It was the summer of -’I don't know. What does it say there? Fifty-one. We were in her aunt’s house. A parcel came for Margaret and she opened it. She looked sort of mad and she just chucked it down, chucked it on the floor, you see, but I picked it up. I'd heard of it and I thought... well, I thought it was a smutty book if you must know, and I wanted to read it She said, "Here, you can have it, if you like’' Something like that I can't remember the details of what she said. It was a long time ago. Minna had got fed up with this Doon and I thought she was sort of ashamed of him.. ‘ 'Minna?'

  'I started calling her Minna then because of the name in the book. What have I said? For God's sake, don't look at me like that!'

  Wexford stuck the book in his pocket.

  'When did you last see her?'

  Drury picked at the cord that bound the seat of his chair. He began pulling out little shreds of red cotton. At last he said:

  'She went away in the August. Her uncle had died..’

  'No, no. I mean recently’

  ‘I saw her last week. That isn't a crime, is it, seeing somebody you used to know? I was in the car and I recognized her. She was in the High Street, in Kingsmarkham. I stopped for a minute and asked her how she was, that sort of thing.. ‘

  'Go on. I want all the details’

  'She said she was married and I said so was I. She said she'd come to live in Tabard Road and I said we must get together sometime with her husband and Kathleen. Kathleen's my wife. Anyway, I said I'd give her a ring, and that was all.'

  'She told you her married name?'

  'Of course she did. Why shouldn't she?'

  'Mr Drury, you said you recognized her photograph. Didn't you recognize her name?'

  Her name, her face, what's the odds? I'm not in court I can't watch every word I say.'

  Just tell the truth and you won't have to watch your words. Did you telephone her?'

  'Of course I didn't I was going to, but then I read she was dead.'

  'Where were you on Tuesday between twelve-thirty and seven?'

  ‘I was at work. I work in my uncle's hardware shop in Pomfret Ask him, he’ll tell you I was there all day.'

  'What time does the shop close?' 'Half past five, but I always try to get away early on Tuesdays. Look, you won't
believe me.' Try me, Mr Drury.'

  ‘I know you won't believe me, but my wifell tell you, my uncle'll tell you. I always go to Flagford on Tuesdays to collect my wife's vegetable order. There's a nursery there, see, on the Clusterwell Road. You have to get there by half five otherwise they're closed. Well, we were busy last Tuesday and I was late. I try to get away by five, but it was all of a quarter past. When I got to Spellman's there wasn't anybody about. I went round the back of the greenhouses and I called out, but they'd gone.'

  'So you went home without the vegetables?'

  'No, I didn't Well, I did, but not straight away. I'd had a hard day and I was fed up about the place being closed, so I went into The Swan and had a drink. A girl served me. I've never seen her before. Look, does my wife have to know about that? I'm a Methodist, see? I'm a member of the chapel. I'm not supposed to drink.'

  Burden drew in his breath. A murder enquiry and he was worrying about his clandestine pint!

  'You drove to Flagford along the main Pomfret Road?'

  'Yes, I did. I drove right past that wood where they found her’ Drury got up and fumbled in vain along the mantelpiece for cigarettes. 'But I never stopped. I drove straight to Hagford. I was in a hurry to get the order ... Look, Chief Inspector, I wouldn't have done anything to Minna. She was a nice kid. I was fond of her. I wouldn't do a thing like that, kill someone!'

  'Who else called her Minna apart from you?'

  'Only this Doon fellow as far as I know. She never told me his real name. I got the impression she was sort of ashamed of him. Goodness knows why. He was rich and he was clever too. She said he was clever.' He drew himself up and looked at them belligerently. 'She preferred me’ he said.

  He got up suddenly and stared at the chair he had mutilated. Among the dirty plates was a milk bottle, half full, with yellow curds sticking to its rim. He tipped the bottle into an empty tea-cup and drank from it, slopping a puddle into the saucer.

  ‘I should sit down if I were you’ Wexford said.

  He went into the hall and beckoned to Burden. They stood close together in the narrow passage. The carpet was frayed by the kitchen door and one of Drury's children had scribbled on the wallpaper with a blue crayon.

  'Get on to The Swan, Mike’ he said. He thought he heard Drury's chair shift and, remembering the open french windows, turned swiftly. But Drury was still sitting at the table, his head buried in his hands.

  The walls were thin and he could hear Burden's voice in the front room, then a faint trill as the receiver went back into its rest. Burden's feet thumped across the floor, entered the hall and stopped. There was utter silence and Wexford edged out of the door, keeping his eye on Drury through the crack.

  Burden was standing by the front door. On the wall at the foot of the narrow staircase was a coat-rack, a zig-zag metal affair with gaudily coloured knobs instead of hooks. A man's sports jacket and a child's plastic mac hung on two of the knobs and on the one nearest to the stairs was a transparent pink nylon hood.

  'It won't take prints,' Wexford said. 'Get back on that phone, Mike. I shall want some help. Bryant and Gates should be coming on about now.'

  He unhooked the hood, covered the diminutive hall in three strides, and showed his find to Drury.

  'Where did you get this, Mr Drury?'

  'It must be my wife's,' Drury said. Suddenly assertive, he added pugnaciously. If s no business of yours!'

  'Mrs Parsons bought a hood like this one on Tuesday morning.' Wexford watched him crumple once more in sick despair. ‘I want your permission to search this house, Drury. Make no mistake about it, I can get a warrant, but it’ll take a little longer.'

  Drury looked as if he was going to cry.

  'Oh, do what you like’ he said. 'Only, can I have a cigarette? I've left mine in the kitchen.'

  Inspector Burden will get them when he comes off the phone,' Wexford said.

  They began to search, and within half an hour were joined by Gates and Bryant. Then Wexford told Burden to contact Dairy's uncle at Pomfret, Spellman's nursery and the manager of the supermarket.

  The girl at The Swan isn't on tonight’ Burden said, 'but she lives in Flagford at 3 Cross Roads Cottages. No phone. Her name's Janet Tipping.'

  'Well get Martin over there straight away. Try and get a phone number out of Drury where we can get hold of his wife. If she's not gone far away - Brighton or Eastbourne - you can get down there tonight.

  When I've turned the place over I'm going to have another word with Mrs Quadrant. She admits she was "friendly" with Mrs P. and she's practically the only person who does, apart from our friend in the next room.'

  Burden stretched the pink scarf taut, testing its strength.

  'You really think he's Doon?' he asked incredulously.

  Wexford went on opening drawers, feeling among a melee of coloured pencils, Snap cards, reels of cotton, scraps of paper covered with children's scribble. Mrs Drury wasn't a tidy housewife and all the cupboards and drawers were in a mess.

  'I don't know’ he said. 'At the moment it looks like it, but it leaves an awful lot of loose ends. It doesn't fit in with my fancies, Mike, and since we can't afford to go by fancies...'

  He looked through every book in the house - there were not more than two or three dozen - but he found no more from Doon to Minna. There was no Victorian poetry and the only novels apart from The Picture of Dorian Gray were paperback thrillers.

  On a hook in the kitchen cabinet Bryant found a bunch of keys. One fitted the front door lock, another the strong box in Drury's bedroom, two more the dining-room and front-room doors, and a fifth the garage. The ignition keys to Drury's car were in his jacket on the coat-rack and the key to the back door was in the lock. Wexford, looking for purses, found only one, a green and white plastic thing in the shape of a cat’s face. It was empty and labelled on the inside: Susan Mary Drury. Drury's daughter had taken her savings with her to the seaside.

  The loft was approached by a hatch in the landing ceiling. Wexford told Bryant to get Drury's steps from the garage and investigate this loft He left

  Gates downstairs with Drury and went out to his car. On the way he scraped some dust from the tyres of the blue Ford.

  A thin drizzle was falling. It was ten o'clock and dark for a midsummer evening. If Drury had killed her at half past five, he thought, it would still have been broad daylight, much too early to need the light of a match flame. It would have to be a match they had found. Of all the things to leave behind a matchstick was surely the least incriminating! And why hadn't she paid for her papers, what had she done with herself during the long hours between the time she left the house and, the time she met Doon? But Drury was terribly frightened ... Wexford too had observed the resemblance between him and Ronald Parsons. It was reasonable to suppose, he argued, that this type of personality attracted Margaret Parsons and that she had chosen her husband because he reminded her of her old lover.

  He switched on his headlights, pulled the windscreen wiper button, and started back towards Kingsmarkham.

  Chapter 12

  Were you and she whom I met at dinner last week,

  With eyes and hair of the Ptolemy black?

  Sir Edwin Arnold, To a Pair of Egyptian Slippers

  The house looked forbidding at night. In Wexford's headlights the rough grey granite glittered and the leaves of the flowerless wistaria which clung to it showed up a livid yellowish green.

  Someone was dining with the Quadrants. Wexford pulled up beside the black Daimler and went up the steps to the front door. He rang the bell several times; then the door was opened, smoothly, almost offensively slowly, by Quadrant himself.

  For dining with Helen Missal he had worn a lounge suit At home, with his wife and guests, he ascended to evening dress. But there was nothing vulgar about Quadrant, no fancy waistcoat, no flirtation with midnight blue. The dinner jacket was black and faultless, the shirt - Wexford liked to hit on an apt quotation himself when he could - 'whiter than new snow on a rave
n's back'.

  He said nothing but seemed to stare right through Wexford at the shadowy garden beyond. There was an insolent majesty about him which the tapestries that framed his figure did nothing to dispel. Then Wexford told himself sharply that this man was, after all, only a provincial solicitor.

  'I'd like another word with your wife, Mr Quadrant’ 'At this hour?'

  Wexford looked at his watch and at the same time Quadrant lifted his own cuff - links of silver and onyx glinted in the muted lights - raised his eyebrow at the square platinum dial on his wrist and said:

  If s extremely inconvenient’ He made no move to let Wexford enter. 'My wife isn't a particularly strong woman and we do happen to have my parents-in-law dining with us...'

  Old man Rogers and his missus, Pomfret Hall, Wexford thought vulgarly. He stood stolidly, not smiling.

  'Oh, very well,' Quadrant said, 'but keep it brief, will you?'

  There was a faint movement in the hall behind him. A brown dress, a wisp of coffee-coloured stuff, appeared for an instant against the embroidered trees on the hangings, then Mrs Quadrant's nanny scuttled away.

  'You'd better go into the library.' Quadrant showed him into a room furnished with blue leather chairs. ‘I won't offer you a drink since you're on duty’ The words were a little offensive. Then Quadrant gave his quick cat-like smile. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'while I fetch my wife.' He turned with the slow graceful movement of a dance measure, paused briefly and closed the door behind him, shutting Wexford in.

  So he wasn't going to let him bust in on any family party, Wexford thought The man was nervous, hiding some nebulous fear in the manner of men of his kind, under a massive self-control.

  As he waited he looked about him at the books. There were hundreds here, tier upon tier of them on every wall. Plenty of Victorian poetry and plenty of Victorian novels, but just as much verse from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wexford shrugged. Kingsmarkham was surrounded by such houses as this one, a bastion of affluence, houses with libraries, libraries with books...