Not in the Flesh

by Ruth Rendell

  Now as he waited to be admitted to Tredown's room, he thought of things that had hardly occurred to him before. Naively, he had supposed he could prevent the mutilation of girls and so perhaps he could, but only after a number of them had already been mutilated, for in order for a prosecution to succeed a circumciser would have to be caught either in the act or when it was in the recent past and the poor little child crippled, her legs bound together. Later he would read through the Act of Parliament and see if there was provision for a charge of intention to commit mutilation, though, without going any further, he could see all the problems and pitfalls this would entail.

  Tredown had had his shower, been shaved, and was propped up in his bed this time. A drip had been inserted in the back of his hand. Surely pointless at this stage? But no, perhaps it was a painkiller that traveled down that tube to make his last days more bearable. Tredown's greenish pallor was even more marked today and his sad smile more revealing of the skull beneath the skin. This time he noticed the cast on Wexford's arm and remarked on it.

  So no one had told him. The last thing Wexford wanted was to tell him that his wife had been charged with attempted murder. “A fall,” he said. “It's just a simple fracture.”

  This satisfied him. “I was telling you about the letter,” he began. “I told you it said I could have the manuscript to do what I liked with. I took that to mean I could-well, make it mine.”

  “But he'd taken the copy away with him, hadn't he? If he meant to give it to you why would he do that?”

  “He took it out of my-the room where I work. That was where we'd talked. That evening my wife brought it to me. He'd given it to her before he left.”

  “Mr. Tredown, do you mean he'd given it to her, or she said he'd given it to her?”

  Tredown frowned. “It's the same thing.”

  “Not always,” Wexford said.

  “I hear what you're saying. And, yes, I'll tell you now that I did have doubts. Oh, more than that, more than that.” The agonized note in his voice came from mental, not physical, pain. “I did write to him-that is, I got Maeve to write to him, saying it was too enormous a gift and telling him again how good it was and how very likely it was to be published and perhaps make a lot of money.”

  “You never saw him again?”

  “Not in the flesh.” The words and the way in which they were spoken brought Wexford an unpleasant feeling that someone or something was watching them. Tredown shivered. “It was just my fancy,” he said. “In the evenings-when I was alone upstairs-if there was a heavy rainfall-but this is pointless, I mustn't go on like this.”

  Indeed you must not, Wexford thought, or I shall begin to think you not quite sane. “So you went to work on the manuscript?”

  Tredown nodded. “Yes, I did. I cut it. I gave some scenes more weight and others less. I took out a lot of technical stuff about the prehistoric creatures and early men. There were episodes in it I thought weren't consistent with Homer and Ovid, I… But why go on? I made it mine, as you say. Maeve was enthusiastic and so was Claudia. Maeve spent hours typing for me-I'm not much of a typist. She transcribed my handwriting and the changes I made to the original manuscript.”

  Wexford was anxious not to sound judgmental. The man was at death's door. He was a wreck of what he had been and, in spite of the palliative drip, he was no doubt in pain. But, if he wasn't precisely shocked by what he had heard, he was astonished at what he saw as villainy. Tredown had been so set on money, urged on by wife and ex-wife, so desperate for fame that it meant nothing to him that the celebrity he achieved would not be his own but stolen from another. “Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise…” but it wasn't only the clear spirit that was raised by that prospect but sometimes greed and theft. For, of course, Tredown had known there had been theft and perhaps worse than theft, but it hadn't stopped him making The First Heaven his own work. Wexford heard his own voice cold and condemning.

  “Didn't you wonder when you never heard from him again?”

  “Maeve told me he'd said he wanted to put the whole thing behind him. Maybe he'd read the book when it came out, but he had no wish for it to be acclaimed as his own.”

  “Perhaps we can leave Samuel Miller for the time being and talk about the man you found to be your researcher. I take his job was to deal with the passages that weren't consistent with Homer and Ovid and with the prehistoric detail.”

  Tredown's frown was back. “What do you mean? I did my own research and I don't know any Samuel Miller. I think we're at cross purposes here.”

  “I think so too.” Wexford got up, stiff and aching. He stumbled, clutched the back of the chair with his left hand. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “I won't take up any more of your time.”

  The death's-head smile came again. “No, it isn't as if I've much of it left.”

  “That was when things fell into place,” Wexford said. He had already passed his discoveries on to the assistant chief constable and was talking to Burden in his office; Hannah and Barry had been sent for. “As in most cases when the truth becomes clear you wonder how you could ever have seen things differently.”

  “But for matching the rings,” said Burden, “would we ever have known it?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Wexford moved behind his desk as Hannah came into the room. It was the first time she had seen the plaster and the sling. “Please may I write something on your cast, guv?”

  “I'm afraid not. It's strictly for persons under twelve.”

  The chances were that she'd have written something along the lines of “Best wishes to the guv.” He'd have had to carry that “guv” about with him for the next five weeks. He watched her settle herself into the chair next to Burden's, leaving the remaining one to Barry. “I'll start at the beginning,” he said, and then added as Barry hurried in, “I'd say ‘good of you to join us’ except that I know where you've been.”

  “Claudia Ricardo is in Interview Room One with Lyn, sir. I asked her about Alan Hexham and she said, ‘Don't be ridiculous. I never laid a finger on him.’ ”

  “If laying a finger on someone was a prerequisite for a murder conviction,” Wexford said, “we'd have a lot more room in our prisons. We wouldn't have eighty thousand banged up.” His sigh was inaudible. “Now for the beginning. It begins, of course, with Alan Hexham living in that house in Barnes with his wife and his two small daughters. For they were still small when he started writing the novel we now know as The First Heaven. He wrote it secretly up in that tiny room of his where everyone else in the household had learned to respect his absolute privacy.”

  “Why did he do it in secret, guv?”

  “Some people have secretive natures. We have plenty of evidence for that. Acting in secret satisfies something in their temperament and adds a spice to what they do. On a more practical level, if no one knows they won't ask the sort of questions that may be very damaging to the project. And I imagine there's always the fear of being scoffed at-even laughed at. They may ask what's going on behind the closed door. But they can be fobbed off with tales of marking homework, filling in forms, preparing lessons. I don't think Hexham did much of that. He wanted it to be thought that he was doing research for authors, advising them, but again his wife must have wondered when he earned nothing by it. Maybe he told her he'd tried and failed.”

  “What did you mean about ‘damaging to the project?’ ” Burden asked.

  “Some writers thrive on making the people close to them aware of exactly what they're doing, reading their latest chapter to them, discussing it in detail, but there are others for whom the whole creative process is ruined if it's-well, brought out into the light of day. I had a writer say to me once that she'd written ten chapters of a novel when her boyfriend found it and read it. He was delighted, loved every word, could quote from it at length, but it ruined it for her. She had to abandon it and start afresh.”

  “Abandoned the boyfriend too, I should think,” said Hannah.

  �
��I believe she did. Anyway, this seems to have been Hexham's attitude, too. It's part shyness, part dread of ridicule, and part a fear that the person who reads it will begin with high hopes and be disappointed. Hexham seems to have had a happy marriage, but we don't know-his daughters certainly don't know-what the precise relations between the two of them were when they were alone. Isn't it possible that Diana Hexham wouldn't have understood what he was getting at? They were never very well off and she didn't work until after he disappeared. We know he took on the occasional tutoring job. Perhaps if she'd known about The First Heaven she'd have wondered why he was wasting his evenings playing at writing a novel which might never be published rather than taking on more coaching for exams. Whatever the answer to that is, he did keep it secret, kept it entirely to himself until it was finished and beyond.”

  Burden said, “A pity he chose Owen Tredown to send that manuscript to. Why did he? Why choose Tredown?”

  “We're never going to know that. Tredown says Hexham had heard him speak on the radio. That may or may not be true. Possibly he just liked Tredown's books-he had two of them in his house-or he may have read an article in a newspaper about Tredown saying that unlike many authors, he read the manuscripts which were sent to him. Anyway, he did send it. He'd have been wiser and safer if he'd thrown it on a bonfire.”

  “Put it in the recycling, guv,” said Hannah in a reproving tone.

  “Or put it in the recycling as you say, Hannah.” In a few words, he thought, she wiped away centuries in which the only way to get rid of paper was to burn it. Was she aware there was life before modern planet-saving measures? He almost laughed. “Tredown read it and thought it wonderful. He told me he was envious. He was jealous of someone who could write that, but I don't believe he had any idea of plagiarism, of stealing someone else's work, at that stage. He wrote to Hexham, praising the book and asking him to come and see him. Or, rather, he got his wife to write. Apparently, she did all his secretarial work. What exactly she said in that letter-or, come to that, subsequent letters-we don't yet know. We may never know.

  “The date Hexham got this letter was in late May. He might then have told his wife, but he didn't. I imagine he was waiting to surprise her with a fait accompli. His old friend Maurice Davidson died and his funeral was fixed for the fifteenth of June. This, incidentally, was three days after John Grimble was refused permission to build more than one house on his deceased father's land. The trench for the main drainage had been dug and now there was no option but to fill it in again.

  “Hexham wrote to say he would be in Sussex on the fifteenth and could he come to see Tredown at about three in the afternoon.”

  Here Barry Vine broke in with, “Why wasn't any of this done by phone, sir?”

  “Presumably, because of maintaining the secrecy. Diana Hexham might have taken the call. Besides, then Tredown would have spoken to Hexham and Maeve would have had no control over what he said. You have to remember too that a lot more letters were written eleven years ago than are today in the e-mail age. Be that as it may, Hexham was told that would be fine and in that letter, written of course by Maeve, he was asked to bring the other copy of the manuscript he had with him. She must have asked and been told he had just the two copies. Remember too it had been typed on an old-fashioned electric typewriter, so unless Hexham possessed a photocopier, which we know he didn't, the number of copies would have been limited.”

  “Wouldn't Hexham have asked why they wanted a second copy, guv?”

  “Probably, but there are answers to that. Such as, so that Tredown could send manuscripts to two publishers or to an agent and a publisher. Anyway, Hexham was satisfied and he brought the second manuscript with him in his briefcase, taking it with him first of all to the funeral and then to the Davidsons' house. He left that house later and caught the 2:20 train to Kingsmarkham. It was pouring with rain. There was no bus for an hour so he took a taxi, which brought him to Athelstan House at a few minutes to three.”

  Burden, who had been fidgeting, took this opportunity to break in. “While all this letter writing was going on there must have been a good deal of discussion between Tredown and his wife-Claudia, too, I expect-as to what line they were to take with Hexham. I mean, I suppose there was a point where Tredown acknowledged to himself and maybe to the two of them that he wanted to pass it off as his own work.”

  “This is one of the things we have to find out,” said Wexford. “If we can. The trouble is that two vital witnesses are dead and another one soon will be. However, decide they did. Not, I think, to murder Hexham, not then. At that point they seem to have had some plan to try and buy the manuscript from him and have him relinquish all rights to it.”

  “They'd never have been safe then, sir. When the book came out, what would there have been to stop him telling some news-paper Tredown had stolen it from him?”

  “Nothing, probably, Barry. Nothing to stop him saying that, but with both copies gone and no member of his family knowing he'd written anything, what evidence would he have had? Anyway, even if they did plan that, it came to nothing. Hexham came and apparently saw Tredown alone. At first. Again we don't know and probably won't know what they said to each other, but it appears that Hexham took the second manuscript away with him, having learned all he wanted to learn, that his novel was good and very likely worth publishing. The rest, he probably thought, he could handle himself.

  “It seems he was given tea by Maeve and Claudia and, as it was still raining, promised a lift to Kingsmarkham station. Not in a taxi this time, but in the Tredowns' own car, that same vehicle Maeve used as a lethal weapon on me. Only it wasn't as lethal as she hoped.”

  “Was it lethal to Hexham?” Barry asked.

  “You'll have to wait awhile for that. To be continued in our next installment, as magazines that ran serials used to say. Inspector Burden and I have an engagement with Miss Ricardo in Interview Room One.”

  27

  “I never laid a finger on him,” Claudia Ricardo said again. “Funny, that phrase, isn't it? As if touching someone would kill him. The touch of death.” She laughed musical peals. “Be useful, wouldn't it? Like a ray shooting out of one's forehead you get in those films about aliens. Noli me tangere would have some real meaning.”

  Priscilla Daventry, her solicitor, was looking grim. One's clients were not supposed to behave like this. One's clients should be rude or truculent or abusive or frightened, in need of reassurance or comfort, preferably silent, though that was rare, but not lighthearted and speculative as this woman was.

  “Who drove Mr. Hexham to Kingsmarkham station?” Wexford asked her.

  “Maeve couldn't drive then. She's a terrible driver now,” Claudia giggled. “I mean, I can't drive at all, but I'd still be better at it than she is, if you get my meaning. And of course you get my meaning! I was forgetting. She did that to your arm, didn't she? Poor Maeve, she shouldn't be allowed out at the wheel of a car.”

  “Just answer the question, will you, Miss Ricardo?”

  “I wasn't there. I went up to Owen.”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  “My client has answered the question,” said Priscilla Daventry. “She said she wasn't there.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Samuel Miller.”

  “I suppose you mean ‘love affair.’ That's such a terrible expression, ‘relationship.’ I mean I have a relationship of sorts with you, though I'd rather not. I have a relationship with Miss Daventry, and I certainly have one with Maeve. But I don't fuck them, which is what you mean by the word, isn't it?”

  Wexford just stopped himself shaking his head. He glanced at Burden, who said, “Did you have sexual relations with Samuel Miller?”

  “Well, I did in 1995. When he was doing our garden. Sometimes in the garden. That shocks you, I can see. Policemen are such prudes.”

  One of the most irritating things someone can say to you is to tell you you're shocked when you're not. Burden reflected on this without ris
ing to the bait. “And when he came back three years later?”

  “Not then,” she said. “He'd taken up with that Bridget woman and I'd-well, I'd moved on. That's the contemporary expression, isn't it? Moved on?” She looked at Wexford and smiled, turned the smile on to Burden, and then, broadening it, onto Priscilla Daventry. “I'm not going to say any more. Silence is about to reign. It's no good asking me because I'm going to keep silent.”

  And she did. He tried to move her to answer, but she remained speechless. She sat smiling and contemplated her long, clawlike, unpainted fingernails. She crossed her legs, right over left, then left over right. She said nothing. Burden took over the questioning. She smiled at him. When he asked her if she had killed Alan Hexham, she smiled more broadly, and when he asked her if Maeve Tredown had, she closed her eyes. Staying there was useless, and after half an hour the interview was terminated, Claudia Ricardo returning to one of Kingsmarkham police station's two cells, and the two policemen going back to Wexford's office. Hannah and Barry had left but returned when sent for, and Karen Malahyde came with them. Claudia Ricardo had been given refreshments, but there had been none for Wexford and Burden, so Hannah sent down for tea.

  “As I said, Hexham came to Athelstan House and saw Tredown alone,” Wexford resumed. “I don't really know how Tredown could have been so confident this story of his could become a best-seller. Of course this may be because I couldn't see much in it myself, but the fact remains that Tredown fell in love with it. He more or less told me so. And, as we know, he was right. He had to get his hands on it and make it his own. Maeve and Claudia appear to have been as enthusiastic as he was. But whereas Tredown left to himself wouldn't, I'm sure, have contemplated anything criminal to get hold of it, they would and did. Tredown may have thought of buying it from Hexham or simply persuading Hexham that whereas he could easily get it published because of the name he already had, Hexham himself would have had great difficulties.