The Veiled One

by Ruth Rendell

  “Dear Sandra Dale,” he read, “I know this is awful and horrible and I am disgusted with myself, but I can’t pretend about it any longer. The fact is that I am experiencing very powerful sexual feelings toward my own teenage son. I think I am in love with him. All the time I struggle against these feelings of which I assure you I am deeply ashamed, but just the same …”

  He had to stop and sit up straight again as Rosie Unwin came in with the coffee, but not before he had noticed that there was an address on the letter and it was signed. Strange. He had somehow assumed most letters would be anonymous.

  “About point nought-nought-one per cent,” she said when he spoke these thoughts aloud. “And most people send us a stamped addressed envelope too.”

  “How do you make your selection? The ones you decide to print, I mean?”

  “We don’t pick the most bizarre,” she said. “That one you were reading, that wasn’t typical. You were reading it, weren’t you? Everyone who comes in here reads the letters; they can’t resist it.”

  “Well, I admit I was. You wouldn’t print that, though?”

  “Probably not. That’s for Sandra to decide, and then if there’s any query it would be the editor’s decision—I mean the editor of Kim. “

  “Like going to a higher court,” Wexford murmured.

  “Sandra picks out those she thinks will have the widest appeal or impact—let’s say common problems, the most human if you like. We’d only print the reply to that one from the woman who fancies her own son. We’d say, ‘To W.D., Wiltshire,’ and then write our reply. I mean we do draw the line. Can you believe it, we had a letter last week from someone asking us what the protein content of semen was … it’s about somewhere.”

  Wexford was saved from replying by the return of Sandra Dale. He waited until she was seated again, then asked her, “So you last saw Lesley when? On Thursday November 19?”

  “That’s right. She didn’t come in on the Friday, she phoned in and told me about her aunt, though I knew then, mind you: I recognized the name. And on the Monday—Monday the twenty-third, that is—she started the computer course. It was a bit of luck, if you can call it luck in the circumstances, that the course happened to be in the same town where her uncle lives.”

  “She left here on Thursday afternoon, did she? What time would that have been—five? Five-thirty?”

  Sandra Dale looked surprised. “No, no, she took the afternoon off. I thought you knew.”

  Wexford smiled neutrally.

  “She finished at one. It was something about having to go down to Kingsmarkham to register for the course. She’d filled in one of the forms wrongly, something like that; she tried to phone the place, but their phone was out of order. Well, according to her it was. I’ll be frank with you: I wasn’t terribly pleased. I mean, I’d got to do without my secretary for a fortnight as it was, and all for the sake of doing our page on a word processor instead of a typewriter which had always suited us perfectly well.”

  Wexford thanked her. This was not at all what he had expected to hear. He had hoped only to pick up from the agony aunt’s department some useful pointers to Lesley Arbel’s character. Instead he had been handed a smashed alibi.

  Rosie Unwin said as he was leaving, “I hope you won’t mind my asking, but are you any relation to Sheila Wexford?”

  He was always being asked that, so he ought not to have experienced that clutch at the heart. “Why do you ask?” he responded rather too quickly.

  She was taken aback. “Only that I admire her very much. I mean, I think she’s beautiful and a great actress.”

  Not that she had heard something awful on the news, or been told of Sheila’s fatal injuries … death … on breakfast television …

  “She’s my daughter,” he said.

  They liked him now, they were all over him. He should have told them the minute he came in, he thought. He waited for one of them—the younger, surely—to tell him as most people sooner or later did that Sheila didn’t look much like him, inferring really not so much lack of resemblance as the discrepancy between her beauty and his … well, lack of it. But they were tactful. They didn’t say anything about wire-cutting either. He went off through the labyrinthine building with Rosie escorting him, talking of Sheila all the way, then they were taking his identification disc from him and signing him out. In half an hour’s time he had an appointment at Scotland Yard for another session with the Bomb Squad, and he thought he might as well walk at least part of the distance. So he made his way across Waterloo Bridge, beneath which the river lay sluggish as oil and above him not only the sun but the sky itself was invisible.

  IT WAS THREE DAYS SINCE HE HAD LAST SEEN CLIFFORD Sanders and in that time Burden’s enquiries had confirmed most satisfactorily that he had indeed worked as a gardener for Miss Elizabeth McPhail at Forest House, Forest Park, Kingsmarkham. Her neighbours remembered him and one of them also remembered Gwen Robson’s visits. What he would have liked was to have found someone who had seen them together, talking to each other. Perhaps this was a lot to expect. Beyond a doubt, Gwen Robson had received her offer of employment as Miss McPhail’s full-time housekeeper four years ago. Clifford was twenty-three and four years previously would have been a year into his university course. Burden considered his strategy. Clifford would be at work now, at Munster’s; he worked all day on Tuesdays until five. He would be tired when he got home and it would do no harm for him to find Burden there waiting for him, anxious for another talk either there in the back of beyond or down at the police station once more.

  Davidson drove the two of them down the long lane that went past Sundays Park. At ten to five it was already dark and pockets of fog made very slow, cautious driving essential. The ivy-clad facade of the house loomed up out of the misty dark, looking alive, looking like a gigantic square bush or a surrealist nightmare of a tree. All the leaves hung limp and gleaming, dewed with water-drops. The car head-lamps alone showed him the dark glistening mass, for not a light was showing amongst the coat of foliage. What did Dorothy Sanders do there all day—her son having taken the car and no bus stop nearer than Forby or Kingsmarkham, both at least two miles distant? Once a week Clifford took her to the Barringdean Shopping Centre, had his hour-long session with Olson, went to pick up his mother. What friends did she have, if any? How well did she really know Carroll the farmer? Each, it would seem, had been deserted by a partner; they were not far removed from each other in age …

  The door opened and she was standing there. “You back again? My son’s not here.”

  Burden remembered what Wexford had said about it being hard to associate her with ethics, with any moral sense. He was aware of something else, too, something he would never have thought of himself as sufficiently sensitive to feel—a coldness emanating from her. It was hard to think of her as having a normal body temperature, warm blood. And as he reflected these things, the whole passing rapidly through his mind as he stood on the doorstep, he felt also how very much he would hate to have to touch her, as if her living flesh would feel like rigor mortis.

  She would think it was the icy air that made him shiver. He said, “We’d like a few words with you, Mrs. Sanders.”

  “Shut the door, then, or the fog will get in.” She spoke of the fog as if it were some sort of elemental or ghost, always waiting outside for a chance unwise invitation.

  Her face was thickly and whitely powdered, the lips painted a waxy red, her head tied up tightly in a brown-patterned scarf so that no hair showed. She was dressed in her favourite brown, jumper and skirt, ribbed tights, flat tan-coloured shoes. Following her into the living room, Burden noticed how thin and upright she was—her hips narrow, her back flat—so that it was something of a shock to see her frontal aspect reflected in the big mahogany-framed mirror, her stringy neck and the deep lines on her forehead. It was cold in there and, whatever she had said about keeping the fog out, it seemed already to have penetrated. A damp chill touched Burden’s skin, the only heat in the r
oom concentrated in the few feet around the coal fire. He glanced at the empty mantelpiece of dark grey flecked marble, the chest of drawers and cabinet in a rather dull dark wood, their surfaces equally bare.

  “May we sit down?” She nodded. “Your son worked as a gardener for Miss McPhail of Forest Park, I believe. That would have been while he was at university?”

  She detected criticism Burden had not meant to imply. “He was a grown man. Men should work. I couldn’t keep him; the grant he got didn’t cover everything.”

  Burden said simply, “Mrs. Robson worked as a home help for Miss McPhail.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth before he realized Dodo Sanders was going to do it again. Once more she was going to register incomprehension at the name of Robson. Robson? Who’s Mrs. Robson? Oh, that woman, that one who was murdered, the one whose body I found, that one. Oh yes, of course. She said none of these things but she looked them all, nodding when Burden reminded her as if recollection had come tardily.

  “He didn’t know her,” she said evenly in her robot’s mechanical voice.

  “If you didn’t know her, or know she worked there, how can you know that?”

  She showed no sign of awareness at having betrayed herself or her son. “She was in the house and he was in the garden; you said that. She wouldn’t go into the garden and he wouldn’t go into the house. Why would he? It was a big garden.”

  Burden left it and allowed a silence to fall before saying, “Have you ever let the upstairs rooms in this house?” He asked because the idea of the furniture up there intrigued him in an awesome kind of way. He remembered Diana Pettit talking about all that furniture impeding them in their search.

  “Why do you ask?” The robot was talking again, its micro-chip tone giving each word equal weight.

  “Frankly, Mrs. Sanders, the place is barely furnished down here and cluttered upstairs—or so I understand.”

  “You’re welcome to look at it if you want.” It was a cordial turn of phrase she used, but not uttered in a cordial way. So might the wolf in Red Riding Hood have said that its teeth were all the better to eat you with. The dome-like bluish eyelids half closed once more, the head went back and Dodo Sanders said, “My son is coming now.”

  Light from the Metro turning in at the gates trickled across the ceiling and down the walls. The woman didn’t speak again; she seemed to be listening, to be straining in fact to hear something. There came the distant sound of a wooden door closing, a bolt being shot. Visibly she relaxed, sinking a little from the waist. Clifford’s key in the lock was succeeded by the sound of Clifford’s feet being vigorously wiped. He must have known by the presence of the car that Burden was here and he didn’t hurry; he even pushed the door open very slowly. He entered the room, looked at Burden and Davidson without giving any sign of recognition, without speaking, and walked towards the single empty chair like someone under hypnosis.

  But before he had sat down his mother did an astonishing thing. She spoke Clifford’s name, just the bare Christian name, and when he turned to look slowly in her direction she leaned her head to one side and lifted her cheek. He moved towards her, bent down and planted an obedient kiss on the floury white skin.

  “Can we have a talk, Cliff?” Burden found himself speaking with undue heartiness, as he might have done to a boy of ten or so who has had a fright, who requires jollying along. “I’d like to talk to you about Miss McPhail. But first we’re going upstairs to take a look round the attics.”

  Clifford’s head turned, his eyes rested momentarily on his mother and moved away. It wasn’t exactly a glance requesting permission, more a look of incredulity that such a step might be allowed, had apparently already been sanctioned. Dodo Sanders got to her feet and they went upstairs—all four of them went. It had been a farmhouse once, so the first flight of stairs was handsome and wide, the second which led to the attics narrow and too steep to climb without grasping at banisters. At the top Burden saw closed doors all around him, smelt a cold mustiness, the smell of neglect, and an uncomfortable memory of past dreams came to him—of secrets and things hidden in lofts, of a hand coming out of a cupboard and a disembodied smiling face. But he wasn’t imaginative as Wexford was. He put his hand up to a wall switch and a light of low wattage came on; then he opened the first door.

  Mother and son stood behind him, Davidson behind them. The room was crammed with furniture and pictures and ornaments, but these were not arranged in any sort of order and the framed paintings were all stacked against walls. Pieces of china and books lay on the seats of chairs, cushions in a heap in the corner. None of it looked valuable, certainly not antique or even of curiosity value but dating from the twenties and thirties, a few pieces older and with turned legs and piecrust edges. Downstairs everything was clean and any assessment of Dodo Sanders’ character must have included her housewifely qualities, but up here there had been no sweeping and dusting. No vacuum cleaner had been lugged up the narrow stairs. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings and gathered in the corners in fly-filled traps. Because this was in the country, in a quiet place not much frequented by motor vehicles, the dust was not thick and flocculant, but dust there was: a thin, soft powdering on every surface.

  The next room was the same, except that there were two bedsteads in there and two flock mattresses and feather-beds, bundles of pink satin eiderdowns and counterpanes tied up with string, sausage-shaped bolsters covered in ticking, rolled blankets, home-made wool rugs in geometric patterns and home-made rag rugs in concentric circles of faded colours. And there were more pictures, but this time they were photographs in gilt frames.

  Burden took a few steps inside this room, picked up one of the photographs and looked at it. A tall man in tweed suit and trilby hat; a woman also wearing a hat, her dress shawl-collared and with a long flared skirt; a boy between them in a school cap, short trousers, knee socks, the group redolent of the mid-thirties. Man and boy closely resembled each other; it might have been Clifford’s face he was looking at, the same pudginess, the same thick lips and even the same moustache, the same inexpressive eyes. But there was something in those people that Clifford lacked, an air in all of them of … what? Superiority was to put it too strongly. A consciousness of social position and social duties? Still carrying the framed picture, Burden looked into the other two attics while Davidson and Clifford and his mother silently followed him. Here was more furniture, more rolled-up rugs and water-colours mounted on gold paper framed in gilt, more books and china animals, but gilded pink Lloyd Loom chairs as well and a Susie Cooper teaset tumbled on a pile of cushions embroidered with flower gardens and country cottages. It was all rather dirty and shabby and practically valueless, but none of it was sinister or suggestive of the supernatural, none of it was the stuff nightmares are made of.

  What had happened? Why was it all up here? He asked himself this as they descended. It wasn’t as if the furnishings downstairs were superior to this or newer; nor that there was so much furniture downstairs that the surplus had found its way up here. Indeed, it was inadequate and Burden had come to the conclusion that mother and son must eat their meals from plates on their laps. He could imagine them with TV dinners or dehydrated messes, bought to save trouble. What he couldn’t picture was this woman cooking the sort of food anyone would want to eat.

  “Those are my grandparents and my father,” Clifford said, putting out his hand for the photograph.

  Dorothy Sanders issued an order to him as if he were a schoolboy like the one in the picture. “Take it upstairs, Clifford; put it back where it’s kept.” Burden would have been more astonished to witness a protest on Clifford’s part, a hesitation even, than to see what in fact happened—automatic obedience as he went immediately up to the attics.

  “I’d like you to tell me a bit about your relationship with Mrs. Robson, Cliff,” Burden said when they were all downstairs once more.

  “His name’s Clifford. It was my name … and he doesn’t have relationships,” his mother said
.

  “I’ll rephrase that. Tell me about when you first met her and what you talked about. It was at Miss McPhail’s, wasn’t it?”

  Dorothy Sanders had withdrawn down the passage towards the kitchen regions. Clifford looked rather blankly at Burden and said he had once done gardening for Miss McPhail. He too seemed to have forgotten who Mrs. Robson was; Burden reminded him and asked him if he ever went inside the Forest Park house—to have a cup of tea or coffee for instance, or to bring flowers in.

  “There was a cleaning lady used to give me tea, yes.”

  “That was Mrs. Robson, wasn’t it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. I don’t remember her name; I never heard her name. It wasn’t Mrs. Robson.”

  His mother came back and Clifford looked at her, childlike, as if for help. She had been washing her hands and reeked of disinfectant. To rid herself of contamination from all that furniture, or from that of the two policemen?

  She said, “I’ve already told you she was in the house and he was in the garden. I’ve told you he didn’t know her. You people don’t seem to understand plain English.”

  “All right, Mrs. Sanders, you’ve made your point,” Burden said. He wasted no more time on her and looked away. “I’d like you to come back to the police station with me, Clifford. We can get a clearer picture of things there.”

  Clifford went with them in his docile way and they drove back to town. He sat at the table in the interview room and looked across it first at Burden and then at DC Marian Bayliss. His eyes went back to Burden, then were lowered towards the tiny geometric pattern on the table-top. In a low voice, not much more than a mumble, he said, “You’re accusing me of murdering someone. It’s incredible, I still can’t accept what’s happening to me.”