Speaker of Mandarin

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘I suppose that’s what you’ll say when I ask you where you were on the night of Tuesday, October the first?’

  Coney Newton looked narrowly at Burden. He was a thin, gaunt, grey-headed man of perhaps fifty, with a rampart of prominent grey teeth. In every sense an ugly customer. ‘I wasn’t anywhere I shouldn’t have been and that’s for sure,’ he said, and he went into an elaborate explanation of how on that evening he had been in a pub with someone called Rocky whose surname he didn’t know, then at his sister’s, then in a club round the back of Leicester Square with ‘old Silver’.

  ‘You were in a club with Silver Perry?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Till when?’

  ‘Maybe two,’ said Newton and he gave Burden another narrow look.

  It would have to be checked along with the alibis of Lake, Singh and Catchpole. The club, which Newton said was called the El Video, would very likely be closed at this hour, but Burden had time to kill before meeting Wexford. He got on a bus and went on to the upper deck, always his favourite way of jaunting around London.

  Really he should have gone to see Newton first, then he could have checked that alibi with Perry. The last thing Perry would do, surely, was support the false story of someone intending harm to his hero. Still, the El Video first.

  It was, as he had expected, closed. With the tightening up of the pornography law, the photographs in the narrow glass case beside the door had been softened to mere languishing close-ups of breast and buttock, succulent mouth and swelling flank. The door itself had a cardboard notice on it which said the club was strictly private and for members only and underneath that a poster advertising a rock concert. There were three bells and Burden rang the middle one.

  After a while the door was opened by a young black woman in velvet knee breeches and a red tee shirt. She looked at Burden, said there was nothing doing till six and then it was only by appointment, but then seemed to understand he meant the club. She giggled and said Moggy would be opening up at eight. Burden walked off up the Charing Cross Road, wondering how Wexford was getting on.

  Purbank wouldn’t tell him what the quarrel was about. He also said he had forgotten the reason for it, though being more restrained than Vinald, he didn’t add that the other man was a nasty piece of work.

  His flat, on the fringe of Epping Forest, was in an apartment block with huge picture windows which pictured panoramas of tree tops. Purbank turned out to be an accountant who operated from home, in a big room drably furnished in ‘safe’ shades of porridge, cardboard and mud. Like Vinald he was made highly nervous by Wexford’s visit and, when asked if he had been in touch with any other members of the train party since their return, particularly if he had received photographs from any of them, he cried, ‘No, no, no!’ with the vehemence of someone pleading not to be assaulted.

  But of the Knightons he seemed genuinely to know nothing. In the train it was the single people who had congregated, the married couples keeping a little apart, though the Knightons had always made a three with Irene Bell. On the hotel roof in Kweilin he disclaimed having noticed anything out of the way except what he called the ‘silly’ music and, remembering it, he gave a nervous bellowing laugh.

  Wexford thought the chances of his having shot Adela Knighton were about as remote as they could be. But he was rather taken aback when Purbank was unable to account for his movements on the night of 1 October. He could only say that he had been at home alone, or so he supposed, he couldn’t really recall, but he thought he had been at home alone and could recall no visitors or phone calls. He seemed a friendless man, not so much a recluse as one whose manner, both boring and blundering, had driven possible friends away.

  His head full of China, remembering China and wondering where Adela Knighton’s photographs of China had got to, Wexford walked across the lobby of the flats and came face to face with a Chinese man. In other circumstances, even in Kingsmarkham where there was at least a Chinese restaurant, he would scarcely have given him a second glance. But here, in spite of himself, he stared just as those Chinese in Chang-sha had stared at him.

  The man spoke pleasantly in an English that was a little high-pitched. ‘Good afternoon. Were you looking for someone?’

  Wexford collected himself. ‘No,’ he said, ‘thanks all the same.’

  He was tall for a Chinese, about forty, professional-looking, in a dark suit and plum silk tie and carrying a dark red leather briefcase. His English was accented but absolutely fluent and idiomatic. ‘Nasty day,’ he said. ‘It’s getting very chilly out,’ and with a smile walked away to the lift.

  Wexford had a look at the names above the doorbells outside. Number 7: Y.S. and M. Hsia. That would be it. And Purbank lived at number 8. Of course there was no reason why Purbank shouldn’t have a Chinese next-door neighbour. There must be many thousands of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in this country. They mostly lived in cities and city suburbs, just as well in a flat in Buckhurst Hill as elsewhere. And yet it was odd. It made him look on Purbank, whom he had almost dismissed as of nugatory interest, with new eyes.

  He picked up Burden at the appointed place by London Bridge. By now it was raining hard and the inspector was standing under his umbrella.

  ‘We’ll have a look at Knighton’s bank account,’ said Wexford. ‘See if any large sums have gone out since he got back from China.’

  Burden said rather gloomily, ‘Can you see that guy hiring an assassin?’

  ‘The wine he drinks is made of grapes. Other men in his station and class of life have done murder. Whatever he may have said on the subject to his wife and children, murder is by no means confined to the working class. And, you know, Mike, it ill becomes him to have said so, it was a fault of character in him that he could say that and it makes me feel his guilt more likely. I don’t agree with you, I feel it’s more likely he’d have hired someone than done it with his own hand.’

  ‘Well,’ said Burden with unexpected shrewdness, ‘that might account for why he’s so ashamed, why he seems to hate himself so much.’

  If he was more interested in the Vinald family than in other members of the train party this was because he was coming to believe that it was the sight of Pandora Vinald, then unmarried, which had occasioned that look of ecstatic shock on Knighton’s face. Somewhere, somehow, Knighton had seen her before, and if that look was anything to go by, had done more than see her. The next step would be to call on Jennifer Norris in her ‘old’ house in Springhill Lane.

  Today she looked more like her mother than ever. Her hair had received a recent perm and her face was as shiny as a new coin. He had expected to be admitted by a cleaner or the present-day equivalent of a maid and into opulent luxury. It was rather a surprise to find her alone and the room into which she took him sparsely furnished. She didn’t ask him to sit down.

  ‘Where did my parents go on previous holidays? Do you mean since Daddy retired?’

  ‘Go back five years, would you, Mrs Norris?’ How old was Pandora? Younger than Jennifer certainly. Perhaps no more than twenty-four.

  She didn’t immediately answer him. It was impossible for her to miss an opportunity of dilating on her family’s prosperity and social advantages. ‘Mummy had what she called her holiday fund, you know. It was her way of getting the best out of her own money. She wanted real travel, you see, not just the usual winter sports in January and some Mediterranean beach in the summer everyone has.’ This last sentence nearly took Wexford’s breath away. He said nothing. ‘So Angus invested this fund for her and she drew on it whenever they wanted to go anywhere—well, really super, you know. Like China. Mummy adored travel.’

  Wexford nodded. ‘Where did they go the first time after this—er, fund was started?’

  ‘Egypt, I think, or it might have been Thailand and Java. I think they went to Mexico some time but I can’t be absolutely sure. And once they just went to Jugoslavia and Corfu.’ The Balkans were dismissed and put on a level with
Bognor Regis. ‘But that was at least six years ago.’

  Keeping his patience, Wexford asked if they had ever been to New Zealand.

  ‘People don’t go to New Zealand for holidays, do they?’ She was a girl of limited horizons. ‘We have some sort of remote cousin in Sydney or it may be Melbourne, some place down there, and they did go to him for a while, maybe a month.’

  ‘They spent a month in Australia? When was that?’

  ‘Oh, years and years ago, six or seven years.’

  It was stretching things a bit. Wexford found it hard to imagine the fifty-six-year-old Knighton popping across from Sydney to Auckland and there falling in love with a girl of seventeen. And what was being suggested, after all? That the girl had still loved him after seven years, had been reunited with him in China and then shot the rival wife?

  ‘Mummy wanted to go to India and Nepal next,’ said Jennifer Norris. ‘She wanted to go in February, poor Mummy.’ For the first time he saw signs of real emotion in her face.

  He noticed something on the walls of a kind of study as they passed back through the hall to the front door which set him inquiring of Sergeant Johnson of the uniformed branch as soon as he was back in the station. But Johnson knew all about it.

  ‘He’s got a gun licence all right, sir, had one for years. Had one long before he was married when he was living in a flat in the High Street here. We do inspect, check he keeps the lethal stuff under lock and key. What you saw on his wall is mostly old fowling pieces, flintlock stuff and so on. He does have modern weaponry. I’ve a list of what he’s got kept up to date.’

  ‘But no Walther PPK?’

  Johnson shook his head. ‘He was the first one I checked on when your directive went round at the start of the case.’

  Of course.

  Wexford walked into his office and found two parcels awaiting him with the rest of the post. One had come by post, the other, in a large brown envelope and unsealed, by hand. He looked into that one first. The envelope contained a secondhand copy of the collected short stories of that Victorian writer of the macabre, Sheridan Le Fanu, and a bit of paper torn from a prescription pad with Len scrawled across it. Wexford wondered what Dr Crocker could be up to but he had never read any Le Fanu and thought this would do very well for relaxation during the Saturday afternoon and Sunday which he intended to take off.

  In the other package, the one that had come by post, there was no clue to the identity of its sender. Wexford removed from their brown paper wrapping eight cardboard folders, the kind that film processors use. The name ‘Knighton’ was written across the top of each of them. Undoubtedly, these were the snapshots the Knightons had taken during their holiday, sent to him from an unknown source. His name on the wrapping and the address of Kingsmarkham Police Station had been printed. The postmark was a London one, Chingford, E.4.

  Carefully, he went through the photographs. But it didn’t take much perspicacity to tell that some, three or four, were missing. The appropriate negatives had also gone, the strip of celluloid cut through. It wasn’t then just a failure to ‘come out’ that accounted for their disappearance. But which ones weren’t there?

  The first six envelopes were all of Eastern Europe and Russia, including one of a Russian railway station which the authorities would certainly have pounced on had they known of its existence. It was from the photographs in the other two folders, the Chinese ones, that the shots were missing. He recognized Chang-sha, the Marquise of Tai’s tomb at Mawangdui, the Mao birthplace at Shao-shan. There were several shots of loop-shaped mountains in Kweilin, all apparently taken from the hotel roof. Then nothing till the Five Goats statue in Canton. What had become of the Li River excursion then, the most spectacular trip to be taken between Peking and Hong Kong? Had the Knightons left their camera behind? Wexford knew they hadn’t. He could remember Adela Knighton taking shots on deck—of the cormorant fishers, the villages, the boats with their square orange sails. Someone, the sender of this parcel, had for a reason as yet unfathomable to Wexford, abstracted those pictures and doubtless destroyed them along with their negatives.

  Knighton put up no opposition to the suggestion that his financial circumstances be examined. Without expression he handed Wexford his latest bank statements, of which he received one every month. When Wexford asked why he had statements so often he explained that this was because, a year ago, owing to a standard order for a direct debit he had forgotten about, he had been briefly overdrawn. Since then his bank had kept him up to date with frequent statements. Prior to his retirement he had had a private account but since then he and his wife had used only their joint account. It was for this account that the statements had been issued. Knighton telephoned his bank and asked the manager to tell Wexford the facts about the private account, that it had been closed for three years.

  There was nothing in the statements for the past year to indicate that any large sum which couldn’t be accounted for had been withdrawn. A substantial monthly sum was paid which Wexford took to be from some pension or annuity of Knighton’s, and there were injections of larger sums, presumably from interest on Knighton’s or his wife’s investments. Four thousand pounds had been paid into the account in April, very obviously from Mrs Knighton’s holiday fund, and a similar amount withdrawn two weeks later to pay in advance for the train tour. It was evident that Knighton had parted with nothing in fee to an assassin.

  Of course there was no way of knowing whether this particular account was the only one he had. But in his previous exploration of the house and its desk and drawers, Wexford had found no cheque book or paying-in book for any account apart from this one and the closed private account of which Knighton had kept his final cheque book.

  ‘Mr Knighton, I’d like you to come down to the police station with me so that we can have a talk. I think it would be profitable for you to have a talk with me and my colleague, Inspector Burden.’

  ‘I see no reason why you can’t talk to me here.’

  ‘Perhaps not but I do. It will be more straightforward for all of us at the police station.’

  ‘You mean more intimidating for me? I am quite sufficiently intimidated, I assure you.’ Knighton made a weary movement of his head. ‘I don’t know if it’s fear or shock or what it is, but I seem to be suffering from some kind of amnesia, what a mad doctor would call a fugue.’ Knighton used the quaint and old-fashioned expression for an alienist without awkwardness. ‘I seem to live in a stupefied daze,’ he said.

  Wexford noted he hadn’t included grief among the emotions which distressed him.

  ‘If I am going to be interrogated, I think I should have legal advice.’ It seemed a strange thing for such as he had been to say. ‘My legal adviser should be present,’ he said.

  ‘That’s entirely your privilege, sir,’ said Wexford more blandly than he felt.

  It was a curious interview. And this was because of Knighton’s frankness in certain areas and obtuse caginess in others. However, no legal adviser was present. Perhaps he thought that with a lifetime of experience behind him he could advise himself.

  They used one of the less cell-like interview rooms. It had a rug on the floor. The chairs had straight backs but padded seats. Knighton sat on one side of the table and Wexford and Burden faced him. He looked ill, his eyes were fast becoming dark holes in his face, some sort of remorse was piling years on him as cancer does. He looked as if he had reached the end of his tether or some eleventh hour. Yet he could make a pedantic lawyer’s joke.

  It was chilly in the room. The central heating was not due to be started until 1 November. Wexford had a small electric heater brought in and apologized to Knighton for the cold and general mild discomfort.

  ‘De minimis non curat lex,’ said Knighton with his death’s head grin.

  The law may take no account of trifles but lawyers do. In accordance with Wexford’s expressed wish, Knighton went into long detailed theories of how a potential killer might have known he was to be away on the night of 1 Oc
tober. Once again he named the people to whom he had spoken of his projected trip to London: his wife; his daughter Jennifer; his son-in-law; village cronies; and his son Roderick. His host naturally had known of it and Dobson-Flint. Whom those people had told he couldn’t begin to guess. Suddenly he said, ‘You’ve asked my children and Miss Bell and Adrian Dobson-Flint and a good many others too, I suspect, if my marriage was a happy one. You haven’t asked me.’

  ‘In the circumstances,’ said Burden, ‘we took it for granted you’d say it had been.’

  ‘In a murder inquiry, Inspector, you shouldn’t take anything for granted. It was not a happy marriage. It never was. For years it was common knowledge I didn’t get on with my wife. My wife felt towards me as many women feel towards their husbands. I was her possession and her protector and she had a right to my continued presence in her life. I don’t suppose she ever thought whether she cared for me or not. I disliked her. As the years went by I disliked her more and more.’

  Temporarily this silenced Burden. It took more than that to nonplus Wexford.

  ‘Perhaps you feel like making a new statement, Mr Knighton?’

  ‘I’m not going to confess to anything if that’s what you mean. I disliked my wife but I bitterly regret her death. I would give everything I have—’ he hesitated and Wexford thought he was going to say ‘to bring her back’ but he ended ‘—to turn time back to before the first of October.’

  Wexford said, ‘You were an unwilling husband. Were you a faithful one?’

  ‘For twenty-five years I was. Before that—there was someone I wished to marry but it was impossible and we parted. I had my children to think of.’

  ‘And your career, I daresay,’ said Wexford.

  Knighton winced. He made a vague gesture in front of his face. ‘And my career, yes. I was thinking of a judgeship. As it happened, it never came. Let me say that I knew it wouldn’t come if I deserted my wife and children for a young actress.’