Speaker of Mandarin

by Ruth Rendell

  They talked to him for a further hour. Gates came in with coffee and a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches. Knighton took the coffee but refused to eat anything. Wexford asked him about his knowledge of guns. Knighton said he knew nothing about the Walther PPK beyond that in fiction it was the gun used in the later James Bond books and that in fact it was used by the Stockholm police force. As the afternoon wore on to five o’clock they let him go home.

  Two things of significance happened on Monday morning. One was the collapse of Gordon Vinald’s alibi. Mrs Ingram and Denis Phaidon had been sounded out and both agreed that they had been to visit the Vinalds for coffee and drinks but it had been on Wednesday, 2 October, not Tuesday, 1 October. And Phaidon, in all innocence, made matters rather worse for Vinald by saying that they had originally intended to go there on the Tuesday but had been put off until the next night because, according to Pandora, her husband had been called away on business to Birmingham.

  Wexford was reading the report on this and thinking about it, when Detective Constable Archbold who, with Bennett and Loring, was still pursuing a house-to-house enquiry in Sewingbury, came in to tell him it seemed they had at last found a witness. Thomas Bingley, an old man, retired, a one-time agricultural labourer. He had been in the wood through which the footpath from Sewingbury to Thatto Vale ran …

  ‘An old man?’ Wexford interrupted. ‘In a wood at half-past two in the morning? What the hell for?’

  ‘Well, sir, for poaching. Pheasants, it would seem. That’s why it’s taken us so long to find him, he’s been lying low. It was his niece put us on to him, thought we ought to know uncle was often out on that path at night at this time of year. Apparently he sets running snares and goes to fetch his booty in the small hours.’

  ‘And he was there on October the first, was he? I call that adding insult to injury, poaching a man’s birds on the very first day shooting officially begins.’

  ‘Cheeky,’ Archbold agreed. ‘The point is, sir, he says he saw a man on that path. It was a clear night and the moon was shining and he says he saw a tall thin man with grey or white hair walking rapidly along the path towards Sewingbury.’

  ‘With a smoking automatic in his hand, I daresay,’ said Wexford.

  By chance, thanks to the anonymous parcel, Wexford had photographs of several possible suspects in his possession. In the single living room of Bingley’s unsavoury cottage down by Sewingbury Mill he showed the old man a picture of Knighton. Bingley looked at it and scratched his head and said that could have been the man he saw, though he thought he wasn’t so tall. Purbank, pictured on the Kweilin hotel parapet in conversation with Irene Bell, he looked at and seemed to consider as a possibility. Then he hesitated and pointed with his little finger, a dirty finger with a broken nail, at someone in the background of the photograph, a man whose hair was covered by a straw sun hat. It was Vinald.

  ‘This feller I saw looked a lot like him.’

  ‘You can’t put any credence on anything a bloke like that says,’ said Burden when they were outside by the river bank.

  ‘It’s a muddled effort to please us in case we do him for poaching. He’s one of those who thinks we won’t love him if he says he doesn’t know.’ Wexford surveyed the recently completed concrete embankments, already known locally as ‘the weir’, through which the Kingsbrook had now been made to pass. There had been considerable controversy over whether it should be done at all. The river which, three weeks before, had flowed between reedy (and often litter-strewn) banks, was trammelled into a symmetrical gorge with a paved sitting area, holes in the paving for trees and a new brickwork arch to the bridge that carried Springhill Lane.

  ‘It doesn’t look all that bad now it’s finished,’ Wexford said. There came into his mind a vision of the Li River and its landscape of looped mountains, the porcelain blue sky, the rippling water—and Wong drowned. ‘Purbank has grey hair,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on. Any port in a storm, that is.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Purbank has no alibi for that night. And he may have a motive.’ They strolled over to the car that was waiting for them at the point where the footpath to Thatto Vale joined the road. ‘Three or four photographs and their negatives are missing from this set of Knighton’s. Suppose it was to Purbank that Adela Knighton sent her pictures? The postmark on the package returned to me was Chingford, and Chingford, according to my map of Greater London, is pretty well next door to Buckhurst Hill where Purbank lives. Suppose one or more of those snaps showed Purbank in a compromising situation, a situation which he would do a great deal to avoid having made public.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. But Purbank might conceivably have thought Adela Knighton sent them to him, not out of kindness or interest, but to inform him what she knew. And perhaps she did.’

  ‘So what do we do about that?’

  ‘Nothing, at the moment. First we’re going to find out why Vinald lied and said he was at home having cosy little drinks parties when in fact he was in Birmingham. Or Herstmonceux or Mevagissey. There’s no knowing with a liar of his calibre. The really interesting thing about that alibi of his, though, was that it alibi’d Pandora as well. And now it doesn’t, nothing and no one does.’

  In Birmingham, it appeared, Vinald had done no more than meet the agent of a South American collector of porcelain. He had taken with him certain of the pieces he had brought out of China and two vases more recently acquired. In saying that this had taken place on the evening of 2 October instead of the true date, 1 October, he had made a simple mistake.

  Vinald brought all this out very glibly but he couldn’t conceal a terrible underlying nervousness. He was afraid of something and his fear was mounting. Wexford and Burden saw him at home, not in the shop, and Pandora came into the room while they were talking. Was it for her that he was afraid?

  She was in a dress of white knitted wool today, bronze belt and shoes, her black glossy hair in the current fashion of smooth top and the sides a Renaissance frizz. She looked calm, not at all nervous. Wexford was suddenly sure he had been quite wrong in connecting her with Knighton. It was most probable they had never even spoken to each other.

  ‘So you and your wife were alone here on the Tuesday night?’

  They both said yes to that rather quickly and in unison. Their haste made them break off and smile awkwardly at each other. Pandora shrugged, opening her eyes wide.

  ‘I’m going to have to insist on your telling me the cause of your quarrel with Mr Purbank.’

  Vinald waited a moment. He smiled stoically, making the best of things.

  ‘If you must know, he persistently made remarks insinuating I was turning the trip into what he called a buying spree.’

  ‘And if you were, how did that affect him?’

  ‘He suggested that every time we went sight-seeing and had a choice of what to visit I opted for the places where there would be artefacts for sale rather than for museums or panoramic views or whatever.’

  ‘That may have been irritating to you but it was hardly offensive, was it?’

  ‘It was the way he said it. It was more in the implication than what was actually said.’

  ‘Mr Purbank says he has forgotten the cause of your quarrel.’

  There was no mistaking the satisfaction this afforded Vinald. He smiled gaily. He put his arm through his wife’s. ‘He’s a very nasty piece of work. Frankly, when he said he’d tell our guide it was my object to turn other people’s holidays into a commercial venture to feather my own nest, I’d had enough. I slapped him down and we—exchanged no further words.’

  Wexford knew he was lying, or rather that he was telling a heavily diluted version of whatever the truth was. As they left, going down the steps, Wexford paused to stroke the head of the Pensive Selima who was sitting among some dead lobelias in an urn. She suffered his attentions, shook herself distastefully, jumped out of the urn and skittered down into the area.

  ‘
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes,’ said Wexford, ‘and heedless hearts is lawful prize …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The poem the cat gets her name from. Come on, we’re going to the V and A.’

  Once Burden wouldn’t have been quite sure. His wife had altered all that. ‘The Victoria and Albert Museum,’ he said to that London expert, Donaldson, and to Wexford, ‘What are we going there for?’

  ‘China’s gayest art,’ said Wexford.

  That night, tired but not particularly late home, he finished Le Fanu’s novella of vampires, ‘Carmilla’, and went on to the next story in the collection, ‘Green Tea’.

  He didn’t tell Burden. He didn’t tell anyone but his wife. Sitting up in bed reading Le Fanu beside Dora reading Charlotte Brontë, he came wonderingly to the end of the story and started to laugh.

  ‘You mean,’ said Dora as he explained, ‘that this man was writing a book and he got overtired and he kept himself going by drinking green tea? Tremendous quantities of it as a sort of stimulant?’

  ‘You might say he chain-drank cups of green tea. And he was very much frightened by a monkey-like creature he began seeing in the corner of his room. Then he saw it in the street and it got on an omnibus with him. Well, I saw an old woman with bound feet.’

  ‘I suppose it was Len Crocker sent you the book.’

  ‘Of course it was. He realized I’d made myself hallucinate in the same way as the Reverend Mr Jennings did in Le Fanu’s story. I chain-drank green tea too, you know. I must have been drinking a couple of gallons a day.’

  He laughed, remembering. But thinking about it before he fell asleep, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the explanation. He was relieved, it took a niggling little load off his mind, it was obvious it had been the green tea that produced the visions—but was that really all there had been to it? Surely there had to be more, though he might never find out what.

  * * *

  It made him feel a little strange about drinking his breakfast cup of tea, though this was Twining’s Assam and in no way green. After breakfast he looked among his books, found Masterpieces of the Supernatural, and saw as he suspected that the last story in the collection was ‘Green Tea’. If only he had read on to the end he would have known the answer when his anxiety was at its height.

  Now what to do about what the poacher saw? About Purbank and the photographs? Burden was busy with reports from Middlesbrough, Manchester and Newcastle, all of them clearing the remaining men whom Knighton had prosecuted, respectively, on charges of murder, arson and grievous bodily harm. Back in the cottage down by Sewingbury weir, Wexford struggled to get something more satisfactory out of Bingley. But the old man again picked Vinald out from the photograph, qualifying his selection by saying the man he had seen looked more like Vinald than anyone else there. All he was positive about was that he had seen a man walking along the footpath at three in the morning or thereabouts and that man had been walking back from Thatto Vale.

  Wexford and Burden had lunch together in the Many-Splendoured Dragon. Spring rolls, beef and onions, beansprouts, water chestnuts, Chinese mushrooms. Burden had a pot of jasmine tea but with a restrained shudder Wexford stuck to Perrier. He had been back in his office five minutes when the switchboard told him there was a girl downstairs wanting to see him. A Miss Elf.

  ‘A Miss what?’

  ‘Elf, Mr Wexford. Like, you know, gnomes and fairies.’

  He nearly said, ‘Is she pale green?’ but green for the moment was a dirty word with him. ‘Get someone to bring her up.’

  Loring brought her in and left at a nod from Wexford. She was a small fair girl, perhaps five feet tall, and she looked very young. Fourteen or fifteen was his first impression. Her face was babyish, innocent, with large soft blue eyes. She wore jeans, a red sweat shirt and a red and white track suit top, blue and white canvas and rubber running shoes and, carrying no handbag, came in with her hands in her pockets.

  ‘Miss Elf?’ Wexford said.

  ‘That’s right.’ Her voice didn’t quite match the appearance.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s more what I can do for you. OK if I sit down? I’ve got some info for you. A friend of mine—well, more a client—he said the police here were looking for this old guy hanging about H.P.G. in the night time on October the first. So I never let on to my client but I reckoned I’d better present myself to you seeing as I did. Did see him, I mean.’

  It was all very unclear. Miss Elf had aged in his estimation about two years but he was still mystified. ‘You live in Hyde Park Gardens or Stanhope Place? Your parents live there?’

  She broke into laughter. ‘No, no. I’d better begin at the beginning, hadn’t I? Tell you who I am and what I am and what I was doing there at that hour, right?’

  ‘What are you?’ Wexford said slowly.

  ‘I’m a whore,’ said Miss Elf.

  Wexford had begun to guess it. He disliked people trying to shock him, he wondered when they would ever learn he couldn’t be shocked and hadn’t been shockable these thirty years.

  ‘I suppose you mean you’re a prostitute, a call girl?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You look very young for that.’

  ‘Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? I mean, me looking young. That’s what you might say got me into it, me looking so young always. I’d got a rare commodity to sell and it was a sellers’ market. I’m twenty-four actually. But wanting to screw twelve-year-olds didn’t go out with the Victorians, you know, and I looked twelve when I started. I’d pass for fifteen now, wouldn’t you say?’

  Wexford nodded. He couldn’t resist asking, ‘Is your name really Elf?’

  Her laughter was loud and harsh, with a coarse note. ‘Really and truly. I was born Elf, the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Elf. Piece of luck, wasn’t it? But I don’t insist on it, you can call me Sharon.’

  Of this offer he resolved not to avail himself. He was thinking that most of her clients were probably men of his age and he knew enough of prostitutes to be aware that she would look on him with the same eyes as she looked on them, believe him subject to the same desires and the same perverse needs that made them want little girls. He felt a bit angry and a bit sick over it all and then he told himself that at any rate what went on now was ten thousand times better than in the days when it was really little girls they had.

  ‘So to the night of October the first,’ he said coldly.

  Sharon Elf fixed her large blue eyes on him. ‘This client of mine in Stanhope Place, he’s one of my regulars, reminds me a bit of you actually.’ She didn’t see Wexford wince, or if she did, didn’t care. ‘He gave me a buzz around eight that night and said would I come and see him at midnight. Half twelve would be better if I could make it on account of he’d got people for dinner and by twelve thirty they were sure all to have gone.’

  ‘Where exactly does this client of yours live?’

  ‘One of those houses facing the back of H.P.G.’

  ‘Hyde Park Gardens, yes, I see.’

  ‘As it happened, I could make it very well. I’d got another client at eleven, that was up in St John’s Wood, so I left there around twelve twenty, twelve twenty-five and I got a cab and it got me round to Stanhope Place just before twenty to one. I know you’re going to ask me how I can be so sure of the time. The fact was I didn’t want to embarrass my client—you know, if his guests hadn’t gone on the dot like he said. So I kept looking at my watch and it was just before twenty to one we got there.

  ‘I took a look at my client’s house and I saw the light on in the hall and the bedroom but not the lounge, so I knew that was OK. Anyway, I was paying off the driver when this old fella came out of the back of H.P.G., one of the lower ground floor flats—well, basements really. He came across the road and took my taxi.’

  ‘Did you hear where he asked the driver to go to?’

  ‘Sorry. There I can’t help you. I wasn’t interested, you see, didn’t know any
reason why I should be. Not then.’

  ‘How exactly do you know now?’ Wexford asked.

  She said simply, ‘My client in Stanhope Place gave me a buzz last night and I went round around ten. He told me the fuzz had been asking questions. It was the first time I’d seen him for three weeks, you see, or I reckon he’d have told me before.’

  Wexford could almost have blessed Purbank or whoever it was had sent him those photographs. They were coming in very handy. There was one of the whole train party together on the Kweilin hotel roof. Only Adela Knighton, who had taken the shot, was missing. Unhesitatingly Sharon Elf picked out Knighton.

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘You’re quite sure that’s the man you saw in Stanhope Place at twenty minutes to one on the night of October the first?’

  ‘Positive,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I had a good look. You see, I rather fancied him.’

  Wexford’s brain reeled. Did it work both ways then? If tired old men were looking for girls too young to criticize or have standards, were the girls looking for surrogate grandfathers? He was glad, though, to see the back of Miss Elf and, feeling a fool, asking himself who was he to sit in judgement, nevertheless opened his window for a little while after she had gone. Perhaps it was only to blow away the smell of rubber soles and Palmolive soap.

  He turned his thoughts to what she had told him. There was Bingley’s evidence and now this. He pressed his buzzer and said, if Inspector Burden was about, would they ask him to come up? Burden came in carrying a report on the last man on his list, a certain Dudley Preston whom Knighton had defended on charges of manslaughter and drunk driving but had failed to save from three years in prison.

  ‘Do you know your window’s wide open? It’s like an icebox in here.’

  ‘You can shut it if you like.’ Wexford told him about Sharon Elf and what she had seen.

  Burden’s mouth went down at the corners. But that, Wexford thought, was more on account of Miss Elf’s profession than the destruction of Knighton’s alibi.

  ‘You believe her? A woman like that?’