Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘All right. I know.’

  ‘I don’t think the place interests her much, Barry. She hasn’t realised yet what sort of money and property she’s come into.’

  Vine turned from his computer screen. ‘I’ve been talking to Brenda Harrison, sir. She says she and the Griffins quarrelled because she didn’t like Mrs Griffin hanging washing out in the garden on a Sunday.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘I think it shows Brenda’s got more imagination than I gave her credit for.’

  Wexford laughed, then became instantly serious. ‘We can be sure of one thing, Barry. This crime was committed by someone who didn’t know this place and these people at all and by someone else who knew both very well indeed.’

  ‘One in the know and one to take instruction from him?’

  ‘I couldn’t put it better myself,’ said Wexford.

  He was pleased with Burden’s sergeant. You must not say, even to yourself, when someone had died a heroic death, or any death at all, that his replacement was a positive improvement or that tragedy was a blessing in disguise. But the feeling was there, or just the inescapable relief that Martin’s successor was so promising.

  * * * *

  Barry Vine was a strong muscular man of medium height. If he had held himself less well he might have been called short. Not exactly secretly but certainly privately, he went in for weight lifting. He had reddish hair, short and thick, the kind that recedes but never goes bald, and a small moustache that had grown dark, not red. Some people always look the same and are instantly recognisable. Their faces can be conjured up by memory and screened on the inner eye. Barry’s was not like that. There was something protean about him, so that in certain lights and at certain angles you would have called him a sharp-featured man with a hard jawline, while at others his nose and mouth looked almost feminine. But his eyes never varied. They were rather small, a fleckless, very dark blue, that fixed friend and suspect alike with an unvarying steady gaze.

  Wexford, whom his wife called a liberal, tried to be tolerant and forbearing, and often succeeded (or so he believed) in being merely irascible. Until his second marriage it had never occurred to Burden – or he had not listened when these things had been pointed out to him – that there might be any wisdom or virtue in holding views other than those of an inflexible conservative. He would have found nothing to dispute in the notion of the police force as the Tory Party with helmet and truncheon.

  Barry Vine thought little about politics. He was the essential Englishman, more English in a curious way than either of his superiors. He voted for the party which had done most for him and his immediate circle in the recent past. It mattered very little whether they called themselves right or left wing. ‘Most for him’ meant, in his book, most in the area of finance, saving him money, reducing taxes and prices, and making life more comfortable.

  While Burden believed that the world would be a better place if others behaved more like he did, and Wexford that things would improve if people learned to think, Vine made no incursions into even such primitive metaphysics. For him there existed a large (but not large enough) population of decent law-abiding people who worked and owned houses and raised families in varying degrees of prosperity, and a swarm of others, instantly recognisable by him even if they had, as yet, committed no offence. The interesting thing was that this was not a matter of class, as it might be in Burden’s case. He could spot, he said, a potential villain even if this person had a title, a Porsche and several million in the bank; an accent like an art history don at Cambridge or the intonation of the man who digs up the roads. Vine was no snob and often started off with a bias towards the road-digger. His villain-spotting rested on quite other pointers, something intuitive perhaps, though Vine called it common sense.

  Therefore, when he found himself in the Myringham pub called the Slug and Lettuce, having discovered that this was where Andy Griffin’s friends congregated most evenings, his antennae were quickly at work assessing the criminal potential of the four men for whom he had bought halves of Abbot.

  Two of them were unemployed. That hadn’t inhibited their regular attendance at the Slug and Lettuce, which Wexford would have excused on the grounds that human beings need circuses as well as bread, which Burden would have called fecklessness but which Vine set down as characteristic of men on the lookout for lucrative ways to break the law. One of the others was an electrician, grumbling about a fall-off in work caused by recession, the fourth a messenger for an overnight delivery company who described himself as a ‘mobile courier’.

  A phrase particularly offensive to Vine’s ears was that so often heard in court, uttered by defendants or even witnesses: ‘I might have been.’ What did it mean? Nothing. Less than nothing. Anybody, after all, might have been almost anywhere or done almost anything.

  So when the unemployed man called Tony Smith said that Andy Griffin ‘might have been’ in the Slug and Lettuce on the night of 11 March, Vine ignored him. The others had already told him, days ago, that they hadn’t seen him that evening. Kevin Lewis, Roy Walker and Leslie Sedlar were adamant that Andy hadn’t been with them, nor afterwards at the Panda Cottage. They were less positive about his present whereabouts.

  Tony Smith said he ‘might have been in the old Slug’ on Sunday evening. The others couldn’t say. That was one evening on which they gave the pub a miss.

  ‘He goes up north,’ Leslie Sedlar offered.

  ‘Is that what he tells you, or do you know it?’

  This was a distinction hard for any of them to make. Tony Smith insisted that he knew it.

  ‘He goes up north with the lorry. He goes up regular, don’t he?’

  ‘He hasn’t got a job any more,’ said Vine. ‘He hasn’t had a job for a year.’

  ‘When he had his driving job he went up regular.’

  ‘How about now?’

  He said he went up north, so he did. They believed him. The fact was they weren’t much interested in where Andy went. Why should they be? Vine asked Kevin Lewis, whom he had assessed as the most sensible and probably the most law-abiding, where he thought Andy was now.

  ‘Off on his bike,’ Lewis said.

  ‘Where, then? Manchester? Liverpool?’

  They barely seemed to know where those places were. To Kevin Lewis, Liverpool dredged up recollections of his ‘old man’ talking about something popular in his youth called the Mersey Sound.

  ‘He goes up north then. Suppose I said he doesn’t, he hangs about down here?’

  Roy Walker shook his head. ‘He don’t. Not Andy. Andy’d be in the old Slug.’

  Vine knew when he was beaten. ‘Where does his money come from?’

  ‘He gets the dole, I reckon,’ said Lewis.

  ‘And that’s it? That’s all?’ Keep it simple. No use asking about ‘supplementary sources of income’. ‘He’s no other money coming in?’

  It was Tony Smith who answered. ‘He might have.’

  They were silenced. They had no more to offer. An enormous strain had been put on their imaginations and the result was to exhaust them. More Abbot might have helped – ‘might have’! – but Vine felt the game wasn’t worth the candle.

  * * * *

  Mrs Virson’s voice was loud, expansive, the product of an expensive girls’ boarding school attended some forty-five years before. She opened the front door of The Thatched House to him and welcomed him in with a kind of high graciousness. The floral printed dress she wore upholstered her like a voluminous chair cover. Her hair had been done that day. The scrolls and undulations looked as fixed as if they had been carved. It was unlikely that all this was for him, but something had happened to change her attitude to him since his previous visit – Daisy’s own insistence on her willingness to see and talk to him?

  ‘Daisy’s asleep, Mr Wexford. She’s still very deeply shocked, you know, and I insist on her having plenty of rest.’

  He nodded, having no comment to make.

  ‘She’ll be awa
ke in time for her tea. These young things have a very healthy appetite, I’ve noticed, however much they may have been through. Shall we go in here and wait for her? I expect there are things you want to chat to me about, aren’t there?’

  He was not the man to neglect such an opportunity. If Joyce Virson had something to say to him, which was what ‘chat’ must mean, he would listen and hope for the best. But when they were in Mrs Virson’s drawing room, sitting in faded chintz-covered chairs and facing each other across an arts-and-crafts coffee table, she seemed to have no inclination to begin a conversation. She was not embarrassed or awkward or even diffident. She was simply thoughtful and perhaps doubted where to begin. He was very wary of helping her. In his position any help would look like interrogation.

  She said suddenly, ‘Of course what happened up there at Tancred House was a terrible thing. After I heard about it I didn’t sleep for two whole nights. It was simply the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard in the whole course of my life.’

  He waited for the ‘but’. People who began like that, with an admission of their appreciation of tragedy or extreme misfortune, usually went on to qualify it. Initial empathy was to be an excuse for subsequent abuse.

  There was no ‘but’. She surprised him by her directness. ‘My son wants Daisy to be engaged to him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mrs Copeland didn’t like the idea. I suppose I should call her Davina Flory or Miss Flory or something, but old habits die hard, don’t they? I’m sorry, I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but a married woman will always be “Mrs” and her husband’s name to me.’ She waited for Wexford to say something and when he said nothing, continued, ‘No, she didn’t care for the idea. Of course I don’t mean she had anything against Nicholas. It was just some silly notion – I’m sorry but I thought it silly – about Daisy having her life to lead before she settled down. I could have said to her that when she was Daisy’s age girls got married just as young as they could.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘You said you could have said this to her. Did you in fact say it?’

  A pucker of wariness crossed Mrs Virson’s face. It passed. She smiled. ‘It was hardly my business to interfere.’

  ‘What did Daisy’s mother think?’

  ‘Oh, really, it wouldn’t have mattered what Naomi thought. Naomi didn’t have opinions. You see, Mrs Copeland was much more like a mother than a grandmother to Daisy. She made all the decisions for her. I mean, where she went to school and all that. Oh, she had very big ideas for Daisy, or Davina as she insisted on calling her, most confusing. She had her whole future mapped out, university first, Oxford naturally, and then poor little Daisy was to have a year travelling. Not anywhere a young girl would want to go to, I mean not Bermuda or the south of France or anywhere nice, but places in Europe with art galleries and history, Rome and Florence and those sort of places. And then she was to go on doing something at another university, if you please, another degree or whatever they call them. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the purpose of all this education for a pretty young girl. Mrs Copeland’s idea was for her to bury herself at some university, she wanted her to be a – what’s the name I want?’

  ‘An academic?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Poor little Daisy was to have got there by the time she was twenty-five and then she was supposed to write her first book. I’m sorry, but it just seems ridiculous to me.’

  ‘What about Daisy herself. How did she feel?’

  ‘What does a girl of that age know? She knows nothing about life, does she? Oh, if you go on talking about Oxford and make it sound a glamorous place and then you keep saying how wonderful Italy is and seeing this picture and that statue, and how much more you can appreciate things if you’ve been educated in this way and that – well, naturally, it has some effect on you. You’re so impressionable at that age, you’re just a baby.’

  ‘Marrying,’ said Wexford, ‘would of course put a stop to all that.’

  ‘Mrs Copeland may have been married three times but I don’t think she was too keen on marriage just the same.’ She leant towards him confidingly, lowering her voice and looking briefly over her shoulder as if someone else was in a far corner of the room. ‘I don’t know this, I mean I don’t actually know it, it’s pure guesswork but I think it’s pretty sound – I’m positive Mrs Copeland wouldn’t have turned a hair if Nicholas and Daisy had wanted to live together without marriage. She was obsessed with sex, you know. At her age! She’d probably have welcomed a relationship, she was all for Daisy having experience.’

  ‘What sort of experience?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t take me up on every little thing I say, Mr Wexford. I mean, she used to say she wanted her to live. She’d really lived, she used to say, and I suppose she had with all those husbands and all that travelling. But marriage, no, she wasn’t at all happy about that idea.’

  ‘Would you like your son to marry Daisy?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I would. She’s such a sweet girl. And clever, of course, and good-looking. I’m sorry, but I shouldn’t like my son to marry a plain girl. I don’t expect you think that’s very nice but it does seem such a waste, a handsome man with a plain wife.’ Joyce Virson preened herself a very little. There was no other word for that slight elongating of her neck, for the way she ran a thick finger along her jawline. ‘We’re a good-looking family on both sides.’ The smile she gave Wexford was arch, was nearly flirtatious. ‘Of course the poor little thing’s madly in love with him. You’ve only got to see the way she follows him with her eyes. She adores him.’

  Wexford thought she was going to preface her next remarks with her usual expression of sorrow for an opinion she very obviously did not in the least regret, but she only elaborated on Daisy’s qualifications for a union with a member of the Virson family. Daisy was so fond of her, had such nice manners, was so even-tempered and good-humoured.

  ‘And so rich,’ said Wexford.

  Mrs Virson actually jumped. She started as violently as someone in the early stages of a seizure. Her voice rose twenty or thirty decibels.

  ‘That has nothing whatsoever to do with it. When you look at the size of this house and the standing we have in the community, you can hardly imagine there’s any shortage of money, surely. My son has a very good income, he’s quite able to support a wife in the . . .’

  He thought she was going to add something about the style to which Daisy was accustomed, but she checked herself and glowered at him. Sick of her hypocrisy and affectations, he had decided the time had come for a sharp thrust below the belt. It had gone home better than he had hoped for. He smiled to himself.

  ‘You’re not worried she may be too young?’ he said. Now the smile was extended to her as well, wide and disarming. ‘You called her a baby just now.’

  Joyce Virson was saved from answering by the entry of Daisy into the room. He had heard her footsteps on the hall floor as he spoke the word ‘baby’. She gave him a wan smile. Her arm was still bandaged but less bulkily and the sling was lighter. This, he realised, was the first time he had seen her standing up, moving about. She was thinner than he had expected, her shape more fragile.

  ‘What am I too young for?’ she said. ‘I’m eighteen today, it’s my birthday.’

  Mrs Virson shrieked. ‘Daisy, you terrible girl, why didn’t you tell us? I hadn’t the least idea, you didn’t say a word.’

  She attempted an astonished laugh but Wexford could tell she was very displeased. She was chagrined. Daisy’s revelation gave the lie to her claims of an intimate knowledge of the young woman staying in her house.

  ‘I suppose you just dropped a hint to Nicholas, so that he could plan a surprise.’

  ‘As far as I know, he doesn’t know either. He won’t remember. I have no one in the world now to remember my birthday.’ She looked at Wexford, said lightly, stagily, ‘Goodness, how sad!’

  ‘Many happy returns of the day.’ He used the
old-fashioned formula.

  ‘Ah, you’re tactful, you’re careful. You couldn’t say “Happy birthday”, could you? Not to me. It would be frightful, it would be an insult. Will you remember my birthday next year, d’you think? Will you say to yourself on the eve of it, it’s Daisy’s birthday tomorrow? You may be the only one who will.’

  ‘What nonsense, dear. Nicholas will certainly remember. It’ll be your job to keep him up to that. I’m sorry, but men need a hint, you know, not to say a little twist of the arm.’ Joyce Virson’s expression was ferociously arch. Daisy allowed her eyes to meet Wexford’s for a short moment and looked away. Not looking at him, she said, ‘Shall we go in the other room, then?’

  ‘Oh, why not stay here, dear? It’s nice and warm in here and I won’t listen to what you’re saying. I’ll be too wrapped up in my book. I won’t hear a word.’

  Determined not to speak to Daisy in Mrs Virson’s presence, before making this point he waited to hear what Daisy would say. She looked so far away, so remotely sorrowful, that he expected an apathetic acquiescence, but instead she spoke firmly.

  ‘No, it’s better it should be private. We won’t turn you out of your room, Joyce.’

  He followed her to the ‘little den’, the room where they had been on Saturday. There she remarked, ‘She means well.’ He marvelled at how young she could be – and how old. ‘Yes, I’m eighteen today. After the funeral I think I’ll go home. Quite soon after. I can do what I like now I’m eighteen, can’t I? Absolutely what I like?’

  ‘As far as any of us can, yes. Apart from breaking the law with impunity, you can do as you please.’

  She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t want to break the law. I don’t know what I want to do but I think I’d be better at home.’

  Warningly, he said, ‘Perhaps you don’t quite realise how you’ll feel confronting your home again. After what happened there. It will bring that night back to you very painfully.’

  ‘That night is always with me,’ she said. ‘It can’t be there more strongly than it is every time I close my eyes. That’s when I see the picture of it, you see. When I close my eyes. I see that table – before and after. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to bear sitting at a dining table again? She gives me my meals on a tray here. I asked for that.’ She was silent, smiled suddenly and looked at him. He saw a strange glow in her dark eyes. ‘We always talk about me. Tell me about you. Where do you live? Are you married? Have you got children? Have you got people who remember your birthday?’