Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord . . .’

  Her sense of the dramatic – and of the fitting? – had prompted her also to make sure the Prayer Book of 1662 was used. Was he attributing too much to her and was that Mrs Virson’s work or even the parson’s good taste? She was a remarkable girl. He was aware of a sense of warning, of alarm, whose source he couldn’t trace.

  ‘Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live . . .’

  * * * *

  The wind had not been noticeable in the town. Perhaps, on the other hand, it had only got up in the past half-hour. Wexford remembered some sort of gale warning in the forecast of the night before. The wind had a knife edge feel to it as it whistled across this place of burial that a few years ago had been a meadow on a hillside.

  Why burial and not cremation? More of Daisy’s dramatic ideas, perhaps, or else a wish expressed in wills. There was to be no will-reading after this, the solicitor had told him, no anything after this, none of that gathering together for sherry and cake. ‘In the circumstances,’ said the solicitor, ‘it would be wholly inappropriate.’

  No flowers. Daisy, it appeared, had asked for donations instead to a number of causes, none of them likely to meet with a sympathetic response from many of these people, charities for Bangladesh, a fund to counter famine in Ethiopia, the Labour Party and the Cats’ Protection League.

  A single grave had been prepared for the married couple. The one beside it was for Naomi Jones. Each was lined with sheets of artificial turf of a sicklier green than the grass. The coffins went down and one of those aged scholars stepped forward to cast a handful of earth upon the last of Davina Flory.

  ‘Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world . . .’

  It was over, the drama past. The most significant thing now for all was the biting of the wind. Collars were turned up, arms hugged shivering bodies inside inadequate clothes. Undeterred, Jason Sebright was going from person to person, boldly putting his request. Instead of the notebook of former times, he had a receiver and recording device. Wexford wasn’t altogether surprised to see how many people responded favourably. Some of them very likely thought they were going out live on radio.

  He had not spoken to Daisy. He watched one mourner after another approach her and saw her lips move in monosyllabic response. One old woman pressed a kiss on her white cheek.

  ‘Oh, my dear, and poor Davina wasn’t even a believer, was she?’

  Another said, ‘That lovely service, it does send shivers down one’s spine.’

  An elderly man, speaking in what Wexford called an Ivy League voice, embraced her and, and with an impulsive gesture, apparently an expression of sudden emotion, pressed her face into his neck. When she lifted her head Wexford saw her lips had left a crimson imprint on his white collar. He was a tall man, paper-thin, with a small grey moustache and a bow tie. Preston Littlebury, the erstwhile employer of Andy Griffin?

  ‘You have my deepest sympathy, my dear, you know that.’

  Wexford saw that he had been wrong about the young girls. One at any rate had braved the grimness of the day and the bad weather, a thin pale teenager in black trousers and a raincoat. The elderly woman with her was saying, ‘I’m Ishbel Macsamphire, my dear. Last year in Edinburgh? Remember? With poor Davina. And then I met you with your young man. This is my granddaughter . . .’

  Daisy behaved beautifully to all of them. Her sadness gave her an enormous dignity. She managed the difficult feat he had seen her achieve before, of responding with courtesy yet without a smile. One by one they moved away from her and for a moment she was alone. She stood, surveying the people as they moved towards their cars, as if searching for someone, her eyes wide, her lips a little parted. It was as if she was looking for a mourner whose presence she expected but who had not come, who had failed her. The wind snatched the long black scarf she wore and pulled it out in a fluttering streamer. She shivered, hunched herself for a moment before coming up to Wexford.

  ‘That’s over. Thank goodness. I thought I might burst out crying, or faint, but I didn’t, did I?’

  ‘Not you. Were you looking for someone who hasn’t come?’

  ‘Oh, no. Whatever gave you that idea?’

  Nicholas Virson was approaching them. In spite of her denial, it must have been he she was looking for, her ‘young man’, for she gave a little dip of the head as if bowing to some necessity, as if resigned. She took his arm and let him lead her to his car. His mother was already seated inside it, peering through the steamy glass.

  Wexford thought, as he had occasionally thought of Sheila years ago, and thought of her with accurate foresight, what an actress she would make! Well, Sheila had made an actress, but Daisy wasn’t acting, Daisy was sincere. She was simply one of those people who cannot help extracting drama from their personal tragedies. Hadn’t Graham Greene said somewhere that every novelist has a splinter of ice in his heart? Perhaps she would follow in her grandmother’s footsteps here too.

  Grandmother’s footsteps. He smiled to himself as he thought of the game children played, tiptoeing up close, seeing how near they could get, before the one in front with her back to them turned round, and they fled screaming . . .

  * * * *

  ‘We found two sets of keys inside, sir,’ said Karen. ‘We found her chequebook, but no cash or credit cards.’

  The house was lavishly furnished, the kitchen luxuriously appointed. In the bathroom, which was ‘en suite’ with Mrs Garland’s bedroom, was a bidet and a power shower, a hair dryer attached to the wall.

  ‘As in the best hotels,’ Karen said with a giggle.

  ‘Yes, but I thought they only did that to stop the guests stealing them. This is a private house.’

  Karen looked doubtful. ‘Well, you couldn’t lose it this way, could you? You wouldn’t wonder where you’d left it last time you washed your hair.’

  To Wexford it looked more as if Joanne Garland had spent money for the sake of spending it. She had hardly known what to spend her income on. An electric trouser press? Why not? Even though the clothes cupboard revealed only a single pair of trousers. A phone extension in the bathroom? No more running dripping into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel. The ‘gym’ contained an exercise bicycle, a rowing machine, a contraption that looked to Wexford like nothing so much as pictures he had seen of the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg, and something that might have been a treadmill.

  ‘They used to make poor devils in workhouses stomp up and down on those,’ Wexford said. ‘She has it for fun.’

  ‘Well, for her fitness, sir.’

  ‘And all this, is this for her fitness?’

  They were back in the bedroom where he confronted the most comprehensive collection of cosmetics and beauty products he had ever seen outside a department store. These items were not in the drawers of a dressing table or on a shelf, but contained in a large cabinet, there exclusively to accommodate them.

  ‘There’s another lot in the bathroom,’ said Karen.

  ‘This looks more like something you’d stick up your nose,’ said Wexford, holding up a brown bottle with a gold top and dropper. He unscrewed the top from a jar and sniffed the contents, a thick sweet-scented yellow cream. ‘You could eat this one. They don’t work, do they?’

  ‘I suppose it gives the poor old things hope,’ said Karen with all the arrogant indifference of twenty-three. ‘You believe what you read, don’t you think, sir? You believe what you read on labels. Most people do.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  What struck him most was how tidy the place was. As if its owner was going away and had known well in advance she was going. But no one goes away without telling anyone. A woman with such a large family as Joanne Garland doesn’t go away without a word to her mother, to her brothers and sisters. His mind went back to that evening and Burden’s scenario. It hadn’t been a satisfactory scenario but
it had its points.

  ‘How are we getting on with checking out all the cab companies in the district?’

  ‘There are a lot of them, sir, but we’re getting through them.’

  He tried to think of possible reasons for a wealthy, single, middle-aged woman suddenly taking off on a trip in March without telling her family, her neighbours or her business partner. Some lover from the past who had turned up and swept her off her feet? Unlikely in the case of a hard-headed businesswoman of fifty-four. A summons from the other side of the world that someone close to her was dying? In that case, she would have told her family.

  ‘Was her passport in the house, Karen?’

  ‘No, sir. But she may not have had one. We could ask her sisters if she ever went abroad.’

  ‘We could. We will.’

  Back at the stables of Tancred House, a call was put through to him. It was no one he knew or had even heard of: the deputy-governor of Royal Oak Prison outside Crewe in Cheshire. Of course he knew all about Royal Oak, the famous high-security, Category B prison that was run as a therapeutic community and still, years after such theories ceased to be fashionable, held to the principle that criminals can be ‘cured’ by therapy. Though with just the same rate of recidivism as any other British jail, it at least appeared not to make its inmates worse.

  The deputy-governor said he had a prisoner who wanted to see Wexford, who had asked for him by name. The prisoner was serving a long sentence for attempted murder and robbery with violence and at present he was in the prison hospital.

  ‘He thinks he’s going to die.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s called Hocking, James. Known as Jem Hocking.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘He’s heard of you. Kingsmarkham, isn’t it? He knows Kingsmarkham. Didn’t you have a police officer shot down dead there getting on for a year ago?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Wexford. ‘Yes, we did.’

  O.k.a. George Brown. Was Jem Hocking the man who had bought a car in the name of George Brown?

  Mrs Griffin told them Andy hadn’t come back yet. ‘But we had a phone call, didn’t we, Terry? He rung up last night from up north. Where did he say he was, Terry? Manchester, was it?’

  ‘He rung up from Manchester,’ Terry Griffin said. ‘He didn’t want us to worry, he wanted us to know he was all right.’

  ‘Were you worried?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of whether we was worried or not. It’s a matter of Andy thinking we might be worried. We thought it was very considerate. It’s not every son that’d ring up his mum and dad to tell them he was all right when he’d only been away two days. You do worry when he’s on that bike. A bike wouldn’t be my choice but what’s a young boy to do with the price cars are? It was very considerate and thoughtful ringing us up.’

  ‘Typical of Andy,’ said his mother complacently. ‘He was always a very considerate boy.’

  ‘Did he say when he was coming back?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t expect him to tell us his every movement.’

  ‘And you don’t know his address in Manchester?’

  Again Mrs Griffin had been too sensitive and the relationship too finely tuned for him to risk disturbing it by bald enquiries of that nature.

  The woman called Bib admitted Wexford to the house. She wore a red tracksuit with an apron over it. When Wexford said that Mrs Harrison was expecting him she gave a sort of grunt and nodded but said not a word. She walked ahead of him with a rollicking gait like someone who has been too long on board ship.

  Brenda Harrison was in the conservatory. It was very warm, faintly damp and sweet-smelling. The scent came from a pair of lemon trees in tubs of blue and white faïence. They were simultaneously in flower and fruit, the flowers white and waxy. She had been busy with watering can, houseplant food and tissues for putting a gloss on leaves.

  ‘Though who it’s all for I’m sure I don’t know.’

  The blue and white printed blinds were drawn up in ruffles high up in the glass roof. Queenie, the Persian, sat on one of the sills, her hyacinth eyes fixed on a bird on a branch. The bird was singing in the rain and its cadences made the cat’s teeth chatter.

  Brenda got up off her knees, wiped her hands on her overall and subsided into a wicker chair.

  ‘I’d just like to hear their version, those Griffins. I’d really like to hear what they told you.’

  Here Wexford refused to oblige her. He said nothing.

  ‘Of course I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going to say a word. Not to you lot, I mean. It wasn’t fair on Ken. Well, that’s the way I saw it. Not nice for Ken, I thought. And when you think about it, what’s that Andy Griffin taking a fancy to me for some reason and trying all that funny business, what’s that got to do with criminals shooting Davina and Harvey and Naomi? Well, nothing, has it?’

  ‘Tell me about it, will you, Mrs Harrison?’

  ‘I suppose I must. It’s very distasteful. I know I look a lot younger than I am – well, people are always telling me – so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when that Andy got fresh.’

  It was an expression Wexford hadn’t heard for years. He marvelled at Mrs Harrison’s vanity, the delusion that made this shrivelled lined woman imagine she looked younger than her fifty-odd years. And what was there, after all, to be so pleased and proud about, in looking younger than one was? It had always perplexed him. As if there was some particular virtue attached to looking forty-five when one was fifty. And what anyway did fifty look like?

  She was staring at him, seeking the words in which to reveal it or perhaps obfuscate it. ‘He touched me. I nearly jumped out of my skin.’ As if anticipating the question, she placed her hand against her left breast, looking away. ‘It was in my own house. He’d come in the kitchen, I was having a cup of tea, so of course I gave him one. Not that I liked him, don’t think that.

  ‘He’s evil. Oh, yes, I’m not exaggerating. He’s not just peculiar, he’s evil. You’ve only got to look at his eyes. He was just a little kid when we first came here, but he wasn’t like other kids, he wasn’t normal. His mother, she wanted him allowed to play with Daisy – well, you can just see that happening, can’t you? Even Naomi said no, not just Davina. He used to have these screaming tantrums, you’d hear him through the walls, it’d go on for hours. They couldn’t do a thing with him.

  ‘He can’t have been a day over fourteen when I caught him here peering at me through the bathroom window. I’d got all my clothes on, thank God, but he didn’t know that when he started looking, did he? That was the point, to catch me with no clothes on.’

  ‘The bathroom?’ Wexford said. ‘What did he do, climb a tree?’

  ‘The bathrooms are downstairs in these houses. Don’t ask me why. They were built that way with the bathrooms downstairs. He only had to come through from theirs through the hedge and hang about outside. It wasn’t long after that his mother told me a lady in Pomfret had complained about him for the same thing. Called him a Peeping Tom. Of course she said it was a wicked lie and the woman had got it in for her poor Andy, but I knew what I knew.’

  ‘What happened in the kitchen?’

  ‘When he touched me, d’you mean? Well, I don’t want to go into details and I won’t. When it was done, after he’d gone, I thought to myself, it’s only because he’s madly attracted to you and he can’t help himself. But he could help himself when he came back next day, asking for money, couldn’t he?’

  Queenie gave a tap with her paw on the glass. The bird flew away. The rain suddenly came down heavily, the water lashing against the panes. The cat got down and stalked towards the door. Instead of getting up to assist her, which Wexford would have expected from such a committed animal lover, Brenda sat intently watching. It soon became clear what she was waiting for. Queenie stood up on her hind legs, took hold of the door handle with her right paw and pulled it down. The door came open and she passed through, tail erect.

  �
�You can’t tell me they’re not more intelligent than any human being,’ said Brenda Harrison fondly.

  ‘I’d like to hear about this attempted rape, Mrs Harrison.’

  She didn’t care for the word. A deep blush coloured her worn face. ‘I’m sure I don’t know why you’re so keen on all these details.’ Having implied that Wexford’s interest in the matter was of a prurient kind, she looked down, twisting her neck, and began kneading a corner of her overall. ‘He touched me, like I said. I said, don’t. He said, why not? Don’t you like me? It’s not a matter of like or dislike, I said, I’m a married woman. Then he got hold of me by the shoulders and he pushed me back against the sink and started rubbing up against me. Well, you said you wanted details. It doesn’t give me any pleasure talking about it.

  ‘I struggled but he was a lot stronger than me, it stands to reason he was. I said to let me go or I’d go straight in and tell his father. He said, had I got anything on under my skirt, and he tried pulling at my skirt. I kicked at him then. There was a knife laying on the draining board, only a little knife I use for doing the veg, but I grabbed hold of it and I said I’d stick it in him if he didn’t let go. Well, he let go then and called me a name. He called me an aitch, oh, ar, ee, and said it was my fault for wearing my skirts tight.’

  ‘Did you tell his father? Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘I thought if I kept quiet it’d all blow over. Ken’s a very jealous man, I suppose it’s only natural. I mean, I’ve known him make a scene over a fellow just looking at me on a bus. Anyway, next day that Andy came back. He knocked on the front door and I was expecting the man to service the tumble-dryer, so naturally I opened it. He pushed his way in. I said, this is it, this time you’ve gone too far, Andy Griffin, I’m telling your dad and Mr Copeland.

  ‘He didn’t touch me. He just laughed. He said I was to give him five pounds down or he’d tell Ken I’d asked him to – well, to go with me. He’d tell his mum and dad and he’d tell Ken. And folks’d believe him, he said, on account of me being older than him. “So much older” was what he said, if you must know.’