by Ruth Rendell
‘Did Davina do that?’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing. Poor woman’s dead and in a hideous way.’
The four of them at the table, two ciphers, as Perkins called them, two sparklers, and then the gunmen entered the house and it was over, the railing and the wit, the dullness and the love, the past and the hope. He often thought of it, he thought about the mise-en-scène more than he ever had in any murder case before. The red and white tablecloth, red and white like those fishes in the pool, was a recurring image no one would believe a seasoned policeman like himself could keep seeing. As he read Davina’s account of her travels in Saxony and Thuringia, he thought of that tablecloth, dyed with her blood.
‘It’s a horrible way to kill someone,’ he had said to Burden of Andy Griffin’s hanging. ‘Murder is horrible.’ But had it been a clever murder? Or a murder that was mystifying only through a concatenation of unforeseeable circumstances? Were they to believe that the gunman had been clever enough to engrave grooves in the barrel of a .38 or a .357? Some chum of Andy Griffin’s had been clever enough for that?
Rosemary Mountjoy stayed at Tancred House with Daisy on Monday night, Karen Malahyde on Tuesday and Anne Lennox on Wednesday. Dr Sumner-Quist furnished Wexford with a full report of the port-mortem on Thursday and a national tabloid daily carried a story on its front page enquiring why the police had made no progress at all in the hunt for those responsible for the Tancred House massacre. The Deputy Chief Constable had Wexford up to his house, wanting to know how he had come to let Andy Griffin die. Or that was what it amounted to, couched differently.
The inquest on Andy Griffin was opened and adjourned. Wexford studied a detailed analysis from the forensic lab on the state of Andy’s clothes. Particles of sand, loam, chalk and fibrous leafmould were found in the seams of his track-suit pants and top and the pockets of his jacket. A very small amount of jute fibre as used in the manufacture of ropes adhered to the neck of his track-suit top.
Sumner-Quist had found no traces of any sedative or narcotic substance in the stomach or intestines. A blow had been struck to the side of the head prior to death. It was Sumner-Quist’s opinion that this blow had been struck by a heavy instrument, probably a metal instrument, wrapped in cloth. The blow was not severe but would have been enough to stun Griffin, to lay him out cold for a few minutes. For long enough.
Wexford didn’t shudder. He only felt like shuddering. It was an awful picture that this conjured up, somehow not of this modern world as he knew it, but of a long past time, arcane, brutish and crudely rustic. He could see the unsuspecting man, the fat, stupid and foolishly confident man perhaps believing he had a henchman in his power, and the other creeping behind him with his prearranged weapon, his padded weapon. The blow to the head, quick and expert. Then, no time to waste, the prepared noose, the rope slung over the great limb of an ash tree . . .
Where had the rope come from? Gone were the days of small private ironmongers, ownership passed down in a family from generation to generation. Now you bought rope at a DIY emporium or in the hardware section of some vast general supermarket. It made things harder, for a shop assistant remembers serving an individual customer who asks for specific items far better than does the girl or boy on the check-out. They look at the price rather than the nature of an object as it is lifted from the trolley, they may even pass it unseeing under the scrutiny of an electronic eye, and they may not look at the customer at all.
He had managed to get to bed early. Dora had a cold and was sleeping in the spare room. This had nothing, or not much, to do with the heated words they had had earlier over Sheila. Several times on the phone Dora had spoken to Sheila, but always in the daytime when her father was at work. She was bitter against him, Dora told Wexford, but willing to ‘talk it through’. The terminology made Wexford snort. That sort of jargon was all very well at Royal Oak, quite another thing from the lips of his daughter.
Dora’s idea was that Sheila should come down for another weekend. Of course, Casey would have to come too, they were a couple now, one of those unmarried couples, who do everything together and put their names side by side on Christmas cards. Casey would come with her as naturally as Neil would with Sylvia. Over his dead body, said Wexford.
So Dora had sniffed and taken her cold into the spare room. With her went the pile of literature Sheila had sent – addressed pointedly to her mother – on the little town of Heights in Nevada where the university campus was. This included a prospectus of Heights University with details of the courses it offered and photographs of its amenities. A city guide presented panoramic views of the scenery in which it was set and pages and pages of advertisements from local traders to offset, no doubt, the cost of this glossy production. Wexford had given them both a miserable glance before handing these productions back to Dora without comment.
He sat up in bed with a fresh pile of books Amyas Ireland had sent. He read all the writing on the cover of the top one, which Ireland had told him was called ‘jacket copy’. He read enough of the introduction to understand that Lovely As A Tree was going to be about Davina Flory’s efforts with her first husband to replant the ancient woods of Tancred, before the onset of sleep dropped his eyelids and shook him with a violent galvanic start. He put out the light.
His phone was bleeping. He reached for it and knocked the tree book on to the floor.
Karen said, ‘Sir, this is DC Malahyde at Tancred House. I’ve phoned in.’ This was the term they all used for contacting the police station to summon help. ‘They’re on their way. But I thought you’d want to know. There’s someone outside, a man, I think. We heard him and then we – well, Daisy, she saw him.’
‘I’m on my way too,’ said Wexford.
Chapter Seventeen
It was one of those rare nights when the moon shines nearly bright enough to read by. Up in the woods Wexford’s car lights quenched the moonlight but once he emerged on to the open land and came into the courtyard, everything showed as clear as day in the still white radiance. No breath of wind stirred the trees. To the west of the great pile of the house and behind it showed the tops of the pines and firs and cedars in the pinetum, serrated, spired, pinnacled, fronded, black silhouettes against the gleaming pearl-grey sky. A single greenish star shone very brightly. The moon was a white sphere, alabaster-like and glowing, so that you could understand the ancients believing a light burned inside it.
The arc lamps under the wall were out, had perhaps gone out on a time clock. It was twenty to one. Two police cars were parked on the flagstones, one of them Barry Vine’s Vauxhall. Wexford pulled his car alongside Barry’s. In the dark water of the pool the moon was reflected, a white globe. The front door was open, the inner glass door was closed but not locked. Karen opened it to him as he approached. She told him, before he could get a word out, that four men from the uniformed branch were searching the woods nearest to the house. Vine was upstairs.
He nodded, went past her into the drawing room. Daisy was walking up and down, clenching and unclenching her hands. He thought for an instant that she was going to throw herself into his arms. But she only came close to him, about a yard from him, bringing her fists up to her face and holding them to her mouth as if she meant to gnaw her knuckles. Her eyes were enormous. He understood at once that she had been frightened almost unendurably, was near hysteria with terror.
‘Daisy,’ he said gently, and then, ‘Won’t you sit down? Come and sit down. Nothing is going to happen. You’re quite safe.’
She shook her head. Karen went to her, hazarded a touch on her arm, and when that was repulsed, took her arm and led her to a chair. Instead of sitting down, Daisy turned fully to face Karen. Her wound must be nearly healed by now, only a slight padding on the shoulder showed through her sweater.
She said, ‘Hold me. Please hold me for a minute.’
Karen put her arms round her and held her tight. Wexford noticed that Karen was one of those rare people who can hug another without patting shoulder
blades. She held on to Daisy like a mother with a child that has been endangered newly restored to her, then she released her gently and propelled her into the chair, placed her in the chair.
‘She’s been like this ever since she saw him, haven’t you, Daisy?’ Nurse-like, Karen went on, ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve cuddled you, it doesn’t seem to do much good. Would you like another cup of tea?’
‘I didn’t want the first cup!’ Wexford had never before heard Daisy sound like this, her voice all over the place, jagged, like the run-up to a scream. ‘Why do I have to have tea? I’d like something to stun me, I’d like something to make me go to sleep for ever!’
‘Make us all a cup of tea, would you, Karen?’ He disliked making this request of women officers, it smacked too much of the old days, but he told himself he would have asked for tea to be made if it had been Archbold standing there or Davidson. ‘For you and me and Sergeant Vine and whoever else is about. And would you bring Daisy a small brandy? I think you’ll find it in the cabinet in the –’ Not for anyone was he going to call it the serre ‘– the greenhouse.’
Daisy’s eyes darted this way and that, to the windows, to the door. When the door swung slowly and silently inwards she drew in her breath in a long tremulous gasp, but it was only the cat, the big dignified blue cat, walking majestically in. The cat gave Wexford one of those stares of contempt that only a spoilt pet can achieve, went up to Daisy and leapt lightly into her lap.
‘Oh Queenie, oh Queenie!’ Daisy hung forward, burying her face in the dense blue fur.
‘Tell me what happened, Daisy.’
She went on nuzzling the cat, murmuring feverishly. Queenie’s purr was a deep heavy throb.
‘Come on,’ Wexford said more roughly. ‘Get a grip on yourself.’ He talked to Sheila like that when she tried his patience, had talked to her like that.
Daisy lifted her head. She swallowed. He saw the delicate movement of the thorax between the curtains of shining dark hair.
‘You must tell me what happened.’
‘It was so awful.’ Still the ragged voice, hoarse, shrill, broken. ‘It was terrible.’
Karen came in with the brandy in a wineglass. She held it to Daisy’s lips like medicine. Daisy took a sip and choked.
‘Let her drink it herself,’ said Wexford. ‘She’s not ill. She’s not a child or a geriatric, for God’s sake. She’s just had a fright.’
That shook her. Her eyes flashed. She took the glass from Karen as Barry Vine came in with four cups of tea on a tray, and threw the brandy down her throat in a bold defiant gesture. A violent choking ensued. Karen banged her on the back and the tears came into Daisy’s eyes, overflowed and streamed down her face.
Having watched this performance inscrutably for a few seconds, Vine said, ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘I suppose it is morning, Barry. Yes, well, it must be. Now Daisy, dry your eyes. You’re better now. You’re all right now.’
She rubbed at her face with the tissue Karen handed her. She stared at him rather mutinously but it was in her old voice that she spoke.
‘I’ve never had brandy before.’
It rang a bell. Years and years before, he remembered Sheila uttering those same words and the young ass that was with her saying, ‘Another virginity gone, alas!’ It made him sigh. ‘OK, where were you both, you and Karen? In bed?’
‘It was only just after eleven thirty, sir!’
He had forgotten that to these young things eleven thirty was mid-evening. ‘I asked Daisy,’ he said sharply.
‘I was in here, watching the telly. I don’t know where Karen was, in the kitchen or somewhere, making herself a drink. We were going to go to bed when the programme finished. I heard someone outside but I thought it was Karen . . .’
‘What do you mean, you heard someone?’
‘Footsteps out in the front. The outside lights had just gone off. They’re set to go off at half past eleven. The footsteps came right up to the house, to the windows there, and I got up to look. The moon was very bright, you didn’t need lights. I saw him, I saw him out there in the moonlight as near as you are to me now.’ She paused, breathin quickly. ‘And I just started screaming, I screamed and screamed, till Karen came.’
‘I’d already heard him, sir. I heard him before Daisy did, I think, footsteps outside the kitchen door and then going round the back of the house, along the terrace. I ran through the house and into the – the conservatory, and I heard him again but I never saw him. That was when I phoned in. I phoned in before I heard Daisy screaming. I came in here and found Daisy at the window screaming and hammering on the glass and then I – I phoned you.’
Wexford turned to Daisy again. She had grown calm, the brandy apparently having had that stunning effect she craved. ‘What exactly did you see, Daisy?’
‘He had a thing over his head, like a sort of woolly helmet with eyeholes. He looked like those pictures you see of terrorists. The thing he was wearing, I don’t know, maybe a track-suit, dark, could have been black or dark blue.’
‘Was it the same man as the gunman who killed your family and tried to kill you here on 11 March?’
Even as he uttered it he thought what a terrible question it was to have to put to an eighteen-year-old, a sheltered girl, a gentle frightened girl. Of course she couldn’t answer him. The man had been masked. She returned his look with one of despair.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know. How can I tell? It might have been. I couldn’t tell anything about him, he might have been young or not so young, he wasn’t old. He looked big and strong. He seemed – he seemed to know this place, though I don’t know how I knew that, it’s just that he seemed to know what he was doing and where he was going. Oh, what will become of me, what will happen to me!’
Wexford was saved from trying to find an answer by the entry into the room of the Harrisons. Though Ken Harrison was fully dressed, his wife was in the kind of garment Wexford had heard, long ago, called a ‘housecoat’, red velvet with whitish swansdown round the neck, the front open from the waist to show blue spotted pyjama legs. In time-honoured fashion, she was carrying a poker.
‘What’s going on?’ said Harrison. ‘There’s men everywhere. The place is bristling with cops. I said to Brenda, you know what this could be? This could be those villains come back to finish Daisy off.’
‘So we put some things on and came straight here. I wasn’t walking, I made Ken get the car out. You’re not safe here, I wouldn’t count on being safe even inside a car.’
‘Mind you, we should have been here. I said it from the first, when we first heard there was going to be some policewoman stopping in the house. Why didn’t they just get us? You don’t want some bit of a girl, policewoman or no policewoman so-called. Johnny and us, we should have been called in, God knows there’s bedrooms enough, but oh no, nobody suggested it, so I never said a word. If Johnny and us had been here and the word had gone round we was here, d’you reckon any of this would have happened? D’you reckon that gunman would have had the nerve to come back here with ideas of finishing her off? Not a . . .’
Daisy cut him short. Wexford was astonished by what she did. She jumped up and said with cold clarity, ‘I’m giving you notice. You must be on some sort of notice and I don’t know what it is, but a month’s if possible. I want you out of here and the sooner the better. If I had my way, you’d be out tomorrow.’
She was her grandmother’s granddaughter all right. She stood with her head thrown back, confronting them contemptuously, and then, quickly, her voice broke and slurred. The brandy had done its work and now it was doing work of a different kind.
‘Haven’t you any feelings? Haven’t you any care for me? Talking about finishing me off? I hate you! I hate you both! I want you out of my house, off my land, I’m going to take your cottage away from you . . .’
Her cry disintegrated into a wail, a hysterical sobbing. The Harrisons stood dumbfounded, Brenda’s mouth actually hanging open. Karen went up
to Daisy and Wexford thought for a moment she was going to administer one of those slaps that are supposed to be the best remedy for hysteria. But instead she took Daisy in her arms and, with one hand on the dark head, brought it to rest against her own shoulder.
‘Come, Daisy, I’m going to take you up to bed now. You’ll be quite quite safe now.’
Would she? Wexford wished he could have provided such a confident reassurance. Vine’s eyes met his and the sedate sergeant performed the action most nearly possible to him of casting up the gaze. He moved his eyeballs a few millimetres to the north.
Ken Harrison said excitedly, ‘She’s overwrought, she’s in a state, she didn’t mean that. She didn’t mean that, did she?’
‘Of course she didn’t mean it, Ken, we’re all a family here, we’re part of the family. Of course she didn’t mean it – did she?’
‘I think you’d better go home, Mrs Harrison,’ said Wexford. ‘Both of you should go home.’ He rejected saying that things would seem different in the morning, though they undoubtedly would. ‘Get on home and get some sleep.’
‘Where’s Johnny?’ said Brenda. ‘That’s what I’d like to know. If we could hear those men, and they were making enough racket to wake the dead, why didn’t Johnny hear them? Why’s he laying low? That’s what I’d like to know.’ She went on with venom, ‘Can’t even be bothered to come up here and see what’s going on. If you ask me, if someone’s going to get the push it should be him, lazy devil. What’s he got to lay low about?’
‘He slept through it.’ Wexford couldn’t resist adding, ‘He’s young.’
Karen Malahyde, twenty-three years old, far from fitting Ken Harrison’s image of a ‘policewoman’, that now derogatory and disused term, was a black belt who taught a judo class. Wexford knew that if she had encountered the Tancred intruder on the previous night and that man had either been unarmed or slow on the draw, she would have been capable of rendering him harmless very rapidly. Once she had described how she went alone everywhere fearlessly at night, having proved herself by throwing a mugger the width of a street.
