by Ruth Rendell
Pamela Burns looked a little smug. A small modest smile appeared on her lips. Mrs Chowney said shrewdly, ‘This is about that Naomi, isn’t it? It’s got something to do with what happened up there. Joanne was worried about her. She used to talk to me about it, when she wasn’t talking about herself.’
‘Worried in what way, Mrs Chowney?’
‘Said she had no life, ought to find a man. Said her life was empty. Empty, I thought to myself, and her living in that house, never known money worries, playing at selling china animals, never had to fend for herself. That’s not an empty life, I said, that’s a sheltered life. Still, she’s gone and it’s all water under the bridge.’
‘Your daughter had a man in her own life, did she?’
‘Joanne,’ said Mrs Chowney. He remembered too late that with so many it was necessary to specify. ‘My daughter Joanne. She’s had two, you know, two husbands.’ She spoke as if some kind of rationing scheme existed in this area of life and her daughter had already used up the best part of her allocation. ‘There might be someone, she wouldn’t tell me, not if he wasn’t loaded. What she’d do is show me the things he’d given her and there was nothing of that, was there, Pam?’
‘I don’t know, Mother. I wasn’t told and I wouldn’t ask.’
Wexford came to the question that was the point of his visit. He trembled on the brink of it. So much depended on a guilty or defensive or indignant response.
‘Did she know Naomi’s ex-husband, Mr George Godwin Jones?’
They both looked at him as if such sublime ignorance was only to be pitied. Pamela Burns even leant a little towards him as if to encourage him to repeat what he had said, as if she had not, could not, have heard aright.
‘Gunner?’ said Mrs Chowney at last.
‘Well, yes. Mr Gunner Jones. Did she know him?’
‘Of course she knew him,’ said Pamela Burns. ‘Of course she did.’ She made a gesture of locking her forefingers. ‘They were like that, thick as thick, her and Brian and Naomi and Gunner, weren’t they? Used to do everything together.’
‘Joanne had just got married for the second time,’ put in Mrs Chowney, ‘oh, it’ll be getting on for twenty years ago.’
They were still incredulous that all this might not be widely known. It was as if he had to be indignantly reminded of the facts, not be told them for the first time.
‘It was through Brian Joanne got to know Naomi. He was a pal of Gunner’s. I remember her saying what a coincidence it was Gunner marrying a girl from round here and I thought, not just a girl from round here, come on, a girl from that background! Still, Joanne had got a leg-up in the world. Brian used to say he was just a poor millionaire, but that was him trying to be funny.’
‘They were that close,’ said Mrs Chowney, ‘I said to Pam, I wonder Gunner and Naomi don’t take those two on their honeymoon with them.’
‘And the closeness persisted after the two divorces?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I mean, did these four people continue to know each other after their marriages ended? Of course I know Mrs Garland and Mrs Jones remained friends.’
‘Brian went to Australia, didn’t he?’ Mrs Chowney asked the question in the tone she might have used to ask Wexford if the sun had risen in the east that morning. ‘They couldn’t be hob-nobbing with him even if they’d wanted to. Anyway, Gunner and Naomi’d split up long before. That marriage was doomed from the start.’
‘Joanne took Naomi’s part,’ said Pamela Burns eagerly. ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? A close friend like that. She lined herself up with Naomi. She and Brian were together then and even Brian took against Gunner.’ She added sententiously, ‘You don’t give up on a marriage just because you can’t get on with your wife’s mother, especially when you’ve got a baby. That baby was only six months old.’
* * * *
The caterer’s van, as was its daily habit, was drawn up on the courtyard between Tancred House and the stables. It was fragrant with curry and the scent of Mexican spices.
‘Freebee would have a word to say about that too, if he did but know about it,’ said Wexford to Burden.
‘We have to eat.’
‘Yes, and it’s a cut above the station canteen or any of our cheaper haunts in town.’ Wexford was eating chicken pilaf and Burden an individual ham and mushroom quiche.
‘Funny to think of that girl, only a few yards away from us really, being waited on by a servant, her meals cooked for her, just as a matter of course.’
‘It’s a way of life, Mike, and one we don’t happen to be used to. I doubt if it contributes much to personal happiness or detracts from it. When does that shop of his expect Gunner Jones back?’
‘Not till Monday. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be home sooner. Unless he skipped off, left the country. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘Gone to join her, d’you reckon?’
‘I don’t know. I was certain she was dead, but now I just don’t know. I’d like to be able to make another of what you call my scenarios for those two but when I try it it doesn’t work. Gunner Jones has the best motive of anyone for these killings – provided Daisy had died, and no doubt whoever shot her thought she would die. In that case, he would have inherited everything. But where does Garland come in? Was she his girlfriend, going to share the loot with him? Or was she an innocent visitor who interrupted him – and who else? We’ve established no connection at all between Jones and Andy Griffin beyond Gunner’s seeing him a couple of times as a kid. Then there’s the vehicle they came in. Not Joanne Garland’s car. The forensic boys have been over that with a toothcomb. Not the BMW. There’s not a sign to indicate anyone but Joanne herself had been in it for months.’
‘And where does Andy come in?
Bib Mew had returned to work at Tancred House and there Wexford and Vine had each had a further go at talking to her. Mention of the body hanging from the tree, however carefully couched in soothing language, resulted in more trembling fits and once a kind of attack which manifested itself in a series of short sharp screams.
‘She won’t go past where it was,’ Brenda Harrison volunteered with ghoulish relish. ‘She goes all that long way round. All the way down to Pomfret and along the main road and up to Cheriton. Takes her hours and it’s no joke when it’s raining. Daisy –’ here a loud sniff ‘– says to Ken to fetch her in the car, it’s the least we can do, she says. Let her fetch her herself if she’s so keen, I said. We’re under notice, I said, I don’t see why we should put ourselves out. I hope you’re still baking our own bread, Brenda, she says, and I’ve got someone for dinner tonight, Brenda, and we’re getting pushed out into the street. Davina would turn in her grave she knew.’
The next time Wexford tried to see her Bib hid in the room off the kitchen where the freezer was and locked herself in.
‘I don’t know what you’ve done to scare her,’ Brenda said. ‘She’s a bit simple, you know. You did know that?’ She tapped her head with two fingers. A silent mouthing offered: ‘Damage to her brain in the birth.’
There were a good many things Wexford would have liked to know. If Bib had seen anyone near the hanging tree. If she had seen anyone at all in the woods that afternoon. Thanny Hogarth was his only link with what might have happened; Thanny Hogarth must be her interpreter.
‘Accordingly,’ Wexford said, finishing his pilaf, ‘I’ve got him coming up here this afternoon to make a statement. On what happened when Bib arrived at his door and told him about finding Andy Griffin’s body. But I don’t think it’s going to supply any shattering revelations.’
Thanny Hogarth arrived on his bicycle. Wexford saw him from the window. He came across the courtyard towards the stables, no hands, pedalling away, his arms folded, his face rapt as he listened to the Walkman clamped to his head.
The headset was draped round his neck when he sauntered in. Karen Malahyde intercepted him and brought him over to Wexford. Thanny’s hair was tied back today, apparently with a sho
elace, in that style which Wexford loathed on a man, while recognising his dislike as prejudice. He was unshaven to exactly the same degree as he had been last time they met, that is with two or three days’ growth of beard. Was it always so? Wexford allowed himself to wonder how he managed it. Did he trim it to that level with scissors? In a pair of Western boots, chestnut brown, stitched and studded, and with a red scarf knotted round his neck, he looked like a handsome young pirate.
‘Before we begin, Mr Hogarth,’ Wexford said, ‘I’d like you to satisfy my curiosity on one point. If your creative writing course doesn’t start until the autumn, why are you here six months early?’
‘Summer school. It’s a preliminary course for students taking the MA.’
‘I see.’
He would check that with Dr Perkins but he had no doubt he would find all above-board. Karen had a shorthand notebook and took down Thanny Hogarth’s statement. It was also recorded on tape.
‘For what it’s worth,’ he said cheerfully, and Wexford was inclined to agree with him. What was it worth, this brief account of a few blurted-out terrified words?
‘She said, “A dead person. Hanging up. Hanging up off of a tree.” I guess I didn’t believe her. I said, “Come on,” or something like. Maybe I said, “Wait a minute,” I said to tell me again. I’d just made coffee and I made her have some, though I guess she didn’t care for it. Too strong. She spilt it all down her, she was kind of shaking.
‘I said, “How about you take me and show me?” but that was the wrong thing to say. It started her off again. “OK, then,” I said, “you have to call the police, right?” It was then she said she hadn’t a phone. Isn’t that incredible? I said to use mine but she wouldn’t. I mean, naturally I see she wouldn’t want to do that, so I said OK, I’ll do it, and I guess I did.’
‘She said nothing about seeing anyone else in the woods? Then or on a previous occasion near where the body was?’
‘Nothing. You have to understand she didn’t talk much, not actual talk. She made a whole lot of noises, but real speech, no.’
In addition to the other means of recording this statement, Wexford had been noting down some of it when his ballpoint ceased to work. The tip of it began making grooves instead of marks on the page. He looked up, reached for another pen out of the jar beside the furry cactus and saw that Daisy had come into the stables and was standing just inside the door, looking rather wistfully about her.
She saw him a fraction after he saw her and immediately came over, smiling and holding out her hands. This might have been a social visit, long-promised, that she was paying. That it was, to all intents and purposes, a police station, that these were police officers conducting a murder enquiry, had not in the least deterred her. She was unaware of the implications and innocent of the knowledge which would have inhibited others.
‘You asked me to come the other day, and I said no, I was tired or I wanted to be alone or something, and ever since I’ve thought how rude that was. So I thought, today I’ll go and see the place and here I am!’
Karen was looking scandalised and Barry Vine not much less so. The open-plan arrangement of the stables had its disadvantages.
Wexford said, ‘I’ll be delighted to give you a conducted tour in ten minutes’ time. Meanwhile, Sergeant Vine will show you our computer system and how it works.’
She was looking at Thanny Hogarth, just a glance she gave him before taking her eyes away, but it was a glance full of curiosity and speculation. Barry Vine said to come this way, please, and he’d explain the computer phone-link with the police station. Wexford had the impression she didn’t want to go but that she recognised she hadn’t much choice.
‘Who was that?’ said Thanny.
‘Davina, called Daisy, Jones, who lives at the house.’
‘You mean the girl who was shot?’
‘Yes. I’d like you to read this statement, please, and if you find everything satisfactory, to sign it.’
Halfway through his reading, Thanny lifted his eyes from the sheet to have another look at Daisy, who was being instructed by Vine in the formatting of software. A line came into Wexford’s head: ‘What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?’ Romeo and Juliet . . . well, why not?
‘Thank you very much. I shan’t need to trouble you any longer.’
Thanny seemed not at all anxious to go. He asked if he too could be shown the computer system. It was interesting to him because he was considering replacing his typewriter. Wexford, who wouldn’t have got where he was if unable to deal with this kind of thing, said no, sorry, they were far too busy.
With a shrug, Thanny ambled off towards the door. There he lingered for a moment as if deep in thought. There he might have stood until Daisy herself had taken her leave, had not DC Pemberton opened the door for him and firmly ushered him out.
‘Who was that?’ said Daisy.
‘An American student called Jonathan Hogarth.’
‘What a nice name. I do like names with th sounds in them.’ For a moment, a disconcerting moment, she sounded exactly like her grandmother. Or as Wexford guessed her grandmother must have sounded. ‘Where does he live?’
‘In a cottage at Pomfret Monachorum. He’s here to do a creative writing MA at the University of the South.’
Wexford thought she looked wistful. If you like the look and the sound of him, he felt like saying, go to university and you’ll meet plenty like him. He felt like saying it but he didn’t. He wasn’t her father, however paternal he might feel, and Gunner Jones was. Gunner Jones couldn’t have cared less whether she went to Oxford or she went on the streets.
‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever use this place again,’ she said. ‘Well, not as my own special private place. I won’t need to. It would be a funny thing to do now I’ve got the whole house. But I shall always have happy memories of it.’ She spoke like someone of seventy, grandma again, looking back to a distant youth. ‘It was really nice, getting home from school and having here to come to. And I could bring my friends, you know, and no one would disturb us. Yet I’m sure I didn’t appreciate it as I should have done when I had it.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Did that boy come on a bike? I saw a bike leaning up against the wall.’
‘Yes, he did. It’s not all that far.’
‘Not if you know the way through the woods, though I suppose he wouldn’t. And, anyway, not on a bike.’
After she had gone back to the house, Wexford permitted himself a small fantasy. Suppose they were really attracted to each other, those two. Thanny might ring her up, they might meet and then – who could tell? Not a marriage or a serious relationship, he wouldn’t want that for Daisy at her age. But to put Nicholas Virson’s nose out of joint, to change Daisy’s repudiation of Oxford to enthusiastic acceptance, how desirable all that seemed.
* * * *
Gunner Jones returned home rather earlier than expected. He had been in York, staying with friends. Burden, on the phone, asked him for the name and address of the friends and he refused to give these details. In the meantime, he had learned from the Metropolitan Police that, far from being unable to handle a gun, Jones was a member of the North London Gun Club and had been issued with firearms certificates for a rifle and a handgun, in respect of both of which he was subject to periodic inspections by the police.
The handgun was not a Colt but a Smith and Wesson Model 31. Nevertheless, all this led Burden to ask him, in no uncertain terms, to come to Kingsmarkham police station. At first Jones again refused but something in Burden’s tone must have made it clear to him that he had little choice.
To the police station, not to Tancred House. Wexford would talk to him in the austerity of an interview room, not up here with his daughter only a stone’s throw away. He hardly knew how he came to the decision to drive home by the Pomfret Monachorum road. It was much further, a very long way round. The beauty of the sunset perhaps or, more practically, to avoid, by driving eastwards, heading straight for that flaming
red ball whose light blinded as it penetrated the woodland in dazzling shafts. Or simply to see how spring had begun to veil the young trees with green.
After half a mile he saw them. Not the Land-Rover. That was either hidden among the trees or not in use today. And John Gabbitas was not dressed in his protective clothing, there was no chain saw or other tools to be seen. He was in jeans and a Barbour jacket and Daisy too wore jeans with a heavy sweater. They stood on the edge of a recent plantation of young trees, a long way away, glimpsed only because there happened to be an aisle here, a swathe cut through. They were talking, they were close together and they did not hear his car.
The sun gilded them with red-gold so that they looked like painted figures brushed into a landscape. Their shadows were dark and stretched out on the reddened grass. He saw her lay her hand on Gabbitas’s arm and her shadow copy the gesture, and then he drove on.
Chapter Twenty-One
A woodsman uses rope. Burden remembered ‘surgery’ being performed on a tree in a neighbour’s garden. It was during his first marriage, when his children were young. They had all watched from an upstairs window. The tree surgeon had roped himself to one of the great limbs of the willow before beginning the work of sawing off a dead branch.
Whether or not John Gabbitas would be working on a Saturday he didn’t know but he made a point of getting to the cottage early just in case. It was only a minute or two past eight thirty. A repeated ringing of the doorbell failed to rouse him. Gabbitas either wasn’t yet up or had already gone out.
Burden walked round the back and looked at the various outbuildings, a woodshed and a machinery shed and a structure for keeping wood dry while it seasoned. All had been searched at the beginning of the case. But when they searched, what had they been looking for?
