by Ruth Rendell
The tissues came out again and once more she wiped her face, but carefully this time. Wexford thought she looked remarkably young for fifty-four, or if not exactly young, remarkably smooth-faced. She might have been a tired and rather battered thirty-five. Her hands, though, were those of a much older woman, webs of stringy tendons, wormed with veins. She wore a jersey suit of goose-turd green and a great deal of costume jewellery. Her hair was a bright pale gold, her figure shapely if not quite slim, her legs excellent. In anyone’s eyes she was an attractive woman.
Breathing deeply now, sipping the whisky, she took a powder compact and lipstick out of the bag and restored her face. Wexford could see the gaze arrested by the worst of the bruises, one under her left eye. She touched it with a fingertip before applying powder in an attempt at concealment.
‘We have a lot of things we’d like to ask you, Mrs Garland.’
‘Yes. I suppose.’ She hesitated. ‘I didn’t know, you know, I didn’t have a clue. They don’t have foreign news – well, it’s foreign to them – in American papers. Not unless it’s a war or something. There wasn’t anything about this. The first I knew was when I phoned that girl, Naomi’s girl.’ Her lip trembled when she spoke the name. She swallowed. ‘Poor thing, I suppose I should be sorry for her, I should have told her I was sorry, but it threw me, it just flattened me. I could hardly speak.’
Vine said, ‘You told no one you were going away. You didn’t say a word to your mother or your sisters.’
‘Naomi knew.’
‘Maybe.’ Wexford didn’t say what he felt, that they would never know the truth of that, since Naomi was dead. The last thing he wanted was a fresh gush of tears. ‘Would you mind telling us when you went and why?’
She said, like children do, ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid you do. Eventually. Perhaps you’d like to think about your answer. I have to tell you, Mrs Garland, that your vanishing into thin air like this has caused us considerable trouble.’
‘Could you get me some more Scotch, please.’ She held the empty glass up to Vine. ‘Yes, all right, you needn’t look like that, I do like a drink but I’m not an alcoholic. I specially like a drink in times of stress. Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘I’m not in the business of answering your enquiries, Mrs Garland,’ Wexford said. ‘I’m here so that you can answer mine. I’m doing you the courtesy of coming here. And I want you capable of answering. Is that clear?’ He half-shook his head at Vine who was standing with the glass in his hand and a what-did-your-last-servant-die-of expression on his face. Joanne Garland looked shocked and truculent. ‘Very well. This is a very serious matter. I’d like you to tell me when you got home and what you did.’
She said sulkily, ‘It was last evening. Well, the plane from Los Angeles gets to Gatwick at half two, only it was late. We weren’t through Customs till four. I meant to get the train but I was too tired, I was clapped-out, so I had a car all the way. I was here about five.’ She looked hard at him. ‘I had a drink – well, two or three. I needed them, I can tell you. I went to sleep. I slept the clock round.’
‘And this morning you went down to the shop, found it closed up and looking as if it had been closed up for a long while.’
‘That’s right. I was mad with Naomi – God forgive me. Oh, I know I could have asked someone, I could have phoned one of my sisters. It never crossed my mind. I just thought, Naomi’s screwed it up again – well, like I said, God forgive me. I hadn’t got the shop keys, I thought it’d be open, so I shlepped home and phoned Daisy. Well, I reckoned I was phoning Naomi to tear her off a strip. Daisy told me. That poor kid, it must have been hell having to tell me, sort of relive it all over again.’
‘The evening you went away, 11 March, you went to see your mother in the Caenbrook Retirement Home between five and five thirty. Would you tell us what you did after that?’
She sighed, cast a glance at the empty glass Vine had placed on the table and passed her tongue across her freshly painted lips. ‘I finished my packing. It was the next day I was flying on, the twelfth. The flight didn’t leave till eleven a.m. and I was to check in at nine thirty but still I thought, well, I’ll go tonight, what if the trains are delayed in the morning? It was just a decision I made on the hop really. When I was packing. I thought, I’ll ring up a hotel at Gatwick and see if they’ll take me and I did and they could. I’d promised to go up and see Naomi, though we’d actually made all the arrangements during the day. And we weren’t going to do the books, Naomi said she’d keep the VAT up to date. But I’d said I’d go just to show willing, you know . . .’ Joanne Garland’s voice faltered. ‘Well, all that. I thought, I’ll go to Tancred, have half an hour with Naomi, and then drive home and get myself to the station. It’s five minutes’ walk to the station from here.’
This fact was well-known to Wexford and he made no comment on it. It was Vine who persisted. ‘I don’t see why you had to go that night. Not if the plane didn’t leave till eleven. Say you had to check in by nine thirty. It’s only half an hour in the train, if that.’
She gave him a sidelong aggrieved look. It was evident Joanne Garland had taken against Wexford’s sergeant. ‘If you must know, I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing anyone in the morning.’ Vine’s expression remained unenlightened. ‘OK, don’t bend over backwards to understand, will you? I didn’t want people seeing me with cases, I didn’t want questions, my sisters just happening to phone up – right?’
‘We’ll leave the magical mystery tour for the time being, Mrs Garland,’ said Wexford. ‘What time did you go to Tancred House?’
‘Ten to eight,’ she said quickly. ‘I always know the times of things. I’m very time-conscious. And I’m never late. Naomi was always trying to get me to go up there later but that was only her mother flapping. She’d leave these messages on my answering machine but I was used to that, I never played the messages back on a Tuesday. I mean, why shouldn’t I be considered as much as Lady Davina? Oh God, she’s dead, I shouldn’t say it. Well, like I said, I left at ten to eight and got up there at ten past. Eleven minutes past, in fact. I looked at my watch while I was ringing the doorbell.’
‘You rang the bell?’
‘Over and over. I knew they heard. I knew they were there. God, I mean, I thought I knew.’ The colour drained from her face and left it paper-white. ‘They were dead, weren’t they? It had just happened. My God.’ Wexford watched her as she briefly closed her eyes, swallowed. He gave her time. She said in a changed, thicker voice, ‘The lights were on in the dining room. Oh, God forgive me, I thought, Naomi’s told Davina we’ve done all that needs to be done and Davina’s said, in that case it’s time that woman learnt not to come disturbing me while I’m having my dinner. She was like that, she would say that.’ Again came a vivid recollection of what had happened to Davina Flory. Joanne Garland put her hand up to her mouth.
To frustrate any further calls for God’s forgiveness, Wexford said quickly, ‘You rang again?’
‘I rang three or four times altogether. I went round to the dining-room window but I couldn’t see in. The curtains were drawn. Look, I was a bit cross. It sounds terrible to say that now. I thought, OK, I won’t hang about and I didn’t, I drove home.’
‘Just like that? You drove all the way up there and then when they didn’t answer the bell you drove home again?’
Barry Vine received a very peevish look. ‘What did you expect me to do? Break the door down?’
‘Mrs Garland, please think very carefully. Did you pass any vehicle or meet any vehicle on your way to Tancred?’
‘No, definitely not.’
‘Which way did you come?’
‘Which way? By the main gate, of course. That’s the way I always went. I mean, I know there’s another way, but I’ve never used it. It’s a very narrow lane that other way.’
‘And you saw no other vehicle?’
‘No, I’ve said. I hardly ever did, anyway. Well, I think I met John wh
at’s-his name once, Gabbitas. But that was months ago. I definitely met no one on March the eleventh.’
‘And going back?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t meet or pass another vehicle when I was coming or going.’
‘While you were at Tancred, was there another car or van or vehicle of some kind parked in front of the house?’
‘No, of course there wasn’t. They always put their cars away. Oh, I see what you mean, oh God . . .’
‘You didn’t go round to the side of the house?’
‘You mean, round the bit past the dining room? No, no, I didn’t.’
‘You heard nothing?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. What would there be to hear? Oh – oh, yes. Shots. My God, no.’
‘By the time you left it would have been – what? A quarter past?’
She said in a low subdued voice, ‘I told you, I always know the time. It was sixteen minutes past eight.’
‘If it helps, you can have another drink now, Mrs Garland.’
If she was expecting Barry to wait on her she waited in vain. She gave a contrived sigh, got up and went to the drinks cupboard. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’
It was clear only Wexford was being asked. He shook his head. ‘How did you get those bruises on your face?’ he said.
* * * *
The drink cradled in her lap, she sat upright on the sofa with her knees pressed together. Wexford tried to read her face. Was it coyness he saw there? Or embarrassment? Not, at any rate, the memory of some kind of abuse.
‘They’ve almost gone,’ she said at last. ‘You can hardly see them any more. I wasn’t coming home until I was sure they’d faded.’
‘I can see them,’ Wexford said bluntly. ‘No doubt I’m wrong, but it looks to me as if someone punched you in the face pretty savagely about three weeks ago.’
‘You’ve got the date right,’ she said.
‘You’re going to tell us, Mrs Garland. There are a lot more things you’re going to tell us but we’ll start with what happened to your face.’
It came out in a rush. ‘I’ve had cosmetic surgery. In California. I stayed with a friend. It’s usual there, everyone has it – well, not everyone. My friend had and she said to come and stay with her and go into this clinic . . .’
Wexford interrupted with the only term familiar to him. ‘You mean you’ve had your face lifted?’
‘That,’ she said sulkily, ‘and my eyelids tucked back and a peel on my upper lip, all that stuff. Look, I couldn’t have had it done here. Everybody would have known. I wanted to get away, I wanted to go somewhere warm and I didn’t – well, if you must know, I didn’t like the look of my face any more. I used to like what I saw in the mirror and suddenly I didn’t – right?’
Things began falling into place very rapidly. He wondered if the time would come when Sheila would want something like this done and feared she would. Could you, anyway, make a mockery of Joanne Garland or disapprove or sneer? She could afford it and it had no doubt achieved what she aimed at. He could understand how she might not want that aggressive gossipy family to know or her neighbours to notice, but would rather present them all with a fait accompli to which they might react by attributing her new appearance to good health or the rarely precedented kindness of time. Vague, out-of-this-world Naomi might be allowed to know. Someone had to be in Joanne’s confidence, to hold the fort and run the shop. Who better than Naomi who knew the business inside out and whose reaction to a facelift might be no more than another woman’s to a hair tinting or a shortened hemline?
‘I don’t suppose you’ve talked to my mother,’ said Joanne Garland. ‘Well, why would you? But if you had you’d know why I wouldn’t want her getting hold of something like this.’
Wexford said nothing.
‘Are you going to let me off the hook now?’
He nodded. ‘For the time being. Sergeant Vine and I are going to get our lunch. You’ll probably want to have a rest, Mrs Garland. I’d like to see you later. We have an incident room up at Tancred House. I’ll see you there at – shall we say four thirty?’
‘Today?’
‘Today at four thirty, please. And if I were you I’d give Fred Harrison a call. You won’t want to be driving over the permitted limit.’
* * * *
More flowers on the gatepost. Crimson tulips this time, about forty of them, Wexford estimated, their stems concealed by the heads of those below, the whole mass of them laid on a pillow of green branches to form a lozenge shape. Barry Vine read the words on the card to him.
‘“Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed.”’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Wexford. ‘Barry, when I’ve done with Mrs G. I want you and me to conduct an experiment.’
As they proceeded through the woods, he phoned home and spoke to Dora. He might be late. Oh, no, Reg, not tonight, you mustn’t, it’s Sylvia’s house-warming. Had he forgotten? He had. What time were they due there? Eight thirty at the latest.
‘If I can’t make it before, I’ll be home by eight.’
‘I’ll go out and buy her something. Champagne unless you’ve got something more interesting in mind.’
‘Only a pillow of forty red tulips but I’m sure she’d prefer champagne. I don’t suppose Sheila rang?’
‘I would have told you.’
The woods were sheened with green, coming alive with spring. In the long green alleys between the trees white and yellow flowers starred the grass. There an oniony scent from the wild garlic with its stiff jade-coloured leaves and lily-like blossoms. A jay, pink and speckled blue, flew low under the oak branches, uttering its screeching cry. The rain which pattered down filled the woods with a soft rustling susurration.
They emerged into the open parkland, passed through the space in the low wall. A sudden increase in rain power came as a violent cloudburst, water pounding on the stones, streaming down the windscreen and the sides of the car. Through the shivering glassy greyness, Wexford saw Joyce Virson’s car back again outside the front door. A sudden premonition which came to him of something momentous in the offing he dismissed as absurd. They meant nothing, those feelings.
He went into the stables, thinking of the sender of flowers, of John Gabbitas who had never mentioned his plans to buy a house, of the defection of the Harrisons, of that strange half-witted woman who listened outside doors. Were any of these anomalies of significance in the case?
When Joanne Garland arrived he took her into the corner where Daisy’s two armchairs had been stowed. Since their earlier meeting she had applied pancake make-up and powder to her face. His knowledge of the reason for her trip had made her self-conscious. She looked at him anxiously, sat in one of the chairs, holding her hand up to her cheek in a way designed to hide the worst purple mark.
‘George Jones,’ he said. ‘Gunner Jones. You know him?’
He must be getting naïve. What had he expected? A deep blush? Another collapse into tears? She gave him the sort of look he might have given her had she asked him if he knew Dr Perkins.
‘I haven’t seen him for years,’ she said. ‘I used to know him. We were pals, him and Naomi and me and Brian – that’s my second husband. Like I say, I haven’t seen him since he and Naomi split up. I’ve written to him a couple of times – is that what you’re getting at?’
‘You wrote to him suggesting he and Naomi Jones got together again?’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘Isn’t it true?’
She paused for thought. A scarlet nail scratched at her hairline. Perhaps the invisible mending itched. ‘It is and it isn’t. The first time I wrote, that’s what it was about. Naomi’s been a bit – well, wistful, sort of moping. Once or twice she said to me how maybe she should have tried harder with Gunner. Anything was better than loneliness. So I wrote. He never answered. Charming, I thought. Still, by then I could see it wasn’t all that good an idea. I’d been a bit premature. Poor Naomi, she wasn’t made fo
r marriage. Well, that applies to relationships in general. I don’t mean she liked women. She was best on her own, pottering about with her bits and pieces, her paints and all that.’
‘But you wrote to him again, at the end of last summer.’
‘Yes, but not about that.’
‘About what, then, Mrs Garland?’
How many times had he heard the words she was about to utter? He could forecast them, the precise form of the rebuttal. ‘It’s got nothing to do with this business.’
He responded as he always did. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
She became suddenly angry. ‘I don’t want to say. It’s rembarrassing. Can’t you understand? They’re dead, it doesn’t matter. In any case, there wasn’t any – what’d you call it? – abuse, violence. I mean, that’s laughable, those two old people. Oh, God, this is so stupid. I’m tired and it’s got nothing to do with any of this.’
‘I’d like you to tell me what was in the letter, Mrs Garland.’
‘I want to see Daisy,’ she said. ‘I must go to the house and see Daisy and tell her I’m sorry. For God’s sake, I was her mother’s best friend.’
‘Wasn’t she yours?’
‘Don’t twist my words all the time. You know what I mean.’
He knew what she meant. ‘I’ve got plenty of time, Mrs Garland.’ He hadn’t, he had Sylvia’s party that he had to go to. Let the heavens fall, he had to go to that party. ‘We’re going to stay here in these two quite comfortable armchairs until you decide to tell me.’
By now, anyway, apart from its relevance to the case, he was dying to know. She hadn’t just awakened his curiosity with her prevarications; she had pulled it out of sleep and set its nerves on stalks.
‘I gather it’s not personal,’ he said. ‘It’s not something about you. You need not be embarrassed.’
‘OK, I’ll fess up. But you’ll see what I mean when I tell you. Gunner never answered that letter either, by the way. Fine father he is. Well, I should have known that, never taking a scrap of interest in the poor kid from the time he scarpered.’
