by Ruth Rendell
‘One of the men in the bank stood in the queue with a handful of green banknotes. Since the pound went we don’t have green notes in this country. Which country does? Exclusively green banknotes?’
‘The United States,’ said Burden.
‘Yes. Those notes were dollars. Martin was killed on 13 May. Thanny Hogarth is an American who may well have had dollars in his possession when he came here, but he didn’t arrive in this country until June. How about Preston Littlebury? Vine tells us he does most of his transactions in dollars.’
‘Have you seen Barry’s report yet? Littlebury deals in antiques, that’s correct, and he imports them from eastern Europe. But his main source of income at the present time is from the sale of East German army uniforms. He was a little shy of admitting it but Barry got it out of him. Apparently, there’s a terrific market for that sort of memorabilia here, tin hats, belts, camouflage.’
‘But not guns?’
‘Not guns, so far as we know. Barry also says that Littlebury has no bank account here. He has no account with that bank.’
‘Neither do I,’ Wexford retorted, ‘but I’ve got my famous Transcend card. I can use any branch of any bank I like. Besides, the man in the queue with the notes was there simply to change those notes into sterling, wasn’t he?’
‘I’ve never seen this Littlebury but from what I hear of him he’s not the sort to pick up a gun and make off with it. I’ll tell you what, Reg, it was Andy Griffin in that queue, with the dollars Littlebury paid him in.’
‘Then why did he never change them? Why did we find them in his parents’ house?’
‘Because he never reached the head of the queue. Hocking and Bishop came in and Martin was killed. Andy picked up the gun and made off with it. He took it to sell it and he did sell it. That was what he blackmailed the purchaser about, possession of the incriminating gun.
‘He never changed those dollar bills. He took them home and hid them in that drawer. Because he had a – well, a sort of superstitious fear of being seen with them after what had happened. One day maybe he’d change them but not now, not yet. He’d get far more for that gun than ninety-six dollars, anyway.’
Wexford said slowly, ‘I believe you’re right.’
* * * *
The kind hospitable gesture would have been an offer to put Nicholas Virson up. Perhaps Daisy had made the offer and it had been declined. On the same grounds as Virson’s refusal to stay the night once before?
Now, though, things were surely different. The man had nowhere to go. But in Daisy’s sky this star was setting, no matter how brightly it had once shone, when it had occasioned that wonder and that adoring gaze. Thanny Hogarth had displaced it. What are you when the moon doth rise?
It was normal behaviour for someone of her age. She was eighteen. But a tradgedy had happened, Nicholas Virson’s mother was dead, his house had burned down. Daisy must have offered hospitality and her offer, simply because of the existence of Thanny Hogarth, had been spurned.
Until he found somewhere more permanent, Nicholas Virson had taken a room at the Olive and Dove. Wexford found him in the bar. Where he had acquired the dark suit he wore Wexford couldn’t guess. He looked sombre and lonely and much older than when they had first met at the infirmary, a sad man who had lost everything. As Wexford approached he was lighting a cigarette and it was to this act that he made reference.
‘I gave up eight months ago. I was on holiday with Mother in Corfu. It seemed a good time, no stress and all that. It’s a funny thing, when I said nothing would make me start again, I couldn’t have foreseen this. I’ve been through twenty today already.’
‘I want to talk to you about Tuesday night again, Mr Virson.’
‘For God’s sake, must you?’
‘I’m not going to ask you, I’m going to tell you. All you have to do is confirm or deny. I don’t think you’ll deny it. You were at Tancred House.’
The unhappy blue eyes flickered. Virson took a long draw on his cigarette, like a smoker who has rolled up something stronger than tobacco. After a hesitation he made the classic reply of those he would have defined as of the criminal classes. ‘What if I was?’
At least it wasn’t, ‘I might have been.’
‘Far from “driving around”, you drove straight up there. The house was empty. Daisy was out and no police officer was there. But you knew all that, you knew how it would be. I don’t know where you parked your car. There are plenty of places where it would be hidden from those coming in up the main drive or along the by-road.
‘You waited. It must have been cold and boring but you waited. I don’t know when they came in, Daisy and young Hogarth, or how they came. In his van or her car – one of her cars. But they came at last and you saw them.’
Virson murmured into his drink, ‘Just before twelve.’
‘Ah.’
He was muttering now, sullenly. ‘She came back just before midnight. There was a young chap with long hair driving.’ He lifted his head. ‘He was driving Davina’s car.’
‘It’s Daisy’s now,’ said Wexford.
‘It isn’t right!’ He hammered with his fist on the table and the barman looked round.
‘What? Not to drive her grandmother’s car? Her grandmother’s dead.’
‘Not that. I don’t mean that. I mean, she’s mine. We were practically engaged. She said she’d marry me “one day”. She said that the day she came out of hospital and came to our house.’
‘These things happen, Mr Virson. She’s very young.’
‘They went into the house together. The fellow had his damned arm round her. A fellow with hair down on his shoulders and two days’ growth of beard. I knew he wouldn’t come out again that night, I don’t know how but I knew. There was no point in waiting any longer.’
‘Perhaps it was as well for him he didn’t come out.’
Virson gave him a defiant glare. ‘Perhaps it was.’
Wexford believed part of it. He thought he could easily believe all of it. Believe but not prove. He was nearly there, anyway, he nearly knew what had happened on 11 March, he knew the motive and the name of one of the two who had carried it out. As soon as he got home he was going to phone Ishbel Macsamphire.
* * * *
The post had come late, after he had left for work. Among the things for him was a parcel from Amyas Ireland. It contained Augustine Casey’s new novel The Lash in proof. Amyas wrote that this proof copy was one of five hundred Carlyon Quick were issuing, Wexford’s number 350, and he should hang on to it as it might be worth something one day. Especially if he could get Casey’s signature on it. Amyas was right, wasn’t he, in thinking Casey was a friend of Wexford’s daughter?
He suppressed an instinct to hurl it into the log fire Dora had lighted. What quarrel did he have with Augustine Casey? None. Once Sheila was over the worst, the man had done them all a favour.
He tried the Edinburgh number but no one answered. She was out and might not be in till ten, say, or ten thirty. If someone was out at eight you could be pretty sure she’d be out till past ten. He would while away the time with Casey’s book. Even if Mrs Macsamphire said yes to all his questions, it was such a little thing to go on, so thin on its own . . .
He read The Lash, or tried to. After a time he realised he had understood nothing, and this wasn’t because his attention was elsewhere, he simply found it incomprehensible. A good deal of it was in verse and the rest seemed to be a conversation between two unnamed persons, probably but not certainly male, who were deeply concerned about the disappearance of an armadillo. He had a look at the end, could make nothing of it, and turning the pages back saw that this verse alternating with talk about the armadillo persisted through the pages, apart from one which was covered with algebraic equations and one which contained the single word ‘shit’ repeated fifty-seven times.
After an hour he gave it up and went upstairs to find Davina Flory’s tree book which was on his bedside cabinet. The place he had reached he
saw that he had marked with the guide to the town of Heights, Nevada, which Sheila had given him, the town where Casey was to be, doubtless by now had become, writer-in-residence at the university.
At least she was no longer going there. Love was a strange business. He loved her and therefore should have wished for her what she wished for herself, to be with Casey, to follow him to the ends of the earth. But he didn’t. He was overwhelmingly glad she was to be denied what she wanted. He sighed a little and turned the pages, looking at the colour plates of forest and mountain, a lake, a waterfall, the city centre with a gold-domed capitol building.
The advertisements were more entertaining. Here was a company which made Western boots to order ‘in all the radiant colours of the spectrum, in this world and outer space’. Coram Clark Inc. was a gunsmith in Reno, Carson City and Heights. He sold all kinds of weaponry that made Wexford’s eyes open wide. Rifles, shotguns, handguns, air guns, ammo, reloading, scopes, black powder, said the advertisement. The whole spectrum of Browning, Winchester, Luger, Beretta, Remington and Speer. Highest prices paid for used guns. Buy, sell, trade, gunsmithing. You didn’t need a licence in some American states, you could carry a gun with you in your car, provided you displayed it openly on the seat. He remembered what Burden had said about students being allowed unrestrictedly to buy guns for self-defence when a serial killer was rumoured to be on some campus . . .
Here was an ad for the finest popcorn in the west and another for personalised licence plates in iridescent colours. He tucked the guide into the back of Lovely As A Tree and read for half an hour. It was nearly ten and he tried Ishbel Macsamphire again.
Of course, he couldn’t ring her at all much after ten. That was a rule he tried to stick to, that you phone no one after ten at night. Two minutes to ten and someone was ringing the doorbell. The rule about not calling anyone after ten applied equally to calling on them, in Wexford’s opinion. Well, it wasn’t quite ten.
Dora went to the door before he could stop her. He never thought it wise for a woman to go alone to answer the door in the evening. Not a sexist attitude, but prudent, until the day all women went to Karen’s trouble and learnt a martial art. He got up and went to the living-room door. A woman’s voice, very low. So that was all right. A woman collecting something.
He sat down again, opened Lovely As A Tree at the place where the marker was and his eye fell once more on the gunsmith’s advertisement. Coram Clark Inc. . . . One of those names he had heard recently in some quite other context. Clark was a common name. But whose name was Coram? Coram, he remembered from long-ago school days when Latin was obligatory, meant ‘on account of’ – no, ‘in the presence of’. There was a mnemonic they learned of prepositions which took the ablative:
a, ab, absque, coram, de,
Palam, clam, cum, ex and e,
Sine, tenus, pro and prae,
Add super, subter, sub and in,
When state, not motion, ‘tis they mean.
Amazing to remember that after all these years . . . Dora came in with a woman behind her. It was Sheila.
She looked at him and he looked at her and he said, ‘How marvellous to see you.’
She went up to him and put her arms round his neck. ‘I’m staying with Sylvia. I got the night of the party wrong and came yesterday. But, darling, what a fabulous house! And what’s come over them, abandoning suburbia at last? I’m loving it but I thought I’d tear myself away and sort of pop over.’
At ten o’clock. It was just like her. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.
‘Well, no. I’m not all right. I’m wretched. But I’ll be OK.’
He could see the proof of Casey’s book lying on one of the sofa cushions. Casey’s name wasn’t in letters an inch high as it might be on a finished copy but it was plain enough to see. The Lash by Augustine Casey, uncorrected proof, probable price in UK £14.95.
‘I said a lot of horrible things. Do you want to talk it through?’
Wexford’s involuntary shudder made her laugh.
‘I’m sorry, Pop, for all the things I said.’
‘I said worse things and I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve got Gus’s book.’ There was a look in her eyes that recalled the adoration he had hated to see, the slavish spellbound devotion. ‘Did you like it?’
What did it matter now? The man was gone. He would lie to be kind. ‘Yes, very good. Very fine.’
‘I didn’t understand a word of it myself,’ said Sheila.
Dora burst out laughing. ‘For goodness’ sake let’s all have a drink.’
‘If she has a drink she’ll have to stay the night,’ said Wexford the policeman.
* * * *
Sheila stayed for breakfast, then went back to the Old Rectory. It was long past Wexford’s usual time for going to work but he wanted to speak to Mrs Macsamphire before he left. For some reason, not fully comprehended, he wanted to speak to her from here, not the stables or his own phone in the back of a car.
Just as ten seemed the latest you could phone anyone, so nine was the earliest. He waited till Sheila was gone, dialled the number and got a young woman with a very thick Scots accent who said Ishbel Macsamphire was in the garden and could she call him back? Wexford didn’t want that. The woman might be one of those who grudged every penny spent on long-distance calls, who might have to grudge every penny.
‘Would you mind asking her if she could spare the time to speak to me now?’
While he waited, something strange happened. He remembered quite clearly who it was shared his name with a gunsmith in Nevada, who it was had Coram for a middle name.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It took him all day because he couldn’t start until the late afternoon. All day and half the night because when it was midnight in Kingsmarkham it was still only four in the afternoon in the far west of the United States.
Next day, after four snatched hours of sleep and enough transatlantic phone calls to give Freeborn apoplexy, he was driving along the B 2428 towards the main gate of Tancred. The night had been very cold, laying a sharp silvering on wall and fencepost and a shimmering hoar frost to outline with glitter young leaves and twigs that were still leafless. But the frost was gone now, melted in strong spring sunshine, the sun high and dazzling in a bright blue sky. Much the same as in Nevada.
Every day the trees grew greener. A sheen of green became a mist, the mist a veil, the veil a deep brilliant cloak of it. All the weariness of winter was being covered up by green, dirt and damage concealed as the new growth hid accumulated litter and detritus. A dark grim picture, a grey lithograph, had its spaces gradually filled in by a brush loaded with soft viridian. The forest to the right of him and the woods to the left were no longer dark masses but a variegated shimmering green that the wind stirred, lifting branches and swaying them to let in gusts of light.
A car was parked ahead, by the gate. Not a car, a van. Wexford could just make out the figure of a man, who seemed to be tying something to the gatepost. They approached slowly. Donaldson stopped the car and got out to open the gate, pausing as he did so to examine the confection of blues, greens and violets, of which the latest offering was composed.
The man had returned to his van. Wexford got out of the car and went over to it, necessarily passing behind it in order to speak to the occupant of the driving seat. This viewpoint afforded him the sight of a bunch of flowers painted on the van’s side.
The driver was young, no more than thirty. He wound down the window.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Wexford. May I ask if all the flowers on the gate have come from you?’
‘So far as I know. Other people may have brought floral tributes but not so far as I know.’
‘You’re an admirer of Davina Flory’s books?’
‘My wife is. I don’t have time to read.’
Wexford wondered how many times he had heard those two statements before. Particularly in the country, a certain kind of ma
n found it macho to make these disclaimers. Blame it on the wife. Reading, specially fiction, was for women.
‘So all these have been tributes from your wife?’
‘Eh? You have to be joking. They’re my advertising campaign, aren’t they? The wife wrote out the bits to put on the cards. It looked like a good place. Constant comings and goings. Whet their appetites and when they’re really intrigued, tell ’em where they can order similar for themselves. Right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date at the crematorium.’
Wexford read the label on this fan-shaped bouquet of irises, asters, violets and forget-me-nots, a peacock’s-tail design. No quotation from the poets this time, no apt line from Shakespeare, but: Anther Florets, First Floor, Kingsbrook Centre, Kingsmarkham and a phone number.
Burden, when Wexford told him, said, ‘Drawing a bow at a venture, isn’t it? And a pretty expensive bow. Would it ever work?’
‘It has, Mike. I saw Donaldson surreptitiously taking down the address. And you surely remember all the people who said they wished they could get flowers like that. Hinde, for another. You did yourself. You wanted them for your wedding anniversary or something. So much for my sentimental speculations.’
‘What sentimental speculations?’
‘I’d got as far as imagining this was some ancient who’d been Davina’s lover in the dim past. Might even have been Naomi’s dad.’ He said to Karen who walked by with a clipboard, ‘We can get this lot packed up today, ready to move out. Mr Graham Pagett can have his technology back with the grateful thanks of Kingsmarkham CID. Oh, and a polite letter thanking him for doing his bit to fight crime.’
‘You’ve found the answer,’ said Burden. It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes. At last.’
Burden looked hard at him. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘It’s a lovely morning. I’d like to go outside somewhere, in the sun. Barry can drive us. We’ll take the car down through the woods somewhere – and we’ll make it a long way from the hanging tree. That gives me the creeps.’
