by Ruth Rendell
curls, her dress full-skirted and tight-waisted, the man in floppy grey flannels and pullover. Her mother as a child, Wexford guessed. Her parents newly married. The furniture was a three-piece suite, a lacquered coffee table, a useless-looking two- tiered table, a bookcase which contained few books and whose middle shelves were used to display china animals. On the bottom shelf were perhaps twenty compact discs and the same number of cassettes. The red hall carpet extended to cover the floor of this room but otherwise the colour scheme was unexciting, mostly beige and brown. Her parents probably had a beige living room and a blue bedroom. There was nothing to show that Annette had been comparatively young, not yet forty, no break-away from convention, nothing minimally adventurous. ‘Where’s the television?’ Wexford asked. ‘Where’s the video? No radio, no cassette player, no CD player? None of those?’ ‘That’s funny. Maybe she didn’t have them, maybe she was some sort of fundamentalist who didn’t believe in those things. No, but wait a minute, she had CDs. . . . See that table there? The one with the two tiers. Don’t you reckon there’s been a TV on the top and a video underneath?’ You could see the marks, a rectangle of dust in the polished surface above and a slightly larger one below. ‘It looks as if her invitation to the burglar was accepted,’ said Wexford. ‘I wonder what else she had. A computer maybe? A microwave in the kitchen, though it’s hard to say where it would have fitted in?’ ‘She was killed for that?’ ‘I doubt it. If our perpetrator killed her for what she had in the flat, he’d have taken her watch and her ring. That ring looks valuable to me.’ ‘Or it could be that the TV and the video have gone off somewhere to be repaired.’ ‘Oh, sure, it could be. All sorts of things could be. There’s been one single case recorded of successful self-strangulation, so she might be the second one. And she sold the best part of her consumer goods first to pay for her funeral. Come on, Mike.’ Returning to the bedroom, now free for any kind of arbitrary examination, Wexford opened the cupboard door and, without comment, though Burden was behind him, eyed the garments inside. Two pairs of jeans, a pair of cords, cotton loons, several not very short miniskirts size twelve and two longer skirts size fourteen, which seemed to indicate that Annette had recently put on weight. Folded sweaters on the shelves, blouses, all of them ordinary, safe, quiet. Behind the other door hung a navy winter coat, beige raincoat, two jackets, one dark red, one black. Had she never dressed up, gone out in the evenings, been to a party? Wexford picked the ring off the bedside cabinet and held it out on his palm to Burden. ‘A fine ruby,’ he said. ‘Worth more than all your TVs and Nicam video-plusses and cassette players put together.’ He hesitated. ‘Which of us is going to be the first to ask the question?’ ‘It’s been on the tip of my tongue ever since I knew she’d been murdered.’ ‘And mine.’ ‘OK,’ said Burden, ‘I will. Is there any connection between this death and the fact that she seems to have been the last person to have seen Melanie Akande alive?’ Edwina Harris came home while they were still there. She pushed the door open, entered the hall, saw Flat One sealed off with yellow tape and was standing staring when DS Karen Malahyde came out to her.
‘Did I leave the door on the latch? I mean, I always do when I go out and nothing’s ever happened.’ She realized what she had said. ‘What has happened?’ ‘Can we go upstairs, Mrs Harris?’ Karen broke it to her carefully. It was a shock but no more than that. She and Annette Bystock had been neighbours, not friends, never close. After a few minutes she was able to tell Karen that Annette’s parents were dead, she had no brothers or sisters. She thought Annette had once been married but she knew no more than that. No, she hadn’t heard or seen anything untoward in the past few days. She lived in the upper flat with her husband and he hadn’t heard anything or he would have told her. In fact, she hadn’t known Annette was ill. She wasn’t the friend who had brought in the groceries. ‘Like I said, I wasn’t her friend.’ ‘Who was?’ ‘She never had any boyfriends to my knowledge.’ ‘Women friends, then?’ But Edwina Harris couldn’t say. She had only once been inside Flat One, but couldn’t remember noticing whether or not Annette had television. ‘But everyone has TV, don’t they? She had a radio, a little white one. I know that because while I was in there she showed it to me. She’d spilt red nail varnish on it and she couldn’t get it off, wanted to know what would get it off, and I said remover, but she’d tried that.’ ‘There’s someone lives opposite,’ Burden said. It was a bit awkward, he found he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. ‘A very old person,’ he said carefully, and with equal tact, ‘They look as if they’d see everything. Did they know Annette?’ ‘Mr Hammond? He’s never been over here. He hasn’t left that room for . . . well, it has to be three years.’ Edwina Harris wasn’t prepared to identify the body. She had never seen a dead person and didn’t want to start now. Annette had had a cousin somewhere, she had heard her mention a cousin. Jane Something. A birthday card had come from this woman and the postman had put it in her box instead of Annette’s. That was when Edwina Harris heard about the cousin, when she took the birthday card over to Annette. It was Wexford who asked her about the front door to the house. ‘It was never left unlocked overnight.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Well, I’m sure I never left it unlocked.’ ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Burden, after they left her. ‘Women in ground floor flats are supposed to be sleepless with dread about intruders. They have alarms, they have bars on all the windows – or that’s what I read.’ ‘Appearance and reality,’ said Wexford. Some time later in the day they found Annette’s cousin, a married woman with three children living in Pomfret. Jane Winster agreed to come to Kingsmarkham and identify the body. Told what had happened, Cyril Leyton at first refused to believe. Incredulously, ‘You’re having me on,’ he had said roughly when phoned, then, ‘Is this some sort of trick?’ Finally convinced, he repeated over and over, ‘My God, my God. . . .’ Tomorrow would be Saturday, but in name only, as Wexford said to Burden. There wouldn’t be any time off and all leave would be cancelled. Burden’s remarks about
Simisola
women in ground floor flats reminded him of the meeting scheduled for Saturday night at Kingsmarkham Comprehensive. He wondered if he would still be able to take part. The talk he was planning he had given twice before at Women, Aware! meetings and had enjoyed speaking. He wouldn’t miss it this time, not unless he absolutely had to; unless, for instance, someone had been arrested for this murder. The young men – Wexford disliked the word ‘youth’ and refused ever to use it – were still sitting on the stone balustrade of the Benefit Office steps. Perhaps they weren’t the same ones but they looked the same to him. This time he took particular note of them so that he would know them again: a boy with a shaven head in a grey tee-shirt; a boy in a black leather jacket and tracksuit bottoms with rats’ tail hair tied back in a ponytail; another very short one with fair curly hair and a black boy with dreadlocks and one of those big floppy knitted caps. Assessing them like this, he realized what he had done, what he had told Burden racists did, so he changed the description to: a boy with dreadlocks and a knitted cap. They looked at him with indifference, or three of them did. The one with the ponytail didn’t look at him at all. For all that, he expected some muttered remark as he passed them, an insult or a quip, but there was nothing. He went up the steps to find the door locked but a young girl coming towards him behind the glass to open it. He hadn’t seen her before. She was small with pointed features and reddish hair, the label pinned to her black tee-shirt identifying her as Ms A Selby, Admin Assistant. He said good afternoon to her and something about being sorry to detain them all like this after hours, but she was too shy to reply. He followed her between counters to the back where she opened a door marked not only ‘Private’ but ‘Keep Out’ as well. He hadn’t intended it to be like this. Cyril Leyton – for it was surely he who had fixed this up – was evidently a headmaster manqué. The chairs, normally those on which clients waited to sign on, were arranged in five rows with grey metal tables in front of each. On these chairs the staff sat
. There were more of them than Wexford had realized. He saw to his rather horrified amusement that Leyton had seated them according to rank: the two supervisors, the remaining New Claims Adviser and all Executive Officers, in the first row; administrative officers behind; then the administrative assistants, those who worked on the switchboard, saw to the post, operated the copier, at the back. In the last row, on the extreme left, possibly the seat of the lowliest, was the bullet-headed security officer. On each table, in front of each member of staff, was a notepad. All that was lacking, Wexford thought, was a blackboard – and perhaps a ferrule for Leyton to hold and use for rapping knuckles. The manager looked busy and important, enjoying himself now the first shock was past. His red face was shiny. Since Wexford had last seen him he had had his hair cut cruelly short and the clippers had left an angry-looking crimson rash on his neck. ‘All present and correct, I trust,’ he said. Wexford merely nodded to him. Ridiculous as this regimentation was, the notepads might be useful. So long as they understood they weren’t to write down what he said but what they knew. ‘I’ll try not to detain you long,’ he began. ‘You’ll all have heard by now of Miss Bystock’s violent death. It will be on our local television news at six-thirty and in the papers tomorrow so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you now that it was a case of murder.’
From somewhere in the audience he heard the sound of an indrawn breath. It might have come from Ingrid Pamber, whose blue eyes were fixed earnestly on him, or the wispy fragile blonde sitting next to her who must have been twenty-five but looked no more than fifteen. Her label was too far away for him to read. In the row in front of them Peter Stanton, the other New Claims Adviser, sat like an important young executive at a seminar, one long elegant leg crossed over the other, ankle on knee, his elbows on the chair arms, his head flung back. He was very good looking in a dark brooding way and he seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘She was murdered in her own home, Ladyhall Court in Ladyhall Avenue. We don’t yet know when. We shan’t know until the postmortem is over and the other forensic tests have been done. We shan’t know how she died or when or why. But as far as that goes the help of the people who knew her will be invaluable to us. Miss Bystock had very little family, few friends. The people she knew are the people she worked with and that means you. ‘One of you or several of you may between you have all the information we need to find Miss Bystock’s killer and bring him – or her – to justice. Your cooperation will be invaluable. I should like you all to agree to be interviewed by my officers tomorrow, either in your own homes or at Kingsmarkham Police Station if you prefer. Meanwhile, if any of you has anything to tell me now, anything that might be important or urgent, I shall be in Mr Leyton’s office for the next half-hour and I’d be grateful if you’d come to me there and pass this information on. Thank you.’ Cyril Leyton said importantly as they walked into the little grey office, ‘I can tell you anything you want to know. There’s not much goes on here that I don’t know about.’ ‘I’ve already told everyone that if they have something to tell me that’s urgent they should do it now. Have you anything to tell me?’ Leyton grew redder. ‘Well, no, not specifically, but I . . .’ ‘What time did Miss Bystock phone on Wednesday to say she wouldn’t be coming in? Can you tell me that?’ ‘I? No, I can’t. I’m not a switchboard operator. I can find someone who will . . .’ ‘Yes, Mr Leyton,’ Wexford said patiently, ‘I’m sure you can, but all your staff will be questioned tomorrow. Didn’t you hear me say that? I’m asking you what you can tell me.’ Leyton was saved from answering by a tap on the door. It opened and Ingrid Pamber came in. Wexford, who always noticed – as most men do notice – if a woman is specially good looking, had taken good note of this girl. Her looks were the kind that most appealed to him, the fresh wholesomeness of her, her glossy dark hair sleekly held back by a barrette, her fine features and smooth pink and white skin – what his father would have called her ‘complexion’ – her shapely figure that was slim but a long way from today’s anorexic ideal. The clothes she wore were in his opinion the most flattering to any pretty woman: a short straight skirt, a clinging knitted sweater – in this case cream cotton and short-sleeved – low-cut shoes with heels, as unlike a man’s shoe as could be. She levelled at Wexford a rueful smile that was almost laughter through tears. It looked natural but he thought it was calculated. Her eyes were the kind whose irises are such a strong colour that they seem to shed their own blue light. ‘I was – I was looking after her,’ she said. ‘Poor Annette, I was taking care of her.’ ‘You were friends, Miss Pamber?’ ‘I was her only friend.’
Ingrid Pamber said it quietly but dramatically. She sat down opposite Wexford, and sat with care, but her skirt was too short not to rise six inches above her knees. The sideways attitude she sat in, knees and ankles close together, seemed designed to show off a woman’s legs to best advantage – but a modest woman’s, not the Hollywood starlet kind who crosses one leg over the other, extending the toe in its high-heeled shoe. He thought he understood Ingrid Pamber as a girl whose sexual success depended on a contrived reserve, discreet revelations, an almost shy appeal. In another age she would have managed excellently the manipulation of petticoats to give a sight of ankle or the handling of a shawl that when it slipped allowed a glimpse of cleavage. ‘It was you who took the call from Miss Bystock on Wednesday morning?’ ‘Yes. Yes, it was. She asked the switchboard to put the call through to me.’ ‘Which was most improper,’ said Leyton. ‘I shall be speaking to Mr Jones and Miss Selby about that. The call should have come to me.’ ‘I told you about it,’ said Ingrid. ‘I told you within about thirty seconds.’ ‘Yes, maybe, but that’s not the . . .’ ‘Mr Leyton,’ Wexford said, ‘I’d be grateful if you’d leave us. I’d like to talk to Miss Pamber alone.’ ‘Look here, this is my office!’ ‘Yes, I know, and very obliging it is of you to let me use it. I’ll see you later.’ Wexford got up and opened the door for Leyton. He had scarcely gone through it before Ingrid Pamber giggled. One of the hardest things we are ever called on to do is feign sorrow when we are happy or pretend happiness when we are in grief. Ingrid remembered too late that, as Annette’s only friend, she was supposed to be sad. She looked down, biting her lip. He waited a moment, then asked her, ‘Can you tell me what time this call came?’ ‘It was nine-fifteen.’ ‘How can you be so sure of the time?’ ‘Well, we start at nine-thirty and we’re supposed to be in by nine-fifteen.’ She opened her eyes wide as she looked at him and he felt the force of that blue beam. ‘I’ve been getting in a bit late lately and . . . well, I was pleased with myself for making it on time. I’d looked at the clock and seen it was nine-fifteen and at that moment the call from Annette came for me.’ ‘What did she say, Miss Pamber?’ ‘That she thought she had a bug and felt awful and wouldn’t be in and I was to tell Cyril. And she said would I take her in a pint of milk on my way home from work, that was all she wanted, she couldn’t eat anything. She said she’d leave the door on the latch for me. It’s the kind of door that’s got a handle like a door . . . well, an inside-door if you know what I mean.’ Wexford nodded. This then was the friend he had guessed at. ‘So I said I would and the minute I put the phone down a man phoned and asked for her. He didn’t give his name but I knew who it was.’ She gave him a sidelong look, rather a rogueish look. ‘Anyway, I said she was at home ill.’ ‘And you did take her the milk?’ ‘Yes. It was about five-thirty I went in.’ ‘She was in bed?’ ‘Yes, she was. I was going to stay for a bit, have a chat, you know, but she said not to come too near in case I caught it. She’d made a list of things she wanted me to get her next day and I took that with me. She said she’d give me a ring at work in the morning.’
‘Did she?’ ‘No, she didn’t but it didn’t matter.’ Ingrid Pamber seemed quite unaware of what she was saying. ‘I’d got her list. I knew what she wanted.’ ‘So she’d given you a key?’ ‘Yes, she had. I got the things, cornflakes and grapefruit and stuff, and I went in with them at the same time last evening. I left them in the box. I thought she’d
put them away.’ ‘You didn’t go in to see her?’ ‘Last evening? No, I didn’t. I couldn’t hear anything. I thought she must be asleep.’ He detected the guilt in her voice. Friend she might have been but she hadn’t wanted to be bothered with Annette the night before, she had been in a hurry, so she had dumped the box of groceries and left without looking into the bedroom. . . . Or wasn’t it like that at all? ‘Now when you left the flat on Wednesday evening you had a key, so of course you didn’t leave the front door on the latch? It was locked behind you?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ How blue her eyes were! They seemed to grow bluer, to become neon-like, day-glo peacock eyes, as they gazed earnestly into his. ‘So when you returned on Thursday evening, last evening, you found the door locked and let yourself in with your key?’ ‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ He switched to another subject. ‘I suppose Miss Bystock had television? A video?’ ‘Yes.’ She looked surprised. ‘I remember when she bought the video. It was around last Christmas.’ ‘Now when you went there on Wednesday and yesterday, did you see the television set?’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know, I . . . I’m sure I saw it on Wednesday. Annette said to draw the curtains as I was leaving. She wanted the curtains drawn to stop the sun fading the carpet or something. Funny, wasn’t it? I’d never heard of that before. Anyway, I did draw them and I saw the TV and the video.’ He nodded. ‘And yesterday?’ ‘I don’t know. I didn’t notice.’ In too much of a hurry, Wexford thought, in and out, no messing. Something in his look seemed to touch her. ‘You don’t mean . . . she was dead then, she was already dead . . . you can’t mean that!’ ‘I’m afraid she was, Miss Pamber. It looks very much as if she was.’ ‘Oh, God, and I didn’t know. If I’d gone in there. . . .’ ‘It would have made no difference.’ ‘They didn’t . . . they didn’t kill her for a telly and a video?’ ‘It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened.’ ‘Poor Annette. That makes me feel terrible.’ Why did he have the distinct impression she didn’t feel terrible at all? She spoke the conventional words in the conventional way and her face wore a conventional mask of woe. But those eyes danced with life and vitality and happiness. ‘The man who phoned here and asked for her? Who did you think that was?’ She lied again. He marvelled that she thought he couldn’t tell. ‘Oh, just a friend, one of her neighbours actually.’ ‘Who did you think it was, Miss Pamber?’ he said. She looked him straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t know.’ ‘You knew who it was just now and now you don’t? I’ll ask you again tomorrow.’
