by Ruth Rendell
computer and a recording device. The posters on the walls were the educational kind, the life of a tree, the human digestive system, a climate map of the world. Joel looked like his father, dark, thin, already tall, but had his mother’s cool manner. Perhaps he too was capable of violent eruptions. He spoke to Karen before she had a chance to speak to him. ‘My mother has told me what you’ve come for. It isn’t any good asking me because I don’t know.’ ‘Joel, I only want you to tell me if you were aware of your father going out just before eight. Were you in this room?’ The boy nodded. He seemed relaxed but his eyes were wary. ‘You were in this room which is over the garage? If a car went out you’d hear it.’ ‘My mother keeps her car in the garage. His always stands out.’ ‘Even so. You’ve got good hearing, haven’t you? Or were you concentrating very hard on your essay?’ She had noticed that when the chance came he had not referred to Snow as ‘my father’. She took the plunge. ‘Your mother has told you what all this is about?’ ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m not a child. He’s been committing adultery and now his woman’s been murdered.’ Karen blinked. She was seriously taken aback. She took a deep breath and started again on the car, the garage, the time. Downstairs, Wexford was asking Carolyn Snow if she would care to amend the statement she had made concerning her husband’s movements on the evening of 7 July. ‘No. Why should I?’ She wore no make-up. Her hair looked as if she hadn’t washed it since she found out about Annette Bystock. If her clothes were expensive and in good order this was probably because she had no others. She said suddenly, ‘There was another one before her, you know. A Diana something. But she didn’t last long.’ She put her hand up to her hair. ‘Is it true that a wife can’t give evidence against her husband?’ ‘A wife can’t be compelled to give evidence against her husband,’ said Wexford. ‘It’s not the same thing.’ She thought about this and what she thought seemed to please her. ‘You won’t want to talk to me again, will you?’ ‘We might. It’s a possibility. Not thinking of going away anywhere, I hope?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you ask?’ He could tell she was thinking of it. ‘The schools break up next week. I don’t want you going away at present, Mrs Snow.’ At the front door he paused. She was standing behind him but left him to open the door himself. ‘You have a relative living in Ladyhall Avenue, I believe?’ ‘No, I haven’t. Where did you get that idea?’ He wasn’t going to tell her that it had come from her husband or that this person’s place of residence was his reason for not going to Annette’s flat. ‘A friend, then?’ ‘No one.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘My family come from Tunbridge Wells.’ He left, thinking that if Annette had threatened to expedite a marriage between herself and Snow by divulging all to Carolyn, that would be Snow’s motive for murder. Carolyn’s reaction to learning of her husband’s sustained infidelity was all too evident now. She was as unforgiving and as vindictive as Snow had expected her to be. And he would know; there had been another before Annette. On the other hand, he might have gone round to Ladyhall Court on that Wednesday evening to beg Annette not to tell. He might have promised her all sorts of concessions. Taking her out to dinner occasionally would have been a start, Wexford thought. Or a
holiday somewhere with her or just giving her a present. None of it had worked. Nothing else would do but that he leave Carolyn and come to her. They quarrelled, he tore the lead of the bedside lamp out of the wall and strangled her. . . . It was that tearing the electric lead part that didn’t ring true, Wexford thought. It would have taken some strength. In the heat of rage, wouldn’t he have put his bare hands round her throat? He crossed the pavement to his car where Karen already waited at the wheel, the only exercise he would get that day. Dr Crocker, and lately Dr Akande, had told him he should walk more (the best kind of cardiovascular exercise, they both intoned) and he was wondering whether to tell Karen to take the car back alone and leave him to do the mile or two on foot, when he saw the doctor coming towards him. Wexford was immediately aware of that craven reaction which makes us want to pretend we haven’t seen someone, makes us cross the road and keep our eyes averted, when the prospective encounter may involve reproach or recrimination. He had committed no offence against Dr Akande; on the contrary, he had done everything in his and his force’s power to find the doctor’s missing daughter, but in spite of this he felt ashamed. Worse than that, he wanted to avoid the society of someone as unhappy and as despairing as the doctor must be. But he made no attempt to do so. A policeman must confront everything or take some other job (retrain, in ES parlance). It was a maxim he had first uttered to himself some thirty years before. ‘How are you, doctor?’ Akande shook his head. ‘I’ve been visiting a patient who’s only two years short of a hundred,’ he said. ‘Even she asked me if I had any news. They’re very kind, very good. I tell myself it would be worse if they stopped asking.’ Wexford could think of nothing to say. ‘I keep thinking about what Melanie might have done, where she went, all that. It’s as if I don’t think of anything else. It goes round and round in my head. I’ve even started wondering if we’ll ever have her body. I never could understand that, those people who lost sons in war and craved their – their remains. Or just wanted to know where they were buried. I used to think, what does it matter? It’s the person you want, the living creature you loved, not the – the outer casing. I understand now.’ His voice had broken on the word ‘love’ as unhappy people’s voices do break on that particular trigger. He said, ‘You must excuse me, I try to keep going,’ and walked off, as if blindly. Wexford watched him fumbling with the key at his car door and guessed his eyes were thick with tears. ‘Poor man,’ said Karen, making Wexford wonder if this was the first time she had ever uttered that adjective and that noun in conjunction before. ‘Yes.’ ‘Where are we going now, sir?’ ‘To Ladyhall Avenue.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Ingrid Pamber told us something that seems to have got lost in the general shock-horror over Snow’s behaviour. Do you know what I’m talking about?’ ‘Something about Snow?’ ‘Of course it may not be true. She’s a liar and an embroiderer too, I daresay.’ ‘Do you mean about his wife having some relation living opposite Ladyhall Court?’ Wexford nodded. They turned out of Queens Gardens where Wendy Stowlap lived and passed the corner shop where Ingrid had bought Annette’s groceries. A man was banging furiously on the glass side of the phone box in which a woman talked on, unheeding.
A blind woman let them into the house. Her eyeballs, in their baskets of wrinkles, were like glass that has been crazed from too much handling. Wexford spoke gently. ‘Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham CID, and this is Detective Sergeant Malahyde.’ ‘She’s a young lady, isn’t she?’ said Mrs Prior, staring into the middle distance. Karen admitted it. ‘I can smell you. Very nice too. Roma, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, it is. Clever of you.’ ‘Oh, I know ’em all, all the perfumes, it’s how I know one woman from the next. It’s no good you showing me those cards of yours, I can’t see them, and I don’t suppose they smell.’ Gladys Prior giggled at her own wit. She led them to the staircase and they followed her up. ‘What’s happened to that young chap B,U,R,D,E,N?’ It was evidently some kind of ‘in’ joke and it made her laugh again. ‘He’s busy somewhere else today,’ said Wexford. Percy Hammond wasn’t looking out of his window. He was asleep. But the light sleep of the very old was easily broken when they came into the room. Wexford wondered what he had looked like when he was young. There was nothing in that creased, pouchy, stretched, puckered face to indicate the lineaments of middle age, still less youth. It was scarcely human any more. Only the white, rosy-gummed dentures, displayed when he smiled, hinted at real teeth, lost fifty years before. He was dressed in a striped suit with waistcoat and collarless shirt. The knees held up the grey worsted as a frame with sharp metal angles might, and the hands which rested on them were like a pigeon’s claws. ‘Do you want me to attend an identity parade?’ he asked. ‘Pick him out from a line of them?’ Wexford didn’t. While mentally congratulating Mr Hammond on his quick-witted assumption, he could on
ly tell him out loud that there was no doubt about who had robbed Annette’s flat. They already had someone helping them with their enquiries into this matter. ‘You couldn’t have gone anyway,’ said Mrs Prior. ‘Not in your state.’ She addressed Karen, to whom she seemed to have taken a fancy. ‘He’s ninety-two, you know.’ ‘Ninety-three,’ said Mr Hammond, thus confirming Wexford’s Law that it is only when under fifteen and over ninety that people wish to add years to their true age. ‘Ninety-three next week, and I could have. I haven’t tried going out for four years, so how do you know I couldn’t have?’ ‘An intelligent guess,’ said Gladys Prior with a giggle in Karen’s direction. ‘Mr Hammond,’ Wexford began, ‘you’ve already told Inspector Burden what you saw across the way very early last Thursday morning. Were you looking out of your window on the previous evening?’ ‘I’m always looking out. Unless I’m asleep or it’s dark. Even in the dark sometimes – you can see with the street lights if you turn the light off in here.’ ‘And do you turn the light off, Mr Hammond?’ asked Karen. ‘I have to think about the electric bills, missy. My lights were off last Wednesday evening, if that’s what you want to know. You want to hear what I saw? I’ve been thinking about it, going back over it. I knew you’d come back.’ He was blest in such a witness, Wexford thought thankfully. ‘Tell me what you saw, will you, sir?’ ‘I always watch them come home from work. Mind you, a few of them have gone away on holiday. Most of them ignore me but that chap Harris, he always gives me a
wave. He got home about twenty past five and ten minutes after a girl came. She had a car and she parked it outside. There’s a yellow line there that means you’re not supposed to park till six-thirty but she took no notice of that. I’d never seen her before. Pretty girl she was, about eighteen.’ Ingrid would be flattered, for what it was worth. By the time you reach ninety-three, Wexford thought, people of fifty look thirty to you and those in their twenties seem children. ‘She went into the flats?’ ‘And came out after five minutes. Well, seven minutes, it was. I’m no good at guessing time but I timed her, I don’t know why. Gives me something to do. I do that sometimes, it’s a game I play, I bet on it. I say to myself, ten bob on it, Percy, she comes out before ten minutes are up.’ ‘The young lady doesn’t know what ten bob is, Percy. You’re not living in the real world, you aren’t. Fifty pee to you, dear, it’s twenty years and more since the changeover but it’s like yesterday to him.’ Wexford interrupted, ‘What happened next?’ ‘Nothing happened. If you mean by that, did any strangers go in. Mrs Harris came out and came back with an evening paper. I had my meal then, bit of bread and butter and a glass of Guinness, the same as I always have. I saw the car come that takes Gladys to her blind club.’ ‘Seven sharp,’ said Mrs Prior. ‘And I was back at half-past nine.’ ‘While you were eating, Mr Hammond,’ said Wexford, ‘did you sit at the table over there? Did you watch any television?’ The old man shook his head. He pointed at the window. ‘That’s my telly.’ ‘Don’t get much sex and violence on it, though, do you, Percy?’ Gladys Prior became convulsed with laughter. ‘So you went on watching, did you, Mr Hammond? What happened after Mrs Prior had gone out?’ Percy Hammond screwed up his already screwed-up face. ‘Nothing much, I’m sorry to say.’ He gave Wexford a shrewd glance. ‘What do you want me to have seen?’ ‘Only what you did see,’ said Karen. ‘It’s around eight I’m interested in, Mr Hammond,’ said Wexford. ‘I don’t want to put ideas into your head, but did you see a man go into Ladyhall Court between five to and a quarter past eight?’ ‘Only that chap with his dog. There’s a man whose name I don’t know and Gladys doesn’t know, he’s got a spaniel. He always takes it out in the evening. I saw him. I’d think something was wrong if I didn’t see him.’ Something was wrong, thought Wexford, something was very wrong. ‘No one else?’ ‘No one at all.’ ‘Not a man or a woman? You saw no one go in at about eight and come out at between ten and ten-thirty?’ ‘I said I’m no good with times. But I didn’t see another soul until the young chap I told Mr What’s-his-name about.’ ‘B,U,R,D,E,N,’ said Mrs Prior with a gale of giggles. ‘And it was dark then. I was in bed, I’d been asleep, but I got up – why did I get up, Gladys?’ ‘Don’t ask me, Percy. To spend a penny, I dare say.’
‘I put the light on for a minute but it was so bright, I turned it off, and I looked out of the window and I saw this young chap come out with a big box in his arms – or was that later?’ Karen said gently, ‘That was in the morning, Mr Hammond. You saw him in the morning, don’t you remember? That’s the one you asked us about, if you’d have to pick him out in an identity parade?’ ‘So it was. I told you I wasn’t much good with time . . .’ ‘I think we’ve tired you out, Mr Hammond,’ said Wexford. ‘You’ve been a great help but we’ll only ask you one more thing. You and Mrs Prior. Is either of you related to some people called Snow of Harrow Road, Kingsmarksham?’ Two disappointed old faces turned towards him. Both liked excitement, both hated having to deny knowledge. ‘Never heard of them,’ said Mrs Prior gruffly. ‘I suppose you know everyone . . . er, down this street, do you?’ Wexford asked her as they were going down the stairs. ‘You were going to say “by sight”, weren’t you? Bless you, I wouldn’t have minded. Though it’d be nearer the mark to say “by smell”.’ She waited till she got to the foot of the staircase before letting her laughter escape. ‘There’s a lot of old folks down here, the houses are old, you see, and some of them have lived in them for forty years, fifty. Would they be young or old, this person that’s related to Mrs What-d’you-call-her?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Wexford. ‘I don’t know at all.’
Chapter Twelve The house was new, just finished, the last coat of paint applied perhaps no more than a week ago. But it still made him feel in a time warp. Not that he saw Mynford New Hall as old but rather that he had gone back two hundred years and, finding himself a character in, say, Northanger Abbey, had been brought here to view a brand-new mansion. It was Georgian, with a pillared portico and a balustrade along the shallow roof, a big house, ivory-white, the windows perfectly proportioned sashes, the columns fluted. In alcoves on either side of the front door stood stone vases hung with stone drapery and with living ivy and maidenhair fern. A gravel sweep would have been better but the carriage drive was paved. The tubs and troughs clustered on it held bay trees and yellow cypress, red fuchsias in full bloom, orange and cream arbutus, pink pelargoniums. By contrast, the flowerbeds were bare, turned earth without a weed showing. ‘Give them a chance,’ Dora whispered. ‘They’ve only been here five minutes. They must have hired those tubs for the occasion.’ ‘Where were they before, then?’ ‘In that place down the hill, the dower house.’ The hill was a gentle slope of green lawns descending towards a wooded valley. A grey roof could just be made out among the trees. Wexford remembered the old hall on the hilltop, a mid-Victorian stucco pile, not old enough or distinctive enough to be listed for preservation. Presumably, the Khooris had encountered no planning difficulties in pulling it down and setting the new hall up. Their guests thronged the big lawn. In the middle of it stood a large striped marquee. Wexford had referred to it laconically as ‘the tea tent’, a term Dora obscurely felt to be irreverent or even lèse majesté. Her husband hadn’t wanted to come. She told him not altogether truthfully that he had promised, then that it would do him good, take him out of himself. In the end he had come for her sake because she had said she wouldn’t go if he didn’t. ‘Do you know anybody here? Because if you don’t we might as well go for a walk. I wouldn’t mind having a look at the old dower house.’ ‘No, ssh. Here’s our hostess and homing on you if I’m not mistaken.’ Anouk Khoori was a protean creature. He held in his mind the image of her in her tracksuit, her face au naturel, hair in a bouncy ponytail; and that other image, the champagne social worker, the ardent campaigner and political aspirant, power-dressed, up on high heels, her jewellery and solitary solitaire. It was on her hand now but with many companions, flashing white and blue from her fingers as she walked towards them. And she was different again, not simply
altered as women always are by change of dress and hairstyle, but altogether unrecognizable. If he had met her off her home ground, if Dora hadn’t been there to identify her, he doubted if he would have known Anouk Khoori. This time she was the chatelaine in yellow chiffon
