The Babes in the Wood

by Ruth Rendell

  “He seems to have withdrawn his objections now he’s got someone of his own.”

  He thought about these things now as he had himself driven to Forest Road. Had he and Dora been exceptionally lucky in that their marriage had endured? Or was it rather that in their day people worked harder at marriage? Divorce, if not actually disgraceful, was a distant last resort; you married and you stayed married. If his first wife had lived would Burden’s marriage have endured? He couldn’t recall any child in his class at his own school whose natural mother and father weren’t together. Among his parents’ friends and neighbors no one was divorced. So were half those marriages deeply and secretly unhappy? Did their homes ring with frequent bitter quarrels conducted in the presence of their children, his classmates? No one would ever know. He disliked even thinking of the feelings of his son-in-law, Neil, whom he was fond of and who loved his children. Now he would see these boys in the care of what amounted to a new father of whom they would perhaps grow fonder. Would he also give them a new stepmother? And all because he bored Sylvia and hadn’t talked to her much. Maybe that was unfair, but wasn’t this Cal the most awful crashing bore? With time his looks would fade and his sexual prowess, if that was also part of the attraction, would wane . . .

  Banish it from your mind, he told himself as he and Vine made their way to the last street in Kingsmarkham. This would be his first meeting with George and Effie Troy, though Vine had met and talked to them before. He noted the girth of George, fatter than he, Wexford, had been at the worst of his overeating, and a lot less tall. His wife had an interesting face and manner, a woman of character. These little Gothic houses, of which there were a number scattered around Kingsmarkham and Pomfret, looked quaint but were poky and dark, comfort, even when they were first built, sacrificed to some mistaken idea—the Oxford Movement and then Ruskin, he thought vaguely— that England would be a better place if medievalized. He seated himself in a chair far too small for him.

  Already, after having only exchanged a few words with the Troys, he knew that Effie would speak for them both. Effie would be the coherent one, the less emotional one, and the question he had to ask was highly emotive.

  “I’m sorry I have to ask you about this and I wouldn’t if I didn’t think it necessary.” The dark-browed face, the dark eyes, were turned on him inscrutably. “I’ve learned that your daughter gave up teaching because she was accused of stealing money from one of the students.”

  “Who told you such a thing?” It was the father who asked, not the stepmother.

  “That I’m not at liberty to tell you. Is it true?”

  Effie Troy spoke slowly, in measured tones. Wexford suddenly thought that if you had to have a stepmother, the way his grandsons would, this might not be such a bad one to have. “It’s true that Joanna was accused by a boy of sixteen of taking a twenty-pound note out of his backpack. He later, er, recanted. This is some few years ago. You’re right when you say she ‘gave up’ teaching because of this. She did, of her own volition. She wasn’t sacked or asked to resign. She was never charged with stealing.”

  This last Wexford already knew. He was about to ask why she gave up when she had apparently been exonerated when the father, unable to contain himself any longer, burst into a harangue. Joanna was victimized, the boy was a psychopath, he accused her purely to make trouble and make himself the center of attention, he hated her because she expected him to do too much homework. Effie listened to all this with an indulgent smile, finally patting her husband’s hand and whispering to him as to a child, “All right, darling. Don’t get in a state.”

  Obedient but still looking mutinous, George Troy fell silent. Vine said, “Do you know the boy’s name?”

  “Damian or Damon, one of those fashionable names. I don’t remember the surname.”

  “Mr. Troy?”

  “Don’t ask me. All I wanted was to put it out of my head. The monstrous behavior of the modern child is beyond my comprehension. I don’t understand and I don’t want to. Joanna may have told us his surname but I don’t recall. I don’t want to. No one has surnames anymore, do they? She brought one of her pupils here once—I’m not calling them students, students are in colleges—I forget why, she called in and this pupil was with her. Called me George if you please. Because my wife did. No, they don’t have surnames anymore. They all of them called my daughter Joanna at that school. When I was a child we called our teachers ‘sir’ or ‘miss, ’ we were respectful . . .”

  “Tell me about your daughter,” Wexford said. “What sort of a person is she? What’s she like?” He seemed to address both of them but he looked at Effie.

  She said, to his astonishment, because he thought her husband about to ask this of her, “Would you like to make us all a cup of coffee, darling?”

  He went. He seemed not to suspect Effie wanted him briefly out of the way. But did she?

  “Her mother died when she was sixteen,” Effie began. “I married her father three years later. It wasn’t difficult for me, being her stepmother, I’d known her all her life. She was never rebellious, she was never resentful. She’s very bright, you know, won all the scholarships, went to Warwick University and Birmingham. I expect she worked hard but she managed to give the impression she never worked at all. This is the kind of thing you want to know?”

  Wexford nodded. The old man was slow and he was thankful for it.

  “I was surprised when she went in for teaching. That sort of teaching, anyway. But she loved it. It was her life, she said.”

  “She got married?”

  “She met her husband when they were both in graduate school in Birmingham and lived together for a while. Ralph’s some sort of computer buff. His father died and left him quite a lot of money, enough to buy a house. Joanna wanted to live around here and Ralph bought quite a big house. She got her job at Haldon Finch School, a very good job for someone so young, but of course her qualifications were marvelous. She and Ralph seemed to be a case of two people who got on fine while they lived together but just couldn’t handle being married. They split up after a year, he sold the place, and she bought that little house of hers with her share.”

  Effie smiled sweetly at her husband as he lumbered in with a tray on the surface of which coffee had slopped. Their drinks were in mugs, milk in whether desired or not, no spoons, no sugar. “Thank you, George, darling.”

  She hadn’t said a word her husband might not hear, Wexford thought. Perhaps she would have if he had taken longer. Since he had heard her last words, George launched into criticism of the King-bridge Mews house. It was too small, badly planned, the windows too narrow, the staircase perilous. A psychiatrist would call this projection, thought Wexford, who had noticed the stairs in this house, as steep and narrow as a ladder. He addressed the father.

  “Your daughter uses your car, I understand.”

  Wexford guessed this question might result in a long and intricate explanation from George as to why he bought a new car and passed it on to his daughter instead of driving it himself, so he wasn’t surprised by the fresh flow of words. Effie interrupted smoothly when he paused to take a sip of coffee.

  “My husband wasn’t confident at the wheel any longer, I’m afraid. He’d suddenly become rather nervous of causing an accident.” Or you had, Wexford thought. “His eyesight was letting him down. Of course, I ought to have taken over the driving but the fact is I can’t drive. I never learned. Absurd, isn’t it? Joanna said she was thinking of buying a car and George said, don’t do that, you can have mine on permanent loan.”

  Far from being offended at his wife’s taking over the conversation, George Troy looked pleased and proud. He patted her hand in a congratulatory way. Effie went on, “Joanna set up as a freelance translator and editor. And of course she did private teaching—coaching, I suppose you’d call it. French and German. The students, er, pupils mostly came to her house but sometimes she went to them. Then she landed this job writing French lessons for the Internet. I’m sure I have
n’t put that well, but perhaps you know what I mean. The company had a website and she put these lessons on it, first of all an elementary course, now an intermediate one, and she’s doing a third for advanced students. I don’t really know what more I can tell you.”

  What a pity the old man had come back! “Boyfriends since the break-up of her marriage, Mrs. Troy?”

  “There haven’t been any,” said George. “She was too busy for that sort of thing. She had a new career to establish, didn’t she? No room for men and any of that nonsense.”

  The stepmother said, “Joanna wasn’t fond of children, she told me that. Not small children, that is. Of course she liked them when they were old enough for her to teach them. She liked bright children. She wouldn’t have wanted to marry again for the sake of having children.”

  According to their grandmother, the Dade children were very bright indeed. “Mr. Troy, Mrs. Troy, have you ever heard of the Church of the Good Gospel? Their slogan is ‘God loves purity of life.’”

  Both looked blank.

  “Giles Dade is a member of it. Ms. Troy never mentioned that to you?”

  “Never,” Effie said. “Joanna isn’t religious herself. I don’t think she was very interested in religion.”

  “Lot of mumbo-jumbo,” said her husband. “I feel the same.”

  “Finally,” Wexford said, “did Joanna have crowned teeth?”

  “Crowned teeth?”

  “We have found what we believe to be a crown off one of her teeth in the Dades’ house. It looks as if it fell out and she had temporarily— and obviously not effectively—secured it with some kind of adhesive.”

  Effie knew exactly what he was talking about. “Oh, yes, she had two teeth that were crowned. She had them done years ago because they were discolored. She said they aged her, which of course wasn’t true. She can’t have been more than twenty-one when they were done. The crown you’re talking about came off two or three weeks back, it actually came off while she was eating a chocolate caramel in this house. She said she’d have to go to the dentist, but she hadn’t the time, she couldn’t make it that week. I was just going to the shops and she said while I was out would I get her a tube of that stuff from the pharmacy. And I did.”

  Of the other parents only the mother was at home. Roger Dade was, as usual, at work. Katrina had her own mother with her, a woman very unlike her and very different from Matilda Carrish, plump and sturdy, maternal, wearing what are usually called “sensible” clothes, a skirt, blouse and cardigan, and lace-up walking shoes. The house looked as if she had taken charge. It had never been dirty, just rather too untidy for comfort, but Mrs. Bruce had transformed it like the housewifely woman she was. All those diamond panes had been polished, ornaments washed and on a coffee table, as in the lounge of a country house hotel, magazines were stacked, their corners perfectly aligned with the angle of the table. A bowl that had looked as if it could serve no useful purpose had been filled with red and yellow chrysanthemums and a sleek black cat with a coat like satin, presumably owned by the Bruces, lay stretched out on the mantelpiece.

  The only unkempt and wretched object (animate or inanimate) in the room was Katrina, who sat huddled, a blanket round her shoulders, her once pretty brown hair hanging in rats’ tails, her face gaunt. Wexford sensed there would be no more acting, no more posing, striking of attitudes, scene-setting. In the face of reality all that faded. She no longer cared how she looked or what impression she might make.

  No tea or coffee or even water had ever been offered them in that house. Doreen Bruce now offered all three. Wexford was sure that if drinks had been accepted, they would have appeared in matching china on a lace cloth. He asked the children’s grandmother when she had last seen Giles and Sophie or spoken to them on the phone.

  She looked like a woman who would have a low, comfortable sort of voice but hers was high and rather shrill. “I never spoke to them, dear. I’m not keen on phones, never know what to talk about. I can say what I’ve got to say or pass on a message, but as to conversation, never have been able to and never shall.”

  “They came to stay with you in the school holidays, I believe.”

  “Oh, yes, dear, that’s a different thing altogether. We like having them with us, that’s quite different. They’ve always come to stay with us in the holidays, Easter as well as the summer sometimes. There’s lots to do round where we live, you see. It’s lovely country, quite isolated, plenty of things for young people.”

  Not much, as far as Wexford could see. Nothing for the kind who used Joanna’s website. Of course, he hadn’t been there, but he knew that parts of the Suffolk coast, though only seventy miles from London, had a remoteness scarcely felt here. What would there be to do? The seaside perhaps no more than ten miles away, but no seaside resort, fields all strictly fenced in with barbed wire, fast traffic making the roads difficult to walk along. No facilities for young people, no youth club, no cinema, no shops, and probably one bus a day with luck.

  “Where do you think Giles and Sophie are, Mrs. Bruce?”

  She glanced at her daughter. “Well, I don’t know, dear. They didn’t come near us. I’m sure they were happy at home, they had everything they wanted, their parents couldn’t do enough for them. They weren’t one of those—what-d’you-call-it—dysfunctional families.”

  He noticed the past tense. So, perhaps, did Katrina, for she turned to look at him and, still cowering under her blanket, shouted, “When are you going to find them? When? Have you looked? Has anybody been looking?”

  With perfect truth he said, “Mrs. Dade, every police force in the United Kingdom knows they are missing. Everyone is looking for them. We have made a television appeal. The media knows. We shall continue to do everything we can to find them. I assure you of that.”

  It sounded impotent to him, it sounded feeble. Two teenagers and a woman of thirty-one had vanished off the face of the earth. The muffled face emerged and tears began to wash it so that it was as wet as if put under the tap.

  Later that day he discussed it with Burden. “It’s almost two weeks now, Mike.”

  “What do you think happened to them? You must have a theory, you always do.”

  Wexford didn’t say that it was Burden’s theory of drowning, influencing Freeborn, that had delayed the investigation for eight days. “Joanna Troy has no criminal record. That we know for sure. But what’s the truth about that allegedly stolen note? And are there any more such incidents in her past?”

  “Her ex-husband’s been found. He doesn’t live in Reading anymore. He’s moved to Southampton, got himself a new girlfriend who comes from there. Anything like that he may be able to tell us.”

  “I feel about her that she’s a bit of mystery. She’s a young woman who’s been married but she’s apparently had no boyfriends since. She’s a teacher who loves teaching but dislikes children, yet she minds two children quite regularly while their parents go out. If she has friends apart from Katrina and up to a point the woman next door, we haven’t found any. When she’s challenged about a possible affair with Roger Dade she laughs but she doesn’t deny it. We need to know more.”

  “You haven’t said what your theory is.”

  “Mike, I suppose I think, on the slight evidence we’ve got, that Joanna has killed those children. I don’t know her motive. I don’t know where—certainly not in the Dades’ house. I don’t know how she’s disposed of the bodies or what she’s done with her car. But if all this happened on Saturday evening, she had time to dispose of them and time to leave the country before anyone knew they were missing.”

  “Only she didn’t leave the country. Her passport’s in her house.”

  “Exactly,” said Wexford. “And we don’t believe in false passports, do we? Except for spies and gangsters and international crooks, especially fictional ones. Not unless the killing was carefully premeditated, and I’m sure it wasn’t. Improbable as it sounds, she took those children out somewhere and killed them on an impulse because she’
s a psychopath with a hatred of teenagers. And if you think that’s rubbish, can you come up with anything better?”

  Chapter 8

  TOXBOROUGH LIES NORTHEAST OF KINGSMARKHAM, just over the Kentish border, but the Sussex side of the M20. Once a small town of great beauty and antiquity, its spoliation began in the 1970s with the coming of industry to its environs, and its ruin was complete when an approach road was built from it to the motorway. But several villages in its vicinity yet in remote countryside have retained their isolation and unspoiled prettiness. One of these is Passingham St. John (pronounced, for reasons unknown, “Passam Sinjen” ), which, being no more than two miles from Passingham Park station, is a favorite with wealthier commuters. Such a one was Peter Buxton who, two years before, had bought Passingham Hall as a weekend retreat.

  Originally intending to retreat there every Friday evening and return to London on Monday morning, Buxton soon found that escape to rural Kent was not so easy as it had at first appeared. For one thing the traffic on Fridays after four in the afternoon and before nine at night was appalling. Going back on Monday morning was just as bad. Moreover, most of the invitations he and his wife received to London functions it was prudent for an up-and-coming media tycoon like himself to accept were for Friday or Saturday evenings, while Sunday lunchtime parties were not unknown. Especially in the winter these invitations came thick and fast, and thus it was that the first weekend of December was the first he and his wife had been to Passingham Hall in more than a month.

  The house stood on the side of a shallow hill, so Buxton knew there was little danger of its flooding. In any case Pauline, a woman from the area who came in two or three times a week and kept an eye on things, had reported to Sharonne Buxton that all was well. Her husband had also worked for the Buxtons as handyman and gardener but had given up in October, offering the excuse of a bad back. Urban Buxton, originally from Greenwich, was learning how common this disability is in the countryside. Unless you are prepared to pay extravagantly for basic services, bad backs explain why it is so hard to find anyone to work for you.