The Babes in the Wood

by Ruth Rendell

  Harassed, Peter said, “Who the hell is Lord Tremlett?”

  “The pathologist. He’s here to examine the body in situ.”

  “You mean the bodies, don’t you?”

  “That I can’t say, sir.”

  Perhaps the chap on the phone could. Peter asked him, but he didn’t answer. “We’d like to see you, Mr. Buxton. As soon as possible.”

  Chapter 13

  BY THE TIME BURDEN AND Barry Vine got to Passingham Hall the pathologist had gone but the car was still where Peter Buxton said he had first seen it. Scene-of-crime officers had been busy measuring and taking samples, and the fingerprint people were still there. A truck with a crane on it followed them down the drive, prepared to haul the VW Golf and its contents out of the quarry, and behind the truck a car driven by Pauline Pearson’s husband Ted, his back and the doctor’s injunction forgotten. It was half past five and dark but powerful lamps had been brought to the scene and these could be seen between the trees, lighting up the wood. Two cars and a van were parked on the grass verge that bordered the lane.

  A single exterior light showed Burden the facade of the hall, the two flights of steps leading up to the portico and front door, and the two cars on the forecourt, a staid-looking Mercedes and a dashing Porsche. Lights appeared to be on in several rooms. Vine rang the bell and the door was answered by a spectacularly beautiful woman of about twenty-seven. She looked less than pleased to see them. Yet, thought Burden, the expert on all things sartorial and cosmetic, the effect of casual carelessness—apparently no makeup, pale blonde hair spikily untidy, blue jeans, white sweater, no jewelry—must have been achieved for their benefit or that of the scenes-of-crime men.

  “My husband’s in the drawing room” were the only words she was to utter for some time. She opened double doors and walked in ahead of them.

  Peter Buxton was thirty-nine and looked fifteen years older. The skin of his face was a dull grayish red. He was one of those men who are very thin with narrow shoulders and spindly legs but wear their belly as if it were a cushion hung on them in a bag. They have the problem too of arranging it to bulge above the trouser belt or below it. Buxton had opted for the former. He was sitting in an armchair with a drink that looked like whisky and water on a small table beside him. The room contained a great many such small tables, piecrustedged and with lamps on them, consoles and a couple of chaise longues, bunchy flounced curtains at the windows. It had the air of having been put together by an interior decorator recovering from a nervous breakdown.

  “When can I go back to London?” said Peter Buxton.

  Burden knew a little about him, where he lived and what he did for a living. “Chief Inspector Wexford will want to see you tomorrow, Mr. Buxton . . .”

  “Here?”

  “You can come to the police station in Kingsmarkham if you prefer that.”

  “Of course I don’t. I want to go back to London. It’s Christmas.

  Sharonne—my wife, that is—and I have to get ready for Christmas. She kindly came down here this afternoon to support me but now we want to go home.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your discovery of this car on your property, sir? You drove down here this morning, I believe. You came because your central heating wasn’t functioning, is that right?”

  Before Peter Buxton could answer, the door opened and a woman walked in, followed by a rather stout man who, as soon as he saw the company, pressed his hand into the small of his back. The woman was solid, upright, middle-aged and, from her newly set hair to her lace-up ankle boots, might have been an actress playing a farmer’s wife in some rustic soap opera. A flood of words poured out of her. “Sorry to come bursting in like this, Mrs. Buxton, but having a key I thought I wouldn’t trouble you to answer the door. I heard about your spot of bother in the village, you know what village gossip is, and I thought you might be in need of some help. I see the heating’s on again. I feel it, rather. Nice and warm, isn’t it? And it’s turning quite cold out, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a white Christmas. Oh, whoops, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d got company.”

  “They are police officers,” said Buxton in a voice as cold as the weather.

  “In that case, I’ll sit down a minute if you’ve no objection. I might be able to contribute. You sit on that hard chair, Ted, you have to think of your back.”

  Apparently, Buxton balked at actually telling them to go. He tried to catch his wife’s eye but she kept her head averted, determined not to be caught.

  “You were saying, Mr. Buxton,” said Burden, “about coming down to see to your central heating.” Something in Buxton’s face told him all was not well. The man was more uneasy than he should have been. “What time was that?”

  It was the right question to ask. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  Sharonne Buxton spoke at last. “Yes, you do, Peter. Let me jog your memory. The first time I tried to get hold of you at the office was just after ten. That was on my mobile at the hairdresser’s and you’d already left. They said you’d gone on your own instead of having Antonio drive you. I wanted to tell you Jason’s asked us to dine at the Ivy the day after Boxing Day. Then I’d planned on going to Amerigo’s new collection but I went home first and that was when Pauline phoned to tell me about the heating.”

  Quick on the uptake, Vine said, “But you already knew about the heating, Mr. Buxton, because that was the reason for your coming down here.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Pauline Pearson seized her opportunity. “He couldn’t have known. I didn’t know till I came in to have a tidy up and dust around. That was at half past ten. I kept trying to phone Mrs. Buxton to tell her and I thought she must be out. I thought she’d be home for lunch so I kept on trying and I finally got hold of her just after eleven.”

  “You’d left long before that, darling. Don’t you remember? And when I got hold of you at last you weren’t here. You were in Guildford. You said so.”

  Interesting, thought Vine. Very interesting. Peter Buxton had driven himself to Passingham Hall, had unusually dispensed with his driver, and had used the central-heating failure as an excuse for his visit. So what was his true purpose? Something to do with a woman? Possible but, according to Vine’s information, the man had been married less than three years and Sharonne Buxton was very beautiful. Moreover, he spoke of her and looked at her with admiration bordering on idolatry. And what was he doing in Guildford? Leave it for now, Vine thought. Think about it. And who the devil was Amerigo and what did he collect?

  “You went up into the wood,” Burden said. “Why was that?” He glanced at the notes he’d made earlier. “A Mr. Mitchell who farms nearby told the local police he encountered you at about eleven by the quarry. You told him about the car and the, er, smell was very strong. He went back to the house with you and gave you the number of the nearest police station. Is that right? But what made you go into the wood?”

  “You couldn’t have smelled it from down here,” said Vine.

  Pauline Pearson intervened. “You certainly could not. I’ve got a very good sense of smell, haven’t I, Ted? I was here earlier and I couldn’t smell it. Thank God. Makes you feel sick to your stomach, doesn’t it?”

  “Nasty,” said Ted. “Very nasty.”

  “If it wasn’t that made you go into the wood, what did?”

  “Look, I found the bloody car and told you people. What does it matter why or how?”

  “This is a suspicious death, sir,” said Burden. “All the circumstances may be very important.”

  “Not to me. Nobody has told me anything. I don’t even know how many people were in the car. I don’t know if it was those kids and that woman who was with them. I’m told nothing.”

  “There’s very little to tell, sir,” said Vine. “The body in the car hasn’t yet been identified.”

  “What else do you want to know?” Peter Buxton reached for his glass, realized it was empty, and looked longingly at his wife.

  Her rea
ction amused Burden. “No, darling,” she said firmly, “no more. Not yet. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea in a minute.” She turned her head, as exquisite as a flower on a stalk, toward the policemen. “I hope you won’t be long. My husband should go to bed early. He’s had a shock.”

  It was ten past six. “I’ll make the tea, Mrs. Buxton,” said Pauline, “when they’ve gone.”

  “When did you last come down to Passingham Hall?” Burden addressed the wife this time.

  It was a question, he inferred from her suddenly wavering manner, that she wasn’t entirely happy to answer. “I can’t say offhand. Some weeks ago. When was it, darling? Maybe the last weekend in November or the first in December. Something like that. It’s not exactly a fun place in winter, you know.”

  This piqued Pauline Pearson, the native, who showed her displeasure in a tightening of the lips and a stiffening of the shoulders. Ted gave a loud sniff. The Buxtons would be lucky if they got their tea, Burden thought, reflecting how he’d have liked a cup himself.

  “Did you go to Guildford after you found the car in the quarry, Mr. Buxton?” Vine looked at his notes. “I don’t quite understand the time sequence here. You found the car at about eleven, phoned the local police station at about a quarter past, they got here just before twelve, talked to you and went up into the wood with Mr. Mitchell. At ten past twelve Mrs. Buxton phoned you on your mobile and you were in Guildford. But I phoned you on your home number here at twelve twenty and you answered.”

  Burden’s lips twitched. He put on a serious expression. “How do you manage to be in two places at once, sir? It must be a useful accomplishment.”

  Peter Buxton looked at his wife and this time their eyes met. “My wife made a mistake. I never said I was in Guildford. I’d no reason to go there.”

  “But you’d a reason to come here? Did you make a mistake, Mrs. Buxton?”

  She said sulkily, “I must have.”

  “All right.” Burden got up. “I think we’ll leave it there. Chief Inspector Wexford will want to interview you in the morning. Will ten A.M. be convenient?”

  “I want to go home,” said Peter Buxton like a child on his first day at primary school.

  “No doubt you may—after the Chief Inspector has talked to you.”

  Outside in the car Burden started laughing. Vine joined in. They were still laughing when the Pearsons came down the steps and got into their car. Pauline gave them a glare and muttered something to her husband. “I shouldn’t laugh,” Burden said. “God knows what he’s been up to. Now they’re alone the showdown will start.”

  “The divine Sharonne is very easy on the eye,” said Vine.

  “True. I dare say he’ll forgive her for spilling the beans or whatever she did. Funny they didn’t arrange things better before we got there, wasn’t it?”

  “I reckon she’d only just arrived. He didn’t have the chance.” The lamps were gone, the truck with the crane was gone and all that showed it had ever been there were double lines of ruts in the soft soil revealed by their car headlights.

  “Who’ll identify the body?” Vine asked.

  “God knows. It’ll be a grim task, whoever it is. His Lordship seemed to think she’d been there getting on for a month. It’s probable she’s been there since that weekend the Dades were in Paris. She won’t be a pleasant sight.”

  Too unpleasant a sight for a father to see, Wexford had decided. For this must be Joanna Troy. They had marked her down as perpetrator, quite a reasonable assumption, but she was the victim and quite possibly the missing children were victims too. The grounds of Passingham Hall and the whole area of open countryside surrounding it would have to be searched for their bodies. Meanwhile, this morning, Tremlett would begin on the post-mortem. Her dentist, whoever that was, to identify her? To match the broken-off piece of crown to her dentition? Then, if they could do some sort of makeover on her face, restore it to a semblance of the human, ask the stepmother to look at it? Wexford shuddered.

  A nice Christmas present, to be shown the decaying face of your husband’s only child. Perhaps they could avoid it. How had she died? It wasn’t immediately apparent, according to Tremlett. No obvious wounds. Taking Vine with him—“They won’t be over the moon seeing me again,” the sergeant grinned—Wexford had himself driven to Passingham Hall for ten o’clock and arrived as Peter Buxton was carrying a suitcase out to the open boot of the Porsche.

  “Anticipating an early departure, Mr. Buxton?” said Vine.

  “You said I could go home once I’ve talked to whoever it is.”

  “Chief Inspector Wexford. And we’ll have to see about that.” Being, like God, no respecter of persons, Wexford looked at him reflectively. “Can we go inside?”

  Buxton shrugged, then nodded. They followed him in. “The divine Sharonne,” as Barry Vine had called her, was nowhere to be seen. Too early in the morning for a high-maintenance woman, Wexford decided. They went into a smallish room with leather chairs, a desk, and a few books, the kind that, while they have handsomely tooled spines, look hollow and as if no pages are behind those morocco and gilt facades. A window afforded a view of Passingham Hall woods. Peter Buxton jumped, starting violently when a pheasant rose out of the undergrowth, flapping and squawking.

  “So when did you first see this car in the quarry, Mr. Buxton?” Wexford was acting on intuition and what Burden and Vine had told him. He was rewarded by the dark flush that mounted into Buxton’s face.

  “Yesterday morning. Haven’t they told you that?”

  “They have told me what you said. What they haven’t told me, because they don’t know, is why you came down here yesterday. Not because there was something wrong with your heating, you didn’t know that. At your London office you told Mr. Antonio Bellini you were going to a funeral in Godalming. Your wife seems to think you were in Guildford when she phoned you.”

  “She’s already said she made a mistake about that.”

  “Did Mr. Bellini make a mistake too? When Inspector Burden spoke to him on his home phone at nine last evening, he seemed very sure of what you’d told him.”

  Peter Buxton affected to sigh impatiently. “What does all this matter? I came down here. To my own house. Is there something unusual in that? I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t breaking and entering. This is my house. I’ve a perfect right to be here. I found a car in the woods and told the police. What’s wrong with that?”

  “On the face of it, nothing. It sounds very public-spirited. But when did you first see the car in the quarry? Was it the last time you came here? Was it the weekend of Saturday, December the second, just under three weeks ago?”

  “I don’t know what you’re insinuating.” Buxton jumped to his feet and pointed out of the window. “What are all those people doing on my land? Who are they? What are they looking for?”

  “First of all, they are not on your land. They are on Mr. Mitchell’s land. They are police officers and conscientious members of the public helping them in the search for two missing children. We should like to search your land also. I’ve no doubt there’ll be no objection on your part.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Buxton. “I don’t know at all. Here’s my wife. We’re of one mind on this. We resent being kept here, we want to go home.”

  Sharonne Buxton was of a type Wexford had never found attractive, belonging as he did to the class of men who admire sweeter-faced, darker, livelier women with hour-glass figures, but he acknowledged her beauty. A less sullen and contemptuous expression would have improved her. Instead of a “Good morning,” “hello,” or even “hi,” she said in a voice and with an accent that required but hadn’t received the same honing and polishing as her face and body, “You don’t need us here. We’ve engagements in London. It’s Christmas or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Wexford ignored her. He said to her husband, “Thank you for your permission. The search is very important and the searchers will be as careful of your property as possible.”

  �
�I didn’t give permission. And I shan’t. Not unless you let us go. That’s a fair exchange, isn’t it? Let us return to London and you can search the place until the New Year for all I care.”

  Wexford, who had been looking at his notes, snapped the book shut. He felt like paraphrasing Through the Looking Glass with a “Police officers don’t make bargains.” Instead he said, “In that case I shall apply for a warrant. I have no powers to force you to stay here, but I think I should remind you that obstructing the police in the course of their inquiries is an offense.”

  “We’ll stay,” said Sharonne Buxton. “But we’d like it to go on record that we didn’t want the place searched or any of you here.”

  It was Burden who attended the post-mortem. For a man of such fastidious tastes and sleek appearance, he was surprisingly unmoved by the sight of an autopsy. He watched it impassively with much the same attitude as anyone else viewing a hospital sitcom on television. Wexford, who felt differently, but was accustomed by now to hiding those feelings, arrived when it was nearly over. Hilary, Lord Tremlett, whose macabre sense of humor had increased with his elevation to the peerage, was at the stage of talking about bagging up the dead mutton and doing a “quickie facelift” for the benefit of the relatives. He seemed to find it hugely amusing that the dentist who had looked in to check the dentition against his chart and to match the crown, unused to such sights, had retched and required a glass of water before he could look inside the cadaver’s mouth.

  “It’s her, though,” said Burden, as callous as Tremlett in his attitude to the poor dentist. “It’s Joanna Troy.”

  “I shall get Effie Troy to look just the same,” Wexford said, remembering certain misidentifications in the past. “She’s a sensible woman and Lord Tremlett’s tidied up the face. So what did she die of?”

  Tremlett began stripping off his gloves. “A blow to the head. Death would have been instantaneous. Could have been inflicted with that dear old standby, the blunt instrument, but I think not. I favor a fall and a striking of her head against something hard, possibly the ground, but not soft ground. Not that famous wood of yours, that wouldn’t have killed her, more likely sucked her in, like the quagmire in The Hound of the Baskervilles.”