Some Lie and Some Die

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Ye-es. I expect that’s it. She left her mother at four and she must have caught the five-twelve bus. There are only two buses going to Forby in the afternoon, as you know. What did she do in that spare hour and ten minutes? We’ll have to find out if anyone saw her in the High Street. There’s the London angle too, but I’ve already got wheels moving there.’

  ‘D’you want to see Mrs Peveril?’

  ‘Not now, Mike. I doubt if we can make much progress tonight. I’ll let them finish the house-to-house. They may get something more. She may have been seen later. I don’t want to speculate at this stage.’

  Burden left the car and, throwing his raincoat over his head, plunged off through the rain. Wexford turned the car, moving off in low gear through the torrents, the steady downpour, glancing once at Sundays where the last dispirited stragglers were leaving the park.

  6

  By the morning it had been established that Mrs Margaret Peveril of number five, The Pathway, was very probably the last person to have seen Dawn Stonor alive. On Monday, June sixth, Dawn had entered the pathfields at five-thirty and disappeared. By nine Wexford and Burden were back in The Pathway. By nine also an emergency interview room had been set up in the Baptist church hall where Sergeant Martin and a team of detectives waited to talk to anyone who might have seen Dawn on the previous Monday afternoon. The photograph had been blown up to poster size ready to jog memories, and another photograph prepared, this time of Polly Davies wearing a blonde wig and dressed in clothes resembling as nearly as possible Mrs Stonor’s description of the mauve suit.

  The rain had stopped during the night and the town and its environs looked washed, battered, wrung out to dry. All the summer warmth had gone with the storm, leaving a cloud-splashed sourly blue sky, a high sharp wind and mid-winter temperatures.

  At Sundays Martin Silk was burning litter, the accumulated detritus of eighty thousand people’s weekend. A row of fires blazed just behind the wall and the wind blew acrid white smoke in clouds over the Sundays estate, the Forby road and the barren brown plain of the park. Silk’s little herd of Friesians had returned to their pasture. They stood in a huddle under the cedars, bewildered by the smoke.

  The Pathway was shaped like an arm with bent elbow, its shoulder the junction with the Forby road, its wrist and hand—or perhaps its one pointing finger—a footpath which ran through hilly meadows and copses to Stowerton. Three houses and two bungalows had been built along this arm, but in its crook there were only open fields. The bungalows were identical, rather large pink plastered bungalows with red tiled roofs and detached garages. They stood ‘in their gardens’, as estate agents put it, meaning that there are sections of garden at the sides as well as at front and back. Some twenty feet separated one from the other, and a further twenty feet down stood a two-storey house. Similar building materials had been used for this house and the two dwellings on the upper arm, red brick, white stone, cedarwood, but they varied in size and in design. All had sparse lawns and flower-beds planted with unhappy-looking annuals.

  ‘The Peverils came in first,’ said Burden. ‘Their place was finished in January. Miss Mowler and Dunsand both moved in in March. He came from Myringham, Miss Mowler from the town here and the Peverils from Brighton. The Robinsons retired here from London, moving in in April, and the Streets came here from up north last month.’

  ‘Do they all have garden gates opening on to that bit of land between them and the quarry?’ asked Wexford.

  ‘Only the Peverils and the two bungalows. There was going to be a path made at the back, but someone got the planning authority to veto that.’

  ‘We’ll go and have a word with your Mrs Peveril.’

  She was a very nervous woman, breathless with nerves. Wexford thought she was in her late thirties. Her hair-style and her clothes were fussy but not in any of the current modes. She dressed evidently in a somewhat modified version of the style of her youth, full, longish skirt, stilt heels. He sized her up immediately as belonging to a distinct and not uncommon type, the sheltered and conservative woman who, childless and exclusively dependent on her husband for all emotional needs, tends to be suspicious of other men and of the outside world. Such women will go to almost any lengths to preserve their security and their absolute domestic quietude, so Wexford was rather surprised that Mrs Peveril had volunteered any information about a murder victim.

  ‘All that smoke,’ she said querulously, leading them into an over-neat living room. ‘Isn’t it dreadful? I shan’t be able to get my washing out for hours. It was bad enough having that ghastly racket over the weekend—I didn’t get a wink of sleep. The noise was frightful. I’m not surprised someone got murdered.’

  ‘The murder,’ said Wexford, ‘happened several days before the festival started.’

  ‘Did it?’ Mrs Peveril looked unconvinced. ‘When I heard someone had been killed I said to my husband, they took too many of those drugs they all take and someone went too far. D’you mind not sitting on that cushion? I’ve just put a fresh cover on it.’

  Wexford moved on to a leather-seated and apparently invulnerable chair. ‘I believe you saw the girl?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I saw her. There’s no doubt about that.’ She gave a short nervous laugh. ‘I don’t know many people round here except my friend on the other side of the estate, but I knew that girl wasn’t local. The people round here don’t dress like that.’

  ‘What made you notice her?’

  ‘If you’re going to ask me a lot of questions I’d like my husband to be present. I’ll just call him. He’s working but he won’t mind stopping for a bit. I might say—well, the wrong thing if he wasn’t here. I’ll just call him.’

  Wexford shrugged. In a manner of speaking, the ‘wrong’ thing could easily be the thing he wanted her to say. But she had asked for her husband as some people ask for their lawyers and probably with less need. He saw no reason to refuse his permission and he got up, smiling pleasantly, when Peveril came in.

  ‘You didn’t see the girl yourself, Mr Peveril?’

  ‘No, I was working.’ Peveril was one of those men who talk about work and working as if labour belongs exclusively to them, as if it is an arduous, exacting cross they must bear, while the rest of the world make carefree holiday. ‘I work a ten-hour day. Have to what with the cost of running this place. The first I heard of any girl was when my wife told me last night she’d given information to the police.’ He glared at Burden. ‘I was working when you lot came.’

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t keep you from your work now?’

  ‘Oh, please don’t go, Edward, please don’t. You said I was silly to say what I said last night and now …’

  ‘I can do with a short break,’ said Peveril lugubriously. ‘I’ve been at it since eight, thanks to being made totally idle by a weekend of uproar. I’m worn out.’

  Comforted but still jumpy, his wife rushed into the middle of things. ‘It’s a matter of chance I was here at all. I nearly went to the pictures—my husband had seen the film in London and told me to go—but it was such a lovely afternoon. I just looked out of the window there and I saw her. I saw this girl walking up towards the footpath.’

  ‘Describe her to me. In as much detail as you can, please.’

  ‘She was about my height and she had a lot of dyed blonde hair cut in the shaggy way they all go in for.’ Mrs Peveril twitched at her own over-permed, frizzy dark hair with an unsteady hand. ‘And she was very heavily made-up, tarty. She had on this trouser suit, bright mauve—it hurt your eyes—with a darker mauve edging to it, and mauve patent shoes with high heels. Her handbag was mauve, a great big showy handbag with a gilt buckle, and she was carrying a brown carrier bag. I watched her because I wanted to tell my husband what a sight she was—he’s very particular in his tastes, being a sort of artist—and I save up little things to tell him when he’s finished work.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell him, Mrs Peveril?’

  ‘I must have forgotten.’ She was suddenly
flurried. ‘I wonder why I didn’t tell you, Edward?’

  The ‘sort of artist’ turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘I expect I was too tired to listen. If you’ve finished with her I’ll get back to the grindstone.’

  ‘I’ve almost finished. Where did she go?’

  ‘Across the field,’ said Mrs Peveril promptly. ‘That is, down the footpath, you know. I stayed at the window a long time but she didn’t come back.’

  She came to the door with them and watched them nervously as they got back into their car. Wexford’s driver, glancing up innocently, received from her such a sharp look that he went red and turned away.

  ‘Well, Mike, I don’t quite know what to make of the Peverils, but she certainly saw the girl. Her description was too accurate to admit of anything else. Our best bet is to conclude that Dawn went across that field to meet a man. Where would she have met him?’

  ‘In the open, I suppose. If she was going to meet him in Stowerton she’d have gone to Stowerton—the buses go every ten minutes between four and seven. There’s no shelter between here and Stowerton except trees and the old pumping station.’

  Wexford nodded. He knew the place Burden spoke of, a shed containing disused pumping equipment and standing in thick woodland on the banks of the Kingsbrook.

  ‘We’ll have it searched,’ he said. ‘That’s quite an idea. Meanwhile, I’d like to see how things are progressing in the High Street.’

  Things had progressed considerably. When Wexford entered the hall of the Baptist church, Martin had two people waiting to see him, each with information that was to complicate rather than simplify the case.

  The first of these, an assistant from the Snowdrop Laundry and Dry Cleaners in Kingsmarkham High Street, was a middle-aged cheerful woman who had known Dawn Stonor as a schoolgirl and since then had sometimes seen her on her rare visits to her mother.

  ‘We sort of knew each other by sight really,’ she said. ‘She came in last Monday at about a quarter past four.’

  ‘She was dressed in mauve?’

  ‘That’s right. A very smart trouser suit. I remember we cleaned it for her Easter time. When she came in on Monday I wasn’t sure if she knew me, but I asked her how her mum was and her gran and she said all right. Well, she’d brought this blue frock in to be cleaned and she wanted to know if I could get it done express. She wanted to collect it the next morning. “We can just do it,” I said, “seeing you’ve brought it before four-thirty.” If they come in later than that, you see, they can’t get their things back before the next afternoon.

  ‘ “I want to be on the ten-fifteen train tomorrow,” she said, “so can I collect it at ten?” ’

  ‘She meant to collect it herself?’ Wexford asked.

  ‘Well, she said “I”. She didn’t say anything about her mum fetching it like she has in the past. No, she meant to get it herself. I said that’d be all right and I made out the slip for her. You can see our part of it if you like. I’ve got it here with me.’

  Wexford thanked her and examined the slip, noting the name and the date.

  ‘But she didn’t collect it?’

  ‘No. I had it all ready but she never came. I was going to pop up to her mum’s with it this week and then I heard what had happened. Awful, isn’t it? It made me go cold all over when I heard.’

  Next Wexford saw the manager of the Luximart, a big new supermarket which stood between the Dragon and the Baptist church just beside the Forby bus stop. He was young, eager and helpful.

  ‘The young lady came in here at half past four. We don’t get many customers late on a Monday on account of we don’t sell meat on a Monday and the veg isn’t fresh. Most people eat up the Sunday leftovers and shop on Tuesdays.

  ‘She was almost my last customer and when she left she waited nearly half an hour for the Forby bus, the five-twelve. Stood outside here, she did. I cursed, I can tell you, because just after the bus had come and she’d got on it I was sweeping up in the shop and I found this slip from the cleaners.’

  ‘May I see?’

  ‘I was certain she’d dropped it. I was sure it hadn’t been there before she came in and I was quite worried thinking maybe she’d have trouble collecting her cleaning. I reckoned she’d come back but she never did. Then when I saw your notices and heard the name …’

  ‘You didn’t know her?’

  ‘Never saw her before,’ said the manager, ‘that I can recall.’

  Wexford matched the two slips, the top and the carbon. Miss Stonor, he read, 15 Lower Road, Kingsmarkham. Blue dress, express, 46p. ‘Will you describe her, please?’

  ‘Nice-looking blonde. Very smartly dressed in a sort of purple blouse and slacks. I don’t know, I can’t describe girls’ clothes. I reckon she had a purple bag. I remember thinking …’ The manager looked up ruefully and bit his lip. ‘I remember thinking she was a smashing piece, but it seems awful saying that now she’s dead.’

  ‘What did she buy?’

  ‘I knew you’d ask me that. I’ve been trying to think. I was at the check-out and she called me over to the deep freeze and asked me what the strawberry sundaes were like. They’re sort of mousse things in cartons. I said I’d recommend them and she put two in the trolley. Wait, I’m trying to see it, sort of get a picture …’

  Wexford nodded, saying nothing. He knew that this method, a kind of free association, was the best way. Let the man close his eyes, transport himself mentally back into the shop, stand beside the girl, re-create the almost empty wire trolley …

  ‘There was a can in the trolley.’ He concentrated. ‘I know what it was! Soup. Vichyssoise, the stuff you can have hot or cold. It’s all coming back. She took a jar of chicken fillets off the shelf and tomatoes—yes, tomatoes in a pack. I think she bought bread, a cut loaf. She might have bought butter, I don’t remember. I do remember she got a bottle of wine, though, because she had the cheapest line we do. Spanish beaujolais and some cigarettes. She hadn’t a basket. I gave her a brown paper carrier.’

  There was no one else to see. Wexford went back to the police station where he found Burden with the doctor. The wind rattled the windows and a thin rain spattered against the glass.

  ‘She meant to spend the night here,’ he said. ‘She was going to call for that dress on Tuesday morning. And it was food she was carrying in that bag when Mrs Peveril saw her. Food for two people.’

  ‘For her and her date,’ said Burden.

  ‘Then he wasn’t a casual pick-up. A man she picked up would either not ask her to eat with him at all or else he’d invite her to some restaurant. You can’t imagine a girl making a date with a stranger and that stranger saying, “Bring a three-course meal with you and we’ll have a picnic.” She must have known him and known him well.’ Wexford listed the items of food and said, ‘What’s the most interesting thing about that food, Mike?’

  ‘It could have been eaten cold as it was or it could have been heated. In other words, it could have been bought especially to be eaten in the open air, or it could equally well have been heated—the soup and the chicken, that is—which means indoors, in a house.’

  During this interchange the doctor, who had been sketching a duodenum on the back of Wexford’s draft of the crime-prevention plans, looked up and said, ‘It wasn’t eaten at all. I’ve got a provisional medical report prepared for you—there’ll be a more detailed one later from the experts, of course—but the girl’s stomach was empty. She hadn’t eaten anything for five or six hours. Maybe the boy friend ate the lot on his own.’

  ‘Or else food and wine and carrier bag are hidden somewhere with the mauve trouser suit.’

  ‘Not the wine,’ said Crocker. He stopped drawing and his face was suddenly grim. ‘The wine was used. Remember the glass you found, Reg, the glass you cut your hand on? There was glass embedded in her face and neck. Her dress was stained with wine as well as blood. I don’t think I’m being unduly melodramatic when I say that her attacker went completely mad. Perhaps you and Mike will be a
ble to find out whatever it was she said or did to him. All I can say is that something she did tipped him over the edge. He beat her to death with that wine bottle. He beat her in such a frenzy that the glass broke against the bones of her face.’

  It was dark inside the little shed, half-filled as it was by cumbersome, rusty machinery, and the men worked by the light of lamps they had brought with them. Outside the pumping station the river rattled noisily and the wind slapped the door monotonously against its rotted frame.

  ‘If they came in here,’ said Wexford at last, ‘it was a very brief visit. No blood, no crumbs, no cigarette ends.’ He touched his hair and brought away a handful of cobwebs. ‘It’s a filthy hole, not at all my idea of the sort of rendezvous likely to entice a girl like Dawn Stonor, who, I take it, was conscious of her appearance.’ For a moment he watched the men lifting up old sacks and searching through coils of rotted rope. ‘I wish to God I could understand why she put that red dress on,’ he said. ‘I’ve a feeling that if I could I’d have the key to the whole business.’

  ‘Because she got dirty in here?’ hazarded Burden.

  ‘Doing what? Not eating, not smoking, not making love. Talking, maybe? Then where did the dress come from? She wasn’t carrying it with her. Perhaps he was. I just don’t think it’s possible that in one day she got two garments soiled so as to be unwearable. The coincidence is too great, and it’s beyond the bounds of credibility that he happened to have a dress with him ready for her to put on in case hers got dirty. And who was he?’

  ‘We may get some help as far as that goes from the London end.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Shall we go? All this dust is making me cough.’

  What Burden termed help from the London end had come in while they were down by the river. It was not information, data, reported interviews, but help in actual human form. She was an attractive young woman, this girl who had shared a flat in Philimede Gardens, Earls Court, with Dawn Stonor. Wexford went into the interview room where they told him she was and found her drinking tea and chain-smoking, the ashtray on the table in front of her already choked with butts.