Some Lie and Some Die

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Oh, I’ll come,’ said Burden.

  ‘No. Have your Sunday with the kids. If we find anything I’ll let you know at once.’

  Wexford allowed his glance to fall once more on the dress, caught now in a ray of evening sunshine which touched it like a stage spotlight. He tried to imagine Margaret Peveril slender, rejuvenated, but he could only see her as she was, bigger and fleshier than Dawn, a woman whose whole build showed that she could never, since her teens, have worn that dress. He shrugged.

  He didn’t attempt to get a search warrant. With Martin and three constables, he went to The Pathway in the morning, a misty, cool morning such as heralds a fine day. The sunshine hung like a sheet of gold satin under a fine tulle veil.

  Muttering and pleading that his work would be disturbed, Peveril agreed without much protest to his house being searched. Wexford was disappointed. He had expected the man to put up a front of aggressive opposition. They lifted the fitted carpets, scrutinised skirting boards, examined the hems of curtains. Mrs Peveril watched them, biting her nails. This ultimate desecration of her home had driven her into a kind of fugue, a total withdrawal into apathy and silence. Her husband sat in his studio, surrounded by men crawling on the floor and peering under cabinets; he doodled on his drawing board, making meaningless sketches which could not, under any circumstances, have been saleable.

  Miss Mowler, returning home from church, came up to Wexford at the gate and asked if the men would like tea. Wexford refused. He noticed, not for the first time, how the churchgoing woman who might more conveniently carry a prayer book in her handbag, always holds it ostentatiously in her hands, an outward and visible sign of spiritual superiority. Dunsand was mowing his lawn, emptying the cuttings into a spruce little green wheelbarrow. Wexford went back into the house. Presently he looked out of the window and, to his astonishment, saw Louis Mbowele approaching, his coat swinging open to allow the soft summer air to fan his brown, bead-hung chest. Louis went into Dunsand’s garden, the mowing was abandoned and the two men entered the bungalow. Not so very astonishing, after all. Wexford remembered that Louis was a philosophy student at Myringham where Dunsand taught philosophy.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he said to Martin.

  ‘She wasn’t killed here, sir. Unless it was in the bathroom. I reckon you could stick a pig in that bathroom and not leave a trace.’

  ‘We may as well get out then. This is supposed to be a day of rest and I’m going home.’

  ‘Just one thing, sir. Young Stevens asked me if you’d see him before he goes off duty. He’s at the station. He mentioned it last night but what with all this it went out of my head. He’s got something on his mind but he won’t tell me what.’

  The house was restored to order. Wexford apologised sparingly to Mrs Peveril.

  ‘I told you she didn’t come here,’ she said with a cowed resentful look. ‘I told you she went right away from here. She went across the fields.’

  Wexford got into the car beside Martin. ‘I wish she wouldn’t keep saying that, you know, gratuitously, as it were.’ He slammed the door. Martin listened pohtely as he was obliged to do, his mind on his Sunday dinner which would probably be spoilt by now, anyway. ‘Why does she say it if it isn’t true?’ said Wexford.

  ‘Maybe it is true, sir.’

  ‘Then why didn’t anyone else see her after five-thirty? Think of all those blokes coming home for their dinners at Sundays and in Stowerton around six. They’d have seen her. She was the kind of girl men notice.’

  The mention of dinner made Sergeant Martin even more obtuse than usual. ‘Maybe she sat in the fields for hours, sir, sat there till it was dark.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Wexford roared. ‘If she was going to have to hang about for hours she’d have stayed at her mother’s or if that was unbearable, gone to the pictures in Kingsmarkham.’

  ‘But the last bus, sir?’

  ‘It’s less than a mile, man. She was a strong healthy girl. Wouldn’t she have walked it later rather than sit about in a field?’

  ‘Then Mrs Peveril never saw her.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she did. She observed her closely, every detail of her appearance.’

  The car drew up and the two men got out, Martin to depart for a long and well-deserved dinner, Wexford to see Stevens who was already waiting for him in his office. The shy and inarticulate young policeman stood to attention rigidly which made Wexford even crosser and also made him want to laugh. He told the man to sit down and Stevens did so, less at ease in a chair than stiffly on his feet.

  Wexford didn’t laugh. He said quite gently, ‘We do have a welfare officer, Stevens, if the men have some domestic or private problem that’s interfering with their work.’

  ‘But it’s work that’s interfering with my work, sir,’ Stevens stuttered.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  The man swallowed. ‘Sir.’ He stopped. He said it again. ‘Sir,’ and then, rushing, the words tumbling out, ‘Mrs Peveril, sir, I’ve wanted to tell you for days. I didn’t think it was for me to put myself forward. I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘If you know something about Mrs Peveril that I ought to know, you must tell me at once. You know that, Stevens. Now come on, pull yourself together.’

  ‘Sir, I was transferred here from Brighton last year.’ He waited for Wexford’s nod of encouragement which came with brisk impatience. ‘There was a bank robbery, sir, last summer. Mrs Peveril saw the raid and she—she came to the police voluntarily to give evidence. The superintendent interviewed her a lot, sir, and she had to try to identify the villains. We never caught them.’

  ‘You recognised her? Her name? Her face?’

  ‘Her face, sir, and then when I heard her name I remembered. She knew me too. She was very hysterical, sir, a bad witness, kept saying it was all making her ill. I’ve had it on my conscience all week and then I kept thinking, well, so what? She didn’t hold up the bank clerk. And then it got so I thought—well, I had to tell you, sir.’

  ‘Stevens,’ sighed Wexford, ‘you’ve got a lot to learn. Never mind, you’ve told me at last. Go away and have your dinner. I’ll check all this with Brighton.’

  He began to have an inkling of what had happened. But he must check before going back to The Pathway. There wasn’t going to be any Sunday dinner for him.

  The Peverils were just finishing theirs. It struck Wexford that this was the first time he had encountered Peveril not working or coming straight from his work or fidgeting to get back to it.

  ‘What is it this time?’ he said, looking up from roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb your lunch, Mr Peveril. I want to talk to your wife.’

  Peveril promptly picked up his plate, tucked his napkin into the neck of his sweater and, having paused to grab the mustard pot, was making for the door to his studio.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Edward!’ said his wife in the thin, high-pitched voice which, if it were louder, would be a scream. ‘You never give me any support, you never have done. I shall be ill again. I can’t bear being questioned. I’m frightened.’

  ‘You’re always bloody frightened. Don’t hang on me.’ He pushed her away. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got a plate in my hand?’

  ‘Edward, can’t you see, he’s going to make me say who did it! He’s going to make me pick someone out!’

  ‘Mrs Peveril, sit down. Please sit down. I’d be glad if you wouldn’t go away, sir. I don’t think it’s for me to interfere between husband and wife but, if I may say so, Mrs Peveril might not be quite so frightened if you’d try to give her the support she wants. Please, sir, do as I ask.’

  Wexford’s tone had been very stern and commanding. It was effective. Bullies crumple fast when sharply admonished, and Peveril, though he moved no closer to his wife and did not look at her, sat down, put his plate on the edge of the table and folded his arms sullenly. Mrs Peveril crept towards him and hesitated, biting her thumbnail. She gave Wexford the half-sly, half-despera
te look of the hysteric who is trying to preserve intact the thickly packed layers of neurosis.

  ‘Now will you both listen quietly to what I have to say?’ He waited. Neither spoke. ‘Mrs Peveril, let me tell you what I think happened. In Brighton you witnessed a bank robbery.’ Her eyes opened wide. She gave a little chattering murmur. ‘That was a most upsetting experience for you, but you very properly came forward to give information to the police. You were a key witness. Naturally, the police questioned you exhaustively. You fancied yourself badgered and you became frightened, ill perhaps with fright, both from the constant visits of the police and from a notion that some revenge might be taken against you for the information you had given. You moved here to get away from that. Am I right?’

  Mrs Peveril said nothing. Her husband, who never missed a cue, said, ‘Sure, you’re right. Never mind where I had my roots, my contacts, my ideal studio. Madam wanted to run away so we ran away.’

  ‘Please, Mr Peveril.’ Wexford turned to the woman, sensing that he must be very careful, very gentle. Her stillness, the compulsive nail biting, the hard set furrows in her face, were ominous. ‘You had only been here a few months when you realised, because of what you had seen, that you might soon be involved in another and perhaps even more disturbing criminal case. Mrs Peveril, we know you saw Dawn Stonor on Monday, June sixth. You gave an accurate description of her, more precise than any other we have. I suggest to you—please don’t be alarmed—that you either admitted her to this house or saw her enter another house. You told us you saw her cross the fields because you believed that would be the surest way to draw our attention, the attention you find so frightening, away from you and your own neighbourhood.’

  It might have been all right. She took her hand from her mouth and bit her lip. She made a little preparatory murmur. It would have been all right if Peveril hadn’t started to his feet and shouted at her, ‘Christ, is that true? You bloody fool! I thought there was something fishy, I knew it. You told lies to the police and nearly landed me right in it. My God!’

  She began to scream. ‘I never saw her at all! I never saw her!’ A slap on the face would have been effective. Instead, her husband began shaking her so that the screams came out in stifled strangled gasps. She crumpled and fell on the floor. Peveril took a step backwards, white-faced.

  ‘Get Miss Mowler,’ snapped Wexford.

  By the time he returned with the nurse, Mrs Peveril was lying back in a chair, moaning softly. Miss Mowler gave her a bracing, toothy smile.

  ‘We’ll get you to bed, dear, and then I’ll make you a nice strong cup of tea.’

  Mrs Peveril cringed away from her. ‘Go away. I don’t want you. I want Edward.’

  ‘All right, dear. Just as you like. Edward can get you to bed while I make the tea.’

  At the use of his Christian name Peveril frowned ferociously, but he gave an arm to his wife and helped her up the stairs. Miss Mowler bustled about, removing plates of congealing food, boiling a kettle, hunting for aspirins. A little thin woman, she was quick in her movements and efficient. She talked all the time she worked, apologising for non-existent faults. What a pity she hadn’t been on the spot when ‘it’ happened. If only she had been in her garden, for instance. How unfortunate that, what with one thing and another, she had had to wash her hands and take off her overall before accompanying Mr Peveril to the house. Wexford said very little. He was thinking that he would be lucky to get any more out of Mrs Peveril that day.

  The tea was taken up. Peveril didn’t reappear. Wexford followed Miss Mowler back into her own bungalow where newspapers were spread over the hall carpet and a kind of late spring cleaning seemed to be in progress.

  ‘I spilt a cup of cocoa down the wall. It’s a blessing this paper’s washable. I don’t know what you must think of me, washing walls on a Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘The better the day, the better the deed,’ said Wexford politely. ‘I want to have another look at the quarry, Miss Mowler. May I make my way there through your garden?’

  He was permitted to do so but only after he had refused pressing offers of tea and coffee, sherry, a sandwich. Miss Mowler, having been assured that he didn’t need her to accompany him down the path and open the gate for him, returned to her work. He let himself out of the garden and into the narrow no man’s land that separated the estate from Sundays.

  16

  Heavy rains had fallen and now the sun had returned as bright and hot as ever. But it was too soon yet for new grass to show, too soon for even the beginnings of the green carpet which by autumn would once more cover the desert plain which Sundays park had become. Wexford sat down on the edge of the quarry. Here nature was winning, for the flowers and shrubs, the delicate yet lush herbage of June, had been assailed by only half a dozen trampling feet. New roses, new harebells, were opening to replace the crushed blossoms. He looked at the broken wire, the wall, the three gates, but they told him nothing more, and gradually the scented air, sun-warmed and soft, drove thoughts of the case from his mind. A butterfly, a Clouded Yellow, drifted languidly past him and alighted on a rose, its petals paler and creamier than the buttercup-coloured wings. Not so many butterflies these days as when he was a child, not so many as when even his daughters were children. Under his breath he caught himself humming a tune. At first he thought it was that song of Vedast’s which stuck in his mind and irritated him. Then he realised it wasn’t that one but a ballad of Betti Ho’s in which she prophesied that her children would never see a butterfly except in a museum. The Clouded Yellow took to the air again, hovering, floating …

  ‘You’re trespassing!’

  Wexford started to his feet, shaking himself out of his dream.

  ‘You’re trespassing,’ said Silk again, half-serious, half-peevishly ironic. ‘I don’t see why I should always have the fuzz trampling over my land.’

  Looking up into the irritable white face and the smiling black one, Wexford said, ‘I’m not trampling. I was sitting and thinking. What are you two up to? Planning another festival?’

  ‘No, we’re going to try and get a commune going here during the university vacation. Louis and I and his girl friend and about half a dozen others. Louis wants to see how it works out with a view to operating a kibbutz system in Marumi.’

  ‘Really?’ said Wexford blankly. He didn’t see how gathering together a house party in a fully-equipped and furnished mansion could be a rehearsal for kibbutzim in an equatorial state, but he didn’t say so. ‘Well, I think I’ll trample off now.’

  ‘So will I,’ said Louis unexpectedly. He gave his radiant grin and patted Silk on the grey head which reached just to his shoulder. ‘Peace be with you.’

  They skirted the Peverils’ fence and emerged at the head of The Pathway. Mrs Peveril’s bedroom curtains were drawn. Dunsand was pulling puny little weeds out of his flowerless borders. Beside Miss Mowler’s car a bucket of soapy water stood unattended. It was hot, sunny, a radiant day. The English do not relax in deck-chairs in their front gardens and, apart from the crouching figure of the philosophy lecturer, the place was deserted. Louis waved graciously to him.

  ‘Want a lift into Kingsmarkham?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Louis said. ‘That way I might get the three-thirty bus to Myringham.’

  Wexford’s car was a fair-sized one, but no car except perhaps Vedast’s Rolls would have been roomy enough to accommodate Louis Mbowele comfortably. Laughing, he hunched himself inside the folds of his pony-skin and slid the passenger seat back to its fullest extent.

  Wexford said, ‘When you get to the top of wherever it is you’re going, are you going to make them live in communes?’

  ‘It’s the only way of life, man.’

  ‘And force them to be equal and dictate the pattern of their houses and the subjects of their study and operate a censorship and forbid other political parties?’

  ‘For a time, for a time. It’s necessary. They have to learn. When they see it all works and the new generation’s grown up a
nd we have peace and full bellies, then we can start to relax. It’s necessary to make them do what they aren’t just too crazy to do right now. So you have to make them for their own good.’

  ‘Do you know a saying of James Boswell? “We have no right to make people happy against their will”?’

  Louis nodded, smiling no longer.

  ‘I know it, man, and I know the connection in which it was said. The slave trade. The traders excused themselves on the ground that my people would be happier on plantations than in jungles. This is different. This is for real. And it’s only for a time.’

  ‘Oh, Louis,’ said Wexford, turning into the Forby road, ‘that’s what they all say.’

  They drove into Kingsmarkham in silence. The heat of the day, his failure to get anywhere, enervated Wexford. There seemed nothing else to do with his afternoon but go home, eat his stale lunch, maybe sleep. Then, as they approached the place where the Myringham bus stopped, he became aware of the long silence and wondered if he had offended the young African. Louis looked as if he would have a hearty appetite, and the Olive and Dove did a good Sunday lunch.…

  ‘Have you eaten?’ he said.

  ‘Sure. I cadged some bread and cheese off Len.’

  ‘Mr Dunsand? Why did you have to cadge? Isn’t he very hospitable?’

  Louis grinned. Evidently, he hadn’t been offended, only sleepy from the sun. ‘He’s a recluse,’ he said. ‘He finds it hard to communicate. Still, I took him out to lunch a while back in Myringham—last Wednesday fortnight it was—so I guess he owed me a meal. I asked him to join our commune but he’s not together enough for that.’

  ‘Strange. You’d think a lecturer in philosophy would …’

  ‘Have found the way? Found himself?’ Louis leapt out of the car and strode round to open Wexford’s door. ‘That’s a popular misconception, man. It’s living—a broad spectrum of living—that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think.’