by Ruth Rendell
‘So come by, come nigh,
come try and tell why
some sigh, some cry,
some lie and some die.’
He had sung it aloud and the others were staring at him. Pat giggled.
John said, ‘Very groovey, Mr Wexford.’
In the same parlance Wexford said, ‘I shouldn’t make much bread that way, John. Apart from not being able to sing, I don’t have the figure for it.’ He raised his heavy body out of the chair and said rather sharply to the inspector, ‘Come into the house.’
‘First thing tomorrow,’ Wexford said, ‘I want you to swear out a warrant to search Dunsand’s house.’
‘What, another fruitless search?’
‘Maybe it won’t be fruitless.’
Burden took Pat’s ballet shoes off the seat of one chair and John’s tennis racket off another. ‘On what evidence, for God’s sake?’
‘If Mrs Peveril has any value as a witness at all, Dawn Stonor went to Dunsand’s house. She was last seen going to his house and she was never seen coming out of it, never seen again. I would calculate that it’s a shorter distance from his back fence to the quarry than from any other back fence. She was killed in that house, Mike.’
‘Will you ask Dunsand’s consent first?’
‘Yes, but he’ll refuse. At least, I think so. I shall also ask him not to go to work tomorrow. They come down this week, so he can’t have anything very pressing to do.’
Burden looked bewildered. ‘You were just as sure it happened in Peveril’s house, sir. Are you saying she knew Dunsand, that it was Dunsand she met in that pub on June first?’
‘No. I know it wasn’t. Dunsand was in Myringham on June first. Louis Mbowele told me that.’
‘And Dunsand can’t have let her in on that Monday. He wasn’t there at five-thirty. We’re as certain as can be she didn’t know Dunsand. Can you imagine him picking a girl up, asking her to come to his house?’
‘You must remember that Dunsand isn’t the only person who could have let her in. Nell Tate had a key.’
‘She used to go and see her ex-husband?’ Burden asked doubtfully.
‘I should think not,’ Wexford rejoined slowly. ‘Mrs Peveril would have seen her if she had been and Mrs Peveril never saw her. Perhaps he sent her the key in the hope that she would visit him. The fact remains that she had a key and she could have been in Dunsand’s house by five-thirty. Did you ever check on that Duvette Gardens alibi?’
Burden looked a little offended. He was conscientious, proud of his thoroughness. ‘Of course I did. Although, there didn’t seem much point when you got so interested in Peveril. I got the Met. on it’
‘And?’
‘Vedast’s car was stuck outside all day and all night, gathering his usual parking tickets. Nobody seems to have a clue whether they were inside the house. One of them may not have been. We just can’t tell.’
Wexford nodded. ‘The Tates would lie themselves black in the face to protect their master and he’d lie to protect his little ones. I think he cares a good deal more for “Goffo” than for “Nello”, though, don’t you? I wish I could see a motive. One might suggest that Nell was jealous of Dawn’s relationship with Zeno Vedast, only there wasn’t a relationship any more. Vedast might have had a date to meet Dawn somewhere in the neighbourhood and Nell found out about it and lured her into the house to kill her. D’you fancy that idea?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Tate might have fallen in love with Dawn when they met at the Townsman Club and got the key from his wife to use Dunsand’s house for a love nest. Then Vedast killed her to prevent her spoiling their jolly little tria juncta in uno. Does that suit you better?’
‘Well, I suppose anything’s possible with people of their sort.’
‘Sure it is. Nell arranged to meet Dawn there because she had Dunsand’s loneliness on her conscience. She thought Dawn might make him a suitable second wife—no less suitable than his first, at any rate—but when Dawn had confessed that Vedast had phoned her, shown interest in her, Nell got into a rage. She would, of course, have instructed Dawn to bring with her a second-hand red dress because Dunsand likes second-hand clothes, red is his favourite colour, and he prefers dresses to be a tight fit.’
Burden said distantly, ‘I don’t see the point of all this, sir. Aren’t you rather arguing with yourself? It’s you who want to search the place, not I.’
‘I expect I am, Mike,’ said Wexford. ‘I haven’t an idea how it happened, but two things I’m certain of. We shall find traces of blood in Dunsand’s house tomorrow, and Dunsand will confess to having killed Dawn Stonor from the chivalrous motive of protecting his former and still much-loved wife. It’s going to be a heavy day so I think I’ll be off home now.’
18
While they ransacked the bungalow, Wexford sat with Dunsand in the sombre living room. The search warrant had been shown to him and he had read it carefully, scrupulously, in total silence. He lifted his shoulders, nodded and followed Wexford into the living room, pausing at the window to pick a dead flower off one of the dehydrated cacti. Then he sat down and began to leaf through one of the travel brochures in the manner of a patient in a doctor’s waiting room. The light fell on his glasses, turning them into gleaming opaque ovals. His eyes were invisible, his thick mouth closed and set, so that his whole face was expressionless. But as he turned the pages and came to one on which some words had been pencilled in the margin, there came suddenly a tightening of those rubbery cheek muscles that was like a wince.
‘Your wife had a key to this house, Mr Dunsand.’
He looked up. ‘Yes. I sent it to her. But she’s my wife no longer.’
‘I beg your pardon. We believe she or a friend of hers was here on June sixth.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, no.’
Wexford thought he had closed his eyes, although he could not be sure. He was aware of a terrible stillness in the room, a profound silence, which the movements in the hall and overhead accentuated rather than disturbed. Dunsand was not in the least like Godfrey Tate to look at or in manner, yet they shared this strange reticence. Both Nell Tate’s husbands possessed the rare quality of being able to answer a searching question with a straight yes or no. Had she chosen them for this or had she made them so? Had she chosen them at all? The man Wexford could be sure she had chosen was chatty, verbose, an extrovert whom some would call charming.
He tried again. ‘Do you ever see your former wife?’
‘No.’
‘Never, Mr Dunsand?’
‘Not now. I shall never see her again now.’
‘You’re aware that she’s staying at the Cheriton Forest Hotel?’
‘Yes. I saw it in the paper, a picture of her with a lot of flowers. She used to fill the house with flowers.’ He glanced at the moribund cacti and then he picked up his brochure again. Underneath it on the pile was a pamphlet advertising dishwashers and another for garden equipment. ‘I’d rather not talk any more now, if you don’t mind.’ He added curiously, ‘I’m not obliged to say anything, am I?’
Wexford left him and went into one of the bedrooms. Bryant, Gates and Loring were crawling about, examining the carpet.
‘Are there any women’s clothes in the wardrobes?’
‘No, sir, and there’s no blood. We’ve done the whole place. This is the last room. We’ve even been up in the loft.’
‘I heard you. Contents of the refrigerator?’
‘It’s empty. He’s been defrosting it. He’s very houseproud, sir. If you’re thinking of that food she bought, the dustbins have been emptied twice since June sixth.’
Aghast, suddenly weary, Wexford said, ‘I know she was killed here!’
‘The hall floor’s bitumastic, sir, the kind of stuff that’s poured on as liquid and then left to set. There are no joins. I suppose we could get it taken up. We could have the tiles off the bathroom walls.’
Wexford went back into the room where Dunsand was. He cleare
d his throat and then found he was at a loss for words. His eyes met not Dunsand’s own but the thick baffling glass which shielded them. Dunsand got up and handed him two identical keys.
‘One of these,’ he said in a calm, neutral voice, ‘is mine. The other I sent to my former wife and she returned it to me by post.’ Wexford looked at the keys, the first of which was scraped and scarred from daily use, the second scarcely marked. ‘Mrs Tate,’ said Dunsand with awful precision, Vas never here. I should like to make a point of that.’ Things were happening, Wexford thought, at least to some extent according to the pattern he had forecast. Dunsand swallowed, looked down at the floor. ‘I found the girl here when I got home on June sixth. She must have got in by a window. The kitchen fanlight had been left unfastened. I encountered her as soon as I let myself in. She was giving the place what I think thieves call a “going over”. We struggled and I—killed her. I hit her with a bottle of wine she had left on the hall table.’
‘Mr Dunsand …’ Wexford began almost despairingly.
‘No, wait. Let me finish. She had brought some things with her, apart from the wine, some shopping in a bag and some clothes. Perhaps she thought my house was empty and she meant to camp there—“squat” is the word, isn’t it? After it got dark I put her body in the quarry and the other things into the river under the bridge. Then I washed the floor and the walls.’ Staring at Wexford, he said abruptly, ‘Aren’t you going to caution me? Shouldn’t there be witnesses to take all this down?’
‘This confession—you insist on making it?’
‘Of course. It’s true. I killed her. I knew it was only a matter of time before you arrested me.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed them against his sleeve. His naked eyes were frightening. There was something terrible yet indefinable in their depths, a light that told perhaps of passion, of single-minded fanaticism under that flaccid exterior. He was used to teaching, to instructing. Now, in a teacher’s voice, he proceeded to direct Wexford.
‘The proper thing, I think, will be for me to go to the police station and make a statement.’ He put on his glasses, wiped a beading of sweat from above his left eyebrow. ‘I could go in my own car or accompany you if you think that wiser. I’m quite ready.’
‘Well, you were right,’ said Burden in grudging admiration.
‘Only up to a point. We didn’t find a trace of blood.’
‘He must be a nut or a saint, taking that on himself to shield a woman like Nell Tate.’ Burden began to pace the office, growing vehement. ‘That statement he made, it doesn’t even remotely fit the facts. For one thing, Dawn was let into the house. She didn’t go round the back. And for another, why should she suppose Dunsand’s house to have been empty—I mean, unoccupied? If she had, she wouldn’t have camped there on her own. She had a home to go to. Can you see Dunsand beating a woman to death because he suspected her of breaking into his house? Crocker said her killer was mad with rage, in a frenzy. That phlegmatic character in a frenzy?’
‘He and Tate,’ said Wexford, ‘are apparently both phlegmatic characters. They are still waters which not only run deep but which may have turbulent undercurrents. Strange, isn’t it? Dunsand hasn’t asked for a lawyer, hasn’t put up the least resistance. He’s behaved almost fatalistically. That woman breaks the men she doesn’t want but can’t scratch the surface of the man she does want.’
Burden shook his head impatiently. ‘What do we do now? What next?’
‘Go back to Dunsand’s place, I suppose. Have another look round and experiment with those keys a bit.’
Bright noon in The Pathway, the hottest day yet of a summer that promised to be all halcyon. The sun had brought into blossom tiny pink flowers on the plants in Miss Mowler’s garden. In the meadows in the crook of the arm-shaped road they were cutting hay, cropping flowers far more lush and vigorous than those man had planted. The crude pink of Dunsand’s bungalow was blanched to a rosy pallor by the hard hot light.
Wexford went up to the front door and tried Dunsand’s keys. Both worked. The third key, the one Tate had given him, looked different, and by now he was sure it wouldn’t move the lock. It didn’t.
‘It’s a much older key than the others,’ said Burden. ‘What’s Tate playing at?’
‘Let’s go inside.’
The whole house had been searched, but for evidence of a crime, not for clues to a life. Wexford remembered how Dunsand had planned to redecorate the place. He held on to that, certain it must have some significance. In a week’s time perhaps that ugly wallpaper, those wriggling black stems, those golden flowers, would have been removed. Dunsand would have stripped it down, replaced it. But Dunsand had confessed …
Reticently, disliking the job, he went into the living room where the cacti were, where Dunsand had sat, blindly studying his brochures, and opened the desk. He found no letters, only bills; no marriage certificate, no album of photographs. But in a small drawer under the roll-top he discovered Dunsand’s address book, a brown leather-covered book very sparing of entries. A London phone number was recorded under the letter T, just a number followed by a dash and the name Helen. Wexford noted the code and thought it might probably be Vedast’s. He looked under S and under D but found no reference to Dawn Stonor.
It was at this point that it occurred to him how she, the dead, she whose death was the cause of this enquiry, had for some days past seemed to fade from its screen. It was as if she, as a real person, a personality, had lost her importance, and that he was searching for the answer to some other puzzle in the ramifications of which her death had been almost incidental. And he saw her—vividly but briefly—as a pawn, a used creature, her life blundering across other, brighter lives, falling through folly and vanity into death.
But the vision went, leaving him no wiser, and he thrust his hands once more into the pigeon-holes of the desk. A bunch of photographs came to light at last. They were in an envelope stuffed into a slot at the side of the roll-top interior, and they were mostly snapshots of Dunsand, much younger, with people who were evidently his parents, but underneath them were two much larger shots which Wexford took to the window. The strong fight showed him first a wedding photograph, Dunsand still young, Dunsand smiling down without reserve at his bride in her badly fitting wedding dress, her veil wind-blown, young bony hands clutching a tight posy of rosebuds. Unless he had been twice married, the bride must be Nell. Time and art had changed her so much in the intervening years—eight? Ten?—since the picture was taken as to make her scarcely recognisable as its subject. Her hair was dark, cropped short, her face fresh and childlike. But it was she. The big yearning eyes were unchanged and the short upper lip, showing even in those days its petulant curl.
He brought out the other photograph, the last one, from under it. Nell again, Nell fractionally older, her hair still short and feathery, her skin apparently innocent of make-up. The portrait was coloured, tinted in the shades of old china, rose and sepia and ice-blue and plum red. Nell’s new wedding ring gleamed brassily against the dull red stuff of her dress, and on the simple bodice, just below the round neckline, hung a pearl drop on a gold chain.
Wexford went ponderously out into the hall.
19
On all-fours Burden was examining the floor and the hideous shiny wallpaper with its pattern of little gold flowers and tiny, regularly recurring crimson leaves, wallpaper which met a floor that curved up to join it without any intervening skirting board.
‘Get up, Mike. It’s useless. We’ve done all that already.’
‘One must do something,’ said Burden irritably. He got up and brushed his hands against each other. ‘What’s the matter? You’ve found something!’
‘This.’
‘It’s the dress! But who’s the girl?’
‘Nell Tate.’
Burden stared incredulously at the portrait. Then he put it beside the wedding picture, nodded, looked up at the chief inspector. ‘I like her better how she was,’ he said quietly.
‘So would
most men, but maybe she doesn’t know that.’ Wexford slipped the two photographs back into the envelope. ‘Mike, I’ve a curious feeling I’m losing touch with Dawn Stonor, that she’s fading away from me and I’m coming to grips with something stranger, something almost more terrible than her actual death. There must be many murder victims,’ he said slowly, ‘who meet their deaths without knowing in the least why they are to die.’
‘Most of them, I should think. Victims of poisoners, old shopkeepers who know the till’s empty, all children.’
‘She wasn’t a child,’ said Wexford. ‘Perhaps your list isn’t completely comprehensive. I don’t know, Mike. I’m only dreaming, not really getting anywhere. This is a gloomy place, isn’t it? The windows are huge and yet the light doesn’t seem to get in. Of course, it’s an illusion, it’s something to do with the dulling, deadening influence of the man’s personality.’
They moved back into the living room where the books frowned on the blue birds and the orange lilies that covered the walls.
Burden said, ‘We’re getting too dreamlike for me. I’d be happier if I could understand about the keys, if I could see how Dawn got in here.’
‘Someone let her in. Someone asked her to come and that someone was here to let her in when she arrived at five-thirty. Not Dunsand.’
‘But he cleared up the mess. He was left to dispose of the body he found when he got home.’
‘I suppose so. You talk about mess, Mike. What mess? Where is it? Where are the traces of it? Is this killer the one killer we’ve ever come across who can commit a crime as bloody as this one and leave no blood? I don’t believe it.’
