by Ruth Rendell
‘The first of June,’ he said to Vedast, ‘was the birthday of the man Dawn was very probably going to marry, the man she would have married if you had left her alone. She was at home, waiting for him to come to lunch. You didn’t know that. Would you have cared if you had? You phoned her in the morning and asked her to meet you for a drink.’ Burden stirred in his chair, his eyebrows lifting. ‘She wasn’t very elated about it. Perhaps she realised that a man like you, a man as rich as you are, who could afford without policing it the most expensive restaurant in London, only takes a girl for drinks in a pub if he despises her, if he thinks she isn’t worth any more. But she dressed carefully for you just the same, changing out of the clothes that were good enough for an ordinary fiancé.
‘And later, when the excitement of that lunchtime date had begun to recede, she asked herself—and her flatmate—if she was despised, if that was the reason why you were only prepared to have a hole-in-corner, sub rosa affair with her, hiding her in a house no one knew you had bought instead of taking her to an hotel.
‘In that pub, between one o’clock and three, you asked her, after some preliminary flattery and flirtation, no doubt, to spend the night of the following Monday with you in your new house. Of course, she agreed. She would be on holiday. She could go and see her mother and then go on to The Pathway. That she and Dunsand were people with feelings never entered your head, did it? You were as careless of his as of hers. That Mrs Tate was in the habit of preparing for him on these occasions a special meal of his favorite food, of bringing good wine and beautiful flowers—to fill the void?—didn’t trouble you at all. You told Dawn anything would do, just some quick picnic food for you and her to share. Any old wine, the cheapest she could get.
‘She must go there first, you told her, and you gave her the key Mr Dunsand had sent to Mrs Tate and which Mrs Tate had given you. No responsibility, Mrs Tate? You left it all to Zeno?’ Wexford turned back to Vedast. ‘You’d be along around half past six. As soon as she was in the house she was to go upstairs where she would find a red dress.
‘Now this dress had been laid out on the bed by Mr Dunsand. During his married life this dress of Mrs Tate’s had been his favourite. When she wore it, sat down to dinner with him, listened to his account of his day and gave him account of hers, he could fancy himself protected from the “harsh light of day” and back safe and happy with his wife.
‘Dawn knew nothing of this. She was told nothing of this. You asked her to wear this dress because it belonged to a fashion current when you were still together, still lovers, and you told her it would recall to you that past time.’
Looking ill, the colour all gone from his face, leaving a swarthy pallor, Tate lurched to his feet. He edged round the sofa and said to Vedast, ‘Is that true?’
‘No harm? Christ … You did that and she knew it. God, I feel like I’ve never known either of you, never seen you before …’
‘Godfrey …’ Nell put out a feeble hand. ‘I didn’t do anything. I only told him—well, you know.’
‘Have another drink, Goffo,’ Vedast drawled.
‘I don’t want any more.’ Tate made this remark in a thick but wondering voice. He swung on Wexford. ‘Go on, then. What happened? Tell me the rest. Him …’ He pointed at Vedast as if reluctant to use his name. ‘Him and her, they were with me that evening. Honest, they were. They can’t have killed her.’
‘Who kills, Mr Tate, the one who holds the knife, the one who says “stab!” or the one who sends the victim to the appointed place? Which of the three Fates is responsible for our destinies, she who spins the thread, she who cuts it or she who merely holds the scissors?’ Wexford could tell from Tate’s puzzled, vacant expression that all this was going over his head. ‘Maybe Mr Dunsand could tell us. He’s the philosopher.’ Glancing at Burden, hoping there would be no actual exclamation of shock, he said, ‘He killed her, of course. He’s admitted it. He isn’t the kind of man to prevaricate for long. Only chivalry made him tell a few lies to avoid any involvement of …’ Scornful eyes came to rest on Nell, ‘… of his beloved former wife.’
Wexford went on carefully, ‘As to what he did, I’ll tell you. He came home, longing, of course, for the evening and the night ahead. He let himself in with his own key at twenty to seven. By that time Dawn must have been feeling uneasy. There were many things to make her uneasy, the modest size of the place, the austere furnishings, the superabundance of learned books. And the dress—a dress that was too small for her, unbecoming, too tight. Of course she felt uneasy. Of course, when she heard a key in the lock, she came out of the living room shyly, not speaking, just standing there.
‘Instead of Vedast, she saw a little middle-aged stranger. Instead of his wife, Dunsand saw—what? What, Mrs Tate?’
‘Dawn Stonor,’ she said in a small, sullen voice.
‘Oh, no. She didn’t exist for him. He never even knew her name. He saw his wife, yet not his wife, a girl of his wife’s age but bigger, coarser, with even more make-up, with brassier hair, yet wearing his wife’s dress, his favourite dress.
‘Perhaps he didn’t believe in the reality of this sight. Even to a better-balanced man than Dunsand, what he saw looming in the little hall would have seemed a hallucination. To him it wasn’t just a travesty of his wife but a kind of incubus sent by something which existed in his clever sick mind to torment him. He wanted to destroy what he saw and he simply did so, attacking the hallucinatory shape with the first weapon that came to hand, the wine bottle his visitant had left on the hall table.’
Vedast got up, lifted his head sharply as he had lifted it at the festival, shook back his lion’s mane. ‘How was I to know things would go that way?’ He held out his glass. ‘Get me some more of that stuff, will you, Goffo.’
Tate said, ‘Not me. Get your own bloody drink.’
‘Temper, temper.’ The golden eyebrows went up, the teeth showed in what was perhaps a smile.
‘Can’t you do anything to him?’ Tate said to Wexford. ‘He killed her. He’s the real killer.’
‘I know it, Mr Tate, but no, I can’t do anything to him. What should be done to him? He is as sick as Mr Dunsand, a megalomaniac who lives on fantasies.’
‘Don’t give me that balls. He ought to be shot. Hanging’d be too good for him.’
‘ “Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned” … You are not obliged to associate with them, Mr Tate. You need not, just because you also married her, copy her first husband and be chivalrous.’
‘Too bloody right, I needn’t.’ Shock had brought Tate complete cold sobriety. On his knees, he flung armfuls of garments into the red grip, seized it and a smaller suitcase. ‘I’m going, I’m quitting.’ He got up, said to Vedast, ‘You owe me a hundred quid. You can send it care of my mum’s. She knows the address.’
‘You can’t go,’ said Vedast and at last he wasn’t playing. His voice had lost its lightness. ‘We’ve been together for eight years. What’ll I do without you?’
‘Cut your bloody throat, but cut hers first.’ Tate held out his hand to Wexford. ‘I used to call you lot pigs,’ he said, ‘and maybe I will again. But, thanks, you’ve done me a good turn. If you’ve done nothing else you’ve got me away from them. I might even stop drinking now.’ Then he used the first cultivated, literate phrase Wexford had ever heard from his lips but, even as he said it, the chief inspector knew he had learnt it parrot fashion from the ‘scene’ with which he had been associated. ‘They’d have destroyed me utterly.’
‘I really think they would, Mr Tate.’
When he had gone, slamming the suite door, the slave who remained seized Vedast’s arm and said, ‘Good riddance. I just feel relief, don’t you?’
Vedast made no reply. He picked up the phone sullenly, asked for a porter. Immediately Nell, taking her cue, bundled heaps of clothes into cases, bags, carriers. Wexford and Burden, ready to leave, helpless, impotent, watched her. The cases were all packed in five minutes. Vedast stood at the window, his e
xpression inscrutable. He looked over the balcony rail once, perhaps at the departing Tate. The porter came in, took two cases in his hands, one under his arm. Nell flung a white coat round her shoulders.
‘I take it we shan’t be wanted any more?’
‘You will be wanted at Mr Dunsand’s trial. Before that, statements will have to be taken from you.’
‘Me?’ said Vedast. ‘I can’t appear in court. It will be ghastly bad publicity. Why did Goffo have to go like that? Goffo could have coped.’
‘I’ll cope,’ said Nell fondly. ‘Let’s go now, shall we? It’s nearly midnight. Let’s get going.’
He pushed her away. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘I’m going by myself. You can get a taxi to whatever station there is in this hole.’
‘But we’ve got the car!’
Petulantly, like a little boy, he said, ‘It’s my car. I’m going in it. You’d better face it, Nello, you’re no use to me without Godfrey. He looked after me and then—then you came along.’ His face cleared a little. ‘You were a nice bit of decoration,’ he said.
The flesh of her face seemed to sag. Her lip curled up, her eyes widened, stretching the skin, wrinkling it. ‘You can’t mean it, Zeno. Zeno, don’t leave me! I’ve worshipped you since I was twenty. I’ve never thought of any man but you.’
‘No, dear, I know. You just married them.’
As the porter returned to fetch the remaining luggage, Vedast tried to unhook her hands from his shoulders. ‘Nello, do as I say. Let go of me. I’m going to pay the bill and then I’m going.’ He went up to Wexford, the bantering tone quelled by what he had to say and by the presence of the inquisitive porter. ‘I suppose we can keep all this quiet?’ One of the long, lean hands sketched a gesture towards a jeans pocket. ‘I imagine …’
‘Mr Vedast, we are leaving.’
‘I’ll come down with you.’
‘Zeno!’ Nell screamed. ‘Zeno, I love you!’
The two policemen had moved a pace or two away from the singer, moved distastefully. Nell flung herself upon Vedast. Her coat fell from her shoulders. She clung to his neck, pushing her fingers through the golden hair, pressing her body against him.
‘Where am I to go? What am I to do?’
Struggling, pushing her, he said, ‘You can go to Godfrey’s mum. Go where you like, only get off me. Get off! Christ, Dawn Stonor’d have been a better bet than you. Get off!’
They grappled together like wrestlers, Nell screaming and clinging. Vedast was strong and muscular but not quite strong enough. He kicked and punched, grabbing at her hair, tearing it. They toppled and rolled on the floor among the dead flowers, the empty bottles, knocking over and breaking into fragments the orange-juice glass.
‘Let’s go,’ said Wexford laconically.
In the corridor bedroom doors had been cautiously opened and sleepy people stared out. On the stairs the policemen passed four or five of the hotel night staff running up, alarmed by the screams, the thumps on the floorboards. Lights began to come on as the somnolent hotel woke to life.
The night was as clear, as softly violet-blue as the night of the festival, but now the moon was waning. And there were no ballads to be heard here, no plangent note from a string plucked with controlled power. Wexford could still hear Vedast’s voice, though, raised now in a high-pitched lunatic scream, a sound none of his fans would have recognised. Instead of that vibrant twang came the crash of flying furniture; instead of melody, Nell’s hysterical sobbing, and instead of applause, the manager gravely and quite ineffectively begging his guests to stop.
‘Perhaps they’ll kill each other,’ said Burden as they passed the furred golden car.
‘Perhaps they will. Who cares?’ Wexford sighed. ‘Vedast won’t like it in court. Will it have any effect on his career?’
Once again Burden was being appealed to as the expert on such matters. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, starting the car. ‘These singers, they’re always appearing in court on drug offences. Did you ever hear of their records selling less well afterwards?’
‘Drugs are one thing. Provided you don’t deal in them, drugs harm no one but yourself. But there’s a big thing among young people at the moment for loving your neighbour, for not hurting—above all, for keeping in mind that people are people. I don’t think they’ll be too pleased when they know their idol forgot or, rather, neglected to care for that fact.’
‘Poor old Dunsand. What of him?’
‘His career will be ruined, but it won’t be prison for him. Mental hospital for years? Is that much better? It was a succubus he killed. Unfortunately for him, we know succubi don’t exist—they’re flesh and blood.’
A single light showed in Burden’s bungalow. In an armchair in the living room John lay asleep, his hair tousled, a half-empty glass of milk beside him. The indicator light on the record player still glowed red.
‘God, I forgot the kids! I was so carried away I forgot them.’ Burden stooped tenderly over his son, but the boy didn’t stir. ‘He waited up for me,’ he said wonderingly.
Wexford smiled rather sadly. ‘Poor John. Somehow I don’t think he’ll get the Sundays album for his birthday now.’
‘He certainly won’t.’ Burden took a stride to the record player, his face flushing with anger when he saw what lay on the turntable. Savagely, he seized ‘Let-me-believe’ in both hands and seemed about to twist it, to bend it double, when Wexford laid a gentle, warning hand on his arm.
‘No, Mike,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that. Leave it to John and—and all of them. Let them be his judges.’
Three Inspector Wexford Mysteries
BY RUTH RENDELL
“Mystery writing of the highest order … durable,
complex, and affectingly human.”
—The New York Times Book Review
MURDER BEING ONCE DONE
The ailing Wexford is in London for a rest cure—one that deprives him of alcohol, rich food, and, above all, police work—when a young girl is found murdered in a gloomy nearby cemetery. The authorities, commanded by Wexford’s nephew, can’t find out who the victim was: the dead girl has no possessions, no past, and a name that seems patently false. And so Wexford defies doctors orders and the big-city condescension of the London police to take a look for himself.
Crime Fiction/0-375-70488-4
NO MORE DYING THEN
Years as a policeman in the placid village of Kingsmarkham have taught Inspector Wexford that the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes. But what kind of person would steal—and possibly murder—two children? Wexford’s search is complicated when his colleague falls in love with the mother of one of the missing youngsters.
Crime Fiction/0-375-70489-2
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE
In spite of the dire predictions, the rock festival at Sundays seems to be going off without a hitch. Then a hideously disfigured body is discovered in a nearby quarry, and Inspector Wexford must ask how an event devoted to peace and idealism could become the setting for a murder. The victim is a distinctly unglamourous local girl who lied about her friendships with celebrities. But she had a very real connection with the festival’s charismatic star, a singer who inspires an unwholesome devotion in his followers.
Crime Fiction/0-375-70490-6
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
