by Ruth Rendell
“Miss Andrews, the fact is you should have known this whole operation was bound to fail. It was wrong of you to raise Mrs. Sharpe’s hopes and encourage her in this way. You must know that.”
“I don’t see that. It could have worked, it nearly did.”
“And the effect on Sanchia has to be damaging.”
“Not half as damaging as living with a violent criminal.” An upsetting thought struck her. “She won’t have to go back, will she?”
“Of course she will have to go back,” Wexford said with a sigh. “I understand, I appreciate the circumstances. But whatever Mr. Devenish may have done, he is her natural father, who is living in an apparently stable relationship with her natural mother.” He held up his hand as Jane Andrews started forward in her chair “Just a minute, Miss Andrews. I hear what you say and I believe you. But if Mrs. Devenish makes no complaint to us about her husband, there is nothing we can do. And if she was going to make a complaint, she would have done so already, wouldn’t she? According to you, this has been going on for about thirteen years.”
“He has to know what Fay did? I mean, that she took Sanchia away herself?”
There was something in the way she said it that sent a chill down Wexford’s spine. He wanted to be unaffected by her, to maintain detachment, but he was unable to control his body’s response, the shiver that ran through him.
All he could do was conceal it and tell her as coolly as he could that of course Devenish would have to know, adding to himself that the man should already have been told, just as Sanchia should by now have been reclaimed and returned to her parents. These things had to be done at once. He didn’t want to look into Jane Andrews’s white, frightened face, but he had to.
She repeated the words she had spoken before: “He will kill her.”
Restoring a missing child to her parents should be one of the pleasantest of a police officer’s tasks. Wexford had found missing children before; taking them home, seeing the bereft mother’s face, the father’s joy, had been enough to warm his heart. This time would be different and a happy occasion transformed into . . . he hardly knew what. Horror? Dismay? Perhaps fearful danger. But it had to be done and he had to do it.
It was useless Jane Andrews telling him she wanted as few people as possible to know of this. They had to know. Charges would have to be brought against Jane Andrews and Louise Sharpe, but it was a puzzle to know what charges. At any rate, there was no great hurry. Neither of them would run away. As for Fay Devenish, he couldn’t bring himself to think of punishing her further, and of her husband he couldn’t bear to think at all. Giving himself an unusual injunction, to play it by ear, he had Donaldson drive him to Ploughman’s Lane and Woodland Lodge.
It was the first time he had been there since Sylvia and then Jane Andrews’s, revelations. In the light of them, the idyllic place looked different, not a peaceful sylvan corner of Kingsmarkham lying snugly between the old market town and the downs, but sinister, coven, the beautiful trees there for the purpose of hiding what went on beneath their shelter. Yet no one would imagine, looking at the house that seemed on this fine sunny afternoon to nestle comfortably in a leafy dell, that inside it a continuous crime was perpetrated, an ongoing, perpetual assault on a defenseless creature. So delightful was the picture and so peaceful the atmosphere that for a moment he doubted. Jane Andrews had invented it, imagined it, contrived this story to cover the truth. There had been some other motive for Fay Devenish giving away her own child. But as soon as he saw her, for it was she who opened the door to him, he knew it was all true, and he was almost at a loss for words.
At least Stephen Devenish was away from home. He was at Seaward Air in the Brighton office. She told him so, as if he couldn’t possibly have wanted to see her - it must be her husband he was in search of.
“I’m glad to have the chance of seeing you alone, Mrs. Devenish.”
“My sons will soon be home.”
Did she think she needed protection from him? “I want to talk to you without your sons. On your own. I have something to tell you.”
She knew. She read it in his face and she went as white as the ivory linen blouse she wore. For a moment he thought she was going to faint and he wished he had brought Lynn with him or Wendy Brodrick. But she recovered, even managed a dreadful strained smile, and he thought how recovering from pain and shock was her life, she was used to it.
He was going toward the study where, once before, he had talked to her as she lay on the hide sofa, her face marked and swollen, her speech impeded, but she laid a thin, light hand on his arm, said, “No, not in there. Please don’t let’s go in there.”
He remembered what Jane Andrews had said about that room, that male place, darkly paneled, leather-furnished, with the swords and the dagger on the wall, as the scene of many of her injuries. Instead, he followed her into a room designated her province, the kitchen.
On the refectory table where Devenish had wept stood a large wooden bowl brimming with fruit, pale yellow apples, dark green pears, gleaming oranges, golden bananas, and grapes like jade beads. Everywhere was spotless, as if newly spring-cleaned. Two of the casement windows were open and the fresh white curtains fluttered in a breeze that ruffled the leaves of the herbs, basil and sage and savory and marjoram in glazed earthenware pots on the sill. The little painted doors on the cuckoo clock were shut.
He motioned to her to sit down at the table and he took a chair opposite her. It was an immense relief to him, a comfort almost, that she had no bruises on her face, no marks or scars, so that he could tell himself that perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all, perhaps there had been exaggerations. Her eyes met his and she looked away. And then he told her. He told her that Sanchia was found, that she was safe and content in the home of a Mrs. Louise Sharpe, but that Mrs. Sharpe had not abducted her.
“You did that yourself, Mrs. Devenish.” It was a statement, not a question. “You need not tell me why. I know why.”
The whitening, the threatened fainting, was past. She only sighed. “Someone is bringing her back?”
“In about half an hour’s time.”
She hesitated. She dreaded saying it but she was obliged to. The words were forced out painfully, like something stiff squeezed from a tube. “What am I to tell my husband?”
The hard rejoinder would have been that she should have thought of that before. He wouldn’t have dreamt of saying it. “We’ll come to that in a minute. Your friend Miss Andrews has told me a lot of things about you and Mr. Devenish. I expect you can guess what they are. If they are true and you have been the - let’s say the victim of repeated assaults. . .“
She stopped him and now the words poured out. “You’re going to say I could call you, the police that is, and bring charges against him and have him in court, and I could leave - but where could I go? And it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t, he would just be angrier, and wherever I went, he’d find me, I know he would. He says so, he says he’d find me wherever I went. There isn’t any escape, not while he’s alive and I’m alive, no escape at all.”
She put her fingers up to her eyes, touched her temples as if stimulating thought, then said, looking at him with pathetic bravery, with a forlorn hope, “The only thing is that he may change. I thought he was changing a year ago when he hadn’t . . .well, done anything to me for a whole four weeks. I mean, it didn’t last, but it wasn’t quite so bad for a while and then it started again, but I know he was stressed-out, there was trouble at work, and I’m - I’m not always - well, the wife he expected, the wife a man like him deserves, if you like. I know all that. He may change, do you think?”
Not believing it for a moment, Wexford said, “The temporary loss of his daughter may make a difference; it may have shocked him into changing his ways.” Can the leopard change his spots? “But Mrs. Devenish,” he tried again, “there is no need at all for you to put up with this treatment. ‘What your husband does to you is just as much assault as when a man knocks down another man in a stre
et fight.”
“I know. But he doesn’t. He says he loves me, I’m the only woman he’s ever loved. It’s his duty to . . . well, chastise me. He says I need it or I’d go completely to pieces. He really believes that.” Her voice, low as it normally was, rose suddenly to a shriek as her control vanished. “What will he do when he knows it was me took Sanchia? What will he do?”
“Please try to keep calm. I do understand. I understand your predicament. I will be here, I will tell him. And the other officers will come with Sanchia and stay here.” It all sounded so feeble, such a wretched compromise. He put strength and firmness into his voice. “Please remember what I’ve said. You aren’t obliged to put up with this. Next time he strikes you, get into your car and come straight to the police station. Will you do that?”
She was crying now, shaking with sobs, as she had never cried when her child was missing. Wexford fetched her a glass of water. She sipped it, then took the glass back to the sink, rinsed it, dried it on a tea cloth, and put it away. The back door opened and the two boys came in from school. Their entry made a physical change in her. She sat up straighter, seemed to brace herself, managed a smile. But they didn’t speak to her and she didn’t speak to them. She got up and put cans of Coke from the refrigerator onto the table for them with a plate of biscuits and two packets of crisps. Would Wexford like tea? He shook his head. Both he and she jumped when the doorbell rang and she gave a little scream of fear.
Edward said, “Come on, Mum, get yourself together.”
Robert went to the door and came back with Barry Vine, Karen Malahyde, a young child-care officer, and Sanchia. Both boys were shocked and silent. Fay Devenish said, “Sanchia,” as if she were uttering an exclamation of despair. The child stared, put her fists in her eyes, turned her back on her mother, and buried her head in Karen’s skirt.
“Someone make a cup of tea, will you?” Wexford said to the company, not daring to single out the young women.
But the child-care officer complied.
“Where has she been?” Edward said to his mother.
“Don’t ask.”
“You and Dad, you’re crazy,” said Robert.
He took one of the crisp packets and walked out of the room. Barry handed round the teacups. Sanchia turned her head slowly, looked at her mother, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and squeezed her eyes tight shut. No one seemed able to think of anything to say. There was no conversation apart from Karen’s remarking that it hadn’t rained for a couple of days and the child-care officer’s saying in her bright social worker’s voice how much she liked the cuckoo clock and had it come from Switzerland. At that moment the doors opened, the cuckoo came out, flapped its beak, and said “cuckoo” five times.
Another half hour went by and they had all had two more cups of tea before Stephen Devenish came home. Fay was the first to be aware of his car; she seemed to hear it before it could possibly be heard, as if some extra sense abuse and fear had developed in her picked up inaudible sound across long distances. She stiffened, sat rigid, then began to shiver visibly.
“All right,” Wexford said. “Stay there. Leave it to me.”
He reminded himself that the man didn’t know, no one had forewarned him. No doubt, strange as the whole concept was, monster that he was, he loved his child. Human beings were beyond belief strange creatures. Wexford didn’t wait for Devenish’s key to enter the lock but went outside onto the forecourt. Sanchia’s father was standing beside the black Jaguar he had just stepped out of, and when he was aware of Wexford, he turned and gave him his charming smile.
“I have good news for you, Mr. Devenish,” Wexford said in a low, steady voice. “Your daughter is found. Sanchia is home again with her mother.”
There was no mistaking Devenish’s joy, his unfeigned delight. He crowed with triumph, punched both fists in the air like some sportsman who has scored a goal or won a set. He took Wexford’s hand and pumped it up and down. He laughed with pleasure.
“Where was she? What happened to her?” A less pleasant thought seemed to strike him. “Is she all right?”
“She seems fine. Shall we go inside?”
“But what happened to her?”
“I’m going to tell you that. In a moment. And I am going to ask you to be very understanding and patient and tolerant, Mr. Devenish. Shall we go into your study? I want to speak to you alone. I’m sure you can postpone seeing Sanchia for ten minutes.”
Devenish listened with his back turned. He stood at the window, apparently looking out, while Wexford talked. Then, when he could stand it no longer, Wexford said, “Please sit down, Mr. Devenish.”
The man turned to him a face suffused with blood. Dark veins stood out on his forehead. He sat down on the edge of the leather sofa. “She’s not sane. She’s quite mad. I didn’t know she was mad when we got married, but I soon found out. It’s a blessing for her she’s got me or she’d just go to pieces. She’s a nymphomaniac, for one thing. Not with me, I may add, with everyone else but me. Still, what can you expect. She’s mad.”
Wexford was in a dilemma. He had no proof of Devenish’s violence, though he believed in it absolutely. But he couldn’t tell the man to leave his wife alone when Devenish would only deny he had ever assaulted her. “It’s not a matter of insanity,” Wexford said at last, “but she certainly needs to see a psychiatrist . . .”
“What are you going to charge her with? Kidnapping Abduction? She ought to go to prison for life. I couldn’t bear that, I love her, she needs me.”
Instead of answering, Wexford said, “As much as anything, your wife is going to need your sympathy and your support, sir. Now you had better come and see her and your daughter.”
By this time Karen had told Fay Devenish that a woman officer trained about domestic violence would be visiting her and a child-care officer would be making regular calls. Fay said that after they had gone, her husband would kill her. Offered a mobile for getting rapidly in touch with the police or the Social Services, she said they already had three mobiles in the house and there was no point in having another. Sanchia crawled under the table and sat there sucking her thumb, but after about ten minutes she came out and climbed onto her mother’s lap.
“What have I done to her?” Fay said. “Have I traumatized her?”
“I shouldn’t think so for a moment,” the child-care officer said. “She’ll be fine.” But when Devenish appeared with Wexford, Sanchia started to cry. It wasn’t ordinary crying but sustained screams, pumped out hysterically. Fay sat with her head bowed, holding Sanchia around the waist but making no attempt to quiet her. Her husband walked over to Fay, stood beside her chair, laid a hand on her shoulder. Fay didn’t move. The child continued crying, sobbing now.
“All right, darling, I know all about it,” Devenish said. “It’s not so terrible. We’ve got her back and that’s all that matters.”
Fay looked at Wexford and asked if he was going to arrest her.
“We’ll have a talk about that tomorrow,” he said.
There was nothing more to be done, but he had never before left a situation with such reluctance. He told him self not to be melodramatic; above all, not to imagine he was leaving her to her death. Devenish would be chastened, he would know he was being watched. It was absurd to feel that the moment Wexford, Vine, and the two women were out of the house, Devenish would turn upon his wife and strike her, knock her to the ground.
On the other hand, it wasn’t over, the man would never change. Fay would again have her face punched and her eyes blackened, perhaps her bones broken, maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but next week or the week after. It would never cease until she left him or he killed her. And if she left him, he would pursue her. Wexford had never felt so powerless.
Next day he went back as he had promised and he did see her without Devenish. The woman officer from the Regional Crime Squad had called earlier, she told him.
Fortunately, her husband had left at eight-thirty for the Brighton office. DS Margaret S
tamford had offered her a pager as well as a mobile, which she had refused, presented her with all sorts of options for accommodation support if she left her husband, and told her about the Hide helpline. Nothing more had been heard from Kingsmarkham Children’s Department, and that Fay Devenish felt was a relief.
“They won’t take Sanchia into care, will they? I don’t know why I say that, really, it might be the best thing for her if they did take her into care.”
“Mrs. Devenish,” Wexford said, “you are not to be charged with any offence. Indeed, the only offence could be charged with is wasting police time, and preparing such a case” - he smiled reassuringly – “with all the paperwork would waste more police time. I would just like to reinforce what DS Stamford said to you. We can’t prosecute your husband unless you are prepared to give evidence against him, and you’ve said you aren’t. I would urge you to think again, and if there are any more assaults, to be in touch with us as soon as possible. You can phone at any hour of the day or night. Do you understand That?”
She nodded. “Of course,” she said, “of course I will,” and he knew she didn’t mean a word of it.
So he went away and left her, but his thoughts refused to abandon her. She was with him all the rest of that day and the next, and the next. He kept thinking of ways he might act to stop it, post a man to watch the place by day and another by night, lurk outside the windows to catch Devenish when next he attacked her. It wasn’t practical, it wasn’t possible, he hadn’t the manpower. He waited for a phone call, not from her - that he was sure would never come - but from someone, even one of her sons, who had found her mutilated or dying or dead.
It was beyond his imagination to picture what scenes ensued after he had gone and she was alone with Devenish. Or perhaps it was only that his mind flinched from it. She was so small and frail, and Devenish such a big, burly man who must be twice her weight. And the terrible thing was that Devenish had a right to be angry with his wife for what she had done, taking away his child, deceiving him, lying to him and her sons. But no one had a right to vent his anger against someone else with savage treatment and blows.
