by Ruth Rendell
There as no signature. It often amused him to note how, without a thought, we address people we dislike, despise, or distrust with the endearment dear. It was even done by writers of anonymous letters. In his time he had seen many of them but never one like this. It seemed, for one thing, the work of an educated person. There was something evangelical about that last sentence, almost like a line from a psalm, and a suggestion in the mention of God and the capital letters for the deity pronoun that the writer might be religious.
He changed his mind about not going through the drawer now. Two more letters in much the same vein came to light. Both began Dear Mr. Devenish and both mentioned Devenish’s “cruelty” to his wife, while the second referred to his habit of cutting her with a knife. One was dated early July and the other mid-June. So perhaps Devenish hadn’t lied when he said in April that he had had such letters but had destroyed them. Perhaps there had been many and they had come regularly.
When Wexford returned to Woodland Lodge in the afternoon, not two but three women were in the living room. Jane Andrews, neat and smart in a long-skirted, cream linen suit, was sitting with her friend on one of the sofas, holding her uninjured hand, while in an armchair was a woman Fay surprisingly introduced as her mother, Mrs. Dodds. Thin, worn Fay in the blue cotton frock that hung on her bore no resemblance to this tall, well-built lady in bright green dress and matching high-heeled shoes, her “big hair” a carefully teased golden helmet, her face skill fully painted. Cakes were on a table, with biscuits in a silver dish, and someone had made a pot of coffee. They offered Wexford a cup but he shook his head.
“Mrs. Devenish, I’d like to speak to you alone, so perhaps you can spare your mother and your friend for ten minutes.”
Shepherding them outside, he called to Lynn to sit with Fay Devenish. He was thinking quickly, seeing a way to seize his chance. The study was obviously out of bounds. However much Jane Andrews had loathed Stephen Devenish, she would probably balk at going into the room so soon after he had met a violent death there. But it was a big house of many rooms. Opening a door, he looked into a playroom where the television set was still on, though The Lion King was long over, and where toys lay scattered everywhere as Sanchia had abandoned them. With his next attempt he was luckier. Here was the dining room. A table big enough to seat twenty - had the poor woman been obliged to hold dinner parties for Devenish’s business associates? - still left room for a sideboard, drinks cabinet, and occasional chairs.
He asked the two women to sit down, then said, “Mrs. Dodds, your grandsons will soon be brought home from school. I don’t think it a very good idea for them to be here, do you? Your daughter needs to rest. I’m wondering if you’d have them for a few days, just to - ”
She cut him short. Her eager smile and rapturous voice changed the image he had of her as far from grandmotherly. “I’d love to have them. What a splendid idea. My husband and I are always saying we never see enough of them. I wouldn’t mind keeping them for a month. And they love being with us.”
“That’s fine, then. If you could” - his glance took in Jane Andrews as well as Mrs. Dodds – “just make it appear the invitation came from you in the first place? It would . . . well, come better that way.”
“Of course I will.”
“You and Miss Andrews could pack some clothes for them while I’m talking to Mrs. Devenish. I’m sure you know what they need.”
Fay was sitting quietly, contemplating her left hand, now bandaged. Perhaps she was thinking this was the last wound she would ever receive at Devenish’s hands. Or of what she had done? Or what her rescuer, this stranger, had done?
“What time was it when you heard this man’s voice, Mrs. Devenish?”
“I told you. About eight. I was in the kitchen, clearing away the breakfast things. The boys were with me, waiting for their lift to school.”
“I should like to get the sequence of events right, if you please. I won’t keep you longer than I can, I appreciate what a strain this must be on you.”
Fay cleared her throat. She glanced across the room, and for a moment Wexford thought she was going to ask if it was necessary for Lynn to be present, but she didn’t.
She sighed. “Sanchia was awake by six-thirty. She always is. I got up when I heard her and got her dressed and downstairs. By that time my husband was up and having a shower. I went into the boys’ rooms at seven and got them up. I had to go back and tell them again, but I always do have to. I was helping Sanchia with her breakfast when my husband came down. I gave him his breakfast. He always has – had - a cooked breakfast. Then the boys came down for their cornflakes and toast."
"I’d . . . I’d run out of oranges to make juice from, it’s a bad time of the year for oranges, so I used some frozen juice but it wouldn’t thaw out - you don’t want to hear all this.”
“I want to hear everything,” said Wexford. “Go on.”
“My husband finished his breakfast and went into the study. That was about a quarter to eight. He called to me to come in there . . . I - oh, I don’t . . .”
Her face crumpled in distress. There were no tears, rather a twisting of her features into a grimace of dismay and pain. It was as if - and Wexford thought he read it plainly - she was asking herself, as she had always asked herself, why this man of hers had felt the need to hurt her over and over and on and on. Why? Had she really been so bad that she deserved this?
Wexford said gently, “Your husband called you into the study to punish you, didn’t he, for failing to supply fresh orange juice?”
She sucked in her lips, bent her head, said an almost silent, “Yes.”
“He had a knife but it wasn’t a knife from the kitchen? It was a knife he happened to have with him in the study?”
No more than a nod this time.
“He told you to hold out your hand - your left hand because he had no wish to interfere with your ability to do housework - and cut you across the palm.”
“Yes.”
Unsuitably and uncharacteristically, Wexford found himself exulting in his heart that the man was dead, had died by violence, had been punished. He said nothing.
Fay said in a voice that trembled, “He was much, much worse to me after that - that business with Sanchia. Every day there was - there was - something, beatings or cutting me or kicking. Edward and Robert saw it, Sanchia saw it.”
“It’s over now,” said Wexford, adding silently to himself, whatever the truth of this, whatever the outcome, there would be no more of that. “Tell me what happened after your husband cut you.”
“I went back to the kitchen. No, I went into the downstairs cloakroom first and tied my hand up in the towel that was in there. The boys didn’t see the cut, but they saw my hand was tied up. They were just leaving for school. On the days I don’t take them, they walk about a hundred yards down the road and get a lift with a woman who’s also got children at their school. I sent them off - ”
“Excuse me - do you mean you went to the front door with them?”
She looked at him, puzzled at first. “Did I . . . oh, I see what you mean. No, I just told them it was time to go and said good-bye to them, and they went out of the kitchen into the ball and out of the front door. I didn’t actually see them leave the house, but I know they did. And then, almost immediately - well, a couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was this man. I heard his voice and my husband’s voice, talking to him.”
He noticed that she never referred to Devenish as Stephen, but always as “my husband,” as a slave might say “my master.”
“That would have been at eight o’clock. Did you hear him leave?”
“I don’t know. I thought I heard the front door close, but that could have been my husband going, only it wasn’t.”
“Weren’t you surprised, Mrs. Devenish, that your husband said nothing to you before he left? That he didn’t say good-bye to you?”
Her shaky laugh rang shockingly in that quiet place. “Would you be surprised if someone di
dn’t say good-bye to you when he’d just slashed you with a knife?”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps not.”
Suddenly she sprang from her chair, looked around her wildly. “‘Where’s my little girl? ‘Where’s Sanchia?”
“With Mrs. Wingrave.”
“I want her, I want her back! Oh, God, d’you realize, I never need fear for her again!”
“Of course you can have her back.”
“I’ll go and fetch her,” said Lynn.
Across the road and down another driveway, Moira Wingrave was alone in the cushiony, flock-wallpapered room she called the “lounge,” reclining on a sofa with her feet up, a long glass of something beside her that might have been virgin tomato juice or a Bloody Mary, and the television on. Sanchia was somewhere about, she said, probably upstairs with Tracy. “Oh, yes, she’s taken a great fancy to Tracy. Those simple people are always a hit with children.”
Lynn asked her if she had seen a man enter the drive way to Woodland Lodge at about eight that morning.
“What man? You don’t mean poor Stephen Devenish?”
“No, not him. Maybe a neighbour who lives at Laburnum House?”
“Oh, Gerry Paulton. No, why would I see him? He doesn’t even know the Devenishes, does he?”
“I’d like to take Sanchia back to her mother now.”
“Please do. Be my guest. I’m not used to children, and frankly I never know what to say to them.”
Tracy Miller knew She was playing a game with Sanchia called “around and around the room,” of which Moira Wingrave would certainly have disapproved, since it consisted in the child’s clambering around the master bedroom on the furniture without putting her feet to the ground, jumping from little gilt chair to Louis XVI reproduction commode, ending up on the ivory-silk-festooned dressing table, and leaping off it into Tracy’s arms. Articulate now, Sanchia said she didn’t want to go home, she wanted to stay with Tracy and began to cry. Eventually Lynn persuaded her with a bribe of Smarties, which she found by a lucky chance in the bottom of her bag.
Back at home, her mother gave Sanchia a smothering hug and covered her face, and head with kisses, treatment that Sanchia struggled under. She had been back home for ten minutes when Edward and Robert arrived at the back door, driven by their head teacher in his car. They looked as children of their ages always do when caught up in tragic events, awkward, embarrassed, lost, and helpless.
Edward muttered something in response to Jane Andrews’s greeting. Robert said nothing. He shuffled his feet, then asked his mother if there was anything to eat. From force of habit Fay got up and fetched cans of Coke out of the fridge, bread and butter and Marmite from a larder, Mars bars from somewhere else. But when their grandmother came in, both showed more enthusiasm than Wexford had ever seen from either of them. He felt content with his plan and said he must go.
Outside he met Vine, who had been paying a routine call at Sylvia’s old home where Gerald Paulton, just home from work, told him that he always drove himself to Brighton. It was true that he had once had a lift from Stephen Devenish when his car was having its electrics overhauled, but that had been more than a year ago.
“What a dreadful thing. I was devastated when my wife told me, just devastated. He was the nicest chap, one of the best.”
“So you didn’t call at Woodland Lodge at about eight this morning?”
In fiction people questioned by the police take interrogation in their stride or are merely annoyed by it. Reality is different. Gerald Paulton was shocked and frightened by Vine’s question. What on earth did he mean? What was he insinuating?
“I’m not insinuating anything, sir. I’m making a routine inquiry."
“You’ve got me on your list of suspects!”
“We don’t have a list of suspects, Mt Paulton. This investigation has only just begun.”
“Well, I didn’t go there this morning. I left for work at half past seven. Ask my wife, ask my kids, the au pair, anyone.”
At home, Wexford read and reread the copies that had been made of the anonymous letters he had found in Devenish’s desk. The originals had gone to the lab for testing. He thought how much harder the universal use of computers had made the identification of anonymous letter writers, but probably policemen had said much the same thing when typewriters were invented. These letters were plainly the work of someone with more than a grudge against Devenish. He must find out more about this man Devenish had allegedly turned out of his office and thrown downstairs. One thing particularly struck him: Why had Devenish kept these letters, that is, those that came in June and July, but not the earlier ones?
Could it be because only these specifically mentioned his abuse of his wife? Of course Wexford didn’t even know if this was so, it was just guesswork. The others might have mentioned it too.
And what need, anyway, to look farther afield for Devenish’s killer than his own home?
Chapter 21
Conciliatory tactics appealed to Wexford not at all and he hoped to get through this interview with Brian St. George without using any. On the other hand, he wanted information from the editor of the Kingsmarkham Courier, which could only be obtained from St. George. If necessary he would have to make a concession and restore to the Courier its old press rights with Kingsmarkham Police.
But as it happened, when he met St. George in his High Street office, the editor was anxious to be helpful, even obsequious, and prepared to say and do anything in order that the status quo might be restored. “The ‘fat cats’ story Mr. Wexford? When we took that photo of Sanchia? I can’t tell you precisely when it was, nor off the cuff. But my PA will do so in the twinkling of an eye. Our computer system here is quite excellent.”
St. George’s PA’s were constantly changing and none seemed more than sixteen years old. The last one had been a plump blonde who wore a micro-skirt that barely covered her buttocks. Her successor was black, six feet tall, with long, gold-beaded extensions to her dyed-red hair.
“See if you can find the Devenish ‘fat cats’ story will you, Carly-Jo? Try two years back And bring me a printout.”
Wexford said, “Did you interview him?”
“Sure we did. It’s all in the story. We’ll be using extracts, I expect, in this week’s account of his murder.”
Rather taken aback, Wexford said, “You will? Why is that?”
“He had quite a bit to say about enemies. He made enemies in his job, he said. For instance, the airline manager was sacked soon after he got this salary increase. It was for incompetence, and he was incompetent, according to Devenish. He’d been hopeless from the start, lost the company untold business.”
Trevor Ferry. “You won’t be running a story about that, I trust,” said Wexford rather severely.
“Certainly not.” St. George assumed an expression of extreme rectitude. “I hope we’re more responsible than that.”
“So do I.”
“We didn’t use it in the ‘fat cats’ story. I’m simply telling you what he told me. Very nice chap he was, very easy to get on with, open and honest. In his position he met with a lot of envy, he said. You know, great job, megabucks, lovely wife, smashing kids, beautiful home . . .”
“Yes, all right. I do know.”
“I was only going to say, Reg, that people don’t like it. They resent it. I mean, why should he have it and me not have it, that sort of thing. They don’t think it’s fair. Oh, here’s our story.”
Carly-Jo came back with the printout, put it in front of Wexford in a sweet, heavy wave of perfume. Afraid from the tingling in his nostrils that he was going to sneeze, he pressed his forefinger against his upper lip, a sure preventative. The story he saw at once, offered little help. It was the usual thing, beginning with a word picture of Devenish’s lifrstyle, then leading into a long quote from him, justify a salary of nearly £400,000 per annum. Not a line about enemies, still less threats. Nothing about the sacked manager.
“Since you were aiming to bring the chap into
hatred, ridicule, and contempt, I suppose you were scared of libel.” Wexford laid down the printout.
“I don’t think that’s altogether fair, Reg. It’s not as if we were a national daily. Most of us have to live among the people of this town. We don’t want to make enemies either. Besides, there’s something to be said for goodwill, keeping up a happy relationship with one’s contributors.”
“Why did he mention enemies at all? Don’t tell me, I can guess. You or your reporter asked him if he had them, if he got threats, if this so-called envy took positive form.”
“As I recall it,” said St. George uncomfortably, “he did mention threatening letters he’d had. And of course I said there was no question but that he should take the matter to the police at once.”
“Naturally,” said Wexford dryly. “You would.”
“He laughed it off, said he’d thrown them away. They were garbage and the best place for garbage was the dust bin.”
“How original. I’m not surprised you couldn’t make a story out of it. Apart from Trevor Ferry I don’t suppose he named any of these enemies, did he? He hadn’t any idea who sent the letters, for instance?”
“There was some guy made a nuisance of himself that he had to put out of his office once, he said that, but he didn’t name any names.”
To Burden the Devenish death was merely a nuisance that distracted him and took officers away from the hunt for Hennessy’s killer. Finding the wielder of the petrol bomb and bringing him or her to court was enormously more important in his eyes than running to earth whoever had stabbed Stephen Devenish. In his customary fashion he had long since dismissed Devenish as a villain and a brute, unfit to exist. He wouldn’t go so far as saying good luck to his killer, for justice mattered to him, but he resented having to surrender good men and women to the inquiry when there was still so much to be done to track down the petrol bomber.
