Wexford 18 - Harm Done

by Ruth Rendell

  “I suppose she did it, anyway, didn’t she?” he said to Wexford over a snatched lunch at the Europlate. “These wife-beaters who get their comeuppance, it’s always the wretched, abused woman who’s done it. The worm has turned, that’s all.”

  “The fact is that only two percent of all homicides involve abused women killing their partners.”

  “Oh, come on, Reg. She’s stuck it for years, he’s bashed and kicked her to kingdom come, and one day it’s the last straw. She breaks, she picks up the knife or whatever he cut her with and gives it to him. Tit for tat and then some.”

  Wexford, who was eating Italian pasta with German asparagus, shook his head, then, seeming to think better of it, nodded. “There’s a lot more I want her to tell me. But I want to talk to the boys first. Then there’s this business with the weapon.”

  “You haven’t found the weapon, have you?”

  “The funny thing is that I don’t know. I say I don’t know because there were seven knives in that kitchen. Of course, one could say that there should have been eight.”

  “I can’t say I follow you.”

  “No, well, is it true what Fay Devenish says and there never were eight knives? Or were there eight and one is missing? Or was one of the seven others used? Or is it true what Fay says that none of the kitchen knives was used? If it was one of the kitchen knives, three can be discounted because they’re too small to inflict those sort of injuries and one is a saw. That leaves three.”

  “We’ll know more,” said Burden, “when the noble lord, Lord Tremlett, gives you his postmortem results. No doubt it’ll be quite a simple matter to match the knife to the wounds.”

  Wexford said, and to Burden his remark sounded irrelevant, “She’s got a dishwasher.”

  “She’s what? So have I. So have you. What’s that got to do with it? The way I see it is, they have that absurd contretemps with the orange juice, he summons her to be punished, cuts her, and somehow she gets hold of the knife and stabs him. Blood everywhere, lashings of it. She puts her clothes in the washing machine and has them in the dryer before she phones us. Her only witness is a child of three who wasn’t even there, thank God, when the killing took place. Clear as crystal, no problem.”

  Burden pushed away his plate and drank some water. All this talk of stabbing and blood had started putting him off his food. It never seemed to have much effect on Wexford, and yet, if Burden absolutely had to say, he’d call himself more callous than the chief inspector.

  “When he called her into the study,” Wexford said slowly, “the boys were still in the house.”

  “So she says.”

  “They very likely were if he summoned her, as you put it, at seven forty-five. But they can’t have been in the house when Devenish was killed. You’re not saying he submitted to having a knife stuck in him three times without a murmur? He probably shouted and screamed the place down.”

  “So she didn’t kill him straight after he cut her,” said Burden, taking the pudding menu from Henri. “She went back into the study after the boys had left to walk down the road for their lift and did it then. That need have been no later than five past eight, which left her ample time to get those clothes washed. She was probably wearing the pink dress we found among the clean wash. When you come to think of it, she was in an ideal situation to stab someone and get away with it, having the means of get ting rid of bloodstains right there. As for the knife, she could have buried that anywhere in all those acres they’ve got. Are you going to have a pudding?” Wexford shook his head. “Nor am I,” Burden said.

  Catherine Daley the mother of a son of eleven and a daughter of ten, told Karen Malahyde that three days a week she drove her children and the Devenish boys to school in Sewingbury and fetched them back two days a week. Fay Devenish drove all four children to school two days a week and fetched them on three. On the morning of Stephen Devenish’s death it had been Catherine’s turn to take all the children to school, and as was their habit, Edward and Robert Devenish had come to her house, Braemar, Ploughman’s Lane, at about five past eight. It might have been nearer ten past, but they were never late, Fay saw to that, knowing that Catherine Daley would leave in her car at eight-fifteen. The drive took twenty minutes and both mothers liked to have the children there in plenty of time for an eight forty-five start.

  “How did the boys seem?” Karen asked Catherine.

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Were they normally behaved? Excited? Frightened? Subdued?”

  “I really don’t know. Perhaps Edward was rather quiet. But then he is the quieter of the two. Robert can be rather boisterous.”

  “Was he boisterous yesterday?”

  “Not really. No, he wasn’t. They were both quite normal.”

  Wexford spoke on the phone to the sacked manager, Trevor Ferry. At eight on the previous morning, the day of Stephen Devenish’s death, he had still been in bed, he said. Could anyone substantiate that? His wife could, Ferry said. Anyone else? There had been no one else in the house, Ferry said rather sullenly. What did Wexford think? That they had an au pair?

  “Mr. Ferry, this is a far more serious matter than that which we had to deal with when I last spoke to you. If you remember the names of any of these people you seemed then to think had reason to quarrel with Mr. Devenish, will you get in touch with me, please?”

  Wendy Brodrick had stayed at Woodland Lodge overnight and Lynn Fancourt was in the house now. If Fay thought this surveillance strange, she said nothing about it. She was in the playroom with Sanchia, another Disney video running but the child ignoring it and playing instead with a convoy of camouflage-painted toy army vehicles that must surely have once belonged to her brothers.

  Not the original but a photocopy of the threatening letter was what he showed Fay. No, she had never seen it before but she knew about these letters. Stephen had had plenty of them. He had never shown her any but he had described them to her.

  “I thought he’d accuse me of sending them,” she said. “But he never did. They were done on a computer and he knew I couldn’t use a computer. He thought them well written and I expect he thought I was too ignorant to write them. He was always saying I was ignorant.” She changed the subject. “My sons went to stay with my mother. Did you know that?”

  “She said she was going to invite them.”

  Fay switched off the television by means of the remote. Although Sanchia wasn’t watching the video, hadn’t watched it since Wexford came into the room, she immediately set up a howl of protest: “Put it on, put it on, put it on!”

  If she had been wordless and silent before, she had made up for lost time. She came up to her mother and began hitting her with a toy jeep.

  “Oh, all right,” Fay said, “but you’re to watch it. I don’t feel I could cope with the boys at the moment. She’s bad enough, but I don’t want to be separated from her just the same.”

  “You won’t have to cope with them,” Wexford said. “Where does your mother live?”

  “My mother and my dad. He’s not dead. Did you think he was? They live in Myringham.” She gave him an address. “Are you going to ask them to keep the boys a bit longer?”

  “Possibly. If you like. I want to talk to Edward and Robert, Mrs. Devenish. Do you have any objection?”

  She looked surprised at being asked. Then she looked defeated. As if she had been found out? Or was about to be found out? “No, I don’t think so,” she said in a weary voice. “No, I don’t mind. Would it make any difference if I did?”

  He wasn’t going to answer that, not when she had consented. “I will, of course, speak to them in the presence of your mother or your father.”

  As if she hadn’t heard him or didn’t care, she said almost dreamily, “I never told them anything about what was going on till. . . well, last year, I suppose, then I told my mother what Stephen did to me, and do you know what she said? She said, ‘You must have done something to provoke him.’ And my father said, ‘There’s not
much in that. They used to say it was all right to beat your wife with a stick as long as it wasn’t thicker than your thumb.’ And he laughed and said it was a lot of fuss about nothing. That’s why I’ve been. . . well, a bit distant from them lately. The children love them.”

  He nodded. Sometimes there is absolutely nothing to say. Lynn came out from the kitchen and met him in the hall. “She’s made no phone calls, sir, and the phone’s been put onto the answering machine for incoming calls. Not that there’ve been any. I checked.”

  “You’ve done well,” said Wexford, pleasing Lynn more than she would have thought possible.

  He went into the study and sat there, trying to imagine the scene of the morning if what Fay Devenish said was true, if a man had come to the front door at eight o’clock and been admitted by Stephen Devenish, a man who brought a knife with him. In a briefcase? In a carrier bag? Or had he found a knife there, ready to hand? And did Devenish know him? Devenish had been in the study, scene of the recent latest wounding of his wife, and had seen a man he knew come to the front door. Presumably, he had believed he had no reason to fear this man.

  They went into the study where, fifteen minutes before, perhaps only ten minutes before, Devenish had punished his wife for the heinous offence of failing to buy oranges by slashing her across the palm of her hand with a knife. What knife? The same knife? And where was it now? One thing was for sure, it wasn’t the dagger hanging up on the wall. The blade of that was corroded with rust, he saw when he took it down.

  What had happened in this room, the male room that Fay so hated, the leather-padded, sword-hung room, between this man and Devenish? Threats? Demands? Refusals to comply or pay or what? Then out comes the knife and the man gives Devenish three stabs to the chest. Covered with Devenish’s blood - he would be covered with blood - he had left the house, taking the bloody knife with him, and run off down the street, seen by no one.

  Who could believe such a story? Still, Wexford had heard of odder things. He must delay no longer but take himself to the Doddses’ home and talk to Edward and Robert Devenish.

  The call came through to him on the car phone as Donaldson was driving him northward through the villages and along the Sewingbury-to-Myringham road. At first the line was fuzzy and the tone blurred, and he couldn’t make out who was speaking to him. Then suddenly the voice of Trevor Ferry came on clear and almost too loud. “I’ve remembered something. You know you asked if I could think of anyone who might have a grudge against Devenish? Well, there is someone.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, and before I forget, my wife has gone along to Kingsmarkham Police Station to tell them I was definitely at home and still in bed at eight this morning. Providing an alibi is what you call it, right?”

  “That’s what we call it, Mr. Ferry. Wexford said, wondering why these people were quite so quick off the mark and if they had something to hide. “Who is this someone with a grudge?”

  Wexford’s heart dipped a little when Ferry said, “I don’t remember the name,” leapt when he went on, “but I can tell you the story. This guy said Devenish caused his brother-in-law’s death.”

  “I’ll call on you, if I may, early tomorrow morning.”

  “How early?” said Ferry.

  “Don’t worry; you’ll be up. It won’t be before nine-thirty.”

  Trevor Ferry, saying good-bye and ringing off, sounded disappointed that Wexford wasn’t coming at once, rushing to him at top speed, to hear earthshaking revelations. But a hundred sensational tales of Devenish’s misdemeanours or provocations of injured fellow workers and dissatisfied customers couldn’t alter that Fay’s version of events remained incredible. Only corroboration of her story could make it believable, and what corroboration could there be?

  The three-story town house was almost in the center of Myringham. Fay Devenish could hardly have grown up here, it was too recently built. Everything about it looked new, from its fresh white facade, bright paint, and gleaming glass to the young, struggling plants in its window box of a front garden. Even the car on the garage drive was new, an S-registered, two-door saloon in the latest shade of rose-pink.

  There seemed nothing in particular here to interest boys of twelve and ten. Perhaps their grandparents took them out a lot. But not long after Wexford was inside, admitted by Fay Devenish’s father, a skinny, little old man whom she strongly resembled, he found himself revising his opinion. For the whole house seemed a boys’ paradise, and since this could hardly have been spontaneously contrived, merely on the chance of his asking Mrs. Dodds to invite her grandsons to stay, he supposed it must be like this all the time. One room they passed before ascending the stairs contained, indeed was entirely given over to, a train set. Most adults with a passion for trains have their railway hidden away on the top floor, but Mr. Dodds had his downstairs. He had armies on mantelpieces, toy menageries on windowsills, a video library of monsters, horrors, and outer space on the landing, and as far as Wexford could see through open doors, a television set in every room.

  “And a video,” said Mr. Dodds. “Not much point without a video, is there? We’ve not long moved here, used to have a bigger place, but I’ve managed to squeeze all my stuff in. We’ve four bedrooms and the fourth’s entirely for my model aircraft. I used to have dogs and cats too. Can’t be done here, but we’ve fifteen guinea pigs in the back garden and the gerbils live in our bedroom.”

  The two Devenish boys were in the room Mr. Dodds called the lounge, each with a computer - ”I’ve got six,” their grandfather put in - Edward playing patience on his, Robert concentrating on a soccer game in which, from the colors the players wore, France seemed to be competing against Brazil. Mrs. Dodds, dressed in scarlet today with a short skirt, sat placidly by, reading Vogue. Wexford greeted her and said hello to the boys, who took absolutely no notice of him.

  How had Fay reacted to this setup? The dogs and cats, guinea pigs and gerbils, were all right, but how about the toy soldiers and the trains? Perhaps it had been different when she was young and the Dodds family lived else where. Dodds might have turned to these juvenile artifacts only as he entered his second childhood. Whatever it was, Edward and Robert obviously relished it all, and Wexford had some difficulty not only in persuading the boys but in prevailing upon Mr. and Mrs. Dodds to “exit from” or “shut down” the computers or whatever the jargon was. Mrs. Dodds even said it was a shame when they were enjoying themselves so much. Wexford couldn’t help thinking of Fay, who had told him her parents had dismissed her complaints of Devenish’s behaviour as fussing about nothing.

  One thing to be thankful for about this room was that, apart from the computers and the huge television with video recorder, there was no sign of Mr. Dodds’s preoccupations. Neither boy could be distracted by Lego, Godzilla, or a miniature motorway. Both grandparents elected to stay while Wexford talked to the boys and he was thankful for it. Afterward, no one should say that he had acted improperly. The tall, older boy sat in an arm chair beside his grandmother, the younger on a sofa next to his grandfather. There was something uncanny about their resemblance to the dead man. Edward already had the face of a young Lord Byron, handsome, shapely, dark- eyed, with strong, full mouth and firm jawline. And then, as Robert turned to look at his grandfather for reassurance, Wexford caught in the angle of his head and the tilt of his nose a glimpse of Fay, and somehow this tiny flash of likeness, soon probably to fade, was the most saddening of all things. . .

  “I want you to tell me what happened yesterday morning,” he began, “when you first got up and when you left for school to have your lift from Mrs. Daley.” He waited until Edward nodded and Robert followed with a vigorous nodding. “Now, you got up and came downstairs for your breakfast. That would have been about half past seven. What did you have for breakfast?”

  “We always have the same,” Edward said. “Orange juice and cornflakes - well, he has Shreddies - and toast.” He looked from one to the other of them, as if for approval. Am I doing it right? wa
s unspoken but it was there. “My dad has - I mean, he used to have - a cooked breakfast. Eggs and bacon, and maybe a sausage and fried bread, and sometimes mushrooms.” A shadow seemed to pass across Edward. Wexford saw, perhaps for the first time, what is really meant by the phrase his face fell. “Mum hadn’t got any oranges for the juice and Dad got furious, though she’d got frozen. He ate his breakfast and went into the study, he said he was going into the study and he did go in there.” Edward looked at his grandfather and, getting an encouraging smile, went on in a way that elderly child had not perhaps expected, “Dad called Mum into the study and I - I shut the kitchen door, I. . .”

  Wexford said, “Go on, please, Edward. I understand what you’re saying. It’s all right for you to go on.”

  The child was desperate and Wexford felt for him to an extent he had never empathized with his own grandchildren; he had never needed to do so.

  But it was Robert who butted in and saved his brother. He said almost harshly, “He was going to start bashing her around. I mean, Dad was. Beating or kicking her, he’s always doing it.”

  His grandmother gave a little scream. “Robert, you naughty boy, how dare you tell such wicked untruths!”

  Robert shrugged. Suddenly he looked decades older than his age, a little old man like his grandfather. “I’m glad he’s dead,” he said flatly.

  More shrieks followed this statement. Mr. Dodds shook his head sorrowfully. “They’ve got powerful imaginations at that age,” he said.

  Wexford intervened. “Perhaps we’ll let Edward continue now. Just one thing, Edward. Did your father take a knife with him from the block in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t think so. No, he didn’t.”

  “While your mother and father were together in the study did you hear either of them cry out?”