by Ruth Rendell
The whole family - for Jane Andrews fitted in like a family member - were in the big living room where the French windows were thrown open. The children ran in and out of the garden, bringing grass clippings from the lawn on their shoes and onto the white carpet. There was no one to stop them and no need to stop them now. But when she had shown him in, Jane Andrews suggested to Sanchia that she might like Jane to push her on her new swing, and the child took Jane’s hand and pulled her out side, leaving him alone with Fay.
Fay said in a cold, practical voice, “Am I allowed to cremate him?”
“Of course. The undertakers you use will see to the formalities. I think it’s only that you have to have two doctors sign the certificate instead of one.”
He couldn’t read her expression. There’s no art, he thought, to find the mind’s construction in the face. Burn him, destroy him, scatter the ashes, be rid of him forever - was that what she was thinking? Or, more likely, I loved him once, he seemed different once, if only he could have been the way I believed him to be when we were young . . .
“How do the boys seem?” he asked her.
“They’re fine.”
“I’d like to talk to them again, especially to Edward, about the man who called here at eight last Tuesday morning.”
Fay nodded, apparently neither shocked nor gratified. “I’m going to sell this house. I shall put it on the market when all this” - she used an extraordinary phrase in the circumstances - ”has blown over.”
He could find nothing to say.
“He left everything he could to the children, you know. The house is in my name, I don’t know why he did that, some tax dodge, I expect. He always said I wasn’t fit to manage money. Shall I call Edward in now?”
“I think he’s coming of his own accord, Mrs. Devenish.” A little color came into her face. It was almost a blush.
“Please don’t think I’m correcting you, you don’t have to remember it now, but I’m going to call myself by my maiden name. I’ll be Ms. Dodds in future.”
Edward came in from the garden. Wexford could have sworn he had grown in the past few days. He was entering puberty and looked like a teenager.
“Sit down, will you, Edward?”
The boy glanced at his mother and at a nod from her sat down in the least comfortable chair nearby, sat upright, and looked straight at Wexford.
“The man you admitted to this house on the morning your father died, you described him as ‘just a man.’ Can you be more specific?” Seeing that the boy was unsure of what he meant, he amended that. “Can you try to describe him to me? Close your eyes and try to get a picture.”
Edward closed his eyes but opened them again almost immediately. Again he looked at his mother, said, “He was just an ordinary man. About Dad’s age, I told you that.” He screwed up his face as if in an effort to remember. “I think he had jeans on and maybe a jacket. Oh, and he was carrying a case.”
“What kind of a case? A briefcase?”
“A big briefcase.”
“Now, the doorbell rang while you and Robert were out in the hallway, heading for the front door. The door to your father’s study is on the right. Was that door closed?”
“I think so. It might have been just - well, pulled to.”
“I see. Now you answered the door and saw the man with the briefcase there. What did he say? And what did you say?”
“I don’t think I said anything. He said, ‘I’d like to see Mr. Devenish.’”
“Deep voice, high voice, what kind of voice?”
“Quite deep. Just an ordinary man’s voice.”
Fay Devenish had attempted to seem uninterested in all this, had turned her eyes toward the garden where Jane Andrews, Robert, and Sanchia were slowly strolling toward the house, but now she turned to Edward and watched him inscrutably.
As if on cue, he said, and said with the snobbery of which only the privately educated child of wealthy parents is capable, “He had the local accent. Like yours, only more so.”
Wexford allowed himself to react to this not at all. Inwardly, he smiled. Impossible even to feel angry with this poor child. “Was he fat? Thin? Dark? Fair?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”
“You’d have noticed if he’d been a big fat man, wouldn’t you?”
“He wasn’t like that. He was just normal size.”
“Now, did your father come out of the study or did you open the door and show the man in?”
“I opened it. I just said to him ‘in there,’ then Robert and I went. We closed the front door after us like we always do. We had to go to Mrs. Daley’s and we’d have been in trouble if we’d been late.”
“Did you close the study door after the man?”
Suddenly Edward looked bored, as if he had lost interest. “I don’t remember. Can I go now?”
“Yes. But I want to talk to your brother.”
This was a hopeless task. Robert was as childish as Edward was - if not altogether pleasantly - mature.
“He looked like Batman.”
“Can you remember what he said, Robert?”
“He said, ‘Trick or treat,’ and I said, “Where’s Godzilla?’ and he turned into a bear, black fur grew all on him, and he roared and showed all his big teeth. I said, ‘You’re not Godzilla, you’re the Beast.’”
Robert collapsed in helpless laughter. To Wexford’s astonishment he rolled on the floor, laughing and shrieking. Jane Andrews came in, prodded Robert with her toe, said in a teacher’s tone, “Get up. Come on, don’t be crazy.”
It was effective, but only up to a point, for the boy’s laughter was succeeded by a storm of tears. Fay put her arms around him and he sobbed against her shoulder. Her eyes met Wexford’s above Robert’s head, but Wexford could see only blankness in them and dismal resignation.
Jane was in jeans and sweatshirt, but today her face was made up and she wore earrings, a long silver chain neck lace, and a big watch with a black-and-silver face. She looked pleased with herself, glad to be busy and useful, the heroine’s friend, her mainstay and support. “I’ll be staying here for as long as Fay wants me,” she said, “as long as I’m needed,” and she bent down to pick up Sanchia.
But the little girl, seeing her brother in their mother’s arms, was immediately jealous, pushed Jane away, and climbed up beside Robert. The almost adolescent Edward, not hesitating for long but unable to find a corner in Fay’s chair for himself, stood behind it and leaned his cheek against her hair.
Wexford and Jane Andrews looked at each other and Jane smiled. “Love-bombing, as the psychologists put it,” she said.
Chapter 24
A needle in a haystack is not too different a concept from a knife in a hundred acres of woodland, interspersed with gardens, with shrubberies and hedgerows, and a drainage system branching underneath it. The drains had been investigated for that knife, and an unpleasant task been assigned to PC Peach and WPC Brodrick: that of sifting through the rubbish collected that Tuesday morning from Ploughman’s Lane by Kingsmarkham’s contracted refuse collectors, Agate PLC.
From only one household had a knife been put into the wheelie-bin. But it was just a knife, quite the wrong sort, short and serrated. All the knives taken from Woodland Lodge were returned to Fay Devenish, though before they went back, Wexford looked at them closely, probably for the twentieth time, at their long smooth or serrated blades and their horn handles, dark brown horn or, in two cases, a lighter bleached shade. He looked especially at the two, one with a dark handle, the other with a light, whose blades matched Stephen Devenish’s wounds.
“He must have brought the knife with him in that briefcase,” Burden said. “Brought it with him and took it away. Young Edward says it was a big briefcase, How big, d’you reckon? Big enough to carry something to cover that jacket and those jeans? Say a raincoat?”
“Don’t talk to me about raincoats,” said Wexford. “Dora’s taking me to London on Saturday to buy a new one. Another Burberry,
she says. God knows what they cost now.” He sighed. “What you’re saying, I presume, is that this guy brought a raincoat with him to cover up the bloodstains on his clothes. Maybe it was mine. It was at Muriel Campden it went missing.”
“Be serious, will you? He would have had to conceal his clothes.”
“Doesn’t seem to matter whether he did or not,” Wexford grumbled. “No one saw him.”
“No, but he couldn’t know that, could he?”
Wexford didn’t answer. “No one saw Carl Meeks either. Of course the trouble with checking up on some one who performs some regular task at the same time every day, like dog walking or even just going to work, is that people who see you can’t remember when they saw you. Everyone says they often do see Meeks and the enormous Buster, but not always, and they can’t remember which days they did see him. Darren Meeks was out delivering his papers, so he doesn’t know. Scott was in bed. The primary schools didn’t break up for the summer till that afternoon, but young Scott’s not a candidate for a perfect-attendance prize, always supposing they have them anymore. Linda Meeks says he always takes the dog out without fail, no exceptions.”
“Reg,” said Burden, “do you honestly believe Carl Meeks killed Devenish? It’s more than two years since Devenish threw him down those stairs - or whatever he actually did to him. If he was going to get revenge on Devenish, why did he wait so long?”
“And if he did wait so long, what triggered off his doing it last Tuesday? I suppose it’s possible Meeks encountered Devenish somewhere, even went to one of Seaward’s offices, had another go, and was again man handled.”
“No, it isn’t,” Burden said triumphantly. “I’ve had it checked out. No one among the staff at the Kingsmarkham, Brighton, and Gatwick offices of Seaward has had sight or sound of Meeks since the stairs-throwing incident. It’s just possible Devenish met him in the street and insulted him or some such thing . . .”
“But we’ve no reason to think he did.”
“Now I’ll tell you something,” said Burden. “I wonder if you noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“Gillian Ferry.”
“What about her?”
“Mrs. Ferry is a teacher at the school Edward and Robert Devenish go to. She teaches English at the Francis Roscommon School in Sewingbury?
Wexford thought about it. “So she does. Is it significant?”
“I don’t know. But it makes, so to speak, a double connection between the Ferrys and the Devenishes. Don’t you think it’s a bit odd?”
It was a little after ten o’clock when Sylvia put down the phone. She had been talking for twenty minutes to the woman who called but refused to give her name. Thank God no one else had phoned in the meantime. She got up, went to the window, and looked down into the gardens. The bright windows of houses in Kingsbrook Avenue punctured the darkness. Lawns looked like strips of gray velvet and cypress trees like hooded figures. Sylvia thought there was nothing like hours of solitude working on the helpline for sharpening the imagination. She would so much have liked to tell someone what the anonymous woman had said. Griselda could be told, of course, or Lucy. Sylvia wasn’t a priest and it wasn’t the confessional - but Griselda was on holiday and overworked Lucy was probably asleep.
It was her father Sylvia really wanted to tell, but she would only do that with Griselda’s or Lucy’s permission. Standing there, looking at the backs of houses where the lights were beginning, to go out, she thought about her father, and how attentively he would listen and bow wisely he would respond. If she didn’t feel much better about her husband, Sylvia thought, she did about her father. Another good thing The Hide had done for her.
Reflected in the black glass, the door behind her opened and Tracy Miller came in, wearing a pink tracksuit and with her long hair pinned to the top of her head.
Sylvia turned around and smiled, glad of some company. Tracy often came in for half an hour on her way to bed. Her children would have her up at six in the morning. “I’ve had such a frightening phone call, Trace.”
“One of them bastards wanting to chop your tits off?”
Sylvia laughed. She actually laughed, which only proved how hardened you could get or how the passage of time softened the worst horrors. “Not a man. A woman. I want to tell you but I can’t. You know the rules. It’s absolutely in confidence.”
“I know. It’s only on account of they know that, they trust you, that the poor cows give you a phone at all.”
“Did you call a helpline before you came here?”
“Me? I phoned all of ten times before I screwed up my courage and made the break. By that time he’d nailed up the doors on the cupboard so I couldn’t get at my clothes and cut up my shoes. I went barefoot for a week. Well, you know what he’s like. He scared you when he got over the wall, didn’t he?”
Sylvia nodded. “She asked my advice and I gave it. For what it’s worth. I’m not a lawyer. I just remembered some thing I’d read and I said to be careful. If you’ve got to lie, lie. Was that wrong, Trace?”
“Don’t ask me, love. What do I know? You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, that’s what I say.”
The crematorium chapel was no more than five years old, its walls paneled in fine hardwoods, its windows owing a good deal to Chagall’s designs for stained glass. The curtains, of dark green linen, had been embroidered by a local craftswoman with heavenly bodies, galaxies, and long-tailed comets, and the pulpit was a cylinder of polished steel with star-shaped cutouts through which light faintly gleamed. But for all that, it was a dismal place, cold, stark, and designed to hold more mourners than were likely ever to occupy its inlaid maple pews. Often the number was limited to ten, as was the case today, when his family and a few acquaintances came to cremate Stephen Devenish.
A representative from Seaward Air, Wexford thought the man in a raincoat very like his own lost Burberry must be. The representative sat, looking uncomfortable, with pale gray felt hat on his lap. Devenish’s PA Wexford recognized, a smartly dressed young woman in a black suit and very high-heeled, black patent shoes, sitting two rows behind him. It was extraordinary how ostentatiously the English avoided sitting next to anyone they didn’t know. Four seats from her was Trevor Ferry.
Anyone may go to a funeral, it isn’t obligatory to be asked. But still Wexford was surprised to see him there. Had he come to rejoice and gloat or simply quietly to celebrate? Ferry didn’t look in his direction but sat staring at the abstract up on the wall that might have represented an angel or a tree of life, it was impossible to tell.
Fay came in with her father and mother, Jane Andrews walking behind with Edward. That was the extent of the congregation. Devenish had had no parents living, but though he had a sister, she had stayed away. There were no flowers, and if any request had been made by Fay that, instead of flowers, donations should be made to a charity; no mention was made of such a suggestion. At one point the Seaward representative got up and seemed to be about to deliver some kind of eulogy of the dead man, but Fay touched his arm, whispered something to him, and he sat down again.
No hymns were sung. Handel’s Water Music was quietly piped, some words from the Alternative Service Book were muttered, and the coffin was slowly drawn away to disappear behind the beige velvet curtains and to send Devenish’s body to the fire. Without waiting for any valediction, any closing of the ceremony, Fay got up and walked out, the small congregation gradually following her. The officiating cleric looked embarrassed. The music stopped.
Outside, the Seaward man got into the black Mercedes that was waiting for him and was driven away. Wexford found himself walking down the long gravel drive in the company of Trevor Ferry.
“That was a funny old carry-on,” Ferry said conversationally. “Talk about a good-riddance gathering.”
“Is that what you’d call it?” Wexford said, amused.
“Well, wouldn’t you? I suppose you want to know what took me there.”
“If you want to tell me.”
>
“I don’t mind, I’m not proud. The fact is, I’m a poor man - well, you know that. I’m unemployed and likely to remain so, I’m bored. I can’t afford cinemas and I certainly can’t afford to join clubs. I’ve got square eyes - that’s what they used to call it when I was a kid - from watching TV. So I like to get out sometimes to whatever I can that’s free.”
“Like funerals?”
“Why not? You can’t get in to weddings. Not if they’re any good. Besides, believe it or not after what’s happened, I felt sorry for the poor devil. He wasn’t so bad. It’s an outing, isn’t it? Sometimes I go down to the station and watch the Intercities go through.”
Wexford said nothing. It was raining again, a drop fell on his nose, and he could see the coin-size spots on the paving.
“Anyway I got to talk to you. It all makes a change. For instance, another thing I do, I’ve joined the Kingsmarkham Neighbourhood Clean Streets Campaign.”
They had almost reached the car park, where Donaldson awaited Wexford. He turned back and cast a look at the sugar-loaf-shaped crematorium, with its steel doors and glass cross on the top. “The what?”
“Haven’t you heard of it? Groups of us are organized to go to specific areas picking up litter. Oh, you don’t get paid, it’s on a voluntary basis. But you get people to talk to, I’ve met some very decent people, and they give you midmorning coffee and biscuits. Tuesday’s my day. The only drawback is you have to start so damned early, before eight a.m. on the green outside the Town Hall.”
