Murder Being Once Done

by Ruth Rendell

  But now it would be worse. Howard wouldn't really be able to pretend any longer and his continuing silence would prove what Wexford guessed already, that he thought his uncle an

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  old has-been, maybe just fit to catch a country shop-lifter or root out a band of thugs with a cock-fighting hide-out on the South Downs.

  He must have fallen asleep and slept for a long time. When he awoke the paper had gone and Dora was sitting opposite him with his dinner on a tray, cold chicken, and more of those bloody biscuits and junket and two white pills.

  'Where's Howard?'

  'He's only just got in, darling. When he's finished his dinner he'll come in here and have his coffee with you.'

  And talk about the weather?

  It was, in fact, the weather on which he began.

  Most unfortunate we're having this cold spell just now, Reg.' He never called his uncle uncle and it might have caused raised eyebrows if he had, for Howard Fortune, at thirty-six, looked forty-five. People were inclined to deplore the age gap between him and his wife, not guessing it was only six years. He was exceptionally tall, extravagantly thin and his lean bony face was wrinkled, but when he smiled it became charming and almost good-looking. You could see they were uncle and nephew. The Wexford face was there, the same bone construction, though in the case of the younger man the bones were almost fleshless and in the older obscured under pouches and heavy jowls. Howard smiled now as he poured Wexford's coffee and placed it beside him.

  'I see you've got Utopia there.'

  It was not quite the remark expected of a man who has spent his day in the preliminary enquiries into murder. But Howard, in any case, didn't look the part. His silver-gray suit and lemon Beale and Inman shirt were certainly the garments he had put on that morning but they appeared as if fresh from the hands of a valet. His thin smooth fingers, handling the leather binding of More's classic, looked as if they had never handled anything harsher than old books. Having placed a cushion behind his uncle's head, he began to discourse on Utopia, on the 1551 Ralph Robinson translation, on More's

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  friendship with Erasmus, occasionally pausing to insert such deferential courtesies as, 'which, of course, you already know, Reg'. He talked of other ideal societies in literature, of Andreae's Christianopolis, of Campanella's City of the Sun and of Butler's Erewhon. He talked pleasantly and with erudition and sometimes he broke off to allow a comment from Wex- ford, but Wexford said nothing.

  He was boiling with anger. The man was not merely a snob, he was monstrously cruel, a sadist. To sit there lecturing like a professor on idealist philosophy when his heart must be full of its opposite, when he knew his uncle had brought in not only Utopia but that Dystopia on which the newspaper had enlarged. And this was the same little boy whom he, Wexford, had taught to take fingerprints!

  The telephone rang and, out in the hall, Denise answered it, but Wexford could see Howard was alert for the call. He watched his nephew's face sharpen and when Denise came in to tell her husband it was for him, he saw a silent signal pass between them, a miniscule shake of the head on Howard's part indicating that.the call and all it implied must be kept secret from their guest. Of course, it was one of Howard's subordinates phoning to tell him of a new development. In spite of his mortification, Wexford was hungry to know what that development could be. He listened to the murmur of Howard's voice from the hall, but he couldn't distinguish the words. It was all he could do not to open the door, and then, when Howard returned, ask him baldly. But he knew what the answer would be.

  'You don't want to bother your head with all that.'

  He didn't wait for Howard to come back. He took Utopia and made for the stairs, calling a curt good night to Denise and nodding to his nephew as he passed him. Bed was the best place for an old fogey like him. He got between the sheets and put on his glasses. Then he opened the book. His eyes felt gravelly but surely it wasn't his eye playing him a trick like that . . .? He stared and slammed the book shut.

  It was in Latin.

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  He dreamed a lot that night. He dreamed that Howard had relented and personally driven him to Kenbourne Vale Cemetery to view with him the Montfort vault, and when he awoke it seemed impossible to him that he could go home without ever having actually seen it. The murder would, for a short space, be a topic of conversation even in Kingsmarkham. How was he going to explain to Mike that he had been e~c- cluded from all concern in it? That he had stayed with the man in charge of the case and yet learned no more than the average newspaper reader? By lying? By saying he wasn't interested? His temperament revolted from that. By telling the truth, then, that Howard had refused to confide in him.

  At ten he came downstairs to the usual pantomime. Shred. deaf wheat and orange juice and Denise waiting at the bottom of the stairs today. Otherwise it was the same as all the other mornings.

  Without his having told her, Dora had discovered Utopia was in Latin and the two of them were already planning to get him an English translation. Denise's sister-in-law worked in a bookshop and would get him a paperback; to make assurance doubly sure, she would herself go into the library and order the Ralph Robinson.

  'You needn't go to all that trouble for me,' said Wexford.

  'Where are you going for your walk this morning Uncle Reg?'

  'Victoria,' he said, not adding that he was going to enquire about trains and listening in silence while they gasped about walking that distance.

  Of course, he wouldn't walk. There was probably a bus. The eleven, he thought, there were always dozens of elevens except when you wanted one. Today the eleven and the twentytwo seemed to be on strike, while buses going to Kenbourne Vale charged in packs across the King's Road and up Gunter Grove.

  He had a terrible urge just- to see that cemetery. Howard's men would have finished with it by now, and anyone could go into cemeteries if he wanted to. Then, when he got home,

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  he could at least describe the vault to Mike and say it was unfortunate he had to leave just at that point. Victoria station could wait. Why not phone, anyway?

  The next bus said Kenbourne Lane station on its front. Wexford didn't like to ask for the cemetery in case the smiling West Indian conductor took him for another ghoulish sightseer he was unsure of himself in London, a little of his decisive identity lost so he said, 'All the way, please,' and settled back into his seat to pretend he was complying with that piece of hackneyed advice to tourists that the best way to see London is from the top of a bus.

  Its route was up to Holland Park Avenue and then along Ladbroke Grove. Once the bus had turned into Elgin Crescent, Wexford lost his bearings. He wondered how he would know they had left North Kensington, or Notting Hill or wherever it was and entered Kenbourne Vale. The neighbourhood already fitted Crocker's description of miles of mouldering terraces, but thirty years had passed and there were tower blocks and council estates as well.

  Then he saw a sign: London Borough Of Kenbowne. Copeland Hill. AD the plaques with street names on them, Copeland Terrace, Heidelberg Road, Bournemouth Grove, bore the postal direction West Fifteen.

  Must be nearly there. His humiliation was giving way to excitement. The bus had lumbered round a kind of circus and entered Kenbourne Lane, a wide treeless thoroughfare, inclining upwards, a street of Asiatic food shops, squat Edwardian pubs, pawnbrokers' and small tobacconists'. He was wondering how he would find the cemetery when, as the bus came over the crown of the hill, there rose to the left of him an enormous pillared portico of yellow sandstone. Wrought- iron gates, as huge as the gates to some oriental walled city, stood open, dwarfing the workman who was touching up the black paint on their posts.

  Wexford rang the bell and got off when the bus pulled in to a request stop. In this exposed place the sharp wind caught him and he turned up the collar of his coat. The heavy leaden

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  sky looked full of snow. There were no sightseers about, no police cars, and neither the workman nor
some sort o. attendant Mr Tripper, perhaps? who stood at the entrance to a lodge, said a word to him as he passed under the archway.

  As soon as he was inside the cemetery, he remembered what Crocker had said about it being huge and bizarre. This was not an exaggeration, but the doctor had omitted to say that it was also, perhaps because of its size and because of staff shortages, hideously neglected. Wexford stood still and took in the sprawling wild panorama.

  Immediately in front of him was one of those buildings all large cemeteries boast and whose use is in doubt. It was neither a chapel nor a crematorium, but it possibly housed offices for the staff and lavatories for the mourners. The style was that of St Peter's in Rome. Not, of course, so large, but large enough. Unluckily for the inhabitants of Kenbourne Vale, its architect had been no Bernini: the dome was too small, the pillars too thick and the whole edifice executed in the same yellow sandstone as the portico.

  Of this material also were the two colonnades which branched out of the right-hand side of the St Peteris building like encircling arms and met some hundred yards distant at an arch which supported a winged victory. Between them and the outer walls, above which could be seen St Biddulph's HospitaL were deep strips of wilderness, a jungle of shrubs and trees, showing here and there protruding from the mass the weather- torn peaks of tombs.

  In the space between the colonnades some attempt had been made to tidy the place. The shaggy grass was chopped off, the bushes pruned, to reveal grime-encrusted monuments, angels with swords, gun-carriages, broken columns, weeping Niobes, Egyptian obelisks and, immediately beside St Peter's, two tombs the size of small houses. Training his eyes, Wexford saw that one was that of the Princess Adelberta of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, and the other of His Serene Higbuess the Grand Duke Waldemar of Retz.

  The place was ridiculous, a grandiose necropolis, devour

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  sing land which might better have served Kenbourne Vale's homeless. It was also profoundly sinister. It was awe-inspiring. Never before, not in any mortuary or house of murder, had Wexford so tellingly felt the oppressive chill of death. The winged victory held back her plunging horses against a sky that was almost black, and under the arches of the colonnades lay wells- of gloom. He felt that not for anything would he have walked between those arches and the pillars which fronted them to read the bronze plaques on their damp yellow walls. Not for renewed health and youth would he have spent a night in that place.

  He had mounted the steps to view the cemetery and he had viewed it. Enough was enough. Luckily, the Montfort vault must lie between the wall and the colonnade. He guessed that because only there grew the flexes, and he was foolishly relieved to know that he would not have to explore the inner area whale the most monstrous and folly-like tombs stood and where the winged victory dominated everything like some sinister fallen angel.

  But as soon as he had descended the steps and taken a path which led to the right-hand side of the cemetery he found that the depths were no less unpleasant than the heights. True, the winged victory and the colonnades were made invisible by the trees, but these in themselves, crowded together, untended and almost all of evergreen varieties, held their own kind of menace. They made the path very dark. Their trunks were hidden to shoulder height by ivy and thick brambly shrubs, and among these shrubs began to appear first the outlines of gravestones and then, as the path ran parallel with the outer wall, the shapes of larger and larger tombs.

  Wexford tried to chuckle at some of the pompous inscriptions but his laughter stuck in his throat. The absurd was overpowered by the sinister, by the figures in bronze and sculped stone which, made furtive and hideous by encroaching moss and decades of fallen grime, lurked among the trailing tendrils and even, as the wind rustled between leathery leaves and broken masonary, seemed to move. Overhead, he could see

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  only a narrow corridor of sky and that stormy, black and Turneresque. He walked on, looking straight ahead of him down the defile.

  Just when he was beginning to feel that he had had about as much of this as flesh and blood could stand, he came upon the Montfort vault. It was the size of a small cottage and much nastier in reality than in the photograph. The cameraman had not been able to capture the mouldy smell that breathed out of the half-open door or render the peculiarly unpleasant effect of sour green moss creeping across the warrior's face and the paws of the dead lions.

  Nor had the inscription appeared in the paper, It was unlike any other Wexford had seen in the cemetery, bearing no information about the dead who lay in the vault. The copper plate had turned bright green with verdigris, but the lettering, of some untarnishable metal gold leaf? stood out clear and stark.

  'He who asks questions is a fool.

  He who answers them is a greater fool.

  What is truth? What man decides it shall be.

  What is beauty? Beauty is in the eye of man.

  What are right and wrong? Today one thing, another tomorrow.

  Death only is real.

  The last of the Montforts bids you read and pass on

  Without comment.'

  This epitaph if epitaph it could be called so interested Wexford that he took a scrap of paper and a pencil from his pocket and copied it down. Then he pushed open the door, expecting a creak, but there was no sound at all. Perhaps Mr Tripper had oiled the hinges. A creak would somehow have been reassuring. He realised suddenly that some of the awe and the disquiet he felt was due to the profound silence. Since entering the cemetery he had heard nothing but the crepitation of dead leaves beneath his feet and the rustle of the wind.

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  Inside the vault it was not quite dark. Utter darkness would have been less unpleasant. A little grayish light fell on to the flight of steps from a narrow vitrine in the rear wall. He went down the steps and found himself in a chamber about twelve feet square. The dead Montforts lay not in the coffins mentioned by Mr Tripper but in stone sarcophagi which rested on shelves. In the centre of the chamber was a marble basin absurdly ILke a birdbath and containing a dribble of water. He couldn't imagine what purpose it served. He approached the sarcophagi and saw that there were two rows of them with a narrow space between. It must have been there in that trough, on the damp stone floor, that Loveday Morgan's body had been found.

  He shivered a little. The vault smelt of decay. Not surely of the dead Montforts, passed long ago to dust, but of rotted grave flowers and stagnant water and unventilated age. A nasty place. She had been twenty, he thought, and he hoped she had died quickly and not in here. What are right and wrong? Today one thing, another tomorrow. Death only is real.

  He turned back towards the steps and, as he did so, he heard a sound above him, a footfall on the overgrown gravel path. Some attendant, no doubt. He set his foot on the bottom stair, looking up at the rectangle of dingy light between door and frame. And then, as he was about to speak and declare his presence, there appeared in the aperture, gaunt and severe, the face of his nephew.

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  You conceive in your mind either none at all or else a very false image and similitude of this thing.

  EVERYONE is familiar with the sensation of wanting the earth to swallow him when he is caught in embarrassing circumstances. And what more appropriate plot of earth than this, thought Wexford, aghast. These acres, choked with the dead, might surely receive one more. There was, however, nothing for it but to mount the stairs and face the music.

  Howard, peering down into semi-darkness, had not at first recognised the intruder. When he did, when Wexford, awk. wardly brushing cobwebs from his coat, emerged on to the path, his face registered simple blank astonishment.

  'Good God. Reg.' he said.

  He looked his uncle up and down, then stared into the vault, as if he thought himself the victim of some monstrous delusion. Either this was not Wexford, but some Kenbournite dis- guised to resemble him, or else this was not Kenbourne Vale cemetery. It took him a few moments to recover and then he said:

  'I thou
ght you wanted a holiday from all this sort of thing.'

  It was stupid to stand there like a schoolboy. In general, embarrassment was foreign to Wexford and he brimmed over with self-confidence. Now he told himself that he was catching criminals when this man was chewing on a teething ring and he said rather coldly, 'Did you? I can't imagine why.' Never

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  apologise, never explain. Won't let me keep you from your work. I've a bus to catch.'

  Howard's eyes narrowed. 'No,' he said, 'you're not going like that.' He always spoke quietly, in measured tones. 'I won't have that. If you wanted to see the vault, why didn't you say last night? I'd have brought you with me this morning. If you wanted the inside stuff on the case, you only had to ask.'

  Absurd as it was, undignified, to stand arguing in the bitter cold among toppled gravestones, Wexford couldn't leave it like that. All his resentment had boiled to the surface.

  'Ask?' he shouted. 'Ask you when you've made a point of excluding me from everything to do with your work? When you and Denise have conspired to keep quiet about it like a couple of parents turning off the television in front of the child when the sexy play starts? I know when I'm not wanted. Ask!'

  Howard's face had fallen glumly at the beginning of this speech, but now a faint smile twitched his lips. He felt in the pocket of his coat while Wexford leaned against the vault, his arms folded defiantly.

  'Here, read that. It came two days before you did.' Reassured by the evidence he had produced, Howard spoke firmly now. 'Read it, Rem'

  Suspiciously Wexford took the letter. Without his glasses he could only just read it, but he could make out enough. The signature, 'Leonard Crocker', leered blackly at him. '. . . I am confident I can rely on your good sense . . . Your uncle, a close friend of mine and my patient . . . Nothing he wants more than to get completely away from everything connected with police work . . . Better not let him come into any con- tact with . . .'