by Ruth Rendell
'Well, sir, I think his mother must have been one of the romantic kind, fond of fancy names. She called him Barnabas, but the wife and I, we like something plainer, so we've settled for James after my old dad. As soon as we've got that adoption order out of the way we'll have a proper christening.'
'Only four days to go, isn't it?'
- Clements nodded. His cheerfulness had suddenly evaporated at the reminder of the short time the agonizingly short, agonisingly long time which separated probationary fatherhood from the real thing. Or denied him fatherhood altogether? Looking at the man's red weathered face which, for all his vaunted worldly wisdom, remained immature and schoolboyish, Wexford thought of the coming Friday with a small shiver of dread. Suppose this young woman, this romantic girl who had named her child fancifully, changed her mind again and came into the court to claim him? What would life be like then for Clements and his good patient wife, alone and desolate on top of their tower? It was fine and just, this law which gave prime consideration to the natural mother and her child, but it was a cruel law for the sterile who waited and longed and prayed.
'You've shown such an interest in our boy, sir,' Clements
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said, smiling again, 'that the wife and I were wondering if you'd come along one day and have a bite of lunch with us and welt see young James. Say tomorrow or Wednesday? We'd take it as an honour.'
Wexford was touched. 'Tomorrow will be fine,' he said, reflecting that it would be a way of passing the time. On an impulse, he patted the sergeant's shoulder.
Denise and Dora had just finished their lunch. Neither expressed surprise at seeing him or shock that he was still alive. There was a look in his wife's eyes that he had not seen there for many years.
'What have you been up to,.Uncle Reg?' asked Denise, for the first time in their acquaintance eyeing him as a man rather than as an ancient invalid.
'Me?' said Wexford ungrammatically. 'What d'you mean?' It was odd, he thought, how guilty the innocent can be made to feel. Certainly the telegram: Fly at once, all is discovered, would send half the population packing their bags and making for the nearest airport. 'What d'you mean, "up to"?'
'Well, a woman's been phoning for you, a4Melanie something. I didn't catch the last name. She said, could you go round and see her and in the daytime, please, when her husband is out. You're to phone her back and she says you know the number.'
Wexford was puzzled, but he burst out laughing just the same.
'Who is she, Reg?' said Dora, not quite believing she was deceived, but not entirely happy either.
'Melanie?' he said airily. 'Oh, Melanie Just a woman I'm having a red-hot affair with. You know all those times you thought I was over at Kenbourne with Howard? Well, actually I was with her. There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle, my dear.' He stopped, caught his wife's eye. It was admonitory, yet faintly distressed. 'Dora!' he said. 'Look at me. Look at me. What woman in her right mind would want me?'
'I would.'
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'Oh, yau.' He was oddly moved. He kissed her lightly. 'That's the blindness of love,' he said. 'Excuse me. I'll just give my mistress a tinkle.'
Dearborn was in the phone book, Stephen T., with some letters after it that Wexford thought indicated architectural qualifications. He dialled and Melanie Dearborn answered on the second ring. Did she always? Had she been sitting by the phone to jump out of her skin when it rang?
'I'm very sorry to trouble you Mr Wexford. I I . . . Would it be a great imposition to ask you if you could come over here and see me?'
'Now, Mrs Dearborn?'
'Well, yes, please. Now.'
'Can you give me some idea what it's about?'
'May I leave that until I see you?'
Much intrigued, Wexford said, 'Give me ten minutes,' and rang off. He explained to Denise and Dora, or rather gave them what explanation he could, for he had no more idea than they as to why Melanie Dearborn wanted to see him in her husband's absence. Could it be that she was genuinely worried about Dearborn's obsession with the transformation of Kenbourne Vale because his passion led him to neglect her or his business? Or was it anxiety over some aspect of Alex- andra's welfare that distressed her? Neither of these answers seemed probable.
'The library have got your book in, Uncle Reg.' said Denise. 'You can call in for it on your way back.'
As he picked up the blue card and left the house, he came to the conclusion that Mrs Dearborn had sent for him because he was a policeman.
The cab came to a halt at a double white line, and on the major road a red Mini passed them, coming from the direction of Laysbrook Square. Wexford caught only a quick glimpse of its driver, a young woman in a dark coat. Her gloved hands rang a bell in his mind but summoned nothing from its recesses, and he forgot the gloved girl when the taxi
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brought him under the mews arch and he saw Melanie Dearborn waiting for him on the steps of Laysbrook House.
Wexford achieved a calm and, he hoped, reassuring smile for her, but she did not smile back. She clasped his hand in both hers and began to let forth a stream of apologies for dis- turbing someone who was only a slight acquaintance.
His guess had been right. 'It's because you're a policeman,' she said when they were inside. 'Or rather, because you're a detective, but not exactly working at the moment, if you know what I mean.'
Wexford didn't.
'You can tell me what I ought to do,' she said, dropping into a chair and immediately applying both hands to the piping cords.
'I'm not so sure of that,' he demurred. She was such a nice woman and so obviously distressed that he allowed himself advice that should only have come from an intimate friend. 'Try to relax,' he said. 'Your hands . . . Let me give you a cigarette.'
She nodded, pulling her hands away from the chair arms and clutching one in the other. 'You're a soothing sort of person, aren't you?' she said as he lit her cigarette. 'I feel a bit better.'
'That's good. What's it all about?'
'My daughter,' said Melanie Dearborn. 'She's missing. I don't know where she is. Ought I to report her as a missing person?'
Wexford stared. 'The baby? You mean someone has taken the baby?'
'Oh, no, no, of course not! Alexandra is upstairs. I mean my elder daughter, Louise. She's twenty-one.' It was pathetic the way she waited shyly for the gallant thing to be said. Wexford couldn't say it. Today Mrs Dearborn looked amply old enough to be the mother of a grown-up daughter. But Dearborn was he the father? He could have sworn this pair hadn't been married more than three or four years. 'She's not Stephen's,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'I was married before. I
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was only nineteen when Louise was born and my first husband died when she was ten.'
'What makes you think she's missing? Does she usually live here?'
'No. She never has. She and Stephen don't get on, but I don't really know why not. They used to and it was actually through Isa she calls herself that that I first met Stephen. I suppose she resented my marrying again.'
An old story. The mother and daughter close, the interloping lover who leaves the daughter out in the cold.
'We got married three years ago,' she said. 'Isa was still at school, waiting to do her A Levels. She already had a provisional place at Cambridge, but when she heard we were going to get married she threw all that up and went off to share a flat with another girl.' Mrs Dearborn's fingers had returned to the compulsive fraying of the cords while her cigarette burnt itself out on the rim of the ashtray. 'She has an allowance under her father's will, a thousand a year. I don't know if she ever worked.'
'You never hear from her?'
'Oh, yes, we made up our quarrel in a sort of way. We were never like we used to be. She was always reserved and she became terribly secretive. I suppose that was my fault. I don't want to go in for a display of self-pity, Mr Wexford, but I had rather a lot to bear in my first marriage and then widowhood wasn't easy. I rather taught Isa to keep well, a stiff u
pper lip, and not show her feelings.'
Wexford nodded. 'But she kept in touch with you by phone or by letter?'
'She'd phone me from time to time but she would never come here and she refused to tell me where she was living after she had left the flat she shared with the other girl. She phoned from call boxes. It made me very unhappy and Stephen saw it and then then he got some private detective to find out where she was. Oh, it was so terrible! Isa swore she'd never speak to me again. She said I'd ruined her life. After that I tried not to let Stephen know I was worried about 93
her and that's why I asked you to come here while while he was out.'
'When did you last hear from her?'
She crushed out the smouldering cigarette stub and lit another. 'I'd better tell you a bit more about it all. After Stephen ran her to earth like that she phoned me to tell me I'd ruined her life, I didn't hear a word for months. Then, about a year ago, she started phoning quite regularly again, but she wouldn't say where she was living and she always sounded unhappy.'
'You must have commented on that?'
'Of course I did. She'd always said, "Oh, it's nothing. The world's not a very jolly place, is it? You taught me that and it's true." Mr Wexford, you don't know her. You don't know how impossible it is to question her. She just says, "Let's leave that, shall we?" I wanted her to come and see me at Christmas to tell her about . . .'
He raised his eyebrows a fraction. 'Excuse me, if I don't tell you what that something was. It can't have anything to do with Isa being missing. Anyway, I begged her to come and she did come. She came on Boxing Day. That was the first time I'd seen my daughter for nearly three years. And after that she came agent, two or three times, but always when Stephen was out.'
'She saw him on Boxing Day'?
Melanie Dearborn shook her head. 'No, he spent the day with his mother. She's in a nursing home. Isa looked very thin and pale. It frightened me. She was never vivacious, if you know what I mean, but all the life seemed to have gone out of her. But she began to phone me regularly, about once a week. The last time I heard from her that was what you wanted to know, wasn't it? the last time was Friday a week ago. Friday, February 25th.'
Wexford felt the blood go from his face. He hoped it didn't show. 'She phoned you last Friday week?'
'Yes, at lunchtime. She knows Stephen's never in for lunch and she always phoned at about one-fifteen.'
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11 Other rocks there be tying hid under the water, which therefore be dangerous.
1,LIEXFORD sat quite still. He knew that her observant eyes ~ ~ would detect any unease that he might show. He could hear a clock ticking in the room, a sound he had not previously noticed Mrs Dearborn's fingers made a rending noise as they tore another half-inch of piping out of the chair. Picking feverishly, she went on talking.
'Isa sounded tremendously happy. There was a note in her voice I hadn't heard there since she was a little girl. She actually asked me how I was and how Alexandra was. Then she said she thought she'd soon have some news that would please me. Of course I asked her what news and she said she thought that could wait for a week or two, but she'd phone me again in a few days. Well, I couldn't bear to leave things like that, and I was begging her to tell me when the pips went on the phone. I said to give me her number and I'd call her back, but before she could they'd cut us off.'
It all fitted. It fitted horribly. 'She didn't phone you again?' he said, knowing what the answer would be.
'No, it was a terrible let-down. I went almost mad with well, curiosity, I suppose you'd call it and I forgot all about not chasing her and I tried to phone Stephen to get him to find her again if he could.... But he was out all that afternoon and when he did come home I'd cooled off and I thought I'd just wait until she phoned again. But she hasn't phoned since.'
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'What are you afraid of?'
'Of her happiness.' She laughed a little shrilly. 'Doesn't that sound absurd? I keep asking myself if happiness hasn't made her do something reckless, take some awful risk.' With a shiver, she said. 'What shall I do? Tell me what to do.'
Come to Kenbourne Vale with me and identify a body. He couldn't say that. If this had been Kingsmarkham and he in charge of the Morgan case, he would have said something like that but in the gentlest possible, the most roundabout way. He wasn't in Kingsmarkham and before he did anything he would have to talk to Howard, perhaps find out more before he did even that.
Melanie Dearborn had suffered a lot in her forty years. If his present assumption was correct, all the pain she had ever been through would be nothing compared with the anguish she was going to have to bear. He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. And this woman wasn't that. He liked her, he liked her femininity and her concern and her good manners.
What harm would it do to comfort her and let things slide for a bit? He had no duty here. He was on holiday.
'It's only just over a week, Mrs Dearborn,' he said. 'Remember there was a time when you didn't hear from Isa for months.'
'That's true.'
'If I may, I'll call on you again on Wednesday and if you still haven't heard by then, we'll report your daughter as a missing person.'
'You really think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill?'
'I do,' he lied. So what? He could be wrong, couldn't he? Isa what was her other name? could be alive and well and junketing about Europe with some boy for all he knew. Something like this had happened to him once before. He had known the girl was dead, all the evidence had pointed to it, and then she had turned up, all tanned and smiling from a holiday in Italy with a poet.'
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'What's your daughter's surname?' he asked.
'Sampson,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'Louise Sampson, or Isa or Lulu or whatever she's calling herself at present.'
Or Loveday? Don't, he wanted to cry he who had always rejoiced at positive identifications don't make the thing worse for me, more definite.
'I must go.'
'How?' she asked. 'Taxi? Bus?'
'One of those,' he smiled.
'Let me drive you. You've been so kind, giving up your holiday time to me, and I've got to go shopping.'
They argued. Mrs Dearborn won. She went upstairs to fetch the baby and when she reappeared at the head of the stairs, Wexford went up to help her with the carry cot. Her head resting on a pale pink pillow, the child Alexandra stared up at him with large, calm blue eyes. She was rather a fat baby, exquisitely clean and dressed in an expensive-looking, onepiece garment of pink angora.
Mrs Dearborn tucked a white fur rug round her. 'My husband's latest extravagance,' she said. 'He buys presents for this child practically every day. She's got far more clothes than I have.'
'Hello,' said Wexford to the baby. 'Hello, Alexandra.' She behaved after the manner of her kind by first wrinkling her face threateningly, then allowing it to dissolve into a delightful smile of friendliness and trust. 'She's beautiful,' he said sin- cerely.
Mrs Dearborn made no reply to this. She was groping under coats on the hallstand. 'I'm looking for a scarf,' she said half to him, half to herself, 'a blue silk one I'm rather fond of. Heaven knows where it's got to. Come to think of it, I haven't seen it for weeks. I wonder if Stephen could have given it to the cleaning woman I had before this one? When she left he insisted on giving her masses of clothes. He's such an impulsive man.' The baby began to whimper. 'Oh, Alex- andra, don't start. She's like a dog,' said Mrs Dearborn rather crossly, 'Once she knows she's going out she won't let
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you rest till you're up and away. I may as well borrow Stephen's coat. My fur's at the cleaners and it s so cold, isn't it?'
She enveloped herself in Dearborn's sheepskin jacket which was much too big for her and they ran to the car through a sudden downpour. Child and cot were dumped on the back seat as if they were luggage to be safely stowed and then forgotten. Wexford was rather surprised. He had judged Mrs Dearborn as a strongly maternal woman, wrapped up in her husband and her daughters. Sh
e wasn't too old to have a baby, but perhaps she was too old to enjoy caring for one. And yet she was no older than the sergeant's wife who even enjoyed playing with her baby when he woke her in the night. It must be her worry over Louise which all-consuming, withdrew her from the rest of her family.
'Tell me the name of the friend Isa shared a flat with,' he said.
'Verity Bate. They were at school together and Verity went to train as a teacher at St Mark and St John.'
'I take it that that's in London?'
'We're not half a mile from it now,' said Mrs Dearborn. 'It's quite near where you're staying, in King's Road. I'll show you. She'll be in her last year now, but I don't know if she's still in the flat. It's near Holland Park and I did try ringing the number, but I didn't get any reply,'
By now they had crossed the King's Road and were going nothwards. On the back seat Alexandra was making soft gurgling sounds. Wexford looked over his shoulder and saw that she was watching the rain slapping against the window, reaching out a fat hand as if she thought she could catch the bright glittering drops. They came into the Fulham Road by way of Sydney Street, and when they had passed the cinema and entered that part of the road which is as narrow as a country lane, Mrs Dearborn asked him if he would mind a few minutes delay.
'I always buy my bread and cakes here,' she said. 'Could you bear if if I left you with Alexandra?'
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Wexford said he could bear it very happily. She parked the car by a meter in Gilston Road, exclaiming with satisfaction because its last occupant had left ten minutes still to run, and walked off to the cake shop without a parting word to the baby. Wexford turned to talk to her. She didn't seem at all put out at being left alone with a stranger, but put up her hands to explore his face. The rain drummed on the car roof and Alexandra laughed, kicking off the white rug.
Playing with the baby passed the time so pleasantly that Wexford almost forgot Mrs Dearborn and he was surprised when he saw that ten minutes had gone by. Alexandra had temporarily lost interest in him and was chewing her rug. He looked out of the window and saw Mrs Dearborn, deep in conversation with another woman under whose umbrella they were both sheltering. She caught his eye, mouthed, Just coming,' and then the two women approached the car.
