Murder Being Once Done

by Ruth Rendell

  'But he'll know by now he hasn't a hope in hell of remaining as Alexandra's father?' Wexford gripped the back of the chair. He was shivering. 'Will she have told him that?'

  'Unless she's a far more phlegmatic woman than I take her to be, yes.'

  He tried to stay calm. He knew his face had grown white, for he could feel the skin shrink and tremble. Baker's face was scornful and sour, Howard's entirely bewildered.

  'You wanted my advice. It must be that because you don't want my opinion. My advice to you is to phone Dearborn's hotel now, at once.' Wexford sat down and turned his face to the wall.

  'He's in his room,' said Baker, replacing the receiver. 'I don't see the need for all this melodrama. The man's in his room, asleep, but they've gone to check and they'll call us back. I 182

  suppose Mr Wexford's idea is they'll find a bundle of clothes under the sheets and the bird flown.'

  Wexford didn't comment on that. His hands were clasped tightly together, the knuckles whitened by the strong pressure. He didn't relax them but he relaxed his voice, making conversation for the sake of it. 'What happened about Clements?' he asked, attempting to sound casual.

  'He got his order,' Howard said. 'Phoned through to tell us. No difficulty at all.'

  'I'll send his wife some flowers,' said Wexford. 'Remind me.' He helped himself to more coffee without bothering to ask permission, but his hand was unsteady and he slopped it on to the desk. Howard didn't say a word.

  The phone gave the prefatory click that comes a split second before it rings. Before it rang Wexford had jumped and got the shock over. Three hands went out to the receiver, the other men infected by his dread. It was Howard who lifted it, Howard who said, 'I see. Yes. You've got a doctor? The local police?' He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. His thin face had grown very pale. 'There's a doctor staying in the hotel,' he said. 'He's with Dearborn now.'

  'He tried to kill himself,' said Wexford and he said it not as a question but as a statement of fact.

  'They think he's dead. They don't know. Some sort of overdose, it sounds like.'

  Baker said, attempting a suitable dolefulness, 'Maybe it's the best thing. Horrible, of course, but when you think of the alternative, years inside. In his position I'd take the same way out.'

  Howard was talking again, asking sharp questions into the phone. 'What position?' said Wexford. 'You don't still think he did it, do you?'

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  23 If by none of these means the matter go forward as they would have it, then they procure occasions of debate.

  `][EXFORD had seen many a dawn in Kingsmarkham, but 'T never till now a London dawn. He parted the curtains at Howard's window and watched the indigo sky split and shred to show between the heavy clouds streaks of greenish light. A little wind, too slight to set the cemetery trees in motion, fluttered a flag on the roof of a distant building. Pigeons had began to coo, to take wing and wheel lazily against the facades of tower blocks which they, foolish creatures and slow to learn, still took for the cliffs of southern Italy from where the Romans had brought them two thousand years before. The roar of the traffic, half-silenced during the small dead hours, was rising again to its full daytime volume.

  Apart from himself, the office was empty. As the great red ball of a sun began to rise, thrusting through reddish-black vapourish folds, the street lamps of Kenbourne Vale went out gradually. Wexford went across the room and snapped off the light switch. But no sooner had he found himself in the welcome, restful semi-darkness than the light came on again and Howard limped into the office with Melanie Dearborn.

  Her face was haggard, the eye sockets purple with fatigue and fear. She wore trousers and a sweater and over them her husband's sheepskin coat. But for all her pain and her anxiety,

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  she hadn't forgotten her manners. Blinking a little against the light, she came up to Wexford and held out her hand. 'I'm so sorry,' she began, 'that we should meet again like this, that these terrible things . . .'

  He shook his head, fetched a chair and helped her into it. Then he met Howard's eyes and Howard gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, pursing his lips.

  'Your husband . . . ?'

  'Is going to recover,' Howard answered for her. 'He's in hospital and he's very tired but he's conscious. He'll be all right.'

  'Thank God,' Wexford said sincerely.

  She looked up at him and managed a weak watery smile. 'Why was I so stupid as to phone him last night? I got in a panic, you see. I couldn't bear to think of him coming home and perhaps finding Alexandra gone. He told me all he'd done to keep her.'

  Wexford sat down and drew his chair close to hers.

  'What did he do,'Mrs Dearborn?'

  'I'm afraid to tell you,' she whispered. 'Because if it comes out . . . they may . . . I mean, they could take Alexandra away and not let us . . .'

  Wexford looked at Howard, but Howard didn't move a muscle.'It will be better to tell us,' he said. 'It's always better to tell the truth. And if the bribe wasn't taken . . .'

  There was a discouraging cough from Howard and Melanie Dearborn gave a heavy sigh. She snuggled more deeply inside the coat as if, because it was her husband's and he had worn it, she had near to her a comforting part of himself. 'The bribe was offered,' she said.

  'How much?' Howard asked gently but succintly.

  'Five thousand pounds.'

  Wexford nodded. 'She was to promise not to oppose the order in exchange for that?'

  'She did promise. When she came to my husband's office. Then and there they made an appointment to meet in Ken- bourne Vale cemetery on February 25th at two-fifteen.'

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  'Why did she change her mind?'

  'She didn't exactly. According to Stephen, she was a very simple sort of girl. When he and she met that day she began to talk about how she was going to use the money and give it to someone to look after Alexandra while she was out at work. She didn't even have the sense to realise what she was saying. Stephen said, "But you won't have Alexandra. I'm giving you the money so that I can keep her." And then she put her hand over her mouth you can imagine and said, "Oh, Mr Dearborn, but I must keep her. She's all I've got in the world and you won't miss the money." She just didn't see.'

  Wexford nodded but he said nothing. He had seen the girl, or her ghost, her counterpart, her doppel-ganger. Both had been brought up in a strict morality, but a morality which leaves out what ordinary human beings call ethics.

  'Stephen was well, appalled,' Mrs Dearborn went on. 'He said he'd give her more, anything she asked. He was prepared to go up to oh, I don't know fifty thousand, I expect. But she couldn't imagine that amount of money.'

  'He didn't give her anything?'

  'Of course he didn't. She was chattering on about how she'd give a thousand to someone to look after Alexandra and keep the four for the future, and he saw it wasn't any good and he just turned away and left her. He was very quiet and moody that night I thought it was because he was tired of the way I fretted about Louise. By the middle of the next week he was on top of the world again. I know why that was now. He'd realised who the murdered girl was.'

  Howard had listened to it all without intervening, but now he said in a steady cool voice, 'If you're going up to see your husband, Mrs Dearborn, we'd better see about transport for you.'

  'Thank you. I'm afraid I'm giving everyone a great deal of trouble.' Melanie Dearborn hesitated and then said in a rush, 'What am I to say to him about about Alexandra?'

  'That depends on the outcome of this case and upon the court.'

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  'But we love her,' she pleaded. 'We can give her a good home. Stephen he tried to kill himself. The bribe wasn't accepted. In the girl's mind it wasn't a bribe at all but a gift, just like the clothes we gave her aunt.'

  'Well?' said Wexford to Howard after she had left them, casting over her shoulder a last imploring look.

  'The court might, I suppose, see it in that light. But when the evidence given in Dearborn'
s prosecution . . .'

  'What are you going to prosecute him for, Howard? Making a present of money to a poverty-stricken girl, his former servant's niece, so that she could raise a child he was fond of decently? And then withdrawing the offer because the chosen guardians weren't suitable in his eyes?'

  'It wasn't like that, Reg. you're being Jesuitical. Dearborn killed her. The scarf was his wife's, in the pocket of that coat which they both wear. He had abundant motive which no one else had. And he had the special knowledge. He put her in a tomb he knew wouldn't be visited until after he had got his adoption order.'

  'Knew?' said Wexford. 'He wouldn't have forgotten it was Leap Year. February 29th was his birthday.'

  'I don't understand you, Mr Wexford,' said Baker who had just come in and had overheard his last words. 'According to your report you go along with our views entirely.'

  'How do you know? You didn't bother to read to the end.'

  Howard looked at his uncle, half-smiling as if he understood that this was triumph, this was the end he had asked for and more than Wexford had hoped to attain. He picked up the last two sheets of blue paper and, beckoning Baker to him, read them swiftly. 'We shouldn't be here,' he said when he had finished. 'We should be in Garmisch Terrace.'

  'You should,' Wexford retorted. He looked at his watch and yawned. 'I've a train to catch at ten.'

  Baker took a step towards him. He didn't hold out this hand or attempt to retract anything or even smile. He said, 'I don't know how Mr Fortune feels, but I'd take it as a personal

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  favour if you'd come with us.' And Wexford understood that this was a frank and full apology.

  'There are other trains,' he said, and he put on his coat.

  Early morning in Garmisch Terrace, a thin pale sunlight baring the houses in all their dilapidation. Someone had scrawled 'God is dead' on the temple wall, and the Shepherd was in the act of erasing it with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of water. Outside number 22, Peggy Pope, her hair tied up in a scarf, was loading small articles of furniture into a van.

  'Going somewhere?' said Wexford.

  She shrugged. 'Next week,' she said. 'I thought I owed it to the landlords to give them a week's notice.' Her face, unwashed, unpainted, rather greasy, had a curious spiritual beauty like a young saint's. 'I'm just getting shot of a few of my things.'

  Wexford glanced at the driver. It was the Indian tenant. 'Off with him, are you?'

  'I'm off ~one, me and the kid, that is. He's just letting me have a loan of his van. I'm going home to my mother. Nowhere else to go, is there?' She thrust a battered record player into the van, wiped her hands on her jeans and went down the area steps. The three policemen followed her.

  The stacks of old books were still there, the cumbersome shabby furniture. On the wall a little more paint had peeled away, enlarging the map of that unearthly, Utopian continent. Lamont was in bed, the baby lying restlessly inthe crook of his arm.

  Peggy showed none of the outraged propriety that might have been evinced by a respectable housewife under these circumstances. She wasn't a respectable housewife but a wandering girl about to leave her lover. Remembering perhaps how Wexford had once before assisted her in moving heavy objects, she seemed to take his presence as a sign that it was in this role that he had reappeared, and she thrust into his arms a shopping basket full of kitchen utensils. Wexford shook his head at her. He went over to the bed and stared at Lamont

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  who responded first by burying his head in the pillow, then by pulling himself slowly and despairingly into a sitting position.

  Howard and Baker came closer to the bed, Peggy watched them. She knew now that something was wrong, that they were not merely here to ask questions. But she said nothing. She was leaving Garmisch Terrace and everything it contained, and perhaps she didn't care.

  'Get up, Lamont,' said Baker. 'Get up and get dressed.'

  Lamont didn't speak to him. Under the dirty sheet he was naked. His eyes had a naked empty look in them, expressing a total failure, an utter poverty, a lack of love, of possessions, of imagination. Thou art the thing itself, Wexford thought, un- accommodated man is no more than such a poor, bare animal as thou art . . . 'Come along, you know why we are here.'

  'I never had the money,' Lamont whispered. He let the sheet drop, took the child in his arms and handed her to Peggy. It was the final renunciation. 'You'll have to look after her now,' he said. 'Just you. I did it for you and her. Would you have stayed if I'd got the money?'

  'I don't know,' Peggy said, crying. 'I don't know.'

  'I wish,' said Howard tiredly, 'I felt as well as you look. They say a change is as good as a rest, and you haven't had either, but you look fine.'

  'I feel fine.' Wexford thought but he didn't say aloud, I'll be glad to get home just the same. 'It's good to be able to read again without feeling you're going to go blind.'

  'Which reminds me,' said Howard, 'I've got something for you to read in the train. A parting gift. Pamela went out to the West-End and got it.'

  A very handsome copy of Utopia, bound in amber calf, tooled in gold. 'So I've got it at last. Thanks very much. If we're going back to Chelsea now, d'you think we could make a detour for me to say good-bye to him?'

  'Why not? And in the car, Reg. maybe you'll just clear up a few points for me.'

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  It was going to be a lovely day, the first really fine day of Wexford's holiday now that his holiday was over. He asked Howard to wind down the window so that he could feel the soft air on his face. 'After I made that first blunder,' he said, 'I realised Dearborn wouldn't have desecrated his cemetery, and then I remembered he'd told me February 29th was his birth- day. A man doesn't forget when his own birthday is going to occur, especially when it only really occurs once in every four years. Lamont put her in the Montfort vault because it was outside it that he encountered- her and killed her.'

  'What put you on to him in the first place?'

  'The way Loveday I think of her as Loveday, perhaps because she was trying to get out of her darkness into a kind of light the way she went down to talk to him and wanted to entrust something to him. She had nothing to entrust but Alexandra. She approached him and not Peggy partly because she was afraid of Peggy and partly because it was Lamont who mostly cared for his own child.' They entered Hyde Park, a sea of precocious daffodils. Ten thousand saw I at a glance . . . 'She told him she was going to get five thousand pounds, and she must have convinced him in spite of the unlikelihood of it, for he consulted estate agents. I saw a specification he had there for a house costing just under five thousand.'

  'She was only going to give him one thousand.'

  'I know. I don't suppose he thought of resorting to violence then, but he meant to con the rest out of her.'

  'So she phoned Dearborn,' said Howard as they drove past the museums, thronged with tourists this Saturday morning. 'She phoned him at one-fifteen on February 25th to make the appointment.'

  'They'd already made it in his office. It was Lamont she phoned. He was in the Grand Duke and he always took his phone calls there. She told him the money was going to be handed over to her in the cemetery that afternoon. He must have waited for her and seen her part from Dearborn, con- cluding, of course, that she had got the money.'

  'Then he waylaid her,' said Howard. 'He asked for his

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  thousand to start with, but she wouldn't give him even that She had nothing to give.'

  Wexford nodded. 'He desperately wanted to keep Peggy and his child. Nothing was to get in his way now. He strangled her with her own scarf.'

  'No, Reg. I can't have that. It was Mrs. Dearborn's scarf.'

  'It was once,' said Wexford. 'Dearborn gave it to Loveday's aunt.'

  The river was rippling brown and gold, a big brother, dirtier and wider and stronger, of the Kingsbrook. Tonight, Wexford thought, when we've unpacked our bags and the grandchildren have been to get their presents, tonight I'll go down and look at
my own river. He got out of the car and walked up to Sir Thomas. This morning the gold cap and the gold chain were almost too dazzling to look at.

  Wexford turned to Howard who had limped after him. He tapped his pocket where the new book was. 'More than four hundred years since he wrote that,' he said, 'but I don't know that things have changed all that much for the better, not the way he must have hoped they would. It's a good job he doesn't know. He'd get up off that seat of his and gQ back to the Tower.'

  'Aren't you going to read your new book?' asked Dora when they were in the train, and the outer suburbs, grey streets, red housing estates, white tower blocks, trees like numberless puffs of smoke in the gold mist, flowed past the window.

  'In a minute,' said Wexford. 'What have you got there, more presents?'

  'I nearly forgot. These two came for you this morning'

  Two parcels, a thick one and a thin one. Who could be sending him parcels? The handwriting on the brown paper wrappings meant nothing. He undid the string in the thin one and a copy of Utopia fell out, a paperback version, with a card enclosed, depicting a rabbit in rustic surroundings, and signed with love from Denise's sister-in-law. Wexford- snorted.

  'Are you all right, darling?' said anxious Dora.

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  'Of course I'm all right,' Wexford growled. 'Don't start that again.'

  The other parcel also contained a book. He wasn't at all surprised to come upon another Utopia, second-hand this time but well preserved. The card had a violet border. the name on it printed in gold. 'You forgot this', Wexford read. 'Something to read in the train. You can keep it. One doesn't meet human policemen every day. I.M.T.'

  Something to read in the train . . . Tiredness hit him like a physical blow, but he struggled to keep awake, clasping his three new books, staring out of the window. The green country was beginning now, fingers of it groping and inserting themselves into wedges of brick. Soon they would be travailing into the haunch of England, into the swelling downs. Now for Utopia, now at last.

  Dora bent down and silently picked up the books from the carriage floor. Her husband was asleep.