by Ruth Rendell
"I haven’t worked since Seaward Air said they ’had to let me go,’ " he said. "Nice expression that, don’t you think? ’We’ll have to let you go,’ as if I’d been begging to be released. That was getting on for two years ago, and d’you know how many jobs I’ve applied for in that time? Three hundred. Well, three hundred and twenty-one, to be precise."
"So you’ve no reason to be very fond of Stephen Devenish?"
Ferry switched off the television just as Burden was about to ask him to do so. He was a small man and overweight, with the unhealthy fat of the drinker of stout and eater of junk food. But his face was pale and puffy, and he had adopted the balding man’s unwise trick of combing strands of longer hair over the naked pate in an attempt to disguise it. The eyes that fixed Burden in a disconcerting stare were a pale toffee-brown, the white blood-spotted. Burden thought he knew what the man’s reply would be and was astonished when Ferry said, "Why? What’s he done now?"
Burden hesitated. "What would you expect him to have done, Mr. Ferry?"
"I only meant, who else has he given the boot to? Or, come to that, been bloody to or lost his temper with."
"You wouldn’t describe him as a charming man, then?"
"He can be."
"To women?"
"He’s not one of those, what these days they call sex addicts. I’ll give him that, he’s devoted to his wife. I suppose he’s got some good in him. I asked you what he’d done."
"I know you did, Mr. Ferry," said Burden, who wasn’t going to be spoken to like that. "I heard you. It isn’t what he’s done but what’s been done to him." It was still too soon to mention the missing child to Ferry or anyone else. "Someone’s been sending him threatening letters. Anonymous letters."
"No kidding," said Ferry, and he looked happier than he had since Burden arrived. "Threatening what?"
Burden didn’t answer. "He’s got a little daughter. She’s nearly three. Have you ever seen her?" He knew at once from Ferry’s expression, his obvious lack of interest, that this man had nothing to do with the kidnapping of Devenish’s child.
Ferry said, "His wife brought her into the Kingsmarkham office once—you know they’ve an office there, and one at Gatwick and another in Brighton. I happened to be there. I can’t say I’m much of a child-lover, and as for babies ..."
"I suppose you draw unemployment benefit, Mr. Ferry?"
"Yes, I do, if it’s any business of the police. And I’m likely to draw it as far as I can see till it’s replaced by the old-age pension. Fortunately, my wife has a job." Ferry’s voice had taken on a scathing edge of sarcasm. "Fortunately, we have no children, no little daughters. She went back to teaching when Devenish ’let me go.’ Didn’t want to, of course. Who would when they’ve been a lady of leisure living in Kingsbrook Valley Drive? And she has to work in the private sector, which means less pay."
"You mentioned just now people Mr. Devenish had been unpleasant to or with whom he’d lost his temper. Can you give me the names of any of those people?"
Ferry gave a harsh laugh. "There’d be too many of them. The answer’s practically everyone he came in contact with."
Jane Andrews was out shopping but her mother was at home, a garrulous and highly articulate old woman who, in the space of ten minutes, had told Wexford she was seventy-two years old, a widow who had lived in this Victorian villa for forty years (and intended to die in it), that she had two daughters, Jane and Louise, that Louise too was a widow and that Jane had been married twice and divorced twice, circumstances that Mrs. Probyn spoke of as if they were symptoms of a life-threatening disease.
"My daughters haven’t had very happy lives, Chief Inspector. Poor Jane is one of these career women, so-called, who’s sacrificed married happiness to the demands of the job. She’s something in PR, which my late husband always said meant ’proportional representation’ but nowadays seems to mean ’public relations,’ whatever that may be."
"She has always lived with you?"
"My goodness, no. One flat after another she’s had, and what you might call one husband after another, I suppose. But when my husband died—I firmly believe the balance of his mind was disturbed, poor man—he left a very curious will." Mrs. Probyn said this in the manner of an old-fashioned storyteller about to relate, before an audience, a tale of mystery and suspense. She paused dramatically, then went on, "My daughter Louise is a rich woman. Her husband left her extremely well off. She, at least, doesn’t have to work. You might say that her only misfortune— apart from losing him, of course—is her failure to have children. Well, that’s my view of it. But I digress. Quite reasonably, my husband felt he need leave her nothing, as he might also have felt with regard to poor Jane, whose troubles I must say have been largely of her own making. But alas, no. Under the terms of his will, this house, my home for forty years, was left to Jane, giving me only a life interest. In other words, I was to live here for the term of my natural life but in point of fact it belongs to Jane. There! What do you think of that?"
Wexford had no intention of saying what he thought of it, his principal reflection being that if he had been Jane Andrews, he would have gone on occupying one of those flats rather than move in here with this loquacious harpy. But he was saved from some anodyne reply by a newcomer’s arrival.
At first he thought this was a man, and the illusion lasted a few seconds. A rather feminine-looking man, certainly, with tip-tilted nose and full lips, but quite tall enough, not far short of six feet, and flat-chested. Then he saw her hands and noticed the absence of an Adam’s apple. She spoke to her mother, held out her hand to him, and said hello. The voice was deep and rather harsh. She was no more dressed like a man than the average woman, her jeans and white shirt and trainers were almost a uniform, and her hair was simply fashionably short. The illusion faded.
She seemed to be in her late thirties, slim and quite good-looking. Makeup would have improved her, for her skin was poor, pitted on the cheeks with pinprick acne scars. Her face shone with the exertion of carrying two heavy bags up the hill. She dropped them on the floor and sat down, sprawled in an armchair. He told her who he was and asked her about her friendship with Fay Devenish. He believed she was still in possession of a key to Woodland Lodge. Before answering, she suggested that her mother leave them alone.
"She does have her own sitting room," she said as the old woman left the room with an offended air. "And it’s not this one. This is a big house, plenty of room for two women to live in without actually meeting all that often." She smiled to soften the harshness of her remarks. "I expect you think I’m being very mean. Sorry. I’ve only myself to blame for moving in here. I should have stayed where I was or taken my sister’s offer to share with her. She doesn’t live far away."
Having no comment to make, Wexford said nothing.
"What was it you asked me about Fay?"
"I said I believed you were a friend of hers."
"I was once, but no longer."
"There was a quarrel?"
"Not between her and me, if that’s what you mean."
"Then between you and her husband?"
"Let me put it this way. He doesn’t like her to have friends. He told her to stop seeing me and stop—well, communicating with me. He’s jealous. He’s even jealous of his own children. And that’s absolutely all I’m going to say."
No policeman worth his salt takes much notice of that frequently uttered statement. "Jealous how? Are you saying he dislikes his children? How about the little girl?" Wexford purposely used the present tense. "Does he dislike her?"
"I never said anything about dislike. I said he was jealous. And I’ve never seen Sanchia. I just about know she exists, that’s all. I haven’t seen the boys for years."
Wexford could tell she was unaware of the slip she had made. He looked at her thoughtfully. "What became of the key, Miss Andrews?"
"What key?"
"The key the Devenishes gave you when you stayed in the house to look after their cat."
/> "That was years and years ago."
"About seven years." Wexford was watching her carefully and he saw that a muscle in the corner of her left eye had begun twitching. It was slight, a mere flicker, but she put up her hand and touched it with one finger to hold it still. "Was there some reason for you to have the key copied?"
She said too quickly and too indignantly, "That would be dishonest, and I’m not dishonest. I really don’t want to say any more about the Devenishes, so if you don’t mind ..."
"Do you own a car, Miss Andrews?"
"Of course I do."
She sounded exasperated, but more than that. Nervous too? Most people were nervous when questioned by the police. Innocent or guilty, they were apprehensive. He tried to imagine her driving to Ploughman’s Lane in the middle of the night, parking her car on the Woodland Lodge drive, entering the house and going upstairs, picking up out of her bed a child she had never seen before, preventing that child from crying out—he tried to imagine it and failed. But there was still one odd thing ...
"Miss Andrews, something puzzles me, I’m bound to say." He looked at his watch. "I’ve been questioning you for the past fifteen minutes yet you’ve never asked why, you’ve never asked the reason for our coming here. I find that very strange, don’t you?"
She answered quickly, with no hesitation. "I didn’t need to ask. It’s because the Devenishes’ baby’s missing, because Sanchia’s missing."
"But how did you know that?"
"It’s been in the papers, it’s been on television."
"No, it hasn’t. Come to that, how did you know her name was Sanchia if you have had no contact with Mrs. Devenish for seven years?"
The muscle beside her eye jumped again. She closed her eyes for a moment and, opening them, looked straight into Wexford’s face. It was the way, he thought, that no one in ordinary social intercourse ever looks at anyone else.
"Well, Miss Andrews?"
"Fay told me, of course. She phoned and told me."
"So, in spite of what you’ve said, you do keep in touch?"
Jane Andrews’s hands clenched in her lap. "Stephen doesn’t know it, but we do phone each other. Once upon a time she used to tell me everything. Stephen hated that. He told her I was a lesbian and—and had designs on her. It would be funny if it weren’t so stupid and false. I’ve been married, actually I’ve been married twice. I’m likely to have done that if I were a lesbian, aren’t I?"
She was more animated than during the whole rest of their talk. Color had come into her pale face and her eyes were so bright they seemed full of tears.
On his way home he stopped off in Ploughman’s Lane. The house Sylvia had once lived in, before she and Neil and the boys moved out into the real country, was next door but three to Woodland Lodge, if you could use such an expression about a neighborhood in which properties were fifty yards apart. He had always liked the house, one of the smallest in this neighborhood, its unpretentious, comfortable Arts and Crafts ashlar and gables, its simple garden with strategically placed trees. The people who had bought it had added a double garage and a glazed porch. The planning department must have allowed it, he supposed, regretting past simplicity and spaciousness. Short of cutting them down, no one could do much to spoil the beauty of the trees up here, the copper beeches at their loveliest golden red in April, the horse chestnuts in flower, the oaks just coming into amber-green leaf. That place had been called, was still called, Laburnum House. The trees after which it was named were still in bud, their yellow blossoms due to appear within days. He had never liked laburnums since Sylvia, aged three, had been rushed to hospital after eating a seed pod in her grandmother’s garden.
The curious thought came to him that in a case like that the parents knew almost from the start their child’s fate and future. Within minutes he and Dora had been told that Sylvia’s stomach had been pumped, she was fine, she would be fine. The Devenishes knew nothing of their daughter’s whereabouts, her well-being, the state of her mind, not even if she was still alive.
At Woodland Lodge the older boy, Edward, answered the door. He said, without waiting to be asked, "My mother’s asleep and my father’s in the garden."
"I’ll walk round and find your dad," Wexford said, wondering, as he took the path that led around the back of the house, why a boy of twelve referred to his parents so formally instead of using his own gentler diminutive.
How did people get their lawns like that? This one was like green felt, closely shaven. Stephen Devenish was standing in the middle of it, clipping the edge of the turf around a large rose bed with a pair of long-handled shears. Strange thoughts seemed to be dodging in and out of his mind today, Wexford reflected as he walked toward him, speculations and unprecedented fancies. Why on earth, for instance, did he feel that he would have much preferred to encounter Devenish when he wasn’t armed with a dangerous implement? The man was charming, gracious, courteous, patient, and civilized, wasn’t he? Not always. Not when he talked about Jane Andrews.
And as if he read Wexford’s mind, it was to her that he immediately reverted as he laid the offensive weapon on the grass. "I’m afraid I spoke a mite roughly about Miss Andrews when I talked to you earlier." He smiled, that ever-present smile apparent even in the worst adversity. "She meant well. No man likes to see an outsider come between him and his wife though, does he? An intervener, wouldn’t she be called?"
"That was in divorce cases, Mr. Devenish," said Wexford. "She was the female equivalent of a corespondent."
"Really?"
"As to outsiders, as you put it, most women have women friends apart from the couples they and their husbands or partners call their friends."
"We don’t," said Devenish. "We have each other. We don’t need anyone else. Come into the house."
Wexford followed him. They went in through the back door into a kind of boot room and thence into a large, well-appointed, immaculate kitchen. In a dining or breakfast area, the table was laid for an evening meal for four, a white cloth instead of place mats, silver instead of bone-handled cutlery, flowers in a vase. Again Wexford thought how peculiar it was that Fay Devenish did all this on her own without help, and apparently still did it while her baby daughter was missing, while she was distraught and while her doctor had evidently sedated her and told her to rest.
He wanted to say something like this, that frankly he was troubled, that he was like someone in a dark wood, confused and disoriented. No one could have got into this house without breaking in, but on the other hand, no one could have brought in a ladder. Most significantly, no stranger could have taken Sanchia without the child’s crying and disturbing her parents. He wanted to say it, he had begun to say it, when, unexpectedly and dreadfully, Stephen Devenish burst into tears. He flung his arms across the neatly laid table, lowered his head, and sobbed. He shook with sobs, his shoulders heaving, his hands clenched.
Taken aback, Wexford sat opposite him patiently. There was nothing he could do, he hardly knew why he had come. Perhaps just to see this man again, this house again. He looked about him, studying his surroundings. The counters were laden with equipment of the steamer, rice-cooker, pasta-maker variety. A knife block of some dark hardwood held seven or eight horn-handled knives. The walls were hung with blue-and-white porcelain plates, Royal Copenhagen and Delft. There was a calendar of the Highlands and a cuckoo clock. Last time he was here he had heard it tell the hour, but distantly. Now, suddenly, a jaunty painted cuckoo popped out and, flapping its break, cuckooed six times.
At the fourth cuckoo Stephen Devenish raised his face. He had been drumming on the table with his fists and had knocked over the pepper pot and the flower vase. One of the glasses fell over and rolled onto the floor. Wexford got up and filled another with water from the tap. He said quietly, "Here, drink this, come on," and wondered why he couldn’t lay a hand on the man’s shoulder, why his reluctance to touch Devenish amounted to revulsion.
"I’m a fool," Devenish said, sitting up, taking the water. "I
couldn’t help it. I keep thinking I’ll never see her again, she’s dead." His face was dry. He had cried without shedding tears. "I’ll never see her again in this world, those are the words that go round in my head."
"While there’s life, there’s hope," Wexford said in a cliché he didn’t normally use.
"Yes, but is there life? Isn’t it much more likely there’s death?" Devenish drew in a long, shuddering breath. "I’m sorry I broke down like that. I love my little girl, you see. I want to see her grow up."
Wexford didn’t stay long after that. Incongruously, his last thought as he left that kitchen was that when Fay Devenish woke up, the first thing she would do—or would be expected to do?—was straighten, refresh, and relay that crumpled, finger-marked cloth.
So often late home that Dora no longer reproached him or even commented, Wexford nevertheless expected some kind of reproof from his elder daughter. Sylvia had called in on her mother on her way home from work at Kingsmarkham Social Services and was sitting next to her on the sofa, the two of them drinking white wine. But instead of admonishing him she seemed anxious only to defend herself. "I’m driving, Dad, so I’m positively only having one glass."
He said, smiling, "You know, my dear, I can’t imagine you ever willfully breaking the law."
She flushed with pleasure. "Can’t you? That’s nice."
"If you’ve a moment, I’d like to ask you something you might call in the field of child psychology."
Dora sprang up. "I’ll just put your dinner in the microwave. "
"No, don’t. I will. In a minute." He felt a sudden distaste for the idea of expecting any such service from her. "Sit down. Stay."
Sylvia finished her wine and set down the glass. "I’m not a psychologist, Dad, child or otherwise, though I must say people are always taking me for one. I just did a course in it for my degree."
"You’ll do," her father said. "Darwin said, I hope I can get it right, ’Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write.’ Tell me at what age you’d expect a child to start talking."
