by Ruth Rendell
Set down in a chair opposite him—literally set down by Vicky, a hand on each shoulder pushing her into a sitting position—Lynn felt she owed herself congratulations on not being afraid of him. She just made it, just managed to resist and turn back the finger of fear that crept up her spine. It was his eyes as much as anything, his eyes that seemed to have more white around the irises than most people’s, and his silence, so that he made her doubt if he was able to speak. If he made a sound, what kind would it be?
Ever since she had come into the house, she had been thinking of the missing little girl, listening for child noises and looking around the room for child signs. But there had been no sounds. Whoever had furnished this room had no interest in their surroundings beyond requiring them to be comfortable and insulated. Beige was the predominant color, and those people had no interest in toys, either for children or grown-ups. Sanchia wasn’t here, unless Vicky was cleverer than Lynn thought.
After staring at her, those eyes apparently unblinking, for ten minutes, Jerry got up and began walking about the room, picking things up and putting them down again, a book, an ashtray, a brass ornament in the shape of a tortoise. From an arrangement of flowers in a basket he took a blue iris, brought it to his nose, sniffed it, dropped it on the floor, and trod on it. Not a simple treading underfoot but a concentrated, manic stamping and crushing. Then he passed on to the window and stood there with his back to the room, although the curtains were drawn.
Vicky bent down and scraped the remains of the iris off the carpet, where it had left a dark blue stain. "You can clean that off in the morning," she said to Lynn. "When you’ve had a good night’s rest."
All the time Jerry was staring at Lynn and later roving about the room, Vicky had been talking, giving some sort of explanation, or as much of an explanation as she thought fit for Lynn to know. This wasn’t her house, she was house-sitting for the owners, who were away on holiday. She and Jerry had only been there for three days so far. The owners liked their place to be immaculate, as Lynn could see. Keeping it that way would be her job, but first, early in the morning, she, Vicky, would show her how to get Jerry’s breakfast.
"Time for bed now," Vicky said. "My goodness, look at the time, it’s after eleven."
At that, as if time had a particular fascination for him, Jerry spun around. He was wearing a shirt of khaki-colored cotton buttoned up to the neck, and at his sharp turn the top button came undone to reveal two strips of plaster covering a lint pad on his upper chest. Vicky went up to him and buttoned his shirt. She did it quickly as if she didn’t want Lynn to see the plasters. He allowed her attentions but, when she was finished, sat down cross-legged on the floor with his back against the curtains. His eyes closed, his head nodding, he looked as if he was about to fall asleep in that position.
Lynn was glad to get away from him. She went upstairs, taking careful note of the geography of the house. From outside, in the dark, that it had a third story wasn’t apparent, but now she was being urged to mount another flight. Vicky was behind her, telling her to hurry up, she hadn’t got all night, which seemed a strange thing to say in the circumstances. At the top Vicky showed her into a bathroom, doubtless mounting guard outside, for when Lynn came out, she almost bumped into her. The door to the room that was to be hers Vicky opened from behind her. Everything happened quickly after that, and when it was too late, Lynn realized how much she had underestimated the woman, for as Lynn stepped into the room she heard a click and a snip and felt her bag slide from her shoulder. Vicky had cut the strap with scissors. Lynn twisted around and made a grab for her, but what she clutched was Vicky’s hair and the gray wig came away in her hand. The door was slammed in her face and the key turned in the lock, Vicky on the outside and Lynn on the inside, without her mobile.
The scenario she had created in her mind had been quite different. Vicky would bring her to a bedroom and stand over her while she undressed and put on the nightclothes provided. With her back turned, of course, like the puritanical wardress she resembled. Her own clothes would be taken away, the door locked on her, and she left to make her phone call. Things had not happened like that.
Wexford would be cross. He became a different person when he was cross—cold and stern and rather contemptuous, if never unfair. He would say she was too inexperienced to mount an operation of this kind with herself as decoy. She should have told him or Barry Vine first, she should have asked.
Police officers in TV sitcoms knew how to pick locks or, if they were the brute-force type, break them down with a running kick. Lynn knew that if she tried to break the door down, she would make so much noise that Vicky and Jerry would come and between them they could overpower her. Besides, she very much disliked the idea of a hands-on struggle with Jerry. Though stoutly determined not to be afraid of him, she thought she might scream if he so much as laid the tip of one finger on her skin.
She went to the window and pulled back the curtains, having first switched off the light. At first she could see almost nothing beyond that the rain had stopped. She opened the window, which was a casement. The lamps were still on in the room below, quite a long way below, about twenty feet, as she appeared to be in some third-story extension built on up here perhaps only a few years back. The light down there showed in the parting between the curtains and as a thin yellow line across the wet, black paving. A long way down, too far to jump, much too far when she’d be jumping onto concrete. Sheets, curtains, blankets, Lynn disliked the idea of any of those. She looked inside the cupboard. It was full of women’s clothes, old clothes or the clothes of an old person, smelling musty and of camphor spray. Two of the dresses had self-belts, but she could see they were too flimsy for her purpose.
She sat down on the bed. She listened. The house was silent. Her watch told her the time was twenty-five past eleven. Up here it was doubtful if she would hear them go to bed, but she would see the light go out. Did they share a bed? She didn’t care for that idea either. It wasn’t much use to her knowing if they were in bed unless she could find a way out. Somehow she must use the room, she must use what was in the room. It hadn’t been designed as a prison, it was the owners’ guest room. Visitors slept here, used the bathroom next door, probably enjoyed their semi-isolation at the top of the house. And if the owners weren’t keen on color and adornment, they evidently were on comfort. There had been soft, fluffy towels in that bathroom, new, unused cakes of soap, and a jar of expensive bath essence.
Vicky and Jerry hadn’t taken Sanchia, that was certain. Unless they had taken her but she was no longer here now because ... No, she wouldn’t even think of that, it wasn’t her job or her place to think of it. She went to the window once more. The light was still on down there. She hated to think of Jerry near a child or a child in his presence. Vicky’s wig still lay on the floor, inside the door where it had fallen. Well, Vicky could come and get it after she was gone.
If you want a thing badly enough, said Lynn to herself, you can do it. Pity there wasn’t a phone. People never do have phones in guest rooms, no matter how hospitable they may be, but they do have television sets, and the one in here had an aerial of zigzag metal plates standing on the top of it. There were two bed lamps, one on either side of the bed, and another standing on the dressing table. Lynn got on her hands and knees and crawled under the bed. Two double sockets each held two plugs. What appliances did the others serve? She followed the lead of one of them up into the bedding and found an electric blanket. The other belonged to a radio.
Each lead was about two meters long, say six and a half feet. Lynn looked about her. She opened drawers in the dressing table, but all were empty, neatly lined with white-spotted beige paper. Back to the window to check if the light was still on. It was. There was a drawer in each bedside cabinet. The one on the left-hand side contained the television remote, the one on the right an unopened box of tissues, a packet of throat pastilles, a container of nasal spray, and a tiny pair of nail scissors.
Better than nothin
g, much better. It was no good longing for a sharp knife. The leads on the bed lamps and the aerial were thin—though, Lynn hoped, strong—and they responded well to the snip of the small, fairly sharp scissors. The heavier electric cables on the blanket, radio, and television set were a different matter. She worked on them until her right forefinger was sore and bleeding, and she realized she would never get through the television cable.
From somewhere far below her she heard a stair creak. She went back to the window and saw that the light was out. Lynn began to feel rather excited. Then she had a thought she at once condemned as silly. Kingsmarkham police were going to have to replace all these cables, mend everything she’d destroyed in here, not the owners, still less Vicky and Jerry. What did all that matter when she’d found them?
She set about tying the cables together. Reef knots, that was the way. The knots took up a great deal of lead. At first she had thought she had an enormous length to play with, something like eighteen meters for a drop of something like six, but the knots took it up, and when it was done and firm and looked safe to use, it wasn’t more than maybe five meters long. And she still needed a length of it to tie on to something.
Tie on to what? The farther away from the window the more of those five meters would be used up. Underneath the window was a radiator. Lynn examined it and saw that it was fastened to the wall by two metal brackets and to the floor by the pipes through which the water or oil or whatever passed. It felt firm enough. It would have to do. She passed the cable through the flanges on the top of the radiator and made it fast with another reef knot, a double one this time.
Again she listened to the silence of the house. Then she switched off the light. It would be harder in the dark but safer. If only she had gloves! She put one leg over the windowsill, blessing the trousers Vicky so disliked, then the other. Sitting on the ledge, her legs dangling, she realized that this was going to take some resolution, the very letting go and depending on that thin cable. Even the thick blanket and radio leads looked weak now. She turned herself over, still holding on to the sill, and lay on the window ledge on her pelvis, her legs outstretched.
The darkness was deep, inside the room and outside. She took hold of the cable in her right hand, eased herself away from the window, still holding the ledge with her left hand, and brought both feet onto the wall. It had a rough surface, as if the rendering had been worked on with a pargeting tool. The pattern was formed in a kind of bas-relief in which none of the raised portions protruded more than half an inch, but it was enough to get a better foothold than on an absolutely flat surface. Lynn tried to grip with her toes, but her shoes were stiff and had leather soles.
She climbed back into the room, took her shoes off, and hung them around her neck by their laces. Her socks came off too and she tucked them into her shoes. Back on the windowsill, she went through the same process and found it much easier this time. Perhaps going back and starting again had been a good idea. Now she could grip the protrusions in the bas-relief much more satisfactorily.
The worst part, as she had known it would be, was letting go, taking her left hand from the sill onto the cable and depending entirely on it. She hadn’t foreseen how the cable would stretch and swing, and the radiator give a long, groaning creak. But it held. Gripping the cable as firmly as she could, she moved her right foot down a few inches, then her left, then her right. Her hands slipped on the cable then and she began to slide, desperately trying to walk down the wall, running instead, until her feet slipped off it, she swung in the air about ten feet up, and from above came a crunch, a clatter, and a grinding, wrenching sound.
Lynn dropped then, the cable running through and burning her fingers, to land on her feet, her legs wide apart. But she was upright and she was sound. Up above her she couldn’t see much except a whitish thing on the windowsill with the cable still attached to it. She weighed only eight and a half stone, but her weight had pulled the radiator away from the wall. Would the pipes have gone too? Was there any water or oil in there when the heating was off? She wasn’t going to stay to find out, and with pictures of pipes spouting water and the house flooding passing through her mind, she put on her socks and shoes and fled.
Through the side entrance, around to the front. Not a light on in the house, not a light anywhere. Only those who have lived in the country, better still in a house outside a village, know how dark the countryside can be at midnight. Without a torch it is virtually impossible to go for a walk. But after a while you get used to the dark as Lynn did. Absolute blackness becomes black and gray, then gray and black, then the varied shades of monochrome, like an old, dark film.
She was walking along the lane by which they had arrived. At the crossroads she went close up to the signpost but was still unable to read it. But she had noted where she was on the way here and she would find it again. Left here for Bredeway and the bridge over the river. Suddenly, ahead of her, on the right-hand side, she saw a light, and she made her way toward it, keeping close up against the hedge. She hadn’t got her bag with her, nor her mobile, but her warrant card she had. Carry it on you, Barry Vine had once told her. Not in your bag or your overcoat pocket but on you, in an inside pocket. So she had and it was there, against her heart, really, though that was a dramatic way of putting it.
The light was upstairs in a thatched cottage by the bridge. It must have been generally brighter here, for she could read the name Bridge Cottage and she noted it as another pointer to where she was. She rang the doorbell. No one answered. She rang again and again, banged on the door, using the knocker and her fist. She even thought of throwing stones at the window, but she might break it and she didn’t want to be responsible for causing more damage.
No one was home. They left that light on to make people like her, or more dangerous people, think someone was there. She turned away, closed the gate behind her, and walked on over the bridge. If Vicky had heard the noise wrenching the radiator off the wall had made, would she come after her? It was likely enough. But Lynn knew she would be more than a match for Vicky on her own. A sign on the left side ahead said something, that this was the beginnings of a village, Bredeway probably. Close up, she could just read it: BREDEWAY. DRIVE CAREFULLY THROUGH OUR VILLAGE. Chance’d be a fine thing, thought Lynn. Her car was still up there on the bypass, unless someone had nicked it or driven into it.
The village was mostly in darkness, though lights were on in two of the cottages and one biggish house was ablaze with light. That was the one, thought Lynn. She could hear the noise from the place before she was inside the gate, music, shouting, laughter, and as she entered the garden, she could see people dancing in the brightly lit front room. Her warrant card in her hand, she rang the doorbell, then knocked. They might not hear the bell.
A girl of about eighteen opened the door. She didn’t wait for Lynn to explain. "Oh, God, I’m sorry. The people next door rang and said they were phoning the police and we promised not to make so much noise, but, I don’t know how it is, you get carried away, don’t you? It’s my boyfriend’s eighteenth birthday party. I didn’t think the police would actually come. Oh, God, I feel so terrible ..."
"All I want," said Lynn, "is to use your phone, if I may."
"Of course you may, of course. Come in. Have a drink. There’s only Football Red and Football White, we’ve drunk the champers. Look, we’ll be as quiet as mice while you’re phoning, I promise."
16
At some time during the night she had gone up into that room and retrieved her wig. A complicated structure of blue-gray puffs and whorls and curled wisps, it sat on top of a grim face, in which the crags and cracks had appeared early, if the age she had given was a true one. She looked a lot more than fifty-five. Her neck was thick but her face drawn and pinched. The ringless hands looked swollen and her ankles bulged above the tops of her lace-up shoes.
In a gruff, mannish voice, she kept saying she hadn’t done anything wrong. She had been trying to help Jerry, that was all, caring for him as
she always did. Wexford said nothing. He was waiting for James Beamish to arrive. The solicitor representing Jerry had turned up ten minutes before and was in the next interview room with his client and Burden and DC Cox. Jerry Dover, his name was, according to her. She was Victoria Cadbury, and his late mother’s sister.
Both of them had been up when the two squad cars arrived at 1:30 a.m., Jerry sitting cross-legged on the hall floor, swaying from side to side and keening softly. Vicky had been on the top floor, trying to pull a heavy metal radiator off the windowsill but lacking the strength for it. Neither of them had gone in pursuit of Lynn Fancourt. Jerry Dover looked incapable of being left on his own, though Vicky must have left him when she went for her interviews, for the night she had spent at Mrs. Chorley’s house, and later to seek her prey. Wexford had only caught a glimpse of him when he arrived at the station himself this morning, but that was enough to define Jerry as mad, or to put it more correctly, severely schizophrenic, the kind of person they used to describe as "unfit to plead."
The house in Upper Brede had been searched and the garden inspected. Of course there was no sign of Sanchia Devenish and no evidence that she had ever been there. It seemed that no child had lived there or been there for many years. The house belonged to a couple called Jackson. Vicky Cadbury had been house-sitting for them while they were on a Greek island. They were due home tomorrow to find their spare bedroom’s electrics dismantled and its radiator torn off the wall. Wexford had to give grudging approval to Lynn Fancourt. After all, she had caught this pair on her own initiative, but at the cost of a good deal of the taxpayers’ money—unless the householders’ insurance would pay up—and in some ways it served her right that her car, which she had left on the old bypass, had been vandalized during the night and its radio stolen.
At first he had thought he would have liked to have been there and seen her snatch off Vicky’s wig, but already he was beginning to feel pity for these two. A tragic, if ludicrous, story would emerge, and coincidentally with that thought, came James Beamish, brisk and cocky as ever.
