by Ruth Rendell
"Revenge?"
"Look, Reg, we’ve known all along that whoever did this did it for revenge. That’s the only possible motive."
"I’m off to look at spikes," said Wexford.
The old Midland Bank building in Brook Road was opposite the Job Centre and the Nationwide Building Society. Brutal refurbishment had removed the pillared portico and the Parthenon frieze and replaced the front entrance with swing doors in a white metal-mesh arrangement rather like a freezer basket. This was the headquarters of Kingsmarkham Domestic Environment and Landscape Department, and the man-with-flowers, woman-with-spade logo was over the door.
Entering the foyer, Wexford encountered Rochelle Keenan coming out of the lift. This made little impact on him beyond reminding him that she was some relation to his informant of the morning, Shirley Mitchell, sister or sister-in-law or something. He went upstairs to the room that housed the Clean Streets Campaign and was shown the tools supplied to the volunteers. Shirley Mitchell had described them accurately, and nothing he saw much surprised him.
Undoubtedly either of these spiked implements could have been used to kill a man. The smaller one reminded Wexford of something he had never actually seen but had often read and heard about: the ice pick, once beloved of the writers of American murder mysteries. But perhaps it didn’t in fact look much like this at all.
"The missing one hasn’t been returned to you?"
It had not. The woman who had shown him the tools took a philosophical view. So much went missing from the council’s property, issued for various reasons to the public— went missing or was destroyed—that really she was surprised more of these hadn’t disappeared. Had he heard, for instance, of the fatal damage to Jodi the virtual baby?
"Fatal?" Wexford said. "It wasn’t real."
"Maybe not." She sounded huffy. "But it was very valuable."
By this time the search of Ferry’s house in Oval Road would have begun. Wexford said to Burden, "There is no way the wounds in Stephen Devenish’s chest are going to match up with one of those spikes. They are very precisely described in the medical report. It was a knife, not a spike."
"What if you find the thing inadequately washed and wrapped up in a towel in Ferry’s bedroom?"
"I doubt very much that we will. Even if we do, the fact remains that a knife of precise measurements was used and not a spike of any kind."
"With Devenish cremated ..."
" ’Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass,’ only she won’t have wasted a good brass urn on him. Makes no difference, anyway. The medical report is a marvel of precision."
Burden looked dubiously at him. "Then what are you going to find?"
Possibly nothing. Possibly something unconnected with Devenish’s death. You remember what you pointed out to me and I’d missed? About Gillian Ferry being a teacher at the school the Devenish boys go to?"
"Sure I do. She teaches English at the Francis Roscommon."
"Sit down a minute, Mike." Wexford took his seat on one side of the desk, motioned Burden to the other. Wexford pushed away the ashtray Shirley Mitchell had moved toward his side. "Gillian Ferry is also Robert Devenish’s—well, we used to call them form mistresses, I expect there’s another term now. I’m no expert in these things but I think Robert is a badly disturbed child, a child who was perhaps more affected by his father’s treatment of his mother than either his brother or his sister was. Did he have anyone to confide in? Anyone to tell about the horrors that went on at home?"
"I think I see what you’re getting at."
"Yes, he had his teacher, his class teacher. Suppose he confided in her? She already had cause to hate Devenish, he was responsible for her husband losing his job and, incidentally, for forcing her back to work. Almost any woman—any man, come to that—would be moved by a child telling them his father constantly assaulted his mother. Many would be outraged and angry ..."
"Are you saying Gillian Ferry killed Devenish?"
"No, Mike. I’m saying she wrote the letters."
25
It was too small a house and too sparsely furnished to give the searchers much difficulty. Less than half an hour after they began, they found the spiked tool that was the property of the local authority. Trevor Ferry had made no attempt to hide it but put it into a kitchen drawer along with a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers. Technically, he had stolen it, but more realistically, he had simply taken it home by mistake. In any case, even a cursory examination of the tool made it clear that though it was capable of being used as a lethal weapon, it hadn’t been so used.
The bag Ferry had carried with him the Tuesday before and yesterday could never have been described as a briefcase, even by twelve-year-old. It was a soft, unstructured holdall, shabby and almost dilapidated, made of dark green canvas with tan-colored plastic binding. Wexford wasn’t going to waste time showing it to Edward Devenish. Would he ever have mentioned a briefcase if his younger brother hadn’t?
Ferry’s indignation at the searching of his house was extreme, and he accused Wexford of "disloyalty" and even of "betrayal" solely, it seemed, on the grounds that they had left a crematorium together and carried on a reasonably amicable conversation. "I call it dirty and underhand. Worming details out of me under the guise of friendship."
Wexford ignored the last bit. It was too ridiculous to be taken seriously and reminded him of Brian St. George. "You volunteered the information, Mr. Ferry," Wexford said mildly. "I didn’t ask you."
"I should have known better than to open my mouth to you people."
"Why did you tell me you were still in bed at eight in the morning when in fact you were out with the cleanup campaign?"
"Because that time I had the sense not to open my mouth. I knew what you’d think if I said I’d been in Winchester Drive at a quarter to eight. You already knew there was no love lost between me and Steve Devenish. I may as well say it now."
"You told me, I quote, ’He wasn’t so bad.’ "
The blood came into Ferry’s face and swelled the tissues. It even seemed to get into his eyes. "I hated him."
"Did your wife also hate him, Mr. Ferry?"
Many men would have seen the question as a hint that there might have been sexual relations or a desire for sexual relations between Devenish and Gillian Ferry. In that Ferry did not, in that he hesitated and slightly narrowed his eyes, Wexford understood her husband had half guessed she had written the threatening letters.
She had been out while the search was done and knew nothing about it. The anger she had suppressed burst out when she saw police in her home, and she turned on Ferry, calling him a fool, a spiritless fool with no gumption. "You’re as weak as a baby! You are a baby, you’ve never begun to grow up."
Wexford had found no evidence of the letters but he hadn’t expected to do so. She would hardly have made copies and kept them in a reference file. A Word for Windows program had been used to produce them, but the searchers hadn’t found a computer. He would have been surprised if they had in this household where money was tight. She would have used one of the computers at the Francis Roscommon School. He showed her the letter, the last line of which threatened to make Devenish’s wife a widow and his children orphans, and asked if she was its author.
She held it in her hand and took a long time reading it. He could see in her face that she admired her achievement. When she had finished, she was smiling. Defiantly, she admitted authorship. "Yes. I wrote it. I wrote a lot of letters to that man. More than a hundred. A hundred and sixteen in all, if you want to know "
She lifted her eyes, opened them very wide so that they looked spherical. In the dark, Wexford was sure, sparks would fly from that white-blonde hair. Her face was contorted as she spoke. "I wrote them. I enjoyed writing them. I kept them courteous, even quite formal. They all started, ’Dear Mr. Devenish.’ They were in very good prose, though I doubt if he appreciated that." Her tone made it clear she believed she had been clever and amusing. "It was for my own pleasu
re, my own revenge. It made me feel better about a whole lot of things."
Her husband stared at her, then put his head in his hands. Gillian Ferry looked at him contemptuously. "I didn’t do it out of love of you, so don’t think it. I should have left you when you drank yourself out of that job, when you got sozzled every day—God knows why I didn’t."
To Wexford she said more calmly, "It wasn’t for him. At least, it was only a bit for him. Mainly it was because Devenish was such a bastard, punching his wife in the face and cutting her, and letting his kids see, wanting them to see. Robert told me, I teach Robert at school, or I tried to, but you can’t teach much to a child who’s living a nightmare at home. Kids like that aren’t exactly receptive."
"He told you about his father beating his mother."
"Beating is a word for it, I suppose. It’s not the one I’d choose. He told me how the torture started. The poor woman put a horn-handled knife in the dishwasher by mistake once, and when it came out, the powder or the hot water or whatever had bleached the handle. Devenish cut her for that, he cut her with the same knife." Her eyes flashed. "I’d like to meet the guy who killed Devenish, I’d shake him by the hand."
Wexford cautioned her. She took no notice of his words.
"Will I go to prison?"
"Probably not."
"Pity. I’d quite like to go to prison. It’d be a change from here and him, and that bloody school."
When he got back to Kingsmarkham, Lynn Fancourt was waiting for him with the news that Carl Meeks could be eliminated from the inquiry. Two people had been found who remembered seeing him in the Kingsbrook Meadows with Buster at 8 a.m. on the day of the Devenish murder. Her report was on his desk but she’d like just to tell him that the witnesses weren’t Carl’s neighbors or among the more dubious of Kingsmarkham’s citizens. Both were dog owners dog-walking, the woman the proprietor of a boutique in York Street, whose premises Patrick Flay had robbed, the man a college lecturer who taught computer studies at Myringham University.
But it was really Buster who was responsible for getting Carl Meeks out of trouble. Once seen, never forgotten, as Burden had said, Buster was a dog to remember. The First Gear owner (with her spaniel) had seen him for the first time that Tuesday. She recalled it because Tuesday was her birthday and she’d wished she could ask her boyfriend for a Great Dane for a birthday present, only she already had the spaniel.
Buster got into a fight with the lecturer’s Jack Russell. While gentle enough with human beings, Danes were apparently in the habit of seizing upon smaller dogs, hurling them in the air, and shaking them to death. Or so the lecturer said. He had had to take Jake to the vet, which was a nuisance because that Tuesday was the day he was due to begin teaching a course at a summer school in Sewingbury.
Carl Meeks was off the hook, as Burden put it.
Wexford said, "But Ferry isn’t, is he? Not really."
"What d’you mean?"
"Just because he didn’t do it with the litter spike doesn’t mean he didn’t do it all. And equally, because it was his wife who wrote the letters, that doesn’t exonerate him. He still has no alibi. He was within walking distance of Devenish’s home at the relevant time. He admits he hated the man. And there’s another thing—he seems to me not to find life worth living. What has he to look forward to? His retirement pension in twenty years’ time. He has no children. His wife dislikes him. His home is a tip. Maybe he did it because, like his wife, he doesn’t care what happens to him, anything for a change, even prison."
"Bit extreme, isn’t it? People don’t really behave like that. "
" ’People don’t do such things,’ as Ibsen says? Maybe. Anyway, we have a far more likely suspect."
"We do?"
Wexford nodded. Then he said that he’d had it for today and how about a drink in the Olive and Dove? "I want to tell you a story."
They walked there, the length of the High Street. It was a mild evening of hazy sunshine, humid and still. A bereavement charity was holding a wine and cheese party in St. Peter’s Church Hall, but by the look of the trickle of visitors it was sparsely attended. Conversely, on its closure at six, crowds poured out of the Heaven Spent mali, laden with carrier bags, flushed from the triumph and deep inner fulfillment shopping brings. Wexford spotted Maria Michaels and Miroslav Zlatic among them. He thought about his lost raincoat and the dismal prospect of buying a new one, then about a previous visit to the Olive and Dove when a newspaper had taken a photograph of him with a beer tankard in his hand and printed it above a ribald legend. He had never forgotten it; he dreaded its happening again. But that had been outdoors, in the hotel garden, and this evening they would be in the quiet and seclusion of the landlord’s snug.
"You’re very silent," said Burden.
"I’m thinking. Anyway, I don’t think one can be ’very’ silent. You’re either silent or you’re not. It’s like saying someone is very dead."
"Like Devenish. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a dead man so many people were glad to be dead. Not a dissenting voice."
"I doubt if his children are glad, Mike. Children have a rare faculty of loving parents who are unworthy of their love. You might say children love their parents as a matter of course. It’s sad."
The garden of the Olive and Dove and its bar were crowded this evening, mostly with people under thirty, many probably under eighteen.
"In the United States they make you produce identification to show your age," Burden said.
"That’s fine if you’ve got any. If you don’t have a passport or a driving license or a rail pass, what then? Don’t tell me they do in America, I know that. The point is they don’t here."
No one was in the snug. It was too small and, with its only window overlooking a yard full of beer-can crates, too dimly lit to attract Kingsmarkham’s youth. The three tables had marble tops and the chairs were upholstered in worn, dark red leather. Another feature of the place, discouraging to many, was a notice on the wall that read don’t even think of smoking here. You either went to the bar and queued up or rang a brass bell for service. No one came in here otherwise.
They both asked for Adnams. It arrived in glasses, which pleased Wexford, though he had once preferred tankards. He hadn’t drunk out of a tankard—they called them mugs in here—since that never-to-be-forgotten day. He said an unaccustomed "Cheers" to Burden and took a long draft of his beer.
"Cheers," said Burden. "I’ve been thinking about that boy Edward, Edward Devenish. He could have killed his father. After he’d seen his mother come into the kitchen with her hand bleeding. He could have gone into the study, picked up the knife, and stabbed his father, taken him by surprise. He’s a big, strong boy, though not as tall as Devenish, and it’s someone shorter than Devenish we’re looking for."
"How about the blood, Mike? Did he cover up his clothes before he went in there? Or wash his clothes before he left for school? And what about Robert? Was he in it too? You’re forgetting what I said about children loving their parents."
"Maybe, but children do kill their parents, it’s not unknown, patricide. Yes, by the way, why do we call the act patricide and the perpetrator a parricide?"
Wexford said rather impatiently, "I don’t know," and uncharacteristically, "Does it matter?" He didn’t wait for an answer. "In France when they had capital punishment, parricides were sent to the guillotine barefoot and with their faces veiled. I read that somewhere. But Edward and Robert Devenish aren’t parricides." He hesitated. "I know who did this murder. And it wasn’t any of our suspects. I think," he added reflectively and rather sadly, "I’ve always known it."
Burden simply looked at him, saying nothing.
"I said I was going to tell you a story." Someone carried a crate of empty bottles out into the yard, dropping it with a crash. Wexford winced. "Silent," still less "very silent," were no longer descriptions that had much relevance. The countryside was as noisy as the town. He took another drink. Beer was still pretty good. "Fay Devenish and
her son Edward and, more or less, her son Robert, have told us a man, unknown to Edward, came to the front door of Woodland Lodge that Tuesday morning at eight a.m. Give or take a little, I suppose. It may have been two or three minutes to eight, or two or three minutes past. We also know that Stephen Devenish was stabbed to death, receiving three stab wounds to the chest, at some time between seven forty-five and eight-thirty.
"The scenario goes like this: At seven thirty-five or seven-forty, again give or take a little, Stephen Devenish, seriously displeased with his wife’s failure to provide fresh orange juice, gets up from the breakfast table, leaves the room, and goes into his study. Perhaps he shuts the door, perhaps he doesn’t. Fay, her sons, and her daughter, Sanchia, remain in the kitchen.
"Within five minutes Devenish calls out to his wife from the study—presumably from the study doorway. He calls out, ’Come in here, Fay,’ or even, knowing him, ’Come in here, darling.’ She knows what is going to happen and the boys probably know, but she goes. She hasn’t much choice, has she? If she doesn’t go, he’ll fetch her, drag her out of there, an act of violence which Sanchia will witness.
"She goes into the study. Devenish tells her she has to be punished, she’s a hopeless housewife and mother, she’s mad, she has to learn, and a load more of that stuff, no doubt. He tells her to hold out her hand and he cuts her across the palm. Probably she cries out. She may even scream out, loudly enough for the children in the kitchen to hear. Devenish wipes the knife clean on something— maybe his own handkerchief, which she will have to wash—and tells her to go. Her hand is bleeding heavily, so she goes across the hallway into the cloakroom where she holds it under the cold tap, then wraps it in the towel that hangs there."
"Okay," said Burden a little impatiently. "We know all that."
"Wait. The study door is left a little ajar. Fay goes back to the kitchen, her hand wrapped in the towel. Neither boy asks what has happened. They know. Fay tells them to get ready for school, it’s their last day of term, and they know they have to be at Mrs. Daley’s by five past eight.
