Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Oh, but there is. I must tell you that first thing this morning, before I came down here - I live in Gloucestershire - I got in touch with a private investigation agency Search and Find Limited of Bedford Square. I’ll give you their telephone number.’

  ‘Bedford Square, London?’ Wexford asked.

  ‘Is there another?’

  Wexford sighed. She would make an excellent witness, he thought, as he showed her to the door and closed it behind her. A drift of her perfume had wafted past him as for a moment she stood close by him, per fume and some other scent as well. It was - it couldn’t be - cannabis? It couldn’t be. Not at her age, in her position. The cologne she used must have some pot-like ingredient in it and his sometimes too-acute sense of smell had picked it out.

  He dismissed it from his mind. He hadn’t asked her how well she got on with her grandchildren and it was too late now. It was hard to imagine small children liking her, but Sophie and Giles were of course small no longer. Yet he couldn’t picture her being drawn to teenagers, making concessions to them, entering in any way into their interests. Would she, for instance, know what hip-hop was? Or gangsta rap? Or the identity and nature of Eminem? Would the availability of the morning-after pill mean anything to her and, if it did, would she censure it out of hand? She had, he thought, spoken of teenage mothers as of some alien species permitted to exist only by the dispensation of a merciful authority

  But what of this story of hers accounting for Joanna Troy’s abandonment of her profession? If it were true, why hadn’t the Dades revealed it? Why had Roger Dade been at some pains to cover it up? Wexford couldn’t fit Matilda Carrish, into the Dade menage at all. She seemed to have nothing in common with Roger except a physical resemblance. It was possible, of course, that she was a fantasist, that she had invented her account of Joanna’s stealing from a pupil. He knew better than to believe that because a woman or man seemed straight forward, direct, was articulate, avoided circumlocution and evasiveness, they must also be truthful and beyond deceit. One had only to think of successful conmen. He went to the window and looked out across the landscape. Waterlogged or not, the solid ground could still absorb more, was absorbing more. He could see the floods receding, the water sinking into somewhere still enough of a sponge to receive it, meadows reappearing, willows rising, their trunks free and their fine trailing branches swaying once more in the wind.

  Suppose, when the Brede became a river again and not a lake, a mud-coated blue four-door saloon VW Golf was revealed lying in what had been the deepest part. And suppose three bodies had failed to come to the surface when gases inflated them because the three people had all this time been inside the car. Reason told him this was impossible, that there was no way the car could have got into the deepest part unless it had been parked on the river bank and everyone inside it unconscious for the time it took for the water to rise to its highest level. Suppose this was so and they had been overcome by carbon monoxide fumes . . . Impossible, though this must be something like what Freeborn and Burden had in mind. And if so, when had Joanna Troy parked there? On Sunday morning? In heavy rain with a flood warning out? In any case, Giles wouldn’t have gone. He had to go to church...

  All this went round and round in Wexford’s head. He put on his raincoat from force of habit rather than because he needed it and went out to get himself a sandwich for his lunch. He could have sent someone but he wanted to look at the water levels at the same time. For the first time for nearly a fortnight the pavements were dry. He walked along the High Street and noted that St Peter’s churchyard was no longer flooded. Gravestones looked like what they were, markers of burial sites. They had ceased to be rocks protruding from the sea. The parapet of the Kingsbrook Bridge was clear, its roadway awash with mud drifts. As stonework and walls, lamp standards, bollards, signposts emerged from the receding flood, everything had a sodden look, not washed dean but soiled with tidemarks, mud-stained and draped with dirty waterweed. What was it going to cost, putting all this to rights? And what of the flooded houses, some of them twice engulfed since September? Would insurance companies pay up and would their owners ever be able to sell them?

  Going back, he made a detour up York Street to buy his sandwich. Kingsmarkham’s finest were to be obtained at the Savoy Sandwich Bar where they made them for you while you waited. He chose brown bread and smoked salmon, no spread. Dr Akande had forbidden butter except in minuscule amounts, had forbidden so many kinds of substitutes that Wexford couldn’t remember which. It was easier to do without but he asked for some watercress on the salmon, not because he liked it but because Akande did. The next customer, a small man wearing a clerical collar, asked for cheese and pickle, the cheapest kind they did. It was this which made Wexford linger, his suspicion confirmed when the man behind the counter called out to someone in the kitchen, ‘The usual for Mr Wright!’

  ‘You won’t know me,’ Wexford said when the sandwiches had been packaged and handed over. ‘Two of my officers interviewed you. Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham Crime Management.’

  Wright gave him an uncertain look. Many people did when they first met him, Wexford was used to it. They wondered what it was they had done and what he wanted them for. Wright’s wary expression gave way to a faint smile.

  ‘Giles Dade and his sister are still missing, I believe?’

  ‘Still missing.’

  They left the shop. Because Jashub Wright turned right and began walking in the direction of ‘the hut’ Wexford went that way too. The pastor of the Church of the Good Gospel talked about the floods. Everyone in Kingsmarkham and the villages talked constantly about the floods and would for weeks, months, to come. As he was speaking a pale sun, a mere pool of light, appeared among the clouds.

  ‘What sort of purity of life?’ Wexford asked when they paused in front of the church and its signboard with the sub-title.

  'All sorts really. Purity of mind and conduct. A sort of inward cleanness, if that doesn’t sound too much like the fashionable vogue for clearing the body of toxins.’ Wright laughed heartily at his joke. ‘You might say our aim is actually to clear mind, body and spirit of toxins.’

  Wexford had always had difficulty in establishing the difference between mind and spirit. Which was which and where were they? As for the soul. . . He said none of this but instead, very simply, ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘That’s a pretty big question to ask at midday out on the pavement.’ More hearty laughter.

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘If new members want to join the congregation they must make confession before they can be accepted. We hold a cleansing for them and they undertake not to commit the sin again. We understand about temptation and if they are tempted they have only to come to us - that is, to me and the church elders - and we give them all the help we can to resist whatever it is. Now if you’ll excuse me...’

  Wexford watched him enter the church by a side door. He wondered what on earth Burden had been thinking of to describe Wright as ‘decent’. That creepy laugh had made him shiver. The cleansing sounded ominous - how could you get in and witness it? Only by applying to join, he supposed, and he wasn’t as interested as that.

  ‘I’ve been away,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve been away for a fortnight. When I got home yesterday someone down the street told me Joanna had disappeared.’

  This was his second uninvited guest, a short dumpy woman of forty dressed in red. She had been waiting a long time and he had to bolt his sandwich to prevent her waiting any longer. Grumblings of heartburn troubled him. ‘And you are?’

  They had told him but only her Christian name, Yvonne, had stayed with him. ‘Yvonne Moody. I live next door to Joanna. There’s something I think you ought to know. I don’t know what those Dades have told you and Joanna’s father but if they’ve said she was fond of those kids and they were fond of her, they couldn’t be more wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs Moody?’

  ‘Miss,’ she said. ‘I’m not married I’ll tel
l you what I mean. First, you shouldn’t run away with the idea she and Katrina were best friends. Joanna may have been Katrina’s but Katrina wasn’t hers. Far from it. They’d nothing in common. I don’t know what brought them together in the first place, though I have my ideas. One day Joanna said she wasn’t going to have anymore to do with the family. But she did, though she’d come home and tell me that was the last time she’d babysit - well, not babysit but you know what I mean - she only did it for Katrina’s sake, she was sorry for Katrina, and the next week there she was, up there again.’

  ‘What did you mean, you have your ideas?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? She liked Roger Dade - liked him too well, I mean. The way no one should let herself think about a married man. I don’t know him, I’ve only come across the son, but whatever he’s like it was wrong what she was doing She s said to me once or twice that if Katrina went on the way she did, all those scenes and tears arid drama, she’d lose him. If that doesn’t tell you she meant she’d step into her shoes I don’t know what does. I told her she was heading for trouble besides behaving immorally. You can commit adultery in your heart just as much as in the flesh. I said that but she laughed and refused to-discuss it.’

  Wexford wasn’t surprised. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to expose his private life to this woman Just as Burden came into the room his phone rang and he was told the Assistant Chief Constable was on the line.

  ‘You can go ahead now, Reg. Tomorrow we can be certain ‘ Freeborn sounded mildly embarrassed ‘There’s, er, nothing down there.’ Would he have preferred to - find three corpses and a waterlogged car?

  Burden had been over to Framhurst where the floods were disappearing fast. ‘As if someone had pulled the plug out,’ he said. ‘By this time tomorrow you’ll be able to see the fields again.’

  Wexford thought this a bit over-optimistic ‘What do we make of the sanctimonious Yvonne Moody? If it’s true what she says, why would abducting the Dade kids help Joanna? Surely it would be more likely to put the Dades against her for ever, both of them. Or is every thing Ms Moody says a lie?’

  ‘Who knows? You have to admit there are some funny aspects about this case. I mean, what on earth did Katrina have in common with a highly educated single woman fourteen or fifteen years younger than herself? Katrina may have admired her greatly, which one can imagine, but Joanna? What this Moody woman says does provide a reason for Joanna’s friendship with Katrina, it would account for her going over there to look after the children. But there’s so much about the lot of them we don’t know. For instance, that weekend seems to have been the first time she’d stayed in the house...’

  ‘No, I asked. Back last April or May, they couldn’t remember which, she stayed overnight while the Dades went off to some estate agents’ bunfight in London. Roger didn’t want to drive back in case he was over the limit.’

  Burden nodded. ‘OK. The other occasions she’d only have been there for the evening, but there may have been times when she sat in so that Katrina could go out while Roger was working late. Only he got home earlier than he expected or earlier than he’d told Katrina. Other times she may have deliberately come without her car so that he had to drive her home.’

  ‘I’d never have suspected you were such an expert on seduction, not to say adultery.’

  The once-widowed, twice-married Burden said frankly, ‘Well, as you know, I’ve committed what they used to call fornication but never adultery. Still, you pick up this stuff in our line of business.’

  ‘True. Your solution is ingenious but it doesn’t help with why she took the kids, if she did. Stealing a twenty-pound note is hardly a rehearsal for stealing two people. However, when your weather forecast comes true tomorrow or whenever and we know for sure the car and those three were never down there, we can proceed to find out more.’

  ‘Better start by asking all the dentists in the United Kingdom to be on the watch for a young woman coming to them with a missing tooth crown. Or asking them if any young woman has already come to them.’

  ‘We can try said Wexford, ‘but if she’s as intelligent as you say, and I dare say she is, though that website could have fooled me, she’d guess wed check up on dentists and instead of getting the crown professionally fixed she’ll have been back to the pharmacist and bought another pack of that adhesive stuff.’

  Chapter 7

  As the floods subsided, among the detritus left behind were a bicycle, two supermarket trolleys, an umbrella with spokes but no cover, the usual crisp packets, Coke cans, condoms, single trainers, miscellaneous clothes as well as a wicker chair, a prototype video recorder and a Turkey carpet.

  Wexford expected a further directive from Freeborn but none came. He phoned headquarters and was told the Assistant Chief Constable had started on a week of his annual leave. ‘We proceed, I think, don’t you?’ he said to Burden.

  ‘Is there any point in checking on where all these sweatshirts and jeans come from? Some of them are barely recognisahle, they’re in shreds.’

  ‘Get Lynn on it. It can’t do any harm. Our priorities are the parents and a further investigation of Joanna Troy’s background.’

  Early that morning, as soon as it began to be light, he had carried out a survey of his garden. A depressing business. It wasn’t that he was much of a gardener himself. He didn’t know the names of many plants, knew nothing of their Latin or Linnaean names, had never understood what needs sunshine, what shade, what plenty of water, what very little. But he liked to look at it. He liked to sit in it of a summer evening, enjoying the scents and the quiet and the beauty as pale flowers closed their petals for the night. Although Browning’s poem itself revolted him, the awful adjectives like ‘lovesome’ - God walks in gardens indeed! - he agreed with the sentiment. His garden was the veriest seat of peace. Now it looked like a swamp and worse, the kind of marsh that has been irresponsibly drained and abandoned as a waste land. Things which had grown there and which he had known as ‘that lovely red thing’ or ‘the one with the wonderful scent’ had either disappeared entirely or survived as a bunch of wet sticks. It was Dora he felt sorrier for than himself. She had done it, chosen the plants and shrubs, tended them, loved the place. Only the lawn seemed to have come out of the water unscathed, a brilliant, yellowish, evil green.

  He went indoors, took off his boots and searched for the shoes he’d left somewhere. Dora was on the phone. She said, ‘That’s for you to decide, isn’t it?’ and he knew it must be something unpleasant, something he wouldn’t want to know.

  She said goodbye and put the receiver down. Only one person apart from Burden ever phoned at eight in the morning, and she’d never speak in that crushing tone to Mike.

  ‘You’d better tell me what Sylvia’s up to now.’

  ‘Cal’s moving in with her. Apparently, it’s been suggested before but Neil made a fuss. On account of the boys, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. So would I.’

  ‘He seems to have withdrawn his objections now he’s got someone of his own.’

  He thought about these things now as he had him self driven to Forest Road. Had he and Dora been exceptionally lucky in that their marriage had endured? Or was it rather that in their day people worked harder at marriage, divorce if not actually disgraceful was a distant last resort, you married and you stayed married? If his first wife had lived would Burden’s marriage have endured? He couldn’t recall any child in his class at his own school whose natural mother and father weren’t together. Among his parents’ friends and neighbours no one was divorced. So were half those marriages deeply and secretly unhappy? Did their homes ring with frequent bitter quarrels conducted in the presence of their children, his classmates? No one would ever know. He disliked even thinking of the feelings of his son-in-law Neil, whom he was fond of and who loved his children. Now he would see these boys in the care of what amounted to a new father of whom they would perhaps grow fonder. Would he also give them a new step mother? And all because he
bored Sylvia and hadn’t talked to her much. Maybe that was unfair but wasn’t this Cal the most awful crashing bore? With time his looks would fade and his sexual prowess, if that was also part of the attraction, would wane...

  Banish it from your mind, he told himself as he and Vine made their way to the last street in Kingsmarkham. This would be his first meeting with George and Effie Troy, though Vine had met and talked to them before. He noted the girth of George, fatter than he, Wexford, had been at the worst of his overeating, and a lot less tall. His wife had an interesting face and manner, a woman of character. These little Gothic houses, of which there were a number scattered around Kingsmarkham and Pomfret, looked quaint but were poky and dark, comfort, even when they were first built, sacrificed to some mistaken idea - the Oxford Movement and then Ruskin, he thought vaguely - that England would be a better place if mediaevalised. He seated himself in a chair far too small for him.

  Already, after having only exchanged a few words with the Troys, he knew that Effie would speak for them both. Effie would be the coherent one, the less emotional one, and the question he had to ask was highly emotive.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you about this and I wouldn’t if I didn’t think it necessary.’ The dark-browed face, the dark eyes, were turned on him inscrutably. ‘I’ve learned that your daughter gave up teaching because she was accused of stealing money from one of the students.’

  ‘Who told you such a thing?’ It was the father who asked, not the stepmother.

  ‘That I’m not at liberty to tell you. Is it true?’

  Effie Troy spoke slowly, in measured tones. Wexford suddenly thought that if you had to have a stepmother, the way his grandsons would, this might not be such a bad one to have. ‘It’s true that Joanna was accused by a boy of sixteen of taking a twenty-pound note out of his back pack. He later, er, recanted. This is some few years ago. You’re right when you say she “gave up” teaching because of this. She did, of her own volition. She wasn’t sacked or asked to resign. She was never charged with stealing.’