Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  Thekla Wright answered the door. Wexford had never seen her before and was a little taken aback. She was blonde and very pretty but the way she was dressed - what did her clothes remind him of? It came to him when they were on the threshold of the living room. A photograph he’d once seen of the wives of a Mormon in Utah, polygamy long illegal but a blind eye turned to it. They had been dressed like Thekla Wright or she was dressed like them, her frock faded cotton print mid-calf length, her bare legs covered in fuzzy blonde hair, her feet in flat sandals of the Start-rite kind children had worn in his pebble-dashing days. Her long hair was looped up untidily with combs and grips.

  He had expected to see Jashub Wright alone but the pastor’s wife opened the door to disclose inside a gathering that made him think of a function he had never attended but only heard about, a prayer meeting. He had to stop himself staring. Probably most of the chairs the Wrights possessed were arranged in a circle and on each one, eight out of the ten, sat a man. They weren’t dressed in striped trousers and frock coats and they weren’t wearing stovepipe hats but for a moment he had the illusion they were. All were in suits with shirts and ties. All had very short hair. They rose to their feet as one when he and Lynn came in and Lynn got some very strange looks. He thought Mrs Wright had left them because her baby was crying but perhaps not, perhaps she had gone because they excluded women from their counsels. But Jashub Wright stepped forward with outstretched hand. Wexford ignored it - he was practised in this - and introduced Lynn, expecting verbal disapproval. But there was none, only a rather oppressive silence.

  Wexford sat down and Lynn did. Now all the chairs were occupied. Before he could begin one of the men spoke and he saw he had come to a conclusion too soon.

  ‘I am an elder of the United Gospel Church. My name is Hobab Winter.’ He glanced quickly at Lynn and away. In that glance a feminist would have detected fear of women. ‘It’s my duty to point out that females are not normally present at our meetings but we will make an exception in this case.’

  Wexford said nothing but Lynn spoke up, as he was sure she would. ‘Why not?’ No one answered and she repeated what she had said. ‘I’d really like to know why not.’

  It was the pastor who replied, in a genial and friendly tone, as if Lynn couldn’t fail to appreciate what he was saying. ‘We must never forget that it was a woman who brought about man’s fall.’

  Lynn was evidently too stunned for an immediate riposte and when after a few seconds she opened her mouth, Wexford whispered for no one’s ears but hers, ‘DC Fancourt, not now. Leave it.’ She said nothing but he was aware of the tremor of rage running through her. He spoke quickly. ‘May I have your names, please? So that we know what we’re doing.’

  One by one the circle uttered them, preceded by their titles, Elder, Reader, Officer, Deputy Very odd, he thought. ‘Now would someone tell me about this ceremony that takes place in the wood at Passingham Hall twice a year in January and July? Presumably this is the cleansing ritual you once mentioned to me.’

  ‘The ritual, as you call it, though we prefer another name, will not be taking place there this January Not in view of the circumstances.’

  ‘So if you don’t call it that what do you call it?’

  ‘It is our Confessional Congregation.’

  They certainly weren’t anxious to be forthcoming. Wexford looked at the circle of men. Some of them were vaguely familiar to him, he had seen them about in Kingsmarkham. Each face was calm, enclosed, mild. They were rather alike, not one could have been described as good-looking, all had roundish faces, all were clean-shaven with small eyes and small mouths, though the noses varied in shape and size and the hair colour varied where much hair could be seen. Every face was curiously unlined, though somehow he could tell the youngest was in his thirties and the oldest in his six ties. If he was still alive and if he stayed with them, would Giles Dade come to look like this one day?

  ‘What happens at the Confessional Congregation?’ he asked.

  ‘Church members attend.’ Jashub Wright was laconic. ‘New members confess their sins and are absolved. Cleansed. Purified. As I said to you once before, their bodies and spirits are cleared of toxins. Afterwards biscuits and Coke and lemonade are served. Women are involved in the catering arrangements, of course.’ Once again he smiled gently at Lynn who looked away. ‘Miss Moody is in charge of that. The people are very happy, they rejoice, they sing, they claim the new member as their own. Each new member has a mentor - one of the elders, of course - assigned to him. Or her. To prevent him sliding back into sin.’

  ‘Who did you say was in charge of the catering?’

  ‘Miss Yvonne Moody. She is one of our most deeply committed members.’

  They left the room for a brief interval.

  ‘She came to us of her own accord, sir, and she did admit to knowing Giles Dade,’ Lynn said. ‘You can’t say she’s tried to deceive us.’

  ‘No, I dare say not. But it’s interesting in various ways, isn’t it? She knew Joanna Troy well, she lived next door to her, and she knew Giles through her church. Not only that. She knew about the clearing Shand-Gibb calls the Dancing Floor and therefore the existence of the quarry and the way through the wood to reach it. I revoke “I dare say not”. She did deceive us. She came to us of her own accord because she saw that as the best way to project her innocence. Let’s go back in there.’

  The circle of members was as they had left it, the faces still serene, mild, inscrutable. Wexford noticed what he hadn’t before, a faintly unpleasant smell pervading the small room. It took him a moment to realise this was the odour of eight lounge suits, worn daily but dry-cleaned seldom. He sat down again.

  ‘How are you - maybe I should say, how did you - get to the site of the Confessional Congregation? By car?’

  ‘Certainly by car,’ Wright said. ‘Occasionally some people went by train and station taxi but these means are difficult as well as costly. Our members in general are not well-off, Mr Wexford.’ The circle indicated its approval by vigorous nods. ‘Besides that, there was always limited parking space at Passingham Hall and Mr Buxton didn’t care for us leaving cars outside his house. Add to that the limited incomes of our members and you will understand that we usually attended three or four to a car. That is the prudent way.’

  ‘So any members of the United Gospel Church’, said Burden, ‘would know how to get to Passingham St John, the location of the drive to Passingham Hall, the way into the wood and the whereabouts of the quarry?’

  ‘Broadly speaking, yes.’ It was the man called Hobab Winter who replied. Where did they get these names? Not from their god-fathers and godmothers at their baptism, Wexford was sure. They must have adopted them later. ‘Of course, as we’ve said, some would be passengers in other people’s cars. Some can’t drive. One or two come by train and take a taxi from Passingham Park station.’

  If he had been going to say more, Jashub Wright cut him short. ‘To what are these questions tending?’

  Wexford spoke sharply, ‘To finding, arresting and bringing to trial the murderer of Joanna Troy, Mr Wright. And to locating Giles and Sophie Dade.’ He paused. ‘Dead or alive,’ he said.

  Wright nodded silently but with an air of offence. His wife’s voice from outside summoned him to the door and he held it open for her to pass through, carrying a tray. On it were ten tumblers of something pale-yellow and fizzy. Lynn took hers with an expression on her face that almost made Wexford laugh. The drink was lemonade but a surprisingly good home-made kind.

  ‘I take it you are all present at Confessional Congregations? Yes. I’d like your full names and addresses and . . .‘ he dropped his bombshell ‘. . . I shall want to know where each of you were on Saturday, the twenty-fifth of November last, between ten a.m. and midnight.’

  He expected a chorus of indignation but the faces remained impassive and only the pastor himself protested. ‘Alibis? You’re not serious.’

  ‘Indeed I am, Mr Wright. Now perhaps you’ll do as I
ask and give your names to DC Fancourt.’

  Wright made an attempt at a joke but his tone was sour. ‘Round up the usual suspects,’ he said.

  Back in his office, Wexford regarded the list. The seven were called Hobab Winter, Pagiel Smith, Nun Plummer, Ev Taylor, Nemuel Morrison, Hanoch Crane and Zurishaddai Wilton. The first names were grotesque, the surnames uncompromisingly English. Not only were there no Asian names among them - he would have known that from the Good Gospellers’ appearance - but none of Scots or Welsh origin, never mind any incomers from the continent of Europe. He wondered if all this meant they were subject to adult baptism when they joined the Gospel Church and received new names as people converted to Judaism did.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he said to Burden. ‘These odd Christian sects, they used to be called Dissenters, Nonconformists, I don’t know what they are now, they all go on and on about the gospel but they’re hooked on names out of the Old Testament, old Jewish names in fact, while Jews never are. You’d expect them to have names like John and Mark and Luke and whatever but they don’t, they think those are Catholic names.’

  ‘I know a Jewish chap who’s called Moses, and you can’t get more OT than that. And my Sons are called John and Mark, but I’m not Catholic.’

  ‘No, you’re not anything and nor am I. Forget it. I know what I mean if you don’t. Barry and Karen and Lynn are checking on alibis and we are going to see Yvonne Moody but this time we’ll go to her.’

  There was one question he had failed to ask the elders and officers of the United Gospel Church but it was to be some time before he realised what it was.

  The little town house where Joanna Troy had lived looked forlorn. Perhaps that was only because they knew it was empty and its owner gone for ever. A bay tree in a tub which, if Joanna had returned home on Monday, 27 November, would no doubt have been taken indoors for the winter out of the rain, snow and frost, had succumbed to one of these dire weather conditions and become a shivering pillar of brown leaves that rattled in the wind. The rain had given way to a whitish mist, not dense enough to be called a fog but obscuring the horizon.

  Inside one of the panes in a downstairs window of Yvonne Moody’s house was pasted a notice which announced that a ‘Winter Fayre’ would be held at the Good Gospel Church, York Street, Kingsmarkham on Saturday, 20 January. All welcome. Tea, cakes, stalls, games and bumper raffle.’ She made no secret of her affiliation, Wexford thought. But really he had no justification for supposing she did, only the sneaking feeling that an honest woman when referring to Giles Dade would have said, ‘I’ve only come across the son, he belongs to my church,’ instead of leaving out reference to the church altogether. ‘When they were inside, seated in a cluttered living room that smelt strongly of spring time meadow air freshener, he asked her why not.

  ‘It wasn’t important,’ she said and added, ‘I didn’t think it was your business, frankly.’

  ‘But you thought it was our business to hear about a possible relationship between Roger Dade and Joanna?’

  ‘It was useful information, wasn’t it? Adultery con tributes to murder. I know that. Not from experience, certainly not, but from what I’ve seen on TV. Half those serials and dramas are about that sort of thing. Of course I’m careful what I watch. Half those things I have to avoid, it wouldn’t be suitable for a woman committed to Jesus as I am.’

  She might be rather attractive, he thought, if she weren’t bulging almost indecently out of her green jersey trouser suit. He looked, then out of politeness tried not to look, at the double bosom she seemed to have, her true breasts and the roll of fat underneath them and above her too tightly belted waist. Her dark frizzy hair was held back by an Alice band, the kind of headgear he believed no woman should wear after the age of twenty. She wore a lot of heavy make-up, so presumably the Gospellers hadn’t latched on to biblical strictures against paint and adornment.

  ‘Did you like your next-door neighbour, Ms Moody?’

  ‘You can call me Miss. I’m not ashamed of my virginity Burden was blinking his eyes rapidly. ‘Like her? I didn’t dislike her. I pitied her. We always pity sinners, don’t we? I’d be sorry for anyone so lost to God and duty as to contemplate adultery with a married man. That poor boy Giles. I was sorry for him.’

  ‘Why was that?’ Burden asked her.

  ‘Fifteen years old, on the threshhold of manhood, and subject to her influence. He was old enough to see what went on between her and his father if his sister wasn’t. The corruption of the innocent makes you shiver.’

  Did she always go on like this? Could her friends stand it? But perhaps she had none. ‘When did you last attend one of the Good Gospel Church’s Confessional Congregations, Ms Moody?’

  She sighed, perhaps only because once again he had failed to pay tribute to her maidenhood. ‘I couldn’t go last July. I organised the food and drink but I didn’t actually go. My mother was unwell. She lives in Aylesbury and she’s very old, nearly ninety. Of course I realise this can’t go on, she’ll have to come and live here with me. These things are sent to try us, aren’t they?’

  Neither Wexford nor Burden had an opinion on this. ‘So you haven’t been for a year but you know the place pretty well? Passingham Hall grounds, I mean.’

  Was she wary or was it his imagination? ‘I don’t know if I could find my way there if someone else wasn’t taking me. Mr Morrison usually takes me, Mr Nemuel Morrison that is. And his wife, of course. I haven’t a car of my own, I don’t drive.’

  ‘You don’t or you can’t?’ Burden asked.

  ‘I can but I don’t. The traffic has become too heavy and too dangerous for me. I never go far except to my mother and I do that by train.’ She began to tell them in detail the route she took from Kingsmarkham to Aylesbury; the train to Victoria, tube across London, train from Marylebone. ‘I did once go to Passingham by train. All the cars were f you see. It was an awful journey but worth it in such a good cause. It was Kingsmarkham to Toxborough, then the local train Toxborough to Passingham Park and then a taxi, but the taxi ride was only two miles. Mind you, I could afford a car. I’ve got a very good job in management.’

  ‘We’d like to know where you were on the twenty-fifth of November of last year,’ Wexford said. ‘That was very likely the night on which Joanna Troy died. Can you account for your movements? The period we’re interested in is from ten a.m. on Saturday until midnight.’

  Questioning about alibis often elicited an angry response from people who were not necessarily suspects but simply had to be eliminated from enquiries. But seldom had either officer’s simple query met with such a storm of indignation.

  ‘You’re accusing me of killing Joanna? You must be mad or very wicked. No one’s ever said anything like that to me in all my life.’

  ‘Ms Moody, you’re accused of nothing. All we are doing is - well, crossing people off a list. Naturally, we have a list of the people who knew Joanna, that’s all. Knew her. You’re on that list just as her father and step mother are and we would like to cross you off.’

  She was mollified. Her face, which she had contorted into a grimace of fury and disgust, relaxed a little and her hands, closed into tight fists, loosened. ‘You’d better cross me off here and now,’ she said. ‘I was in Aylesbury with my mother. I can tell you exactly when I went there and when I came back and I can do it without looking it up. I had a phone call from her neighbour on the twenty-third of November and went up there next day. Once again I had to get off work, take the rest of my annual leave. By the time I got to my mother’s house she’d been taken into hospital. Anyone up there will tell you I was staying in her house that weekend and visiting the hospital twice a day - well, not the Saturday afternoon, she was having some procedures, had to be sedated, and there was no point in me going till next morning. The neighbours will all tell you I was in the house on my own all evening.’

  ‘The neighbours’, said Wexford as he and Burden enjoyed a quiet pint in the nearest pub, ‘will tell us they didn’t s
ee her or hear her or hear any sounds from the house but they know she was there, where else would she be?’

  ‘But we’ll have to ask them. She could have got to Passingham Hall that evening and back probably but it would have taken a very long time. I’m sure she wasn’t involved.’

  ‘Maybe. Leave that for a moment and get back to Joanna herself. I think the contents of that overnight bag of hers point to the time they all three left, or perhaps I should say, were taken from, the Dades’ house.’

  ‘You mean it must have been late at night because Joanna was apparently wearing - well, a nightdress. That’s what girls wear those oversize T-shirts for.’

  ‘Do they, indeed?’ said Wexford, grinning, And how would you know? But, no, that wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘No, because she could just as easily have been killed on Sunday morning at that rate. She could still have been wearing that T-shirt.’

  ‘Mike,’ said Wexford, ‘she was an early riser. Jennings told us so. Don’t you remember? When he was talking I about her energy? She always gets up at six thirty he says, same at the weekends. Always gets showered and dressed, he said, or words to that effect. In that bag of hers she had two sets of underwear among the soiled clothes, one set for Friday, one set for Saturday, and one set unworn. Those were for Sunday. Therefore they were taken from the house on Saturday night and probably quite late at night.’

  Burden nodded. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘And now I’m going home,’ said Wexford, ‘to look up these loony names in the Old Testament and maybe the voters’ list on the Internet too, find out what these Good Gospel people are really called.’