Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ said Burden, ‘but those missing children posters are all over the place this morning. More thanever. No one’s told Search and Find Limited that Sophie’s turned up.’

  ‘They’ll know by now. Of course, there’s no one to tell them now Matilda Carrish is dead.’

  ‘Unless she’s given them some payment in advance,’ Burden said, ‘they’ll call their dogs off. They’d be daft to expect to recover what they’re owed from Roger. Some hopes.’

  When Wexford and Karen got to Antrim only Mr and Mrs Bruce and Sophie appeared to be at home. No explanation for the absence of Roger and Katrina Dade was offered and Wexford didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. The first question he put to Sophie was unexpected. She had obviously hoped to be allowed to proceed with the departure of the three of them from the house, and for a moment she looked disconcerted.

  'Where is Giles now?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m trying to be helpful but I can’t be because I just don’t know.’

  ‘Because your grandmother didn’t tell you?’

  ‘I asked. Matilda said it was better for me not to know so that if anyone asked me like you’re asking now I wouldn’t have to lie, I just wouldn’t know.’

  It made sense. Matilda Carrish had sent Giles some where to be safe. . . . But safe from what? And why had she done it? Why had she done any of it? Why receive the children in the first place? Now was the time to test Sophie’s truth-telling. “Where were we? Ah, yes, you heard a noise and a scream and came running out of your room ...’

  ‘We’d got past that.’

  ‘Maybe. I’d like to hear it again, though.’

  She caught on where many three times her age hadn’t seen through his ruse. She knew quite well what he was doing. ‘Giles came out of his bedroom. It’s right at the top of the stairs. Peter was down in the hall feeling Joanna’s neck and her pulse. He looked up at us and said, She s dead. After a bit he tried to lift her up but he couldn’t and he had to get Giles to help him. They put her on the sofa. Peter got a cloth and wiped up the blood, there wasn’t much, but he said he needed a scrubbing brush and water. I told him where it was and he fetched the brush. But before he started on it he said he needed brandy and Giles gave him some but he wouldn’t have another because he was going to drive.’

  'All right, Sophie, that’s fine.’ He wasn’t imagining it, she looked triumphant.

  ‘He scrubbed the carpet,’ she said, ‘and wiped the side of the cupboard and then he said we must pack up her stuff to take with us.’

  ‘Take with you where?’ Karen asked.

  ‘He didn’t say. He just said we had to get Joanna’s body out of there. OK, I know what you’re thinking - why didn’t I just say no? I don’t know why. I don’t know why Giles didn’t. I suppose we thought we’d helped him clear up and I’d packed Joanna’s case and Giles had helped lift her, he helped carry her out to the car as well. We were sort of involved, you see. Look, I thought if we stayed I’d have to tell my father, I could imagine the questioning, all his shit, you don’t know how he goes ballsing on. We’d get blamed, I knew that.’

  ‘It was pouring with rain; they got soaked out there. I put on my old anorak because Peter said the yellow one would attract attention, though there wasn’t any attention, it was one in the morning and raining like the end of the world was coming …’

  Karen interrupted. ‘What were they wearing, Joanna and Peter? When she went down the stairs, however it was?’

  ‘She had just a T-shirt on, a long one that sort of came to her knees. He was in pants, you know, under pants. Nothing else. But after he’d cleaned up in the hall he put on the clothes he’d been wearing, jeans and a shirt and a sweatshirt. We all went upstairs and Giles and me, we got dressed and we made our beds, we made them look the way they do when the cleaner does them.’ She laughed. ‘You can if you try. Then we shut all the bedroom doors. No, before that Peter said to take something with us to make it look as if we’d drowned. He said there’d be flooding and the river would - what do they call it? Burst its banks.’

  ‘He said that?’ Almost for the first time she had said something Wexford simply couldn’t believe. The man was a prophet? That was before any of the floods began.

  ‘Why not?’ She sounded aggressively like her father. ‘It was on the news at ten. There were flood warnings out all over the south.’

  ‘All right. What did you take with you?’

  ‘A T-shirt with my face on it and my name. It was cool but it got too tight. We had one done for me and one for Giles when we were in Florida.’

  ‘So you left the house - at what time?’

  ‘It was about two by then. He had to put the wind screen wipers on at double speed or he wouldn’t have been able to see, it was raining so hard . . .’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Karen. ‘This was Joanna’s car, right? What about his car? He arrived in the evening by car, didn’t he?’

  Sophie hadn’t thought of that or she genuinely didn’t know? Hard to tell. ‘He never said. Maybe he didn’t come in a car, he could have walked, or else he left his car out in the street.’

  ‘Unless he came back for it on the Sunday - a risky thing to do - it would still be there if he had.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. You can’t expect me to know everything.’ Wexford thought she was going to repeat that she was only a child but she didn’t. ‘The river was rising. You could still get over the Kingsbrook Bridge but it looked as if you soon wouldn’t. Peter said to drop the T-shirt over the wall - what d’you call it? The parapet - and I did. Did anyone ever find it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was found.’

  ‘I want it back. It was groovy. Did they think we’d drowned?’

  ‘Some did.’

  ‘I bet my mother did. She’s poop, you know. Two tracks short of a CD, Giles says. Or he did when he was skill. Before he got all Christian and good. D’you want to know what happened next?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I hadn’t a clue where we were going. I thought it didn’t matter. I just thought Peter would look after us. He seemed sort of quite kind and friendly. I did notice when we went across the county boundary There was a sign by the road said “Welcome to Kent”.’

  ‘I was quite interested by then in where we were going. Peter knew. He wasn’t just driving somewhere, anywhere. We left the main road and came to a village and there was another sign saying it was a place called Passingham St John.’ Sophie pronounced it as it was spelt. ‘Peter said that was wrong,’ she said, ‘it should be Passam Sinjen. You could tell he knew it well.’

  ‘He drove down a track - well, more a sort of lane. About halfway down was a track leading into a wood. It was quite wet and manky and I thought the car might get stuck but it didn’t. There was a big open space and on the other side of that was this quarry. All in among the trees. Peter stopped there. He said we were going to sit there for an hour because it was still only about three and once we’d got rid of the car we wouldn’t have any shelter. It was still raining but not as much as it had been at home. I think I fell asleep for a bit. I don’t know if Giles did. When I woke up it was still raining but not as much.'

  ‘Peter got Giles to help him carry Joanna into the driving seat. I sat in the back while this was going on, but he made me get out to help push. We all pushed as hard as we could till the car went over the edge. It didn’t turn over, it just slid and bounced a bit an came to a stop when it got caught in bushes. You could still see it all right but only if you really looked.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll break for ten minutes.’

  ‘You could tell he knew it well,’ she had said. He had driven there in the dark, in the rain, apparently without difficulty. He was called Peter. . . Yet Buxton had seemed such a fool. If all this were true - and how could it not be? - he must be a consummate actor.

  They went back into the room and Mrs Bruce came in with So
phie. She brought three cups of tea on a tray and a glass of Coke. Her granddaughter looked at it and said, ‘Real people drink it out of the can.’

  ‘Just for once then, you’ll have to be an unreal person, dear.’

  Karen began the questioning. ‘You and Giles and Peter were in the wood at - what? Four o’clock in the morning? - with no car and no future plan. Is that right?’

  The girl nodded. She made a face over her Coke.

  ‘There’s a house at the bottom of the lane. Did you go to the house?’

  ‘I didn’t see any house. I didn’t know there was one. We went to the station.’

  Like some commuter on a routine journey to the office. . . ‘What station?’

  ‘I don’t know. Passingham something. Passingham Park. There’s not a park there. It means people can park their cars but there weren’t any there. It was too early.’

  ‘How did you get to Passingham Park?’ Wexford asked.

  ‘We walked. I suppose we had to. It was a long walk along a lot of lanes but Peter knew the way. They were just opening the station when we got there. We were very wet, soaked through. Then that dumb-ass Peter said he was leaving us, we were to stay away for a week and then we could go back home and say what we liked, he’d be out of the country by then. He wrote down an address and gave it to Giles and said we could stay there. The first train would be along a bit after five. We went into the station and he bought tickets for us. Out of the machine. We had to go over the bridge but he didn’t come with us. He gave Giles some money and said goodbye and good luck or something like that. We waited on the platform and the train came along at around five fifteen.’

  ‘That would be the Kingsmarkham-Toxborough-Victoria main line?’ Karen said.

  ‘I suppose. It did go to Victoria because that’s where we got out. We were still thinking then that we’d go to the address Peter had given us but Giles said, no, we’ll go to Matilda. It was a bit past six, too early to phone her, but we had to get across London to Paddington Station and we got into a muddle about that. We haven’t been in the London tube much and when we changed from the first line we got into a train going the wrong way, so it was nearly seven when we got to Paddington. Giles had some money of his own and the money Peter had given him. The cafeteria was open and we bought rolls and cheese and bananas and ate them, and we had two cans of Sprite and then Giles went to find a phone box. He’s got a wix phone but he’d left it at home.’

  ‘A mobile,’ said Karen.

  ‘Matilda said to come straight away, she’d come to Kingham station and meet us. Kingham’s the nearest station to where she lives. We bought two tickets to Kingham and got a train at seven thirty...’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Karen. ‘Your grandmother just said to come straight away? Giles had presumably told her you’d left home and gave her some reason for that and she didn’t want to know any more, she didn’t question any of this, she just said to come? I don’t believe you, Sophie.’

  ‘I can’t help that. That was what happened. She didn’t like my parents you know. She couldn’t stand Mum.’

  ‘Even so. . . Let it go for now. You went by train to Kingham, your grandmother met you there and you stayed at her house with her. No one thought of phoning your parents to say you were safe? Peter only told you to stay away for a week. Why didn’t you go home after a week?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I hate it here and I liked it with Matilda. Matilda was deep...’

  ‘Deep?’ Wexford looked helplessly at Karen and Karen said, ‘I think it just means “cool”, sir.’

  Sophie made a disgusted face. ‘Giles had gone, any way. He went away next day. I didn’t want to be at home alone with them.’

  ‘Giles went away?’ Wexford said. ‘Where did he go? Why did he?’

  ‘Matilda said he ought to go. They didn’t talk about it in front of me, so I don’t know what she said or why. I told you. If I didn’t know I couldn’t tell, could I?’

  ‘The police came - where were you then?’

  She smiled, then laughed. ‘The first time I just went up into one of the bedrooms. Matilda said they wouldn’t search for us, not in the home of an old woman and a celebrity, she said. Then, when you came, I hid in the cupboard in the room where you were talking. I thought how manky it would be if I sneezed.’

  ‘And all this’, Wexford said, ‘was set up by Matilda Carrish? She knew how anxious your parents were, she must have known every police force in the country was looking for you, she even came to us to complain we weren’t doing enough.’

  ‘She thought it was funny. She left me alone in the house that day she went to London with strict instructions not to go out. I never did go out. I didn’t mind, it was raining all the time. I’d done enough walking that night to last me my life.’

  ‘How about these private investigators? These Search and Find people? She took them on, she must have made a down payment. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘She said it would make people think she couldn’t be to blame. It was cool, wasn’t it? Really skill. She knew they’d not search her place and they’d never find Giles, she said.’

  Wexford shook his head. Usually able to see the funny side of almost everything (as his wife put it) he found nothing in the least amusing here, in spite of the girl’s twitching lips and barely suppressed enjoyment of the situation. For all that, his next words hadn’t been intended to bring her down to earth quite so violently.

  ‘Well, she’s dead now. She’s beyond explaining to us.’

  Sophie knew she was dead as well as anyone did, but this reminder crushed her. She lifted a suddenly woeful face. ‘She was jammy, I loved her and she loved me. That’s more than anyone else does. Excepting Giles, she was the only one I loved.’ And she broke down in a storm of tears.

  At the beginning of this case, Wexford said to himself, I said they weren’t the babes in the wood. Now I’m not so sure.

  In the afternoon they began again, but this time Burden was with Wexford and her father with Sophie. Wexford didn’t like it and Sophie obviously loathed him being there but there was nothing he could do. Understandably, Doreen Bruce had had enough. But he was sure Roger Dade’s presence would make the girl clam up. He hoped he wouldn’t have to reprove him too often for interfering. Of Katrina there had been no sign all day.

  As it happened, Dade hardly spoke and certainly he made no attempt to stop his daughter speaking, but sat with closed eyes in morose silence, seemingly indifferent to police questioning and Sophie’s answers. Though he began by once more probing into Matilda Carrish’s extraordinary willingness to take in and hide her grand children, Wexford’s aim at this session was to discover as much as he could of Giles’s possible whereabouts. He was disinclined to believe the girl when she insisted she didn’t know. But he started with Matilda.

  ‘I find it hard to believe your grandmother took you in without question. She simply agreed to take you in and lie to the police? Did she give you any explanation, tell you, for instance, why she was doing this?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about it,’ Sophie said. ‘Giles told her what had happened to us and I told her. We told her in the car going back from the station. She just said she was glad we’d come to her.’

  Dade opened his eyes and looked at his daughter. It was an unpleasant look but Sophie didn’t flinch. Wexford persisted, ‘You’d done nothing wrong.’ Concealing a crime? Hiding a body? ‘I’ll correct that. You’d done nothing yourselves to Joanna. Why didn’t she phone your parents? You’d told her about Peter. Why not phone the police and tell them what you’d told her?’

  Sophie was beginning to look uncomfortable. ‘She never even thought of that, I’m sure. She just wanted to look after us and see we didn’t get into trouble.’

  He left it. ‘Your brother can’t have left the country,’ he said. ‘His passport is here. When did he leave your grandmother’s house?’

  She had already told him but again he was testing her. ‘It was
early on the Sunday morning we got to Matilda’s. I slept a lot that day and so did Giles. We were tired, we’d been up all night. But in the evening Matilda said he ought to go first thing in the morning, she’d been making arrangements on the phone. He ought to go before our parents told the police we were missing. By the time I woke up it was all fixed She drove him to the station. She said it was best for me not to know where he was going and then I couldn’t tell anyone who asked.’ She looked triumphantly at him. ‘Like you,’ she said.

  The sheet of water that covered most of the road reminded him of the winter floods. Not again, please. The rain had stopped but it was obviously no more than a lull. He was putting out the recycling box on to the pavement, and thus breaking one of the local authority’s rules. You weren’t supposed to put the newspapers, cans and bottles out till the following morning but the rain might be torrential in the morning . . .

  It was a funny thing, he thought, how you were always distracted from this task by reading whatever was on top of the pile. You wouldn’t normally read it when you’d sat down with the newspaper it was in, you wouldn’t dream of reading a piece about waterproof mascara or Burmese cats or the latest fifteen-year-old pop sensation, but somehow you couldn’t resist it in these particular circumstances. The article that caught his eye was on a cookery page. It happened to be lying open on the top, although the date on it was a week ago. Its illustrations in full colour, it showed a starter of avocado and grapefruit in lime coulis, a monkfish confection and a tarte tatin with cream . . .

  But wait a minute, wasn’t that the menu Sophie had described as Joanna preparing for this dinner on the fateful Saturday night three months ago? He looked at it again, standing there in the road, under the street lamp. Coincidence? He didn’t think so. More likely, it was proof of the extent to which the girl had lied. She had read that page while at her grandmother’s and remembered its details when they were needed . . .