Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  He ought to be able to reason out where she had sent Giles. Was it possible he had gone to her daughter’s house? If so, the daughter had left him behind to come here, but no doubt in the care of her husband and children. It was a place he could have gone to without a passport. As a kind of minor celebrity, Matilda most likely had friends everywhere, abroad as well as here. But he couldn’t have gone abroad because he had no passport. . . Would a friend living in, say, northern Scotland harbour a boy who was involved in a murder inquiry and whom the police wanted to question? Matilda had and birds of a feather flock together . . .

  The coffin was carried in. The sparse congregation rose as a dismal voluntary was played, and Wexford’s earlier impression was confirmed. Very few people had come. There was no choir and no one with a strong voice among the mourners. They broke into a ragged version of - what else? - ‘Abide with Me’. Just where could Giles Dade possibly be abiding at this moment?

  All the members of Wexford’s team that could be spared had spent the previous day questioning George and Effie Troy and Yvonne Moody about Peter. The results weren’t helpful. Only George Troy seemed to recall Joanna mentioning a Peter but he had similar recollections of her talking about an Anthony, a Paul, a Tom and a Barry Effie interrupted to say that these weren’t boyfriends but children she had taught and this had thrown George into confusion. Yvonne Moody’s replies were useless. She was obviously predisposed to a need for Joanna to have no friends apart from herself and possibly other women. Reluctantly, she had at last admitted she had seen men - she called them boys - going to Joanna’s house for private coaching. One of them might have been a Peter.

  The coffin was removed and placed in the car that would transport it to the crematorium. Only the officiating clergyman seemed to be accompanying Matilda Cattish on her last journey Wexford watched her driven away. Dade had come down the steps from the church with Charlotte something. He gave Wexford a sullen glare, muttered to his sister. Wexford expected a putting of heads together, a whispered colloquy, before both of them ignoring him. But Dade’s sister turned in his direction, smiled and came over, hand extended.

  ‘Charlotte Macallister. How do you do?’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,’ Wexford said insincerely.

  ‘Yes. What on earth was she doing, hiding those children? I think she must have gone quite mad. Senile dementia or something.’

  She was the least likely victim of senile anything, he thought. ‘Giles is still missing, of course,’ he said. ‘But he’s alive. . .‘ A bellow from Dade momentarily took his breath away.

  ‘Sophie! Sophie!’

  The girl was running out of the churchyard, running as fist as only a thirteen-year-old can. Her father yelled because he was powerless to stop her. He clenched his fist and stamped.

  ‘Very bad for the blood pressure,’ Charlotte Macallister said calmly. ‘He won’t make old bones if he goes on like that.’

  ‘It occurred to me in there’, said Wexford, ‘that your mother might have sent Giles to you.’

  ‘It did, did it? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m not so much a chip off the old block as that. And if I fell in with her plots my husband wouldn’t. He’s a high-ranking officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and a pal of Sir Ronald Flanagan. Bye-bye. If you need me I’ll be staying with Roger and Katrina for a couple of days.’

  Wexford and Burden lunched together, not at the Moonflower, but in the police canteen. Burden sniffed his fish and made a face.

  ‘Something wrong with it?’

  ‘No. Not really. Cod ought to smell of something, it ought to smell nice. This smells of nothing, it might be cardboard - no, polystyrene. That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘Talking of fish,’ said Wexford who was eating ravioli, ‘this whole Peter story is fishy, don’t you think? No one’s heard of him. Katrina hasn’t, Yvonne Moody hasn’t, and they were apparently her closest friends. Her father and stepfather haven’t. And I’ll tell you something else. It may be coincidence but I had another look at that cooking piece I told you about and it was written by someone with Peter for a first name.’

  Burden raised his eyebrows, nodded. ‘None of the Dade neighbours saw anyone come to the house that Saturday evening except Dorcas Winter. They didn’t even see her, only knew she’d been because the paper was there.’

  ‘Why would Sophie invent him? Besides, could she invent him? A man called Peter she might, and the name she got from a magazine, but the things he did and said? His pushing Joanna downstairs, clearing up the blood, driving the car and knowing about Passingham? Knowing how it was pronounced?’

  ‘He could be called something else,’ Burden said. ‘On the other hand, none of these people even knew of a man in Joanna’s life. Why should she conceal him from her family and friends? She wasn’t married.’

  ‘Very likely he is, though. All we know is who he’s not, and he’s not Peter Buxton. Sophie was adamant about that. In fact, when I asked her after he’d gone she was so indignant that I might even think so for a moment that she was almost in tears. I’d say she passionately didn’t want Buxton to be this Peter - and that in itself is odd.’

  ‘It’s not odd,’ Burden said slowly, pushing fishbones to the side of his plate and the khaki-coloured peas to join them. ‘It’s not odd if she invented Peter and panicked when she saw we took it seriously, when she realised that here was a real person who could be accused of a crime he didn’t commit.’

  ‘Then, if she invented Peter, who was in the house and accidentally or purposely, killed Joanna Troy?’

  ‘Someone she doesn’t want us to know about. Someone she’s protecting.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to talk to her again,’ Wexford said.

  ‘By the way, the Buxtons are splitting up. I met Colman in the High Street, taking down posters. He told me. Not very discreet of him, was it?’

  There had been a funeral and, in other circumstances, he would have let a day pass, but no one except Sophie had shown much grief for Matilda Carrish. Even hers, Wexford felt, was the grief of a child whose whole future, eagerly anticipated, is before her and who knows, any way, that in the nature of things the old must die. What kind of a mother had Matilda been that Roger Dade seemed to regard her as one who caused almost less nuisance by dying than by remaining alive? Perhaps the kind he had imagined, well-intentioned, an ardent believer in free expression, but neglectful too, pursuing her own (lucrative) interests while leaving her children to pursue theirs. Or was it that Dade was simply a con genitally unpleasant man? And why, why, why had the woman taken those children in and defied the police forces of an entire country to find them?

  He notified the family that he and Burden would return in the late afternoon to speak to Sophie once more. Fortunately it was Mrs Bruce he saw. Dade’s reaction would have been less amiable. This time, surprisingly, it was her mother who chaperoned her at the interview, but she might as well have not been there, for she sat silent for almost the whole time, lying back in an armchair with her eyes closed. Also present was Karen Malahyde. ‘I need you as interpreter,’ Wexford said to her and then the girl came in. Once more she was all in black and a dancing devil with horns and trident had appeared on her forearm. It looked like a tattoo but was probably a transfer.

  ‘Sophie,’ he began, ‘I’m going to be very frank with you in the hope that you’ll be frank with me. Four hours ago when I was having my lunch with Mr Burden here we discussed the man you call Peter...’

  She interrupted him. ‘He is called Peter.’

  ‘Fine. He’s called Peter,’ said Burden. ‘I expressed my doubts about Peter’s existence. None of your neighbours here had seen anyone come to this house that evening. Scott Holloway denies coming here. Only Dorcas Winter came, delivering the evening paper, and she didn’t come in. But Mr Wexford thought Peter must exist because he doubted if you could have invented him. You might have invented a man called Peter but not the things he said and did. Above all, not the way he pron
ounced Passingham. What do you have to say about all that?’

  Her eyelids flickered. She looked down. ‘Nothing. It’s all true.’

  ‘Describe Peter,’ Burden said.

  ‘I did. I said he was ordinary a dumb-ass.’

  ‘What did he looked like, Sophie?’

  ‘Tall. Not in good shape, quite ugly. His face was starting to go red. Dark hair but going bald.’ She screwed up her eyes, apparently in an effort to think. ‘One of his front teeth crossed a bit over the one next to it. Droopy mouth. Maybe forty-five.’

  She had described her father. But even by the wildest stretch of imagination and the wildest manipulation of alibis, Peter couldn’t be Roger Dade. At the relevant time he had been in Paris with his wife, as attested to by a hotel keeper, a travel agent, an airline and the Paris police. A psychologist would say she didn’t know many men (as against boys) and had described her father as the one she knew best and most strongly disliked and feared - in other words, a man she thought capable of violent crime.

  ‘Sophie,’ Wexford said, ‘what became of the piece of paper Peter gave you with an address on it?’

  He hadn’t asked her that before. It had seemed unimportant. He was astonished to see her flush deeply. ‘Giles threw it away,’ she said.

  He was more certain she was lying than he had been at any of her other replies. ‘Did you look at it before you decided to go to your grandmother? Was it something about that address which made you decide going to your grandmother would be better?’

  ‘Giles looked at it. I didn’t.’

  He nodded. He glanced at Katrina. She appeared to be fast asleep. ‘Giles hadn’t got his mobile with him. He made the call to your grandmother from a call box. How did he know the number?’

  ‘She was our grandmother. Of course we knew her phone number.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any “of course” about it, Sophie. You only saw your grandmother once or twice a year. You had seldom been to her house before. No doubt you had her number in an address book at home. Your parents probably had it on a frequently used number directory in their phone at home but what you’re saying is that you knew the number by heart, you had it in your memory or Giles’s.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I think you decided to make for your grandmother’s before you left this house. I think you knew where you were going from the start.’

  She made no answer.

  ‘Who spoke to her, you or Giles?’

  ‘It was me.’

  ‘All right,’ Wexford said, ‘that will do for today. I’d like to speak to Mr and Mrs Bruce, please. Where are they?’

  That awoke or at least stirred Katrina. She sat up. ‘My parents are sitting up in their room. They went up there because they’ve had a row with Roger. They’re going home tomorrow, anyway.’ Her voice rose until it became somehow frighteningly high-pitched. And I’m going with them. I’m going with them for ever.’

  Sophie said, ‘Take my father with you.’

  ‘Don’t be more stupid than you can help. I’m going with them because I’m leaving him. D’you under stand now?’

  'You’re poop.' The girl spoke roughly but she sounded afraid. ‘What about me? I can’t be left alone with him.’

  Katrina looked at her and tears of self-pity welled. ‘Why should I care about you? You didn’t care about me when you took yourself off, you and your brother, when I thought you were both lying dead somewhere. It’s time I started thinking of me.’ She addressed Wexford. ‘Having your child murdered or disappeared or thinking they have mostly leads to the mother and father splitting up. It’s quite common. Haven’t you noticed?’

  He didn’t answer this. He was thinking of Sophie, thinking fast and wondering.

  ‘We’ll be leaving in the morning. Early. If you want my parents they’re in Giles’s room. Just go up and knock on the door. I had to put that bitch Charlotte in the one they’d been using. Apparently she can only sleep in a room where the bedhead is to the north. I’ll put it all behind me tomorrow, thank God.’

  Wexford motioned to Burden to come outside into the hall with him. The house was very silent and seemed otherwise empty. Probably Roger had taken his sister out somewhere. Wexford said, ‘No time like the present. We’ll take Sophie into that other room, the dining room or whatever, and you ask her. Ask her outright. I can’t leave it another day.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Reg. She’s thirteen.’

  ‘Oh God, so I can’t. Then it’ll have to be in the mother’s presence.’

  But when they went back Katrina had fallen asleep or was giving a very good imitation of someone who had. She lay curled up like a cat, her knees under her chin, her head buried in her arms. Sophie sat staring at her fixedly like someone watching a wild animal, wondering what it would do next.

  Wexford said, ‘Why do you dislike your father so, Sophie?’

  She turned towards him, it seemed reluctantly. ‘I just do.’

  ‘Sophie, you seem very well-informed about sex. I’m going to ask you outright. Has he ever touched you or tried to touch you in a sexual way?’

  Her reaction was the last either police officer expected. She started to laugh. It wasn’t dry or cynical laughter but true merriment, peal on peal of it. ‘You’re all poop, the lot of you. That’s what Matilda thought, that’s why she let us come. Her own dad did it to her when she was a kid. So she let us come and said she’d hide us. But I put her right, though I don’t think she believed me. He’s skanky but he’s not that bad.’

  Burden glanced at Katrina. She hadn’t moved. ‘So fear of your father’s, er, attentions isn’t what makes you dislike him?’

  ‘I get pissed off at him because he’s just never never nice to me. He shouts at me and he’s skanky. And he’s always nagging me to go to my room and work. I can’t have my friends here because it’s a waste of time, he says. I’m supposed to work, work, work. I only like get books and CDs and gear as presents for working. It’s the same for Giles. Is that enough for you?’

  ‘Yes, Sophie,’ said Wexford. ‘Yes, thank you. Tell me something else, then. When did you set your grandmother straight about your relationship with your father? As soon as you got to her house? The same day, the Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t remember exactly when but it was before Giles went away. We were all three there, Matilda and Giles and me, and Matilda asked me why we’d left and I told her and she said was it really more about something my father did to me. I’d heard about that stuff, it’s always on the TV but it never happened to me and I told her so.’

  ‘In that case, if she was satisfied that your father was no more than strict and a bit bullying with you, why didn’t she then call your parents or the police to say where you were or that you were safe?’

  With a shake of her head and a brandishing of arms, Katrina woke up. Or came out of her self-induced trance. She put her feet to the ground ‘I can answer that.’ As seemed to happen almost every time she opened her mouth, the tears started. But instead of constricting her speech or causing her to gag, they simply rolled down her thin cheeks. I can tell you why she didn’t. She took my children in to get revenge on me. Because I told her when she was here in October that I wouldn’t let them see her again. Not ever. Well, when they were grown-up I couldn’t stop them but while they lived here with us I’d keep them apart if it took the last breath in my body.’

  ‘Do you mind telling us why you wouldn’t let their grandmother see them again?’

  ‘She knows.’ Katrina pointed a shaking forefinger at her daughter. ‘Ask her.’

  Wexford raised an enquiring eyebrow at Sophie. The girl said nastily, ‘You tell them if you want. I’m not going to do your dirty work for you.’

  Katrina pulled her sleeve down over her hand and used it like a handkerchief to wipe her streaming eyes. ‘She was going to stay a week. My husband -, she put extreme scorn into the word ‘- said we ought to have her for a week. I didn’t want that. She looked down on me, al
ways did, because I’m not supposed to be clever like her. Well, the third day she was here I went up to Sophie’s room to tell her her tutor had phoned to say he couldn’t give her a lesson next day and when I opened the door she wasn’t there and she wasn’t in Giles’s room, and I found all three of them in Matilda’s room. They were all in there and Matilda was sitting on the bed smoking pot.’

  ‘Mrs Carrish was smoking cannabis?’

  ‘That’s what I said. I started screaming - well, any one would. I told Roger and he was incandescent. But I didn’t wait to see what he’d do, I told her she’d have to go, there and then. It was evening but I wasn’t going to have her in my house a minute longer...’

  ‘You’d better tell what Matilda said, not just you,’ Sophie said scornfully. ‘She said she was doing what she always did to relax. If we didn’t ever relax, she said, we’d get sick and be too ill to pass exams. It was harmless if we wanted to give it a go she said, but she wouldn’t give us any, she was sure we had plenty of chances to get it. Oh, and said my father was full of shit and he’d make us full of shit too.’

  ‘Stop using that filthy language,’ Katrina said at the top of her voice, and to Wexford in a more subdued tone, ‘I even packed her bags for her, threw all her fancy clothes, all her black designer stuff, I threw it into her cases and put them outside on the doorstep. My husband fetched her downstairs - for once he asserted himself with her. I’d never seen that before. It was nine at night. I don’t know where she stayed, some hotel, I suppose.’ Suddenly she screamed at him, ‘Don’t look at me like that! She was an old woman, I know that. But she didn’t act like one, she acted like a fiend, getting my children on to drugs. . .