Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

by Ruth Rendell

  “Still, I hope he’s out somewhere and not expected home till seven,” she said to Matthew as she put the two bottles of wine in the fridge.

  Matthew looked up from his computer. “I don’t think he’ll be rude to you in my presence, darling. If he is I shall tell him to watch his tongue.”

  “Oh, Matthew, we mustn’t upset Fiona.”

  “He mustn’t upset you,” said Matthew.

  Still, if it hadn’t been for Jeff, Michelle thought, she wouldn’t be losing weight now. Every time she was tempted by a croissant or a slice of quiche she remembered his hurtful words and turned away from the dangerous food. It was rather odd, to dislike someone yet feel indebted to him.

  A little after five-thirty Fiona rang the bell. “You should have come in the back way,” said Michelle. “No need to be formal.”

  “All right, I won’t next time. Jeff’s out somewhere. He’s gone for a job interview. Well, actually, two job interviews, one over lunch and the other at four this afternoon.”

  Michelle said nothing. She didn’t believe in these possible jobs but thought Jeff Leigh perfectly capable of saying he’d found lucrative employment; this in order to get himself out of the house for regular periods each day while pursuing whatever nefarious occupations provided him with an income.

  “I’ve left him a note telling him to come in here when he gets home. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course.”

  There was a chill in Michelle’s tone and Fiona noticed it. But she smiled uncertainly, told Michelle she was looking remarkably well, and wasn’t she right in thinking she’d lost weight?

  “A few pounds,” said Michelle comfortably.

  Matthew shut down his computer and poured the wine. He passed Fiona the dish of peanuts and ate two himself. Michelle had sparkling water. She watched in amazement as Matthew poured himself half a glass of wine and sipped it like a person who hadn’t an eating problem, raising his glass to Fiona and saying, “To your future happiness.”

  The talk turned to Fiona’s wedding, who’d be invited, what she’d wear, where they’d go for their honeymoon. Michelle noticed she still had no engagement ring and then castigated herself for being a censorious bitch. Maybe engagement rings were no longer fashionable or Fiona just didn’t like them. Fiona began talking about a vegan she knew who was bringing up her children as vegans, which she, Fiona, didn’t think was right. How could she be sure they’d get enough protein? But she’d wondered if Matthew would think the vegan woman suitable to go on his program.

  Matthew laughed and said it was early days yet. “I haven’t got a program till I’ve talked to the producer and perhaps not even then.”

  “Oh, everyone knows you will have. That first one was so good. Well, I don’t know where Jeff’s got to. Did you hear my phone ringing a minute ago? That may have been him.”

  Michelle occasionally heard the ringing of Fiona’s phone through the wall but hadn’t this time. She saw Fiona to the door and kissed her as they said good-bye.

  “There you are, darling,” Matthew said. “He’s no more keen on our company than we are on his.”

  Because it was past seven when she let herself into her house, Fiona checked her answering machine for messages and then she checked her mobile. Nothing. Jeff might have phoned, of course, and not left a message. That would mean he’d soon be home. She’d very little food in the house and didn’t feel like going out to buy some, so she called a restaurant they both liked at Swiss Cottage and booked a table for dinner at eight-thirty.

  “Wake up,” said Eugenie, shaking Zillah. “If you go to bed in the daytime you won’t sleep tonight.”

  Zillah opened her eyes sluggishly and sat up with a groan. It was half past five and she’d slept since eleven. For a moment she hardly knew where she was or why she was there. Then she heard Jordan crying. “Where’s Mrs. Peacock?”

  “You gave her a key and she let us in. If you hadn’t I expect we’d have been out there on the doormat all night. In the cold. Why don’t you give me a key, Mummy?”

  “Because seven-year-olds don’t have keys. And it isn’t cold, it’s probably the hottest day of the year. Where’s Mrs. Peacock?”

  “Out there.” Eugenie pointed to the door. “I wouldn’t let her come into your bedroom because you might not have any clothes on.”

  Zillah got up and, noticing she was wearing only a bra and panties, put on her dressing gown. Outside the bedroom door, Jordan sat on the floor in tears. She picked him up and he buried his wet face in her neck.

  Mrs. Peacock was sitting in the living room, in the window seat with its magnificent view of the sunlit Palace of Westminster, drinking from a large glass of what was evidently cream sherry. “I helped myself,” she said, not at all abashed. “I needed it.”

  “Mrs. Peacock took us to McDonald’s and then to a movie,” said Eugenie. “We saw Toy Story 2. And please don’t say you shouldn’t go to the cinema when the sun’s shining because we did and we loved it, didn’t we, Jordan?”

  “I cried.” He dug his fingers into his mother’s neck till she winced.

  “I must owe you a lot of money,” Zillah said to Mrs. Peacock.

  “Yes, you do, rather. I’ll just have another Bristol Cream and then we’ll tot it up, shall we?”

  Zillah paid Mrs. Peacock double her usual rate as well as for the cinema and the lunch. Somewhat unsteady on her feet by this time, she meandered into the lift. Zillah shut the front door. Where was Jims? With Leonardo, no doubt. Or had he gone down to his constituency? Most likely he was in Fredington Crucis and had Leonardo with him. She wondered how on earth she was going to pass the weekend. It was as bad as being in Long Fredington. Because there was no Annie or Lynn here, no Titus and Rosalba, it was worse.

  The body of Jeffrey John Leach lay on the floor of the cinema, on the right-hand side between rows M and N, for nearly two hours before it was discovered. No one leaving a cinema looks along an empty row even if the lights are on. The next performance of The House on Haunted Hill was due to begin at six-ten and there would be a final screening, the most popular, at eight forty-five. But the six-ten showing was fairly well attended-or would have been if the two eighteen-year-old girls hadn’t entered row M at a quarter to. They told no one what they saw. They screamed.

  Immediately the cinema was cleared and patrons’ ticket money refunded. An ambulance came, but it was too late for that. The police arrived. Jeffrey Leach had taken a little while to die, it came out later at the inquest, as his lifeblood seeped away into the carpet. Police noticed the blood all over one of the seats, as if the perpetrator had wiped the weapon on its upholstery. It was at this point that the whole cinema, not only this particular theater, was closed to the public.

  Within an hour they knew that Jeff had died between three and four-thirty. None of the staff remembered who had sat in that row nor any patron leaving early. One said he thought he recalled a man leaving around five and another vaguely remembered a woman slipping out at ten past. Both were unable to describe these people or even make a guess at their ages. The cinema was searched for the weapon, a long, sharp carving knife. When that yielded nothing, the search was extended and Edgware Road closed from Marble Arch to Sussex Gardens, causing the worst traffic jam in central London for ten years.

  The body was removed. The bloodstained seat and those on either side of it were also taken away for DNA testing, in case the perpetrator had left behind a hair, a flake of skin, a drop of his or her own blood. The police might have saved themselves the trouble. All the hairs that ever fell from Minty’s head came out when she washed it, as she did once or twice a day, and disappeared down the plughole. Any flakes of skin had been scrubbed off with a nailbrush and a loofah in hot soapy water. She left no more DNA behind her than would a plastic doll fresh from its manufacturer’s. The principle that every murderer leaves something of himself behind at the crime scene and takes some trace of it with him, Minty had disproved.

  When it got to nine a
nd Jeff hadn’t come home, Fiona was so worried she went next door. Not because Michelle or Matthew would know any more than she did, not that they could give her any advice she couldn’t give herself, but simply for their company, for the comfort and reassurance they might give her. To have someone else with whom to share her anxiety. Long before, she’d canceled that dinner reservation, made herself tea, and tried unsuccessfully to eat a sandwich.

  Afterward, when they were in bed, Matthew and Michelle confessed to each other that they’d both had the same thought: that Jeff had deserted Fiona. Of course, they said not a word of this at the time. When a woman is out of her mind with worry you don’t tell her that maybe the man she met only eight months before and of whose past history she knows nothing has walked out on her. You don’t say he’s obviously a villain and a conman who’s alarmed by the prospect of marriage. You give her a brandy and tell her to wait a little and then you’ll start phoning hospitals.

  Fiona went home twice just to check he hadn’t come back in the meantime. She returned to the Jarveys twice, by now shaking with fear. It was past ten. If that man’s somewhere with another woman, thought Michelle, I’ll find some way to punish him. Never mind his teaching me to slim, that was me, not him. I didn’t have to take notice of what he said, but I will make life hard for him if he’s betrayed her. I will find him and tell him what I think of him. I will set a private detective on his track, I will. Her unaccustomed vindictiveness alarmed her, and she forced herself to give Fiona an encouraging smile. Should she make tea? Another drink? Fiona stood up and threw herself into Michelle’s arms. Michelle hugged her and patted her shoulder, and held her against her big, soft bosom while Matthew phoned the Royal Free and the Whittington, and half a dozen other hospitals. Then he phoned the police.

  They knew nothing about a Jeff Leigh. Matthew spelled the name for them.

  “You said Leigh, not Leach?”

  “No, Leigh.”

  “There’s been no accident to anyone of that name.”

  For by now they knew whose was the body they had on their hands. In the breast pocket of its linen jacket they found a bloodstained driving license in the name of Jeffrey John Leach, of 45 Greta Road, Queen’s Park, London NW10. It had been issued nine years ago and a long time before new British driving licenses were required to contain their holder’s photograph. Also in the pocket were a photograph, in a plastic pack, of a long-haired young man with a baby in his arms, a bloodstained letter from a woman called Zillah, a door key of a common kind and unnumbered, £320 in £20 and £10 notes, a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach, and a half-used packet of Polo mints.

  It took no more than a few hours to establish that Jeffrey John Leach was married to Sarah Helen Leach, née Watling, who also had a driving license and lived at an address in Long Fredington, Dorset.

  Chapter 16

  ARRIVING IN HIS parliamentary constituency late on Friday afternoon, Jims had first had a meeting with his agent, Colonel Nigel Travers-Jenkins, and then, accompanied by him, gone as guest of honor and principal speaker to the annual gala dinner of the South Wessex Young Conservatives at the Lord Quantock Arms in Markton. Contrary to Zillah’s belief, Leonardo wasn’t with him. While he was speaking, on the subject of the Party’s future hope and inspiration being in the hands of its youth, whose idealism and fervor had already been manifested to him that evening, Zillah was sitting in the Abbey Gardens flat watching a Rugrats video with the children, Jordan grizzling on her lap.

  Jims, who had been casually fond of her for years, had always used her rather as a screen for his natural activities than as a friend. She was the kind of woman whose appearance led the South Wessex Conservatives to put her down as a female of loose morals. Any Fredingtonian seeing him call at Willow Cottage, particularly in the evenings, believed-again in their phrase-the worst. But they were the sort of people who held to a double standard, condemning the woman in this situation but attaching no blame to the man. Rather the reverse, as Jims well knew, for someone had reported back to him that Colonel Travers-Jenkins had been overheard calling him “a bit of a lad with the birds.” For this reason, though he used her, he had always felt grateful to Zillah and persuaded himself this was affection.

  Now he was married to her he felt quite differently. She was a nuisance and, if not kept under surveillance, might damage his career. Jims thought about these things as he drove back to his house in Fredington Crucis. What a pity it was that once you’d been through a marriage ceremony, you had to live under the same roof as your bride! What a misfortune you couldn’t give her a lump sum and a little house somewhere, and never see her again! Still, he knew this was impossible. He must be married and manifestly be seen to be married. And his wife must be Caesar’s wife. There was no other way. When he got home on Monday morning he would set about educating Zillah in her duties as helpmeet to the Member for South Wessex. He would teach her about the boards and committees she must chair, the garden parties she must attend, the baby shows judge, Conservative Women’s gatherings address, the canvassing she must do, and the suitable clothes she must wear. No skirts above the knee, nothing low-cut, no sexy shoes, tight trousers-maybe no trousers at all-but afternoon dresses and big hats. A supposed mistress may look like a loose woman but not an MP’s wife.

  Jims had phoned Leonardo and then gone to bed. In the morning he held his appointments at nine sharp in Casterbridge Shire Hall, where he made earnest promises to his constituents that he would personally improve the education of their children, the National Health Service, transport, and the environment, while undertaking to retain at all costs hunting with dogs. Jims didn’t say “dogs,” though that was the term that appeared in the title of the new bill proposed on the subject. To please the people in the Shire Hall he referred always to “hounds.” Talk of the hunt, a constant subject of conversation and discussion in South Wessex, reminded him that on Saturday evening he would be addressing the local branch of the Countryside Alliance at Fredington Episcopi village hall. The meeting would be so well attended that the largest hall in the neighborhood had been chosen as its venue.

  His speech he had brought with him. It was still in his briefcase, which he hadn’t even opened while at Fredington Crucis House. In calling it a speech, Jims was rather underrating himself, for of course he had no intention of reading to the assembled members. But there were all sorts of details of a previous private member’s bill that he had noted down on paper, along with statistics, reports on research into cruelty to stags and stress levels in foxes, and, most important, assessments of the hardship which would be suffered by locals should hunting be banned in what Jims was careful to call “England” and occasionally “this blessed plot,” but never “the United Kingdom.” Also with his notes was the Burns Report in its dark blue cover, the findings of Lord Burns’s investigation into hunting. When he was leaving his office and was once more in his car, he opened his briefcase to check that he had it and his notes with him.

  Jims intended to have lunch at the Golden Hind in Casterbridge with a close friend, the predecessor, in fact, of Leonardo. The decision to end their relationship had been mutual and there were no hard feelings. Moreover, Ivo Carew was chairman of a charity called Conservatives Target Cancer, so being seen with him could only win approval. But he couldn’t find his Countryside Alliance notes. He emptied everything out of the briefcase onto the passenger seat. He knew they weren’t there and he also knew very well where they were. Inside a transparent blue plastic folder that matched the cover of the Burns Report, and he would have spotted them at once. He knew they weren’t there and he knew where they were: in Leonardo’s house.

  But precisely where? That he couldn’t remember. He did remember, though, that Leonardo had told him on the phone the evening before that he was taking Friday off and would be going to see his mother in Cheltenham. These visits were frequent and enjoyable, for Giulietta Norton, born in Rome just after the Second World War and a hippie and groupie in the sixties, was a fascinating wom
an and about as unlike a mother as could be. Leonardo might even decide to stay the night. Of course Jims had a key to the flat, that was no problem. Even if he could remember exactly where the blue folder was and could persuade one of Leonardo’s neighbors to let his messenger in, whom could he trust? Was there anyone he could rely on to go to Glebe Terrace, find the notes, and fax them to him, without thinking it funny, without thinking it suspicious that James Melcombe-Smith MP left important papers in the home of a young and very good-looking stock jobber? In, very probably, that young man’s bedroom? Zillah, perhaps. He called his home number on his mobile. No answer. In fact, Zillah, deeply asleep, heard the phone ringing in a dream about Jims changing his sexual orientation and falling in love with her. She thought the ringing was her mother and she ignored it.

  How useless she was! An encumbrance, not even a helpful companion. Jims called Ivo Carew and canceled their date.

  “Thanks a bunch,” said Ivo. “Did you have to wait till five to one?”

  “It’s unavoidable. D’you honestly think I wouldn’t rather see you than drive back to bloody London?”

  He stopped en route at a Merry Cookhouse where, shuddering, he tried to eat chicken in a basket and chips. With plenty of time to spare, he could have lunched with Ivo and set off a couple of hours later, but he was becoming nervous about the whereabouts of that folder. His mind must be set at rest as soon as possible. But not before he’d complained about the soggy chips and the chicken, which he was sure was spoiled. The manager was a man with a temper easily roused and the two of them engaged for a minute or two in a slanging match.

  The traffic was heavy and grew heavier as Jims approached London. A pile-up near a motorway and a road junction caused a nose-to-tail queue extending for several miles, while roadworks near Heathrow airport reduced cars to a single lane. It was close to eight o’clock before he parked the car in Glebe Terrace. His mind must be going, he thought. Having mislaid his notes, he was now unable to find the key to Leonardo’s house. He looked on his Abbey Gardens Mansions key ring and his car keys ring, then went through his pockets. It wasn’t there. The woman next door, Amber Something, had one. He prayed she’d be at home and she was. She gave him a funny look in which there was a lot of snide amusement but she gave him the key, saying to be sure to let her have it back in the morning. He let himself into Leonardo’s house.