by Ruth Rendell
Mounting the little staircase to the bedroom, he thought how ghastly it would be if he opened the door and found Leonardo in bed with someone, maybe that guy in the Department of Education and Employment he said was attractive. A lot of men wouldn’t mind, though he wasn’t one of them. But the room was empty.
Jims searched for the folder. It was nowhere to be found. Seriously worried, he went back downstairs and after hunting-hunting!-for ten minutes, found it and Burns at the back of a rather elegant rosewood filing cabinet. Put there, no doubt, by Leonardo’s obsessively tidy busybody of a cleaner.
He’d go out to dinner, then come back here to sleep. There was a chance Giulietta had a date, in which case Leonardo might come back. Anyway, he couldn’t face his own home, not with Zillah there and those kids.
While Jims was searching for his notes and Zillah was watching television in Abbey Gardens Mansions with Jordan on her lap, two policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were calling at Willow Cottage, Long Fredington.
After she had left, Zillah’s landlord, who during her tenancy had been afraid she’d never go but stay forever and eventually establish children’s rights for her girl and boy, had decided to sell the place. Accordingly, he was having it redecorated and a new kitchen and bathroom fitted. Although the builders had started soon after Christmas, their task was still incomplete. Scaffolding covered the front of the house, the windows were boarded up, and a builders’ sign proclaiming the workmen as construction designers stuck up in the garden. The police could see no one lived there. They tried the neighbors and were told Mrs. Leach had left in December and got married again. The woman next door could even tell them whom she’d married: the local MP, Mr. Melcombe-Smith.
It was, of course, imperative that the late Jeffrey Leach’s wife be told as soon as possible of his violent death. But it now appeared she was his wife no longer. She had remarried, and into a social class far above what the investigators had calculated was Jeffrey Leach’s.
Zillah had just got up on Saturday morning when the policeman rang the bell at Abbey Gardens Mansions. It was only half past eight, an early hour for her, but she’d been unable to lie in, for Eugenie’s prediction-that having slept most of the day she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night-proved true. The children were already up and watching cartoons on television. Zillah came out in her dressing gown and began making toast and pouring cornflakes into bowls. She caught sight of herself in a mirror and backed away from it, she looked so terrible, her hair in rats’ tails and dark smudges under her eyes. A spot, the likes of which she hadn’t had for fifteen years, was erupting in the middle of her chin.
“Who on earth’s that?” she asked when the bell rang.
“You’ll know if you open the door,” said Eugenie. “What a stupid question.”
“How dare you be so rude!”
Jordan, who was always upset by shouting, began to snivel. The doorbell rang again and Zillah went to answer it.
“Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”
“That’s right.”
“May I come in? I have some distressing news for you.”
There was no one in the world not in the flat at that moment whom Zillah cared enough for to mind whether they were fit or injured, alive or dead. But she couldn’t hide her shocked response when the caller told her of the death of Jeffrey Leach. “I don’t believe it.”
“I’m afraid it’s true.”
“What did he die of? Some sort of accident?”
This may have given the man the impetus to come straight out with it. “He was murdered yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry.”
“Murdered? Who murdered him?”
There was no reply to that. The policeman wanted to know where she’d been between three and four-thirty and Zillah, still amazed at the news, said she’d been here.
“Alone?”
“Yes, quite alone. My children were out with their-er, nanny.”
“And Mr. Melcombe-Smith?”
Zillah couldn’t exactly say she didn’t know. It would look very odd in a bride of two months. “In his constituency. That’s South Wessex, you know. He’s been there since Thursday afternoon. I can’t believe Jerry’s been murdered. Are you sure it was Jerry?”
“Certainly it was Mr. Jeffrey Leach. Is this him?”
Zillah looked for the first time in nearly seven years on the photograph she herself had taken in those happier times-though she hadn’t thought them so then-of Jerry with the three-week-old Eugenie in his arms. “My God, yes. Where did you find it?”
“That’s not important. You identify it as Jeffrey Leach?”
She nodded. “I’m amazed he kept it.”
Then came the question of questions, the one that brought the blood to her face and made it recede again as rapidly: “When exactly were you divorced, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”
She knew it would be a mistake to lie but she had to. Still, she hesitated. “Er-it must have been last spring. About a year ago.”
“I see. And when did you last see Mr. Leach?”
It had been two weeks before, here, in this flat. She remembered how he’d called her a bigamist. The time before that had been six months ago, in October, in Long Fredington, when he’d come for the weekend. And driven away in the boneshaker, ten minutes before the express and the local train crashed. “October,” she said. “It was while I was living in Dorset with my children.” For the sake of verisimilitude, she felt the need to insert some circumstantial detail. “He drove down on Friday evening and stayed the weekend. The first weekend in October. He left again on Tuesday morning.”
He held something out to her. It was a Visa card. “Is this yours?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know.”
“The name on it is Z. H. Leach and those are not common initials.”
“Yes, it must be mine.”
It was the card Jims had arranged for her to have last December when she’d accepted his proposal. She saw that its starting date was December and expiration date November 2003. After she was married and Jims gave her two new cards in the name of Mrs. Z. H. Melcombe-Smith, she’d forgotten all about the existence of this one. How had Jerry got hold of it? That day in the flat he’d wandered about when he was supposed to be going to the loo, she’d heard his stealthy footsteps, thought she heard him go into her bedroom, but attached no importance to it. After all, she was used to visitors prying into her things, Malina Daz, Mrs. Peacock…
“Did you give it to Mr. Leach?”
“No, yes. I don’t know. He must have taken it. Stolen it.”
“That’s an interesting conclusion to come to, especially since this card wasn’t issued until December and the last time you saw Mr. Leach was in October. Are you sure you haven’t seen him since?”
Then Zillah uttered the time-honored phrase so often on the lips of old lags up in court yet again. “I may have done.”
The policeman nodded. He said that that would be all for now but he’d be in touch. When did she expect Mr. Melcombe-Smith’s return? Zillah didn’t but said Sunday evening. Eugenie came into the room, holding her brother’s hand, both fully dressed and looking clean and neat. The policeman said in the kind of voice childless men use when talking to children they’ve never met before, bluff, interrogatory, embarrassed, “Hello. How are you?”
“Extremely well, thank you. What have you been saying to my mummy?”
“It was just a routine inquiry.” The policeman suddenly realized the late Jeffrey Leach must have been their father. “I’ll see myself out,” he said to Zillah.
A famous Italian novelist and professor had just published a new book to great acclaim and Natalie Reckman was off to Rome to interview him. Her flight left from Heathrow in the late morning. She bought the novelist’s first book in paperback and three newspapers at an airport bookstall, but they told her only that a man had been murdered in a London cinema and this didn’t much interest her.
While in the aircraft she read her paperback. The Evening Standard was brought ro
und but Natalie shook her head, she’d seen enough newspapers for one day. She thought she might stay in Rome till Monday, have a look at a new theater that was being built, maybe see what all this fuss was about someone desecrating the graves in the English Cemetery. With luck she’d get three stories for the price of one.
When it got to midday on Saturday and Jeff still hadn’t come back, Fiona feared he had left her. She searched the house for a note, looked under tables and behind cabinets in case it had fallen on the floor from where he’d left it. There was nothing. To go without a word was to add insult to injury, but gone he had.
Michelle helped with the search. She pointed out that if Jeff had really left, he’d taken nothing with him. All the clothes but those he’d gone out in were in the cupboard, including the black leather jacket he was so fond of. His four pairs of shoes, apart from those he was wearing, were in Fiona’s shoe rack, his underpants and socks in the drawer. Would he have gone without his electric shaver? Without his toothbrush?
“I’m afraid he must have met with some sort of accident,” Michelle said, her arm round Fiona. “Now, Fiona darling, was he carrying anything to identify him?”
Fiona tried to remember. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t go through Matthew’s pockets, would you?”
“I never have.”
“No, and nor do I. I trust Jeff. D’you think I should now? I mean, look in the pockets of the leather jacket?”
“Yes, I do.”
There was nothing helpful, only a pound coin, a supermarket bill for groceries, and a ballpoint pen. Fiona tried the pockets of Jeff’s raincoat. A tube train ticket, a button, a twenty-pence piece. “Where’s his driving license?”
“Where did he usually keep it?”
“I suppose it might be in the car.”
The two women went out to Fiona’s dark blue BMW, which she was obliged to leave parked in the street. Michelle, who was finding it less difficult these days to climb into a car than it had been, got into the back and searched the pockets, while Fiona, in the driver’s seat, examined the glove compartment. A road map, a pair of sunglasses, a comb, all belonging to her. No gloves, of course, there never are. Michelle found another road map, a half-empty box of tissues, a chocolate paper, and a single Polo mint. This might have been a valuable clue for the police if they’d known of it and known how to read it. Fiona dropped it down the drain in the gutter.
Michelle stayed with her, made lunch-salad and cheese and crispbread. Neither felt like eating. At midafternoon Matthew joined them. Michelle had left his lunch on a tray and to please her and divert Fiona, he told her he’d eaten it all, three slices of kiwi fruit, a dozen salted almonds, half a bread roll, and a sprig of watercress. By this time Fiona’s mood had changed. They’d been unable to find Jeff’s driving license, so he must have it on him and if he’d met with an accident could have been identified by it. The anger which had been suspended when she realized all his clothes were in the house, to be replaced by the anxiety of the night before, returned. He’d left her. No doubt he intended to come back one day for his possessions, or he’d even have the nerve to ask her to send them on.
The Evening Standard was delivered to the house in the late afternoon. Matthew heard it drop on to the doormat and went into the hall to fetch it. Fiona was on the sofa with her feet up, Michelle in the kitchen making tea. The newspaper had a big headline: MOVIE MURDER and under that: Man Stabbed in Cinema. A large photograph showed the interior of the theater where the body had been found, though nothing of the body itself, and there was no picture of the dead man. His name wasn’t disclosed. Matthew took the newspaper back into the living room but Fiona was asleep. He showed it to Michelle.
“There’s no possible reason to think it’s Jeff, darling.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Matthew. “He likes the cinema and Fiona doesn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone in the afternoon on his own.”
“What shall we do?”
“I think I’ll call the police, darling, and see what I can get out of them.”
“Oh, Matthew, what are we going to do if it is Jeff? How terrible for poor Fiona. And why would anyone want to murder him?”
“You can think of a few reasons and so can I.”
Leonardo had returned from his mother’s just as Jims was going out to get his dinner. The two men went to a new and fashionable Tunisian restaurant together, came home again at ten-thirty, and spent the night together in Glebe Terrace. Both were far too discreet to suggest Leonardo accompany Jims to Dorset, so he set off alone at about ten in the morning.
Once it was possible, when driving to the West Country, to stop in some little town of great antiquity and beauty, and there eat lunch in the White Hart or the Black Lion or whatever ancient hostelry graced the place. But since the coming of arterial roads that bypassed every urban habitat this pleasant custom had disappeared, unless you made a twenty-mile detour, and all that now existed to provide refreshment to the traveler were motorway cafés and huge complexes of restaurant, shops, and lavatories. Into one of these Jims was obliged to go, having parked his car among several hundred others, to eat a limp salad, two samosas, and a banana. One good thing: he’d avoided the Merry Cookhouse. By three he was back in Fredington Crucis, where he had a bath and dressed in his country go-to-meetings suit, a well-cut tweed outfit with waistcoat, a tan-colored shirt, and knitted tie. A crowd of antihunt protesters were assembled outside Fredington Episcopi village hall, all carrying banners with words like “barbarians” and “animal tormentors” on them. Dreadful photographs of tortured foxes in their death throes and stags escaping hunters by plunging into the Bristol Channel were set up along the short driveway. A horrible baying sound, not unlike that of hounds in full cry, went up from the protesters as Jims walked in, but inside he was greeted by sustained applause. The place was packed, with chairs in the aisles and people standing at the back.
The chairman of the local branch introduced him and congratulated him on his recent marriage. The audience cheered. Jims addressed them as “Ladies and Gentlemen, friends, Englishmen and Englishwomen, you who uphold our Dorset way of life, you the backbone of our land, this land of such dear souls, this earth, this realm, this England.”
They clapped and cheered. He told them at length what they already knew; what a glorious sport hunting with hounds was, how it had been part of English rural life since time immemorial, that it was a hallowed tradition which preserved the countryside and sustained thousands in employment. Though in fact he rather disliked riding, he went on to say what a pleasure it was for him, toiling all week in the murk and bustle of London, to go out with the South Wessex on a fine Saturday morning. The fresh air, the wonderful countryside, the sight and sound, surely the finest of all rural experiences, of the hounds on the scent. Foxes, he said, suffered very little in the chase. Lamping by night and shooting by the unskilled with a gun was far more cruel. In fact, he corrected himself, hunting wasn’t cruel at all, considering that only six percent of hunted animals were actually killed. The real pain would be suffered by those employed in various ways by the hunt-he quoted the alarming statistics in the notes he’d gone back to London to find-and who stood to lose their livelihoods if this pernicious bill became law.
He continued in this vein, though he was preaching to the converted and had no doubters to persuade. Just before he came to the end he recalled that he hadn’t responded to the chairman’s congratulations on his nuptials, so he finished by thanking him and saying how much he looked forward to setting his two charming stepchildren on horseback and introducing them to the joy of the chase.
The tremendous applause went on for nearly two minutes, with foot-stamping and shouts of approval. People queued up to shake his hand. A woman said she’d nearly not voted for him at the general election but now she thanked God nightly in her prayers that she had. The local branch of the alliance took Jims out to dinner in a horrible little restaurant called the Warming Pan, but he managed to escape
at ten and drove himself home to Fredington Crucis House, fearful all the way that due to the amount of a rather disgusting Armenian red he’d drunk he might be over the limit.
Zillah had spent the sort of afternoon that wasn’t at all to her taste, first taking the children to a playground on the south side of Westminster Bridge, then walking them along the South Bank past the London Eye and the National Theatre and the bookstalls, as far as Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe. It was sunny and warm, and it seemed to her as if everyone in London was down there on the traffic-free embankment. Strange, then, that this walk reminded her of life in Long Fredington. The loneliness of it, perhaps, with no one else to talk to but two people under eight, no man in her life, not even Jerry. She hadn’t brought his pushchair, so after a while she had to carry Jordan. She bought ice cream and Jordan’s dripped down onto her Anne Demeulemeister jacket. “Sometimes I think I’ll still be carrying you when you’re eighteen.”
Her cross tone set him off sniveling. Neither child had made any comment on the policeman’s visit, for which Zillah supposed she should be thankful. She was praying she’d heard the last of him and of Jerry. Perhaps, on the next visit he’d threatened, he’d only want to talk to Jims. Bigamy, she thought, when she was home again getting the children’s tea, bigamy. Why had that policeman asked her for the date of her divorce? But even though Jerry had been alive when she married Jims, she reminded herself, he was dead now. He’d died within two months of the wedding. Hold on to that, she said to herself, hold on to that, you haven’t got two husbands, you had two for only a few weeks. You can’t be a bigamist when you’ve only one husband.
