by Ruth Rendell
Surely they must have been impressed by his beautiful voice. Was that the voice of a thug who went about murdering people with knives? Michelle hadn’t expected the next question.
“Did anyone see you? Would anyone remember you at Waitrose?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Matthew looked faintly amused, his lips twitching. “Hundreds of people were in there.” And we don’t look as funny as we used to, Michelle thought. I’m still fat and he’s still thin, but the contrast isn’t so great. Lots of couples look like us. “I can’t remember seeing anyone at the Vale of Health. People don’t go out for walks anymore, do they?”
No one answered him. It was then that Michelle had asked how they knew she and Matthew had disliked Jeff and the two officers said they were unable to divulge that information. Matthew said he couldn’t understand this insistence on an alibi. They alibied each other, they’d been together all the time. Miss Demeanor’s colleague smiled pityingly. Ah, yes, but they were married. The inference was that each would readily lie to save the other. That was absurd when you remembered how many husbands and wives were at loggerheads.
Michelle reverted to the subject next morning. Sleep had been slow in coming to her last night and when at last it did she dreamed of her unborn children, those children that would now never be born. There were three of them, all girls, all clones of Fiona, each one turning their back on her and walking away, saying they’d never loved her because her heart was full of hatred.
Wanting to raise the subject again with Matthew, she lighted upon it obliquely. “I can’t believe they’d seriously think of us as people capable of murder.”
“Well, if you think that, darling, you’ve nothing to worry about. So cheer up. Come and give me a kiss.” Michelle kissed him. “You know, you look lovely today, you look years younger.”
Even that was no comfort to her. She could hear Fiona saying the words. The people next door, she’d have said, we’d got quite friendly with them, but they made it plain they disliked Jeff. It got uncomfortable being with them. Sometimes Mrs. Jarvey had the most awful vindictive expression on her face. All Jeff did was imply that she’s fat. Well, for God’s sake, she is fat and she knows it perfectly well.
“You can’t tell if she said those things, Michelle. It does no good conjuring up these scenarios. It’s a very dangerous kind of fantasizing. After a while you stop distinguishing between the fantasy and what really happened; you don’t know the reality anymore.”
Michelle knew that there could be only one kind of reality, that Fiona had led the police to believe she and Matthew, the gentlest and most civilized of men, hated their neighbor’s partner so much that they were capable of killing him. In a neutral voice she said, “I’d better think about getting our lunch.”
Not that she would eat anything. Since Jeff’s death she had lost her appetite and often felt that food would choke her. In death as in life, he had given her invaluable help. What would the police think if she told them that? That she was mad or that she’d killed Jeff to make sure she’d lost her appetite? Matthew, on the other hand, had discovered the pleasures of a food new to him, ciabatta, the best thing he’d tried for years. Fiona had tried it on him last week. Before Jeff died, before she betrayed me, Michelle thought, as she cut two slices of the Italian bread and put them on a plate with cottage cheese and twelve salted almonds.
For Zillah it had been a terrible day, an awful night, and a worse morning. First, of course, the media crowding her, the flashbulbs going off in her face, the bombardment of shouted questions.
“How does it feel to be married to two men at once, Zillah?” No one called her Mrs. Melcombe-Smith anymore. “Why didn’t you get a divorce, Zillah? Did you get married in church both times? Will you and Jims marry again? Properly this time, Zillah? Is this your little boy, Zillah? What’s your name, darling?”
It was then that Mark Fryer, the rat, had deserted her and run off. Several young women with notepads pursued him. Zillah had put her hands up in front of her face, leaving a gap in the mouth area, through which she shouted, “Go away, go away, leave me alone!”
She’d scooped up Jordan, who was crying as usual, and not just crying but sobbing, bellowing, shrieking in fear. One of the porters had come down the steps, not looking sympathetic but with a dreadful expression of disapproval as if he were silently saying, This isn’t the kind of thing we expect in Abbey Gardens Mansions, here under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament. But he provided her with a coat to cover herself and escorted her into the building, the other porter doing his best to keep the crowd back. Zillah was very nearly pushed into the lift. The doors closed.
The moment she entered the flat the phone started ringing. Ten minutes later she knew better than to answer it but this first time she lifted the receiver.
“Hi, Zillah,” a man’s voice said. “The Sun here. Come out into the sun, right? Can we have a few words? Now, when did you first…”
She slammed down the receiver. It rang again. She lifted it tentatively. It might be her mother, it might be-God forbid-Jims. But she’d have to speak to him. Jordan sat in the middle of the floor, rocking from side to side and screaming. This time the caller was the Daily Star. He must be on a mobile, she could hear the traffic in Parliament Square, Big Ben chiming.
“Hi there, Zillah. How d’you like being the center of attention? Fame at last, right?”
Having unplugged the phone and the one in Jims’s bedroom and the one in her bedroom, she went to bed with Jordan in her arms, hugging him close and pulling the covers over her. Later on, she reconnected her bedside phone and called Mrs. Peacock. Would she fetch Eugenie from school?
“I will this once, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith. But I’m not going to be able to carry on with this much longer. If you’re happy with that I’d like to pop in tomorrow morning about ten and have a frank chat about things, talk it through.”
Zillah wasn’t happy about anything but she felt too broken to say so.
Eugenie came in half an hour afterward, saying Mrs. Peacock had brought her to the flat door, rung the bell, and gone down in the lift without waiting for it to be answered. “Why are the phones all pulled out? My friend Matilda is going to phone me at six and she won’t be able to get through.”
“You can’t have phone calls at your age, Eugenie.”
“Why not? I’m seven and seven is the age of reason. Miss McMurty told us.”
I haven’t reached it yet, thought Zillah with unusual humility, and I’ll be twenty-eight next month, but she refused to plug in the phones and Eugenie sulked all evening. That night Zillah was awakened by Jordan screaming in an apparent frenzy. He was soaked in urine and so was his bed. She changed his nappy and his pajamas, brought him into bed with her. What was wrong with him? She ought to do something about it, take him to that child psychiatrist. At his age his sister had left babyhood behind, was clean, dressed herself, chatted away about anything, only cried if she fell over.
True to her word, Mrs. Peacock arrived at ten sharp.
“We’re not going to have to be looked after by her again, are we?”
“No, Eugenie, you’re not,” said Mrs. Peacock. “Never again, if I may so put it. Have you looked out of your window this morning, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith? A rat pack is outside. I believe that’s the current expression.”
Zillah went to the window. The media people looked like the same lot as yesterday. They were waiting patiently, most of them with cigarettes and a couple with flasks of something. A lot of merriment was going on, they all seemed on the best of terms. As if in protest, Jordan began to cry.
“I brought some papers for you, in case you haven’t seen them. You’re in them, on all the front pages.”
“Thank you. I prefer not to see.”
“Frankly, I’m not surprised. May I sit down? It’s rather early, but all this has been a shock to me and if you don’t object, I’d like a glass of Bristol Cream.”
Zillah poured it, a large schooner. She could quite clea
rly hear the laughter and chatter from the street two floors below. The phone rang. She pulled out the plug, watched closely by Mrs. Peacock.
“Now, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith-though to be honest with you I doubt if you’ve any right to that name-when you phoned yesterday I was, as you might say, in a state of innocence. Things have changed. I’ve read the newspapers. As you may imagine, I could hardly believe my eyes. Abbey Gardens Mansions is no place for you, Maureen Peacock, I said to myself.”
“There are two sides to this,” said Zillah. “I can explain everything.”
The innocent never utter these words and perhaps Mrs. Peacock knew it. “We need not go into that. Who touches pitch shall be defiled. I shall be reluctantly forced to terminate our agreement. You owe me fifty-seven pounds, twenty-five pee, and I’d like cash. You never know with some people whether checks won’t bounce.”
A little of her old spirit returned to Zillah. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that!”
Mrs. Peacock ignored this. She got slowly to her feet, emptied the sherry glass, and wiped her lips with a small lace handkerchief. “Just one other thing before I go.” She pointed to Jordan who, by this time, was lying on his back, writhing and weeping. “There’s something seriously amiss with that child. He needs help without more ado. I knew a child like him twenty-five years ago, always crying and screaming. And what d’you think? Nothing was done and he grew up to be a psychopath. He’s in prison now, in a straitjacket, one of those places where they put violent people who are a threat to the community.”
But Zillah had gone to her bedroom to fetch the money. The amount was more than she had in the flat and she had to take a five-pound note out of Eugenie’s piggy bank. Eugenie, who was really a very strange child, perhaps a genius, started laughing as soon as Mrs. Peacock had gone. Zillah could hardly believe she’d understood what the woman had said but something had made her laugh and after a second or two Zillah joined in. She put her arms round her daughter, preparing to give her a hug, something she hadn’t done for a long time. Eugenie stiffened and pulled away.
Jims might have been trying to get through to her but it didn’t matter much. She knew he’d be here by lunchtime. He’d have canceled his engagement in Casterbridge and driven straight home. There was very little to eat in the flat and obviously she couldn’t go out shopping. If Mrs. Peacock hadn’t been so abominable and rude and defiant, she’d have asked her to get a few things in. The children could have scrambled eggs, though they’d had rather a lot of these lately, and Eugenie had already told her eggs were stuffed with cholesterol and did she know?
It was just after twelve when Jims came. Unlike her, he wasn’t so foolish as to run the gauntlet in Great College Street, he’d have seen what was going on when driving past in the car, but still there was no escape for him. Media people were round the back as well. Zillah, shaking with nerves, heard the lift come up and its doors open. Malina Daz was with him, wearing a sea green salwar kameez and with her hair done like a Japanese geisha’s.
Jims opened the living-room door, took a step inside, and surveyed his little family the way uncharitable people look at asylum seekers. To the children he said not a word. He addressed Zillah in an Arctic voice. “Malina and I are about to prepare a statement for the media. I will show it to you when we’ve finished.”
Malina brought the statement in to her. It was short, prepared on a word processor.
My wife, Zillah, and I fully understand the sensation that recent circumstances-the tragic death of Mr. Jeffrey Leach taken in tandem with our marriage-have occasioned in the media. While absolutely concurring in the opinion of national newspaper editors that this matter is in the public interest and should not be kicked into the long grass but openly aired, we would nevertheless like to assure those kind enough to take an interest in us, that we were totally innocent of any offense.
My wife sincerely believed that her marriage to Mr. Leach had been dissolved twelve months ago. She had implicit trust in Mr. Leach as did I. Not for a moment did either of us believe we were guilty of wrongdoing. If we had, in spite of our love for each other, we of course would have deferred our marriage until we had secured a formalization of the divorce and could start afresh with a level playing field.
Needless to say, we shall remarry as soon as this is feasible. We would both like to extend our best wishes to those good enough to be concerned for us and ask them for their understanding, indulgence, and, indeed, forgiveness.
“It’s a bit formal,” said Malina, “but we deemed that suited to the seriousness of the subject matter. Jims decided it might be best not to mention your husband’s passing setting you free. It looks bad. And we were minded not to use the word ‘bigamy.’ It sounds terribly twentieth-century, don’t you think?”
Because she dared not ask Jims, Zillah asked Malina, “What will they do to me?”
“What, for being married to two men at the same time? Not a lot, I should think. After all, your husband’s dead, isn’t he? It’d be different if he were still alive somewhere. They’ll be focusing on the murder.”
Malina went off to do whatever she did to disseminate the statement. Jordan cried himself to sleep. Eugenie said that if someone would take her there she’d like to go round to her friend Matilda’s for the afternoon but first she was starving.
“There is no food in the house,” said Jims.
“I know there isn’t. I couldn’t go out shopping, could I? Not with all that lot outside.” Zillah very much wanted to placate him. “I could now if I go through the basement. They aren’t in the back.”
“They are. They nearly flattened my car when Malina and I came in.”
“Miss McMurty says that if you don’t have enough to eat you’ll get a vitamin deficiency. Your eyes will go blind and your teeth drop out,” Eugenie said.
“I will get one of the porters to shop for us,” said Jims.
Zillah wondered when the showdown would come, when he’d ask her why she’d deceived him over the nonexistent divorce. She prepared lunch. The porter had bought inferior quality food from some corner shop, besides getting all the things the children didn’t like. The lettuce was wilted and the tomatoes soft. Jordan screamed when he was expected to eat corned beef.
“Can I phone Matilda and get her to come here?” Eugenie suggested.
“I’m surprised you condescend to ask.”
“Well, can I?”
“I suppose so. You’ll have to play in your bedroom. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
Too late Zillah remembered Matilda’s father would probably bring her. But when the child arrived half an hour later she was in the care of a very young and beautiful au pair. She supposed she ought to be thankful Eugenie’s friend was allowed to come at all, permitted to associate with the Melcombe-Smiths, after what had been in the papers.
“I’ll come back for you at six, Matilda.”
They had to have her for three whole hours? That meant Zillah must find something to feed them. She watched them go off toward Eugenie’s room, chatting happily, her daughter giggling like a normal child. The phone began to ring. Zillah lifted the receiver fearfully. It was her mother, saying nothing this time about newspapers but asking if she was so indifferent to her father’s fate that she had forgotten he’d had a heart bypass that morning. After making wild promises she knew she’d never carry out, once Nora Watling had slammed down the phone she was left alone with Jims.
He took from the bookcase an as yet unread biography of Clemenceau, returned with it to his armchair, and, in total silence, opened it at the preface. Zillah picked up a glossy magazine and tried to read a piece about collagen lip implants. Suppose he never spoke to her again? What would she do? She remembered, back in December, how she’d foreseen this marriage as the chaste and charming companionship of two best friends, two people who would have fun together, enjoy life, and at the last have a greater affection for each other than either had for any lover.
“What do you want me to say?” she as
ked him when she could bear the silence no longer.
He looked up, a shade of irritability crossing his face. “I beg your pardon-what?”
“I asked you what you wanted me to say.”
“Nothing,” he said. “There is nothing to say. The newspapers have already said it.”
“We can get through it together, can’t we, Jims? All the fuss will die down. You’ve done nothing wrong. The statement will stop it, won’t it? Oh, Jims, I’m so desperately sorry. I’d have died before I let something like this happen, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Abjectness doesn’t suit you.”
She’d have gone down on her knees to him but for the phone ringing at that moment. “Don’t answer it, let it ring.”
He got up, crossed the room to where the phone was, and lifted the receiver. His expression changed subtly as he listened. “Yes,” he said, and “yes” again. “May I ask why?” She couldn’t remember ever having seen him dismayed before. “I would like to phone my lawyer first,” and then, “Half an hour, right.”
“What is it, Jims?”
“They want me at the police station. Here won’t do. They’re coming to fetch me.”
“My God, Jims, but why?”
Instead of answering he lifted the receiver and dialed the home number of his solicitor.
Eugenie came in, trailing Matilda behind her. “You owe me five pounds, Mummy. You’d better write it down or you’ll forget.”
Chapter 22
ALONE AT HOME, Fiona hadn’t set foot in her garden or conservatory since the news reached her of Jeff’s death. Nor had she been back to work. She had barely been out. When Violent Crimes and Miss Demeanor weren’t there, and their visits grew shorter and shorter until they no longer happened, she sat in her living room, not reading, not watching television or listening to the radio, but just sitting. Her hands were usually folded in her lap, her knees close together. It was days now since she’d cried. She’d phoned no one and when the phone rang she left it to ring.
