by Ruth Rendell
Violent Crimes interviewed Leonardo Norton on Sunday evening. He was very shocked that Jims, whom he thought the most discreet and laid-back of men, had given them his name. A sense of grievance sounded in his voice. “It was at least eight-thirty before I saw him, probably nearer nine. I’d spent the day with my mother in Cheltenham.” This rang in his own ears as the most innocent and blameless of ways to spend a day. “I really can’t account for what Mr. Melcombe-Smith may have been doing in the afternoon.”
They didn’t ask him where Jims had spent the night. Presumably, they hadn’t much interest in what happened after 4:30 P.M.
The next question was rather near the bone. “Did he have a key to this house?”
“To my house? Certainly not.” Jims, after all, would never admit to such a thing.
“But the lady next door has?”
“Amber Conway? Yes, she does. As I have a key to hers. It seemed wise. I understand Mr. Melcombe-Smith borrowed her key.”
According to her sister, whom they tracked down, Amber Conway had gone to Ireland but not until Saturday. She had been at home on Friday night but the sister knew nothing about a key. Violent Crimes told Leonardo they’d come back. Leonardo phoned Jims at home. When the receiver was lifted he could hear a child screaming, another one laughing, and something that sounded like a Disney video bleating and crooning from the television.
“You are a one,” said Leonardo when he heard Jims’s morose tones. “Quite a little devil when you like. Did you really stick a knife in your wife’s husband’s guts?”
“Of course I fucking didn’t.”
“You’ll be taking bribes in brown envelopes next.”
“I don’t allow even you to say that.”
Leonardo laughed. “Want to come over?”
Jims told him coldly that he didn’t think so. He’d had a grilling that had lasted most of the day and he was tired. Besides, he’d have a fresh confrontation next morning.
“Nothing to worry about,” said Leonardo. “The papers will only say a Westminster man has been helping them with their inquiries. Or maybe ‘a well-known Tory MP.’ ”
“Leave it out, would you?” said Jims.
Chapter 23
ON THE OPPOSITE side of Glebe Terrace to Amber Conway and Leonardo Norton lived a woman Natalie Reckman had got to know. She was the sister of her boyfriend’s flatmate’s girlfriend, a rather distantly removed relationship but one whose branchings were instantly simplified by most of the parties meeting for a dinner arranged and cooked by the flatmate. His sister-in-law-to-be told the company how the peace of her street had been disturbed all day by the comings and goings of the police, some in uniform and some, she was sure, plainclothed. Their quarry appeared to be the woman opposite or it might instead be this woman’s neighbor, a young banker or stockbroker or something whom she’d always supposed perfectly law-abiding. Someone had told her that a frequent visitor to his house-and she’d seen him call there herself-was that MP whose wife was a bigamist. She recognized him when she saw his picture in the paper.
Natalie was so excited she could barely eat her dinner. Unfortunately, she had to eat it and she was going to have to stay the night there too or put her relationship with her boyfriend in jeopardy. He’d already complained she was always away and thought more of getting a scoop than of him. Anyway, there wasn’t much that could be done before the morning. But by nine next day she was in Glebe Terrace, her car in the underground car park to avoid all risk of towing away or clamping, and Natalie was ringing the bell on a pretty little house which was the right-hand half of a joined-up pair. No police were about. Just as it began to look as if Amber Conway was still away and Natalie had rung the bell three times, the door was opened by a half-asleep woman with tousled hair and sleep dust in her eyes, wearing a short dressing gown over baby doll pajamas.
“Amber Conway?”
“Yes. Who are you? I only got home at three this morning. Are you the police?”
“Certainly not,” said Natalie. “What an idea.”
“They’ve been phoning me. I told them not to get here till ten.”
“That’s why I got here at nine.” Natalie put one foot over the threshold. “Can I come in?”
Jims had spent the evening lecturing Zillah on what he called her “disgusting and criminal behavior.” If he was to continue to share his life with her it must be on the strict understanding that she did what she was told, starting with a marriage ceremony, quietly carried out this time at a hotel or some such place, anywhere licensed for weddings. After that it would be more sensible for her to live permanently at Fredington Crucis House, only coming to London when her presence was required at some Conservative function, say a party hosted by the leader of the Opposition. Eugenie must go to boarding school and Jordan follow her in three years’ time. Meanwhile he would attend a nursery school of Jims’s choosing.
“I won’t,” Zillah said. “I’ve only just left the bloody place and I’m not going back.”
“I’m afraid you must, my dear. If you don’t I shall have no option but to leave you, or rather, turn you out. Because if we aren’t married and haven’t even lived together for more than two months, I shall be under no legal obligation to support you. Jerry can’t, if he ever did to any extent. He’s dead. So you either toe the line or go on the benefit. I don’t know where you’ll live but I dare say Westminster would put you in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.”
“What a bastard you are.”
“Calling names won’t help. Thanks to some crafty string-pulling, I’ve arranged for us to be married on Wednesday. All right with you?”
That had been Monday. Neither of them had much sleep that night. Even though he hadn’t revealed his state of mind to Zillah, Jims was seriously worried about the police investigation. One never knew when they would pounce again, for pounce he was sure they would. The chief whip had as yet said nothing to him and neither had the leader of the Opposition, but from each he fancied he’d received chilly looks. The idea that they were biding their time was inescapable.
Zillah, too, lay awake but, oddly enough, her state of mind was far more cheerful and forward-looking than his. That afternoon, before he came home, she’d had a phone call from a television channel called Moon and Stars asking her if she’d be willing to go on their A Bite of Breakfast show and talk about her experiences. She’d said she’d think about it and get back to them on Tuesday. If she played her cards right, she could maybe have a career in television. It might be wisest to get married first, just to be on the safe side. She’d ring Moon and Stars in the morning and ask them to wait just one more day, when she’d be able to give them a positive answer.
Jims worried also about the newspapers. That remark of Leonardo’s about describing the man who’d been “helping the police with their inquiries” as a well-known Tory MP still rankled. He was pretty sure they couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t dare, it would be sub judice or whatever the term was, and once again he wished he had some legal training. Probably there would be nothing anyone could link with him-but when would they come back for him? Could he find the courage to make an appointment with the chief whip before the tiresome man sent for him? Once he’d have said his nerve was limitless, but now he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t understand why he’d had no invitations from the Today program or Jeremy Paxman’s Start the Week. They came fast enough when he had nothing to say.
The newspapers flopped onto the mat at six-thirty in the morning. Jims had only slept for about an hour. He was up drinking coffee. If he grabbed the papers with unseemly haste, there was no one to see him. He sighed with relief for there was nothing more about him than the usual “man helping.” So far, so good. A pity, really, that there was no point in going back to bed at this hour. He could have slept at last.
The manager-he called himself the chief executive-of the Merry Cookhouse on the A30 remembered Jims, identifying him from a photograph without any trouble. He had been the rudest and most difficult cu
stomer the man behind the counter had come across for some time. When he’d finished insulting the décor and the service, he’d said the food wasn’t fit for pigs, it was a suppurating sore on the fair face of England, and the staff were morons who couldn’t tell a chicken breast from a pig’s balls.
That had been at three o’clock on the Friday afternoon. Violent Crimes reasoned, rather to their disappointment, that with the state of the traffic, Jims couldn’t possibly have got from this point in Hampshire to Marble Arch in under two hours, more likely three. They didn’t bother to tell him so. Why not let him sweat for a bit? He was obviously guilty of something, if not murder. Once they’d got the evidence of the Merry Cookhouse man, they didn’t take the trouble to call on Amber Conway, though they might have done so if they’d known Natalie Reckman had forestalled them.
“This MP chap, he was a mate of Leonardo Norton, was he?” Natalie was asking this question at the very moment Violent Crimes’s visit was due. “What you’d call a close friend?”
“More than that,” said Amber. “You won’t mention my name, will you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I suppose I’m naive, but I thought for a long time it was politics. We’re all very political in Westminster, you know.”
Natalie switched off the recording device Amber hadn’t noticed she was using. “Often borrowed your key, did he?”
“I’ve never known him do it before. He had a key of his own.”
Back at home, Natalie found a message waiting for her on her answering machine. It was from Zillah Melcombe-Smith and for a start it sang, rather well and in tune: “I’m getting married in the morning.” This was followed by spoken words: “Sorry if I wasn’t very nice to you last time. I was under a lot of pressure. Once I’m legally married to that sod I’ll have a story for you. Would you like to come round on Wednesday afternoon, say about three?”
Natalie put everything on hold. The inquest having taken place and been adjourned, Jeff was getting himself cremated that afternoon at Golders Green. She might as well go. After all, she’d been attached to him for longer than most of his other women and though she’d finally thrown him out, their parting had been as amicable as possible in the circumstances, and her fondness for him had endured until his death. That was probably because she’d never been under any illusions about him.
At two o’clock she dressed herself in a black skirt and jacket. Some precept lingering from years ago when she’d lived at home with her mother made the idea of a trouser suit worn to a funeral seem indecent. Natalie didn’t like hats and only had one, an unbleached straw with a big brim she’d bought for a holiday in Egypt. It wouldn’t do, so she went bareheaded. So did Zillah Melcombe-Smith, whom she hadn’t expected to see. She smiled at her across the chapel, and waved in a discreet and funereal way, suitably subdued to be appropriate for the occasion. Zillah had a child with her, the little boy who was always crying and was Jeff Leach’s son. No doubt, there was no one around for her to leave him with. The voluntary set him off and he was screaming at the top of his lungs by the time the coffin was carried in.
The weeping woman in deepest unrelieved black must be the current girlfriend, or rather, the most recent past girlfriend. Fiona Something. Blond, as usual, with the exception of the one he’d married. She cried all through the perfunctory service. The fat woman who’d come with her put an arm round her shoulders, then pressed her to the biggest bust-you couldn’t call it “breasts”-Natalie had ever seen. That man who’d made such a success of a TV program about anorexia was with them, singing hymns in rather a good baritone. Natalie hadn’t sent any flowers. She’d been feeling guilty about that, but now felt worse, there were so few wreaths. Those there were lay on a paved courtyard outside the crematorium, gerberas and lilies and ranunculus mostly, and Natalie thought how flowers sold in Britain had changed in the past ten years. Before that, it would have been all roses and carnations. A card on the biggest sheaf read: In adored memory of my darling Jeff, Your Fiona. Next to it was a wreath of white dianthus, tightly packed, that looked uncannily like a large Polo mint. The In loving memory card said, From Dad and Beryl. Nothing from the widow. No other former girlfriends there.
Natalie, who’d split up from Jeff just after the Christmas before last, found herself wondering who had come between her and this Fiona. Jeff had mentioned someone, but now she couldn’t remember the details. What had Jeff said about her? If Natalie was going to write an intimate story about all of them she’d have to discover this missing woman’s name as well as that of the girlfriend who came before her and maybe the one before that.
The mourners had all left the chapel by this time and were standing about admiring the flowers, some of them tearfully. Not one among them looked even remotely likely to have been her successor and Fiona’s predecessor. The plump lady with the pretty face was impossible-too old and the wrong shape. A blonde, not unlike Fiona to look at, she recognized as a detective inspector. Natalie introduced herself to a tall, thin woman of sixty who said she’d been Jeff’s landlady in Harvist Road, Queen’s Park.
“He was a lovely man, dear. Never gave a moment’s trouble.”
“I bet he got behind with his rent.”
“There was that. Fancy his wife going and marrying someone else while she was still married to him. Is that her? I think I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Was he away much overnight while he was living in your house?”
“For days on end and often at weekends, dear. But it was all above board. He used to go to Gloucester to see his mother. I was ever so worried he might have been on that train that crashed.”
Not likely, thought Natalie, considering he was driving his old banger back from Long Fredington at the time. Jeff’s mother, she knew for a fact, had died in 1985 and his father was living in Cardiff with a woman Jeff disliked, the Beryl of the Polo mint wreath. They hadn’t spoken for years. “That was at weekends. Was he away much in the week?”
“In the summer he was and maybe September too. ‘I think you’ve found yourself a lady friend,’ I said and he didn’t deny it.”
Natalie went over to have a word with Zillah. “Congratulations on your impending nuptials.”
“You what? Oh, yes. Thanks.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Who could the other woman, the intervening woman, be? Well-off, naturally, either with money or in a well-paid job. Owning her home and that home somewhere in London. North London, Natalie thought. Jeff had been one of those people who treat south London as alien territory for which you probably needed a passport. Once he’d boasted that he’d never even crossed a river bridge. That made her wonder what had become of his car, that twenty-year-old Ford Anglia he’d never cleaned while he was with her. She imagined it in a pound somewhere, having been clamped or grabbed from wherever he’d abandoned it in one of the myriad interlaced streets that lie between the North Circular Road and the Great Western line.
Back home, she made a few phone calls to check that Zillah (aka Sarah) Leach and James Melcombe-Smith were indeed due to be married in the City of Westminster next morning, but found nothing. Jims must be doing the deed in South Wessex. She wondered what chance she had of securing an interview with Leonardo Norton but decided to wait until she’d talked to Zillah, who might have revelations for her beyond anything she’d yet dreamed of.
Compared with her last one and even her first, the wedding was a drab affair. When the new rule or law had come in, Zillah had thought it a brilliant idea that you no longer had to be married in a church or register office but could fix things up in a hotel, a country house, or anywhere, really, provided it was licensed for the purpose. She changed her mind when she saw the place Jims had chosen, a 1930s roadhouse just off the A10 near Enfield. Dressed in the white suit and wearing a new cloche hat with curly black and white feathers, she thought she might as well not have bothered but stayed in jeans and sweater.
The ceiling was half-timbered in black faux beams
and the walls hung with equally faux linenfold paneling. Rustic chairs and tables stood about, and sofas upholstered in chintz covered in half-blown pink and red roses. Zillah had never before seen so much harness or so many saddles, bridles, spurs, and horse brasses, not even in the depths of Dorset. She was introduced to the owner of the place, a slightly superannuated pretty boy with a cockney voice who had once been Ivo Carew’s lover. Saying he was pleased to meet her, he winked rudely at Jims over her shoulder.
The registrar was a woman, young and good-looking. Zillah, for once antifeminist, wondered if she’d feel properly married with a woman performing the ceremony, though she knew registrars were mostly female these days. Ivo and the pretty boy were witnesses, and the whole thing passed off swiftly. Zillah had expected lunch even in this dump, some kind of celebration, but Jims, who hadn’t spoken to her except to say “I will” quickly said good-bye to everyone and drove her back to Westminster.
At last he addressed her. “Now we shall have to make arrangements for you and your children to decamp to Fredington Crucis.”
Chapter 24
THIS WEEK, THOUGH Josephine wouldn’t remember, Minty would have worked at Immacue for twenty years. The end of May, it had been, when she was eighteen. As she started on the shirts, she tried to work out how many she must have ironed in those years. Say three hundred a week for fifty weeks a year, two being taken off for holidays, times twenty made 300,000 shirts. Enough to dress an army, Auntie had said when she’d done ten years. White ones, blue-and-white striped, pink-and-white, yellow-and-white, gray, and blue, there was no end to it. She picked the first one off the pile. It was light-and-dark-green, a rare combination.
As often happened when she let herself think about Auntie the ghost voice spoke to her. “It’s not three hundred thousand, you’re wrong there. You never did shirts on a Saturday, not when you first went there. Not for a good two years. And there was days when you never did fifty on account of there wasn’t fifty to do. That figure’s more like a hundred fifty thousand than three hundred.”
