by Ruth Rendell
‘Speak good English, do you, Miss Doorn?’ Wexford asked as she admitted them.
‘Oh, no, I am very bad,’ said the Dutch girl, giggling.
‘Everybody tell me I am very very bad.’ She smiled without shame.
She belonged, Wexford thought admiringly, to the classic Dutch type which, photographed in clogs and peasant dress among windmills and tulips, advertises the attractions of Holland on holiday posters, Her hair was pale gold and long, her eyes a bright frank blue and her skin as dazzling as any ivory tulip in the Keukenhof Gardens. When she laughed, and she seemed to be always laughing, her face lit up and glowed. She looked, Wexford thought, about twenty.
‘How long,’ he asked, ‘have you been living here with Mr and Mrs Nightingale?’
‘One year. Nearly one year and a half.’
‘So you knew them well? You lived as one of the family?’
‘There is no family,’ said Katje, pushing out full pink lips in disgust.
‘Just him and her.’ She shrugged. ‘And now she is dead.’
‘Yes indeed. That is why I am here. No doubt, you were a good friend to Mrs Nightingale, like a grown-up daughter?’
Katje laughed. She curled her legs under her, bounced up and down. Then she covered her mouth, suppressing giggles, with one hand. ‘Oh, I must not laugh when all is so sad! But it is so funny what you say. A
daughter! Mrs Nightingale wouldn’t like to hear that, I think. No, she think she is young girl, very young and pretty in little mini skirts and eye-liner on, so!’
Burden fixed her with a disapproving glare which she met with frank wide eyes. Persisting doggedly, Wexford said, ‘Nevertheless, you were in her confidence?’
‘Please?’
Burden came to his assistance. ‘She talked to you about her life?’ he said.
‘Me? No, never, nothing. At lunch we sit so, she there, I here. How is your mother, Katje? Will it rain today? Now I lie down and have my little rest. But talk? No, we do not talk!
‘You must have been lonely.’
‘Me?’ The giggles broke out in fresh gusts. ‘Perhaps I should be lonely
...’ She hesitated, struggling with her conditionals. ‘Perhaps if I stay in all day with him and her and all evening too, then I am lonely.
No, I have my friends in Kingsmarkham, many many friends, boys and girls.
Why do I like to stay here with old people?’
‘They were only in their forties,’ said thirty-six-yearold Burden hotly.
‘This,’ said Katje calmly, ‘is what I am saying to you. I am young, they old. Mr Nightingale, he make me laugh. He is a nice man and he say things to make me laugh, but he is old, old, older than my father in Gouda.’
Smug and secure in the unarguable possession of radiant youth, Katje smiled at Wexford, then let her eyes travel to Burden, where they lingered. She looked at him as if she were wondering whether he were obtainable. She giggled.
Blushing, Burden said sharply, ‘What did you see when you came home last night?’
‘Well, I am going to the movies with my friend who is a waiter at the Olive and Dove. First we see the movie, is Swedish film, very sexy, make me feel so hot, you understand?’
‘Oh, yes,’said Burden, looking down.
‘This is natural,’ said Katje severely, ‘when one is young.’ She stretched her long stockingless legs and wriggled her toes in the white sandals. ‘Afterwards I wish to go with my friend to his room but he will not because there is a manager at the hotel, a very unkind man, who is not letting him have girls. So we are sad and my friend takes me instead to the Carousel caf6. There we have coffee and one, two cakes.’
‘What time was this?’
‘It is a quarter to ten when we leave the movies. We are having our coffee and then we are sitting in the car, kissing and cuddling, but very sad because we cannot go to his room. My friend must rise very early in the morning, so he go back to the hotel and I go home. Now it is eleven, I think.’
‘You saw Mrs Nightingale leave the Manor grounds?’
Katje poked a lock of hair into the corner of her mouth. ‘Her I am seeing in the lights of the car, coming out of the gate near where the bonfire is burning. And she is seeing me too. This I know because she is closing the gate quick and hiding till I go by. Very funny, I think to myself. So I drive up along the road and I am leaving the car parked and walking back very soft, very secret, to see if she is coming out again.’ Suddenly Katje sat up straight, shooting her legs out and displaying the tops of her thighs to the nervous Burden. ‘She is coming out again!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I see her cross the road and go into the wood. And she is walking very quiet, looking like this over her shoulder.’ Katje pantominned it in a swift, curiously animal-like burlesque. ‘Then I know what she is doing. Many many times have I too walked like this when I am going to meet my friend in the woods and the unkind man is not allowing us to go to his room. Over my shoulder I am looking to see that no one is following to spy what we do.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Wexford gruffly. ‘I understand all that.’ He didn’t dare look at Burden. It wouldn’t altogether have surprised him if the inspector, like the man in Bleak House, had entirely disappeared, melting away by a process of spontaneous combustion.
With more than an edge of irony to his voice, he said, ‘You have been very frank with us, Miss Doorn.’
‘I am good, yes?’ said Katje with intense satisfaction. She chewed her hair enthusiastically. ‘I tell you things that help? I am knowing all about talking with the police. When I am in Amsterdam with the provos the police are asking me many questions, so I am knowing all about police and not frightened at all!’ She gave them a radiant smile which lingered and sparkled when it was turned on Burden. ‘Now I think I am making you coffee and telling you how we throw the smoke bombs in Amsterdam while this old police chief is talking with poor Mr Nightingale.’
Burden had lost all his poise and while he stammered out something about having already had coffee, Wexford said smoothly, ‘Some other time, thank you.’ He didn’t mind being called a police chief, but the adjective rankled. ‘We shall want to talk to you again, Miss Doorn.’
‘Yes, I think so too,’ said Katje, giggling. Placidly she accepted the fact that most men, having once met her, would want to talk to her again.
She curled up in her chair and watched them go, her eyes dancing.
‘Now for Nightingale,’ said Wexford as they descended the stairs. ‘I’ve already had a few words with him but that was before I knew about these dawn ablutions of his. He’ll have to come out of that study, Mike. I’ve sent Martin to swear a warrant to search this house.’
3
HE had the kind of looks women call distinguished. His hair was silver without a black strand and he wore a small silver moustache which gave him the look of an ambassador or a military man of high rank. Because of this rather premature silvering he looked no younger than his fifty years, although his tall figure was as slim as Sean Lovell’s, his chin muscles firm and his skin unlined.
People expect a pretty woman to have a handsome husband or a rich one.
Otherwise they feel the marriage is unaccountable, that she has thrown herself away. Elizabeth Nightingale had been more than usually pretty and her widower was more than usually rich besides being handsome enough to match her beauty. But this morning he looked almost ugly, his features haggard and drawn.
It had taken a good deal of persuasion and finally peremptory insistence to make him admit them to the study, but now he was inside, Wexford’s anger dissolved into an impatient pity. Quentin Nightingale had been crying.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I must question you just as I must question everyone else.’
‘I realise that.’The voice was low, cultured and ragged. ‘It was childish of me to lock myself in here. What do you want to ask me?’
‘May we sit down?’
‘Oh, please ... I’m sorry. I should have ...’
‘I quite understand,
Mr Nightingale.’ Wexford sat down in a leather chair that resembled his own at the police station, and Burden chose the high wooden stool that stood by the bookcase. ‘First of all, tell me about last evening. Did you and Mrs Nightingale spend it alone?’
‘No. My brother-in-law and his wife came up to play bridge with us.’ A
little animation came into his voice as he said, ‘He is the distinguished author of works on Wordsworth, you know.’
‘Really?’said Wexford politely.
‘They came at about eight-thirty and left at half past ten. My brother-in-law said he had some research to do at the school library before he went to bed.’
‘I see. flow did your wife seem last night?’
‘My wife ...’Quentin winced at the word and at having to repeat it himself.
‘My wife was quite normal, gay and lovely as always.’ His voice broke and he steadied it. ‘A very gracious hostess. I remember she was particularly sweet to my sister-in-law. She gave her some present and Georgina was delighted. Elizabeth was the most generous of women.’
‘What was this present, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ Quentin said, suddenly weary once more. ‘I only heard Georgina thank her for it.’
Burden shifted on his stool. ‘Why did your wife go into the forest, Mr Nightingale?’
‘I don’t know that either. My God, I wish I did. She often went for a walk in the grounds. in the late evening, I mean. I never dreamt she would go into the forest.’
‘You were a happily married couple, sir?’
‘Certainly we were. Ideally happy. Ask any of our friends. Oh God, would I be like this, the way I am, if we hadn’t been happy?’
‘Please don’t distress yourself, Mr Nightingale,’ Wexford said gently.
‘Now I want you to answer very carefully. You’re aware that Palmer came into your bedroom just after five this morning but couldn’t find you?
Would you mind telling me where you were?’
A dark asharned flush coloured Quentin’s face. He put his hands up to his cheeks as if he thought their cold touch would drive the blood away. ‘I
was in the bath,’ he said stiffly.
‘A curious time to take a bath.’
‘Occasionally we all do curious things, Chief Inspector. I awoke early on account of the wind. I couldn’t get to sleep again, so I had a bath.’
‘Very well, Mr Nightingale. I should like to search this house now, if you please.’
‘As you like,’ said Quentin. He looked like a condemned man who has received a reprieve but knows it is only a temporary stay of execution.
Fingering a paperweight of dark blue stone threaded with silver, he said,
‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’
‘We aren’t vandals,’ said Wexford sharply, then relenting slightly,
‘Afterwards you won’t know we’ve passed this way.’
As country houses go, Myfleet Manor wasn’t large, but it wasn’t, to use Burden’s own phrase, a council maisonette either. Altogether there were fifteen rooms, each furnished with taste and apparently with love, nearly every one a museum of objets d’art. Nothing was out of place, no carpet stained or cushion crumpled. Clearly no child and certainly no dog had ever been permitted to run wild here. Only the petals fallen from flower arrange—
ments told of half a day’s neglect.
And yet, despite the dahlia-filled vases and the pale sunbeams that the wind blew flickeringly across satin and polished wood, the place had a cold sepulchral air. It was, as Wexford remarked, ascending the staircase, rather like being in church.
The life of the Manor, its pulse and the sole source of its laughter, was up above them in the au pair girl’s flat. Glancing up the topmost flight rather wistfully, Wexford entered Quentin’s bedroom, Burden following close behind.
The bed had been made. Beside it on a low table lay a book which Wexford glanced at, making no comment. He opened drawers and scanned the well-stocked wardrobe while Burden went into the bathroom.
‘The bath towel’s still wet, sir,’ he called. ‘It’s on a hot rail, though, and ...’ Wexford tramped across to the bathroom where he found Burden looking at his watch. ‘It wouldn’t take seven hours to dry, would it?’
Wexford shook his head. ‘He’s either had two baths,’ he said, ‘or just one and that at nine or ten this morning.’
‘You mean the first one was a real cleaning-up operation? In that case there ought to be blood on the towel or somewhere, and there isn’t.’
‘We’ll check the laundry with Mrs Cantrip. Let’s go next door.’
The dead woman’s bedroom was papered in lilac and silver, a pattern of rosebuds and blown roses which was repeated identically in the satin of the curtains. Between the two windows stood a triple-mirrored dressing table, its legs skirted in white tulle. The bed was white too, huge and smooth, flanked on either side by white fur rugs like patches of snow on the emerald field of carpet.
While Burden searched the dressing table and lifted the lid of a writing desk, Wexford examined the wardrobe. Mrs Nightingale had possessed enough clothes to stock a boutique, the only difference between this rack and a boutique’s being that these garments were all of one size, a young girl’s size twelve, and they had all belonged to one woman.
‘No diary,’ said Burden, busy at the desk. ‘A couple of receipted dressmaker’s bills from a shop in Bruton Street, London, a place called Tanya Tye. The bills she’s paid were for a hundred and fifty-odd and two hundred pounds, and there’s a third one outstanding for another ninety-five. No interest there, I think.’
Wexford moved on to the dressing table. He lifted from its surface jars of cream, bottles of lotion, lastly a flagon of liquid whose declared purpose was to lift and brace facial muscles. ‘Made out of a cow’s digestive juices,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘Or so they tell me.’ His face softened and grew sad. ‘ “Why such high cost,” ‘ he quoted, ‘ “having so short a lease, dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?”
‘Pardon?’
‘Just a sonnet that came into my head.’
‘Oh, yes?’said Burden. ‘Personally, I was thinking what a waste of money when you’ve got to get old anyway. I don’t suppose she went to all this trouble for her husband, do you?’
‘No, there was another man.’
Burden nodded. ‘The man she went to meet last night, presumably,’ be said.
‘What’s your theory, sir? That Nightingale suspected, followed her into the forest and killed her? Burnt his clothes on Palmer’s fire?’
‘I haven’t got a theory,’said Wexford.
They descended slowly. The staircase was long and shallow with a wide landing halfway down. Here a window whose crimson velvet curtains matched the Etoile de Hollande roses in a copper bowl on its sill, gave on to the garden. The wind was still fresh and skittish, sending the hedges rippling like green rivers.
‘There’s a candidate for the third side of our triangle,’ said Wexford, pointing down at the hothouse.
‘Sean Lovell?’ Burden’s intense disapproval of this suggestion, with all its attendant implications, showed in an angry frown. ‘The gardener’s boy? Why, he can’t be more than twenty and she ... I never heard of such a thing!’
‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Wexford. ‘Of course you’ve heard of it. Even you must have heard of Lady Chatterley, if you haven’t read it.’
‘Well, a book,’ said Burden, relieved that the chief inspector had chosen a literary rather than a real-life instance of what he considered a monstrous perversion. ‘Cold in here, isn’t it? I suppose it must be the wind.’
‘We’ll go and have a warm in the hothouse.’
Sean Lovell opened the door for them and they stepped into steamy tropical heat. Pale orchids, green and lemony pink, hung from the roof in moss-lined baskets, and on the shelves stood cacti with succulent lily-shaped flowers. Scented steam had condensed on the cold glass and there was a constant soft dripping sound.
&nb
sp; The perfume, the heat and the colours suited Sean’s rather exotic looks.
Although probably an inheritance from gypsy forbears, his jet-black hair and golden skin suggested Italian or Greek descent. Instead of jeans and sweater he should have worn a corsair’s shirt and breeches, Wexford thought, with a red scarf round his head and gold hoops in his ears.
‘She was a nice lady, a real lady,’ Sean said gruffly. Viciously he snapped a fat leaf from a xygocactus.
‘Always on the look-out for what she could do for you. And she has to go and get herself murdered. It’s like what my old lady says, it’s always the good as dies young.’
‘Mrs Nightingale wasn’t that young, Lovell.’
A brilliant seeping of colour came into the olive-gold cheeks. ‘ ‘Bout thirty, that’s all she was.’ He bit his lip. ‘You can’t call that old.’
Wexford let it pass. Elizabeth Nightingale had tried so hard with her creams and her muscle bracer that it seemed ungenerous, now that she was dead, to disillusion her admirejs.
‘I’d like to know your movements last night. What time d’you knock off here and where did you go?’
Sean said sullenly, ‘I knock off at five. I went home to my tea. I live alone in the village with my old lady. I had my tea and I watched telly all evening.’
‘Don’t you have a girl friend?’
Instead of answering directly, Sean said, ‘You seen the girls round here?’ He gave Wexford a shifty look that gave him the appearance of a Greek pirate. ‘Some evenings I watch telly and some I go into town and play the juke box at the Carousel. What else is there to do in a dump like this?’
‘Don’t ask me, Lovell. I’m asking the questions. You watched television right up to the time you went to bed?’
‘That’s wh,)t I did. Never went out again. You can ask my old lady.’
‘Tell me what programmes you saw.’
‘There was Pop Panel, then the Hollywood musical till ten.’
‘You went to bed at ten?’
‘I don’t remember. I can’t remember what I saw and when I went to bed.
