by Ruth Rendell
‘Perhaps,’ Wexford said. He smiled genially to help the atmosphere relax.
Georgina Villiers was calmer now. She unclasped her hands and looked down at them, breathing shallowly. ‘Do you know why your husband didn’t get on with his sister?’
‘Well, they hadn’t anything in common.’
And what, Wexford asked himself, docs a woman like you, dull and characterless and conventional, have in common with an intellectual like Villiers, a teacher of classics, an authority on Wordsworth?
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘he thought her rather silly and extravagant.’
‘And was she, Mrs Villiers?’
‘Well, she had a lot of money, didn’t she? He hadn’t any other reason for not liking her, if that’s what you mean. She and Quen were very ordinary people really. Not the sort of people I’ve been used to, of course. I never associated with people like that before I was married.’
‘You got on well with them?’
‘Quen was always kind.’ Georgina Villiers twisted her wedding ring, moving it up and down hey finger. ‘He liked me for my husband’s sake, you see. He and my husband are great friends.’ She looked down, nervously biting her lip. ‘But I think he got to like me for myself. Anyway,’ she said, suddenly shrill and cross, ‘why should I care? A man’s wife ought to come first. He ought to think more of her than of outsiders, not go and do his work in somebody else’s house.’
‘You felt that My Nightingale had too great an influence over your husband?’
‘I don’t care,’ said Georgina, ‘for any outside interference.’ She pulled at the ear-rings, slightly releasing the screw of one of them. ‘I was a teacher of physical education,’ she said proudly, ‘before I was married, but I’ve given it up for good. Don’t you think a woman ought to stay at home and look after her husband? That’s best for people like us, have a real home and family without too much outside interest.’
Frowning at Burden who was nodding his head approvingly, Wexford said,
‘Would you object if we searched this house?’
Georgina hesitated, then shook her head.
The bungalow had another reception room and two bedrooms, the smaller of which was unfurnished and uncarpeted.
‘I wonder what he does with his money?’ Wexford whispered. ‘He’s got a good job and he writes those books.’
Burden shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s extravagant like his sister,’ he said. ‘He’ll be different now. He’s got a good wife.’
‘Oh, my God!’
Searching the sparsely filled cupboards, Burden said stiffly, ‘Well, I think it makes a nice change, talking to an ordinary decent woman.’
‘Perhaps she is ordinary and decent. She’s dull enough, God knows. There’s nothing here, no blood, nothing that could conceivably have been used as a weapon.’ They moved on into the kitchen where Wexford lifted the lid of the old-fashioned coke boiler. ‘Blazing away merrily,’ he said. ‘They could have burnt practically anything on here and she’s had hours to do it in.’
Georgina was waiting for them in the living room, sitting apathetically, staring at the wall.
‘I can’t think why my husband’s so long. You’d think that today he’d want to be here with me. You’d.think ...’ Suddenly she froze, listening intently. ‘Here he is now.’
She leapt from her chair and rushed into the hall, slamming the door behind her. Listening with half an ear to the whispered conversation between husband and wife, Burden said, ‘She’s certainly a mass of nerves.
It’s almost as if she expected us to find something. I wonder if ..
‘Sssh!’said Wexford sharply.
Denys Villiers walked into the room, talking over his shoulder to his wife. ‘I can’t be in two places at once, Georgina. Quen’s in a bad way.
I left him with Lionel Marriott.’
Burden’s eyes met Wexford’s. The chief inspector got up, his eyebrows raised in pleased astonishment.
‘Did I hear you mention the name Lionel Marriott?’
‘I expect so, if you were listening,’ said Villiers rudely. He still looked a good deal more than thirty-eight, but less ill than in the Old House that morning. ‘Why, d’you know him?’
‘He teaches,’ said Wexford, ‘at the same school as you do. As a matter of fact, his nephew is married to my elder daughter.’
Villiers gave him an offensive glance. ‘Remarkable,’ he said, his tone clearly implying that Marriott, a cultured person and colleague of his own, had distinctly lowered himself in being associated by marriage with the chief inspector’s family.
Wexford swallowed his wrath. ‘Is he a friend of your brother-in-law’s?’
‘He hangs about the Manor from time to time.’ Coldly Villiers disengaged his arm from his wife’ s grasp and slumped into an armchair. He closed his eyes in despair or perhaps simply exasperation. ‘I want a drink,’ he said, and as Georgina hovered over him, her ear-rings bobbing, ‘There’s a half-bottle of gin somewhere. Go and find it, will you?’
6
T was a great piece of luck, Wexford thought as he strolled down Kingsmarkham High Street at sunset, that by serendipity he had lighted on one of Quentin Nightingale’s cronies and that the crony was Lionel Marriott.
Indeed, had he been allowed to select from all his vast acquaintance in the town one single person to enlighten him on the Nightingales’ affairs, Marriott would have been that one. But it had never crossed his mind to connect Marriott with the Manor, although perhaps it should have (lone, for what great house in the whole neighbourhood was closed to him? What person with any pretension to culture or taste wasn’t on hob-nobbing terms with him? Who but a recluse could deny familiarity with Kingsmarkham’s most hospitable citizen and most fluent gossip?
Wexford had met him half a dozen times and this was enough for Marriott to count him one of his intimates and to avail himself of a rare privilege.
Few people in Kingsmarkham knew the chief inspector’s Christian name and still fewer used it. Marriott had done so since their first meeting and required in exchange that Wexford should call him Lionel.
His own life was an open book. You might not want to turn its pages, but if you hung back, Marriott himself turned them for you, as anxious to enlighten you as to his own affairs as to those of his huge circle of friends.
He was about Wexford’s own age, but spry and wiry, and he had been married once to a dull little woman who had conveniently died just as Marriott’s boredom with matrimony was reaching its zenith. Marriott always spoke of her as ‘my poor wife’ and told stories about her that were in very bad taste but at which you couldn’t help laughing, for his narrative gift and art of skilful digression was such as to reveal the funny side of every aspect of the human predicament. Afterwards you salved your conscience with the thought that the lady was better dead than married to Marriott, who could never for long be attached to just one person and ‘all the rest’, as Shelley puts it, ‘though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion’.
For ‘cold oblivion’ or, at any rate, loneliness, seemed to be Marriott’s great dread. Why else did he fill his house with people every night? Why else teach English literature at the King’s School by day when he had a private income, sufficient even for his needs, his generosity and his hospitality?
Since his wife’s death he hadn’t been celibate and each time Wexford had encountered him it had been in the company of one of a succession of attractive well-dressed women in their forties. Very probably, he thought, as he entered the High Street alley that led down to Marriott’s house, the current companion would be there now, arranging Marriott’s flowers, listening to his anecdotes, preparing canap6s for the inevitable ensuing cocktail party.
His house was at the end of a Georgian terrace of which all but this first one had been converted into shops or flats or storeplaces. By contrast to their sad and dilapidated appearance, his looked positively over-decorated with its brilliant white paint, renewed every two years, its jolly little window boxes
on each sill, and the six curly balconies which sprouted on its fa~ade.
Those not in the know would have supposed it to be owned by a spinster of independent means and a fussy inclination towards horticulture. Smiling to himself, Wexford climbed the steps to the front door, ducking his head to avoid catching it on a hanging basket full of Technicolor lobelias and fire-engine geraniums. For once the alley wasn’t chock-a-block with the cars of Marriott’s visitors. But it was early still, not yet seven o’clock.
It was Marriott himself who came to the door, natty in a red-velvet jacket and bootlace tie, a can of asparagus tips in one hand.
‘Dear old boy, what a lovely surprise! I was only saying five minutes ago how miserable I was because you’d utterly deserted me, and here you are.
The answer to a sinner’s prayer. Wouldn’t it be lovely, I was saying, if dear old Reg Wexford were to turn up tonight?’
Wexford belonged to the generation and social stratum that feels almost faint to hear Christian names on the lips of mere acquaintances and he winced, but even he couldn’t deny that whatever Marriott’s faults, no one could make you feel as welcome as he did.
‘I was passing,’ he said, ‘and anyway I want to talk to you.,
‘And I’ve been longing to talk to you, so that makes two of us. Come in, come in. Don’t stand there. You’ll stay for my party, won’t you? just a little celebration, a few old friends who are dying to meet the great chief inspector after all the lovely things I’ve told them about you., Wexford found himself swept into the hall, propelled towards Marriott’s drawing room. ‘What are you celebrating?’ He took a deep breath and brought out the first name. ‘What is there to celebrate, Lionel?’
‘Perhaps “celebrate” was the wrong word, dear old boy. This part is more in the nature of an “l, who am about to die, salute you” gathering, if you take my meaning.’ He peered up into Wexford’s face. ‘I see you don’t. Well, no, a busy man like you would hardly realise that this is the last night of the holidays and it’s back to the spotty devils tomorrow.’
‘Of course,’ Wexford said. He remembered now that Marriott always gave an end-of-the-holidays party and that he always referred to his pupils at the King’s School as the ‘spotty devils’. ‘I won’t stay, though. I’m afraid I’m being a nuisance, interrupting you when you’re preparing for a party.’
‘Not a bit! You don’t know how overjoyed I am to see you, but I see from your icy looks that you disapprove.’ Marriott threw out his short arms dramatically. ‘Tell me, what have I done? What have I said?’
Entering the drawing room, Wexford saw a bar improvised in one corner, and through the arch that led into the dining room, a table loaded with food, roast fowls, cold joints, a whole salmon, arranged among carelessly scattered white roses. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that I was wrong in supposing you to have been a close friend of Elizabeth Nightingale.’
Marriott’s mobile face fell, becoming suddenly but perhaps not sincerely, lugubrious. ‘I know, I know. I should be in mourning, sackcloth and ashes, no less. Believe me, Reg, I wear the ashes in my heart. But suppose I were to put all these dear people off and fling the baked meats to the Pomfret broiler-pig farm, what good would it do? Would it bring her back? Would it wipe one tear from Quentin’s cheek?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Dear Reg, I can’t bear your censure. Let me give you a drink. A whisky, a pernod, a champagne cocktail? And a little slice of cold duck to go with it?’
Overwhelmed as usual, Wexford sat down. ‘Just a small whisky, then, but nothing to eat.’
‘I’m an outcast, I suppose. You won’t eat my salt.’ Marriott trotted towards the bar, shaking his head. He began pouring huge measures of Vat 69
into cut-glass tumblers. Wexford knew it would be useless to demur. He eyed the room with an inward grin. Although he knew many of the antiques were almost priceless, the chandeliers unique and the d6cor the envy of every person of taste in the town, Marriott’s drawing room always suggested to him a mixture of the Wallace Collection and an Italian restaurant in the Old Brompton Road. The walls were covered by bottle-green paper embossed with emerald fur and hung with gilt-framed brothel mirrors. On every table stood an assortment of carriage clocks, snuff-boxes and useless little bits of Crown Derby. You would be afraid to move except that you knew that what—
ever damage you did Marriott would only smile and tell you it didn’t matter at all, so much more precious was your company, including your clumsiness, than any inanimate object.
The clatter of heels from the kitchen region told him there was a third person in the house, and as he took his triple whisky, the woman appeared carrying a tray loaded with more food. She was a tall blonde of about forty-five with charm bracelets on both wrists which rang like bells as she moved.
‘This is Hypatia, my arnanuensis,’ said Marriott, seizing her arm. ‘You’ve no idea the funny looks I get when I introduce her like that. But then people are so illiterate, aren’t they? This is Chief Inspector Wexford, my dear, the guardian of our peace.’
Unmoved by Marriott’s remarks, Hypatia extended a large calm hand.
‘She won’t interfere with us,’ said Marriott as if she wasn’t there. ‘She’s just going to have a bath and make herself more beautiful than ever. Run along, Patty, darling.’
‘If you’re sure that’s enough nosh,’ said Hypatia.
‘Quite sure. We don’t want any bilious attacks like last time, do we? Now then, Reg, do your grand inquisitor stuff. I’m desolated that this isn’t a social call, but I don’t delude myself.’ Marriott raised his glass. ‘Here’s to kindness!’
‘Er-checrs,’ said Wexford. He waited until the woman had gone and sounds had reached him of water gurgling through the pipes. ‘rhen he said, ‘I want to know about the Nightingales, anything you can tell me.’ He grinned. ‘I
know you won’t let yourself be inhibited by any foolish scruples like good taste or not speaking ill of the dead.’
‘I was very fond of Elizabeth,’said Marriott in a slightly offended tone.
‘We’d known each other all our lives. We were infants together, in a manner of speaking.’
‘A manner of stretching, more like,’ said Wexford nastily. ‘She could have given you a good fifteen years, so don’t kid yourself.’
Marriott sniffed. ‘It’s easy to see you got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘I don’t know about the wrong side. I got out of it a damn’ sight too early. So you’ve known her since she was born, have you? Where was that?’
‘Here, of course. Didn’t you know she and Denys were born here?’
‘I hardly know a thing about them.’
‘Oh, that’s what I like. Total ignorance. As I say to the spotty devils, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after enlightenment, for they shall be filled, even if I have to knock it into ‘em with a slipper. Well, they were born here all right, in a nasty little damp house down by Kingsbrook Lock. Their mother came from London, quite a good family, but their father was Kingsmarkharn born and bred. He was a clerk in the council offices.’
‘Not well-off, then?’
‘Poor as church mice, my dear. Iflizabeth and Denys went to the council school, as it then was, and no doubt he would have gone on wasting his sweetness on the desert air but for the bomb.’
‘What bomb?’enquired Wexford as the bathroom door slammed and something went glug in the water tank far above their heads.
‘One of that stick of bombs a German plane let fly over here on its way to the coast. It was a direct hit and it took Villiers p~re and rn~re to Kingdom Come in one fell swoop:
‘Where were the children?’
‘Denys was out fishing and Elizabeth had been sent to fetch him home. It was early evening, about seven. The Villiers children, Elizabeth and Denys, were fourteen and eleven respectively.’
‘What became of them?’
‘A rather peculiar and most unfair arrangement was made for them,’
said Marriott. ‘Denys went to his mother’s brother and did very well for himself. This uncle was a barrister in a good way of doing and he sent Denys to some public school and then to Oxford. Poor Elizabeth was left behind with her aunt, her father’s sister, who took her away from the High School here when she was fifteen and sent her to work at Moran’s, the draper’s.’
Wexford’s face registered the astonishment Marriott had hoped for. ‘Mrs Nightingale a draper’s assistant?’
‘I thought that would shake you. That old bitch Priscilla Larkin-Smith still goes about telling her mates about the days when Elizabeth Villiers used to fit her for her corsets.’
‘How did she meet Nightingale?’
‘Oh, that was a long time later,’ said Marriott. ‘Elizabeth wasn’t at Moran’s for long. She ran away to London and got a job, the clever little thing. Have some more Scotch, ducky V
‘No, really. You know, Lionel, if it wasn’t for What’sher-name upstairs and her predecessors, one would suspect you of—how shall I put it?-a certain ambivalence. Sometimes you’re too epicene for words.’
Marriott smirked at that, not displeased. ‘I do camp it up rather, don’t I? People are always telling me about it. just a pose, I assure you. Do let me fill your glass.’
Oh, all ri,,ht.’ The water was running out of the bath now and Hypatia’s feet could be heard tapping on the upper floor. ‘Did the brother and sister meet in London?’
Marriott lit a Russian cigarette and blew elegant smoke rings. ‘That I wouldn’t know.’ He looked crestfallen. Wexford knew he hated to admit ignorance of any detail of a friend’s private life. ‘I didn’t see either of them again until I heard Quentin had bought the Manor.’ He recharged their glasses and came back to his chair. ‘When we heard the Manor had new people in I naturally got my wife to call. You can imagine my joy when I heard who this Mrs Nightingale was.’
