A Guilty Thing Surprised

by Ruth Rendell

  he said.

  John looked pleased at being placed in this unique category. ‘Can I have a lift, Dad? Old Roman Villa’s taking us for Prayers and there’ll be hell to pay if I’m late.’

  ‘Don’t say “hell to pay”,’ said Burden absently. ‘Come on, then. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.’

  A day of hunting for a needle in a haystack, of running a predator to earth. He marched into the police station and met Sergeant Martin in the foyer.

  ‘Anything turned up on Twohey yet?’

  ‘No, sir, not as far as I know, but Mr Wexford’s on to something. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in.’

  Burden went up in the lift.

  The chief inspector was sitting at his desk, impatiently drumming his fingers on the blotter. There were pouches under his eyes and he looked, Burden thought, very much the worse for wear. And yet, about his whole demeanour, there was an air of triumph, of momentous discovery that until this moment he had kept suppressed.

  ‘You’re late,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve had to go over and swear out the warrant myself.’

  ‘What warrant? You mean you’ve found Twohey?’

  ‘Twohey be damned,’ said Wexford, jumping up and taking his raincoat from the stand. ‘Hasn’t it yet penetrated your dapper little skull that this is a murder hunt? We are going to Clusterwell to make an arrest.’

  Obediently, Burden followed him from the room. Wexford didn’t care for the lift and, since he had been trapped in it for two hours one afternoon, had tended to avoid it. But now he jumped in and pressed the button apparently without a qualm.

  ‘Villiers’ place?’ Burden asked and, when Wexford nodded, ‘Well, you won’t find him there. He’s taking school Prayers this morning.’

  ‘How bloody unsuitable.’ Wexford gave an explosive snort. The lift sank gently and the door slid open. ‘We’ll take one of the W.P.C.s with us, Mike.’

  ‘Shall we indeed? When are you going to tell me who we’re arresting and why?’

  ‘In the car,’said Wexford.’On the way.’

  ‘And how you suddenly happened to see the light?’

  Wexford smiled a smile full of triumph and renewed confidence. ‘I

  couldn’t sleep,’ he said as they waited for the policewoman to join them.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I read a book. I’m an ignorant old policeman, Mike.

  I don’t read enough. I should have read this one when its author first gave it to me.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a detective story, sir,’ said Burden innocently.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody silly,’ Wexford snapped. ‘I don’t mean the book outlines the murder plan. Anyway, there was no plan.’

  ‘Of course not. It was unpremeditated.’

  ‘Yes, you were right there and right about a lot of things,’ Wexford said, adding in a sudden burst of confidence: ‘I don’t mind telling you, I began to think you were right in everything. I thought I was getting old, past it.’

  ‘Oh, come, sir,’ said Burden heartily. ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ the chief inspector snapped. ‘I’ve still got my eyesight, I’ve still got some intuition. Well, don’t stand hanging about there all day. We’ve got to make an arrest.’

  Someone else must have stood on the dais and commanded the boys to lift up their hearts and voices, for Denys Villiers was at home.

  ‘I took the day off,’ he said to Wexford. ‘I’m not well.’

  ‘You look ill, Mr Villiers,’ said Wexford gravely and, meeting the man’s eyes, ‘You always look ill.’

  ‘Do I? Yes, perhaps I do.’

  ‘You don’t seem curious about the purpose of our call.’

  Villiers threw up his head. ‘I’m not. I know why you’ve come.’

  ‘I should like to see your wife.’

  ‘I know that too. Do you imagine I think you’ve brought a policewoman for the sake of a little feminine company? You underrate your opponent, Mr Wexford.’

  ‘You have always underrated yours.’

  Villiers gave a slight painful smile. ‘Yes, we have been a mutual denigration society.’ He went to the bedroom door. ‘Georgina!’

  She came out, shoulders hunched, head bent. Wexford had only once before seen anyone come through a doorway like that, and then it had been a man, a father who for two days had kept his children at gunpoint in a room with him. At last he had been persuaded to drop his gun and come out, walk across the threshold to the waiting police and crumple into his wife’s arms.

  Georgina crumpled into her husband’s.

  He held her in a close embrace and he stroked her hair. Wexford heard her murmuring to him, begging him not to leave her. She wore no jewellery but her wedding and engagement rings.

  It was so painful to watch that he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words of the charge. He stood awkwardly, clearing his throat, giving a little cough like the sound he had made when she had locked herself in the bathroom. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked at them over her husband’s shoulder. Tears were pouring down her freckled cheeks.

  “Yes, I killed Elizabeth,’ she said hoarsely. ‘The torch was on the ground.

  I picked it up and killed her. I’m glad I did it.’ Denys Villiers, still holding her, shivered violently. ‘If I had known before, I would have killed her sooner. I killed her as soon as I knew.’

  Very quietly Wexford spoke the words of the charge. ‘I don’t care what you take down in writing,’ she said. ‘I did it because I wanted to keep my husband. He’s mine, he belongs to me. I never had anyone else to belong to me. She had everything but I only had him.’

  Villiers listened with a still set face, ‘May I go with her?’ Wexford had never expected to hear him speak so humbly.

  ‘Of course you may,’he said.

  The policewoman took Georgina to the waiting car, an arm round her shoulders. The arm was only for support and to prevent her from stumbling, but it looked as if it had been placed there from kindness and a kind of sisterly regard. Burden followed them, walking with the slow stiff pace of a mourner at a funeral.

  Villiers looked at Wexford and the chief inspector returned his gaze.

  ‘She can’t tell you very much,’ said Villiers. ‘I’m the only person living who knows it all.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Villiers, we shall need to take a statement from you.’

  ‘I’ve written something already. Other people talk or else shut it all up inside themselves, but writers write. I wrote this in the night. I haven’t been able to sleep. I haven’t slept at all.’

  And the envelope was waiting on the hall table, propped against a vase.

  Taking it, Wexford saw that it was addressed to him and that there was a stamp on it.

  ‘If you hadn’t come this morning I should have posted it. I couldn’t have borne the waiting any longer. Now you have it I think perhaps I shall sleep.’

  ‘Shall we go, then?’said Wexford.

  Burden drove with Villiers beside him. No one spoke. As they entered Kingsmarkham, Wexford slit open the envelope and glanced briefly at the first typewritten sheet.

  Then the car swung on to the police station forecourt.

  He got out and opened the nearside front door. But Villiers didn’t move.

  Touching his shoulder to tell him they had arrived, Wexford saw with a sudden shaft of compassion, the first he had ever felt for the man, that Villiers was fast asleep.

  For the attention of Chief Inspector Wexford I cannot suppose that I am among your favourite authors, so I will keep this statement as brief as I can. I am writing it at night while my wife sleeps.

  Yes, she can sleep, the sleep of the innocent, just avenger.

  When you quoted Byron to me I was sure that you knew why if you did not know how. But I have asked myself since then, did you know? Did you even know what you were saying? I stared at you. I waited for you to arrest my wife, and my face must have told you what I was afraid of : that you, to frighten me and to ex
tract a confession from me, had quoted to me the words of a man all the world knows to have been his sister’s lover.

  I think I betrayed myself then. I certainly did so when I gave you my book to read. But then I thought you were too ignorant, too dull and plodding, to equate a short passage in my book with my own life. Now, as the dawn comes up and in its light I look at things coldly and dispassionately, as I remind myself of my provocative rudeness to you and your civilised forbearance, as I remember your percipience, I know that I was wrong. You will read and you will realise, ‘Thou best philosopher, thou eye among the blind!’

  Wordsworth wrote that, Mr Wexford. Wordsworth, as you now know, also loved his own sister, but being a disciple of duty (stern daughter of the voice of God), he left her. You will no longer need to ask what attracted me to Wordsworth, in what particular our affinity lay. For, although Dorothy appears in my book as the merest interlude between Annette and Mary, you will have noted the parallel; you will have realised what, when I was a young man, seeking a subject to which I might devote my life, drew me to this poet. That among other things, of course. I consider Wordsworth second only to Milton and can say with Coleridge, ‘Wordsworth is a very great man, the only man to whom at all times and in all modes of excellence I feel myself inferior.’

  I might, of course, have chosen Lord Byron. The obviousness of the choice repelled me. Besides, I did not want to waste my muse on one whom I consider superficial and grandiloquent, a swashbuckling pop star, simply because he had committed incest (very probably) with Augusta Leigh. But Byron, because he is better known now for his incest than his verse, affects me strangely, the very mention of his name, the quotation of his lines, sets my nerves on edge. You could say that I am allergic to him.

  But I am forgetting my promise to be brief.

  When we were children I did not love my sister. We were always quarrelling and our separation caused us no distress. We were glad to get shot of each other. I did not see her again until I was in my last year at Oxford.

  Our meeting was at the twenty-first birthday party of a university acquaintance of mine. This man’s father introduced me to his secretary, a girl called Elizabeth Langham. We went out together and soon we became lovers.

  I told you I was a good liar but I am not lying now when I say that I had no idea who she really was or that I had ever seen her before the night of this party. Nine years had passed and we had altered. I asked her to marry me and then she had to tell me. For two months I had been my own sister’s lover.

  For years she had followed my fortunes, from envy and a sense of the unfairness of the arrangement that had been made for us. Having run away to London with a man called Langharn who had paid for her to take a secretarial course, she took a job with my friend’s father, knowing that his son and I were at Oxford together. She went to the party, curious to see me; she came out with me with som , e unformed plan of revenge in her mind. But then the situation passed out of her control. In spite of what she knew, she had fallen in love with me. Did it trouble her?

  I don’t think so. Long before this she had passed far beyond the confines of accepted morality, so that she saw this step only as something especially daring and defiant of society.

  We parted, she to America with her employer, I to Oxford. I will not dwell on my feelings at this time. You are a sensitive man and perhaps you can imagine them for yourself.

  I married as soon as I had my degree; not for love-I have never in my life been in love with anyone but Elizabeth-but for safety, for normality. The allowance my uncle had made me ceased when I was twenty-one, so, knowing that I could never make a living from writing poetry or from writing about it, I applied for a teaching job at the King’s School.

  Was I taking a risk in returning to Kingsmarkham? Elizabeth had told me she hated the place. I thought I had found the one town in the world my sister would be sure W avoid.

  It was that egregious busyboy, Lionel Marriott, who told me Elizabeth was here. I dreaded meeting her; I longed to see her. We met. She introduced me to her husband, the son of a millionaire who had been on holiday in America while she was working there. He had bought the Manor as a surprise for her, believing she would like to live near her childhood home.

  We sat at table together with her husband and my wife. We made small talk.

  As soon as our chance came we saw each other alone, and that, Mr Wexford, was the second beginning.

  Our love would have been impossible without the innocent acquiescence of Quentin Nightingale. If he had disliked me it would have been difficult for Elizabeth and me to have met and, since I could not have borne to live near her but separated from her, I should have been forced to change my job and move away. I wish with all my heart now that this had happened.

  Women are tougher than we are, less scrupulous, less a prey to guilt. I suppose Elizabeth had been in love with Quentin when she married him and had meant to be an honest faithful wife. Immediately I re-entered her life she put all this behind her and began to use him as a tool. Her aim was to have me as her lover and at the same time to keep her position, her money and her reputation. She wanted the best of both worlds and she got them.

  Still, to shift the blame like this is useless. I was as guilty as she. The difference between us was that I had a conscience and she had none.

  She worked on Quentin in devious and subtle ways. She told him, pretending that June was her source, that I was a difficult man with a disturbed personality. It would be a kindness on his part to befriend me.

  Characteristically, he reacted by offering me a room in the Old House for my exclusive use.

  It was to seern as if all my invitations to the Manor came from Quentin, for Elizabeth and I must appear to dislike each other. Why? She said that if we showed even normal fraternal affection in public we should soon be betrayed into showing a deeper love than is permitted to brother and sister. I do not believe this was her true reason. Rather, I think, she loved intrigue for its own sake and our public indifference lent for her a spice to our private love.

  And if I say that I loved Quentin too will you call this the vilest hypocrisy? Or has your experience taught you that it is often those whom we have betrayed and deceived and dishonoured that we love the best? For, in preventing them from discovering our betrayal, we learn how to protect them from other harm as well as this one, and the kind words we use initially to blind them become habitual and ultimately sincere. Yes, Mr Wexford, I loved Quentin, and Elizabeth, who discouraged all my friend—

  ships lest I should be driven to confide in a friend, allowed me this one, never understanding that of all mankind he was the man I longed to confess to, his the only forgiveness I should have valued.

  I shall now come to Twohey.

  He had been watching Elizabeth visit me at the Old House, and one day he saw me walk down the stairs with her and embrace her in the apple room.

  It was not a brother’s embrace and rwohey, from outside the window, took a photograph. I paid him blackmail. When he had bled me white Elizabeth began selling her jewellery and having copies made.

  You have not found Twohey yet, have you? Let me help you. Apart from saving Georgina as much suffering as I can, I have only one wish left and that is to see Twohey as wretched as he made Elizabeth and me. You will find his address on the dressmaker’s bills in the writing desk in her bedroom. Tanya Tye is the name (more probably the alias) of the woman with whom he lives in a luxury flat over the shop in Bruton Street. It was all quite simple and very clever.

  Whenever Twohey wanted money he would send Elizabeth a bill from Tanya Tye and the money she was to pay was the sum on the bill plus one nought added to the figure. For example: if the bill was for a hundred and fifty pounds, Elizabeth was to send him fifteen hundred. She sent the money in brown paper parcels. The last one was posted by Katje the day before Elizabeth died. To show her he had received the money he sent her receipted bills.

  Good hunting, Mr Wexford.

  I suppose Marriott h
as enlightened you as to all the details of my surface life. You will know that the NightingaIes and I always took our holidays together and that two years ago, because of Quentin’s illness, Elizabeth and I went away alone. Marriott said we looked ill and careworn when we came home from Dubrovnik, but it never occurred to him that we were sick at heart, not because we had quarrelled but because we had been happy.

  I wanted her to leave Quentin and come, away with me. She refused. Had we set up house together years ago no one would have suspected that we were brother and sister. Now everyone knew it and the scandal would be monumental. That is what she said. But I knew her so well, soror mea sponsor. I knew that her money and her position meant as much to her as I did. She was used to her two worlds, her eggs in two baskets, and, leaving out her terror of Twohey, I think she was mostly happy.

  I had come to the end. I was thirty-six and all my life

  I had worked hard but I had nothing. The fruits of all my labours had gone to keep a Mayfair modiste’s lover in luxury; I had no wife, no children, no friends and I lived in three rooms. True, I had Elizabeth, but for how long? The time would come when she, tranquillised by middle age, would sacrifice me to her other, safer world.

  I decided to make a complete break, so I refused all Quentin’s invitations to the Manor, his almost irresistible pleas. I thought I should be able to work. Instead I lay evening after evening on my bed, thinking, doing nothing, sometimes contemplating suicide. It was a dark night of the soul, comparable to the breakdown Wordsworth had when he had to leave France and leave Annette behind.

  I no longer wanted Elizabeth. If I missed either of them it was Quentin that I missed. I went to the Manor at last and told them I would not go to Rome with them. I looked at Elizabeth and felt-nothing. It was incomprehensible to me that I had wasted the best of my life in loving her.

  I went to Spain. Not the romantic, magic Spain of Madrid and the high sierras, but the sweltering Blackpool which is what we have made of the Costa Brava, and I went as escort to the school party. I suppose I told myself that to feel rage and exasperation and excruciating boredom would be better than to feel nothing at all.