Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

She had become pathetic again, desperate to bolster up her lies. Wexford of course knew what it all meant, that she had discovered the hiding place of the key herself and had divulged it to no one except perhaps her husband. He had to ask, but would the result of his questioning be to make her clam up, take refuge in offended silence?

“Mrs. McNeil,” he said in a pleasant and interested tone, the kind a scholar might use when enquiring of an expert in his field, “knowing where the key was, were you never tempted just to have a look around in there yourself? I mean, as part of your surveillance system? I imagine you may well have wanted to check that no damage had been done to Mr. John Grimble's property.”

She smiled. It was the first time. “Well, of course, you're perfectly right. That was exactly how I did feel. I did go in and my husband did. I didn't say so before because people always put the worst possible construction on that sort of thing. My husband and I-we even considered removing the key into our own safekeeping, but on careful consideration we decided that would be taking good neighborliness too far.”

He had to ask her about the cellar. But more flattery first. There are some people who can take any amount of flattery, and politicians are said to be among them; rural gentry too, particularly those who have lost the position in the county their forebears enjoyed, have no position at all except the dubious one of clinging to the rim of an upper middle class. He thought he could flatter Irene McNeil a little more without arousing her suspicions, and he ignored Burden's stare. “It's unusual to meet with this sort of rectitude in these unregenerate days, Mrs. McNeil. Did you ever find anything in that house which made you feel your-er, investigations were justified?”

This was a thrust, albeit a very gentle one, which had gone home. He saw he was approaching the crux. Irene McNeil said, “Would you mind fetching me a glass of water?”

They both left her and went out into the snow-and-ice-colored operating theater of a kitchen. Once in there, you could believe Irene McNeil never ate anything cooked. A gas hob still looked the way it must have done in the showroom. Burden ran the tap, filled a glass.

“Leave us, would you, Mike?” Wexford said. “No reflection on you but I may get somewhere if it's just me with her.”

“It'll be a pleasure. Shall I stay in the house?”

“You may as well.”

Wexford took the glass back and handed it to her. He noticed that the big arthritic hand shook as she took it. “Mrs. McNeil, did you happen to go down to the cellar?” He noted how that “happen” softened the question, making it a casual inquiry.

She was prickly with guilt. “Is there any reason why I shouldn't have?”

Only that you shouldn't have been in the house at all. “I simply wondered why you shut the door to the cellar.”

“Because I was…” She realized she had admitted it, clapped one hand over her mouth, and after staring at him aghast for a moment, broke into wild weeping. Her body heaved with sobs. At last she moved her hands, holding them up like someone pleading for mercy.

He held the water to her lips, but she pushed it away violently, the way an angry child might, soaking his jacket and shirt. With an effort at control, he gave no sign of the shock the icy water had been. “Mrs. McNeil,” he said, “there is no need for this. There's nothing for you to distress yourself about.” But perhaps there was. How could he tell if this was hysteria or a heartbroken confession? He could find no tissues in that kitchen, brought her instead a drying-up cloth her cleaner must have laundered. She buried her face in it. No more than a minute later she sat up, was more erect than she had been for the whole of the interview, her face patted dry, reminding him that she, after all, belonged to what her kind called “the old school.” Still she didn't speak.

He prompted her. “Because you were what, Mrs. McNeil?” Inspired, he guessed. “Because you were frightened?”

“Yes!”

“What frightened you? Mrs. McNeil, nothing will happen to you”-could he be sure of that?-“if you tell me the truth.”

She came out with the whole story. Once she had begun it seemed there was no stopping her. The floodgates had opened and words cascaded. Even so, Burden dared not take notes. He had come back into the room but sat a little way away from Wexford and her. He could see that whatever she might think of him, she had made of Wexford a sympathetic friend.

“The man, I don't know what he died of,” she began. “Perhaps it was his heart. Ronald, my husband, went into the house-oh, it was eight years ago, in September-he went in because he could see something moving about, I mean see it through the front window. That window was never boarded up, I don't know why not. We'd both seen it, a figure moving about. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a man wearing a red coat-well, orange-and he was tall. He had to bend his head to get through a doorway. Ronald said he was going to see what was going on. Children, he thought, we sometimes saw children go in there, but this man was much too tall to be a child. Ronald wouldn't let me go with him.

“He was gone a long time. It was late afternoon-well, evening, but still quite light. It was evening by the time he came back.” The flood waters trickled now, then stopped. There was a sob in her voice when she spoke again and though the tears had ceased, sweat now broke out on her face and neck. “He came into the house and he was so white I thought he was ill. Well, he was ill, he was. I cried out to him, ‘What's the matter, what's wrong?’ and he said, he said it in a voice I didn't recognize, ‘Reeny, there's a man in there and he's dead. Can you come, please?’

“I went across the road with him. It was light enough to see by. There was no electricity on in the house. We went in the back door.” She looked up into Wexford's face. “I wasn't so heavy as I am now. I could move faster and I was quite strong. I had to be.” She reached for the water but most of it she had spilled over Wexford. Burden refilled the glass and she drank from it. “We went into the bathroom. He was in there, the man. He was lying on the floor and there was-blood.”

At this point Wexford had to interrupt her, trying to keep the sternness out of his voice, “Mrs. McNeil, think what you are saying. You told us you thought this man might have died of a heart attack.”

“No, he didn't. I shouldn't have said that. Ronald-oh, it was so terrible, he had a gun. He had a license for it, it was all above-board. He took his shotgun with him when he went into the house.”

Wexford stopped her. His voice had become very grave.

“Are you saying your husband shot this man? That's a very serious accusation, Mrs. McNeil.”

“I said to him, ‘Did you shoot him?’ and Ronald said, ‘He came at me with a knife. I backed away and he came after me, I had to defend myself.’ ”

“All right. What happened then?”

“My husband said that we must move him, we couldn't leave him there. You see, Ronald had shot him. No one would have believed it was in self-defense.”

You might have put it to the test, Wexford thought. You might just have decided late in the day that honesty was the best policy. What a catalog of folly all this was-yet he believed it. These two self-appointed vigilantes had somehow convinced themselves that it was their job to police that house. Or had it all been a simple but voracious curiosity? A need in their dull lives to trespass and transgress in ways more suited to the pranks of children?

“You moved him?” he said.

“Ronald couldn't have done it alone. He needed me to help.” She seemed pathetically proud of it. “We dared not leave him there, not with all those other people coming in.”