Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

She was silent. Her strong masculine features remained rigid. She passed one hand over her forehead and said, “He wrote poems, you know. He'd written a book too. Sam was no fool.”

Hannah noted the diminutive. “I didn't know.”

“No. People didn't. He wrote a poem for me, but Williams found it and tore it up. D'you want a coffee?”

“I'll get it,” Hannah said.

Looking over her shoulder when she was at the counter, she saw the big woman put her head into her hands. A wedding ring was on the third finger of her left hand and Hannah wondered if the jealous lover was resentful of that too. She took the two cups of coffee back to their table.

“Why did he go to see the Tredowns when you were all in Flagford?”

“I don't know. Did he?”

“He'd worked for them three years before, the last time he came fruit-picking in Flagford. A man called Grimble turned the pickers off his field and Samuel Miller went to see the Tredowns and they gave him a job repairing their car and then driving it.”

“D'you mean Tredown the book writer? The one that did that book called something about heaven? The one they're making a film of?”

“That's the one.”

“He lived in Flagford?”

“Still does,” said Hannah. “Samuel…” The name bothered her, it was inappropriate for what she had supposed Dusty was, not so odd for a writer and a poet. “Samuel-did he know it was that Tredown? I mean, if he was a writer, did he go to see Tredown because he was?”

“Don't ask me. I never knew Tredown lived there. Sam never said.”

“I'm wondering if he brought something he'd written with him to show Tredown.”

Bridget plainly wasn't interested. “If he did I never saw it. How did he die?”

Hannah longed to be able to say this was something Bridget Cook didn't need to know, but she couldn't do that. “I'm afraid he was killed. He was shot.” She said quickly, “The man who shot him is dead.” She let the words register, sink in, then said, “Miss Cook, do you know if Sam carried a knife?”

“It was for his own protection. The folks he hung out with-you needed a knife with that lot. He never used it, that I am sure of.”

“The last time you saw him-can you remember that?”

“That's not something you forget,” Bridget Riley said. “We'd fixed up to get married in three weeks. It wasn't just me, he really wanted it. I'm telling you that because people-well, they used to say things on account of Sam was so much younger than me. Anyway, that day, we'd finished picking for the day. We had a shower in the van but it got broke and Sam was going to mend it but he never did. He come in and said he'd found a place where he could have a bit of a wash. It was an empty house in a field where he'd camped three years earlier. When he got back, he said, we'd go down the pub and then he said, here you are, this is for you, and he give me this ring.”

“The ring you're wearing?”

Bridget nodded. “I'd given him a present too. I'd bought him a T-shirt with his name on.”

At last. Hannah felt the tension in her shoulders relax. She produced the photograph from her bag. “Was it this one?”

The ravaged face went white. Bridget Cook's reaction was more intense than it had been even to news of Miller's death. “Oh, my God.” She touched the glossy surface of the photograph with a callused forefinger.

“I'm sorry if it's been a shock, Miss Cook.”

“No, no. I'm okay. I saw it-the T-shirt with his name on it-in the Oxfam shop in Myringham. Me and Michelle was having a day out. I said to her, ‘Look at that, I've got to have that for Sam,’ and she said, ‘He won't want that thing on it, will he?’ She meant the scorpion, but I said, ‘He's got a scorpion tattoo on his shoulder. He'll like it.’ I was right, he did. He put it on when he went off to have his wash. I never saw him again.” Keeping herself from crying had made her voice hoarse. She looked down at her left hand. “Funny he give me this when he was leaving me.” Revelation came to her. “But he didn't, did he? He got himself killed.” She shook her head. “Williams thinks it's my wedding ring or he'd have had it off me.”

Hannah went home to Bal, wondering how long this woman would stay with a man who beat her up and destroyed the poem another man had written for her. Then, holding Bal in her arms, she caught sight of the two of them, young and good-looking, in the mirror and thought that circumstances alter cases.

The hospice that would be Owen Tredown's home until he came to his final resting place was in Pomfret, a purpose-built unit set among trees. In the area between it and Pomfret High Streetwas a fairly large man-made pond on which were mallards and a couple of moorhens. Bulrushes and hostas with succulent bluish leaves fringed its banks. Donaldson drove past it, turned, and parked outside the hospice gates for Wexford to spend five minutes admiring its generous windows, its carefully laid-out garden, and all the various kinds of access provided for disabled visitors.

He liked the theory or idea of a hospice. He had looked the word up in the dictionary before coming out and found the first definition given for it was “a house of rest and entertainment for pilgrims.” Rest was right, but entertainment? Hardly, unless you counted the television sets that he'd heard were provided in every room. He approved, but still he asked himself what it must feel like to go into a place you knew you'd never come out of alive. You knew this was it, the last place in the world to lie down in, this was the antechamber to the crematorium. He told Donaldson to drive on.

The newspapers must already have Tredown's obituaries prepared. One or two of them would discard those prewritten epitaphs in favor of a tribute composed by a personal friend. There would be a photograph of Tredown, probably taken some twenty-five years before, when the author was young and handsome. The last line would be “he is survived by his wife Maeve.”

The rain had gone and it was another fine day, cold as November must be, but bright and sunny as summer without summer's haze. Greg was in the front garden of Mrs. McNeil's house, sweeping leaves from the path. When he saw Wexford arrive he pulled off the jade-green latex gloves he was wearing and ran to open the car door. Like a doorman at a luxury hotel, Wexford thought. Greg's T-shirt was white enough for a washing-powder advertisement, dazzling as fresh fallen snow, his jeans so tight as perhaps to ruin forever his chances of becoming a parent. He ushered the chief inspector into the house with some ceremony, called out, “Reeny, darling, your guest is here,” and asked Wexford what he would like to drink.

She was a different woman. If he had met her outside her expected environment he wouldn't have recognized her. Though bound to await trial on various serious charges, she looked ten years younger and happier than he had ever seen her. She still had her feet up on a footstool but she had sheer stockings on her legs and those feet encased in court shoes. Her hair had just been done-did Greg's talents extend that far?-and she wore a silk blouse and neat black skirt. She gave Wexford one of the first smiles he had ever had from her and extended a hand with freshly painted nails.

“Mrs. McNeil, I want to talk to you again about the-er, intruder in Mr. Grimble's house,” he said when Greg had brought tea for him and what might have been water with ice and lemon but was more likely gin and tonic for Irene McNeil. “We now believe his name was Samuel Miller. I want you to cast your mind back to September eight years ago and tell me something. In the days or weeks following the day you and your husband had removed his body from the bathroom to the cellar, did you talk about it? Did you discuss it? Did anyone else in the neighborhood mention him? Ask about him?”