Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“You'd need a court order, I suppose.”

“I'd have to apply to the court for an order. I'm not at all sure I'd get one. On what grounds? Your suspicion? Mine? As far as I know, the home is happy and stable. The children are healthy. The sister denies that anything has been done to the child. Social Services would have to be brought in. They'd have to have a medical review of the case.”

Laurette had come in with coffee on a tray. “They'll never have had cause to visit the Imrans. I know Shamis. Her parents adore her and it shows. Not that that would stop them having her genitally mutilated. There are plenty of parents would think that a duty to their daughter, a kindness. Without that, how will she ever find a good husband? That's the way they think. I was lucky,” she said, “not to be done myself. I would have been if my parents hadn't both been killed. I was brought up in an orphanage and somehow got overlooked.”

“So there's nothing to be done?”

“I don't say that,” Akande said quickly. “Social Services should certainly be alerted. I can do that-maybe we can both do it, Reg. Next time the Imrans come to the surgery or one of them comes I can ask them tactfully about their-well, their attitude to female circumcision.”

Laurette said bitterly, “They don't need to take her to Africa, you have to realize that. There are plenty of people here who are willing to do it.”

An invitation to Athelstan House was unexpected and unprecedented. Without prior notice, the wife and ex-wife of Owen Tredown had visited Wexford in his own office but even then had shown no particular desire to tell him anything. Their purpose, then and on receiving him subsequently at Athelstan House, seemed to have been only to score off him and Burden and to-well, “tease” was the word, he thought. Tease, provoke, annoy, and show ill will.

Lacking Tredown, the house felt different, colder, busier, and in a way, brighter. Perhaps it was only that the long brown velvet curtains in the drawing room had been drawn back to their fullest extent and tied, not with cords or sashes but with ordinary house-hold string. The bright daylight, which formerly would have revealed dust and dirt and cobwebs, showed that cleaning had been done on a grand scale, an autumn spring-cleaning in fact. The chandelier, washed and polished, now looked more like a light fitting than copulating squids. Clouds of dust no longer puffed out of the sofa cushions when he seated himself. Tredown was gone and, as if he had been a dirty and troublesome pet, his owners had cleaned up after him.

At first neither tea nor coffee were offered Wexford. He sat down because he wanted to, not because he was asked. Claudia Ricardo sat close beside him, too close, and he was overwhelmed by the scent she wore, something he thought might be patchouli. She spread her long embroidered skirt over her own legs and an inch or two of it over his.

“Can I offer you some lemon curd, Chief Inspector?” she said. “I was making it when you were last here. I'm sure you remember. You said you liked it.”

As she spoke, Maeve Tredown came in with tea and a plate of biscuits and a jar of the lemon curd on a tray. There was a spoon on the tray too, rather as if she were a nurse bringing his medicine. The whole thing might not have been so odd if the lid hadn't been removed from the jam pot. Maeve, in her uniform-style clothes, her gray suit and white blouse, her blond hair stiff and shiny as a yellow silk hat, stood over him, smiling, the nanny with her charge. Did they expect him to sit there and eat jam? He lifted Claudia's skirt off his legs and got up. He took the tray from Maeve and put it on the table. Then he turned around and spoke in the kind of voice no guest should ever use.

“Sit down, please,” he said to Maeve.

She did so. Claudia giggled.

“I don't know why you asked me to come here,” he said, “but no doubt you'll tell me in due course. Meanwhile, I want you to tell me about the manuscript Sam or Samuel Miller gave or lent or sold to Mr. Tredown in June 1995.”

“We never interfered in Owen's business dealings,” said Maeve.

Business dealings? As if Tredown had been an insurance broker instead of a world-famous author. Besides, it was a lie, Wexford thought. Any business there had been, he was pretty sure Maeve and Claudia had handled it. Claudia or Maeve or both had dealt with Tredown's agent, Tredown's publishers, accountants, financial advisers. In the matter of business, the author himself was a babe unborn, as the old phrase had it. “So you never saw or heard of any such manuscript?”

Claudia was looking up at him earnestly. “Dusty,” she said, lingering almost sensuously over the name, “Dusty never saw much of Owen. Perhaps I should say Owen never saw much of him. You must remember Owen disliked being disturbed while he was writing-and he mostly was writing.”

“We saw to that,” was the unspoken sentence. Still standing over them, Wexford said, “Miller came to see you again at the end of September 1998.”

“Possibly,” said Maeve. “About then. I can't be all that sure of the date.”

“I can. You gave him some money. Why?”

“Really! I told you why or my wife-in-law did.” Here a sly smile at Claudia. “It was a wedding present. He had found some woman, one of the fruit-pickers, he was going to marry.”

“A thousand pounds, I think you said?”

“Then you think wrong.” Claudia dissolved into silent laughter. “We'd better things to do with that sort of money.”

He sat down again but this time on an upright chair well away from her. A wasp had got into the room, wheeled about sluggishly before making for the open jam jar. He watched it crawl onto the jam's smooth golden crust. “Miller had read the book Mr. Tredown had concocted from his manuscript and was blackmailing you for plagiarism, for passing off his work as Mr. Tredown's.”

“I know what plagiarism is, thank you very much.” Claudia shook even more with silent mirth. Then, suddenly she was serious. She frowned and swept the wings of charcoal-colored hair away from her face. “How did he die? Dusty, I mean.”

Didn't she know? Then Wexford recalled that, apart from him and his discreet team, Miller's death was known only to Irene McNeil and Bridget Cook. He was almost sure there had been some kind of sexual relationship between Miller and Claudia Ricardo, brief perhaps, a quick coupling in the bushes or in Grimble's house, but something. “That I can't tell you,” he said.

“But he is dead?”

“I've told you so, Miss Ricardo.”

She said nothing.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “if it upsets you.”

“Upsets me?” Her reply came as a strident shout. “You must be mad. I'm delighted. I've a little holiday in my heart.” It was evidently a favorite phrase of hers. “You've made my day.”

The wasp was satiated. It had crawled up to the rim of the jar. Maeve said, “Claudia,” in a warning tone, got up, and crossed to the table. The wasp was grooming itself, lifting its wings, wiping or washing traces of lemon curd from its legs. Maeve put out her hand, picked it up swiftly between finger and thumb and, before it could sting her, crushed the life out of it.

Claudia started laughing again. With an exasperated glance at her, Maeve dropped the wasp corpse onto the tray.

“He came away from here with the money you gave him,” Wexford said, “and instead of going back to the site where the fruit-pickers were camped, went next door to wash himself and find other clothes to wear. Your delight, I suppose, is typically that of the blackmailer's victim when she or he knows the extortion can't be repeated.”

“For a policeman,” said Maeve, “you have a most unusual command of the English language.”