Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“Didn't you wonder when you never heard from him again?”

“Maeve told me he'd said he wanted to put the whole thing behind him. Maybe he'd read the book when it came out, but he had no wish for it to be acclaimed as his own.”

“Perhaps we can leave Samuel Miller for the time being and talk about the man you found to be your researcher. I take his job was to deal with the passages that weren't consistent with Homer and Ovid and with the prehistoric detail.”

Tredown's frown was back. “What do you mean? I did my own research and I don't know any Samuel Miller. I think we're at cross purposes here.”

“I think so too.” Wexford got up, stiff and aching. He stumbled, clutched the back of the chair with his left hand. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “I won't take up any more of your time.”

The death's-head smile came again. “No, it isn't as if I've much of it left.”

“That was when things fell into place,” Wexford said. He had already passed his discoveries on to the assistant chief constable and was talking to Burden in his office; Hannah and Barry had been sent for. “As in most cases when the truth becomes clear you wonder how you could ever have seen things differently.”

“But for matching the rings,” said Burden, “would we ever have known it?”

“Maybe not.”

Wexford moved behind his desk as Hannah came into the room. It was the first time she had seen the plaster and the sling. “Please may I write something on your cast, guv?”

“I'm afraid not. It's strictly for persons under twelve.”

The chances were that she'd have written something along the lines of “Best wishes to the guv.” He'd have had to carry that “guv” about with him for the next five weeks. He watched her settle herself into the chair next to Burden's, leaving the remaining one to Barry. “I'll start at the beginning,” he said, and then added as Barry hurried in, “I'd say ‘good of you to join us’ except that I know where you've been.”

“Claudia Ricardo is in Interview Room One with Lyn, sir. I asked her about Alan Hexham and she said, ‘Don't be ridiculous. I never laid a finger on him.’ ”

“If laying a finger on someone was a prerequisite for a murder conviction,” Wexford said, “we'd have a lot more room in our prisons. We wouldn't have eighty thousand banged up.” His sigh was inaudible. “Now for the beginning. It begins, of course, with Alan Hexham living in that house in Barnes with his wife and his two small daughters. For they were still small when he started writing the novel we now know as The First Heaven. He wrote it secretly up in that tiny room of his where everyone else in the household had learned to respect his absolute privacy.”

“Why did he do it in secret, guv?”

“Some people have secretive natures. We have plenty of evidence for that. Acting in secret satisfies something in their temperament and adds a spice to what they do. On a more practical level, if no one knows they won't ask the sort of questions that may be very damaging to the project. And I imagine there's always the fear of being scoffed at-even laughed at. They may ask what's going on behind the closed door. But they can be fobbed off with tales of marking homework, filling in forms, preparing lessons. I don't think Hexham did much of that. He wanted it to be thought that he was doing research for authors, advising them, but again his wife must have wondered when he earned nothing by it. Maybe he told her he'd tried and failed.”

“What did you mean about ‘damaging to the project?’ ” Burden asked.

“Some writers thrive on making the people close to them aware of exactly what they're doing, reading their latest chapter to them, discussing it in detail, but there are others for whom the whole creative process is ruined if it's-well, brought out into the light of day. I had a writer say to me once that she'd written ten chapters of a novel when her boyfriend found it and read it. He was delighted, loved every word, could quote from it at length, but it ruined it for her. She had to abandon it and start afresh.”

“Abandoned the boyfriend too, I should think,” said Hannah.

“I believe she did. Anyway, this seems to have been Hexham's attitude, too. It's part shyness, part dread of ridicule, and part a fear that the person who reads it will begin with high hopes and be disappointed. Hexham seems to have had a happy marriage, but we don't know-his daughters certainly don't know-what the precise relations between the two of them were when they were alone. Isn't it possible that Diana Hexham wouldn't have understood what he was getting at? They were never very well off and she didn't work until after he disappeared. We know he took on the occasional tutoring job. Perhaps if she'd known about The First Heaven she'd have wondered why he was wasting his evenings playing at writing a novel which might never be published rather than taking on more coaching for exams. Whatever the answer to that is, he did keep it secret, kept it entirely to himself until it was finished and beyond.”

Burden said, “A pity he chose Owen Tredown to send that manuscript to. Why did he? Why choose Tredown?”

“We're never going to know that. Tredown says Hexham had heard him speak on the radio. That may or may not be true. Possibly he just liked Tredown's books-he had two of them in his house-or he may have read an article in a newspaper about Tredown saying that unlike many authors, he read the manuscripts which were sent to him. Anyway, he did send it. He'd have been wiser and safer if he'd thrown it on a bonfire.”

“Put it in the recycling, guv,” said Hannah in a reproving tone.

“Or put it in the recycling as you say, Hannah.” In a few words, he thought, she wiped away centuries in which the only way to get rid of paper was to burn it. Was she aware there was life before modern planet-saving measures? He almost laughed. “Tredown read it and thought it wonderful. He told me he was envious. He was jealous of someone who could write that, but I don't believe he had any idea of plagiarism, of stealing someone else's work, at that stage. He wrote to Hexham, praising the book and asking him to come and see him. Or, rather, he got his wife to write. Apparently, she did all his secretarial work. What exactly she said in that letter-or, come to that, subsequent letters-we don't yet know. We may never know.

“The date Hexham got this letter was in late May. He might then have told his wife, but he didn't. I imagine he was waiting to surprise her with a fait accompli. His old friend Maurice Davidson died and his funeral was fixed for the fifteenth of June. This, incidentally, was three days after John Grimble was refused permission to build more than one house on his deceased father's land. The trench for the main drainage had been dug and now there was no option but to fill it in again.

“Hexham wrote to say he would be in Sussex on the fifteenth and could he come to see Tredown at about three in the afternoon.”

Here Barry Vine broke in with, “Why wasn't any of this done by phone, sir?”

“Presumably, because of maintaining the secrecy. Diana Hexham might have taken the call. Besides, then Tredown would have spoken to Hexham and Maeve would have had no control over what he said. You have to remember too that a lot more letters were written eleven years ago than are today in the e-mail age. Be that as it may, Hexham was told that would be fine and in that letter, written of course by Maeve, he was asked to bring the other copy of the manuscript he had with him. She must have asked and been told he had just the two copies. Remember too it had been typed on an old-fashioned electric typewriter, so unless Hexham possessed a photocopier, which we know he didn't, the number of copies would have been limited.”