Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“Wouldn't Hexham have asked why they wanted a second copy, guv?”

“Probably, but there are answers to that. Such as, so that Tredown could send manuscripts to two publishers or to an agent and a publisher. Anyway, Hexham was satisfied and he brought the second manuscript with him in his briefcase, taking it with him first of all to the funeral and then to the Davidsons' house. He left that house later and caught the 2:20 train to Kingsmarkham. It was pouring with rain. There was no bus for an hour so he took a taxi, which brought him to Athelstan House at a few minutes to three.”

Burden, who had been fidgeting, took this opportunity to break in. “While all this letter writing was going on there must have been a good deal of discussion between Tredown and his wife-Claudia, too, I expect-as to what line they were to take with Hexham. I mean, I suppose there was a point where Tredown acknowledged to himself and maybe to the two of them that he wanted to pass it off as his own work.”

“This is one of the things we have to find out,” said Wexford. “If we can. The trouble is that two vital witnesses are dead and another one soon will be. However, decide they did. Not, I think, to murder Hexham, not then. At that point they seem to have had some plan to try and buy the manuscript from him and have him relinquish all rights to it.”

“They'd never have been safe then, sir. When the book came out, what would there have been to stop him telling some news-paper Tredown had stolen it from him?”

“Nothing, probably, Barry. Nothing to stop him saying that, but with both copies gone and no member of his family knowing he'd written anything, what evidence would he have had? Anyway, even if they did plan that, it came to nothing. Hexham came and apparently saw Tredown alone. At first. Again we don't know and probably won't know what they said to each other, but it appears that Hexham took the second manuscript away with him, having learned all he wanted to learn, that his novel was good and very likely worth publishing. The rest, he probably thought, he could handle himself.

“It seems he was given tea by Maeve and Claudia and, as it was still raining, promised a lift to Kingsmarkham station. Not in a taxi this time, but in the Tredowns' own car, that same vehicle Maeve used as a lethal weapon on me. Only it wasn't as lethal as she hoped.”

“Was it lethal to Hexham?” Barry asked.

“You'll have to wait awhile for that. To be continued in our next installment, as magazines that ran serials used to say. Inspector Burden and I have an engagement with Miss Ricardo in Interview Room One.”

“I never laid a finger on him,” Claudia Ricardo said again. “Funny, that phrase, isn't it? As if touching someone would kill him. The touch of death.” She laughed musical peals. “Be useful, wouldn't it? Like a ray shooting out of one's forehead you get in those films about aliens. Noli me tangere would have some real meaning.”

Priscilla Daventry, her solicitor, was looking grim. One's clients were not supposed to behave like this. One's clients should be rude or truculent or abusive or frightened, in need of reassurance or comfort, preferably silent, though that was rare, but not lighthearted and speculative as this woman was.

“Who drove Mr. Hexham to Kingsmarkham station?” Wexford asked her.

“Maeve couldn't drive then. She's a terrible driver now,” Claudia giggled. “I mean, I can't drive at all, but I'd still be better at it than she is, if you get my meaning. And of course you get my meaning! I was forgetting. She did that to your arm, didn't she? Poor Maeve, she shouldn't be allowed out at the wheel of a car.”

“Just answer the question, will you, Miss Ricardo?”

“I wasn't there. I went up to Owen.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“My client has answered the question,” said Priscilla Daventry. “She said she wasn't there.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Samuel Miller.”

“I suppose you mean ‘love affair.’ That's such a terrible expression, ‘relationship.’ I mean I have a relationship of sorts with you, though I'd rather not. I have a relationship with Miss Daventry, and I certainly have one with Maeve. But I don't fuck them, which is what you mean by the word, isn't it?”

Wexford just stopped himself shaking his head. He glanced at Burden, who said, “Did you have sexual relations with Samuel Miller?”

“Well, I did in 1995. When he was doing our garden. Sometimes in the garden. That shocks you, I can see. Policemen are such prudes.”

One of the most irritating things someone can say to you is to tell you you're shocked when you're not. Burden reflected on this without rising to the bait. “And when he came back three years later?”

“Not then,” she said. “He'd taken up with that Bridget woman and I'd-well, I'd moved on. That's the contemporary expression, isn't it? Moved on?” She looked at Wexford and smiled, turned the smile on to Burden, and then, broadening it, onto Priscilla Daventry. “I'm not going to say any more. Silence is about to reign. It's no good asking me because I'm going to keep silent.”

And she did. He tried to move her to answer, but she remained speechless. She sat smiling and contemplated her long, clawlike, unpainted fingernails. She crossed her legs, right over left, then left over right. She said nothing. Burden took over the questioning. She smiled at him. When he asked her if she had killed Alan Hexham, she smiled more broadly, and when he asked her if Maeve Tredown had, she closed her eyes. Staying there was useless, and after half an hour the interview was terminated, Claudia Ricardo returning to one of Kingsmarkham police station's two cells, and the two policemen going back to Wexford's office. Hannah and Barry had left but returned when sent for, and Karen Malahyde came with them. Claudia Ricardo had been given refreshments, but there had been none for Wexford and Burden, so Hannah sent down for tea.

“As I said, Hexham came to Athelstan House and saw Tredown alone,” Wexford resumed. “I don't really know how Tredown could have been so confident this story of his could become a best-seller. Of course this may be because I couldn't see much in it myself, but the fact remains that Tredown fell in love with it. He more or less told me so. And, as we know, he was right. He had to get his hands on it and make it his own. Maeve and Claudia appear to have been as enthusiastic as he was. But whereas Tredown left to himself wouldn't, I'm sure, have contemplated anything criminal to get hold of it, they would and did. Tredown may have thought of buying it from Hexham or simply persuading Hexham that whereas he could easily get it published because of the name he already had, Hexham himself would have had great difficulties.

“Did Hexham waver? Up in that room at Athelstan House did he listen to some proposition Tredown made to him but decided against it and to have a go at getting it published on his own? If he did so he condemned himself to death.”

“Signed his own death warrant, guv,” said Barry brightly, using the cliché Wexford had avoided.

“Yes, thank you, Barry. Hexham took his second manuscript away with him, no doubt very much encouraged by what Tredown had said to him and confident he could handle the rest himself,” Wexford resumed. “There was a 5:30 train to London and probably he aimed to catch it. It seems possible that Maeve told him someone would drive him as she couldn't drive at that time. Did those two try dissuading Hexham from trying to publish his own work? I don't think so. After he was dead Maeve must have told Tredown not to worry about him again because he had said before he left that he was making them a present of his book. And here was the second manuscript to prove it.”