Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

‘What d’you mean, on that evidence? To my mind, its conclusive. You didn’t expect one of those women to come out with the whole story, did you? Oh, yes, Rose told me in confidence her real name’s Comfrey. Look at the facts. A woman of fifty goes to a doctor with what she thinks may be appendicitis. She gives the name of Comfrey and her address as 6 Princevale Road, Parish Oak. The only occupant of that house is a woman of around fifty called Rose Farriner. Six months later Rose Farriner is again talking of a possible appendicitis. Rhoda Comfrey is dead, Rose Farriner has disappeared. Rhoda Comfrey was comfortably-off, probably had her own business. According to Mrs Parker, she was interested in dress. Rose Farriner is well-off, has her own dress shop. Rose Farriner has a sick old mother living in a nursing home in the country. Rhoda Comfrey had a sick old father in a hospital in the country. Isn’t that conclusive?’

Burden walked up and down the platform, looking gloomily at posters for pale blue movies. ‘I don’t know. I just think we’ll have trouble getting a warrant.’

‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?’

‘Yes there is. It’s a way-out thing. Look, it’s the sort of thing that usually troubles you, not me. It’s the sort of thing I usually scoff at, to tell you the truth.’

‘Well, what the hell is it? You might as well tell me.’

Burden banged the palm of his hand with his fist. His expression was that of a man who, sceptical, practical, down-to-earth, hesitates from a fear of being laughed at to confess that he has seen a ghost. 'It was when we were driving up Montford Hill and we passed those shops, and I thought it hadn’t really been worth getting a bus up that first time, it not being so far from the station to the doctor’s place. And then I sort of noticed the shops and the name of the street facing us and… Look, it’s stupid, Forget it. Frankly, the more I think about it the more I can see I was just reading something into nothing. Forget it.’

‘Forget it? After all that build-up? Are you crazy?’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Burden very stiffly, ‘but I don’t approve of police work being based on silly conjectures and the sort of rubbish women call intuition. As you say, we have some very firm and conclusive facts to go on. No doubt, I was being unduly pessimistic about that warrant. Of course we’ll get one.’

An explosion of wrath rose in Wexford with a fresh eruption of sweat. ‘You’re a real pain in the arse,’ he snapped, but the rattle of the incoming train drowned his words.

His temper was not improved by Friday morning’s newspaper.

‘Police Chief Flummoxed by Comfrey Case’ said a headline running across four columns at the foot of page one. And there, amid the text, was a photograph of himself, the block for which they had presumably had on file since the days when he had been a fat man. Piggy features glowered above three chins. He glowered at himself in the bathroom mirror and, thanks to Robin running in and out and shouting that grandad had got his picture in the paper, cut himself shaving the chicken skin where the three chins used to be.

He drove to Forest Road and let himself into the late James Comfrey’s house with Rhoda Comfrey’s key. There were two other keys on the ring, and one of them, he was almost sure, would open Rose Farriner’s front door. At the moment, though, he was keeping that to himself for comparison with the one in the possession of Kenbourne police only if the obtaining of the warrant were held up. For if they weren’t identical – and, in the light of Rhoda Comfrey’s extreme secrecy about her country life in town and her town life in the country, it was likely enough they wouldn’t be – he might as well say good-bye to the chance of that warrant here and now. But he did wonder about the third key. To the shop door perhaps? He walked into the living room, insufferably musty now, that Crocker had called a real tip, and flung open the window.

From the drawers which had been re-filled with their muddled and apparently useless assortment of string and pins and mothballs and coins he collected all the keys that lay amongst it. Fifteen, he counted. Three Yale keys, one Norlond, one stamped RST, one FGW Ltd., seven rusted or otherwise corroded implements for opening the locks of back doors or privy doors or garden gates, a car ignition key and a smaller one, the kind that is used for locking the boot of a car. On both of these last were stamped the Citroen double chevron. They had not been together in the same drawer and to neither of them was attached the usual leather tag. A violent pounding on the front door made him jump. He went out and opened it and saw Lilian Crown standing there.

‘Oh, it’s you’, she said. ‘Thought it might be kids got in. Or squatters. Never know these days, do you?’

She wore red trousers and a T-shirt which would have been better suited to Robin. Brash fearlessness is not a quality generally associated with old women, especially those of her social stratum. Timidity, awe of authority, a need for selfeffacement so often get the upper hand after the climacteric – as Sylvia might have pointed out to him with woeful examples – but they had not triumphed over Mrs Crown. She had the boldness of youth, and this surely not induced by gin at ten in the morning.

‘Come in, Mrs Crown,’ he said, and he shut the door firmly behind her. She trotted about, sniffing.

‘What a pong! Haven’t been in here for ten years.’ She wrote something in the dust on top of the chest of drawers and let out a girlish giggle.

His hands full of keys, he said, ‘Does the name Farriner mean anything to you?’

‘Can’t say it does.’ She tossed her dried grass hair and lit a cigarette. She had come to check that the house hadn’t been invaded by vandals, come from only next-door, but she had brought her cigarettes with her and a box of matches. To have a companionable smoke with squatters? She was amazing.

‘I suppose your niece had a car,’ he said, and he held up the two small keys.

‘Never brought it here if she did. And she would’ve. Never missed a chance of showing off.’ Her habit of omitting pronouns from her otherwise not particularly economical speech irritated him. He said rather sharply, ‘Then whom do these keys belong to?’

‘No good asking me. If she’d got a car left up in London, what’s she leave her keys about down here for? Oh, no, that car’d have been parked outside for all the world to see. Couldn’t get herself a man, so she was always showing what she could get. Wonder who’ll get her money? Won’t be me though, not so likely.’ She blew a blast of smoke into his face, and he retreated, coughing.

‘I’d like to know more about that phone call Miss Comfrey made to you on the Friday evening.’

‘Like what? said Mrs Crown, smoke issuing dragon-like from her nostrils.

‘Exactly what you said to each other. You answered the phone and she said, “Hallo, Lilian. I wonder if you know who this is.” Is that right?’ Mrs Crown nodded. ‘Then what?’ Wexford said. ‘What time was it?’

‘About seven. I said hallo and she said what you’ve said. In a real put-on voice, all deep and la-di-da. “Of course I know,” I said. “If you want to know about your dad,” I said, “you’d best get on to the hospital,” “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “I’m going away on holiday,” she said, “but I’ll come down for a couple of days first.” '

‘You’re sure she said that about a holiday?’ Wexford interrupted.

‘Course I’m sure. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Tell you another thing. She called me darling. I was amazed. “I’ll come down for a couple of days first, darling,” she said. Mind you, there was someone else with her while she was phoning. I know what she was up to. She’d got some woman there with her and she wanted her to think she was talking to a man.’