Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

She managed a smile. ‘Oh, Mr Wexford, this is so sudden. Will you give me time to think it over?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry. We’re going out to celebrate our engagement.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘Come on. Now. We’ll go and have a nice dinner somewhere and then we’ll go to the pictures. You needn’t tell Sylvia. We’ll just sneak out.’

‘We can’t!’

‘We’re going to.’

So they dined at the Olive and Dove, she in an old cotton dress and he in his water-rat-watching clothes. And then they saw a film in which no one got murdered or even got married, still less had children or grandchildren, but in which all the characters lived in Paris and drank heavily and made love all day long. It was half past eleven when they got back, and Wexford had the curious feeling, as Sylvia came out into the hall to meet them, that they were young lovers again and she the parent. As if she would say: Where had they been and what sort of a time was this to come home? Of course she didn’t.

‘The Chief Constable’s been on the phone for you, Dad.’

‘What time was that?’ said Wexford.

‘About eight and then again at ten.’

‘I can’t phone him now. It’ll have to wait till the morning.’

Sharing the initials and, to some extent, the appearance of the late General de Gaulle, Charles Griswold lived in a converted farmhouse in the village of Millerton – Millerton Les-Deux eglises, Wexford called it privately. Wexford was far from being his favourite officer. He regarded him as an eccentric and one who used methods of the kind Burden had denounced on Parish Oak station platform.

‘I hoped to get hold of you last night,’ he said coldly when Wexford presented himself at Hightrees Farm at nine-thirty on Saturday morning.

‘I took my wife out, sir.’

Griswold did not exactly think that policemen shouldn’t have wives. He had one himself, she was about the place now, though some said he had more or less mislaid her decades ago. But that females of any kind should so intrude as to have to be taken out displeased him exceedingly. He made no comment. His big forehead rucked up into a frown.

‘I sent for you to tell you that this warrant has been sworn. The matter is in the hands of the Kenbourne police. Superintendent Rittifer foresees entering the house tomorrow morning, and it is entirely by his courtesy that you and another officer may accompany him.’

It’s my case, Wexford thought resentfully. She was killed in my manor. Oh, Howard, why the hell do you have to be in Tenerife now? Aloud he said, not very politely: ‘Why not today?’

‘Because it’s my belief the damned woman’ll turn up today, the way she’s supposed to.’

‘She won’t, sir. She’s Rhoda Comfrey.’

‘Rittifer thinks so too. I may as well tell you that if it rested on your notions alone the obtaining of this warrant wouldn’t have my support. I know you. Half the time you’re basing your inquiries on a lot of damn-fool intuitions and feelings.’

‘Not this time, sir. One woman has positively identified Rhoda Comfrey as Rose Farriner from the photograph. She is the right age, she disappeared at the right time. She complained of appendicitis symptoms only a few months after we know Rhoda Comfrey went to a doctor with such symptoms. She…’

‘All right, Reg.’ The Chief Constable delivered the kind of dismissive shot of which only he was capable. ‘I won’t say you know your own business best because I don’t think you do.’

The courtesy of Superintendent Rittifer did not extend to his putting in an appearance at Princevale Road. No blame to him for that, Wexford thought. He wouldn’t have done so either in the superintendent’s position and on a fine Sunday afternoon. For it was two by the time they got there, he and Burden with Baker and Sergeant Clements. Because it was a Sunday they had come up in Burden’s car and the traffic hadn’t been too bad. Now that the time had come he was beginning to have qualms, the seeds of which had been well sown by Burden and the Chief Constable.

The very thing which had first put him on to Rose Farriner now troubled him. Why should she go to a doctor and give only to him the name of Rhoda Comfrey while everyone else knew her as Rose Farriner? And a local doctor too, one who lived no more than a quarter of a mile away, who might easily and innocently mention that other name to those not supposed to know it. Then there were the clothes in which Rhoda Comfrey’s body had been dressed. He remembered thinking that his own wife wouldn’t have worn them even in the days when they were poor. They had been of the same sort of colours as those sold in the Montfort Circus boutique, but had they been of anything like the same standard? Would Mrs Cohen have wanted to get them at cost and have described them as ‘exquisite’? How shaky too had been that single identification, made by a very young woman who looked anaemic and neurotic, who might even be suffering from some kind of post-natal hysteria.

Could Burden have been right about the wallet? He got out of the car and looked up at the house. Even from their linings he could see that the curtains were of the kind that cost a hundred pounds for a set. The windows were doubleglazed, the orange and white paintwork fresh. A bay tree stood in a tub by the front door. He had seen a bay tree like that in a garden centre priced at twenty-five pounds. Would a woman who could afford all that steal a wallet? Perhaps, if she were leading a double life, had two disparate personalities inside that strong gaunt body. Besides, the wallet had been stolen, and from a bus that passed through Kenbourne Vale. Before Baker could insert the key Mrs Farriner had given Dinehart, Wexford tested out the two which had been on Rhoda Comfrey’s ring. Neither fitted.

‘That’s a bit of a turn-up for the books,’ said Burden.

‘Not necessarily. I should have brought all the keys that were in that drawer.’ Wexford could see Baker didn’t like it, but he unlocked the door just the same and they went in.

Insufferably hot and stuffy inside. The temperature in the hall must have been over eighty and the air smelt strongly. Not of mothballs and dust and sweat, though, but of pinescented cleansers and polish and those deodorizers which, instead of deodorizing, merely provide a smell of their own. Wexford opened the door to the garage. It was empty. Clean towels hung in the yellow and white shower room and there was an unused cake of yellow soap on the washbasin. The only other room on this floor was carpeted in black, and black and white geometrically patterned curtains hung at its french window. Otherwise, it contained nothing but two black armchairs, a glass coffee table and a television set.

They went upstairs, bypassing for the time being the first floor, and mounting to the top. Here were three bedrooms and a bathroom. One of these bedrooms was totally empty, a second, adjoining it, furnished with a single bed, a wardrobe and a dressing table. Everything was extremely clean and sterile-looking, the wastepaper baskets emptied, the flower vases empty and dry. Again, in this bathroom, there were fresh towels hanging. A medicine chest contained aspirins, nasal spray, sticking plaster, a small bottle of antiseptic.

Wexford was beginning to wonder if Rhoda Comfrey had ever stamped anything with her personality, but the sight of the principal bedroom changed his mind. It was large and luxurious. Looking about him, he recalled that spare room in Carlyle Villas. Since then she had come a long way. The bed was oval, its cover made of some sort of beige-coloured furry material, with furry beige pillows piled at its head. A chocolate-coloured carpet, deep-piled, one wall all mirror, one all glass overlooking the street, one filled with built-in cupboards and dressing table counter, the fourth entirely hung with brown glass beads, strings of them from ceiling to floor. On the glass counter stood bottles of French perfume, a pomander and a crystal tray containing silver brushes.