Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

‘They had the storm in Pembroke this morning,’ said Dora, coming back.

‘Fantastic,’ said her husband, and then quickly, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t snipe at you. Is there anything on the television?’

She consulted the paper. ‘I think I know your tastes by now. If I suggested any of this lot I might get that vase chucked at me. Why don’t you read something?’

‘What is there?’

‘Library books. Sylvia’s and mine. They’re all down there by your chair.’

He humped the stack of them on to his lap. It was easy to sort out which were Sylvia’s. Apart from Woman and the Sexist Plot, there was Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Dora’s were a detective story, a biography of Marie Antoinette and Grenville West’s Apes in Hell. His reaction was to repudiate this last, for it reminded him too forcibly of his first mistake. Women’s Lib as seen through the eyes of Shelley’s mother-in-law would almost have been preferable. But that sort of behaviour was what Burden called hysterical.

‘What’s this like?’

‘Not bad,’ said Dora. ‘I’m sure it’s very well researched. As far as I’m concerned, the title’s way-out, quite meaningless.’

‘It probably refers to an idea the Elizabethans had about unmarried women. According to them, they were destined to lead apes in hell.’

‘How very odd. You’d better read it. It’s based on some play called The Maid’s Tragedy.’

But Wexford, having looked at the portrait of its author, pipe in mouth, on the back of the jacket, turned to Marie Antoinette. For the next hour he tried to concentrate on the childhood and youth of the doomed Queen of France, but it was too real for him, too factual. These events had taken place, they were history. What he needed tonight was total escape. A detective story, however bizarre, however removed from the actualities of detection, was the last thing to give it to him. By the time Dora had brought in the tray with the coffee things, he had again picked up Apes in Hell.

Grenville West’s biography was no longer of interest to him, but he was one of those people who, before reading a novel, like to acquaint themselves with that short summary of the plot publishers generally display on the front flap of the jacket and sometimes in the preliminary pages. After all, if this precis presents too awful an augury one need read no further. But in this instance the jacket flap had been obscured by the library’s own covering of the book, so he turned the first few pages.

Apparently, it was West’s third novel, having been preceded by Her Grace of Amalfi and Arden’s Wife. The plot summary informed him that the author’s source had been Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, a Jacobean drama set in classical Rhodes. West, however, had shifted the setting to the England of his favourite half-timbering and knot gardens, and with an author’s omnipotent conjuring trick – his publisher’s panegyric, this – had transformed kings and princes into a seventeenth-century aristocracy. Not a bad idea, Wexford thought, and one which Beaumont and Fletcher might themselves have latched on to if writing about one’s contemporaries and fellow nationals had been more in favour at the time. Might as well see what it was like. He turned the page, and his fingers rested on the open pages, his breath held. Then he gave a gasp.

‘What on earth is it?’ said Dora.

He made her no answer. He was looking at two lines of type in italics on an otherwise blank sheet. The dedication. For Rhoda Comfrey, without whom this book could never have been written.

‘Our first red herring,’ Burden said.

‘Only it wasn’t a red herring. If this isn’t proof West knew her I don’t know what would be. He’s known her for years, Mike. This book was published ten years ago.’

It was a cool clean day. The rain had washed roofs and pavements and had left behind it a thin mist, and the thermometer on Wexford’s wall recorded a sane and satisfactory sixty-five degrees. Burden was back to a normal-weight suit. He stood by the window, closed against the mist, examining Apes in Hell with a severe and censorious expression.

‘What a load of rubbish,’ was his verdict. He had read the plot summary. ‘Ten years ago, yes,’ he said. ‘That Hampton guy, his publisher, why didn’t he tell you West had dedicated a book to this woman?’

‘Maybe he’d forgotten or he’d never known. I don’t know anything about publishing, Mike. They call Hampton West’s editor, but for all I know an editor may never see a writer’s dedication. In any case, I refuse to believe that a perfectly respectable and no doubt disinterested man like Hampton was involved in a plot to conceal from me West’s friendship with Rhoda Comfrey. And the same goes for his literary agent and for Vivian and Polly Flinders. They simply didn’t know about the dedication.’

‘It’s a funny thing about the wallet, isn’t it?’ said Burden after a pause. ‘He must have given it to her. The alternative is inconceivable.’

‘The alternative being that he lost it and it was found by chance and deliberately kept by a friend of his? That’s impossible, but there’s a possibility between those two alternatives, that he left it behind in her house or flat or wherever she lived and she, knowing he was to be away for a month, just kept it for him.’

‘And used it? I don’t think much of that idea. Besides, those two girls told you he lost it, and that he asked this Polly to report the loss to the police.’

‘Are they both lying then?’ said Wexford. ‘Why should they lie?’

Burden didn’t answer him. ‘You’ll have him fetched back now, of course.’

‘I shall try. I’ve already had a word with the French police. Commissaire Laquin in Marseilles. We worked together on a case once, if you remember. He’s a nice chap.’

‘I’d like to have heard that conversation.’

Wexford said rather coldly, ‘He speaks excellent English. If West’s in the South of France he’ll find him. It shouldn’t be too difficult even if he’s moving from one hotel to another. He must be producing his passport wherever he goes.’

Burden rubbed his chin, gave Wexford the sidelong look that presages a daring or even outrageous suggestion. ‘Pity we can’t get into West’s flat.’

‘Are you insane? D’you want to see me back on the beat or in the sort of employment Malina Patel marked out for me? Christ, Mike, I can just see us rifling through West’s papers and have him come walking in in the middle of it.’

‘OK, OK. You’re getting this Laquin to send West home? Suppose he won’t come? He may think it a bit thin, fetching him back from his holiday merely because he knew someone who got herself murdered.’

‘Laquin will ask him to accompany him to a police station and then he’ll phone me so that I can speak to West. That’ll be a start. If West can give me Rhoda Comfrey’s London address he may not need to come home. We’ll see. We can’t take any steps to enforce his return, Mike. As far as we know, he’s committed no offence and it’s quite possible he hasn’t seen an English newspaper since he left this country. It’s more than likely, if he’s that much of a francophile.’

Given to non sequiturs this morning. Burden said, ‘Why couldn’t this book have been written without her?’

‘It only means she helped him in some way. Did some research for him, I daresay, which may mean she worked in a library. One thing, this dedication seems to show West had no intention of concealing their friendship.’

‘Let’s hope not. So you’re going to glue yourself to this phone for the next few days, are you?’