Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

This time he got an even more uncertain look. ‘The beginning,’ said Hetherington, ‘would be on the Saturday, Saturday the sixth. Mr West telephoned and asked if he could have a room for three nights, the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Naturally, that would usually be an impossible request in August, but it so happened that a very charming lady from Minneapolis who stays with us regularly every year had cancelled on account of…’ He caught Wexford’s eye, stern censor of snobbish digression. ‘Yes, well, as I say, it happened to be possible and I told Mr West he could have Mrs Gruber’s room. He arrived at seven on the Sunday and signed the register. I have it here.’

Wexford and Baker looked at it. It was signed ‘Grenville West’ and the Elm Green address was given. Certain that the manager was incapable of obeying his injunction, Wexford said:

‘He had been here before, I think?’

‘Oh, yes, once before.’

‘Mr Hetherington, weren’t you surprised that a man who lived within what is almost walking distance of the hotel should want to stay here?’

‘Surprised?’ said Hetherington. ‘Certainly not. Why should I be? What business was it of mine? I shouldn’t be surprised if a gentleman who lived next door wanted to stay in the hotel.’

He took the register away from them. While his back was turned Clements murmured with kindly indulgence, ‘It happens a lot, sir. Men have tiffs with their wives or forget their keys.’

Maybe, Wexford thought, but in those cases they don’t book their night’s refuge some fifteen hours in advance. Even if the others didn’t find it odd, he did. He asked Hetherington if West had brought much luggage.

‘A suitcase. He may have had a handbag as well.’ Although Hetherington was strictly correct in employing this word, the rather quaint usage made Wexford want to repeat, in Lady Bracknell’s outraged echo, ‘A handbag?’ But he only raised his eyebrows, and Hetherington said, ‘He asked if he could garage his car – he didn’t want to leave it on the hardtop parking – so I let him have number five which happened to be vacant. He put the car away himself.’ There was a small hesitation. ‘As a matter of fact, it was a little odd now I come to think of it. I offered to get the car garaged for him and asked for his key, but he insisted on doing it himself.’

‘When did you last see him?’ Baker asked.

‘I never saw him again. He ordered breakfast in his room on the Monday morning. No one seemed to have seen him go out. I expected him to vacate his room by noon on Wednesday but he didn’t appear to pay his bill.’ Hetherington paused, then went on to tell the story broadly as Wexford had heard it from Clements. When he had finished Wexford asked him what had become of West’s room key.

‘Heaven knows. We do stress that our guests hand in their keys at reception when they go out, we make them too heavy to be comfortably carried in a pocket, but it’s of no avail. They will take them out with them. We lose hundreds. I have his suitcase here. No doubt you will wish to examine the contents.’

For some moments Wexford had been regarding a suitcase which, standing under Hetherington’s desk, he had guessed to be the luggage West had left behind him. It was of brown leather, not new but of good quality and stamped inside the lid with the name and crest of Silk and Whitebeam, Jermyn Street. Baker opened it. Inside were a pair of brown whipcord slacks, a yellow roll-neck shirt, a stone-coloured lightweight pullover, a pair of white underpants, brown socks and leather sandals.

‘Those were the clothes he arrived in,’ said Hetherington, his concern for West temporarily displaced by distaste for anyone who would wear trousers with a shiny seat and a pullover – with a frayed cuff.

‘How about this address book?’ said Baker.

‘Here.’

The entries of names, addresses and phone numbers were sparse. Field and Bray, Literary Agents; Mrs Brenda Nunn’s personal address and phone number; several numbers and extensions for West’s publishers; Vivian’s Vineyard; Polly Flinders; Kenbourne Town Hall; a number for emergency calls to the North Thames Gas Board; London Electricity; the London Library and Kenbourne Public Library, High Road Branch; some French names and numbers and places – and Crown, Lilian, with the Kingsmarkham telephone number of Rhoda Comfrey’s aunt.

Wexford said, ‘Where’s the car now?’

‘Still in number five garage. I couldn’t move it, could I? I hadn’t the means.’

I wonder if I have, thought Wexford. They trooped out to the row of garages. The red Citroen looked as if it had been well maintained and it was immaculately polished. The licence plates showed that it was three years old. The doors were locked and so was the boot.

‘We’ll get that open,’ Baker said. ‘Should have a key to fit, or we’ll get one. It won’t take long.’

Wexford felt through the jangling mass in his pocket. Two keys marked with a double chevron. ‘Try these,’ he said. The keys fitted. There was nothing inside the car but a neat stack of maps of Western Europe on the dashboard shelf. The contents of the boot were more rewarding. Two more brown leather suitcases, larger than the one West had left in his room, and labelled ‘Grenville West, Hotel Casimir, Rue Victor Hugo, Paris’. Both were locked, but the opening of suitcases is child’s play.

‘To hell with warrants,’ Wexford said out of range of Hetherington’s hearing. ‘Can we have these taken back to the nick?’

‘Surely,’ said Baker, and to Hetherington in the grating tones of admonition that made him unpopular with the public and colleagues alike, ‘You’ve wasted our time and the taxpayers’ money by delaying like this. Frankly, you haven’t a hope in hell of getting that bill paid.’

Loring drove the car back with Baker beside him, while Wexford went with Clements. A lunchtime traffic jam held the police car up, Clements taking this opportunity during a lull in events to expound on lack of public cooperation, laxity that amounted to obstruction, and Hetherington’s hair which he averred had been bleached. At last Wexford managed to get him off this – anyone whose conversation consists in continual denunciation is wearying to listen to – and on to James and Angela. By the time they got to the police station both cases had been opened and were displayed in the centre of the floor of Baker’s drab and gloomy sanctum.

The cases were full of clothes, some of which had evidently been bought new for West’s holiday. In a leather bag was a battery-operated electric shaver, a tube of suntan cream and an aerosol of insect repellant, but no toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, sponge or flannel, cologne or after-shave.

‘If he’s a homosexual,’ said Wexford, ‘these are rather odd omissions. I should have expected a fastidious interest in his personal appearance. Doesn’t he even clean his teeth?’

‘Maybe he’s got false ones.’

‘Which he scrubs at night with the hotel nailbrush and the hotel soap?’

Baker had brought to light a large brown envelope, sealed.

‘Ah, the documents.’ But there was something else inside apart from papers. Carefully, Baker slit the envelope open and pulled out a key to which was attached a heavy wood and metal tag, the metal part engraved with the name of the Trieste Hotel and the number of the room West had occupied for one night.

‘How about this?’ said Baker. ‘He isn’t in France, he never left the country.’

What he handed to Wexford was a British passport, issued according to its cover to Mr J. G. West.

Wexford opened the passport at page one.

The name of the bearer was given as Mr John Grenville West and his national status as that of a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Page two gave West’s profession as a novelist, his place of birth as Myringham, Sussex, his date of birth 9 September 1940, his country of residence as the United Kingdom, his height as five feet nine, and the colour of his eyes as grey. In the space allotted to the bearer’s usual signature, he had signed it ‘Grenville West’.