Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

‘There’s no need to be patronizing,’ said Burden. ‘They don’t.’

Wexford wasn’t feeling very light-hearted, but he couldn’t, even in these circumstances, resist teasing Burden who was already looking irritable and aggrieved.

‘Oh, and Edward Edwards,’ he said. ‘Know who Edward Edwards was? The Father of Public Libraries, it said underneath his statue. Apparently, he was instrumental in getting some bill through Parliament in 1850 and…’

‘For God’s sake,’ Burden exploded, ‘can’t you get on to West? What’s this Edwards got to do with West?’

‘Not much. He stands outside libraries and West’s book are inside.’

‘Then where is West? Or are you saying he’s going to turn up now he’s read in the paper that one of his girl-friends has murdered the other one?’

‘He won’t turn up.’

‘Why won’t he?’ Burden said slowly. ‘Look, d’you mean there were two people involved in murdering Rhoda Comfrey? West as well as the girl?’

‘No. West is dead. He never went back to the Trieste Hotel because he was dead.’

‘I need another drink,’ said Burden. In the doorway he turned round and said scathingly, ‘I suppose Polly Flinders bumped him off too?’

‘Yes,’ said Wexford. ‘Of course.’

The Olive was getting crowded and Burden was more than five minutes fetching their beer. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘who d’you think’s out there? Griswold. He didn’t see me. At least, I don’t think so.’

‘Then you’d better make that one last. I’m not running the risk of bumping into him.’

Burden sat down again, his eye on the doorway which held no door. He leant across the table, his elbows on it. ‘She can’t have. What became of the body?’

Wexford didn’t answer him directly. ‘Does the word eonism mean anything to you?’

‘No more than all those names you flung at me just now. Wait a minute, though. An aeon means a long time, an age. An aeonist is – let’s see – is someone who studies changes over long periods of time.’

‘No. I thought something like that too. It has nothing to do with aeons, there’s no a in it. Havelock Ellis coined the word in a book published in 1928 called Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Eonism and other Studies. He took the name from that of the Chevalier d’Eon, Charles Eon de Beaumont, who died in this country in the early part of the nineteenth century…’ Wexford paused and said, 'Having masqueraded for thirty-three years as a woman Rhoda Comfrey masqueraded for twenty years as a man. When I agreed that Pauline Flinders had murdered Grenville West, I meant that she had murdered him in the body of Rhoda Comfrey. Rhoda Comfrey and Grenville West were one and the same.’

'That’s not possible,’ said Burden. ‘People would have known or at least suspected.’ Intently staring at Wexford’s face, he was oblivious of the long bulky shadow that had been cast across the table and his own face.

Wexford turned round, said, ‘Good evening, sir,’ and smiled pleasantly. It was Burden who, realizing, got to his feet.

‘Sit down, Mike, sit down,’ said the Chief Constable, casting upon Wexford a look that implied he would have liked the opportunity to tell him to sit down also. ‘May I join you? Or is the chief inspector here indulging his well-known habit of telling a tale with the minimum of celerity and the maximum of suspense? I should hate to interrupt before the climax was reached.’

In a stifled voice, Burden said, ‘The climax was reached just as you came in, sir. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Thank you, but I have one.’ Griswold produced, from where he had been holding it, for some reason, against his trouser leg, a very small glass of dry sherry. ‘And now I too would like to hear this wonderful exposition, though I have the advantage over you, Mike, of having read a condensed version. I heard your last words. Perhaps you’ll repeat them.’

‘I said she couldn’t have got away with it. Anyone she knew well would have known.’

‘Well, Reg?’ Griswold sat down on the settle next to Burden. ‘I hope my presence won’t embarrass you. Will you go on?’

‘Certainly I will, sir.’ Wexford considered saying he wasn’t easily embarrassed but thought better of it. ‘I think the answer to that question is that she took care, as we have seen, only to know well not very sensitive or intelligent people. But even so, Malina Patel had noticed there was something odd about Grenville West, and she said she wouldn’t have liked him to kiss her. Even Victor Vivian spoke of a “funny high voice” while, incidentally, Mrs Crown said that Rhoda’s voice was deep. I think it probable that such people as Oliver Hampton and Mrs Nunn did know, or rather, if they didn’t know she was a woman, they suspected Grenville West of being of ambivalent sex, of being physically a hermaphrodite, or maybe an effeminate homosexual. But would they have told me? When I questioned them I suspected West of nothing more than being acquainted with Rhoda Comfrey. They are discreet people, who were connected with West in a professional capacity.'

'As for those men Rhoda consorted with in bars, they wouldn’t have been a bunch of conservative suburbanites. They’d have accepted her as just another oddity in a world of freaks. Before you came in, sir, I mentioned three names. Isabelle Eberhardt, James Miranda Barry and Martha Jane Burke. What they had in common was that they were all eonists.'

'Isabelle Eberhardt became a nomad in the North African desert where she was in the habit of sporadically passing herself off as male. James Barry went to medical school as a boy in the days before girls were eligible to do so, and served for a lifetime as an army doctor in the British colonies. After her death she was found to be a woman, and a woman who had had a child. The last named is better known as Calamity Jane who lived with men as a man, chewed tobacco, was proficient in the use of arms, and was only discovered to be a woman while she was taking part in a military campaign against the Sioux.'

‘The Chevalier d’Eon was a physically normal man who successfully posed as a female for thirty years. For half that period he lived with a woman friend called Marie Cole who never doubted for a moment that he also was a woman. She nursed him through his last illness and didn’t learn he was a man until after his death. I will quote to you Marie Cole’s reaction to the discovery from the words of the Notary Public, Doctors’ Commons, 1810: “She did not recover from the shock for many hours.”

‘So you can see that Rhoda Comfrey had precedent for what she did, and that the lives of these predecessors of hers show that cross-dressing succeeds in its aim. Many people are totally deceived by it, others speculate or doubt, but the subject’s true sex is often not detected until he or she become ill or wounded, or until, as in Rhoda’s case, death supervenes.’

The Chief Constable shook his head, as one who wonders rather than denies. ‘What put you on to it, Reg?’

‘My daughters. One saying a woman would have to be an eonist to get a man’s rights, and the other dressing as a man on the stage. Oh, and Grenville West’s letter to Charles West – that had the feel of having been written by a woman. And Rhoda’s fingernails painted but clipped short. And Rhoda having a toothbrush in her luggage at Kingsmarkham and West not having one in his holiday cases. All feelings, I’m afraid, sir.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Burden, ‘but what about the age question? Rhoda Comfrey was fifty and West was thirty-eight.’

‘She had a very good reason for fixing her age as twelve years less than her true one. I’ll go into that in a minute. But also you must remember that she saw herself as having lost her youth and those best years. This was a way of regaining them. Now think what are the signs of youth in men and women. A woman’s subcutaneous fat begins to decline at fifty or hereabouts, but a man never has very much of it.'