Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

‘It’ll be at old Comfrey’s place,’ said Crocker easily.

‘I just hope so. I’m going over there now to find it if it’s findable.’

The doctor jumped down from his perch on the edge of the desk. With one of those flashbacks to his youth, to his schooldays, he said on an eager note, ‘Can I come too?’

‘I suppose so. But I don’t want you cavorting about and getting in everyone’s way.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Crocker in mock dudgeon. ‘Who do you think the popularity polls show to be the most respected members of the community? General practitioners.’

‘I knew it wasn’t cops,’ said Wexford.

The house smelt as he had thought it would, of the old person’s animal-vegetable-mineral smell, sweat, cabbage and camphor.

‘What did moths live on before man wore woollen clothes?’

‘Sheep, I suppose,’ said the doctor.

‘But do sheep have moths?’

‘God knows. This place is a real tip, isn’t it?’

They were turning out drawers in the two downstairs rooms. Broken pens and pencils, dried-out ink bottles, sticking plaster, little glass jars full of pins, dead matches, nails, nuts and bolts, screws of thread; an assortment of keys, a pair of dirty socks full of holes, pennies and threepenny bits from the old currency, pieces of string, a broken watch, some marbles and some dried peas; a five-amp electric plug, milk bottle tops, the lid of a paint tin encrusted with blue from the front door, cigarette cards, picture hangers and an ancient shaving brush.

‘Nice little breeding ground for anthrax,’ said Crocker, and he pocketed a dozen or so boxes and bottles of pills that were ranged on top of the chest. I may as well dispose of this lot while I’m here. They won’t chuck them out, no matter how often you tell them. Though why they should be so saving when they get them for free in the first place, I never will know.’

The footfalls of Burden, Loring and Gates could be heard overhead. Wexford knelt down, opened the bottom drawer. Underneath a lot of scattered mothballs, more socks redolent of cheesy mustiness, and a half-empty packet of birdseed, he found an oval picture frame lying face-downwards. He turned it over and looked at a photograph of a young woman with short dark hair, strong jaw, long upper lip, biggish nose.

‘I suppose that’s her,’ he said to the doctor.

‘Wouldn’t know. I never saw her till she was dead and she didn’t look much like that then. It’s the spitting image of the old man, though, isn’t it? It’s her all right.’

Wexford said thoughtfully and a little sadly, remembering the over-made-up, raddled face, ‘It does look like her. It’s just that it was taken a long time ago.’ And yet she hadn’t looked sad. The dead face, if it were possible to say such a thing, had looked almost pleased with itself. ‘We’ll try upstairs,’ he said.

There was no bathroom in the house, and the only lavatory was outside in the garden. The stairs were not carpeted but covered with linoleum. Burden came out of the front bedroom which was James Comfrey’s.

‘Proper old glory hole in there. D’you know, there’s not a book in the house, and not a letter or a postcard either.’

‘The spare room,’ said Crocker.

It was a bleak little place, the walls papered in a print of faded pink and mauve sweet pea, the bare floorboards stained dark brown, the thin curtains whitish now but showing faintly the remains of a pink pattern. On the white cotton counterpane that covered the single bed lay a freshly pressed skirt in a navy-checked synthetic material, a blue nylon blouse and a pair of tights still in their plastic wrapping. Apart from a wall cupboard and a very small chest of drawers, there was no other furniture. On the chest was a small suitcase. Wexford looked inside it and found a pair of cream silk pyjamas of better quality than any of Rhoda Comfrey’s daytime wear, sandals of the kind that consist only of a rubber sole and rubber thong, and a sponge bag. That was all. The cupboard was empty as were the drawers of the chest. The closets had been searched and the alcoves importuned in vain.

Wexford said hotly to Crocker and Burden, ‘This is unbelievable. She doesn’t give her address to her aunt or the hospital where her father is or to her father’s doctor or his neighbours. It’s not written down anywhere in his house, he hasn’t got it with him in the hospital. No doubt, it was in his head where it’s now either locked in or knocked out. What the hell was she playing at?’

‘Possum,’ said the doctor.

Wexford gave a snort. ‘I’m going across the road,’ he said. ‘Mind you leave the place as you found it. That means untidying anything you’ve tidied up.’ He grinned snidely at Crocker. It made a change for him to order the doctor about, for the boot was usually on the other foot. ‘And get Mrs Crown formally to identify the body, will you, Mike? I wish you joy of her.’

Nicky Parker opened the door of Bella Vista, his mother close behind him in the hall. Again the reassuring game was played for the child’s benefit and Wexford passed off as a doctor. Well, why not? Weren’t doctors the most respected members of the community? A baby was crying somewhere, and Stella Parker looked harassed.

‘Would it be convenient,’ he said politely, ‘for me to have a chat with your – er – grandmother-in-law?’

She said she was sure it would, and Wexford was led through to a room at the back of the house. Sitting in an armchair, on her lap a colander containing peas that she was shelling, sat one of the oldest people he had ever seen in his life.

‘Nana, this is the police inspector.’

‘How do you do, Mrs -?’

‘Nana’s called Parker too, the same as us.’

She was surrounded by preparations for the family’s lunch. On the floor, on one side of her chair, stood a saucepanful of potatoes in water, the bowl of peelings in water beside it. Four cooking apples awaited her attention. Pastry was made, kneaded, and set on a plate. This, apparently, was one of the way in which she, at her extreme age, contributed to the household management. Wexford remembered how Parker had called his grandmother a wonder, and he began to see why.

For a moment she took no notice of him, exercising perhaps the privilege of matriarchal eld. Stella Parker left them and shut the door. The old woman split open the last of her pods, an enormous one, and said as if they were old acquaintances: ‘When I was a girl they used to say, if you find nine peas in a pod put it over your door and the next man to come in will be your own true love.’ She scattered the nine peas into the full colander, wiped her greened fingers on her apron.

‘Did you ever do it?’ said Wexford.

‘What d’you say? Speak up.’

‘Did you ever do it?’

‘Not me. Didn’t need to. I’d been engaged to Mr Parker since we was both fifteen. Sit down, young man. You’re too tall to be on your legs.’

Wexford was amused and absurdly flattered. ‘Mrs Parker…’ he began on a bellow, but she interrupted him with what was very likely a favourite question. ‘How old d’you think I am?’

There are only two periods in a woman’s life when she hopes to be taken for older than she is, under sixteen and over ninety. In each case the error praises a certain achievement. But still he was wary.

She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Ninety-two,’ she said, ‘and I still do the veg and make my own bed and do my room. And I looked after Brian and Nicky when Stell was in the hospital having Katrina. I was only eighty-nine then, though. Eleven children I’ve had and reared them all. Six of them gone now.’ She levelled at him a girl’s blue eyes in nests of wrinkles. ‘It’s not good to see your children go before you, young man.’ Her face was white bone in a sheath of crumpled parchment. ‘Brian’s dad was my youngest, and he’s been gone two years come November. Only fifty, he was. Still, Brian and Stell have been wonderful to me. They’re a wonder, they are, the pair of them.’ Her mind, drifting through the past, the ramifications of her family, returned to him, this stranger who must have come for something. ‘What were you wanting? Police, Stell said.’ She sat back, put the colander on the floor, and folded her hands. ‘Rhoda Comfrey, is it?’