Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

The tenth book in the Chief Inspector Wexford series, 1978

Those have most power to hurt us, that we love; We lay our sleeping lives within their arms. O, thou hast raised up mischief to his height, And found one to outname thy other faults.

Beaumont and Fletcher: The Maid’s Tragedy

Home early for once. Maybe he’d start getting home early regularly now August had begun, the silly season. Criminals as well as the law-abiding take their holidays in August. As he turned the car into his own road, Wexford remembered his grandsons would be there. Good. It would be light for another three hours, and he’d take Robin and Ben down to the river. Robin was always on about the river because his mother had read The Wind in the Willows to him, and his great desire was to see a water rat swimming.

Sylvia’s car was parked outside the house. Odd, thought Wexford. He’d understood Dora was having the boys for the afternoon as well as the evening and that they’d be staying the night. As he edged his own car past his daughter’s into the drive, she came running out of the house with a screaming Ben in her arms and six-year-old Robin looking truculent at her heels. Robin rushed up to his grandfather.

‘You promised we could see the water rat!’

‘So you can as far as I’m concerned and if there’s one about. I thought you were staying the night.’

Sylvia’s face was crimson, with rage or perhaps just from haste. It was very hot. ‘Well, they’re not. Thanks to my dear husband, nobody’s going anywhere even though it does happen to be our wedding anniversary. Will you shut up, Ben! He’s bringing a client home for dinner instead, if you please, and I of course as usual have to be the one to do the cooking and fetch the kids.’

‘Leave them here,’ said Wexford. ‘Why not?’

‘Yes, leave us here,’ Robin shouted. ‘Go on.’

‘Oh, no, that’s out of the question. Why do you have to encourage them. Dad? I’m taking them home and Neil can have the pleasure of putting them to bed for once.’

She thrust both children into the car and drove off. The windows of the car were all open, and the yells of the two little boys, for Robin had begun to back his brother up, vied with the roar of the ill-treated engine. Wexford shrugged and went indoors. Some sort of scene had evidently been taking place, but he knew his wife better than to suppose she would be much disturbed by it. True to his expectations, she was sitting placidly in the living room watching the tail end of a children’s programme on television. A great many books had been pulled out of the shelves, and on a tower block of them sat a teddy bear.

‘What’s got into Sylvia?’

‘Women’s Lib,’ said Dora Wexford. ‘If Neil wants to bring a client home he ought to cook the meal. He ought to come home in the afternoon and clean the house and lay the table. She’s taken the children home for the sole purpose of getting him to put them to bed. And she’s taking care to stir them up on the way to make sure he has a hard time of it.’

‘God. I always thought she was quite a sensible girl.’

‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it. It’s been going on for months. You are the people, we are the others. You are the masters, we are the chattels.’

‘Why haven’t you told me about any of this?’

Dora switched off the television. ‘You’ve been busy. You wouldn’t have wanted to listen to all this nonsense when you got home. I’ve been getting it every day.’

Wexford raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s nonsense?’

‘Well, not entirely, of course. Men still do have a better time of it in this world than women, it’s still a man’s world. I can understand she doesn’t like being stuck at home with the boys, wasting her life, as she puts it, while Neil gets more and more successful in his career.’ Dora smiled. ‘And she says she got more A Levels than he did. I can understand she gets bored when people come and the men talk to Neil about architecture and the women talk to her about polishing the bedroom furniture. Oh, I can understand it.’

Her husband looked hard at her. ‘You feel that way too?’

‘Never you mind,’ said Dora, laughing now. ‘Let’s forget our rather tiresome child. You’re so early we might go out somewhere after we’ve eaten. Would you like to?’

‘Love to.’ He hesitated, said quickly. ‘It’s not threatening their marriage, is it? I’ve always thought of them as being so happy together.’

‘We have to hope it’ll pass. Anything we do or say would only make things worse, wouldn’t it?’

‘Of course. Now where shall we go? Cinema? Or how about the open-air theatre at Sewingbury?’

Before she could give him an answer, the phone rang. ‘Sylvia,’ she said. ‘She’s realized Ben left his teddy. You get it, darling. Oh, and Reg…? Would you say we’ll drop it in on our way? I can’t stand another session of the wounded wives tonight.’

Wexford lifted the receiver. It wasn’t his daughter. Dora knew it wasn’t even before he spoke. She knew that look. All he said was ‘Yes’ and ‘Sure, I will’, but she knew. He hung up and said, ‘They don’t all go on holiday in August. A body in a field not half a mile from here.’

‘Is it…?’

‘Not one of the people,’ her husband said drily. ‘One of the others.’ He tightened the tie he had loosened, rolled down his shirtsleeves. ‘I’ll have to go straightaway. What’ll you do? Stir up the telly so I have a hard time of it putting it to rights? You must regret marrying me.’

‘No, but I’m working on it.’

Wexford laughed, kissed her and drove back the way he had come.

Kingsmarkham is a sizeable town somewhere in the middle of Sussex, much built-up now on the Stowerton and Sewingbury sides, though open and unspoilt country still remains at its northern end. There the High Street becomes the Pomfret Road, and there the pinewoods of Cheriton Forest clothe the hills.Forest Road is the last street in the area to bear the postal address Kingsmarkham. It debouches directly from the Pomfret Road, but to reach it most of its few residents take the short cut from the end of the High Street by footpath across a field. Wexford parked his car at the point in Forest Road where this footpath entered it as an alley near the boundary fence of a pair of houses called Carlyle Villas. He swung into the alley and followed the footpath along a high privet hedge that bounded allotments.

About a hundred yards ahead of him he could see a group of men gathered at the edge of a little copse. Inspector Michael Burden was among them and so was Dr Crocker, the police doctor, and a couple of photographers. As Wexford approached, Burden came up to him and said something in a low voice. Wexford nodded. Without looking at the body, he went up to Detective Loring who stood a little apart with a younger man who looked pale and shaken.

‘Mr Parker?’

'That’s right.’

‘I understand you found the body?’

Parker nodded. ‘Well, my son did.’ He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five himself.

‘A child' said Wexford.

‘He doesn’t realize. I hope not. He’s only six.’

They sat down on a wooden seat the council had put there for pensioners to rest on. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I’d taken him round to my sister’s, give the wife a bit of a break while she was putting the other two to bed. I live in one of the bungalows in Forest Road, Bella Vista, the one with the green roof. We were coming back, along the path here, and Nicky was playing with a ball. It went in the long grass under the hedge and he went to look for it. He said, “Dad, there’s a lady down there.” I sort of knew, I don’t know how. I went and looked and I – well, I know I shouldn’t have, but I sort of pulled her coat over her chest. Nicky, you see, he’s only six, there was – well, blood, a mess.’