Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

How useless she was! An encumbrance, not even a helpful companion. Jims called Ivo Carew and canceled their date.

“Thanks a bunch,” said Ivo. “Did you have to wait till five to one?”

“It’s unavoidable. D’you honestly think I wouldn’t rather see you than drive back to bloody London?”

He stopped en route at a Merry Cookhouse where, shuddering, he tried to eat chicken in a basket and chips. With plenty of time to spare, he could have lunched with Ivo and set off a couple of hours later, but he was becoming nervous about the whereabouts of that folder. His mind must be set at rest as soon as possible. But not before he’d complained about the soggy chips and the chicken, which he was sure was spoiled. The manager was a man with a temper easily roused and the two of them engaged for a minute or two in a slanging match.

The traffic was heavy and grew heavier as Jims approached London. A pile-up near a motorway and a road junction caused a nose-to-tail queue extending for several miles, while roadworks near Heathrow airport reduced cars to a single lane. It was close to eight o’clock before he parked the car in Glebe Terrace. His mind must be going, he thought. Having mislaid his notes, he was now unable to find the key to Leonardo’s house. He looked on his Abbey Gardens Mansions key ring and his car keys ring, then went through his pockets. It wasn’t there. The woman next door, Amber Something, had one. He prayed she’d be at home and she was. She gave him a funny look in which there was a lot of snide amusement but she gave him the key, saying to be sure to let her have it back in the morning. He let himself into Leonardo’s house.

Mounting the little staircase to the bedroom, he thought how ghastly it would be if he opened the door and found Leonardo in bed with someone, maybe that guy in the Department of Education and Employment he said was attractive. A lot of men wouldn’t mind, though he wasn’t one of them. But the room was empty.

Jims searched for the folder. It was nowhere to be found. Seriously worried, he went back downstairs and after hunting-hunting!-for ten minutes, found it and Burns at the back of a rather elegant rosewood filing cabinet. Put there, no doubt, by Leonardo’s obsessively tidy busybody of a cleaner.

He’d go out to dinner, then come back here to sleep. There was a chance Giulietta had a date, in which case Leonardo might come back. Anyway, he couldn’t face his own home, not with Zillah there and those kids.

While Jims was searching for his notes and Zillah was watching television in Abbey Gardens Mansions with Jordan on her lap, two policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were calling at Willow Cottage, Long Fredington.

After she had left, Zillah’s landlord, who during her tenancy had been afraid she’d never go but stay forever and eventually establish children’s rights for her girl and boy, had decided to sell the place. Accordingly, he was having it redecorated and a new kitchen and bathroom fitted. Although the builders had started soon after Christmas, their task was still incomplete. Scaffolding covered the front of the house, the windows were boarded up, and a builders’ sign proclaiming the workmen as construction designers stuck up in the garden. The police could see no one lived there. They tried the neighbors and were told Mrs. Leach had left in December and got married again. The woman next door could even tell them whom she’d married: the local MP, Mr. Melcombe-Smith.

It was, of course, imperative that the late Jeffrey Leach’s wife be told as soon as possible of his violent death. But it now appeared she was his wife no longer. She had remarried, and into a social class far above what the investigators had calculated was Jeffrey Leach’s.

Zillah had just got up on Saturday morning when the policeman rang the bell at Abbey Gardens Mansions. It was only half past eight, an early hour for her, but she’d been unable to lie in, for Eugenie’s prediction-that having slept most of the day she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night-proved true. The children were already up and watching cartoons on television. Zillah came out in her dressing gown and began making toast and pouring cornflakes into bowls. She caught sight of herself in a mirror and backed away from it, she looked so terrible, her hair in rats’ tails and dark smudges under her eyes. A spot, the likes of which she hadn’t had for fifteen years, was erupting in the middle of her chin.

“Who on earth’s that?” she asked when the bell rang.

“You’ll know if you open the door,” said Eugenie. “What a stupid question.”

“How dare you be so rude!”

Jordan, who was always upset by shouting, began to snivel. The doorbell rang again and Zillah went to answer it.

“Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”

“That’s right.”

“May I come in? I have some distressing news for you.”

There was no one in the world not in the flat at that moment whom Zillah cared enough for to mind whether they were fit or injured, alive or dead. But she couldn’t hide her shocked response when the caller told her of the death of Jeffrey Leach. “I don’t believe it.”

“I’m afraid it’s true.”

“What did he die of? Some sort of accident?”

This may have given the man the impetus to come straight out with it. “He was murdered yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry.”

“Murdered? Who murdered him?”

There was no reply to that. The policeman wanted to know where she’d been between three and four-thirty and Zillah, still amazed at the news, said she’d been here.

“Alone?”

“Yes, quite alone. My children were out with their-er, nanny.”

“And Mr. Melcombe-Smith?”

Zillah couldn’t exactly say she didn’t know. It would look very odd in a bride of two months. “In his constituency. That’s South Wessex, you know. He’s been there since Thursday afternoon. I can’t believe Jerry’s been murdered. Are you sure it was Jerry?”

“Certainly it was Mr. Jeffrey Leach. Is this him?”

Zillah looked for the first time in nearly seven years on the photograph she herself had taken in those happier times-though she hadn’t thought them so then-of Jerry with the three-week-old Eugenie in his arms. “My God, yes. Where did you find it?”

“That’s not important. You identify it as Jeffrey Leach?”

She nodded. “I’m amazed he kept it.”

Then came the question of questions, the one that brought the blood to her face and made it recede again as rapidly: “When exactly were you divorced, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”

She knew it would be a mistake to lie but she had to. Still, she hesitated. “Er-it must have been last spring. About a year ago.”

“I see. And when did you last see Mr. Leach?”

It had been two weeks before, here, in this flat. She remembered how he’d called her a bigamist. The time before that had been six months ago, in October, in Long Fredington, when he’d come for the weekend. And driven away in the boneshaker, ten minutes before the express and the local train crashed. “October,” she said. “It was while I was living in Dorset with my children.” For the sake of verisimilitude, she felt the need to insert some circumstantial detail. “He drove down on Friday evening and stayed the weekend. The first weekend in October. He left again on Tuesday morning.”

He held something out to her. It was a Visa card. “Is this yours?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know.”

“The name on it is Z. H. Leach and those are not common initials.”

“Yes, it must be mine.”

It was the card Jims had arranged for her to have last December when she’d accepted his proposal. She saw that its starting date was December and expiration date November 2003. After she was married and Jims gave her two new cards in the name of Mrs. Z. H. Melcombe-Smith, she’d forgotten all about the existence of this one. How had Jerry got hold of it? That day in the flat he’d wandered about when he was supposed to be going to the loo, she’d heard his stealthy footsteps, thought she heard him go into her bedroom, but attached no importance to it. After all, she was used to visitors prying into her things, Malina Daz, Mrs. Peacock…