Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Laf laid down his paper and said appreciatively to his wife that the garden was a treat to look at. “Those blue things are a lovely sight. I don’t think you’ve had those before.”

“Lobelias,” said Sonovia. “They make a nice contrast to the red. I got them through mail order but to tell you the truth, I never thought they’d turn out like the picture. Have you seen about this woman who used to be married to that man that was murdered in the Odeon marrying someone else without being divorced? It says here she thought she was divorced. I don’t see how she could have, do you?”

“Don’t know. There’s people about as will do anything, as I have good reason to know. Maybe he showed her some false papers.”

He wasn’t going to let on to Sonovia that this latest bit of news in the Cinema Slayer case hadn’t yet reached Notting Hill police station. The knife was different, he knew all about that, how it was found in a recycling bin and someone said it looked as if it had been boiled and the lab couldn’t tell if it was the murder weapon or not. Who’d boil a knife? That was what the DI had said and Laf had thought, Minty would. He’d had to laugh at the idea of little Minty harming anyone.

“D’you reckon this Zillah Melcombe-Smith’d done wrong,” he asked his wife, “marrying again when she wasn’t divorced? I mean, if she thought she was divorced and she married that MP in good faith?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Laf. Maybe she ought to have checked up before she actually stood at the altar.”

“Well, d’you reckon anyone does wrong if they don’t know it’s wrong?” These matters sometimes troubled Laf as a responsible policeman. “I mean like, if you attacked someone, killed them, because you thought they were a demon or Hitler or something, really believed it? If you thought you were ridding the world of an evil-an evil entity? Would that be wrong?”

“You’d have to be nuts.”

“Okay, more people are nuts, as you call it, than you’d think. Would it be wrong?”

“That’s too deep for me, Laf. You’d better ask the pastor. D’you want another coffee?”

But Laf didn’t. He sat in the sun, thinking that if what he’d outlined to Sonovia was wrong for the person who got killed and all their friends and family, it would be just as wrong if the killer had meant it. But it wouldn’t be wrong for the person who did the killing, they wouldn’t have committed murder like the Commandment said thou shalt not, they’d be innocent as a lamb; they’d have nothing on their conscience and perhaps they’d be proud to have been Hitler’s or the devil’s assassin.

Laf, who was a deeply religious man and an Evangelical, asked himself if they’d go to heaven. He would ask the pastor. And he was pretty sure he’d say that since it was God who had made them mad He ought to let them inside the gates of paradise. He looked back at the garden. Those pale pink geraniums were a lovely color. It was a great thing to be a happy man, to sit under his vine and his fig tree, as the Bible said, under his may tree and his lilac really, with a good wife and his quiverful of children.

Sonovia had gone into the house to phone Corinne. In the afternoon they were going to the Dome, taking their granddaughter with them. He’d wait until a quarter past one, by that time they’d have had their lunch, and then he’d take the papers in to Minty. Maybe she’d like to come with them. Mending the rift between Minty and Sonovia had been the most worthwhile thing he’d done for a long time, Laf thought. His wife was a good woman, if a shade quick-tempered. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Minty wasn’t surprised to be haunted by old Mrs. Lewis, she’d expected it. She couldn’t see her and she hoped she never would, but her voice came as often as the other voices. At any rate it proved she was dead and Jock’s words she’d heard whispered in the night were true. The living didn’t come back and speak to you, they were here already.

She knew the new voice was Mrs. Lewis’s because Auntie told her. Auntie didn’t introduce her, she didn’t bother to, which Minty thought rather rude. She just called her Mrs. Lewis. It was quite a shock. Minty had been ironing at the time, not at Immacue like now, but at home in her own kitchen, when Auntie had started talking to her. She didn’t say a word about the flowers Minty had put on her grave the day before-and they’d cost a lot, over ten pounds-but started criticizing her ironing, saying the washing was too dry, the creases would never come out. And then she’d asked Mrs. Lewis for her opinion. “What do you think, Mrs. Lewis?” she’d said.

The new voice was gruff and deeper than Auntie’s, and it had a funny accent. Must be West Country. “She wants one of them sprays,” it said. “They’ve got a lot of it at the dry cleaners where she works. She could borrow one of them.”

They knew everything, the dead. They could see into everything, which made it funnier, really, that they couldn’t hear what you said to them. Mrs. Lewis had lived in Gloucester, which was hundreds of miles away, while she was alive and she’d never have known about Immacue and Minty working there, but she knew now because she was dead and secrets were revealed to her. The two of them were talking to each other while she went on ironing, chattering away about washing powders and stain removers. Minty tried to ignore them. She couldn’t understand why Mrs. Lewis had come to haunt her. Maybe the old woman had died when she’d heard her son Jock was dead, given way under the shock. She needn’t suppose Minty was going to tend her grave, wherever it was. It was bad enough with Auntie’s, not to mention the expense.

The ironing was done, everything folded and laid in the laundry basket on a clean sheet. Minty picked it up.

“You don’t need to use that basket,” Auntie said. “That’s not a very big pile. You could carry it, it’d be easier.”

“Go away,” said Minty. “It’s nothing to do with you and I’m not putting any more flowers on your grave. I can’t afford it.”

“You can understand her feelings,” said old Mrs. Lewis. “That son of mine got all her money off her. Mind you, he’d have given it back if he hadn’t met his end in that train crash. Every penny he’d have restored to her.”

“If you want to tell me things,” Minty shouted, “you can tell me to my face, not tell her . And it’s down to you to give me my money back.”

But Mrs. Lewis never did talk to her. She talked to Auntie. By a miracle Auntie had got her hearing back and Mrs. Lewis had been talking to her this morning while Minty was ironing for Immacue customers. They could get anywhere, these ghosts. Auntie said she was looking pale, been picking at her food no doubt, but Mrs. Lewis intervened then and said her Jock had made Minty eat, he was a trencherman himself and he liked a girl to be a hearty eater.

“Go away, go away,” Minty whispered, but not quietly enough, for Josephine came out, wanting to know if she’d been talking to her.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, I thought you did. Have you seen the papers this morning? There’s a woman was the wife of that murdered bloke who’s gone and married someone else.”

“I never see the papers till I get home. Why shouldn’t she if he’s dead?”

“He wasn’t dead when she did it,” said Josephine. “And what d’you think, her and this MP got married on the same day as me and Ken. Look, I’ve got the Mirror here. D’you like her outfit? Jeans can be too tight, I don’t care what anyone says. And her hair’s all over the place. That’s some guy she was with, it doesn’t say who he is, not the husband, and that’s her little boy, sobbing his heart out, poor mite.”