Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

A sort of green triangle with trees, he thought vaguely. He expected more requests or even demands from Minty but when one came it was very different from what he anticipated.

“Will you get Sonovia to phone the builders again?”

“Give them time, Minty,” he said, rather taken aback.

She seemed to be listening for something as she stared into a corner. Then she shook herself like someone coming out of a daze. “You said the beginning of the week is Thursday and the end of the week next Monday but Monday’s gone and they haven’t come. I’m never going to get my shower at this rate.”

ONE OF THE LAST sightings of Jims was in Le Tobsil restaurant in Marrakesh. A Liberal Democrat MP, visiting that city with his wife as part of a Moroccan tour, saw him through the window. He couldn’t have afforded to eat there himself. The MP wouldn’t have been surprised to have found him with a young and handsome male companion, but Jims was alone. He mentioned this interesting glimpse to a friend in an e-mail and the friend told a newspaper. That was the beginning of the ongoing and endlessly fascinating “Disappearance of Gay MP” story.

In late August a journalist claimed to have encountered him in Seoul, where Jims granted him an interview. But everyone who knew Jims was highly skeptical about this as none of them could imagine him setting foot in Korea, while the text itself with its admissions of shame, regret, and contrition sounded very unlike him. Neither his agent nor, naturally, his bank was prepared to divulge anything of his whereabouts, though presumably they had some idea. Attempts were made to get the truth out of Zillah, though it took a while to find her as by this time she had let Willow Cottage on a year’s lease to an American novelist and moved into Long Fredington Manor with Sir Ronald Grasmere.

“I’ve always wanted to come back here,” said Eugenie, “and now we’re moving out again.”

But no one took any notice, as usual.

Zillah had no idea where Jims was and cared less. From now on, all her efforts were to make Ronnie happy and convince him he was mistaken when he said that, following his recent divorce, he was done with marriage forever.

From time to time Violent Crimes or Miss Demeanor appeared on television-the only slot they got was two minutes at the end of Newsroom Southeast -to tell an apathetic public that they would never give up the hunt for the Cinema Slayer and killer of Eileen Dring. An arrest would be made in the not-too-far-distant future. They had many leads on which their team was working day and night. Fiona and Matthew and Michelle sometimes watched these programs but without much anxiety or sense of involvement. Their ordeals were over. The police had shown no interest in any of them for weeks now. Their neighbors once more passed the time of day with them, no one crossed the street when they approached, and Fiona had had the graffiti on her gateposts removed and painted over.

Gradually, she was recovering. She no longer expected it to be Jeff when the doorbell rang or to find him waiting for her when she came home. The time was past when she woke from her sedative-induced sleep to wonder why he wasn’t lying there beside her. These days she could agree with friends she had thought unkind that after all, she’d only known him for eight months. It wasn’t really long enough to be sure of one’s feelings. Knowing what she now knew of him, she’d never have been able to trust him, he’d deceived her so often and told so many lies. Sometimes she asked Michelle if she was forgiven for categorizing her and Matthew as among Jeff’s enemies, and although Michelle always said yes, of course, and to forget all about it, Fiona went on asking her as if she doubted the sincerity of her replies.

Michelle had lately been rather quiet and thoughtful so that Matthew often asked her if anything was wrong. She smiled and said, “Far from it. Everything is fine,” and with that he had to be satisfied. He wanted to repeat their weekend away, perhaps abroad this time, and Michelle said she’d love to, but could they postpone it for a few weeks? He’d met quite a lot of new people through his television program and they’d done an unheard-of thing and had a dinner party for eight, a number that included Fiona and a personable man in his thirties Michelle thought might do as Jeff’s replacement. Matthew said not to matchmake, it never worked, and Michelle promised she’d do no more.

One evening, when they and their next-door neighbor had met for drinks, Michelle made something very close to a little speech of thanks to Fiona: “It was your food ideas which really started Matthew eating properly. It came out of your inventive mind. And it was poor Jeff”-she could call him that now-“who taught me to lose weight. He didn’t know that’s what he was doing but he was. Those taunts of his didn’t make me do what those stupid police seemed to think I’d done, they changed me from a great, gross, fat woman into a-well, a reasonable size sixteen.”

“You were always beautiful to me,” said Matthew.

She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “It did make me hate him for a bit. I can admit it now I don’t think anyone will mind.” But although she saw as much of Fiona as she had ever done, though she kissed her affectionately and constantly reassured her, she remembered what she had said to Matthew at the time of the betrayal: “I can never feel the same about her again, never.” It was still true, though she hid it and would always hide it, even from him.

She was healthier than she’d been for more than ten years or she looked healthier, so Matthew was concerned when she said at eight in the morning that she was off to their GP’s office. She’d made an appointment and told him she wouldn’t be long.

He felt a sudden surge of terror. “What’s the matter with you, darling?”

“I won’t know till I’ve seen the doctor, will I?”

It was then that he thought he saw bewilderment in her face and some apprehension of misfortune. She decided against telling him her symptoms, said only that she wouldn’t be long and he mustn’t worry.

The story Natalie concocted out of her hopeless encounter with Nell Johnson-Fleet and her second abortive attempt on her the next day, the troubling meeting with Linda Davies, her sad interview with Fiona Harrington, and her incomprehensible confrontation with Araminta Knox were, she had to admit, something of a failure. None of the newspaper editors to whom she offered it was interested. Other stories had replaced the Cinema Slayer and the Old Bag Lady in the public consciousness. It might be another matter if all that talk of clues and leads on the television last night led to an arrest, but otherwise…

Natalie had done her best with it. She had even had one more go at the voters’ list, widening her search, just in case another woman with something that might be construed as “mint” in her name turned up. She even went back to Laf and Sonovia, and tried to dig deep into their memories, but all they said was that they couldn’t describe a man they’d never seen. After that she followed the modern procedure that used to be known as “spiking” the story and kept it on a floppy disk for what she thought of as the unlikely event of the murderer being found.

The Wilsons had been dismayed by this further visit. Laf saw it as an attempt to implicate Minty in something she couldn’t possibly know anything about. It never crossed his mind that she might be the killer, not gentle, quiet Minty with her strong moral sense and horror of violence. How many times, for instance, had he and Sonovia heard her say she was in favor of a return to capital punishment? But it was strange about Jock Lewis. No evidence that he could find had linked him with Jeffrey Leach until the police found the “boneshaker” in Harold Hill. Nothing had been in the newspapers about that, it was hardly a newsworthy item, but Laf, of course, knew it. Without saying a word to Sonovia or his children, without telling any of his fellow officers why, he managed to get a look at the car himself. The trouble was he simply couldn’t remember. Several times he’d seen the “boneshaker” outside Minty’s house but he’d never taken much notice of it beyond remarking to Sonovia that since the fuel emissions test came in you saw far fewer old bangers about on the roads. He couldn’t even remember whether it was dark blue or dark green or black. The Harold Hill car was dark blue but so dirty, so encrusted with dead leaves, smoke deposit, and squashed insects, that it would have been hard to say if it was the car or not, even if he’d remembered more about it.