Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

He had slumped into a chair and now, looking down at his hands, he saw that he was holding the dishcloth just as he had held that silver tie last night, taut, his fingers flexed at its ends. He relaxed them. Was it possible the police car was parked outside because earlier there had been no other space in which to park? Again he looked out of the window. Anthony Johnson was crossing the road towards the closed mews. The long trill of his doorbell ringing seemed to go through the soft tissues of Arthur’s brain like a knife. He swayed. Then he went to the door.

“Mr. Johnson?”

Arthur nodded, his face shrivelling with pallor.

“I’d like a word with you. May I come in?”

The man didn’t wait for permission. He stepped into the flat and showed Arthur his warrant card. Detective Inspector Glass. A tall, lean man was Inspector Glass with a broad, flat bill of a nose and a thin mouth that parted to show big yellow dentures.

“There’s been a murder, Mr. Johnson. In view of that, I’d be glad if you’d tell me what your movements were last evening.”

“My movements?” Arthur had rehearsed nothing. He was totally unprepared. “What do you mean?”

“It’s quite simple. I’d just like to know how you spent last evening.”

“I was here, in my flat. I was here from the time I got in from work at six-thirty. I didn’t go out.”

“Alone?”

Arthur nodded. He felt faint, sick. The man didn’t believe him. A blank, almost disgusted, incredulity showed in his face, and his lip curled above those hideous teeth.

“According to my information, you spent the evening with Mr. Winston Mervyn, Mr. Brian Kotowsky and a man called Potter.”

And now Arthur didn’t understand at all. Fleeting images of the Grand Duke, of Dean’s profile, appeared on his mind’s eye, but surely … Then came light.

“I think you are mistaking me for Mr. Anthony Johnson who lives on the ground floor. Room 2.” Firmly now, as he saw he had been right, that Glass had made a mistake, he added, “I was at home on my own all evening.”

“Sorry about that, Mr. Johnson. An understandable confusion. Then you can’t help us as to the whereabouts of Mr. Kotowsky?”

“I know nothing about it. I hardly know him. I keep myself to myself.” But Arthur had to know, had to discover before Glass departed, why he had come to this house—why here? “This murder—you’re connecting Mr. Kotowsky with it?”

“Inevitably, Mr. Johnson,” said Glass, opening the front door. “It is Mrs. Vesta Kotowsky who has been murdered.”

14

————

Anthony spent the day in the college library and it was nearly five when he reached Kenbourne Lane tube station on his way home. There on the newsboards he read: Murder of Kenbourne Woman and Kenbourne Killer slays again? Though he was necessarily interested in what leads men to kill, murder itself fascinated him not at all, so he didn’t buy a paper. Helen’s letter would be waiting for him, and since leaving the library his whole mind had been possessed by speculating as to what she would say.

The hall table was piled with correspondence, a heap of it, for once not carefully arranged. Anthony leafed through it. Three specifications from estate agents for Winston, Li-li’s Taiwan letter, a bill for Brian, a bill for Vesta, a bill that would have to be redirected for Jonathan Dean. Nothing for him. Helen hadn’t written. For the first time since he had moved into 142 Trinity Road, a Tuesday and a Wednesday had gone by without a letter from her. But before he could begin to wonder about this omission, whether he had been too harsh with her, whether she was afraid to write, the front door opened and Winston Mervyn and Jonathan Dean—who as far as he knew didn’t know each other, had never met—came into the hall together.

“When did they let you off the hook?” said Winston. “We must have missed you.”

“Hook?” said Anthony.

“I mean we didn’t see you at the police station.”

Anthony thought he had never seen Jonathan Dean look so grim, so spent, and at the same time so much like a real person without pose or role. “I’m not following any of this.”

“He doesn’t know,” said Jonathan. “He doesn’t know a thing. Vesta was murdered last night, Tony, strangled, and Brian’s disappeared.”

They went up to Winston’s room because it was bigger and airier than Anthony’s. Jonathan looked round his old domain with sick eyes, and finding no hackneyed line of verse or prose to fit the situation, stretched himself full-length on the old red sofa. A freezing fog, white in the dusk, pressed smokily against the window. Winston drew the sparingly cut curtains.

“The police came here at half-past seven this morning,” he said. “They couldn’t get an answer from Brian, so they came to me. They wanted to know when I’d last seen Brian and what sort of a mood he was in. I told them about last night. I had to.”

“You told them about all those insinuations of Potter’s, d’you mean?”

“I had to, Anthony. What would you have done? Said Brian was sober and calm and went off to bed in a happy frame of mind? They rooted Potter out, anyway. He must have missed his match. Presumably, after that, they thought they wouldn’t bother with you. And Potter must have remembered, hangover or not, because they got me down to the station and asked me if Brian had been in a jealous rage. I had to say he’d gone off looking for Vesta and him.” Winston waved his hand in the direction of the recumbent Dean.

“But it was rubbish,” said Anthony. “It was Potter’s drunken fantasy. There wasn’t any foundation for it, we all know that.”

“But there was,” said Jonathan Dean.

“You mean, you and Vesta …?”

“Oh God, of course . That’s why I moved away. We couldn’t do it here, could we? In the next room to the poor old bastard. Christ, I was with her yesterday. We spent the afternoon and most of the evening together and then we went off for a drink in the Grand Duke. She left me just before eleven to get the last bus.”

Anthony shrugged. He felt cold, helpless. “You said Brian had disappeared?”

Jonathan ran his fingers through his untidy ginger hair. “I haven’t been living in that bloody awful hole for the past week. It stinks and it’s overrun with mice. My sister said I could stay in her place while she’s away in Germany. She’s got a flat in West Hampstead. I went back there last night from the Duke. I got there about midnight and Brian turned up around half-past. He was pissed out of his mind and he was making all sorts of threats and accusations, only he passed out and I put him to bed.”

“But how did he know you’d be there?”

“God knows. I’ve gone there before when my sister’s been away.” Jonathan shivered. “The thing is, Vesta could have told him before he …”

“Then where is he now?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I left him there and went to work. The fuzz got hold of me at about midday and I told them everything, but when they got to my sister’s Brian had gone. They’re searching for him now. It’s no good looking like that, Tony old man, he must have done it. Why else would he vanish?”

“He could have gone out and seen an evening paper and panicked. I don’t believe him capable of murder.”

“D’you think I do? D’you think I like thinking that way about my old pal? We were like—like two red roses on one stalk.”

Perhaps it was the crass ineptitude of this quotation, or that fact that, in these circumstances, Jonathan had quoted anything at all, which made Winston round on him. “If he did do it, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have messed about with his wife.”