Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

Winston came out of the shop, holding the paper up, reading the front page. He came up to Anthony, thrust the paper at him.

“Look.”

The first thing Anthony saw was the photograph of Brian, the uncompromising passport photograph that had appeared so many times already, day after day, in every newspaper. The mop of hair, the wizened yet flaccid face, the eyes that ever seemed to implore, ever to irritate with their silliness. First the picture, then the headline: VESTA’S HUSBAND FOUND DROWNED. The account beneath those huge black letters was brief.

The body of a man washed up on the beach at Hastings, Sussex, was today identified as that of Brian Kotowsky, 38, husband of Vesta Kotowsky, strangled on Guy Fawkes Day in Kenbourne Vale, West London. Mr. Kotowsky had been missing since the day following his wife’s death .

Mr. Kotowsky, an antique dealer, of Trinity Road, Kenbourne Vale, was known to have relatives in Brighton .

His aunt, Mrs. Janina Shaw, said today that she had not seen her nephew for nine years .

“We were once very close,” she said. “We lost touch when Brian married. I cannot say if my nephew visited my house prior to his death as I have been ill in hospital.”

An inquest will be held .

Anthony looked at Winston. Winston shrugged, his face closed and expressionless. The rain fell onto the newspaper, darkening it with great heavy splashes.

On the way home they hardly spoke. With a kind of delicacy but without communicating that delicacy to each other, they avoided the mews and walked to Trinity Road by the long way round. Then Winston said:

“I shouldn’t have let him go out. I should have dissuaded him and put him to bed and then none of this would have happened.”

“No one is responsible for another adult person.”

“Can you define an adult person?” said Winston. “It isn’t a matter of years.”

Anthony said no more. Entering the hall, he remembered meeting Brian there for the first time. Brian had been sitting on the stairs doing up his shoelaces and he had come up to him and said, “Mr. Johnson, I presume?” Now he was dead, had walked out into the wintry sea until he drowned. He heard Winston say, as from a long way off, that he had a date at seven-thirty, that he must hurry.

“And I must do some work. Have a good time.”

“I’ll try. But I wish I hadn’t seen a paper till tomorrow morning.”

Winston set his foot on the bottom stair, then, having glanced over the banisters, turned and walked up to the table. He picked up three envelopes. “Now I’ve decided on my house, I must remember to tell these agents to stop sending me stuff.” He handed a fourth envelope to Anthony, a mauve-grey one with a Bristol postmark. “Here’s one for you,” he said.

At last, after so long, she had written. To say she wanted his patience a little longer? That she had been ill? Or, wonder of wonders, that she was coming to him? He unlocked his door and kicked on the switch of the electric fire. A single thumb thrust split open the flap of the envelope. He pulled out the sheet of flimsy. Just one sheet? That must mean she had hardly anything to say, that she had settled in his favour. On the brink of a happy upheaval of his life, of consummation, he read it.

Tony, Forgive me. I’m sorry not to have written to you before as I promised. I knew you would be angry if I said I couldn’t make up my mind. I have made it up now and I am going to stay with Roger. I am his wife and it is my duty to stay with him .

I never really loved you. It was just infatuation. You must forget me and it will soon be as if you hadn’t known me .

Do not phone me. You mustn’t try to get in touch with me at all. Not ever. Roger will be angry if you do. So remember, this is final. I shall not see you again and you must not contact me. H

Anthony read it again because at first he simply couldn’t believe it. It was as if a letter for someone else and written by someone else had got into one of those envelopes whose colour and shape and texture had always held a magic of their own. This—this obscenity—couldn’t be intended for him, couldn’t have been written by her to him. And yet it had been. Her typewriter had been used, those distinctive errors were hers. He read it a third time, and now rage began to conquer disbelief. How dare she write such hideous, cliché-ridden rubbish to him? How dare she keep him waiting three weeks and then write this? The language appalled him almost as much as the sentiments it expressed. Her duty to stay with Roger! And then that lonelyhearts novelette word “infatuation.” “Contact” too—journalese for approach or communicate. He examined the letter, analysing it, as if close scrutiny of semantics could keep him from facing the pain of it.

The truth flashed upon him. Of course. She had begun it and the remainder had been dictated by Roger. Instead of serving to pacify him, this realisation only made him angrier. She had confessed to Roger and he had compelled her to write like this. But what sort of a woman was it who would let a man take her over to that extent? And when did she think she was living, she who was self-supporting and had the franchise and was strong and healthy? A hundred years ago? A deep humiliation enclosed him as he imagined them composing that letter in concert, the woman abject and grateful for forgiveness, the man domineering, relegating him, Anthony, to the status of some gigolo.

“You give that presumptuous devil his marching orders. Let him know whose wife you are and where your duty lies. And put in something about not contacting you if he values his skin. For God’s sake, Helen, make him see it’s final …”

Final.

He screwed the letter up, then unscrewed it and tore it into tiny shreds so that the temptation to read it again was removed.

17

————

The news of Brian Kotowsky’s death reached Arthur at nine o’clock that night by way of the television. The announcer didn’t say much about it, only that a drowned corpse had been identified and that there would be an inquest. But Arthur was satisfied. He had never even considered that honourable promptings of conscience might bring him qualms when Brian was tried for Vesta’s murder. Brian Kotowsky was nothing to him, his indifference towards the dead man tempered only by a natural dislike of someone who got drunk and was noisy. But Kotowsky might have been acquitted. Nothing could now acquit him. His self-dealt death marked him as plainly a murderer as any confession or any trial could have done. The police would consider the case as closed.

He slightly regretted his forgery of the morning. So much of his life had been ruined by terror, so much of his time wasted by gruelling anxiety. All of it in vain. But he consoled himself with the thought that, at the time, he had had no choice. Undoubtedly, Kotowsky’s death hadn’t appeared in the early editions of the evening papers so, even if he had bought one, he still wouldn’t have known in time to avoid the substitution of the letter. But now, if Anthony Johnson were to find him out, there was no damaging action he could take. The police had a culprit, dead and speechless.

And so to get on with the business of living. Arthur watched a very old film about the building of the Suez Canal, starring Loretta Young as the Empress Eugénie and Tyrone Power as de Lesseps, till eleven. He enjoyed it very much, having seen it before with Auntie Gracie when he was thirteen. Those were the days. In euphoric mood, he really thought they had been. Saturday tomorrow. The new attendant at the launderette was Mr. Grainger’s nephew’s wife, earning a bit of pin money, and he thought he could safely leave his washing with her while he went to the shops. Maybe he’d treat himself to a duck for Sunday by way of celebration.