Ruth Rendell - The Girl Next Door

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EVERYTHING STOPS FOR Christmas. Daphne flew to Seville on 22 December and stayed at the Alfonso XIII hotel, accepting a friend’s invitation to Christmas dinner. Melissa’s daughters came home (as they called it, though they hadn’t lived there for years) and Lewis stayed, living in a dream, appreciating how nice everyone was to him and going out the day before Christmas Eve to buy presents for all. Michael took a call from Urban Grange that told him his father had had another bad turn and perhaps he would feel like coming. He went, found his father up, eating a large meal, and went home to phone Caroline Inshaw and say that if she wanted to talk to John Winwood, they should not delay it much longer.

It seemed absurd. John Winwood was close on a hundred years old. He could die not any day but any minute. If only he would, thought Michael. It would be best for him, best for everyone and for peace and quiet. Michael’s children came home for Christmas as they always did. Jane began phoning him a week before, promising him a turkey, ‘all the veg you could possibly want, Dad’, some presents that were really ‘way out’. Richard also phoned. He would stay just Christmas Day and the night and then be off to Seattle to attend a conference that would begin next day. Michael went out and bought each of them an iPod because it was easy and quick. He dialled Daphne’s number on Christmas evening and got a message that said, ‘Alan and I are no longer together. I am in Spain until January second.’

Christmas is often mild and damp in London. A sluggish rain fell. Richard left for Seattle, having spent the previous afternoon loading all the music he could find in his father’s house on to the new iPod. He seemed enraptured by it. Jane, on the other hand, repeatedly said she would never learn how to work hers. She loved it, Dad was so clever to think of it, but she was so hopeless she would never even get it out of its box, let alone make it play music. Michael thought there must be something wrong with him that he was relieved when his children left.

His father didn’t die. On the morning of 10 January, he asked himself if he should buy him a birthday present and immediately castigated himself for being so stupid. He had last given him a present at Christmas 1943. His mother had bought it and he could no longer remember what it had been. She had thrust it in his hands and left him to do the impossible, wrap it up.

He was due to meet Caroline Inshaw at Urban Grange at ten a.m. He got there at twenty to, and as he noted the time, it occurred to him that no one said that any more, no one had said it for years; people said nine forty instead. Caroline walked in at five to ten – there, he was doing it again – and they went along the passage to John Winwood’s room. Michael had arranged this visit with his father, so they were expected. He knocked at the door, he didn’t know why, he never had before, and immediately thought himself stupid. There was no response, so he walked in feeling sick.

Dürer’s hands were up on the wall, but they had been moved to the prime place for showing off anything in that room. Sitting up in bed, sitting in the best armchair, walking to the bathroom, John Winwood could see that picture and, for all Michael knew, be amused by it. At present, his father sat in that best armchair, dressed in obviously new clothes. He must have had some member of Urban Grange staff go out and buy them for him. Michael wondered what Darren or one of the other carers (would you call them that?) had thought about being requested to find and purchase dark blue trousers and a tunic top patterned in scarlet and white with a high collar to enclose his neck. Red, yellow and silver trainers were on his feet. Caroline Inshaw was staring at him.

‘Good morning, Mr Winwood,’ she said. ‘How are you today?’

His father began to laugh. ‘Much as usual. What can I do for you? I don’t know why I ask. I know already. Ask away.’

‘I would like you to tell me if you are aware of what I’m talking about when I ask you about a tin box containing a man’s hand and a woman’s hand and dating from about the year nineteen forty-four.’

John Winwood sighed. ‘You’re a very good-looking woman. Seems a pity you have to spend your time talking about severed hands and buried boxes.’

Michael saw a flush mount into her face. ‘Mr Winwood, would you answer the question, please?’

‘Yes, I am aware. I put the hands in that box. I cut them off. I must have had a reason but I’ve forgotten what it was. The woman’s hand was my wife’s, the man’s a chap called Johnson, Clifford Johnson, who was her lover. I couldn’t have that, could I?’ He looked pleased with himself, supremely contented. ‘I found them in bed. I strangled him first because if I’d killed her first he might have killed me. Then I killed her and cut off their hands. I said I don’t remember why; just for fun, I suppose.’

Caroline said, ‘Mr Winwood, is this true or is it some sort of joke?’

‘You mean you find it funny? Well, there is no accounting for tastes. I turned a bunch of kids out of the foundations of a house, including my son there, and once I was alone, I buried the box in a place where I thought no one would find it for years. And I was right. Shall I go on?’

‘Yes please.’

‘I got rid of him after that. Had him sent down to my cousin Zoe, a soft, sentimental woman who couldn’t have kids of her own. My wife was dead. I sold the house as soon as the war was over and married again. No one asked any questions. I said I was a widower, which was true, and they accepted it. I married a woman called Margaret Lewis. Her husband had been killed in the war, in north Africa, in a place called Mersa Matruh, and he left her a house, a great big place, and a mint of money, never mind how much. A hundred thousand was a hell of a lot in those days. Everyone accepted that I was madly in love with her. It was as easy as falling off a horse.

‘It was my looks that got her. I was very good-looking in those days, it gets them every time.’ He stared searchingly at Caroline Inshaw. ‘With your looks you want to remember that,’ he said. ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. I always did. I haven’t worked since I was twenty-three. Then a doctor told me I had a heart murmur. What happened to that? I wonder. Anyway, Margaret lived a long time, died at last, nothing to do with me. I married another rich woman, even richer, called Sheila Fraser. All the interests she had were nothing to me. I never cared about butterflies or – what are they called? The things that eat clothes? – moths. Wildlife, trees, that sort of thing. I couldn’t stand hearing her talk about leaves and fishes and otters and whatever while we were having dinner. She died – that was something to do with me but we needn’t go into that. I was by then a lovely old gentleman, that was what people called me. I didn’t want to live alone any more, so I found the best place in this country to be looked after in. That was here and I’ve been here ever since. I sold the house, I’ve still got plenty of money. It’ll last me out. And when I go, the hedgehogs will have it. Who would have thought I’d live to be a hundred – well, nearly a hundred. Are you going to charge me?’

He suddenly looked much younger. Eighty was hardly young, but just then he could have been taken for eighty.

‘I am. But I want to talk to you some more. I have questions to ask you. I should like you to have a lawyer with you. Are you able to come to London with me? Now, preferably.’

‘I haven’t been out of here for eighteen years. I used to go out. I had a girlfriend in the village and I used to visit her. Those were the days.There’s an old song my mother used to sing, about when he thinks he’s past love, ’tis then he meets his last love. Those were the days.’ He had sung the lines of the song, and now his voice cracked. ‘I don’t think I can go to London,’ he said. ‘It’s too far. I must think. Michael, pass me that glass of water that’s on the bedside table.’