Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death

‘I’m afraid we’re intruding again, sir,’ Wexford said to Missal, his eyes lingering on Quadrant. ‘I’d just like to have a talk with your wife, if you don’t mind.’

Missal stood up, his face working with impotent rage. In his light-weight silver-grey suit he looked fatter than ever. Then Quadrant did a strange thing. He took a cigarette out of the box on the table, put it in his mouth and lit the cork tip. Fascinated, Burden watched him choke and drop the cigarette into an ashtray.

‘I’m sick and tired of all this,’ Missal shouted. ‘We can’t even have a quiet evening with our friends without being hounded. I’m sick of it. My wife has given you her explanation and that ought to be enough.’

‘This is a murder enquiry, sir,’ Wexford said.

‘We were just going to have dinner,’ Helen Missal spoke sulkily. She smoothed her blue skirt and fidgeted with a string of ivory beads. ‘I suppose we’d better go into your study, Pete. Ihge’ll be in and out of the dining-room. God! God damn it all, why can’t you leave me in peace?’ She turned to Quadrant’s wife and said: ‘Will you excuse me a moment, Fabia, darling? That is, if you can bear to stay and eat with the criminal classes.’

‘You’re sure you don’t want Douglas to go with you?’ Fabia Quadrant sounded amused, and Burden wondered if the Missals had warned them of the impending visit, suggested perhaps that this was to enquire into some parking offence. ‘As your solicitor, I mean,’ she said. But Wexford had mentioned murder and when he lit that cigarette Quadrant had been frightened.

‘Don’t be long,’ Missal said.

They went into the study and Wexford closed the door.

‘I want my lipstick back,’ Helen Missal said, ‘and I want my dinner.’ Unmoved, Wexford said, ‘And I want to know who you went out with when you lost your lipstick, madam.’

‘It was just a friend’ she said. She looked coyly up at Wexford, whining like a little girl asking permission to have a playmate to tea. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have any friends?’

‘Mrs Missal, if you continue to refuse to tell me this man’s name I shall have no alternative but to question your husband.’

Burden was becoming used to her sudden changes of mood, but still he was not quite prepared for this burst of violence.

‘You nasty low-down bastard!’ she said.

‘I’m not much affected by that sort of abuse, madam. You see, I’m accustomed to moving in circles where such language is among the terms of reference. His name, please. This is a murder enquiry.’

‘Well, if you must know it was Douglas Quadrant.’

And that, Burden thought, accounts for the choking act in the other room.

‘Inspector Burden,’ Wexford said, ‘will you just take Mr Quadrant into the dining-room (never mind about Miss Wolff’s dinner) and ask him for his version of what happened on Wednesday night? Or was it Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Missal?’

Burden went out and Wexford said with a little sigh, ‘Very well, madam, now I’d like to hear about Wednesday night all over again.’

‘What’s that fellow going to say in front of my husband?’

‘Inspector Burden is a very discreet officer. Provided I find everything satisfactory I’ve no doubt you can convince your husband that Mr Quadrant was consulted simply in his capacity as your solicitor.’

This was the line Burden took when he went back into the drawing-room.

‘Is there some difficulty about Mrs Missal, then, Inspector?’ Fabia Quadrant asked. She might have been asking some minion if he had attended to the wants of a guest. ‘I expect my husband can sort it out.’

Quadrant got up lazily. Burden was surprised that he offered no resistance. They went into the dining-room and Burden pulled out two chairs from the side of the table. It was laid with place mats, tall smoky purple glasses, knives and forks in Swedish steel and napkins folded into the shape of water-lilies.

‘A man must live,’ Quadrant said easily when Burden asked him about his drive with Helen Missal. ‘Mrs Missal is perfectly happily married. So am I. We just like to do a little dangerous living together from time to time. A drive, a chink… No harm done and everyone the happier for it.’ He was being disarmingly frank.

Burden wondered why. It didn’t seem to tie up with his manner when they had first arrived. Everyone the happier for it? Missal didn’t look happy … and the woman with the rings? She had her money to console her. But what had all this to do with Mrs Parsons?

‘We drove to the lane,’ Quadrant said, ‘parked the car and stood on the edge of the wood to have a cigarette. You know how smoky it gets inside a car, Inspector,’ Burden was to be brought in as another man of the world. ‘I’m afraid I know nothing about the lipstick. Mrs Missal is rather a happy-go-lucky girl. She tends to be careless about unconsidered trifles.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps that’s what I like about her.’

Had he seen him? Part of the time, yes, but he certainly hadn’t had Quadrant under his eye all day.

‘I suppose all this did happen on Wednesday,’ Burden said, ‘not Tuesday afternoon?’

‘Now, come. Inspector. I was in court all day Tuesday. You saw me yourself.’

‘We’d like to have a look at your car tyres, sir.’ But as he said it Burden knew it was hopeless. Quadrant admitted visiting the lane on Wednesday.

In the study Wexford was getting much the same story from Helen Missal.

‘We didn’t go into the wood,’ she said. ‘We just stood under the trees. I took my handbag with me because it had got quite a bit of money in it and I mink I must have dropped my lipstick when I opened the bag to get my hanky out.’

‘You never went out of sight of the car?’

The net was spread and she fell in it.

‘We never went out of sight of the car,’ she said. ‘We just stood under the trees and talked.’

‘What a nervous person you must be, Mrs Missal, nervous and extremely cautious. You had Mr Quadrant with you and you were in sight of the car, but you were afraid someone might try to steal your handbag under your very eyes.’

She was frightened now and Wexford was sure she hadn’t told him everything.

‘Well, that’s how it happened. I can’t be expected to account for everything I do.’

‘I’m afraid you can, madam. I suppose you’ve kept your cinema ticket?’

‘Oh, my God! Can’t you give me any peace? Of course I don’t keep cinema tickets.’

‘You don’t show much foresight, madam. It would have been prudent to have kept it in case your husband wanted to see it. Perhaps you’ll have a look for that ticket and when you’ve found it I’d like you to bring it down to the station. The tickets are numbered and it will be simple to determine whether yours was issued on Tuesday or Wednesday.’

Quadrant was waiting for him in the dining-room, standing by the sideboard now and reading the labels on two bottles of white wine. Burden still sat at the table.

‘Ah, Chief Inspector,’ Quadrant said in the tone he used for melting the hearts of lay magistrates. ‘“What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”!’

‘I wish you could convince Mrs Missal of the truth of that maxim, sir. Very unfortunate for you that you happened to choose that particular lane for your… your talk with her on Wednesday night.’

‘May I assure you, Chief Inspector, that it was merely a matter of misfortune.’ He continued to look at the bottles of Barsac, misted and ice-cold.

‘Had I been aware of the presence of Mrs Parsons’ body in the wood I should naturally have come straight to you. In my position, my peculiar position, I always take it upon myself to give every possible assistance to you good people.’