Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death

‘Can’t be helped,’ Wexford said snappily. ‘Mr Griswold’s been on twice already since the inquest, breathing down my neck.’

Griswold was the Chief Constable. Burden saw what Wexford meant.

‘ You know him, Mike. The least hint of difficulty and he’s screaming for the Yard,’ Wexford said, and went out, leaving Burden with the list and the letter.

Before embarking on his womanhunt Burden read the letter again. It surprised him because it gave an insight into Mrs Parsons’ character, revealing a side he had not really previously suspected. She was turning out to be a lot less pure than anyone had thought.

… If meeting Doon means rides in the car and a few free meals I wouldn’t be too scrupulous,

Mrs Katz had written. But at the same time she didn’t know who Doon was. Mrs Parsons had been strangely secretive, enigmatic, hiding the identity of a boy friend from a cousin who had also been an intimate friend.

A strange woman, Burden thought, and a strange boy friend. It was a funny sort of relationship she had with this Doon, he said to himself. Mrs Katz says, I can’t see why you should be scared, and later on, there was never anything in that. What did she mean, anything in that? But Mrs P. was scared.

What of, sexual advances? Mrs Katz says she had a suspicious mind. Fair enough, he reflected. Any virtuous woman would be scared and suspicious of a man who paid her a lot of attention. But at the same time there was never anything in it. Mrs P. mustn’t be too scrupulous.

Burden groped vainly. The letter, like its recipient, was a puzzle. As he put it down and turned to the telephone he was certain of only two facts:

Doon hadn’t been making advances; he wanted something else, something that frightened Mrs Parsons but which was so innocuous in the estimation of her cousin that it would be showing excessive suspicion to be scrupulous about it. He shook his head like a man who has been flummoxed by an intricate riddle, and began to dial.

He tried Bertram first because mere was no Annesley in the book - and, incidentally, no Pensteman and no Sachs. But the Mr Bertram who answered said he was over eighty and a bachelor.

Next he rang the number of the only Ditchams he could find, but although he listened to the steady ringing past all reason, there was no reply. Mrs Dolan’s number was engaged. He waited five minutes and tried again. This time she answered. Yes, she was Margaret Dolan’s mother, but Margaret was now Mrs Heath and had gone to live in Edinburgh. In any case, Margaret had never brought anyone called Godfrey to the house. Her particular friends had been Janet Probyn and Deirdre Sachs, and Mrs Dolan remembered them as having been a little shut-in clique on their own.

Mary Henshaw’s mother was dead. Burden spoke to her father. His daughter was still in Kingsmarkham. Married? Burden asked. Mr Henshaw roared with laughter while Burden waited as patiently as he could. He recovered and said his daughter was indeed married. She was Mrs Hedley and she was in the county hospital.

‘I’d like to talk to her,’ Burden said.

‘You can’t do that,’ Henshaw said, hugely amused. ‘Not unless you put a white coat on. She’s having a baby, her fourth. I thought you were them, bringing me the glad news.’

Through Mrs Ingram he was put on to Julian Ingram, now Mrs Bloomfield. But she knew nothing of Margaret Parsons except that at school she had been pretty and prim, fond of reading, rather shy.

‘Pretty, did you say?’

‘ Yes, she was pretty, attractive in a sort of way. Oh, I know, I’ve seen the papers. Looks don’t necessarily last, you know.’

Burden knew, but still he was surprised.

Anne Kelly had gone to Australia, Marjorie Miller…

‘My daughter was killed in a car crash,’ said a harsh voice, full of awakened pain. ‘I should have thought the police of all people would know that.’

Burden sighed. Pensteman, Probyn, Rogers, Sachs … all were accounted for. In the local directory alone he found twenty-six Stevenses, forty Thomases, fifty-two Williamses, twelve Youngs.

To track them all down would take best part of the afternoon and evening. Clare Clarke might be able to help him. He closed the directory and set off for Nectarine Cottage.

The french windows were open when Inge Wolff let Wexford into the hall and he heard the screams of quarrelling children. He followed her across the lawn and at first saw nobody but the two little girls: the elder a sharp miniature fascimile of her mother, bright-eyed, red-headed; the younger fat and fair with a freckle-blotched face. They were fighting for possession of a swing-boat, a red and yellow fairground thing with a rabbit for a figurehead.

Inge rushed over to them, shouting.

‘Are you little girls that play so, or rough boys? Here is one policeman come to lock you up!’

But the children only clung more tightly to the ropes, and Dymphna, who was standing up, began to kick her sister in the back.

‘If he’s a policeman,’ she asked, ‘where’s his uniform?’

Someone laughed and Wexford turned sharply. Helen Missal was in a hammock slung between a mulberry tree and the wall of a summerhouse and she was drinking milk-less tea from a glass. At first he could see only her face and a honey-coloured arm dangling over the edge of the canvas.

Then, as he came closer, he saw that she was dressed for sunbathing. She wore only a bikini, an ice-white figure of eight and a triangle against her golden skin.

Wexford was embarrassed and his embarrassment fanned his anger into rage.

‘Not again!’ she said. ‘Now I know how the fox feels. He doesn’t enjoy it.’

Missal was nowhere about, but from behind a dark green barrier of macrocarpa Wexford could hear the hum of a motor mower.

‘Can we go indoors, Mrs Missal?’

She hesitated for a moment. Wexford thought she was listening, perhaps to the sounds from the other side of the hedge. The noise of the mower ceased, then, as she seemed to hold her breath, started again. She swung her legs over the hammock and he saw that her left ankle was encircled by a thin gold chain.

‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any choice, do I?’

She went before him through the open doors, across the cool dining-room where Quadrant had looked on the wine, and into the rhododendron room. She sat down and said:

‘Well, what is it now?’

There was something outrageous and at the same time spiteful about the way she spread her nakedness against the pink and green chintz.

Wexford turned away his eyes. She was in her own home and he could hardly tell her to go and put some clothes on. Instead he took the photograph from his pocket and held it out to her.

‘Why did you tell me you didn’t know this woman?’

Fear left her eyes and they flared with surprise. ‘I didn’t know her.’

‘You were at school with her, Mrs Missal.’

She snatched the photograph and stared at it.

‘I was not.’ Her hair fell over her shoulders, bright copper like a new penny. ‘At least, I don’t think I was. I mean, she was years older than me by the look of this. She may have been in the sixth when I was in the first form. I just wouldn’t know.’

Wexford said severely: ‘Mrs Parsons was thirty, the same age as yourself. Her maiden name was Godfrey.’

‘I adore “maiden name”. It's such a charitable way of putting it, isn’t it? All right. Chief Inspector, I do remember now. But she’s aged, she’s different…’ Suddenly she smiled, a smile of pure delighted triumph, and Wexford marvelled that this woman was the same age as the pathetic dead thing they had found in the wood.

‘It's very unfortunate you couldn’t remember on Thursday evening, Mrs Missal. You’ve put yourself in a most unpleasant light, firstly by deliberately lying to Inspector Burden and myself and secondly by concealment of important facts. Mr Quadrant will tell you that I’m quite within my rights if I charge you with being an accessary -‘