Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death

‘And Fabia had a key to Parsons’ house,’ Burden said. ‘The key Mrs P. left in the car before she was killed.’

‘Quadrant had to protect Fabia,’ Wexford said. ‘He couldn’t be a husband but he could be a guardian. He had to make sure no one found out what things were really like for him and her. She was mad, Mike, really crazy, and his whole livelihood would have gone up in smoke if it was known. Besides, she had the money. It's only caf s meat what he makes out of his practice compared with what she’s got.

‘But it’s no wonder he was always sneaking off in the evenings. Apart from the fact that he’s obviously highly sexed, anything was preferable to listening to interminable stories about Minna. It must have been almost intolerable.’

He stopped for a moment, recalling his two visits to the house. How long had they been married? Nine years, ten? First the hints and the apologies; then the storms of passion, the memories that refused to be crushed, the bitter resentment of a chance infatuation that had warped a life.

With terrible finesse, worse than any clumsiness. Quadrant must have tried to break the spell. Wexford wrenched his thoughts away from those attempts, feeling again the convulsions of the woman in the attic, her heart beating against his chest Burden, whose knowledge of the Quadrants was less personal, sensed his chiefs withdrawal. He said practically:

‘Then Minna came back as Mrs P. Fabia met her and they went driving together in Quadranf s car. He didn’t have it on Tuesday, but she did. When she got home on Tuesday night Fabia told him she’d killed Mrs P. What he’d always been afraid of, that her mental state would lead to violence, had actually happened. His first thought must have been to keep her out of it. She told him where the body was and he thought of the car tyres.’

‘Exactly,’ Wexford said, caught up once more in circumstantial detail. ‘Everything I said to him in Parsons’ attic was true. He went to get fresh mud in the tyres and to look at the body. Not out of curiosity or sadism - although he must have felt sadistic towards Mrs P. and curious, by God! - but simply to satisfy himself that she was there. For all we know Fabia wasn’t always lucid. Then Mrs Missal dropped her lipstick. She’s what Quadrant calls a happy-go-lucky girl and that was just carelessness.’

‘He hoped we wouldn’t get around to questioning Fabia, not for some time, at any rate. When I walked into Mrs Missal’s drawing-room on Friday night -‘

‘You spoke to Missal,’ Burden interrupted, ‘but you were looking at Quadrant because we were both surprised to see him there. You said, “I’d like a word with your wife,” and Quadrant thought you were speaking to him.’

‘I was suspicious of him until yesterday afternoon,’ Wexford said. ‘Then when I asked him if he’d known Mrs P. and he laughed I knew he wasn’t Doon. I said his laughter made me go cold and no wonder. There was a lot in that laugh, Mike. He’d seen Mrs P. dead and he’d seen her photograph in the paper. He must have felt pretty bitter when he thought of what it was that had driven his wife out of her mind and wrecked his marriage.’

‘He said he’d never seen her alive,’ Burden said. ‘I wonder why not? I wonder why he didn’t try to see her.’

Wexford reflected. He folded the scarf and put it away with the purse and the key. In the drawer his fingers touched something smooth and shiny.

‘Perhaps he didn’t dare,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he was afraid of what he might do...‘ He took the photograph out, but Burden was preoccupied, looking at another, the one Parsons had given them.

‘They say love is blind’ Burden said. ‘What did Fabia ever see in her?’

‘She wasn’t always like that,’ Wexford said. ‘Can’t you imagine that a rich, clever, beautiful girl like Fabia was, might have found just the foil she was looking for in that…’ He changed the pictures over, subtracting twelve years. ‘Your pal, Miss Clarke, brought me this,’ he said. ‘It gave me a few ideas before we ever heard from Colorado.’

Margaret Godfrey was one of five girls on the stone seat and she sat in the middle of the row. Those who stood behind rested their hands on the shoulders of the seated. Burden counted twelve faces. The others were all smiling but her face was in repose. The white forehead was very high, the eyes wide and expressionless. Her lips were folded, the corners tilted very slightly upwards, and she was looking at the camera very much as the Gioconda had looked at Leonardo…

Burden picked out Helen Missal, her hair in outmoded sausage curls; Clare Clarke with plaits. All except Fabia Quadrant were staring at the camera. She stood behind the girl she had loved, looking down at a palm turned uppermost, at a hand dropping, pulled away from her own. She too was smiling but her brows had drawn together and the hand that had held and caressed hung barren against her friend’s sleeve. Burden gazed, aware that chance had furnished them with a record of the first cloud on the face of love.

‘Just one more thing,’ he said. ‘When you saw Mrs Quadrant yesterday you said she was reading. I wondered if … I wondered what the book was.’

Wexford grinned, breaking the mood. ‘Science fiction’ he said. ‘People are inconsistent.’

Then they pulled their chairs closer to the desk, spread the letters before them and began to read.