Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death

‘ I don’t suppose you could tell me who you sold this one to?’

‘But I love probing and detecting! Let’s be terribly thorough and have a real investigation.’

He opened a drawer with a knob made of cut glass and took out a tray of gilt lipsticks. There were several in each compartment.

‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘Mutation Mink, three gone. I started off with a dozen of each shade. Trinidad Tiger - good heavens, nine gone! Rather a common sort of red, that one. Here we are, Arctic Sable, four gone. Now for my thinking cap.’

Burden said encouragingly that he was being most helpful.

‘We do have a regular clientele, what you might call a segment of the affluent society. I don’t want to sound snobbish, but I do rather eschew the cheaper lines. I remember now. Miss Clements from the estate agent's had one. No, she had two, one for herself and one for someone’s birthday present. Mrs Darrell had another. I do recall that because she took Mutation Mink and changed her mind just as she was going out of the shop. She came back and changed it and while she was making up her mind someone else came in for a pale pink lipstick. Of course, Mrs Missal! She took one look - Mrs Darrell had tried the shade out on her wrist - and she said, “That is absolutely me!” Mrs Missal has exquisite taste because, whatever you may say, Arctic Sable is really intended for red-heads like her.’

‘When was this?’ Burden asked. ‘When did you get the fur range in?’

‘Just a tick.’ He checked in a delivery book. ‘Last Thursday, just a week ago. I sold the two to Miss Clements soon after they came in. Friday, I should say. I wasn’t here on Saturday and Monday’s always slack. Washing, you know. Tuesday’s early closing and I know I didn’t sell any yesterday. It must have been Tuesday morning.’

‘You’ve been a great help,’ Burden said.

‘Not at all. You’ve brought a little sparkle into my workaday world. By the by, Mrs Missal lives in that rather lovely bijou house opposite the Olive and Dove, and Mrs Darrell has the maisonette with the pink curtains in the new block in Queen Street.’

As luck had it. Miss Clements had both lipsticks in her handbag, her own partly used, and the other one she had bought for a present still wrapped in cellophane paper. As Burden left the estate agents he glanced at his watch. Half past five. He had just made it before they all closed. He ran Mrs Darrell to earth in the maisonette next to her own. She was having tea with a friend, but she went down the spiral staircase at the back of the block and up the next one, coming back five minutes later with an untouched lipstick, Arctic Sable, marked eight-and-six in violet ink on its base.

The Stowerton-to-Pomfret bus was coming up the hill as he turned out of Queen Street and crossed the forecourt of The Olive and Dove. He checked with his watch and saw that it was gone ten to six. Maybe it had been late leaving Stowerton, maybe it often was. Damn those stupid women and their lipsticks, he thought; Parsons must have done it.

The lovely bijou house was a Queen Anne affair, much done up with white paint, wrought iron and window-boxes. The front door was yellow, flanked with blue lilies in stone urns. Burden struck the ship’s bell with a copper clapper that hung on a length of cord. But, as he had expected, no one came. The garage, a converted coach-house, was empty and the doors stood open. He went down the steps again, crossed the road and walked up to the police station, wondering as he went how Bryant had got on with the Southern Water Board.

Wexford seemed pleased about the lipstick. They waited until Bryant had got back from Stowerton before going down to The Olive and Dove for dinner.

It looks as if this clears Parsons’ Wexford said. ‘He left the Water Board at five-thirty or a little after. Certainly not before. He couldn’t have caught the five-thirty-two.’

‘No,’ Burden said reluctantly, ‘and there isn’t another till six-two.’

They went into the dining-room of The Olive and Dove and Wexford asked for a window table so that they could watch Mrs Missal’s house.

By the time they had finished the roast lamb and started on the gooseberry tart the garage doors were still open and no one had come into or gone out of the house. Burden remained at the table while Wexford went to pay the bill, and just as he was getting up to follow him to the door he saw a blonde girl in a cotton dress enter the High Street from the Sewingbury Road. She walked past the Methodist Church, past the row of cottages, ran up the steps of Mrs Missal’s house and let herself in at the front door.

‘Come on, Mike,’ Wexford said. He banged at the bell with the clapper. ‘Look at that bloody thing,’ he said. ‘I hate things like that.’

They waited a few seconds. Then the door was opened by the blonde girl. ‘Mrs Missal?’

‘Mrs Missal, Mr Missal, the children, all are out,’ she said. She spoke with a strong foreign accent. ‘All are gone to the sea.’

‘We’re police officers,’ Wexford said. ‘When do you expect Mrs Missal back?’

‘Now is seven.’ She glanced behind her at a black grandfather clock. ‘Half past seven, eight. I don’t know. You come back again in a little while. Then she come.’

‘We'll wait, if you don’t min,’ Wexford said.

They stepped over the threshold on to velvety blue carpet. It was a square hall, with a staircase running up from the centre at the back and branching at the tenth stair. Through an arch on the right-hand side of this staircase Burden saw a dining-room with a polished floor partly covered by Indian rugs in pale colours. At the far end of this room-open trench windows gave on to a wide and apparently endless garden. The hall was cool, smelling faintly of rare and subtle flowers.

‘Would you mind telling me your name, miss, and what you’re doing here?’ Wexford asked.

‘Inge Wolff. I am nanny for Dymphna and Priscilla.’

Dymphna! Burden thought, aghast. His own children were John and Pat.

‘All right, Miss Wolff. If you’ll just show us where we can sit down you can go and get on with your work.’

She opened a door on the left side of the hall and Wexford and Burden found themselves in a large drawing-room whose bow windows faced the street. The carpet was green, the chairs and a huge sofa covered in green linen patterned with pink and white rhododendrons. Real rhododendrons, saucer sized heads of blossom on long stems, were massed in two white vases. Burden had the feeling that when rhododendrons went out of season Mrs Missal would fill the vases with delphiniums and change the covers accordingly.

‘No shortage of lolly,’ Wexford said laconically when the girl had gone. This is the sort of set-up I had in mind when I said she might buy Arctic Sable for a gimmick.’

‘Cigarette, sir?’

‘Have you gone raving mad, Burden? Maybe you’d like to take your tie off. This is Sussex, not Mexico.’

Burden restored the packet and they sat in silence for ten minutes. Then he said, ‘I bet she’s got that lipstick in her handbag.’

‘Look, Mike, four were sold, all marked in violet ink. Right? Miss Clements has two, Mrs Darrell has one. I have the fourth.’

‘There could be a chemist in Stowerton or Pomfret or Sewingbury marking lipsticks in violet ink.’

‘That’s right, Mike. And if Mrs Missal can show me hers you’re going straight over to Stowerton first thing in the morning and start on the shops over there.’

But Burden wasn’t listening. His chair was facing the window and he craned his neck.

‘Car’s coming in now,’ he said. ‘Olive-green Mercedes, nineteen-sixty-two. Registration XPQ189Q.’

‘All right, Mike, I don’t want to buy it.’