MURDER BEING ONCE DONE
by Ruth Rendell
ARROW BOOKS
Arrow Books Limited 17-21 Conway Street, London WIP 6JD An imprint of the Hutchinson Publishing Group London Melbourne Sydney Auckland Johannesburg and agencies throughout the world First published by Hutchinson 1972 Arrow edition 1973 Reprinted 1975, 1979, 1982 and 1984 ~ Ruth Rendell 1972
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Anchor Brendon Limited, Tiptree, Essex ISBN O 09 907390 0
For Frits and Nelly Twiss
The chapter heading quotations are taken from Sir Thomas More's Utopia in the Ralph Robinson translation of 1551
1
The sick . . . they see to with great affection, and let nothing at an pass concerning either physic or good diet whereby they may be restored to their health.
WHEN Wexford came downstairs in the morning his nephew had already left for work and the women, with the fiendish gusto of amateur dieticians, were preparing a convalescent's breakfast. It had been like that every day since he arrived in London. They kept him in bed till ten; they ran his bath for him; one of them waited for him at the foot of the stairs, holding out a hand in case he fell, a lunatic smile of encouragement on her face.
The other this morning it was his nephew's wife, Denise presided over the meagre spread on the dining-room table. Wexford viewed it grimly: two circular biscuits apparently composed of sawdust and glue, a pat of unsaturated fat, half a sugarless grapefruit, black coffee and, crowning horror, a glass of wobbly pallid substance he took to be yoghurt. His own wife, trotting behind him from her post as staircase attendant, proffered two white pills and a glass of water.
'This diet,' he said, 'is going to be the death of me.'
'Oh, it's not so bad. Imagine if you were diabetic as well.'
'Who,' quoted Wexford, 'can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?'
He swallowed the pills and, having shown his contempt for the yoghurt by covering it with his napkin, began to eat sour grapefruit under their solicitous eyes.
'Where are you going for your walk this morning, Uncle Reg?'
He had been to look at Carlyle's house: he had explored the King's Road, eyeing with equal amazement the shops and the people who shopped in them; he had stood at the entrance to Stamford Bridge football ground and actually seen Alan Hudson; he had traversed every exquisite little Chelsea square, admired the grandeur of The Boltons and the quaint corners of Walham Green; on aching feet he had tramped through the Chenil Galleries and the antique market. They liked him to walk. In the afternoons they encouraged him to go with them in taxis and tube trains to the Natural History Museum and Brompton Oratory and Harrods. As long as he didn't think too much or tax his brain by asking a lot of questions, or stay up late or try to go into pubs, they jollied him along with a kind of humouring indulgence.
'Where am I going this morning?' he said. Maybe down to the Embankment.'
'Oh, yes, do. What a good idea!'
'I thought I'd have a look at that statue.'
'St Thomas More,' said Denise, who was a Catholic.
'Sir Thomas,' said Wexford, who wasn't.
'St Thomas, Uncle Reg.' Denise whisked away the unsaturated fat before Wexford could eat too much of it. 'And this afternoon, if it isn't too cold, we'll all go and look at Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.'
But it was cold, bitingly cold and rather foggy. He was glad of the scarf his wife had wrapped round his neck, although he would have preferred her not to have gazed so piteously into his eyes while doing so, as if she feared the next time she saw him he would be on a mortuary slab. He didn't feel ill, only bored. There weren't even very many people about this morning to divert him with their flowing hair, beads, medieval ironmongery, flower-painted boots and shaggy coats matching shaggy Afghan hounds. The teeming young, who usually drifted past him incuriously, were this morning congregated in the little cafes with names like Friendly Frodo and The Love Conception.
Theresa Street, where his nephew's house was, lay on the borders of fashionable Chelsea, outside them if you hold that the King's Road ends at Bcaufort Street. Wexford was beginning to pick up these bits of with-it lore. He had to have something to keep his mind going. He crossed the King's Road by the World's End and made his way towards the river.
It was lead-coloured this morning, the 29th of February. Fog robbed the Embankment of colour and even the Albert Bridge, whose blue and white slenderness he liked, had lost its Wedgwood look and loomed out of the mist as a sepia skeleton. He walked down the bridge and then back and across the road, blinking his eye and rubbing it. There was nothing in his eye but the small blind spot. no immovable grain of dust. It only felt that way and always would now, he sum posed.
The seated statue which confronted him returned his gaze with darkling kindliness. It seemed preoccupied with affairs of state, affairs of grace and matters utopian. What with his eye and the fog, he had to approach more closely to be sure that it was, in fact, a coloured statue, not naked bronze or stone, but tinted black and gold.
He had never seen it before, but he had, of course, seen pictures of the philosopher, statesman and martyr, notably the Holbein drawing of Sir Thomas and his family. Until now, however, the close resemblance of the reproduced face to a known and living face had not struck him. Only replace that saintly gravity with an impish gleam, he thought, those mild resigned lips with the curve of irony, and it was Dr Crocker to the life.
Feeling like Ahab in Naboth's vineyard, Wexford addressed the statue aloud.
'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'
Sir Thomas continued to reflect on an ideal state or perhaps on the perils of Reformation. His face, possibly by a trick of the drifting mist, seemed to have grown even more grave, not to say comminatory. Now it wore precisely the expression Crocker's had worn that Sunday in Kingsmarkham when he had diagnosed a thrombosis in his friend's eye.
'God knows, Reg. I warned you often enough. I told you to lose weight, I told you to take things easier, and how many times have I told you to stay off the booze?'
'All right. What now? Will I have another?'
'If you do, it may be your brain the clot touches, not your eye. You'd better get away somewhere for a complete rest. I suggest a month away.'
'I can't go away for a month!'
'Why not? Nobody's indispensable.'
'Oh, yes, they are. What about Winston Churchill? What about Nelson?'
'The trouble with you, apart from high blood pressure, is delusions of grandeur. Take Dora away to the seaside.'
'In February? Anyway, I hate the sea. And I can't go away to the country. I live in the country.'
The doctor took his sphygmomanometer out of his bag and, silently rolling up Wexford's sleeve, bound the instrument to his arm. 'Perhaps the best thing,' said Crocker, without re- vealing his findings, 'will be to send you to my brother's health farm in Norfolk.'
'God! What would I do with myself all day?'
'By the time,' said Crocker dreamily, 'you've had nothing but orange juice and sauna baths for three days you won't have the strength to do anything. The last patient I sent there was too weak to lift the phone and call his wife. He'd only been married a month and he was very much in love.'