Ruth Rendell - A Sleeping Life

For Elaine and Leslie Gray,

with affection and gratitude

Wexford moved away, and the doctor came back and knelt where he had knelt. He said to Loring:

No sign of the weapon, I daresay?

No, sir, but we havent made much of a search yet.

Well, get searching, you and Gates and Marwood. A knife of some sort. The chances of it being there, he thought pessimistically, were slight. And when you havent found it, he said, you can do a house-to-house down Forest Road. Get all you can about her and her movements, but leave Parker and Carlyle Villas to me and Mr Burden. Back to Dr Crocker. How long has she been dead, Len?

Now, for Gods sake, dont expect too much precision at this stage. Rigors fully established, but the weathers been very hot, so its onset will have been more rapid. Id say at least eighteen hours. Could be more.

OK. Wexford jerked his head at Burden. Theres nothing more here for us, Mike. Carlyle Villas and Parker next, I think.

Michael Burden was properly of too high a rank to accompany a chief inspector on calls of inquiry. He did so because that was the way they worked, the way it worked. They had always done so, and always would, in spite of disapproving mutterings from the Chief Constable.

Two tall men. Nearly twenty years separated them, and once they had been so dissimilar in appearance as to provide that juxtaposition of incongruities which is the stuff of humour. But Wexford had lost his abundant fat and become almost a gaunt man, while Burden had always been lean. He was the better-looking of the two by far, with classical features that would have been handsome had they been less pinched by sour experience. Wexford was an ugly man, but his was the face that arrested the eye, compelled even the eyes of women, because it had in it so much lively intelligence and zest for life, so much vigour, and in spite of his seniority, so much more of the essence of youth.

Side by side, they walked along the footpath and down the alley into Forest Road, not speaking, for there was nothing yet to say. The woman was dead, but death by murder is in a way not an end but a beginning. The lives of the naturally dead may be buried with them. Hers would now gradually be exposed, event after event, obscure though she had been, until it took on the character of a celebritys biography. From the alley, they turned to the right and stood outside the pair of houses, cottages really, in front of which Wexford had parked his car. The houses shared a single gable, and in its apex was a plaster plaque bearing their name and the date of their construction: Carlyle Villas, 1902. Wexford knocked at the blue front door with little hope of getting an answer. There was none, and no one came when they rang the bell on the neighbouring front door, a far more trendy and ambitious affair of wrought iron and reeded glass.

Frustrated at this most promising port of call, they crossed the street. Forest Road was a cul-de-sac, ending in a stone wall, behind which meadows swelled and the forest sprawled. It contained about a dozen houses, apart from Carlyle Villas, a clutch of tiny cottages at the wall end, two or three newer bungalows, a squat grey stone lodge that had once stood at the gates of a long-vanished mansion. One of the bungalows, built at the period when Hollywoods influence penetrated even this corner of Sussex, had windows of curved glass and a roof of green pantiles. Bella Vista.

The child Nicky was still up, sitting with his mother in a living room that had the same sort of untidy look as the one Wexford had left an hour before. But if Parker hadnt introduced this girl as his wife, Wexford would have taken her for no more than an adolescent. She had the smooth brow and bunchy cheeks of a child, the silken hair, the innocent eyes. She must have been married at sixteen, though she looked no more than that now.

Parker said with ferocious winks, This gentlemans a doctor, come to tell us the poor ladys all right. Nicky buried his face in his mothers shoulder.

Quite all right, Wexford lied. Shell be fine. They say the dead are well...

You get along to Nannas room then, Nicky, and shell let you watch her TV.

The tension lightened on his departure. Thanks, said Parker. I only hope it isnt going to have a bad effect on him, poor kid.

Dont worry. Hes too young to see newspapers, but youll have to exercise a bit of censorship when it comes to the TV. Now, Mr Parker, I think you said Miss - er - Comfreys father was in hospital. Dyou know which hospital?

Stowerton. The infirmary. He had an accident last - when would it have been, Stell?

About May, said Stella Parker. Miss Comfrey came down to see him, came in a taxi from the station, and when he saw her he rushed out of the house and fell over on the path and broke his hip. Just like that it happened. Her and the taxi-man, they took him to the hospital in the same taxi and hes been there ever since. I never saw it. Mrs Crown told me. Miss Comfreys been down once to see him since. She never did come much, did she, Brian?

Not more than once or twice a year, said Parker.

I knew she was coming yesterday. Mrs Crown told me. I saw her in the Post Office and she said Rhodad phoned to say she was coming on account of old Mr Comfreyd had a stroke. But I never saw her, didnt really know her to speak to.

Burden said, Who is Mrs Crown?

Miss Comfreys auntie. She lives in the next house to old Mr Comfrey. Shes the one you want to see.

No doubt, but theres no one in.

I tell you what, said Stella Parker who seemed to have twice her husbands grasp and intelligence, I dont want to put myself forward, but I do read detective books, and if its sort of background stuff you want, you couldnt do better than talk to Brians gran. Shes lived here all her life, she was born in one of those cottages.

Your grandmother lives with you?

Helped us buy this place with her savings, said Parker, and moved in with us. It works OK, doesnt it, Stell? Shes a wonder, my gran.

Wexford smiled and got up. I may want to talk to her but not tonight. Youll be notified about the inquest, Mr Parker. It shouldnt be too much of an ordeal. Now, dyou know when Mrs Crown will be home?

When the pubs turn out, said Parker.

I think the infirmary next, Mike, said Wexford. From the vague sort of time Crocker gave us, its beginning to look to me as if Rhoda Comfrey was killed on her way back from visiting her father in hospital. Shed have used that footpath as a short cut from the bus stop.

Visiting time at Stowertons seven till eight in the evenings, said Burden. We may be able to fix the time of death more accurately this way than by any post-mortem findings.

The pub-orientated aunt should help us there. If this old boys compos mentis, well get his daughters London address from him.

Well also have to break the news, said Burden.

Departing visitors were queueing at the bus stop outside Stowerton Royal Infirmary. Had Rhoda Comfrey queued there on the previous night? It was ten past eight. A man in the porters lodge told them that James Albert Comfrey was a patient in Lytton Ward. They went along a corridor and up two flights of stairs. A pair of glass double doors, the entrance to Lytton Ward, were closed. As Wexford pushed them open, a young nurse of Malaysian or Thai origin popped up in their path and announced in a chirrup that they couldnt come in now.

Police, said Burden. Wed like to see the sister in charge.

If you please, my dear, said Wexford, and the girl gave him a broad smile before hurrying off. Do you have to be so bloody rude, Mike?

She came back with Sister Lynch, a tall dark-haired Irishwoman in her late twenties. What can I do for you gentlemen? She listened, clicked her tongue as Wexford gave her the bare details. Theres a terrible thing. A womans not safe to walk abroad. And Miss Comfrey in here only last night to see her father.