A Sleeping Life

Chapter 10

The heat danced in waving mirages on the white roadway.

Traffic kept up a ceaseless swirl round Montfort Circus, and there was headache-provoking noise, a blinding glare from sunlight flashing off chrome and glass. Wexford and Baker took refuge in the car which Clements had imperiously parked on a double yellow band.

‘We’ll have to get into that house, Michael.’

Baker said thoughtfully, ‘Of course we do have a key…’ His eye caught Wexford’s. He looked away. ‘No, that’s out of the question. It’ll have to be done on a warrant. Leave it to me, Reg, I’ll see what can be done.’

Burden and Clements stood out on the pavement, deep in conversation. Well aware of Burden’s prudishness and also of Clements’ deep-rooted disapproval of pretty well all persons under twenty-five – which augured ill for James and Angela in the future – Wexford had nevertheless supposed that they would have little in common. He had been wrong. They were discussing, like old duennas, the indecent appearance of the young housewife who had opened the door of number two Princevale Road dressed only in a bikini. Wexford gave the inspector a discourteous and peremptory tap on the shoulder.

‘Come on, John Knox. I want to catch the four-thirty-five back to Sussex, home and beauty.’

Burden looked injured, and when they had said goodbye and were crossing the Circus to Parish Oak station, remarked that Clements was a very nice chap. ‘Very true,’ sneered Wexford 'with Miss Austen and this is a very nice day and we are taking a very nice walk.’

Having no notion of what he meant but suspecting he was being got at, Burden ignored this and said they would never get a warrant on that evidence.

‘What d’you mean, on that evidence? To my mind, its conclusive. You didn’t expect one of those women to come out with the whole story, did you? Oh, yes, Rose told me in confidence her real name’s Comfrey. Look at the facts. A woman of fifty goes to a doctor with what she thinks may be appendicitis. She gives the name of Comfrey and her address as 6 Princevale Road, Parish Oak. The only occupant of that house is a woman of around fifty called Rose Farriner. Six months later Rose Farriner is again talking of a possible appendicitis. Rhoda Comfrey is dead, Rose Farriner has disappeared. Rhoda Comfrey was comfortably-off, probably had her own business. According to Mrs Parker, she was interested in dress. Rose Farriner is well-off, has her own dress shop. Rose Farriner has a sick old mother living in a nursing home in the country. Rhoda Comfrey had a sick old father in a hospital in the country. Isn’t that conclusive?’

Burden walked up and down the platform, looking gloomily at posters for pale blue movies. ‘I don’t know. I just think we’ll have trouble getting a warrant.’

‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?’

‘Yes there is. It’s a way-out thing. Look, it’s the sort of thing that usually troubles you, not me. It’s the sort of thing I usually scoff at, to tell you the truth.’

‘Well, what the hell is it? You might as well tell me.’

Burden banged the palm of his hand with his fist. His expression was that of a man who, sceptical, practical, down-to-earth, hesitates from a fear of being laughed at to confess that he has seen a ghost. 'It was when we were driving up Montford Hill and we passed those shops, and I thought it hadn’t really been worth getting a bus up that first time, it not being so far from the station to the doctor’s place. And then I sort of noticed the shops and the name of the street facing us and… Look, it’s stupid, Forget it. Frankly, the more I think about it the more I can see I was just reading something into nothing. Forget it.’

‘Forget it? After all that build-up? Are you crazy?’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Burden very stiffly, ‘but I don’t approve of police work being based on silly conjectures and the sort of rubbish women call intuition. As you say, we have some very firm and conclusive facts to go on. No doubt, I was being unduly pessimistic about that warrant. Of course we’ll get one.’

An explosion of wrath rose in Wexford with a fresh eruption of sweat. ‘You’re a real pain in the arse,’ he snapped, but the rattle of the incoming train drowned his words.

His temper was not improved by Friday morning’s newspaper.

‘Police Chief Flummoxed by Comfrey Case’ said a headline running across four columns at the foot of page one. And there, amid the text, was a photograph of himself, the block for which they had presumably had on file since the days when he had been a fat man. Piggy features glowered above three chins. He glowered at himself in the bathroom mirror and, thanks to Robin running in and out and shouting that grandad had got his picture in the paper, cut himself shaving the chicken skin where the three chins used to be.

He drove to Forest Road and let himself into the late James Comfrey’s house with Rhoda Comfrey’s key. There were two other keys on the ring, and one of them, he was almost sure, would open Rose Farriner’s front door. At the moment, though, he was keeping that to himself for comparison with the one in the possession of Kenbourne police only if the obtaining of the warrant were held up. For if they weren’t identical – and, in the light of Rhoda Comfrey’s extreme secrecy about her country life in town and her town life in the country, it was likely enough they wouldn’t be – he might as well say good-bye to the chance of that warrant here and now. But he did wonder about the third key. To the shop door perhaps? He walked into the living room, insufferably musty now, that Crocker had called a real tip, and flung open the window.

From the drawers which had been re-filled with their muddled and apparently useless assortment of string and pins and mothballs and coins he collected all the keys that lay amongst it. Fifteen, he counted. Three Yale keys, one Norlond, one stamped RST, one FGW Ltd., seven rusted or otherwise corroded implements for opening the locks of back doors or privy doors or garden gates, a car ignition key and a smaller one, the kind that is used for locking the boot of a car. On both of these last were stamped the Citroen double chevron. They had not been together in the same drawer and to neither of them was attached the usual leather tag. A violent pounding on the front door made him jump. He went out and opened it and saw Lilian Crown standing there.

‘Oh, it’s you’, she said. ‘Thought it might be kids got in. Or squatters. Never know these days, do you?’

She wore red trousers and a T-shirt which would have been better suited to Robin. Brash fearlessness is not a quality generally associated with old women, especially those of her social stratum. Timidity, awe of authority, a need for selfeffacement so often get the upper hand after the climacteric – as Sylvia might have pointed out to him with woeful examples – but they had not triumphed over Mrs Crown. She had the boldness of youth, and this surely not induced by gin at ten in the morning.

‘Come in, Mrs Crown,’ he said, and he shut the door firmly behind her. She trotted about, sniffing.

‘What a pong! Haven’t been in here for ten years.’ She wrote something in the dust on top of the chest of drawers and let out a girlish giggle.

His hands full of keys, he said, ‘Does the name Farriner mean anything to you?’

‘Can’t say it does.’ She tossed her dried grass hair and lit a cigarette. She had come to check that the house hadn’t been invaded by vandals, come from only next-door, but she had brought her cigarettes with her and a box of matches. To have a companionable smoke with squatters? She was amazing.

‘I suppose your niece had a car,’ he said, and he held up the two small keys.

‘Never brought it here if she did. And she would’ve. Never missed a chance of showing off.’ Her habit of omitting pronouns from her otherwise not particularly economical speech irritated him. He said rather sharply, ‘Then whom do these keys belong to?’

‘No good asking me. If she’d got a car left up in London, what’s she leave her keys about down here for? Oh, no, that car’d have been parked outside for all the world to see. Couldn’t get herself a man, so she was always showing what she could get. Wonder who’ll get her money? Won’t be me though, not so likely.’ She blew a blast of smoke into his face, and he retreated, coughing.

‘I’d like to know more about that phone call Miss Comfrey made to you on the Friday evening.’

‘Like what? said Mrs Crown, smoke issuing dragon-like from her nostrils.

‘Exactly what you said to each other. You answered the phone and she said, “Hallo, Lilian. I wonder if you know who this is.” Is that right?’ Mrs Crown nodded. ‘Then what?’ Wexford said. ‘What time was it?’

‘About seven. I said hallo and she said what you’ve said. In a real put-on voice, all deep and la-di-da. “Of course I know,” I said. “If you want to know about your dad,” I said, “you’d best get on to the hospital,” “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “I’m going away on holiday,” she said, “but I’ll come down for a couple of days first.” '

‘You’re sure she said that about a holiday?’ Wexford interrupted.

‘Course I’m sure. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Tell you another thing. She called me darling. I was amazed. “I’ll come down for a couple of days first, darling,” she said. Mind you, there was someone else with her while she was phoning. I know what she was up to. She’d got some woman there with her and she wanted her to think she was talking to a man.’

‘But she called you Lilian.'

‘That’s not to say the woman was in there with her when she started talking, is it? No, if you want to know what I think, she’d got some friend in the place with her, and this friend came in after she’d started talking, so she put in that “darling” to make her think she’d got a boy-friend she was going to see. I’m positive, I knew Rhoda. She said it again, or sort of “My dear”, she said. “Thought you might be worried if you saw lights on, my dear. I’ll come in and see you after I’ve been to the infirmary.” And then whoever it was must have gone out again, I heard a door slam. Her voice went very low after that and she just said in her usual way, “See you Monday then. Good-bye.” ‘

‘You didn’t wish her Many Happy Returns of the day?’

If a spider had shoulders they would have looked like Lilian Crown’s. She shrugged them up and down, up and down, like a marionette. ‘Old Mother Parker told me afterwards it was her birthday. You can’t expect me to remember a thing like that. I knew it was in August sometime. Sweet fifty and never been kissed!’

‘That’s all, Mrs Crown,’ said Wexford distastefully and escorted her back to the front door. Sometimes he thought how nice it would be to be a judge so that one could boldly and publicly rebuke people. With his sleeve he rubbed out of the dust the arrowed heart – B loves L – she had drawn there, wondering as he did so if B were the ‘gentleman friend’ she went drinking with, and wondering too about incidence of adolescent souls lingering on in mangy old carcases.

He made the phone call from home.

‘I can tell you that here and now,’ said Baker. ‘Dinehart happened to mention it. Rose Farriner runs a Citroen. Any help to you?’

‘I think so, Michael. Any news of my Chief Constable’s get-together with your Super?’

‘You’ll have to be patient a bit longer, Reg.’ Wexford promised he would be. The air was clearing.

Rhoda Comfrey Farriner had made that call to her aunt from Princevale Road on the evening of her birthday when, not unnaturally, she had had a friend with her. A woman, as Lilian Crown had supposed? No, he thought, a man. Late in life, she had at last found herself a man whom she had been attempting to inspire with jealousy. He couldn’t imagine why. But never mind. That man, whoever he was, had indeed been inspired, had heard enough to tell him where Rhoda Rose Comfrey Farriner was going on Monday. Wexford had no doubt that that listener had been her killer.

It had been a crime of passion. Adolescent souls linger on, as Mrs Crown had shown him, in ageing bodies. Not in everyone does the heyday in the blood grow tame. Had he not himself even recently, good husband though he tried to be, longed wistfully for the sensation of being again in love? Hankered for the feeling of it and murmured to himself the words of Stendhal – though it might be with the ugliest kitchen-maid in Paris, as long as he loved her and she returned his ardour.

The girl who sat in the foyer of Kingsmarkham Police Station was attracting considerable attention. Sergeant Camb had given her a cup of tea, and two young detective constables had asked her if she was quite comfortable and was she sure there was nothing they could do to help her? Loring had wondered if it would cost him his job were he to take her up to the canteen for a sandwich or the cheese on toast Chief Inspector Wexford called Fuzz Fondue. The girl looked nervous and upset. She had with her a newspaper at which she kept staring in an appalled way, but she would tell no one what she wanted, only that she must see Wexford.

Her colouring was exotic. There is an orchid, not pink or green or gold, but of a waxen and delicate beige, shaded with sepia, and this girl’s face had the hue of such an orchid. Her features looked as if drawn in charcoal on oriental silk, and her hair was black silk, massy and very finely spun. For her country-women the sari had been designed, and she walked as if she were accustomed to wearing a sari, though for this visit she was in Western dress, a blue skirt and a white cotton shirt.

‘Why is he such a long time?’ she said to Loring, and Loring who was a romantic young man thought that it was in just such a tone that the Shunamite had said to the watchman: Have ye seen him whom my soul loveth?

‘He’s a busy man,’ he said.’but I’m sure he won’t be long.’

And for the first time he wished he were ugly old Wexford who could entertain such a visitor in seclusion. And then, at half past twelve, Wexford walked in.

‘Good morning. Miss Patel.’

‘You remember me!’

Loring had the answer to that one ready. Who could forget her, once seen? Wexford said only that he did remember her, that he had a good memory for faces, and then poor Loring was sharply dismissed with the comment that if he had nothing to do the chief inspector could soon remedy that. He watched beauty and the beast disappear into the lift.

‘What can I do for you, Miss Patel?’

She sat down in the chair he offered her. ‘You’re going to be very angry with me. I’ve done something awful. No, really, I’m afraid to tell you. I’ve been so frightened ever since I saw the paper. I got on the first train. You’re all so nice to me, everyone was so nice, and I know it’s going to change and it won’t be nice at all when I tell you.’

Wexford eyed her reflectively. He remembered that he had put her down as a humorist and a tease, but now her wit had deserted her. She seemed genuinely upset. He decided to try a little humour himself and perhaps put her more at ease. ‘I haven’t eaten any young women for months now,’ he said, ‘and, believe me, I make it a rule never to eat them on Fridays.’

She didn’t smile. She gave a gulp and burst into tears.