A Sleeping Life

Chapter 16

No word came from Commissaire Laquin that day. But Loring’s inquiries were more fruitful, clearing up at last the matter of the wallet.

‘Those girls weren’t lying,’ Wexford said to Burden. ‘He did lose a wallet on a bus, but it was his old one he lost. That’s what he told the assistant at Silk and Whitebeam when he went on Thursday, 4 August, to replace it with a new one.’

‘And yet it was the new one we found in the possession of Rhoda Comfrey.’

‘Mike, I’m inclined to believe that the old one did turn up and he gave her the new one, maybe on the Saturday when it was too late to tell Polly Flinders. She told him she had reached the age of fifty the day before, and he said OK, have this for a present.’

‘You think he was a sort of cousin of hers?’

‘I do, though I don’t quite see yet how it can help us. All these people on the list have been checked out. Two of them, in any case, are dead. One is in an institution at Myringham, the Abbotts Palmer Hospital. One is seventy-two years old. One had emigrated with his wife to Australia. The last of them, Charles Grenville West, is a teacher, has been married for five years and lives in Carshalton. The father, also John Grenville West, talks of cousins and second cousins who may bear the name, but he’s doddery and vague. He can’t tell us the whereabouts of any of them. I shall try this Charles.’

Almost the first thing Wexford noticed when he was shown into Charles Grenville West’s living room was a shelf of books with familiar titles: Arden’s Wife, Apes in Hell, Her Grace of Amalfi, Fair Wind to Alicante, Killed with Kindness. They had pride of place in the bookcase and were well cared for. The whole room was well cared for, and the neat little house itself, and smiling, unsuspicious, cooperative Mrs and Mrs West.

On the phone he had told Charles West only that he would like to talk to him about the death of a family connection of his, and West had said he had never met Rhoda Comfrey – well, he might have seen her when he was a baby – but Wexford would be welcome to call just the same. And now Wexford, having accepted a glass of beer, having replied to kind inquiries about the long journey he had made, looked again at the books, pointed to them and said:

‘Your namesake would appear to be a favourite author of yours.’

West took down Fair Wind to Alicante. ‘It was the name that first got me reading them,’ he said, ‘and then I liked them for themselves. I kept wondering if we were related.’ He turned to the back of the jacket and the author’s photograph. ‘I thought I could see a family resemblance, but I expect that was imagination or wishful thinking, because the photo’s not very clear, is it? And then there were things in the books, I mean in the ones with an English setting…’

‘What sort of things?’ Wexford spoke rather sharply. His tone wasn’t one to give offence, but rather to show Charles West that these questions were relevant to the murder.

‘Well, for instance, in Killed with Kindness he describes a manor house that’s obviously based on Clythorpe Manor near Myringham. The maze is described and the long gallery. I’ve been in the house, I know it well. My grandmother was in service there before she married.’ Charles West smiled. ‘My people were all very humble farm workers and the women were all in service, but they’d lived in that part of Sussex for generations, and it did make me wonder if Grenville West was one of us, some sort of cousin, because he seemed to know the countryside so well. I asked my father but he said the family was so huge and with so many ramifications.’

‘I wonder you didn’t write to Grenville West and ask him,’ said Wexford.

‘Oh, I did. I wrote to him care of his publishers and I got a very nice letter back. Would you like to see it? I’ve got it somewhere.’ He went to the door and called out, ‘Darling, d’you think you could find that letter from Grenville West? But he’s not a relation,’ he said to Wexford. ‘You’ll see what he says in the letter.’

Mrs West brought it in. The paper was headed with the Elm Green address. ‘Dear Mr West,’ Wexford read. ‘Thank you for your letter. It gives me great pleasure that you have enjoyed my novels, and I hope you will be equally pleased with Sir Bounteous, which is to be published next month and which is based on Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters. This novel also has an English setting or, more precisely, a Sussex setting. I am very attached to your native country and I am sorry to have to tell you that it is not mine, nor can I trace any connection between your ancestry and mine. I was born in London. My father’s family came originally from Lancashire and my mother’s from the West Country. Grenville was my mother’s maiden name. ‘So, much as I should have liked to discover some cousins – as an only child of two only children, I have scarcely any living relatives – I must disappoint myself and perhaps you too. ‘With best wishes, ‘Yours sincerely, ‘Grenville West.’

With the exception, of course, of the signature, it was typewritten. Wexford handed it back with a shrug. Whatever the information, or lack of it, had done for the author and for Charles West, it had certainly disappointed him. But there was something odd about it, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The style was a little pretentious with a whisper of arrogance, and in the calculated leading from paragraph to paragraph, the almost too elegant elision of the professional writer. That wasn’t odd, though, that wasn’t odd at all… He was growing tired of all these hints, these ‘feelings’, these pluckings at his mind and at the fingerspitzengefuhl he seemed to have lost. No other case had ever been so full of whispers that led nowhere. He despised himself for not hearing and understanding them, but whatever Griswold might say, he knew they were sound and true.

‘A very nice letter,’ he said dully. Except, he would have liked to add, that most of it is a carefully spun fabric of lies.

There was one more Grenville West to see, the one who dragged out his life in the Abbotts Palmer Hospital. Wexford tried to picture what that man would be like now, and his mind sickened. Besides, he knew he had only contemplated going there to keep himself away from the police station, away from hearing that Laquin had nothing for him, that Griswold had called in the Yard over his head, for it was getting to the end of the week now, it was Thursday.That was no attitude for a responsible police officer to take. He went in. The weather was hot and muggy again, and he felt he had gone back a week in time, for there, waiting for him again, was Malina Patel.

An exquisite little hand was placed on his sleeve, limpid eyes looked earnestly up at him. She seemed tinier and more fragile than ever. ‘I’ve brought Polly with me.’

Wexford remembered their previous encounters. The first time he had seen her as a provocative tease, the second as an enchanting fool. But now an uneasiness began to overcome his susceptibility. She gave the impression of trying hard to be good, of acting always on impulse, of a dotty and delightful innocence. But was innocent dottiness compatible with such careful dressing, calculated to stun? Could that sweet guilelessness be natural? He cursed those susceptibilities of his, for they made his voice soft and gallant when he said:

‘Have you now? Then where is she?’

‘In the loo. She said she felt sick and one of the policemen showed her where the loo was.’

‘All right. Someone will show you both up to my office when she’s feeling better.’

Burden was there before him. ‘It would seem, according to your pal, that the whole of France is now being scoured for our missing author. He hasn’t been in Annecy, whatever your little nursery rhyme friend may say.’

‘She’s on her way up now, perhaps to elucidate.’

The two girls came in. Pauline Flinders’ face was greenish from nausea, her lower lip trembling under the ugly prominent teeth. She wore faded frayed jeans and a shirt which looked as if they had been picked out of a crumpled heap on a bedroom floor. Malina too wore jeans, of toffee-brown silk, stitched in white, and a white clinging sweater and gold medallions on a long gold chain.

‘I made her come,’ said Malina. ‘She was in an awful state. I thought she’d been really ill.’ And she sat down, having given Burden a shy sidelong smile.

‘What is it. Miss Flinders?’ Wexford said gently.

‘Tell him, Polly. You promised you would. It’s silly to come all this way for nothing.’

Polly Flinders lifted her head. She said rapidly, in a monotone, ‘I haven’t had a card from Grenville. That was last year’s. The postmark was smudged and I thought you wouldn’t know, and you didn’t know.’

The explosion of wrath she perhaps expected didn’t come. Wexford merely nodded. ‘You also thought I wouldn’t know he knew Rhoda Comfrey. But he had known her for years, hadn’t he?’

Breathlessly, Polly said, ‘She helped him with his books. She was there in his flat a lot. But I don’t know where she lived. I never asked, I didn’t want to know. About the postcard, I…’

‘Never mind the postcard. Were you and Miss Comfrey in Mr West’s flat on the evening of August fifth?’ A nod answered him and a choking sound like a sob. ‘And you both overheard her make a phone call from there, saying where she would be on the Monday?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Tell him the truth, Polly. Tell him everything and it’ll be all right.’

‘Very well. Miss Patel, I’ll do the prompting.’ He hadn’t taken his eyes from the other girl, and now he said to her, ‘Have you any idea of Mr West’s present whereabouts? No? I think you told me the lie about the postcard because you were afraid for Mr West, believing him to have had something to do with Miss Comfrey’s death.’

She gave him an eager pathetic nod, her hands clenched.

‘I don’t think we’ll talk any more now,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow evening. That will give you plenty of time to get into a calmer frame of mind.’ Malina looked disappointed, less so when he went on, ‘I shall want you to give me the name of the man with whom you spent that Monday evening. Will you think about that?’

Again she said yes, a sorrowful and despairing monosyllable, and then Burden took them both away, returning to say, ‘Rhoda Comfrey was blackmailing West. I wonder why we didn’t think of that befere.’

‘Because it isn’t a very bright idea. I can see how someone might succeed in blackmailing her. She had a secret life she genuinely wanted kept secret. But West?’

‘West,’ said Burden repressively, ‘is almost certainly homosexual. Why else reject Polly? Why else mooch about Soho at night? Why hobnob with all those blokes in bars? And why, most of all, have a long-standing friendship with an older woman on a completely platonic basis? That’s the sort of thing these queers do. They like to know women, but it’s got to be safe women, married ones or women much older than they are.’

Wexford wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Once again he had come up against Burden’s solid common sense. And hadn’t his own ‘feelings’ also been hinting at it when he read the letter to Charles West?

He jeered mildly just the same. ‘So this long-standing friend suddenly takes it into her head to blackmail him, does she? After ten years? Threatens to expose his gay goings-on, I suppose.’ He had never liked the word ‘queer’. ‘Why should he care? It’s nothing these days. He probably advertises his – his inversion in Gay News.’

‘Does he? Then why doesn’t your Indian lady friend know about it? Why doesn’t his agent or Vivian or Polly? It mightn’t do him any good with his readership if ordinary decent people were to find what he gets up to in London at night. It wouldn’t with me, I can tell you.’

‘Since when have you been one of his readers?’

Burden looked a little shamefaced as he always did when confessing to any even mild intellectual lapse. ‘Since yesterday morning,’ he admitted. ‘Got to do something while I’m being a phone operator, haven’t I? I sent Loring out to get me two of them in paperback. I thought they’d be above my head, but they weren’t. Quite enjoyable, lively sort of stuff, really, and the last thing you’d feel is that their author’s homosexual.’

‘But you say he is.’

‘And he wants to keep it dark. He’s queer but he’s still thinking of settling down with Polly – they do that when they get middle-aged – and Rhoda mightn’t have liked the idea of only being able to see him with a wife around. So she threatens to spill the beans unless he gives Polly up. And there’s your motive.’

‘It doesn’t account for how he happens to have the same name as a whole tribe of her aunt’s relatives.’

‘Look,’ said Burden, ‘your Charles West wrote to him, thinking he might be a cousin. Why shouldn’t Rhoda have done the same thing years ago, say after she’d read his first book? Charles West didn’t pursue it, but she may have done. That could be the reason for their becoming friends in the first place, and then the friendship was strengthened by Rhoda doing research for him for that book that’s dedicated to her. The name is relevant only in that it brought them together.’

‘I just hope,’ said Wexford, ‘that tomorrow will bring West and us together.’

Robin came up and opened the car door for him.

‘Thanks very much,’ said Wexford. ‘You’re the new hall porter, are you? I suppose you want a tip.’ He handed over the ices he had bought on the way home. ‘One for your brother, mind.’

‘I’ll never be able to do it again,’ said Robin.

‘Why’s that? School starting? You’ll still get in before I do.’

‘We’re going home, Grandad. Daddy’s coming for us at seven.’

To the child Wexford couldn’t express what he felt. There was only one thing he could say, and in spite of his longing to be alone once more with Dora in peace and quiet and orderliness, it was true. ‘I shall miss you.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin complacently. Happy children set a high valuation on themselves. They expect to be loved and missed. ‘And we never saw the water rat.’

‘There’ll be other times. You’re not going to the North Pole.’

The little boy laughed inordinately at that one. Wexford sent him off to find Ben and hand the ice over, and then he let himself into the house. Sylvia was upstairs packing. He put his arm round her shoulder, turned her face towards him.

‘Well, my dear, so you and Neil have settled your differences?’

‘I don’t know about that. Not exactly. Only he’s said he’ll give me all the support I need in taking a degree if I start next year. And he’s – he’s bought a dishwasher!’ She gave a little half-ashamed laugh. ‘But that’s not why I’m going back.’

‘I think I know why.’

She pulled away from him, turning her head. For all her height and her majestic carriage, there was something shy and gauche about her. ‘I can’t live without him. Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed him dreadfully.’

‘That’s the only good reason for going back, isn’t it?’

‘The other thing – well, you can say women are equal to men but you can’t give them men’s position in the world. Because that’s in men’s minds and it’ll take hundreds of years to change it,’ She came out with a word that was unfamiliar to her wellread father. ‘One would just have to practise aeonism,’ she said.

What had she been reading now? Before he could ask her, the boys came in.

‘We could have a last try for the water rat, Grandad.’

‘Oh, Robin! Grandad’s tired and Daddy’s coming for us in an hour.’

‘An hour,’ said Robin with a six-year-old’s view of time, ‘is ever so long.’

So they went off together, the three of them, over the hill and across the meadow to the Kingsbrook. It was damp and misty and still, the willows bluish amorphous shadows, every blade of grass glistening with water drops. The river had risen and was flowing fast, the only thing in nature that moved.

‘Grandad carry,’ said Ben somewhat earlier in the expedition than usual.

But as Wexford bent down to lift him up, something apart from the river moved. A little way to the right of them, in the opposite bank, a pair of bright eyes showed themselves at the mouth of a hole.

‘Ssh,’ Wexford whispered. ‘Keep absolutely still.’

The water rat emerged slowly. It was not at all rat-like but handsome and almost rotund with spiky fur the colour of sealskin and a round alert face. It approached the water with slow stealth but entered it swiftly and began to swim, spreading and stretching its body, towards the bank on the side where they stood. And when it reached the bank it paused and looked straight at them seemingly without fear, before scurrying off into the thick green rushes.

Robin waited until it had disappeared. Then he danced up and down with delight. ‘We saw the water rat! We saw the water rat!’

‘Ben wants to see Daddy! Ben want to go home! Poor Ben’s feet are cold!’

‘Aren’t you pleased we saw the water rat, Grandad?’

‘Very pleased,’ said Wexford, wishing that his own quest might come to so simple and satisfying an end.