Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ruth Rendell
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ruth Rendell
OMNIBUSES:
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES
COLLECTED STORIES 2
WEXFORD: AN OMNIBUS
THE SECOND WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE THIRD WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE FOURTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE FIFTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THREE CASES FOR CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD
THE RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
THE SECOND RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
THE THIRD RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER
THE BEST MAN TO DIE
A GUILTY THING SURPRISED
NO MORE DYING THEN
MURDER BEING ONCE DONE
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE
SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER
A SLEEPING LIFE
PUT ON BY CUNNING
THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS
THE VEILED ONE
KISSING THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER
SIMISOLA
ROAD RAGE
HARM DONE
THE BABES IN THE WOOD
END IN TEARS
NOT IN THE FLESH
THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
SHORT STORIES:
THE FALLEN CURTAIN
MEANS OF EVIL
THE FEVER TREE
THE NEW GIRLFRIEND
THE COPPER PEACOCK
BLOOD LINES
PIRANHA TO SCURFY
NOVELLAS:
HEARTSTONES
THE THIEF
NON-FICTION:
RUTH RENDELL’S SUFFOLK
RUTH RENDELL’S ANTHOLOGY OF THE MURDEROUS MIND
NOVELS:
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL
VANITY DIES HARD
THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN
THE FACE OF TRESPASS
A DEMON IN MY VIEW
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS
MASTER OF THE MOOR
THE KILLING DOLL
THE TREE OF HANDS
LIVE FLESH
TALKING TO STRANGE MEN
THE BRIDESMAID
GOING WRONG
THE CROCODILE BIRD
THE KEYS TO THE STREET
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME
THE ROTTWEILER
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN
THE WATER’S LOVELY
PORTOBELLO
For Michael Richards, my cousin, with love
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised;
… those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day …
William Wordsworth
1
WHEN QUENTIN NIGHTINGALE left home for London each morning his wife was always still asleep. His housekeeper served him with breakfast, opened the front door for him and handed him his hat and his umbrella, while the au pair girl fetched his newspaper. Next to speed him on his way were the two gardeners, saluting him with a respectful ‘Good morning, sir’, then perhaps his brother-in-law, hurrying to the sequestered peace of his writer’s haven in the Old House. Only Elizabeth was missing, but if Quentin minded he never showed it. He walked briskly and confidently towards his car like a happy man.
On this particular morning in early September everything was just as usual except that Quentin didn’t need his umbrella. The gardens of Myfleet Manor lay half-veiled by a golden mist which promised a beautiful day. Quentin came down the stone steps from the front door and paused briefly in the shrubbery to remind Will Palmer that the incurved chrysanthemums they were nursing for Kingsmarkham flower show were due for a dose of liquid fertiliser. Then he followed the path to the courtyard between the old coach-houses, where his car, its windscreen newly polished by Sean Lovell, stood waiting.
Quentin was a little early. Instead of getting into his car, he strolled to the low wall and looked down over the Kingsbrook valley. The view never ceased to delight him. Hardly another house was visible, only the meadows, green, and, those that had been newly shorn, pale gold; the river winding through its thin sleeve of willows; the low round hills each topped with its ring of trees, and there, to his left, on the other side of the road, the great fir forest. It covered a whole range of hills and this morning in the mist it looked like a dark velvet cloak flung carelessly across the landscape. Quentin was always thinking of metaphors for the forest, comparing it to something, romanticising it. Sometimes he thought of it not as a forest or a velvet cloak but as a recumbent animal, guarding the fields while it slept, and of those irradiating plantations as spread, powerful and protective paws.
He turned his gaze to his own parkland, then to the nearer grounds, the sleek misted lawns and the massed roses whose colours were made pallid by haze, and he was just considering whether he should take a rose, an Iceberg perhaps or a Super Star, when a finger touched his shoulder and a cool voice said:
‘To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.’
‘Good morning, Denys,’ Quentin said heartily. ‘Not a very cheerful quotation to make on a lovely morning. Wordsworth, isn’t it?’
Denys Villiers nodded. ‘If I’m not cheerful,’ he said, ‘it must be because term begins in two days’ time and after that I shan’t get any more work done till Christmas. By the way, I’ve something for you.’ He opened his briefcase and brought out a book, new, glossy, evidently fresh from the binders. ‘An advance copy,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like it.’
Quentin’s face lit with pleasure. He read the title: Wordsworth in Love, by Denys Villiers, and then, with barely controlled excitement, he turned to the dedication. This he read aloud. ‘“For my brother-in-law, Quentin Nightingale, a true friend and patron.” Ah, Denys, that’s wonderful! Makes me feel like Southampton.’
Villiers gave one of his crooked, rare smiles. ‘The only begetter of these ensuing essays, Mr Q. N. …’ He frowned, as if at his own weakness. ‘As long as you like it. Well, as I have work to do and so do you …’
‘Yes, I must be off. Look after yourself, Denys. I shan’t be able to wait to get home and start on this.’ He tapped the book, patted Villiers’ shoulder and turned away. Villiers pushed open the door in the Old House wall and entered the shady court where limes and cypresses grew and where the sun never penetrated. Still smiling, his present on the seat beside him, Quentin drove away to London.
Elizabeth Nightingale spent an hour preparing herself for the eyes of the world. The effect aimed at was one of simple youth, spotless, fresh, lightly painted, dressed with casual precision or perhaps precise casualness. People said she looked no more than twenty-five. Ah, said Elizabeth to her reflection, but they didn’t know me when I was twenty-five! Sometimes she also said that nowadays it took her twice as long to look half as good.
Ever-democratic, she took her morning coffee with the staff in the kitchen. The two gardeners sat at either end of the table and Elizabeth sat opposite Katje Doorn. Mrs Cantrip drank her coffee standing up, issuing her orders.
‘If you catch sight of that Alf Tawney, Will, mind you tell him I’ve got a chicken ordered for tonight and I want it this morning, not five minutes before Madam’s dinnertime. Take your elbows off the table, young Sean. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you fifty times. Now, Catcher, when you’ve drunk your coffee you can take Mr Villiers’ over to him. He’ll think we’re all dead and that’s a fact. And, for pity’s sake, turn off that radio. Madam doesn’t want to listen to that racket, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, but I like pop, Mrs Cantrip,’ said Elizabeth.
Sean lifted his head. ‘Only got to look at you,’ he said, ‘to see you’re no square.’
Shocked, Mrs Cantrip said, ‘That’s no way to talk to Madam!’
‘I take it as a great compliment,’ said Elizabeth.
Sean’s dark face flushed with pleasure and he smiled his pomegranate smile, showing even white teeth between red lips. Inspired by his employer’s encouragement, he eyed first Mrs Cantrip and then Will Palmer. Katje was giggling, but he ignored her. ‘You’re all the same, you oldies,’ he said, ‘stuck in the same old groove.’
‘Your groove’s gardening and don’t you forget it. You’ll never be one of them singers.’
‘And why not?’ But Sean’s aggressive mood had changed to despair. ‘I’ll have to get cracking, I’ll just have to. I said to my old lady, Time’s getting on, I’ll be twenty-three come April. What would have happened if the Beatles had waited till they was twenty-three before making a start?’
‘What would have happened?’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘The world’d have been a quieter place and that’s a fact.’
‘Never mind, Sean,’ said Elizabeth with her sweet smile. ‘You know what I’ve promised. I won’t forget.’ And Sean nodded eagerly, watching Elizabeth with rapt eyes. ‘Now, Will, there’s a suit Mr Nightingale’s finished with that might fit you. While I’m in the giving vein, I’ve packed up a little parcel for your mother, Katje. Some of those biscuits she can’t get in Holland. You’ll find it on the hall table with a parcel of mine. Perhaps you’d take them to the post?’
‘Madam,’ said Mrs Cantrip when Elizabeth had gone, ‘is an angel. It’s a crying shame there aren’t more like her about.’
Katje giggled.
The mist had lifted and the rooms of Myfleet Manor were full of light – strong, late summer sunlight that would show up the slightest vestige of dust. But Mrs Cantrip and Katje had been at work and there was no dust. Elizabeth walked from room to room across the thick smooth sun-bathed carpets, checking that the flowers in copper bowls and famille rose vases were still fresh, occasionally drawing a curtain to protect old delicate satin from the sun. From her bedroom window she watched Katje cross Myfleet village street, holding the two parcels, the one for Holland and the one for London in her plump pink hands. Elizabeth sighed. Almost any of her friends or her servants would have supposed she sighed because Katje had left both the gates – wrought-iron gates whose design was of wyverns rampant with snouts which should have met at the lock – wide open. On the bright white surface of the road Katje’s shadow was black and bouncy, a little deformed by the bulges the parcels made.
Elizabeth went down and closed the gates. She got into the Lotus, driving first to Queens Waterford to discuss with Lady Larkin-Smith the arrangements for the country club dance, next to Pomfret to receive from Mrs Rogers the proceeds from the Cancer Relief collection, lastly to the hairdresser’s in Kingsmarkham. She kept the windows of the car wide open, the top down, and her primrose pale hair streamed out behind her as she drove, like the thistledown hair of a young girl.
At half past one Mrs Cantrip served luncheon in the dining room. Katje’s status gave her the right to eat en famille, but in the absence of Quentin Nightingale she said little. The woman and the girl ate their asparagus, their ham and their blackberry shortcake, in a silence which Elizabeth occasionally broke to comment with pleasure on the food. When they had finished Katje said she would have preferred chipolata pudding.
‘You must teach Mrs Cantrip to make it.’
‘Perhaps I am teaching her this afternoon,’ said Katje, who had difficulties with her present tense.
‘What a good idea!’
‘When you are tasting it perhaps you never wish blackberries again.’ Katje poked about in her mouth, retrieving seeds from between her teeth.
‘We shall have to see. I’m going up for my rest now. If anyone calls or telephones, remember, I’m not to be disturbed.’
‘I am remembering,’ said Katje.
‘Were you thinking of going out tonight?’
‘I meet a boy in Kingsmarkham and maybe we go to the movies.’
‘Cinema or pictures, Katje,’ said Elizabeth gently. ‘You must only say movies when you’re in the United States. You can take one of the cars if you like but I’d rather you didn’t take the Lotus. Your mother wouldn’t like to think of you driving a fast sports car.’
‘I am taking the Mini, please?’
‘That’s right.’
Katje cleared the table and put the crockery in the dishwasher with the glass and the plates from Denys Villiers’ luncheon tray. ‘Now I am teaching you to make chipolata pudding,’ she announced to Mrs Cantrip, who had been taking ten minutes off with a cup of tea and the Daily Sketch.
‘And what might that be when it’s at home? You know Madam never has no sausages in this house.’
‘Is not sausages. Is cream and jelly and fruit. We have cream, yes? We have eggs? Come on now, Mrs Cantrip, dear.’
‘There’s no peace for the wicked and that’s a fact,’ said Mrs Cantrip, heaving herself out of her rocking chair. ‘Though what’s wrong with a good English dessert I never shall know. Mr Villiers ate up every scrap of his. Mind you, with all that book-writing he gets a hearty appetite.’
Katje fetched eggs and cream from the refrigerator. ‘Often I am asking myself,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘why he is not working in his own home. When he has a wife too, is odd, very funny.’
‘And might I ask what it’s got to do with you, Catcher? The fact is Mr Villiers has always worked up there. It must be fourteen or fifteen years since Mr Nightingale had the Old House done up for Mr Villiers to work in. It’s quiet, see? And Mr Nightingale’s got a very soft spot for Mr Villiers.’
‘A soft spot?’
‘I don’t know, these foreigners! I mean he likes him, he’s fond of him. I reckon he’s proud of having an author in the family. Switch the beater on, then.’
Tipping the cream into a bowl, Katje said, ‘Mrs Nightingale is not liking him at all. Every day in the holidays he is working up there and never, not once, Mrs Nightingale is going to see him. Is funny not to like her own brother.’
‘Maybe he’s not easy to like,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘You can depend on it, if there’s a quarrel – and I’m not saying there is, mind – it’s not Madam’s fault. He’s got a very funny manner with him, has Mr Villiers. A nasty temper, like sarcastic. Between you and me, Catcher, I wouldn’t be too happy if I had a boy at that school where he teaches. Now switch that thing off or the cream’ll all be turned to butter.’
Elizabeth didn’t appear for tea.
The sky was cloudless, like a Mediterranean sky, and the sun, at five, as hot as ever. Out in the grounds Will Palmer lit a bonfire down by the gate which led on to the Kingsmarkham road, fouling the warm, scented air with acrid smoke. He fed it with grass mowings and helped it occasionally with a drop of paraffin. Sweating and grumbling, Sean pushed the motor mower over the terraced lawns.
Mrs Cantrip laid the dining table and left a cold dinner on the trolley. Fair weather or foul, she always wore a hat when she went outside. She put it on now and went home to her cottage at the other end of the village.
In the Old House Denys Villiers typed three more sentences on Wordsworth and the emergence of nature as artistic inspiration, and then he too went home. He drove slowly and cautiously to his bungalow in Clusterwell, to be followed half an hour latter by Katje Doorn, revving up the Mini and making it roar and squeal its way through the villages to Kingsmarkham.
Elizabeth lay on her bed with witch-hazel pads on her eyes, conserving her beauty. When she heard the Jaguar come in she began to dress for dinner.
She wore a pale green caftan with crystal embroidery at the neck and wrists.
‘How’s my beautiful wife?’
‘I’m fine, darling. Had a good day?’
‘Not so bad. London’s like a hothouse. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Just a small tomato juice,’ said Elizabeth. Quentin poured it for her and for himself a double whisky. ‘Thank you, darling. It is hot, isn’t it?’
‘Not so hot as in London.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Not nearly so hot,’ said Quentin firmly. He smiled; she smiled. Silence fell.
Quentin broke it. ‘Katje not about?’
‘She’s taken the Mini into Kingsmarkham, darling.’
‘All on our own then, are we? No one coming in for cocktails?’
‘Not tonight. As you say, we’re all on our own.’
Quentin sighed and smiled. ‘Makes a pleasant change, really,’ he said, ‘to be on our own.’
Elizabeth made no reply. This time the silence was intense and of longer duration. Quentin stood by the window and looked at the garden.
‘We may as well have dinner,’ said Elizabeth at last.
In the dining room he opened a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. Elizabeth took only one glass.
‘Turning cooler at last,’ said Quentin during the vichysoisse. ‘I suppose the nights will soon be drawing in.’
‘I suppose they will.’
‘Yes, no matter how hot it is at this time of the year, you always feel that faint nip in the air.’ Elizabeth ate her cold chicken in silence. ‘But it’s been a good summer on the whole,’ Quentin said desperately.
‘On the whole.’
Presently they returned to the drawing room.
‘What time is it?’ asked Quentin from the french windows.
‘Just on eight.’
‘Really? I should have said it was much later.’ He went out on to the terrace to look at his chrysanthemums. Elizabeth looked at Queen magazine, turning the pages indifferently. Quentin came back and sat looking at her. Then he said, ‘I wonder if Denys and Georgina will look in?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘I think I’ll give Denys a ring and see if they’ll come over for a hand of bridge. What do you think?’
‘If you’d like it, darling.’
‘No, no, it’s up to you.’
‘I really don’t mind one way or the other, darling.’
‘Well, I’ll just give him a ring, then,’ said Quentin, expelling pent-up breath in a long sigh.
The Villiers arrived and they played bridge till ten.
‘We mustn’t be too late, Georgina,’ said Villiers, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got a couple of hours’ work to put in at the school library before I go to bed.’
‘What, again?’ said Georgina.
‘I told you earlier, I’ve got a reference to look up.’
His wife gave him a mutinous glare.
‘Denys is dedicated to his work.’ said Quentin, the peacemaker. He smiled kindly at Georgina as the women left the room. ‘Talking of dedications,’ he said to his brother-in-law, ‘will you write in the book for me?’
Using a broken old ballpoint, Denys Villiers wrote on the flyleaf:
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction …
Quentin read it and a faint flush of pleasure coloured his cheeks. He laid his hand on Villiers’ shoulder. ‘Now write your name,’ he said.
So Villiers wrote beneath the quotation: Your brother, Denys Villiers.
‘It’s not like you to be inaccurate. It ought to be “brother-in-law”.’
‘There’s no need,’ said Villiers sharply, shaking off the hand, ‘for too much bloody accuracy.’
The women came back, Georgina fastening her large handbag.
‘Thanks very much for letting me have this, Elizabeth,’ said Georgina. ‘It’s awfully good of you.’
‘You’re more than welcome, my dear. I shall never use it again.’ And Elizabeth kissed her affectionately.
‘When you’ve finished billing and cooing,’ said Denys Villiers unpleasantly, ‘perhaps we can get a move on.’
‘I think I’ll go straight to bed,’ said Quentin. ‘I can’t wait to start the new book. Are you going to sit up a bit longer?’
‘It’s such a fine evening,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I may have a walk in the grounds before I go to bed.’
‘Wrap up warm, darling. I’ll say good night, then.’
‘Good night, darling.’
Elizabeth fetched herself a coat, a soft lightweight thing of deep green angora. In the moonlight it was the same colour as the cypresses that grew in the Italian garden. Late blooming roses, pink, apricot, lemon, all looked white tonight. She walked across the turf between the rosebeds, hexagonal, semicircular, rhomboid, then by the paved path between yew hedges to a door in the red brick wall. The smoke from Will’s fire rose in a thin grey column.
Elizabeth unlocked the gate and let herself out on to the grass verge which, overhung by the manor beeches, separated the wall from the Pomfret road. As car headlights flared, flowed past, she stepped back for a moment into the shadows of the garden. Katje in the Mini, coming home from Kingsmarkham. Once more the road was empty, lighted only by the moon. Elizabeth closed the gate behind her, crossed the road and began to walk away from it by a sandy path that led into Cheriton Forest.
When she was out of sight of the road she sat down on a log, waiting. Presently she lit a cigarette, the third of the five she would smoke that day.
The Nightingales slept in separate bedrooms on the first floor of Myfleet Manor and at the front of the house. Quentin undressed and got into bed quickly. He switched on his bedlamp and opened Wordsworth in Love.
First, as was his custom with Villiers’ books, he studied with pride and pleasure the publisher’s eulogy of the author and his works, and scrutinized his brother-in-law’s portrait on the back of the jacket. Next he looked at all the illustrations in turn, the photographed paintings of Wordsworth, of his sister Dorothy, and of the ‘mazy Forth’ as seen from Stirling Castle. Then, finally, he began to read.
Quentin read like a scholar, religiously looking up every bibliographical reference and reading each footnote. He had just come to the poet’s meeting with his French sweetheart when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Elizabeth in from her walk? But no …
The footsteps went on, up and up, until they sounded faintly above his head. Not Elizabeth, then, but Katje who slept on the top floor.
It was eleven-thirty and growing chilly. He had said earlier that there was a nip in the air. Elizabeth would be cold out there in the garden. The sashes in his own windows and the casements up above rattled as the wind rose. Quentin laid aside his book, got up and looked out of the window.
The moon had disappeared behind a bank of cloud. He put on his dressing gown, opened the bedroom door and stood for a moment in perplexity before making for the stairs.
2
IT WAS DETECTIVE Inspector Michael Burden’s day off. He lay in bed till nine. Then he got up, bathed, and began on the task to which he intended to devote this free day, painting the outside of his bungalow.
A great wind, offshoot of a Caribbean hurricane the Americans called Caroline, had arisen during the night. Burden needed to use no ladders; the eaves of his bungalow were too near the ground for that, but today he didn’t even fancy ascending the steps. Certainly he wasn’t going to allow his eleven-year-old son John, home for the school holidays and an enthusiastic helper, to go up them.
‘You can do the front door, John,’ he said, knowing that he was conferring a special favour. All painters, particularly amateurs, long for the moment when the top coat, an excitingly contrasting colour, is due to be applied to the front door.
‘Blimey, can I?’ said John.
‘Don’t say blimey. It means God blind me, and you know I don’t like to hear you swear.’
John, who normally would have argued the point, trotted off to fetch from the garage a virgin pot of flamingo-pink paint. There he encountered his sister Pat, feeding lime leaves to a hawk-moth caterpillar imprisoned in a shoe box. He was about to say something calculated to aggravate, something on the lines of the folly of encouraging garden pests, when his mother called to him from the back door.
‘John, tell Daddy he’s wanted on the phone, will you?’
‘Who wants him?’
Mrs Burden said in a voice of resigned despair, ‘Can’t you guess?’
John guessed. Carrying the tin of paint, he returned to his father, who had just put the first stroke of top coat on the picture-window frame.
‘Cop shop on the phone for you,’ he said.
Burden never swore, in front of his children or in their absence. Carefully he placed his brush in a jam jar of synthetic turps and entered the house.
His bungalow had seldom looked so attractive to him as it did this morning. Poole pottery vases filled with red dahlias (Bishop of Llandaff, very choice) graced the hall and living room; the new curtains were up; from the kitchen came the rich aroma of a steak-and-kidney pudding boiling for lunch. Burden sighed, then lifted the spotless polished receiver of the white telephone.
The voice of Detective Chief Inspector Wexford said nastily, ‘You took your bloody time.’
‘Sorry. I was painting.’
‘Hard cheese, Picasso. You’ll have to complete the masterpiece some other time. Duty calls.’
Burden knew better than to say it was his day off. ‘What’s up, sir?’
‘Do you know a Mrs Elizabeth Nightingale?’
‘By sight. Everyone knows her. Husband’s a Lloyd’s underwriter. Pots of money. What’s she done?’
‘Got herself murdered, that’s what she’s done.’
Burden broke his rule. ‘Good God!’ he said.
‘I’m at Myfleet Manor. Get over here as soon as you can, Mike.’
‘And I’ve made this great enormous pudding,’ said Jean Burden. ‘Try and get back for lunch.’
‘Not a hope.’ Burden changed his clothes, grabbed his car key. John was sitting on the garden wall, waiting for starter’s orders. ‘Better leave the front door for a day or two, John. Sorry about that.’
‘I’d be OK on my own.’
‘Don’t argue, there’s a good lad.’ He fished in his pocket for a half-crown. ‘You were saying something about a new transistor battery … Get yourself some sweets too.’ He got into the car. ‘Here, John – isn’t a Mr Villiers that’s brother to Mrs Nightingale a teacher at your school?’
‘Old Roman Villa?’ said John. ‘I don’t know whose brother he is. He teaches Latin and Greek. What d’you want to know for?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Burden.
It was a red-brick house, built during the reign of Queen Anne, and it had an air of crouching close above the road, its windows Argus eyes that gazed down over the village, its footings embowered in thick green shrubs which rustled in the wind. Burden parked his car behind the bigger official one Wexford had arrived in, pushed open the wyvern gates and mounted the steps to the front door. Detective Sergeant Martin opened it before he had a chance to ring the bell.
‘Chief Inspector’s in the – er, what they call the morning room, sir.’
The house was full of people and yet a thick breathless hush seemed to hang over it, the silence of the incredible, the silence of shock. Burden tapped on the morning-room door and went in.
It was a small elegant room, its panelling painted in cream and blue. A broad shelf followed the line of the picture rail on which stood floral plates in blue Delft. There were water-colours too, delicate pictures of pastoral scenes – Myfleet Mill, Forby Church, the river bridge at Flagford.
Squeezed into a small chair upholstered in cream satin, Wexford looked even more mountainous than usual. His heavy face was grave but his eyes were alert and watchful, fixed on the woman who sat on the opposite side of the fireplace. Glancing at the neat white hair, the homely red face furrowed by tears and the trim blue nylon overall, Burden summed her up as a faithful servant, an old and devoted retainer.
‘Come in,’ said Wexford. ‘Sit down. This is Mrs Cantrip. She has kept house for Mr and Mrs Nightingale since they were married sixteen years ago.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, putting a handkerchief up to her swollen eyes. ‘And a lovelier person than Mrs Nightingale you couldn’t wish to meet. Good as gold she was and the best I ever worked for. I often used to think, though it don’t sound respectful, pity it’s me and not her who might be wanting a reference one of these days. I could have painted it in glowing colours and that’s a fact.’
Burden sat down gingerly on another satin chair. All the furnishings were spotless and exquisite from the gleaming china to the lady’s firescreens, painted oval discs on long stems.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you must think of us, sir,’ said Mrs Cantrip, misinterpreting his expression. ‘The place in the state it is, but nothing’s been done this morning. Me and Catcher, we haven’t felt up to lifting a duster. When they told me the news I felt so bad I don’t know why I didn’t pass clean out.’ She turned to Wexford and sniffed back her tears. ‘Well, sir, you said as you wanted to see everyone in the house, so I mustn’t keep you now the other gentleman’s come.’ Counting on work-worn fingers, she said, ‘There’s old Will Palmer, him that found her poor dead body, and Sean Lovell and Catcher …’
‘Who’s Catcher?’
‘The foreign girl, what they call an au pair, sir. You’ll find her up in her room on the top floor. And then there’s poor Mr Nightingale himself, locked in his study and won’t open the door to no one.’