A Sleeping Life Read online

  A Sleeping Life

  Ruth Rendell

  When a body of a middle-aged woman is found under a hedge, Inspector Wexford finds he has very little information to pursue the case. From the author of AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS and THE VEILED ONE.

  Ruth Rendell

  A Sleeping Life

  The tenth book in the Chief Inspector Wexford series, 1978

  For Elaine and Leslie Gray,

  with affection and gratitude

  Chapter 1

  Those have most power to hurt us, that we love; We lay our sleeping lives within their arms. O, thou hast raised up mischief to his height, And found one to outname thy other faults.

  Beaumont and Fletcher: The Maid’s Tragedy

  Home early for once. Maybe he’d start getting home early regularly now August had begun, the silly season. Criminals as well as the law-abiding take their holidays in August. As he turned the car into his own road, Wexford remembered his grandsons would be there. Good. It would be light for another three hours, and he’d take Robin and Ben down to the river. Robin was always on about the river because his mother had read The Wind in the Willows to him, and his great desire was to see a water rat swimming.

  Sylvia’s car was parked outside the house. Odd, thought Wexford. He’d understood Dora was having the boys for the afternoon as well as the evening and that they’d be staying the night. As he edged his own car past his daughter’s into the drive, she came running out of the house with a screaming Ben in her arms and six-year-old Robin looking truculent at her heels. Robin rushed up to his grandfather.

  ‘You promised we could see the water rat!’

  ‘So you can as far as I’m concerned and if there’s one about. I thought you were staying the night.’

  Sylvia’s face was crimson, with rage or perhaps just from haste. It was very hot. ‘Well, they’re not. Thanks to my dear husband, nobody’s going anywhere even though it does happen to be our wedding anniversary. Will you shut up, Ben! He’s bringing a client home for dinner instead, if you please, and I of course as usual have to be the one to do the cooking and fetch the kids.’

  ‘Leave them here,’ said Wexford. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Yes, leave us here,’ Robin shouted. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s out of the question. Why do you have to encourage them. Dad? I’m taking them home and Neil can have the pleasure of putting them to bed for once.’

  She thrust both children into the car and drove off. The windows of the car were all open, and the yells of the two little boys, for Robin had begun to back his brother up, vied with the roar of the ill-treated engine. Wexford shrugged and went indoors. Some sort of scene had evidently been taking place, but he knew his wife better than to suppose she would be much disturbed by it. True to his expectations, she was sitting placidly in the living room watching the tail end of a children’s programme on television. A great many books had been pulled out of the shelves, and on a tower block of them sat a teddy bear.

  ‘What’s got into Sylvia?’

  ‘Women’s Lib,’ said Dora Wexford. ‘If Neil wants to bring a client home he ought to cook the meal. He ought to come home in the afternoon and clean the house and lay the table. She’s taken the children home for the sole purpose of getting him to put them to bed. And she’s taking care to stir them up on the way to make sure he has a hard time of it.’

  ‘God. I always thought she was quite a sensible girl.’

  ‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it. It’s been going on for months. You are the people, we are the others. You are the masters, we are the chattels.’

  ‘Why haven’t you told me about any of this?’

  Dora switched off the television. ‘You’ve been busy. You wouldn’t have wanted to listen to all this nonsense when you got home. I’ve been getting it every day.’

  Wexford raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s nonsense?’

  ‘Well, not entirely, of course. Men still do have a better time of it in this world than women, it’s still a man’s world. I can understand she doesn’t like being stuck at home with the boys, wasting her life, as she puts it, while Neil gets more and more successful in his career.’ Dora smiled. ‘And she says she got more A Levels than he did. I can understand she gets bored when people come and the men talk to Neil about architecture and the women talk to her about polishing the bedroom furniture. Oh, I can understand it.’

  Her husband looked hard at her. ‘You feel that way too?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Dora, laughing now. ‘Let’s forget our rather tiresome child. You’re so early we might go out somewhere after we’ve eaten. Would you like to?’

  ‘Love to.’ He hesitated, said quickly. ‘It’s not threatening their marriage, is it? I’ve always thought of them as being so happy together.’

  ‘We have to hope it’ll pass. Anything we do or say would only make things worse, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. Now where shall we go? Cinema? Or how about the open-air theatre at Sewingbury?’

  Before she could give him an answer, the phone rang. ‘Sylvia,’ she said. ‘She’s realized Ben left his teddy. You get it, darling. Oh, and Reg…? Would you say we’ll drop it in on our way? I can’t stand another session of the wounded wives tonight.’

  Wexford lifted the receiver. It wasn’t his daughter. Dora knew it wasn’t even before he spoke. She knew that look. All he said was ‘Yes’ and ‘Sure, I will’, but she knew. He hung up and said, ‘They don’t all go on holiday in August. A body in a field not half a mile from here.’

  ‘Is it…?’

  ‘Not one of the people,’ her husband said drily. ‘One of the others.’ He tightened the tie he had loosened, rolled down his shirtsleeves. ‘I’ll have to go straightaway. What’ll you do? Stir up the telly so I have a hard time of it putting it to rights? You must regret marrying me.’

  ‘No, but I’m working on it.’

  Wexford laughed, kissed her and drove back the way he had come.

  Kingsmarkham is a sizeable town somewhere in the middle of Sussex, much built-up now on the Stowerton and Sewingbury sides, though open and unspoilt country still remains at its northern end. There the High Street becomes the Pomfret Road, and there the pinewoods of Cheriton Forest clothe the hills.Forest Road is the last street in the area to bear the postal address Kingsmarkham. It debouches directly from the Pomfret Road, but to reach it most of its few residents take the short cut from the end of the High Street by footpath across a field. Wexford parked his car at the point in Forest Road where this footpath entered it as an alley near the boundary fence of a pair of houses called Carlyle Villas. He swung into the alley and followed the footpath along a high privet hedge that bounded allotments.

  About a hundred yards ahead of him he could see a group of men gathered at the edge of a little copse. Inspector Michael Burden was among them and so was Dr Crocker, the police doctor, and a couple of photographers. As Wexford approached, Burden came up to him and said something in a low voice. Wexford nodded. Without looking at the body, he went up to Detective Loring who stood a little apart with a younger man who looked pale and shaken.

  ‘Mr Parker?’

  'That’s right.’

  ‘I understand you found the body?’

  Parker nodded. ‘Well, my son did.’ He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five himself.

  ‘A child' said Wexford.

  ‘He doesn’t realize. I hope not. He’s only six.’

  They sat down on a wooden seat the council had put there for pensioners to rest on. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I’d taken him round to my sister’s, give the wife a bit of a break while she was putting the other two to bed. I live in one of the bungalows in Forest Road, Bella Vista, the one with the green
roof. We were coming back, along the path here, and Nicky was playing with a ball. It went in the long grass under the hedge and he went to look for it. He said, “Dad, there’s a lady down there.” I sort of knew, I don’t know how. I went and looked and I – well, I know I shouldn’t have, but I sort of pulled her coat over her chest. Nicky, you see, he’s only six, there was – well, blood, a mess.’

  ‘I do see,’ said Wexford. ‘You didn’t move anything else?’

  Parker shook his head. ‘I told Nicky the lady was ill and we’d go home and phone the doctor. I said she’d be all right. I don’t think he realized. I hope not. I got him home and phoned your people. Honestly, I wouldn’t have touched her if I’d been on my own.’

  ‘This was an exception, Mr Parker.’ Wexford smiled at him. ‘I’d have done the same in your place.’

  ‘He won’t have to…? I mean, there’ll be an inquest, won’t there? I mean, I’ll have to go, I know that, but…’

  ‘No, no. Good God, no. Get off home now and we’ll see you again later. Thanks for your help.’

  Parker got up off the seat, glanced at the photographers, the huddle round the body, then turned round. ‘It’s not for me to… Well, I mean, I do know who she is. Perhaps you don’t…’

  ‘No, we don’t yet. Who is she?’

  ‘Well, a Miss Comfrey. She didn’t actually live here, her dad lives here.’ Parker pointed back down the path. ‘Carlyle Villas, the one with the blue paint. She must have been stopping there. Her dad’s in hospital. He’s an old man, he broke his hip, and she must have come down to see him.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Parker.’

  Wexford crossed the sandy path, and Burden stepped aside for him to look down at the body. It was that of a middleaged woman, biggish and gaunt. The face was coated with heavy make-up, clotted scarlet on the mouth, streaky blue on the crepe eyelids, a ghastly ochreish layer on the planes of cheek and forehead. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Wexford thought he saw – it must be his imagination – a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn.

  A fringe of dark hair just showed under a tightly tied blue headscarf. The body was clothed in a blue and pink printed dress of some synthetic material, and the matching jacket had been drawn across the bodice. One of the high-heeled shoes had come off and hung suspended on a tangle of brambles. Across the hips lay a large scarlet handbag. There were no rings on the hands, no watch on either wrist, but a heavy necklace of red glass beads round the neck, and the nails, though short, were painted the same scarlet.

  He knelt down and opened the handbag, covering his fingers with his handkerchief. Inside was a key ring with three keys on it, a box of matches, a packet of king-sized cigarettes from which four had been smoked, a lipstick, an old-fashioned powder compact, a wallet, in the bottom of the bag some loose change. No purse. No letters or documents.

  The wallet, which was an expensive new one of black leather, contained forty-two pounds. She hadn’t been killed for the money she had on her. There was nothing to give him a clue to her address, her occupation or even her identity. No credit card, no bank card, no cheque book. He closed the bag and parted her jacket. The bodice of the dress was black with clotted blood, but plainly discernible in the dark matted mass were two cuts, the outward evidence of stab wounds.

  Chapter 2

  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 haven’t 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 haven’t 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 God’s sake, don’t expect too much precision at this stage. Rigor’s fully established, but the weather’s been very hot, so its onset will have been more rapid. I’d say at least eighteen hours. Could be more.’

  ‘OK.’ Wexford jerked his head at Burden. ‘There’s 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 celebrity’s 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 Hollywood’s 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 hadn’t 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 gentleman’s a doctor, come to tell us the poor lady’s all right.’ Nicky buried his face in his mother’s shoulder.

  ‘Quite all right,’ Wexford lied. ‘She’ll be fine.’ They say the dead are well…

  ‘You get along to Nanna’s room then, Nicky, and she’ll let you watch her TV.’

  The tension lightened on his departure. ‘Thanks,’ said Parker. ‘I only hope it isn’t going to have a bad effect on him, poor kid.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s too young to see newspapers, but you’ll have to exercise a bit of censorship when it comes to the TV. Now, Mr Parker, I think you said Miss – er – Comfrey’s father was in hospital. D’you 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 li
ke that it happened. Her and the taxi-man, they took him to the hospital in the same taxi and he’s been there ever since. I never saw it. Mrs Crown told me. Miss Comfrey’s 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 Rhoda’d phoned to say she was coming on account of old Mr Comfrey’d had a stroke. But I never saw her, didn’t really know her to speak to.’

  Burden said, ‘Who is Mrs Crown?’

  ‘Miss Comfrey’s auntie. She lives in the next house to old Mr Comfrey. She’s the one you want to see.’

  ‘No doubt, but there’s no one in.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Stella Parker who seemed to have twice her husband’s grasp and intelligence, ‘I don’t want to put myself forward, but I do read detective books, and if it’s sort of background stuff you want, you couldn’t do better than talk to Brian’s gran. She’s 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, doesn’t it, Stell? She’s a wonder, my gran.’

  Wexford smiled and got up. ‘I may want to talk to her but not tonight. You’ll be notified about the inquest, Mr Parker. It shouldn’t be too much of an ordeal. Now, d’you 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, it’s beginning to look to me as if Rhoda Comfrey was killed on her way back from visiting her father in hospital. She’d have used that footpath as a short cut from the bus stop.’

  ‘Visiting time at Stowerton’s 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.’