No Man's Nightingale Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Ruth Rendell

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Sarah Hussain was not popular with many people in the community of Kingsmarkham. She was born of mixed parents – a white Irishwoman and an immigrant Indian Hindu. She was also the Reverend of St Peter’s church.

  But it came as a profound shock to everyone when she was found strangled in the vicarage.

  A garrulous cleaner, Maxine, also shared by the Wexfords, discovers the body. In his comparatively recent retirement, the former Detective Chief Inspector, is devoting much time to reading, and is deep into Edward Gibbons’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He has little patience with Maxine’s prattle.

  But when his old friend Mike Burden asks if he might like to assist on this case, as Crime Solutions Adviser (unpaid), Wexford is obliged to pay more precise attention to all available information.

  The old instincts have not been blunted by a life, where he and Dora divide their time between London and Kingsmarkham. Wexford retains a relish for work and a curiosity about people which is invaluable in detective work.

  For all his experience and sophistication, Burden tends to jump to conclusions. But he is wise enough to listen to the man whose office he inherited, and whose experience makes him a most formidable ally.

  About the Author

  Ruth Rendell is the author of over 50 novels, she has won many significant crime fiction awards. Her first novel, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, and since then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new book.

  She has received major awards for her work; three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award for 1976’s best crime novel, A Demon in My View; the Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for The Lake of Darkness; the Crime Writer’s Gold Dagger Award for 1986’s best crime book for Live Flesh; in 1987 the Crime Writer’s Gold Dagger Award for A Fatal Inversion and in 1991 the same award for King Solomon’s Carpet, both written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine; the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990; and in 1991 the Crime Writer’s Cartier Diamond Award for outstanding contribution to the crime fiction genre.

  Her books are translated into 21 languages. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

  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

  THE VAULT

  SHORT STORIES:

  THE FALLEN CURTAIN

  MEANS OF EVIL

  THE FEVER TREE

  THE NEW GIRL FRIEND

  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

  TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS

  THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY

  No Man’s Nightingale

  Ruth Rendell

  CHAPTER ONE

  MAXINE WAS PROUD of having three jobs. These days more and more people had none. She had no sympathy for them but congratulated herself on her own initiative. Two mornings a week she cleaned for Mrs Wexford, two mornings for Mrs Crocker, afternoons for two other Kingsmarkham women, did gardening and cleaned cars for Mr Wexford and Dr Crocker, and babysat every evening where she was wanted for those young enough to need a babysitter. Cleaning she did for the women and gardening and car-washing for the men because she had never believed in any of that feminism or equality stuff. It was a well-known fact that men didn’t notice whether a house was clean or not and normal women weren’t interested in cars or lawns. Maxine charged maximum rates for babysitting except for her son and his partner. She took care of her granddaughter for free. As for the others, those who had kids must expect to pay for them. She’d had four and she knew.

  She was a good worker, reliable, punctual and reasonably honest, and the only condition she made was payment in cash. Wexford, who after all had until recently been a policeman, demurred at that but eventually gave in like the tax inspector up the road did. After all, at least a dozen other households would have paid almost anything to secure Maxine’s services. She had one drawback. She talked. She talked not just while she was having a break for a cup of tea or while she was getting out or putting the tools away but all the time she was working and to whoever happened to be in the room. The work got done and very efficiently while the words poured out on a steady monotone.

  That day she began on a story of how her son Jason, now manager of the Kingsmarkham Questo supermarket, had dealt with a man complaining about
one of his checkout girls. The woman had apparently called him ‘elderly’. But Jason had handled it brilliantly, pacifying the man and sending him home in a supervisor’s car. ‘Now my Jason used to be a right tearaway,’ Maxine went on and not for the first time. ‘Not in one of them gangs, I’m not saying that, and he never got no ASBOs, but a bit of shoplifting, it was like it came natural to him, and out all night and underage drinking – well, binge drinking like they call it. As for the smack and what do they call them, description drugs – mind Mr Wexford can’t hear me, hope he’s out of hearshot – all that he went in for, and now, since him and Nicky had a kid he’s a changed character. The perfect dad, I still can’t believe it.’ She applied impregnated wadding to the silver with renewed vigour, then a duster, then the wadding once more. ‘She’s over a year old now, his Isabella is, but when she was a neo-nettle it was never Nicky got up to her in the night, she never had to. No, it was my Jason had her out of her cot before the first peep was out of her. Walked her up and down, cooing at her like I’ve never heard a bloke go on so. Mind you, that Nicky never showed no gratitude. I call it unnatural, a mum with a new baby sleeping the night through, and I’ve told her so.’

  Even Maxine sometimes had to pause to draw breath. Dora Wexford seized her opportunity, said she had to go out and Maxine’s money was in an envelope on the hall table. The resumed monologue pursued her as she ran out to the conservatory to tell her husband she’d be back in an hour or so.

  Wexford was sitting in a cane armchair in autumn sunshine doing what many a man or woman plans to do on retirement but few put into practice, reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He had embarked on it expecting to find it heavy going, but instead becoming fast enraptured and enjoying every word. Reaching the end of the first volume, he was happy to anticipate five more, and told Dora she’d picked her moment to desert him.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she whispered.

  ‘I didn’t know we had a schedule.’

  ‘You know now. Here starts your tour of duty.’

  As Dora left, Maxine swooped, pushing the vacuum cleaner and continuing to hold on to it while she peered over his shoulder.

  ‘Got a guide to Rome there, I see. Going there on your holidays, are you? Me and my sister took in Rome on our Ten Italian Cities tour. Oh, it was lovely, but hot, you wouldn’t believe. I said to my Jason, you and Nicky want to go there on your honeymoon when you get around to tying the knot there’s no untying, only these days there is of course, no point in getting married if you ask me. I never did and I’m not ashamed of it.’ She started up the vacuum cleaner but continued to talk. ‘It’s Nicky as wants it, one of them big white weddings like they all want these days, costs thousands, but she’s a big spender, good job my Jason’s in work like so many’s not.’ The voice became a buzz under the vacuum’s roar. She raised it. ‘I don’t reckon my Jason’d go away on a honeymoon or anything else come to that without Isabella. He can’t bear that kid out of his sight for his eight hours’ work let alone a week. Talk about worshipping the ground she treads on, only she don’t tread yet, crawls more like.’ A pause to change the tool on the end of the vacuum-cleaner hose, then, ‘You’ll know about that poor lady vicar getting herself killed and me finding the body. It was all over the papers and on the telly. I reckon you take an interest though you’re not doing the work no more. I had a cleaning job there with her up till a couple of weeks back but there was things we never saw eye to eye on, not to mention her not wanting to pay cash, wanted to do it online if you please and I couldn’t be doing with that. She always left the back door open and I popped in to collect the money she owed me and it gave me a terrible turn. No blood, of course, not with strangling, but still a shock. Don’t bear thinking of, does it? Still, I reckon you had to think of things like that, it being your job. You must be relieved getting all that over with –’

  Standing up, clutching his book, ‘I’m going to have a bath!’ Wexford shouted above the vacuum’s roar.

  Maxine was startled from her monologue. ‘It’s ten thirty.’

  ‘A very good time to have a bath,’ said Wexford, making for the stairs, reading as he went the last lines of Volume 1, describing another murder, that of Julius Caesar . . . during the greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age . . .

  His mobile was ringing. Detective Superintendent Burden, known to the phone contacts list as Mike.

  ‘I’m off to have a look at St Peter’s Vicarage, taking Lynn with me, and I thought you might like to come too.’

  Wexford had already had a shower that day. A bath at 10.30 a.m. wasn’t needful, only seized upon as a refuge from Maxine. ‘I’d love to.’ He tried to keep the enthusiasm out of his voice, tried and failed.

  Sounding surprised, Burden said, ‘Don’t get excited. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘It is for me.’

  He closed the bathroom door. Probably Maxine wouldn’t open it but would perhaps conclude that he was having an exceptionally long bath. The vacuum cleaner still roaring, he escaped out of the front door, closing it after him by an almost silent turning of the key in the lock. Taking an interested member of the public – that, after all, was what he was – on a call or calls that were part of a criminal investigation was something Wexford had seldom done while he was himself an investigating officer. And his accompanying Superintendent Ede of the Met on the vault inquiries was a different matter as he, though unpaid, had had a kind of job as Ede’s aide.This visit, this opportune escape from Maxine, was undergone, he knew, because, once senior and junior officers, over the years they had become friends. Burden knew, none better, how much Wexford would wish to be involved in solving the mystery of who had killed the Reverend Sarah Hussain.

  All Wexford knew of the death, apart from what Maxine had mentioned that morning, was what he had read in yesterday’s Guardian and seen on the day before yesterday’s regional television news. And seen of course when passing the Vicarage. He could have pursued more online but he had cringed from the colourful headlines. Sarah Hussain was far from being the only woman ordained priest of the Church of England but perhaps she was the only one to have been born in the United Kingdom of a white Irishwoman and an Indian immigrant. All this had been in the newspaper along with some limited biographical details including information about her conversion to Christianity. There had been a photograph, too, of a gaunt woman with an aquiline nose in an academic cap and gown, olive-skinned with large deep-set black eyes, and what hair that showed, a glossy jet black. She had been forty-eight when she died and a single mother.

  Her origins, her looks, striking but not handsome, her age, her single parenthood and, above all, that conversion, made him think that her life cannot have been easy. He would have liked to know more and, no doubt, he soon would. At the moment he wasn’t even sure of where the murder had taken place; only that it was inside the Vicarage. It wasn’t a house he had ever been in, though Dora had. He was due to meet Mike and DC Lynn Fancourt in St Peter’s Church porch, the one at the side where the vestry was.

  The Vicarage was some distance away and he had no need to pass the church to reach it. Heading for the gate that led out of Queen Street, he passed a young man pushing a baby buggy, a not particularly unusual sight these days, but he recognised this one as Maxine’s son Jason. As industrious as his mother if not as vociferous, he must be having a day off from his job as a supermarket manager. Curious to see the child whose father worshipped the ground she crawled on, Wexford looked under the buggy hood and saw a pretty pink-cheeked blonde, her long-lashed eyes closed in sleep. Wexford hastily withdrew his head from Jason’s glare. No doubt the man was wary of any male person eyeing his little girl. Quite right too, he thought, himself the parent of girls who were now middle-aged women.

  He was a little early a
nd by design. In his position it was better from him to be waiting for them than they for him. But Burden was seldom late and the two of them appeared almost immediately from the high street. All the years he had known him, Wexford had never ceased to marvel at Burden’s sartorial elegance. Where did he learn to dress like that? As far as he knew, Mike went shopping no more than any other man of his acquaintance. And it couldn’t be the influence of his wives, neither of whom, Jean long dead or Jenny the present one, had much interest in clothes, preferring in their own cases no more than attention to ‘neatness and fashion’, as Jane Austen has it. But here was Burden today, his abundant but short hair now iron grey, his beige jacket (surely cashmere) over white shirt with beige-and-blue figured tie, his beautifully creased trousers of denim, though discernibly – how? how could one tell? – not jeans.

  ‘Good to see you,’ Burden said, though he had seen him and eaten lunch with him three days before.

  Lynn, whom he hadn’t seen for as much as a year, said in a very respectful tone, ‘Good morning, sir.’

  They walked along the path among gravestones and rose bushes towards Vicarage Lane. It was October and the leaves had only just begun to fall. Green spiky conkers lay on the grass under the chestnut trees.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about this poor woman’s murder, Reg,’ Burden said.

  ‘Only what I read in the paper and saw on TV.’

  ‘You don’t go to church, do you?’

  ‘I hesitate to say my wife does, though it’s true, and you know it already. She knew Sarah Hussain, but through church, not socially. Where was she killed?’

  ‘In the Vicarage. In her living room. You tell him, Lynn. You were one of the two officers who were the first to see the body.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LYNN SPOKE IN the same respectful tone as before. ‘I expect you know this, sir, but it was a woman called Maxine Sams who found her. She’d been the Reverend Ms Hussain’s cleaner and she came in to collect some money that was owed her. She’s not a suspect.’

  ‘I know her, Lynn. She cleans for us.’