The Bridesmaid
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ruth Rendell
Title Page
Dedication
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Copyright
About the Book
Philip Wardman had more than just the ordinary squeamishness where death was concerned. Yet he could hardly avoid the suspicious disappearance of his sister’s friend Rebecca Neave, especially when everyone was ascribing the cause to murder. Philip’s feminine ideal is the statue of the Roman goddess Flora in his mother’s garden. His marble Flora doesn’t fade, doesn’t alter, doesn’t die. But then he meets Senta Pelham, a beautiful, sensual, childlike actress who flagrantly disdains the morals of society and passionately desires the elusive Philip.
About the Author
Since her first novel, From Doon with Death, published in 1964, Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon In My View, and the Arts Council National Book Award, genre fiction, for The Lake of Darkness in 1980.
In 1985 Ruth Rendell received the Silver Dagger for The Tree of Hands, and in 1987, writing as Barbara Vine, won her third Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for A Dark-Adapted Eye.
She won the Gold Dagger for Live Flesh in 1986, for King Solomon’s Carpet in 1991 and, as Barbara Vine, a Gold Dagger in 1987 for A Fatal Inversion.
Ruth Rendell won the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990, and in 1991 she was awarded the Crime Writer’s Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding contributions to the genre. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 was made a Life Peer.
Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages and are also published to great acclaim in the United States.
Ruth Rendell has a son and two grandsons, and lives in London.
By Ruth Rendell
OMNIBUSES:
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES
COLLECTED STORIES 2
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 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
The Bridesmaid
Ruth Rendell
For Don
1
VIOLENT DEATH FASCINATES people. It upset Philip. He had a phobia about it. Or that was what he called it to himself sometimes, a phobia for murder and all forms of killing, the wanton destruction of life in war and its senseless destruction in accidents. Violence was repellent, in reality, on the screen, in books. He had felt like this for years, since he was a small child and other children pointed toy guns and played at death. When it had begun or what began it he didn’t know. A curious thing was that he wasn’t cowardly or squeamish, he was no more nor less frightened by it than anyone else. It was rather that unnatural death neither entertained him nor exercised a ghoulish attraction. His reaction was to shy away from it in whatever form it might be presented to him. He knew this was unusual. He hid his phobia, or tried to hide it.
When the others watched television he watched it with them and he didn’t close his eyes. He had never got into the way of denouncing newspapers or novels. But the others knew and had no particular respect for his feelings. It didn’t stop them talking about Rebecca Neave.
Left to himself, Philip would have taken no interest in her disappearance, still less speculated about her. He would have turned off the set. Of course he would probably have turned it off ten minutes before and avoided Northern Ireland, Iran, Angola, and a train crash in France as well as a missing girl. He would never have looked at the photograph of her pretty face, the smiling mouth and eyes screwed up against the sun, the hair blown by the wind.
Rebecca disappeared at about three on an autumn afternoon. Her sister spoke to her on the phone on Wednesday morning and a man who was a friend of hers, a new friend who had been out with her just four times, phoned her at lunchtime on that day. That was the last time her voice was heard. A neighbour saw her leave the block of flats where she lived. She was wearing a bright green velvet tracksuit and white trainers. That was the last anyone saw of her.
Fee said, when the girl’s face appeared on screen, ‘I was at school with her. I thought I knew the name. Rebecca Neave. I thought I’d heard it before.’
‘I’ve never heard it. You’ve never said you had a friend called Rebecca.’
‘She wasn’t a friend, Cheryl. There were three thousand of us at that school. I don’t suppose I even spoke to her.’ Fee was staring intently at the screen while her brother made as conscious an effort not to look. He had picked up the newspaper and turned to an inside page where the Rebecca Neave story had not penetrated. ‘They must think she’s been murdered,’ Fee said.
Rebecca’s mother appeared and made an appeal for news of her missing daughter. Rebecca was twenty-three. Her job was teaching ceramics to adult classes but needing to supplement her income, she advertised her services as a baby-sitter and house-sitter. It seemed possible that someone had phoned in answer to her advertisement. Rebecca had made an appointment for that evening – and kept it. Or that was what her mother believed.
‘Oh, the poor woman,’ said Christine, coming in with coffee on a tray. ‘What she must be going through. I can just imagine how I’d feel if it was one of you.’
‘Well, it’s not likely to be me,’ said Philip who was well-built though thin, and six feet two. He looked at his sisters. ‘Can I turn this off now?’
‘You can’t stand anything like that, can you?’ Cheryl had a ferocious scowl she seldom bothered to restrain. ‘She may not have been murdered. Hundreds of people go missing every year.’
‘There’ll be more to it than we know,’ Fee said. ‘They wouldn’t make all this fuss if she’d just gone off. It’s funny, I remember her being in the same crafts group as I was for O Levels. They said she wanted to go on and be a teacher and the rest of them thought it was funny because all they wanted was to get married. Go on, turn it off, Phil, if you want. There isn’t going to be any more about Rebecca anyway.’
‘Why can’t they put nice things on the news?’ said Christine. ‘You’d think they would be just as sensational. It can’t be that there aren’t any nice things, can it?’
‘Disasters are news,’ said Philip. ‘but it might be an idea to try your kind for a change. They could have a list of today’s rescues, all the people saved from drowning, all those who’d been in car crashes and didn’t get killed.’ He added on a more sombre note, ‘A list of kids who haven’t been abused and girls who’ve got away from attackers.’
He switched off the set. There was a positive pleasure in seeing the picture dwindle and swiftly vanish. Fee hadn’t gloated over Rebecca Neave’s disa
ppearance but speculation about it obviously interested her far more than discussing one of Christine’s ‘nice things’ would have. He made a rather artificial effort to talk about something else.
‘What time are we all supposed to be going out tomorrow?’
‘That’s right, change the subject. That’s so like you, Phil.’
‘He said to be there by about six.’ Christine looked rather shyly at the girls and then back to Philip. ‘I want you all to come out into the garden a minute. Will you? I want to ask your advice.’
It was a small bleak garden, best at this time of the day when the sun was setting and the shadows were long. A row of Leyland cypresses prevented the neighbours from seeing over the fence at the end. In the middle of the grass was a circular slab of concrete and on the concrete stood a birdbath and a statue, side by side. There was no moss growing on the concrete but weeds pushed their way through a split under the birdbath. Christine laid her hand on the statue’s head and gave it a little stroke in the way she might have caressed a child. She looked at her children in that apprehensive way she had, half-diffident, half-daring.
‘What would you say if I said I’d like to give Flora to him for a present?’
Fee seldom hesitated, was invariably strong. ‘You can’t give people statues as presents.’
‘Why not, if they like them?’ Christine had said. ‘He said he liked her and she’d look nice in his garden. He said she reminded him of me.’
Fee said as if their mother hadn’t spoken, ‘You give people chocolates or a bottle of wine.’
‘He brought me wine.’ Christine said this in a wondering and gratified tone, as if taking a bottle of wine to the house of a woman you were having dinner with, was exceptionally thoughtful and generous. She moved her hand along Flora’s marble shoulder. ‘She’s always reminded me of a bridesmaid. It’s the flowers, I expect.’
Philip had never looked closely at the marble girl before. Flora was just the statue which had stood by the pond in their garden at home ever since he could remember. His father, he had been told, had bought her while he and Christine were on their honeymoon. She stood about three feet high and was a copy in miniature of a Roman statue. In her left hand she held a sheaf of flowers, with the other she reached for the hem of her robe, lifting it away from her right ankle. Both her feet were on the ground yet she seemed to be walking or dancing some sedate measure. But it was her face which was particularly beautiful. Looking at her, Philip realised that generally he didn’t find the faces of ancient Greek or Roman statues attractive. Their heavy jaws and long bridgeless noses gave them a forbidding look. Standards of beauty had changed perhaps. Or else it was something more delicate that appealed to him. But Flora’s face was how a beautiful living girl’s might be today, the cheekbones high, the chin round, the upper lip short and the mouth the loveliest conjunction of tenderly folded lips. It was like a living girl’s but for the eyes. Flora’s eyes, extremely wide apart, seemed to gaze at far horizons with an expression remote and pagan.
‘I’ve thought for ages she was wasted here,’ said Christine. ‘She looks silly. Well, what I really mean is, she makes the rest of it look silly.’
It was true. The statue was too good for her surroundings. ‘Like putting champagne in a plastic cup,’ said Philip.
‘That’s it exactly.’
‘You can give her away if you want to,’ Cheryl said. ‘She’s yours. She’s not ours. Dad gave her to you.’
‘I think of all the things as being ours,’ said Christine.
‘He’s got a lovely garden, he says. I think I’d feel better about Flora if I knew she was in her proper setting. Do you know what I mean?’
She looked at Philip. No amount of proselytising on the part of her daughters could persuade her of the equality of the sexes, no pressure from newspapers, magazines or television convince her. Her husband was dead so she looked to her son, not her eldest child, for decisions, rulings, counsel.
‘We’ll take her with us tomorrow,’ Philip said.
It didn’t seem so very important at the time. Why should it? It didn’t seem one of those life or death decisions like whether or not to marry, have a child, change a career, have or not have the vital surgery. Yet it was as significant as any of those.
Of course it was to be a long time before he thought of it in those terms. He tested Flora’s weight, lifting her up an inch or two. She was as heavy as he had expected. He suddenly found himself thinking of Flora as a symbol of his mother, who had come to his father on his marriage and was now to be passed on to Gerard Arnham. Did that mean Christine was contemplating marrying him? They had met the previous Christmas at Philip’s uncle’s office party and it had been a slow courtship, if courtship it was. That might in part have been due to the fact that Arnham was always going abroad for his company. Arnham had only once been to this house, as far as Philip knew. Now they were going to meet him. That made it seem as if things were taking a more serious turn.
His mother said, ‘I don’t think we’d better take Hardy.’ The little dog, the Jack Russell Christine had named after Hardy Amies because she liked the clothes he designed, had come into the garden and stood close beside her. She bent down and patted his head. ‘He doesn’t like dogs. I don’t mean he’d be cruel to them or anything.’ She spoke as if an antipathy to dogs often implied a willingness to torture them. ‘He just doesn’t care for them much. I could tell he didn’t like Hardy that evening he was here.’
Philip went back into the house and Fee said, ‘Seeing Flora reminded me Rebecca Neave once made a girl’s head.’
‘What do you mean, made a girl’s head?’
‘At school. In pottery. She made it in clay. It was lifesize. The teacher made her break it up, she wouldn’t have it put in the kiln, because we were supposed to be making pots. And, just imagine, she may be lying dead somewhere now.’
‘I’d rather not imagine, thanks. I’m not fascinated by these things the way you are.’
Fee took Hardy on to her lap. He always came wooing people at this hour, hoping for a walk. ‘It’s not that I’m fascinated, Phil. We’re all interested in murder and violence and crime. They say it’s because we’ve got elements of it in ourselves. We’re all capable of murder, we all sometimes want to attack people, strike them, hurt them.’
‘I don’t.’
‘He really doesn’t, Fee,’ said Cheryl. ‘You know he doesn’t. And he doesn’t like talking about it, so shut up.’
He was carrying Flora because he was the only male among them and therefore presumably the strongest. Without a car it was a terrible journey from Cricklewood to Buckhurst Hill. They had got the bus down to Kilburn station, the tube from Kilburn to Bond Street and there waited ages for a Central Line train. It had been just before four when they left the house and it was ten to six now.
Philip had never been to this part of metropolitan Essex before. It reminded him a little of Barnet where living had been gracious and the sun seemed always to shine. There were houses in the street they were walking up but they were hidden by hedges and trees and it might have ben a country lane. His mother and sisters were all ahead of him now and he hurried up, shifting Flora on to the other side. Cheryl, who had nothing to carry but was wearing high heels with her very tight jeans, said in a moaning way, ‘Is it much further, Mum?’
‘I don’t know, dear. I only know what Gerard told me, up the hill and the fourth turning on the right.’ Christine was always saying things were nice. ‘Nice’ was her favourite word. ‘It’s a very nice part, isn’t it?’
She was wearing a pink linen dress with a white jacket. She had white beads and pink lipstick and looked the sort of woman who would scarcely stay single for long. Her hair was soft and fluffy and the sunglasses hid the lines under her eyes. Philip had noticed that though she had her wedding ring on – he had never seen her without it – she had left off her engagement ring. Christine probably had some unexpressed dotty reason for doing this, such as that engagement rings represented the love of a living husband while wedding rings were a social requirement for widows as well as wives. Fee, of course, was wearing her own engagement ring. The better to show it off, Philip conjectured, she carried something she called a clutch bag in her left hand. The formal dark blue suit with a too-long skirt made her look older than she was, too old, Arnham might think, to be Christine’s daughter.