A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

was a man’s voice that said, “What town?”
    It was odd that he hadn’t thought about that, but immediately it came back to him, the name of the exchange, though Hilbert’s phone had been disconnected.
    “Colchester,” he said.
    Rufus finished his vodka, slid a cigarette out of the packet on the shelf in front of him.
    “Chipstead,” he enunciated carefully, and then he spelled it. “C Charlie, H Harry, I Ivan, P Peter, S sugar, T Tommy, E Edward, A Adam, D David.”
    “A apple,” the voice corrected him.
    “Okay, A apple,” said Rufus, conscious of his Freudian slip. “Wyvis Hall, Nunes, Colchester.”
    He waited, anticipating the usually annoying rejoinder that they had no subscriber of that name on record. In this case it would possibly be that they had the name of the subscriber but …
    The operator interrupted this thought.
    “The number is six-two-six-two-oh-one-three.”
    Rufus put the receiver back, feeling a clutch at his stomach as if a hard hand had made a grab at the muscles.

4
    THE PICTURE, VERY LIKE the one Rufus Fletcher had taken in the summer of 1976, occupied the screen for about fifteen seconds. The whole item was allowed no more than four times that in the BBC’s Sunday evening news broadcast at 6:30. The other forty-five seconds were taken up by a policeman talking to a reporter about having nothing to say except that there would be an inquest. But Shiva and Lili Manjusri saw the picture and so did Rufus Fletcher. Adam Verne-Smith, unwinding in Puerto de la Cruz, did not, of course, see it. He did not even see an English newspaper. They were expensive to buy and came a day late. He did not want to be reminded of home, and the only paper he even glanced at was the International Herald Tribune, a copy of which Anne found on the beach.
    His father, at home in Edgware, said to his wife: “Good God, Wyvis Hall, as I live and breathe.”
    Beryl Verne-Smith peered, but the picture immediately vanished.
    “Yes, I suppose it was.”
    The policeman talked, the reporter trying to jog him into revelations and failing. In the background autumnal trees could be seen and a church on the summit of a low hill. Lewis Verne-Smith sat shaking his head, less as a gesture of denial than of a generalized despair at the state of the world. It was not that unpleasant memories were evoked, for these were always with him, his existence was inseparable from that old bitterness, but that a sight of the house, even the glimpse of a photograph, revived the precise feelings he had had—why, it must be getting on for eleven years ago.
    “Ten and a half,” said his wife.
    “I shall have to get in touch with the police. No two ways about it, I shall have to get in touch with them.”
    “Not this evening surely?” said Beryl, who wanted to watch Mastermind.
    Lewis said nothing. The room in which they were sitting underwent the curious shrinking process to which it was subject whenever he was reminded of Wyvis Hall or his uncle Hilbert or even if the county of Suffolk were mentioned. Suddenly it grew small and poky. The brick side wall of his neighbor’s house seemed to have moved itself four or five feet farther toward the dividing fence, so that it loomed offensively. Lewis got up and pulled the curtains across with a pettish jerk of his hands.
    “Shouldn’t you wait until Adam gets back?” Beryl said.
    “Why? What would that be in aid of?”
    Beryl meant that Adam had been among the previous owners of Wyvis Hall while her husband had not, but she knew better than to point this out.
    “There is no one living knows that lovely place better than I.”
    “That’s true.”
    “I shan’t wait till Adam returns,” Lewis said in that manner that had once led his daughter to call him the Frog Footman, “but I shall wait until tomorrow.”
    Men and women do not usually put their baser feelings and intentions into words, not even in the deep recesses of their own minds. So Lewis did not say, even to himself,