Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

stair well yawned ahead of him.
    Wexford got up to leave. Halfway across the room he stopped and looked at Villiers, suddenly puzzled. It was impossible to believe the man could look worse, more ill, more corpselike, than when he had first seen him. But now as he stood in the doorway, one thin arm outflung, all vestige of colour, yellow-greyish pigment as it was, had drained from his skin.
    Alarmed, Wexford started forward. Villiers gave a strange little gasp and fainted into his arms.
    *  *  *
    ‘Here we are, then,’ said Crocker, who was the police doctor and Wexford’s friend. ‘Elizabeth Nightingale was a well-nourished and extremely well-preserved woman of about forty.’
    ‘Forty-one,’ said Wexford, taking off his raincoat and hanging it on the peg behind his office door. A couple of rounds of beef sandwiches and a flask of coffee, sent down from the canteen, awaited him on the corner of his desk. He sat down in the big swivel chair and, after looking distastefully at the topmost sandwich which was beginning to curl at the edges, started on it with a sigh.
    ‘Death,’ said the doctor, ‘resulted from a fractured skull and multiple injuries to the brain. At least a doxen blows were struck by a not very blunt metal instrument. I don’t mean an axe or a knife, but something with sharper edges to it, for instance, than a lead pipe or a poker. Death occurred—well, you know how hard it is to estimate—say after eleven P.M. and before one A.M. ’
    Burden was sitting against the wall. Above his head hung the official map of the Kingsmarkham district on which the dark mass of Cheriton Forest showed like the silhouette of a crouching cat. ‘Nothing’s come of our search of the grounds and the forest so far,’ he said. ‘What sort of a weapon had you in mind?’
    ‘Not my job, Mike old boy,’ said Crocker, moving to the window and staring down at the High Street below. Possibly he found this familiar sight boring, for he breathed heavily on the pane and began to draw on the breath film a pattern that might have been a pot plant or a diagram of the human respiratory system. ‘I just wouldn’t have a clue. Could be a metal vase or even a cooking utensil. Or a fancy ashtray or fire tongs or a tankard.’
    ‘You think?’ said Wexford, munching scornfully. ‘A fellow goes into a wood to murder a woman armed with an eggwhisk, does he, or a saucepan? A bloke sees his wife carrying on with another man so he whips out the carved silver vase he happens to have in his pocket and bops her over the head with it?’
    ‘You don’t mean to say,’ said the doctor, shocked, ‘that you’ve got that pillar of society Quentin Nightingale lined up for this job?’
    ‘He’s human, isn’t he? He has his passions. Frankly, I’d rather plump for that brother of hers, that Villiers. Only he looks too ill to lift a knife and fork, let alone hit anyone with a frying pan.’ Wexford finished his sandwiches and replaced the cap on the Thermos flask. Then he swivelled round and gazed thoughtfully at the doctor. ‘I’ve been talking to Villiers,’ he said. ‘He impressed me as a very sick man, among other things. Yellow skin, trembling hands, the lot. Just now, when I was leaving, he fainted dead away. For a minute I thought he was dead, but he came to all right and I got him over to the Manor.’
    ‘He’s a patient of mine,’ said Crocker, rubbing out his drawing with the heel of his hand and revealing to Wexford his favourite view of ancient housetops and old Sussex trees. ‘The Nightingales go privately to some big nob but Villiers has been on my list for years.’
    ‘And you,’ said Wexford sardonically, ‘being a true priest of the medical confessional, are going to keep whatever’s wrong with him locked up in your Hippocratic bosom?’
    ‘Well, I would if there was anything to lock. Only it so happens that he’s as fit as you are.’ Crocker eyed Wexford’s bulk, the purple veins prominent on his