Murder Being Once Done by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

heaven!’
    Howard grinned. ‘We’ll take the sergeant back to the station and then I want to show you something different. You mustn’t run away with the idea that the whole of Kenbourne is like these rat holes.’
    They dropped Clements at the police station, a blackened pile in Kenbourne Vale High Street whose blue lamp swung from the centre of an arch above an imposing flight of steps. Then Howard, driving the car himself, swung into a hinterland of slums, winding streets with corner shops and pubs and patches of waste ground, once green centres of garden squares, but now wired-in like hard tennis courts and littered with broken bicycles and oil-drums.
    ‘Clements lives up there.’ Howard pointed upwards, apparently through the roof of the car, and, twisting round to peer out of the window, Wexford saw a tower block of flats, a dizzy thirty storeys. ‘Quite a view, I believe. He can see the river and a good deal of the Thames Estuary on a clear day.’
    Now the towers grew thickly around them, a copse of monoliths sprouting out of a shabby and battered jungle. Wexford was wondering if this was the contrast he had expected to admire when a bend in the road brought them suddenly to a clear open space. The change was almost shocking. A second before he had been in one of the drabbest regions he had ever set eyes on, and now, as if a scene had been rapidly shifted on a stage, he saw a green triangle, plane trees, a scattering of Georgian houses. Such, he supposed, was London, ever variable, constantly surprising.
    Howard pulled up in front of the largest of these houses, cream-painted, with long gleaming windows and fluted columns supporting the porch canopy. There were flowerbeds and on each side of the house carefully planned layouts of cypresses and pruned kanzans. A notice fixed to the wall read: Vaie Park. Strictly Private. Parking for Residents only. By order of Notbourne Properties Ltd .
    ‘The old Montfort house,’ said Howard, ‘owned by the company to whom Loveday applied for a job.’
    ‘The paths of glory,’ said his uncle, ‘lead but to the grave. What became of the Montforts, apart from the grave?’
    ‘I don’t know. The man to tell you would be Stephen Dearborn, the chairman of Notbourne Properties. He’s supposed to be a great authority on Kenbourne Vale and its history. The company have bought up a lot of places in Kenbourne and they’ve done a good job smartening them up.’
    It was unfortunate, Wexford thought, that they hadn’t operated on Kenbourne Vale police station. It was in acute need of renovation, of pale paint to modify the gloom of bottle-green walls, mahogany woodwork and dark passages. One of these vaulted corridors led to Howard’s own office, a vast chamber with a plum-red carpet, metal filing cabinets and a view of a brewery. The single bright feature of the room was human and female, a girl with copper beech hair and surely the longest legs in London.
    She looked up from the file she was studying as they entered and said, ‘Mrs Fortune’s been on the phone for you, sir. She said please would you call her back as it’s very urgent.’
    ‘Urgent, Pamela? What’s wrong?’ Howard moved to the phone.
    ‘Apparently your . . .’ The girl hesitated. ‘Your uncle that’s staying with you is missing. He went out five hours ago and he hasn’t come back. Mrs Fortune sounded very worried.’
    ‘My God,’ said Wexford. ‘I was going to Victoria station. I shall be in terribly deep water.’
    ‘You and me both,’ said Howard, and then they began to laugh.

5
    They gladly hear also the young men, yea, and purposely provoke them to talk . . .
    ‘Aunt Dora,’ said Denise icily, ‘is lying down. When her headache is better we’re going over to my brother’s to play bridge.’
    Wexford made a further attempt to placate her. ‘I’m very sorry about all this, my dear. I didn’t mean to upset you, but it went right out of my head.’
    ‘Please don’t worry about