Not In The Flesh by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

here,” said Maeve Tredown, opening a door.
       It was a large room and, in spite of the warmth outside, very cold. Its window faced north and overlooked a lawn surrounded by trees, predominantly evergreens. The furniture was unnoticeable, nondescript chairs and sofas and tables. The carpet, patterned in reds and browns, reminded him of nothing so much as a dinner plate off which someone had just eaten a meal of fish and chips with tomato ketchup and a good sprinkling of vinegar. What dominated the place were books, hundreds of them, possibly thousands, in unglazed bookshelves that covered three walls from floor to ceiling. The fourth side of the room was mostly a window and one in dire need of cleaning. Looking out, her back to the room, stood a tall thin woman with long black hair.
       “You'd better sit down.”
       Maeve Tredown spoke as if she begrudged every word she uttered. She was small and round with a face like a pretty piglet's and dyed blond hair, a surely harmless and inoffensive woman. Just the same, Wexford felt that if he had been shown a photograph of her and told she was the matron of a notoriously cruel old people's home or the director of a brutal boot camp, he wouldn't have been surprised. It was all to do with her economical and clipped speech, the iciness in her light blue eyes, and the severe gray flannel suit she wore.
       “I don't know what it is you want.” She glanced in the direction of the other woman, seemed to be considering whether there was any point in introducing her, and finally decided that there was no help for it. “Claudia,” she said, “I suppose these men are as likely to want to talk to you as to me.”
       In turning round, the black-haired woman caused something of a shock. From the back she might have been twenty-five. When she faced them, even in the shadow that fell across her face, she at once became close on sixty. She was extravagantly thin, with the thinness that is natural and unaffected by dieting or overeating, and her face was deeply lined. She came up to them, held out a long-fingered, rope-veined hand, smiled, and was immediately transformed into a ravaged beauty.
       “How do you do? I'm Claudia Ricardo. Well, I was Tredown when I was married to Owen, but I reverted when we were divorced. Ricardo was my maiden name, though I wasn't actually a maiden for very long.”
       Burden was less able to deal with this sort of thing than Wexford. He resorted to ignoring it and speaking in the stolid gloomy tone of a copper on the beat. They had, he said, some questions they would like to ask. Wexford would probably have enjoyed himself at Mrs. Tredown's expense and engaged in repartee with Claudia Ricardo, but Burden's technique may have been more effective. “We'd like to speak to Mr. Tredown as well.”
       “No can do,” said Maeve in a phrase Wexford hadn't heard for years.
       “Yes, I understand he's ill,” Wexford said. “We'll disturb him as little as possible.”
       “It's not that he's ill. He is, but that's not the point. He's working.”
       Claudia Ricardo gave another of her smiles, a less charming one this time. “My wife-in-law—that's what we call each other—likes to keep his nose to the grindstone. I mean, his books are our bread and butter. She cracks the whip, don't you, Em darling?”
       It was Maeve Tredown who smiled this time. She appeared not to be the least offended but fixed Claudia with a conspiratorial smile, accompanied by a companionable wrinkling of the nose, a kind of what-a-one-you-are expression.
       Wexford thought he preferred her when she was taciturn. “Very well. It's not necessary to see him today,” he said. “Perhaps you can answer a few questions. No doubt you know a body was discovered in Grimble's Field. We're having some difficulty of identification. Are you aware of anyone going missing in the area about eleven years ago?”
       “How would we?” This was Maeve who had seated