Some Lie and Some Die by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

January. Miss Mowler and Dunsand both moved in in March. He came from Myringham, Miss Mowler from the town here and the Peverils from Brighton. The Robinsons retired here from London, moving in in April, and the Streets came here from up north last month.’
    ‘Do they all have garden gates opening on to that bit of land between them and the quarry?’ asked Wexford.
    ‘Only the Peverils and the two bungalows. There was going to be a path made at the back, but someone got the planning authority to veto that.’
    ‘We’ll go and have a word with your Mrs Peveril.’
    She was a very nervous woman, breathless with nerves. Wexford thought she was in her late thirties. Her hair-style and her clothes were fussy but not in any of the current modes. She dressed evidently in a somewhat modified version of thestyle of her youth, full, longish skirt, stilt heels. He sized her up immediately as belonging to a distinct and not uncommon type, the sheltered and conservative woman who, childless and exclusively dependent on her husband for all emotional needs, tends to be suspicious of other men and of the outside world. Such women will go to almost any lengths to preserve their security and their absolute domestic quietude, so Wexford was rather surprised that Mrs Peveril had volunteered any information about a murder victim.
    ‘All that smoke,’ she said querulously, leading them into an over-neat living room. ‘Isn’t it dreadful? I shan’t be able to get my washing out for hours. It was bad enough having that ghastly racket over the weekend—I didn’t get a wink of sleep. The noise was frightful. I’m not surprised someone got murdered.’
    ‘The murder,’ said Wexford, ‘happened several days before the festival started.’
    ‘Did it?’ Mrs Peveril looked unconvinced. ‘When I heard someone had been killed I said to my husband, they took too many of those drugs they all take and someone went too far. D’you mind not sitting on that cushion? I’ve just put a fresh cover on it.’
    Wexford moved on to a leather-seated and apparently invulnerable chair. ‘I believe you saw the girl?’
    ‘Oh, yes, I saw her. There’s no doubt about that.’ She gave a short nervous laugh. ‘I don’t know many people round here except my friend on the other side of the estate, but I knew that girl wasn’t local. The people round here don’t dress like that.’
    ‘What made you notice her?’
    ‘If you’re going to ask me a lot of questions I’d like my husband to be present. I’ll just call him. He’s working but he won’t mind stopping for a bit. I might say—well, the wrong thing if he wasn’t here. I’ll just call him.’
    Wexford shrugged. In a manner of speaking, the ‘wrong’ thing could easily be the thing he wanted her to say. But shehad asked for her husband as some people ask for their lawyers and probably with less need. He saw no reason to refuse his permission and he got up, smiling pleasantly, when Peveril came in.
    ‘You didn’t see the girl yourself, Mr Peveril?’
    ‘No, I was working.’ Peveril was one of those men who talk about work and working as if labour belongs exclusively to them, as if it is an arduous, exacting cross they must bear, while the rest of the world make carefree holiday. ‘I work a ten-hour day. Have to what with the cost of running this place. The first I heard of any girl was when my wife told me last night she’d given information to the police.’ He glared at Burden. ‘I was working when you lot came.’
    ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t keep you from your work now?’
    ‘Oh, please don’t go, Edward, please don’t. You said I was silly to say what I said last night and now …’
    ‘I can do with a short break,’ said Peveril lugubriously. ‘I’ve been at it since eight, thanks to being made totally idle by a weekend of uproar. I’m worn out.’
    Comforted but still jumpy, his wife rushed into the middle of things. ‘It’s a matter of chance I was here at all. I