The Vault by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

Dora had phoned Sylvia within an hour and was with her now in her rambling house in the countryside. It rather gratified Wexford to see that both his daughters had bigger houses than he, though of course he now had two. He had joined the ranks of the second-homers. He had become one of those who battle through the nightmare of traffic congestion to reach a country house they will find cold and comfortless. Not in the spring, though, and now with windows open a little way, the stuffiness was past and the air breathable. It was very warm andhe was sitting by one of those windows, looking at the lawn – you could almost see the grass growing longer and longer – when he phoned Burden. He had small hope of the new Detective Superintendent being free on a Saturday night, but Burden had said a quick yes, he’d love to meet.
    As Burden walked back to their table carrying the two glasses of wine, Wexford found himself studying him. It was as if he expected his old friend and one-time subordinate to be changed in appearance, to be taller or heavier or more dignified. Absurd, of course. Only a few months had gone by. Burden was still slender, still perfectly dressed for whatever the occasion happened to be. A Saturday evening drink in a hotel bar? Burden wore grey flannel trousers with a grey nail-head tweed jacket over an open-necked dark green shirt. His hair, once caramel-colour, was now the grey of his jacket. But that, too, was unchanged from their last meeting.
    Inevitably, he asked Wexford what he had been doing. The faint note of concern in his voice was slightly irritating. Wexford told him about Tom Ede, his unorthodox appointment as Ede’s adviser and about the contents of the vault. The four bodies, one of them half-inside a plastic bag of the sort used to cover a bicycle or motorbike. The jewellery. Most of this part had been in the newspapers, had for a week back in May dominated the national dailies. For a moment Wexford had hesitated, but none of this was secret, certainly not from a detective superintendent.
    ‘It’s an intriguing case.’ Even in no more than four words, Burden sounded relieved. What had he expected? That Wexford would be bored with his new life, frustrated, harking back to time past? ‘I suppose there’s no possibility of this Rokeby being the perpetrator?’
    ‘Ede thinks not. And it’s hard to imagine a man applying to the planning authority for an underground room when thiswould mean excavating the very place he least wanted to be discovered. He did apply and the reason his application was rejected appears to have been the neighbours objecting. And you have to remember that it was he who removed the manhole cover. Why would he do that? And if he did, knowing what was underneath, why tell the police?’
    ‘Where was he twelve years ago? You did say twelve years?’
    ‘He and his wife and their children had a house in West Hampstead. They sold it eight years ago and it fetched one and a half million, just enough to buy Orcadia Cottage. It’s hard to see how he could possibly have put three bodies into an underground tomb in a house he very likely didn’t know existed twelve years before.’
    ‘So are you saying,’ said Burden, ‘that whoever did the deed would have had to be living in the house?’
    ‘Not quite, Mike. The manhole is in a paved area or patio with access to a mews by means of a door in the wall. Now that door can be locked and bolted too, but my guess is that it was often left unlocked and unbolted. For instance, it was unlocked when Tom Ede and his sergeant and I went to have a look at the place. It’s quite possible that someone could have brought those bodies there in a car and there has been mention from a neighbour of a man being seen in a big old American car called an Edsel at about the right time.’
    Burden, who liked cars, looked close to nostalgic. He gazed dreamily into the middle distance like one seeing visions. ‘An Edsel Corsair,’ he said. ‘Well,