Wexford 10 - A Sleeping Life by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

change in these dissolute times. I can think of all sorts of fascinating possibilities in that one, only I wouldn’t like to burn your chaste ears. Shall we try to be realistic?’
       ‘I always do,’ said Burden gloomily. He sat down and rested his elbows on Wexford’s desk. ‘She’s been dead since Monday night, and it’s Sunday now and we don’t even know where she lived. It seems hopeless.’
       'That’s not being realistic, that’s defeatist. She can’t be traced through her name or her description, therefore she must be traced by other means. In a negative sort of way, all this has shown us something. It’s shown us that her murder is connected with that other life of hers. A secret life is almost always a life founded on something illicit or illegal. In the course of it she did something which gave someone a reason to kill her.’
       ‘You mean we can’t dismiss the secret life and concentrate on the circumstantial and concrete evidence we have?’
       ‘Like what? No weapon, no witnesses, no smell of a motive?’ Wexford hesitated and said more slowly, ‘She seldom came back here, but she had been coming once or twice a year. The local people knew her by sight, knew who she was. Therefore, I don’t think this is a case of someone returning home after a long absence and being recognized - to put it melodramatically, Mike - by an old enemy. Nor was her real life here or her work or her interests or her involvements. Those, whatever they were, she left behind in London.’
       ‘You don’t think the circumstances point to local knowledge?’
       ‘I don’t. I say her killer knew she was coming here and followed her, though not, possibly, with premeditation to kill. He or she came from London, having known her in that other life of hers. So never mind the locals. We have to come to grips with the London life, and I’ve got an idea how to do it. Through that wallet she had in her handbag.’
       ‘I’m listening,’ said Burden with a sigh.
       ‘I’ve got it here.’ Wexford produced the wallet from a drawer in his desk. ‘See the name printed in gold on the inside? Silk and Whitebeam.’
       ‘Sorry, it doesn’t mean a thing to me.’
       ‘They’re a very exclusive leather shop in Jermyn Street. That wallet’s new. I think there’s a chance they might remember who they sold it to, and I’m sending Loring up first thing in the morning to ask them. Rhoda Comfrey had a birthday last week. If she didn’t buy it herself, I’m wondering what are the chances of someone else having bought it for her as a gift.’
       ‘For a woman?'
       ‘Why not? If she was in need of a wallet. Women carry banknotes as much as we do. The days of giving women a bottle of perfume or a brooch are passing, Mike. They are very nearly the people now. Sic transit gloria mundi.’
       ‘Sic transit gloria Sunday, if you ask me,’ said Burden.
       Wexford laughed. His subordinate and friend could still surprise him.

Chapter 6

    As soon as he had let himself into his house, Dora came out from the kitchen, beckoned him into it and shut the door. ‘Sylvia’s here.’
       There is nothing particularly odd or unusual about a married daughter visiting her mother on a Sunday afternoon, and Wexford said, ‘Why shouldn’t she be? What d’you mean?’
       ‘She’s left Neil. She just walked out after lunch and came here.’
       ‘Are you saying she’s seriously left Neil just like that? She’s walked out on her husband and come home to mother? I can’t believe it.’
       ‘Darling, it’s true. Apparently, they’ve been having a continuous quarrel ever since Wednesday night. He promised to take her to Paris for a week in September - his sister was going to have the children - and now he says he can’t go, he’s got to go to Sweden on business. Well, in the resulting row Sylvia said she couldn’t stand it any longer, being at home all day with the children and