Wexford 14 - The Veiled One by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

not a thing they can do about it.’
       At this point the door opened and Ralph Robson came in, leaning on his stick. He had a dressing gown on, but with a shirt and pair of slacks underneath it. ‘I heard voices.’ His flat but beaky face was turned on Wexford with a puzzled look.
       ‘Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham CID.’
       ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Robson said, sounding anything but pleased. ‘You coming here has saved me a phone call. Maybe one of you can tell me what’s become of the shopping?’
       ‘The shopping, Mr Robson?’
       ‘The shopping Gwen got on Thursday, as was in the boot of the blessed car presumably. I can see I can’t have the car back yet awhile, but the shopping’s a different story. There’s meat in those bags, there’s a loaf and butter and I don’t know what else. I don’t say I’m poor, but I’m not so rolling in money as I can just let that lot go, right?’

    Self-preservation or a tenacity for life overcame grief. Wexford knew this, but it never ceased mildly to surprise him just the same. It might be that this man felt no grief; it might be that he was responsible for his wife’s death, but it might only be that he had ceased to feel much emotion for anyone or anything. That sometimes happened to people as they aged and Wexford had noticed it dispassionately but with an inner shiver. Yet Burden said he had wept when first told.
       ‘We’ll get it back to you later today,’ was all Wexford said.
       He had carefully gone over the contents of the shopping bag himself before having the perishable items placed in one of the police canteen fridges. There had been nothing among them to excite much interest: mostly food, but things from the chemist as well - toothpaste and talcum powder - and from the British Home Stores four light-bulbs; all of these contained in a BHS bag, indicating perhaps that she had stopped there first. Mrs Robson’s handbag, which would also soon be returned and which Burden had first looked into in the car park, contained her purse with twenty-two pounds in it, plus some small change and a chequebook from the Trustee Savings Bank. The credit cards were a Visa and the card which the Barringdean Shopping Centre supplied for its patrons. Her handkerchief and the two folded tissues were unused. The letters which had provided the police with her identity and address were from a sister in Leeds and the other - scarcely a letter in any sense - an invitation to a Christmas fashion show at the shop where Wexford had bought Dora’s sweater.
       ‘Are you missing a brown velvet curtain, Mr Robson?’
       ‘Me? No. What do you mean?’
       ‘A curtain which might have been kept in the boot of your car for the purpose, say, of covering up the windscreen in frosty weather?’
       ‘I use newspaper for that.’
       Lesley Arbel said suddenly, ‘Could you eat a bit of lunch, Uncle? A little something light?’
       He bad sat down and was leaning forward in the chair, pressing one hand on his thigh in what seemed genuine pain, his face twisted with it. ‘There’s nothing I fancy, dear.’
       ‘But you’re not still having those pills, are you? The ones that upset your tummy?’
       ‘Doctor took me off the blessed things. There’s some they don’t suit, he said; they can give you ulcers.’
       ‘You’ve got arthritis, have you, Mr Robson?’
       He nodded. ‘You listen,’ he said, ‘and you can hear the hip joint grind.’ To Robson’s evident agony there came a shift of bone in socket and Wexford did hear it, heard with dismay an unhuman ratchet-like sound. ‘It’s a bit of bad luck for me that I’m allergic to the painkillers. Got to grin and bear it. I’m in line for one of those replacement ops, but there’s a waiting list round here of up to three years. God knows what sort of a state I’ll be in three years. It’d be a different story if I could have it done private.’
       This was no