Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

were, just as she had again forgotten where she was. Her sister had been to see her and made her very tired and various strangers had moved her and pummelled her in a familiar manner that made her angry. Then someone had told her that Jerome was dead and had waited for her to cry. Mrs Fanshawe had twisted her rings - they were a great comfort to her, those rings - and said:
       ‘Then it’s all mine now, mine and Nora’s.’
       They thought she was wandering and they went away. She was glad to see the back of them with their interfering ways and their lack of respect. There was only one person she wanted to see and that was why she stared so searchingly into the young pretty face of the policewoman. But she had been in a coma, she wasn’t mad. She knew very well this wasn’t the right face. ‘Am I in London?’ she asked clearly and briskly.
       ‘No, Mrs Fanshawe,’ said the sergeant, thinking how quavering and weak her voice was. ‘You’re in Stowerton Royal Infirmary, Stowerton in Sussex.’
       ‘You seem very well-informed,’ said Mrs Fanshawe, pleased because she had succeeded so well in pulling herself together. ‘Perhaps you can tell me why my daughter doesn’t come to see me? Haven’t they told her I’m here? Nora would want to know. She’d come home.’
       ‘Oh, Mrs Fanshawe. . .’ The policewoman sounded very wretched, almost distraught, and catching her eye, Sergeant Camb gave her a sharp reproving glance. Better leave it, the look said. Maybe it’s more merciful this way. Let her learn about it by degrees. The mind has its own way of softening blows, he thought sententiously.
       ‘Now back to the - er, accident,’ he said. ‘Just try and see if you can tell me what happened when you left Eastover. It was getting dark and there wasn’t much traffic on the road, it being a Monday. It had been raining and the road was wet. Now, Mrs Fanshawe?’
       ‘My husband was driving,’ she began and she wondered why the man’s face wore such a sloppy expression. Perhaps he had noticed her rings. She slid them up and down her fingers, suddenly remembering that the five of them were worth nearly twenty thousand pounds. ‘Jerome was driving. . .’ What a silly name it was. Like Three Men in a Boat. That made her giggle, although the sound came out like a harsh cackle. ‘I sat beside him, of course, and I was knitting. I must have been knitting. I always do when Jerome drives. He drives so fast,’ she said querulously. ‘Much too fast and he never takes any notice when I tell him to go slower, so I do my knitting. To keep my mind off it, you know.’
       Mean and selfish Jerome was. A man of fifty-five hadn’t any business to drive like a crazy teenager. She had told him that, but he had ignored her like he ignored everything else she ever said. Still, she was used to being ignored. Nora never took any notice of what she said either. When she came to think of it, the only thing she and Jerome had ever agreed about was what a difficult, trying and utterly maddening creature Nora was. It was exactly like her to go away and not get in touch with her parents. Jerome would have something to say about that. . . Then there swam pleasantly into her muddled mind the recollection that Jerome would never have anything to say about anything again, never drive at eighty-five or pick on Nora or do those other terrible and humiliating things. Tonight, when she felt better, she would write to Nora and tell her her father was dead. With Jerome out of the way and all that money for them selves, she felt they would have a much happier relationship. . .
       ‘I was knitting a jumper for Nora,’ she said. What a marvellous constitution she must have to remember that after all she’d been through! ‘Not that she deserved it, the naughty girl.’ Now, why had she said that? Nora had been naughty much naughtier than ever before, but for the life of her Dorothy Fanshawe couldn’t remember of what