Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

Margolis’s car. It commanded Stowerton crossroads. From the roof of the showroom to the pinnacle of the little glass cubicle where Cawthorne sat at the receipt of custom, hung a yellow and scarlet banner: Treble stamps with four gallons . These colours matched the paint on the eight pumps and the neon tubing on the arch to the service entrance. Burden could remember when, not so long ago, a copse of silver birches had stood here and he remembered the efforts of the rural preservation society to prevent Cawthorne’s coming. The last of the birches huddled by the showroom wall like bewildered aborigines crowded out by a conqueror from the new world.
    By contrast the house behind was old. A triumph of the gothic revival, it sported pinnacles, turrets, gables and aggressive drainpipes. Formerly known as Birch House, the home of two spinster sisters, it had been furnished by Cawthorne and his wife with every conceivable Victorian monstrosity. The mantelpieces were fringed and set about with green glass fluted vases, stuffed birds and wax fruit under domes. Cawthorne, after a dubious look at Rupert Margolis, took them into a sitting room and went away to fetch his wife.
    ‘It’s the latest fad,’ Margolis said morosely. ‘All this Victorian junk.’ Above the fireplace hung an oleograph of a woman in Grecian dress holding a lily. He gave it an angry glance. ‘Cawthorne must be sixty and his wife’s a hag. They’re mad about young people. I expect the young people think they had this stuff for wedding presents.’ And he laughed vindictively.
    Burden thought he had seldom met anyone so uncharitable, but when Mrs Cawthorne came in he began to see what Margolis meant. She was extravagantly thin and her dress had a very short skirt and very short sleeves. Her hair was tinted primrose and styled like the head of a feather duster.
    ‘Why, hallo, Roo. You are a stranger.’ Burden was suddenly sure that she had met Margolis perhaps only once before, and here she was giving him pet names like a character out of Winnie the Pooh . A lion hunter. She bounced into a quilted and buttoned armchair, showing a lot of scrawny leg. Margolis took absolutely no notice of her. ‘What’s all this about Ann, then?’
    ‘We hope you’ll be able to help us, Mrs Cawthorne,’ Burden said heavily, but it was to her husband that he turned his eyes. He was an elderly, white-moustached man, with a decided military bearing. If the growing fashion among the young of wearing soldier’s uniforms spread to older generations, Cawthorne ought to catch on. He would look fine in a hussar’s tunic. ‘You had a party on Tuesday evening, Mr Cawthorne. Miss Margolis was invited. I understand she didn’t turn up.’
    ‘Right,’ Cawthorne said briskly. ‘She dropped in in the afternoon, said she’d be sure to be here. Never turned up. I’ve been damned worried, I can tell you. Glad to see you folk have been called in.’
    ‘Yes, and Dickie Fairfax came all the way down from London just to see her.’ Mrs Cawthorne moved closer to Margolis’s side. ‘They used to be friends. Very close friends, I may add.’ She fluttered beaded eyelashes.
    ‘Fairfax, the writer?’ Burden had never heard of him until that morning, but he did not wish to be branded a philistine for the second time that day.
    Mrs Cawthorne nodded. ‘Poor Dickie was rather peeved when she didn’t turn up and drifted away around eleven.’
    ‘Left one of my best brandy glasses on a diesel pump,’ said Cawthorne gruffly. ‘Damned inconsiderate blighter.’
    ‘But he was here all the evening?’ Between eight and eleven, Burden thought. That was the crucial time if the anonymous letter was to be trusted.
    ‘He was here all right. Came on the dot of eight and got started in on the hard stuff right away.’
    ‘You are so mean,’ Mrs Cawthorne said unpleasantly. ‘Mean and jealous. Just because Ann preferred him.’ She gave a tinny laugh. ‘She and Russell have a sort of