The Water's Lovely (39 page)

Was she justified? Ismay didn't know. If she had fought off his advances and killed him in self-defence, well, yes. But in cold blood? A calculated move because he had disgusted her? ‘Do you think you were justified?'

‘No,' said Heather. ‘Not really. Do you?'

‘I can't say. I don't seem to know anything any more.'

‘What are you going to do? If you're going to do anything would you let us have our honeymoon first? For Ed's sake?'

They heard his key in the lock. He came in, kissed Heather, kissed Ismay, and began talking about his mother and the wedding. But Ismay thought his eyes were unhappy, in a steady, accepting, resigned sort of way.

In the days which followed Ismay spent as much time as she could with Heather, not as difficult as it might have been, for Andrew was occupied in house-hunting. And it was ‘house', not ‘flat'. His father had promised him the deposit on a mortgage if he would consent to
buy a mews house. Douglas Campbell-Sedge was prejudiced against flats. His children lived in stylish houses in fashionable places. Ismay went with Heather to buy clothes to wear in a hot sunny climate at Christmas time, sundresses and swimming costumes. She told Andrew she had been looking at furniture and carpets for the new house.

Edmund and Heather left for their honeymoon in the middle of December. On the same day Andrew took Ismay to look at a little house he had found in a pretty mews in Chelsea, cobbled and with antique lamp-posts and troughs for flowers, looking, he said as mewses should. She liked it, he told the estate agent they would have it and that evening he got in touch with his solicitor. Ismay didn't know he had a solicitor but, on reflection, she saw that of course he would have one, inevitably.

Marion and Barry came back from India. He had been disappointed in the subcontinent. There was a great deal more dirt than he had expected. The widespread poverty got him down. There were too many people about who reminded him of that poor wretch who had asked for change outside his house the evening before they were married. The food, too, failed to come up to expectations, the meat and fish being tasteless and tough compared with what he got at the Maharanee and the Pushkar. He wasn't, however, disappointed in his wife who was sweetness itself, something which went a long way to consoling him for the gas, electricity and water bills that Fowler had forwarded and which were waiting for him on his return. Although they were careful not to drink the water, they both came back with what Barry called ‘tummy bugs'.

Christmas chez Litton was a livelier affair than it had been the year before. Joyce and Duncan Crosbie
came, and brought Avice Conroy with them. Her new Croatian au pair was rabbit-minding. The unexpected guests were Marion and Barry Fenix, and their friend ex-Superintendent Alan Ambury who had promised to come in ‘just for drinks' the day before. Marion had made her peace with Irene, humbling herself and apologising profusely – she had done much the same with Avice – for, as she put it, she could afford to do so now. Much to her relief, Barry's impressions of the subcontinent had put him off Indian dress and he came in a new charcoal worsted lounge suit. Marion was in Alexander McQueen with Prada shoes. There was a lot of kissing and expressions of regret that Edmund and Heather weren't there.

‘They've gone to a place called Kanda in Sumatra,' Irene told everyone. ‘No one else knows but Edmund naturally confided in me.'

Barry and his wife went home for Christmas dinner, curried turkey, for Barry's disappointment in India didn't extend to his own cooking, and they took ex-Superintendent Ambury with them but not before he had asked for Irene's phone number and given her his.

Andrew met Ismay's mother at last. He seemed embarrassed by the experience, a condition Ismay had never seen him suffering before. He managed to be polite to Pamela and Michael but was visibly relieved to make his escape and take Ismay out to lunch at San Lorenzo. She thought about Heather and Heather's confession more than she liked. Every day she thought about it and about Edmund knowing and what she should do. If anything. Kieron Thorpe had been committed for trial to a higher court. Andrew said it would be months, maybe even a year, before the trial took place. At least Heather had had nothing to do with that.

She faced Andrew across the table and ate the delicious food and drank champagne. He had given her a gold bracelet for Christmas. She was wearing it. She thought, I must decide about Heather. Perhaps I have decided – to do nothing. In a minute Andrew would wonder why she was so quiet, he would ask her why. She looked up and saw that he had turned his head. His eyes were fixed on a girl who sat waiting, alone, at a table nearby, a fair-haired, pretty, waif-like girl in a translucent white dress. It's nothing, she said to herself, it means nothing. He turned back to her and smiled.

The earthquake and hurricane and floods in Indonesia and Sri Lanka dominated news broadcasts from the day after Boxing Day onwards. ‘Tsunami' was a new word to most viewers but it was soon on everyone's lips. Southern India, the Thai coastline, the islands that Irene still called the East Indies, though she wasn't quite sure what the term comprised. She talked about it on the phone with her new friend Alan Ambury.

‘Sumatra,' he said. ‘The Nicobar Islands, the Andamans.'

‘Sumatra?'

‘Places one has never heard of, like Banda Aceh.'

‘My son is in Sumatra.'

‘It's a vast area, Irene. I shouldn't worry.'

‘You don't want to worry about that,' Andrew said, signing the contract for the purchase of their house in Chelsea. ‘I remember when some mate of my mama's was in a hurricane in Guatemala or she thought she was. Of course I got on to my pal in the Foreign Office but it was all a storm in a teacup if you'll forgive the pun.'

Ismay said, ‘But the worst-hit place is Kanda in Aceh, and Ed's mother said that's where they went.'

Andrew's casting up of eyes showed plainly what he thought of any family connections of Edmund Litton's.

She watched television, one news after another. The water wasn't lovely. One huge wave and then another and another, the engulfing of land, the destruction and sweeping away of fragile structures. Four British citizens staying in a beach hotel in Kanda …

‘Their names cannot be released until next-of-kin have been informed.'

Next-of-kin would be Heather's mother and Edmund's mother. Ismay lived, moved, wandered in a daze. She was afraid to show much to Andrew but at last she couldn't help herself and she threw herself into his arms, begging him to find out, to tell her the worst, anything to end this. He didn't fail her.

‘You're wonderful,' she said. ‘What would I do without you?'

‘You don't have to do without me,' he said.

He gave her a drink and went into the bedroom to phone the pal in the Foreign Office in private. When he came back, after a long time, enmity forgotten, quarrels past, his face told her. He held her close, telling her she had no need of anyone else. Hadn't he said he would love her for ever?

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared.

But only for a while …

It is impossible for Chief Inspector Wexford not to wonder how terrible it would be to discover that one of his daughters had been murdered. Sylvia has always been a cause for concern. Living alone with her two children, she is pregnant again. What will happen to the child? The relationship between father and daughter has always been uneasy. But the current situation also provokes an emotional division between Wexford and his wife, Dora.

One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue their inquiries with a diligence and humanity that make Ruth Rendell's detective stories enthralling, exciting and very touching.

SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 978–0-7704–2993–5

Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an “S” rather than a “C”) is superstitious about the number 13. In the musty old house where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick-and-span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her.

The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down.

Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby—a woman who would not look at him twice.

Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 978–0-7704–2961–4

The first victim was discovered with a bite on her neck. The police traced the DNA to the girl's boyfriend, but the tabloids had already dubbed the murderer “The Rottweiler,” and the name stuck.

The latest body was found near Inez Ferry's shop in Marylebone. Someone spotted a figure fleeing into the shadows, but couldn't say even if it was man or woman. The only other clues are the murderer's penchant for strangling his prey, and then removing a small token—a necklace, a lighter.

To make ends meet, widowed Inez Ferry takes in tenants above her antique store. The unpredictable and obsessive acts of the serial murderer begin to disturb the lives of the heterogeneous little community of lodgers, especially when suspicion grows that one of them might be “The Rottweiler.”

SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 978–0-7704–2948–5