Wexford 18 - Harm Done (51 page)

   “Maybe, but children do kill their parents, it’s not unknown, patricide. Yes, by the way, why do we call the act patricide and the perpetrator a parricide?”

   Wexford said rather impatiently, “I don’t know,” and uncharacteristically, “Does it matter?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “In France when they had capital punishments, parricides were sent to the guillotine barefoot and with their faces veiled. I read that somewhere. But Edward and Robert Devenish aren’t parricides.” He hesitated. “I know who did this murder. And it wasn’t any of our suspects. I think,” he added reflectively and rather sadly, “I’ve always known it.”

   Burden simply looked at him, saying nothing.

   “I said I was going to tell you a story.” Someone carried a crate of empty bottles out into the yard, dropping it with a crash. Wexford winced. “Silent,” still less “very silent,” were no longer descriptions that had much relevance. The countryside was as noisy as the town. He took another drink. Beer was still pretty good. “Fay Devenish and her son Edward and, more or less, her son Robert, have told us a man, unknown to Edward, came to the front door of Woodland Lodge that Tuesday morning at eight a.m. Give or take a little, I suppose. It may have been two or three minutes to eight, or two or three minutes past. We also know that Stephen Devenish was stabbed to death, receiving three stab wounds to the chest, at some time between seven forty-five and eight-thirty.

   “The scenario goes like this: At seven thirty-five or seven-forty, again give or take a little, Stephen Devenish, seriously displeased with his wife’s failure to provide fresh orange juice, gets up from the breakfast table, leaves the room, and goes into his study. Perhaps he shuts the door, perhaps he doesn’t. Fay, her sons, and her daughter, Sanchia, remain in the kitchen.”

   “Within five minutes Devenish calls out to his wife from the study - presumably from the study doorway. He calls out, ‘Come in here, Fay,’ or even, knowing him, ‘Come in here, darling.’ She knows what is going to happen and the boys probably know, but she goes. She hasn’t much choice, has she? If she doesn’t go, he’ll fetch her, drag her out of there, an act of violence which Sanchia will witness.”

   “She goes into the study. Devenish tells her she has to be punished, she’s a hopeless housewife and mother, she’s mad, she has to learn, and a load more of that stuff no doubt. He tells her to hold out her hand and he cuts her across the palm. Probably she cries out. She may even scream out, loudly enough for the children in the kitchen to hear. Devenish wipes the knife clean on something - maybe his own handkerchief, which she will have to wash - and tells her to go. Her hand is bleeding heavily, so she goes across the hallway into the cloakroom where she holds it under the cold tap, then wraps it in the towel that hangs there.”

   “Okay,” said Burden a little impatiently. “We know all that.”

   “Wait. The study door is left a little ajar. Fay goes back to the kitchen, her hand wrapped in the towel. Neither boy asks what has happened. They know. Fay tells them to get ready for school, it’s their last day of term, and they know they have to be at Mrs. Daley’s by five past eight.”

   “Within the next five minutes or so the boys go out into the hallway, use the lavatory, wash their hands, and prepare to leave the house. The doorbell rings. Edward opens the door and there on the doorstep is a man he has never seen before. This man is about the same age as his father - that is, middle to late thirties - is wearing jeans and a jacket, and carrying a briefcase. He says he has come to see Stephen Devenish.”

   “Edward calls out something like, ‘Dad, there’s some one to see you,’ and says to the man, ‘He’s in there,’ indicating the slightly open study door. Fay, in the kitchen, also hears the man’s voice but not Edward’s. Possibly this is because a boy of twelve’s voice is naturally higher and lighter than a mature man’s. Moreover, though Edward can’t remember the man’s precise words, Fay can. She remembers he said, ‘I’m here to see Mr. Devenish.’”

   “Now, whether Devenish had come to the door by then or was still inside, unseen, we don’t know. Edward can’t remember and Robert is too young to be a reliable witness. But the man goes into the study, shutting the door behind him. Now, this is quite remarkable. If a stranger calls on you in your house and is shown into the room where you are, he only closes the door if asked to do so by you, doesn’t he? Unless he’s not a stranger but well known to you and is in fact someone accorded the privileges of a friend, at least of a familiar acquaintance.”

   Burden nodded. “I’d put it more strongly than that. The person coming in would either be a friend of some duration or a person in authority. I mean, I close the door behind me when I come into your office, but Lynn wouldn’t. On the other hand, Southby would and the chief constable would.”

   “That’s true. However, it’s not relevant here. I think there’s a third category. And in that category comes someone who is an acquaintance, not a friend. Indeed, it’s an acquaintance who has become an enemy and, as an enemy, need no longer observe customary social usage or even politeness. He or she wants seclusion and silence, so he closes the door without asking permission of the man inside.

   “The door shuts. The boys leave the house, closing the front door behind them. In the kitchen Fay is giving Sanchia her breakfast and trying to staunch the blood still coming from her hand. She has the breakfast dishes to put into the dishwasher and the day’s washing to do, not to mention housecleaning, bed - making, shopping, and the daylong care of a three-year-old.”

   “She doesn’t hear Devenish’s visitor leave the house, and of course, she doesn’t hear Devenish leave. Devenish is dead, his body lying on the study floor, with three stab wounds in his chest, including the fatal one to the heart. Fay thinks he’s left for work. She tidies and cleans the kitchen, puts the breakfast things in the dishwasher and starts it, takes Sanchia out of her high chair, and gives her things to play with. At some point in the next hour or so she takes her into the playroom and puts on children’s television for her or a video. Then she goes upstairs, makes the beds, gathers up the dirty washing and, along with the towel in which she wrapped her hand, takes it into the utility room and puts it in the washing machine.”

   “I suppose all these household management hints are necessary?” Burden grumbled.

   “I think they are.” Wexford swallowed the last of his beer, set down the glass, wondering why a glass always leaves a damp ring on a surface even when it’s not wet. One of life’s little mysteries, only he had the big ones to solve. “At nine or thereabouts,” he went on, “Fay checks on Sanchia in the playroom, perhaps puts on a new video. Then she goes into the study to clean it, carrying no doubt a duster and pushing a vacuum cleaner. She finds Devenish dead on the floor and calls us.”

   “Yes, but look here,” Burden objected, “are you saying there were two knives? The one Devenish had used to cut his wife’s hand and the one the man at the door brought with him? Because, if you’re not, you must be saying the man at the door brought no weapon with him, either because he didn’t intend to kill Devenish or because he knew the knife would be there waiting for him, which is absurd.”

   “I might be saying that he only thought of killing Devenish when he saw his opportunity in the form of the knife. Perhaps because Devenish said something insupportable to him, he picked up the knife and stabbed him.”

   “Well, okay, perhaps. But who was he, this mysterious man no one recognized but who had the authority or the familiarity to close Devenish’s study door behind him?”

   “First of all,” said Wexford, “I’d like to talk about the knife - or, rather, the knives. But let’s have another drink, shall we? Ring the bell.”

   Feeling like someone in a Victorian mystery story, literature his wife sometimes encouraged him to read, Burden picked up the brass bell and gave it three vigorous shakes. There should have been a candle on the table in one of those metal candlesticks with a snail-shaped handle, or at least an oil lamp. The snug looked as if it hadn’t seen a coat of paint on its grimy ocher walls and dark brown woodwork since, such a story was first published. The barman came. He was a man who could only have lived at the end of the twentieth century with the ring in his pierced lip, matted dreadlocks, and endangered-species tiger-face logo on the back of his hand.

   But he had a pleasant manner and an old-fashioned politeness, and he took their order cheerfully, returning in only a few moments with the two glasses and a free packet of cashews, compliments of the management.

   “I don’t suppose taking these smells of corruption, do you?” Wexford said after the man had gone. “It won’t make us look more favourably on him at the next Brewster Sessions.” He laughed. “Now, the knives. We both know that the knife block is made to hold eight knives but it contained only seven. However, the remaining slot is too small and short to have contained a knife wide enough or long enough in the blade to have made Devenish’s wounds. There was no eighth knife, and when Fay told us there never had been an eighth knife because to insert one made the block too crowded and inhibited the removal of any of the others, she was speaking the truth.”

   “We’ve been through that before.”

   “All right. We have. Of those seven knives, all have horn handles, but five of the handles are dark brown and two a much lighter brown, almost a fawn color. Now this is the effect of putting horn handles into a dishwasher and through a very hot wash. I know. I’ve tried it and Dora wasn’t too pleased with me when she saw what I’d done.”

   “Shame,” Burden mocked, “and when it was all in the cause of justice and truth.”

   Ignoring him, Wexford went on, “Edward Devenish has told me that he knew this happened to one of the knives in the block and Gillian Ferry has told me that for this -  that is, putting a horn-handled knife through a hot wash - Devenish cut Fay’s hand. In fact, it seems this was the first time he cut Fay and the damage to the knife put the idea into his head.”

   “But only one knife, not two?”

   “Edward spoke of just one. But there were two. So when was the second knife put through the hot wash? Not, surely, before Devenish’s death. Fay was often enough punished for nothing, she wasn’t going to stick her neck out committing an offence for which she was deliberately cut across the hand the first time.”

   “Right. And why was it put through the dishwasher?” Burden answered his own question: “Presumably, because such a wash, extending over - what? Forty minutes? - would effectively have removed any blood and any prints that might be on it.”

   “Certainly its blade matches Stephen Devenish’s wounds.” Wexford said. “Don’t you want to know who the man at the door was?”

   “I know you well enough to be quite aware that you’ll only tell me when you’re ready.”

   Wexford grinned. He drank from the new Adnams, nodded. “Remember, according to Edward, it was a man of about thirty-six or seven, tall but not so tall as his father, wearing jeans and a jacket, and carrying a briefcase. Now there is a woman involved in all this whom, when I first saw her, because of her hair and her lack of makeup and her height, and her thinness and her clothes, I took for a man. Very briefly, a matter of seconds rather than minutes, but I took her for a man.”

   “Jane Andrews,” said Burden.

   “Without being in the least unattractive or what used to be called ‘mannish,’ she can make herself look like a man. She’s flat-chested, she’s tall, she has the right haircut. These days women’s jackets and men’s are scarcely different from one another. Jeans are the same for men and women. Let us suppose that Jane Andrews dressed herself in her jeans and jacket, and perhaps added some other masculine touches, men’s shoes in a size seven - her size, anyway, I’d guess - a white shirt? A tie? Edward says the man wore a tie. And the briefcase. Most people still associate briefcases with men, though the concept is slowly changing. That would be enough.”

   “She leaves the house in Brighton at seven or seven- fifteen. Her mother is still in bed asleep and likely to remain so for a couple of hours. There is no one else to see her go or care whether she goes or not. She arrives in Ploughman’s Lane, a place she knows very well, though she hasn’t been there for years.”

   “She parks somewhere. Maybe in Ploughman’s Close or even down the hill to where it meets Winchester Drive. She walks to Woodland Lodge, carrying her briefcase, in which she has a thin, lightweight raincoat and a weapon, for she intends to kill Stephen Devenish. That is the purpose of her visit.”

   “Then what happened . . .?”

   “To the other knife? The one used to cut Fay and which she afterwards put through the hot wash? Wait. Presumably Jane brought a knife with her or even a gun. Why she chose that time of day I don’t know. Perhaps she had already tried to set up a meeting alone with him out side the house but he had refused even to speak to her.”

   “Her motive, of course, is her affection and sympathy with Fay Devenish?”

   “That and the rage she felt, and has felt for years, against Devenish. Perhaps too, her empathy with her sister, Louise Sharpe . . .”

   “It would be a very illogical empathy,” Burden said hotly. “Devenish may have been a villain and a miscreant, but no one could say he was to blame for Louise Sharpe’s problems.”

   Wexford sighed. “We’re talking about emotion, Mike, not logic.” He paused, looked down at the table, then said, “Jane Andrews rang the doorbell and the door was opened almost immediately by Edward. She recognized him, of course, but he didn’t recognize her. Why would he? He hadn’t seen her for years, and when he last saw her, she had long hair. Mrs. Probyn told us that her daughter used to have ‘lovely long hair.’ No doubt Jane deepened her voice for the few words she had to speak to Edward, not a very difficult undertaking. She already has a deep voice for a woman.”

   “She goes into the study and for a moment he doesn’t know who this stranger is. He says hello or something and what can he do for her - well, him, as he thinks. She speaks in her normal voice and then he does recognize her . . .”