Kissing the Gunner's Daughter by Ruth Rendell Page A
Authors: Ruth Rendell
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Police, England, Police Procedural, Large Type Books, Inspector (Fictitious character), Sussex (England), Sussex, Wexford
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as it's possible to block all roads. I mean, there must be dozens of ways out."
"Not really. What they call the by-road goes to Pomfret Monachorum and Cheriton. The main drive goes directly to the B 2428 into town and there happened to be a squad car on that about half a mile along. In the other direction the road goes to Cambery Ashes, as you know. It was a piece of luck for us, or it looked that way. The pair in the squad car knew about it within three minutes of her call. But they didn't go that way, they must have gone by the by-road, and then there wasn't much of a chance. No description, no index number or approximation to it, no idea what to look for. We haven't now. I couldn't have asked her anything more, could I, Reg? I reckoned she was dying."
"Of course you couldn't. Of course not."
"I hope to God she doesn't die."
"So do I," said Wexford. "She's only seventeen."
"Well, naturally one hopes for her sake she'll live, but I was thinking of what she can tell us. Pretty well everything, don't you think?'
Wexford just looked at him.
i�>
58
5
THE girl could tell them everything. Davina Jones called Daisy Flory could tell them when the men came and how they came, what they looked like, even perhaps what they wanted and took. She had seen them and perhaps spoken to them. She might have seen their car. Wexford thought it likely she was intelligent and hoped she was observant. He hoped very much she would live.
Entering his own house at midnight, he thought of phoning the hospital to check on her. What good would it do, his knowing whether she lived or died?
If they told him she was dead he wouldn't sleep, because she had been young and with all of her life before her. And for Burden's reason too, he had better be honest. Because if she was dead the case would be all that much harder. But if they told him she was all right, she was doing well, he would be too hyped up at the prospect of talking to her to sleep.
Anyway, they wouldn't tell him that, but either that she was dead or 'holding her own' or 'comfortable'. In any case WPG Rosemary Mountjoy was with her, would sit outside the ward door till morning and be relieved at eight by WPG Anne Lennox.
3 He went quietly upstairs to see if Dora was *tiU awake. The light from the open door fell,
59
not on her face, but in a wide band across the arm that lay outside the covers, the sleeve of her nightdress, the rather small neat hand with round pink fingernails. Deep sleep held her and her breathing was steady and slow. She could sleep easily then, in spite of what had happened earlier that evening, in spite of Sheila and the fourth member of their party he was already calling 'that wretched man'. He felt unreasonably exasperated by her. Retreating he pulled the door to behind him, went down again and in the living room hunted through the paper rack for the Independent on Sunday of two days before.
The review section was still there, pushed between the Radio Times and some freebie magazine. It was the Win Carver interview he was looking for and the big portrait photograph he remembered as a double-page spread. Page eleven. He sat down in an armchair, found the page. The face was before him, the face he had seen an hour before in death when Sumner-Quist had lifted it from the table by a handful of hair like an executioner holding aloft a severed head.
The text began as a single column on the left-hand side. Wexford looked at the picture. The portrait was of a kind a woman would only tolerate seeing of herself if she had succeeded overwhelmingly in fields distant from the triumph of youth and beauty. These were not lines on the face but the deep scoring of time and the pleating of old age. From a bird's nest of wrinkles the nose stood out beak-like and the
60
lips curved in a half-smile that was both ironic and kindly. The eyes were still young, dark, burning irises and clear unveined whites in the tangle of gathered folds.
The caption read: Davina Flory, the
"Not really. What they call the by-road goes to Pomfret Monachorum and Cheriton. The main drive goes directly to the B 2428 into town and there happened to be a squad car on that about half a mile along. In the other direction the road goes to Cambery Ashes, as you know. It was a piece of luck for us, or it looked that way. The pair in the squad car knew about it within three minutes of her call. But they didn't go that way, they must have gone by the by-road, and then there wasn't much of a chance. No description, no index number or approximation to it, no idea what to look for. We haven't now. I couldn't have asked her anything more, could I, Reg? I reckoned she was dying."
"Of course you couldn't. Of course not."
"I hope to God she doesn't die."
"So do I," said Wexford. "She's only seventeen."
"Well, naturally one hopes for her sake she'll live, but I was thinking of what she can tell us. Pretty well everything, don't you think?'
Wexford just looked at him.
i�>
58
5
THE girl could tell them everything. Davina Jones called Daisy Flory could tell them when the men came and how they came, what they looked like, even perhaps what they wanted and took. She had seen them and perhaps spoken to them. She might have seen their car. Wexford thought it likely she was intelligent and hoped she was observant. He hoped very much she would live.
Entering his own house at midnight, he thought of phoning the hospital to check on her. What good would it do, his knowing whether she lived or died?
If they told him she was dead he wouldn't sleep, because she had been young and with all of her life before her. And for Burden's reason too, he had better be honest. Because if she was dead the case would be all that much harder. But if they told him she was all right, she was doing well, he would be too hyped up at the prospect of talking to her to sleep.
Anyway, they wouldn't tell him that, but either that she was dead or 'holding her own' or 'comfortable'. In any case WPG Rosemary Mountjoy was with her, would sit outside the ward door till morning and be relieved at eight by WPG Anne Lennox.
3 He went quietly upstairs to see if Dora was *tiU awake. The light from the open door fell,
59
not on her face, but in a wide band across the arm that lay outside the covers, the sleeve of her nightdress, the rather small neat hand with round pink fingernails. Deep sleep held her and her breathing was steady and slow. She could sleep easily then, in spite of what had happened earlier that evening, in spite of Sheila and the fourth member of their party he was already calling 'that wretched man'. He felt unreasonably exasperated by her. Retreating he pulled the door to behind him, went down again and in the living room hunted through the paper rack for the Independent on Sunday of two days before.
The review section was still there, pushed between the Radio Times and some freebie magazine. It was the Win Carver interview he was looking for and the big portrait photograph he remembered as a double-page spread. Page eleven. He sat down in an armchair, found the page. The face was before him, the face he had seen an hour before in death when Sumner-Quist had lifted it from the table by a handful of hair like an executioner holding aloft a severed head.
The text began as a single column on the left-hand side. Wexford looked at the picture. The portrait was of a kind a woman would only tolerate seeing of herself if she had succeeded overwhelmingly in fields distant from the triumph of youth and beauty. These were not lines on the face but the deep scoring of time and the pleating of old age. From a bird's nest of wrinkles the nose stood out beak-like and the
60
lips curved in a half-smile that was both ironic and kindly. The eyes were still young, dark, burning irises and clear unveined whites in the tangle of gathered folds.
The caption read: Davina Flory, the
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