Free Some Lie and Some Die by Ruth Rendell Page A

side. She went by the fields because he was going to meet her there and take her back to his house. They arranged it that way just in case the wife changed her mind about going away.’ He made a moue of distaste, sordidness temporarily conquering romance. ‘Some people do go on like that, you know.’
    ‘You seem to know, anyway. So all we have to do now is find a bloke living in a house on the north side of Stowerton who’s known Dawn Stonor since they went to Sunday school together and whose wife was away Monday night. Oh, and find if the wife has missed a red dress.’
    ‘You don’t sound too enthusiastic, sir.’
    ‘I’m not,’ Wexford said frankly. ‘The people you know go on like that but the people I know don’t. They act like
people
, not characters in a second feature film that’s been thrown together for the sake of sensation rather than illustrating human nature. But since my mind is otherwise a blank, I reckon we’d better get asking Mrs Stonor who Dawn knew around Stowerton and who had a lifelong sentimental bond with her.’

8

    ‘The folks round here,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘weren’t good enough for Dawn. She was a proper little snob, though what she’d got to be snobbish about I never will know.’
    For all her frankly expressed unmaternal sentiments, Mrs Stonor was dressed in deepest black. She and the old woman who was with her, and who had been introduced as ‘My mother, Mrs Peckham’, had been sitting in semi-darkness, for the curtains were drawn. When the two policemen entered the room a light was switched on. Wexford noticed that a wall mirror had been covered by a black cloth.
    ‘We think it possible,’ he said, ‘that Dawn went to meet an old friend on Monday night. I want you to try and remember the names of any boy friends she had before she left home or any name she may have mentioned to you on her visits here.’
    Instead of replying, Mrs Stonor addressed the old woman who was leaning forward avidly, clutching the two sticks that supported her when she walked. ‘You can get off back to bed now, Mother. All this has got nothing to do with you. You’ve been up too long as it is.’
    ‘I’m not tired,’ said Mrs Peckham. She was very old, well over eighty. Her body was thin and tiny and her face simian, a maze of wrinkles. What sparse white hair she had wasscragged on to the top of her head into a knot stuck full of pins. ‘I don’t want to go to bed, Phyllis. It’s not often I have a bit of excitement.’
    ‘Excitement! I like that. A nice way to talk when Dawn’s had her head bashed in by a maniac. Come along now. I’ll take your arm up the stairs.’
    A small devil in Wexford’s head spoke for him. ‘Mrs Peckham should stay. She may be able to help.’ He said it more to irritate Mrs Stonor than because he thought her mother would be able to furnish them with information.
    Mrs Peckham grinned with pleasure, showing a set of over-large false teeth. Reprieved, she helped herself to a sweet from the bag on a table beside her and began a ferocious crunching. Her daughter turned down the corners of her mouth and folded her hands.
    ‘Can you think of anyone, Mrs Stonor?’
    Still sulky from having her wishes baulked, Mrs Stonor said, ‘Her dad never let her have boy friends. He wanted her to grow up respectable. We had a job with her as it was, always telling lies and staying out late. My husband tried every way we could think of to teach her the meaning of decency.’
    ‘Tried his strap, mostly,’ said Mrs Peckham. Protected by the presence of the policemen, she gave her daughter a triumphant and unpleasant grin. Wexford could see that she was one of those old pensioners who, dependent for all her needs on a hated child, was subservient, cringing, defiant or malicious as her fancy took her or circumstances demanded. When Mrs Stonor made no reply but only lifted her chin, her mother tried another dig. ‘You and George ought never to have had no kids. Always smacking