Free Means Of Evil And Other Stories by Ruth Rendell

forwards. "Why shouldn't I? Dr. Crocker was away. Elsie came in at nine and Mother was still asleep, and Elsie said it wasn't right the amount she slept. We couldn't wake her, though we shook her, we were so worried. I wasn't to know she'd get up as fit as a flea ten minutes after I'd phoned for him, was I?"
   "Tell me about the day your mother died, Mrs. Betts, Friday, June 2nd," he said, and it occurred to him that no one had yet told him anything much about that day.
   "Well . . ." Her mouth trembled and she said quickly, "You don't think Harry did anything to Mother, do you? He wouldn't, I swear he wouldn't."
   "Tell me about that Friday."
   She made an effort to control herself, clenching her hands on the metal bar. "We wanted to go to a whist drive. Elsie came round in the morning and I said, if we went out would she sit with Mother, and she said, OK, of course she would if I'd just give her a knock before we left." Mrs. Betts sighed and her voice steadied. "Elsie lives two doors down. She and Mother'd been pals for years and she always came to sit with her when we went out. Though it's a lie," her old eyes flashing like young ones, "to say we were always out. Once in a blue moon we went out."
   Wexford's eyes went from the pudding-faced girl in the photograph, her mouth smug and proud even then, to the long strip of turfed-over garden——why did he feel Betts had done that turfing, had uprooted flowers?——and back to the nervous little woman on the mattress edge.
   "I gave Mother her lunch and she was sitting in the front room, doing a bit of knitting. I popped down to Elsie's and rang her bell but she can't have heard it, she didn't come. I rang and rang and I thought, well, she's gone out, she's forgotten and that's that. But Harry said, Why not go out just the same? The painter was there, he was only a bit of a boy, twenty, twenty-two, but he and Mother got on a treat, a sight better than her and I ever did, I can tell you. So the upshot was, we went off and left her there with the painter——what was he called? Ray? Rafe? No, Roy, that was it, Roy——with Roy doing the hall walls. She was OK, fit as a flea. It was a nice day so I left all the windows open because that paint did smell. I'll never forget the way she spoke to me before I left. That was the last thing she ever said to me. Doreen, she said, you ought to be lucky at cards. You haven't been very lucky in love. And she laughed and I'll swear Roy was laughing too."
   You're building an edifice of motives for yourself, Mrs. Betts, reflected Wexford. "Go on," was all he said.
   She moved directly into hearsay evidence, but Wexford didn't stop her. "That Roy closed the door to keep the smell out, but he popped in a few times to see if Mother was all right. They had a bit of a chat, he said, and he offered to make her a cup of tea but she didn't want any. Then about half-past three Mother said she'd got a headache——that was the onset of the stroke but she didn't know that, she put it down to the paint——and would he fetch her a couple of her paracetamols from the bathroom. So he did and he got her a glass of water and she said she'd try and have a sleep in her chair. Anyway, the next thing he knew she was out in the hall walking with her walking frame, going to have a lay-down on her bed, she said.
   "Well, Harry and me came in at five-thirty and Roy was just packing up. He said Mother was asleep on her bed, and I just put my head round the door to check. She'd drawn the curtains." Mrs. Betts paused, burst out, "To tell you the honest truth, I didn't look too closely. I thought, well, thank God for half an hour's peace to have a cup of tea in before she starts picking on Harry. It was just about a quarter to seven, ten to seven, before I went in again. I could tell there was something going on, the way she was breathing, sort of puffing out her cheeks, and red in the face. There was blood on her lips." She looked fearfully at