Free Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell Page A

getting quite good at summing people up.’
       ‘Bully for you,’ said her father sourly. ‘I’ve been trying for forty years and the margin of error’s still about eighty percent.’
       Sheila looked at herself in her handbag mirror. ‘Mr Vigo’s got a very smooth sophisticated manner. Cool, if you know what I mean. I sometimes think dentists have a very interesting relationship with their patients. They’ve got to be nice, have the right psychological approach, otherwise, you’d never go back to them again, would you? It’s such an intimate thing. I mean, can you think of any other situation, Pop, when a man gets so close to a woman except when he’s actually making love to her?’
       ‘I sincerely hope nothing like that happened.’
       ‘Oh, Pop. . . I was just saying what it was like. I was making a sort of comparison.’ Sheila giggled and twisted a strand of hair around one finger. ‘Although, when I was going he did give me a sort of squeeze and said I’d got the loveliest mouth he’d ever seen.’
       ‘My God!’ said Wexford, getting up. ‘If you don’t mind what you say to your father, you might remember he’s also a detective chief inspector.’ He paused and then said, not realizing the effect his words would have, ‘I may go along and see this Vigo.’
       ‘Oh, Pop!’ Sheila wailed.
       ‘Not because of your lovely mouth, my dear. In pursuance of an enquiry of my own.’
       ‘Well, don’t you dare . . .’
       All this time Mrs Wexford had been placidly eating ginger biscuits, but now she looked up and said calmly:
       'What a silly girl you are. I often think it’s a blessing intelligence isn’t necessary in the interpretive arts. If you’ve finished with your face you’d better take that dog out.’
       At the word dog, Clytemnestra uncurled herself.
       ‘All right,’ said Sheila meekly.

Chapter 7

    They stood under the willow trees, looking at the river. Anyone who didn’t know them might have taken them for a couple of businessmen out for a Sunday afternoon stroll.
       But almost everyone in Kingsmarkham knew them and knew also by now that this was the spot where Charlie Hatton had been murdered.
       ‘I said we’d have to talk to everyone in the darts club,’ said Burden, stopping down at the water’s edge, ‘and I reckon we have. Funny, isn’t it? Pertwee’s the only one who could put up with Hatton for a moment, but no one’s willing to come out with it. It’s always the others who were daggers drawn with him. The one you’re talking to is all tolerance and forbearance. The farthest he’ll go is to admit a sort of resentment. Does a man do murder because a mate of his riles him in a pub or because he’s got more money than he has?’
       'He might if he was going to get some of the money,’ said Wexford. ‘A hundred pounds is a lot to a man like Cullam. We’re going to have to watch Cullam, see if he does some big spending in the next few days. I’m not at all happy about the way he washed the clothes he was wearing on Friday night.’
       Burden was advancing gingerly across the river, trying not to get his feet wet. He trod on the projecting stones which the water lapped without covering. Then he bent down and said, ‘There’s your weapon.’
       From the bank Wexford followed the direction of his pointing finger. All but one of the stones were furred at their perimeters and partly on their surfaces with green weed.
       Burden was pointing to the only one that looked bare, as if until very recently it had lain with its exposed area embedded in the river’s gravelly floor. He squatted precariously and lifted the stone in both hands. Then he eased himself to his feet and scrambled back to Wexford.
       It was a big stone, not round, but elongated and shaped rather like a mandolin. The side which had lain on the river bed was green and moss-grown and there was nothing about it except for its shape and its