Free Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell Page B

gone more smoothly. He glanced up at the window and saw the inspector approaching the front door. That she had seen him too and knew who he was he guessed from the little gasp of fear that came from her.
    ‘What’s going on, then?’ she said, her voice dying to a whimper.
    Drayton turned and addressed her severely. ‘I am a police officer and I have reason to believe you are engaged in keeping a disorderly house . . .’
    Ruby Branch sat down on the red and blue sofa, put her head in her hands and began to cry.
    Drayton had expected they would simply take her down to Kingsmarkham and charge her. It was all cut and dried and there had been neither denial nor defiance. She had put the advertisement in Grover’s window to make a little extra money. What with freezes and squeezes, it was a job to make ends meet . . . Burden listened to it all. His eyes were on the scarf Ruby Branch had unwound from her head and was using to wipe her eyes, or perhaps on the ginger curls the removal of that scarf had revealed.
    ‘You were a blonde last time I saw you, Ruby,’ he said.
    ‘Since when do I have to ask your permission when I want to have my hair tinted?’
    ‘Still working for Mrs Harper in Waterford Avenue, are you?’
    She nodded tearfully, then glared at him. ‘What business is it of yours who I work for? If it wasn’t for you I’d still have my job at the supermarket.’
    ‘You should have thought of that,’ Burden said, ‘before your little contretemps with six dozen packets of soap powder. You always were houseproud and it’s been your undoing. Quite a vice with you, isn’t it? I see you’ve been at it again.’
    He stared at the bare boards and thence from Ruby’s varicose veined legs in their thin black nylons to her suddenly terrified face. To Drayton he said conversationally:
    ‘There’s not many working women would find the time to wash a big carpet. Go over it with a damp cloth, may be. That’s what my wife does. Let’s go outside and see what sort of a job she’s made of it, shall we? It’s not a bad morning and I could do with a spot of fresh air.’
    Ruby Branch came with them. She tottered in her high-heeled shoes and it seemed to Drayton that she was dumb with terror. The kitchen was neat and fresh and the step so clean that Burden’s not very dirty shoe made a black print on it. Of the man seen at the window – husband? lodger? – there was no sign.
    Drayton wondered that the clothes line was strong enough to bear the weight of the carpet, for it was soaking wet and looked as if it had been totally immersed in a bath. The high wind hardly caused it to sway. Burden advanced on it curiously.
    ‘Don’t you touch it,’ Ruby said shrilly. ‘You’ll have the lot down.’
    Burden took no notice of her. He gave the carpet a twitch and suddenly, as she had predicted, the line snapped. Its load subsided with a squelch, half on to the path and half on to the lawn, giving off from its heavy soaking folds a strong animal smell of sodden wool.
    ‘Look what you’ve done! What d’you want to come out here poking about for? Now I’ll have to do it all again.’
    ‘No, you won’t,’ Burden said grimly. ‘The only people who are going to touch that are scientific experts.’
    ‘Just giving it an airing?’ Drayton exclaimed.
    ‘Oh, my God!’ Ruby’s face had become a yellowish white against which the quivering red lips stood out like a double gash. ‘I never meant any harm, I was scared. I thought may be you’d pin it on me, may be you’d get me for a – a. . .’
    ‘An accessory? That’s a good idea. May Be we shall.’
    ‘Oh, my God!’
    Back in the disarranged sitting room, she sat for a moment in petrified silence, twisting her hands and biting what remained of the lipstick from her mouth. Then she said wildly:
    ‘It’s not what you’re thinking. It wasn’t blood. I was bottling raspberries and I . . .’
    ‘In April? Do me a favour,’ said Burden. ‘You can take