Free Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell

even he couldn’t deny that whatever Marriott’s faults, no one could make you feel as welcome as he did.
    ‘I was passing,’ he said, ‘and anyway I want to talk to you.’
    ‘And I’ve been longing to talk to you, so that makes two of us. Come in, come in. Don’t stand there. You’ll stay for my party, won’t you? Just a little celebration, a few old friends who are dying to meet the great chief inspector after all the lovely things I’ve told them about you.’
    Wexford found himself swept into the hall, propelled towards Marriott’s drawing room. ‘What are you celebrating?’ He took a deep breath and brought out the first name. ‘What is there to celebrate, Lionel?’
    ‘Perhaps “celebrate” was the wrong word, dear old boy. This part is more in the nature of an “I, who am about to die, salute you” gathering, if you take my meaning.’ He peered up into Wexford’s face. ‘I see you don’t. Well, no, a busy man like you would hardly realise that this is the last night of the holidays and it’s back to the spotty devils tomorrow.’
    ‘Of course,’ Wexford said. He remembered now that Marriott always gave an end-of-the-holidays party and that he always referred to his pupils at the King’s School as the ‘spotty devils’. ‘I won’t stay, though. I’m afraid I’m being a nuisance, interrupting you when you’re preparing for a party.’
    ‘Not a bit! You don’t know how overjoyed I am to see you, but I see from your icy looks that you disapprove.’ Marriott threw out his short arms dramatically. ‘Tell me, what have I done? What have I said?’
    Entering the drawing room, Wexford saw a bar improvised in one corner, and through the arch that led into the dining room, a table loaded with food, roast fowls, cold joints, a whole salmon, arranged among carelessly scattered white roses. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that I was wrong in supposing you have been a close friend of Elizabeth Nightingale.’
    Marriott’s mobile face fell, becoming suddenly but perhaps not sincerely, lugubrious. ‘I know, I know. I should be in mourning, sackcloth and ashes, no less. Believe me, Reg, I wear the ashes in my heart. But suppose I were to put all these dear people off and fling the baked meats to the Pomfret broiler-pig farm, what good would it do? Would it bring her back? Would it wipe one tear from Quentin’s cheek?’
    ‘I suppose not.’
    ‘Dear Reg, I can’t bear your censure. Let me give you a drink. A whisky, a pernod, a champagne cocktail? And a little slice of cold duck to go with it?’
    Overwhelmed as usual, Wexford sat down. ‘Just a small whisky, then, but nothing to eat.’
    ‘I’m an outcast, I suppose. You won’t eat my salt.’ Marriott trotted towards the bar, shaking his head. He began pouring huge measures of Vat 69 into cutglass tumblers. Wexford knew it would be useless to demur. He eyed the room with an inward grin. Although he knew many of the antiques were almost priceless, the chandeliers unique and the décor the envy of every person of taste in the town, Marriott’s drawing room always suggested to him a mixture of the Wallace Collection and an Italian restaurant in the Old Brompton Road. The walls were covered by bottle-green paper embossed with emerald fur and hung with gilt-framed brothel mirrors. On every table stood an assortment of carriage clocks, snuffboxes and useless little bits of Crown Derby. You would be afraid to move except that you knew that whatever damage you did Marriott would only smile and tell you it didn’t matter at all, so much more precious was your company, including your clumsiness, than any inanimate object.
    The clatter of heels from the kitchen region told himthere was a third person in the house, and as he took his triple whisky, the woman appeared carrying a tray loaded with more food. She was a tall blonde of about forty-five with charm bracelets on both wrists which rang like bells as she moved.
    ‘This is Hypatia, my