An Unkindness of Ravens by Ruth Rendell

the situation. But it’s more than possible that the woman who phoned Sevensmith Harding the day after Williams left to say he was ill and the woman who phoned three weeks later to inquire as to his whereabouts are one and the same. And we know the second time was Joy. Now Joy w.as very keen to have me look for her husband when he first disappeared, but later on much less so—indeed, she was obstructive. That first time I talked to her she said nothing about having gone out herself that evening. That was only mentioned the second time. Joy is devoted to her son Kevin. Her daughter is nothing to her, her son everything .. . What on earth’s the matter?’
    Burden’s face had set and he had gone rather pale. He had taken a hard grip on the arms of his chair. ‘Nothing. Go on.’
    ‘Well, then—her son always phones on Thursday evenings and that particular Thursday was the first one he had been back at college. Wouldn’t a devoted mother have wanted to know all those things mothers worry about in such circumstances? Did he have a good journey? Was his room all right? Had he settled in? But this devoted mother doesn’t wait in for his call. She goes out—not to some important engagement, some function booked months ahead, but to watch television at her sister’s. What does all this suggest to you?’
    Having struggled successfully to overcome whatever it was that had upset him, Burden forced a laugh. ‘You sound like Sherlock Holmes talking to Watson.’ Since his second marriage he occasionally read books, a change in him Wexford couldn’t get used to.
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘more “a man of the solid Sussex breed a breed which covers much good sense under a heavy silent exterior”.’
    ‘I wouldn’t say “silent”. Was that from Sherlock Holmes?’
    Wexford nodded. ‘So what do you make of it?’ he said more colloquially.
    ‘That Joy is somehow in cahoots with her husband. There’s a conspiracy going on. What for and why I wouldn’t pretend to know but it’s got something to do with giving everyone the impression Williams is dead. He left that evening and she went out later to meet him away from the house. Whatever they were planning was done away from the house because it had to be concealed from the daughter Sara as much as from anyone else. Next morning Joy rang Sevensmith Harding to say her husband was ill. Of course, it’s nonsense to say she didn’t know that he was their marketing manager and the extent of his income. Next he or she typed that letter on a hired typewriter. She probably did that, not knowing what he called Gardner and making the mistake of addressing him as ‘Mr Gardner’. The abandoned car, the dumped bag of clothes were all part of a plan to make us think him dead. But the increased police attention frightened Joy, she wanted things to go more at her pace. Hence the obstructiveness. I said I didn’t know why but it could be an insurance fiddle, couldn’t it?’
    ‘Without a body, Mike? With no more proof of death than a dumped travelling bag? And if you wanted people to think you were dead, aren’t there half a dozen simpler and more convincing ways of doing it?’
    ‘You feel the same as me then? You don’t think he’s dead?’
    ‘I know he’s dead,’ said Wexford.
    Next day he was proved right.
     It looked like a grave. It was in the shape of a grave, as clearly demarcated as if a slab of stone lay upon it, though Edwin Fitzgerald did not at first see this. In spite of its shape he would have passed it by as a mere curiosity, a whim of nature. It was the dog Shep who drew his attention to it.
    Edwin Fitzgerald was a retired policeman who had been a dog handler. He lived in Pomfret and had a job as a part time security guard at a factory complex on Stowerton’s industrial estate. The dog Shep was not a trained dog in the sense of being police-trained—as a ‘sniffer’, for instance. Fitzgerald had bought him after his last dog died—a wonderful dog that one,