Sins of the Fathers by Ruth Rendell Page B

Thank heaven you've phoned. I've been trying over and over again to get you at that Olive Branch place or whatever it's called."
    "Why, what's the matter?"
    "I've had a dreadful letter from Charles. Apparently poor darling Tess phoned her people late yesterday afternoon and now she's told Charles the engagement's definitely off. She says it wouldn't be fair on him or us."
    "And...?"
    "And Charles says if Tess won't marry him he's going to come down from Oxford and go out to Africa to fight for Zimbabwe."
    "How utterly ridiculous!"
    "He says if you try and stop him he'll do something dreadful and get sent down."
    "Is that all?"
    "Oh, no. There's lots and lots of it. Let me see. I've got the letter here. '...What's the use of Father always ballsing on'—sorry, darling, does that mean something awful?—'on about faith and taking things on trust if he won't take Tess's word and her mother's? I've been into the whole fiasco of the case myself and it's full of holes. I think Father could get the Home Secretary to have the case reopened if he would only make some sort of effort. For one thing there was an inheritance involved but it never came up at the trial. Three people inherited vast sums and at least one of them was buzzing around the place the day Mrs. Primero died...' "
    "All right," said Archery wearily. "If you remember, Mary, I have a transcript of the trial myself and it cost me two hundred pounds. How are things apart from that?"
    "Mr. Sims is behaving rather oddly." Mr Sims was Archery's curate. "Miss Bayliss says he keeps the communion bread in his pocket, and this morning she got a long blonde hair in her mouth."
    Archery smiled. The parish chit-chat was more in his wife's line than solving murders. It brought her to him visually, a handsome strong woman who minded the lines on her face that he never noticed. He was beginning to miss her mentally and physically.
    "Now, listen, darling. Write back to Charles—be diplomatic. Tell him how well Tess is behaving and say I'm having some very interesting talks with the police. If there's the slightest chance of getting the case reopened I'll write to the Home Secretary."
    "That's wonderful, Henry. Oh, there go your second lot of pips. I'll ring off. By the way, Rusty caught a mouse this morning and left it in the bath. He and Tawny are missing you."
    "Give them my love," said Archery to please her.
    He went downstairs into the dark cool dining room, ordered something called a Navarin d'agneau , and in a burst of recklessness, a half-bottle of Anjou. All the windows were open but on some of them the green shutters had been closed. A table in one of these embrasures reminded him with its white cloth, its tilted cane chairs and its vaseful of sweet peas of a Dufy that hung on the walls of his study at home. Filtered sunlight lay in primrose-pale bars across the cloth and the two places laid with silver.
    But for himself and half a dozen elderly residents, the dining room was deserted, but presently the door from the bar opened and the head waiter ushered in a man and a woman. Archery wondered if the management would object to the apricot poodle the woman fondled in her arms. But the head waiter was smiling deferentially and Archery saw him pat the tiny woolly head.
    The man was small and dark and would have been good-looking but for his glassy, red-rimmed eyes. Archery thought he might be wearing contact lenses. He sat down at the Dufy table, ripped open a packet of Peter Stuyvesant and poured the contents into a gold cigarette case. In spite of the man's obvious polish—his sleek hair, svelt suit, taut bone-smooth skin—there was something savage in the way his white fingers tore the paper. A wedding ring and a big bold signet gleamed in the soft light as he tossed the mutilated packet on to the cloth. Archery was amused to see how much jewellery he wore, a sapphire tie pin and a watch as well as the rings.
    By contrast the woman wore none. She was plainly dressed in a cream