Some Lie and Some Die by Ruth Rendell

told me so last Monday when she was home. She’d tell me things she’d never tell you. She knew you’d pour cold water on everything she did.’
    ‘What did she say, Mrs Peckham?’
    ‘She come into my room when I was in bed. You remember Hal, don’t you, Gran? she says. We always called him Hal. Well, I went out to dinner with him Friday night, she said.’
    ‘And you believed her?’ Mrs Stonor gave the brittle laugh that is not a laugh at all. ‘Harold Goodbody was in Manchester Friday night. I saw him myself on telly, I saw him live. She was just making up tales like she always did.’
    Mrs Peckham scrunched indignantly. ‘She got the night wrong, that’s all. Poor little Dawnie.’
    ‘Don’t you be so stupid. He’s a
famous
singer. Though what’s so wonderful about his voice I never shall know. Richard Tauber, now that was a man who
had
a voice.’
    Burden asked, ‘Do his parents still live here?’
    Mrs Stonor looked for a moment as if she was going to tell him not to be so stupid. She restrained herself and said sourly, ‘When he got rich he bought them a great big detached place up near London. All right for some, isn’t it? I’ve always been decent and brought my daughter up right and what did she ever do for me? I well remember Freda Goodbody going round to her neighbours to borrow a quarter of tea on account of Goodbody spending all his wages on the dogs. Harold never had more than one pair of shoes at a time and they was cast-offs from his cousin. “My darling boy” and “my precious Hal” she used to say but she used to give him baked beans for his Sunday dinner.’
    Suddenly Mrs Peckham waxed appropriately biblical. ‘ “Better a dish of herbs where love is”,’ she said, ‘ “than a stalled ox and hatred therewith”.’ She took the last acid drop and sucked it noisily.
    ‘There you are, sir,’ said Burden when they were in the car. ‘A lifelong friendship, like I said.’
    ‘Well, not quite like you said, Mike. Zeno Vedast doesn’t live in Stowerton, he has no wife, and I don’t suppose he makes a habit of eating tinned food in fields with waitresses. The odd thing is that she
did
know him. It seems to bear out what Joan Miall said that, in the nature of things, even a chronic liar must tell more truth than lies. We all know thestory of the boy who cried wolf. Dawn Stonor was a lion-hunter. She cried lion and this time the lion was real. But we haven’t a shred of evidence to connect Vedast with her last Monday. Very likely he was still in Manchester. All I can say at the moment is that it’s intriguing, it’s odd.’
    ‘Surely you think we ought to see him?’
    ‘Of course we must see him. We must see every man Dawn knew, unless he has a watertight alibi for that Monday night. We still don’t know what Wickford was doing after seven.’ The chief inspector tapped his driver’s shoulder. ‘Back to the station, please, Stevens.’
    The man half-turned. He was young, rather shy, recently transferred from Brighton. He blushed when Wexford addressed him, rather as he had coloured under Mrs Peveril’s stare.
    ‘Did you want to say something to me?’ Wexford asked gently.
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Back to the station, then. We can’t sit here all day.’
    By Wednesday Paul Wickford had been cleared of suspicion. After leaving Joan Miall at the Townsman Club in Hertford Street, he had gone into a pub in Shepherd Market where he had drunk one vodka and tonic before driving back to Earls Court. Waiting for him in his flat was his brother who brought the news of their mother’s serious illness and asked Paul to drive with him immediately to Sheffield. Paul had then asked the tenant of the second floor flat to cancel his milk and papers and, if he happened to see Dawn Stonor, to tell her where he had gone. The two brothers had reached their mother’s house in Sheffield soon after midnight, and by the following morning she was dead.
    In spite of there being only thin evidence of