Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods by Ruth Rendell Page B

Moonflower Takeaway’s new restaurant. ‘Abysmally dull and dreary.’ But was that important? Wexford wasn’t going to have to live with him, see his handsome face on the pillow beside him - he grinned at the thought of that - watch his deadpan look when anything amusing was said. But, wait a minute, maybe this last was more than a possibility if Sylvia got into some permanent arrangement with him. . . How much of a New Man was he? These days, he thought, women seemed to like best a man who’d do the housework and mind the kids and iron his own shirts, and never mind if he was boring as hell. In much the same way, men had once preferred and many still did, housewifely women with empty heads and pretty faces. It didn’t say much for human discernment.
       Burden was already seated at one of the Moonflower’s twelve tables. Famous in the district for their Chinese takeaway, this restaurant had been opened a year before by Mark Ling and his brother Pete. It was already popular and with visitors not only local but from further afield, not least because of its (self-styled) head waiter, Raffy Johnson, the Lings’ nephew. Raffy was young, black, handsome and in Wexford’s opinion the most courteous server of food in mid-Sussex. No one could spread a napkin over a customer’s lap with a more graceful flourish than Raffy, no one be more prompt with the menu or more assiduous to check that the single red or purple anemone in its cut glass vase was placed on the table where it neither blocked diners’ sight of each other nor got in the way of the dishes of lemon chicken and black bean squid. He was engaged now in pouring for Burden a glass of sparkling water. He set the bottle down, smiled and drew back Wexford’s chair.
       ‘Good morning, Mr Wexford. How are you? Not liking all this rain, I dare say.’
       If ever there was a success story. . . Wexford remembered Raffy a few years back when he had been a hope less seventeen-year-old layabout, a feckless boy whose only virtue seemed to be his love for his mother, and whom his aunt Mhonum Ling had called a hopeless case, one who would never find work his life long. But his mother Oni had had a win on the Lottery and much of the money had gone on Raffy’s training. There had been hotel work in London, in Switzerland and Jordan, and now he was a partner with his uncles and aunt in this prosperous business.
       ‘I comfort myself with thoughts of Raffy when I’m feeling low,’ said Wexford.
       ‘Good. I must try it. I reckon.we’re all feeling low at the moment. I’m going to have the dragon’s eggs and cherry blossom noodles.’
       ‘You’re joking. You made that up.’
       ‘I did not. It’s on page four. Raffy recommended it. It’s not real dragon’s eggs.’
       Wexford looked up from the menu. ‘I don’t suppose it is since there aren’t any real dragons. I may as well have the same. We have the unenviable task of showing that T-shirt to the Dades this afternoon and the sooner we get it over with the better.’
       Their order was taken and Raffy, agreeing that perhaps ‘dragon’s eggs’ was an unfortunate name, assured them it was a delicious seafood concoction. He’d tell his uncle and they’d find something that sounded more suitable. Could Mr Wexford suggest something? Wexford said he’d think about it.
       ‘What I’m thinking at the moment’, he said to Burden, ‘is that we ought to be sure just when these floods began. I mean, when the Kingsbrook first burst its banks, that sort of thing. When I got home last Friday it was raining, but not heavily and there weren’t any floods. I didn’t go out at all on Saturday and I didn’t know about the flood warning till I saw the television news at five fifteen.’
       ‘Yes, well, I heard the flood warning on Radio Four on Saturday morning early but I guessed we’d be OK, we’re too high up and too far from the Brede or the Kingsbrook. But on Saturday afternoon -