From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Rendell, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82955-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Under the names Mrs. Morpeth had written with an air of triumph: Miss Clare Clarke is a member of the High School teaching staff!!!

“I’d like to talk to Miss Clarke,” he said.

“She lives at Nectarine Cottage down the first lane on the left on the Stowerton Road,” Miss Fowler said.

Burden said slowly, “Fabia is a very unusual name.”

Miss Fowler shrugged. She patted her stiffly waved gray hair. “Not a particularly unusual type,” she said. “Just one of those very promising people I was telling you about who never amounted to much. She lives here somewhere. She and her husband are quite well known in what I believe are called social circles. Helen Laird was another one. Very lovely, very self-confident. Always in trouble. Boys, you know. Honestly, so silly! I thought she’d go on the stage, but she didn’t, she just got married. And then Miss Clarke, of course …”

Burden had the impression she had been about to include Miss Clarke among the failures, but that loyalty to her staff prevented her. He didn’t pursue it. She had given him a more disturbing lead.

“What did you say happened to Helen Laird?”

“I really know nothing, Inspector. Mrs. Morpeth said something about her having married a car salesman. Such a waste!” She stubbed out her cigarette into an ashtray that was daubed with poster paint and obviously home-baked. When she went on her voice sounded faintly sad. “They leave, you know, and we forget them, and then about fifteen years later a little tot turns up in the first form and you think, I’ve seen that face before somewhere! Of course you have—her mother’s!”

Dymphna and Priscilla, Burden thought, nearly sure. Not long now, and Dymphna’s face, the same red hair perhaps, would revive in Miss Fowler’s memory some long-lost chord.

“Still,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, “there’s a limit to everything and I retire in two years’ time.”

He thanked her for the list and left. As soon as he got to the station Wexford showed him the Katz letter.

“It all points to Doon being the killer, sir,” Burden said, “whoever he is. What do we do now, wait to hear from Colorado?”

“No, Mike, we’ll have to press on. Clearly Mrs. Katz doesn’t know who Doon is and the best we can hope for is to get some of the background from her and the last letter Mrs. P. sent her before she died. Doon is probably going to turn out to be a boyfriend Mrs. P. had when she was at school here. Let’s hope she didn’t have too many.”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Burden said, “because honestly—as Miss Fowler would say—those messages in Minna’s books don’t look like the work of a boy at all, not unless he was a very mature boy. They’re too polished, too smooth. Doon could be an older man who got interested in her.”

“I thought of that,” Wexford said, “and I’ve been checking up on Prewett and his men. Prewett bought that farm in 1949 when he was twenty-eight.

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