Wexford 15 - Kissing the Gunner's Daughter by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Rendell, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

15

IT was a job Barry Vine might have done, or even Karen Malahyde, but he did it himself. His rank seemed to frighten Fred Harrison, a nervous man who looked an older and shorter version of his brother. Wexford asked him when he had last driven Joanne Garland to Tancred House and, looking through his book, he named a date four Tuesdays before.

'I wouldn't have touched her with a bargepole if I'd known it was going to lead to trouble,' Fred Harrison said.

In spite of himself and his wretched feelings, Wexford was amused. 'I doubt if it's going to lead to trouble for you, Mr Harrison. Did you see Mrs Garland or hear from her on Tuesday 11 March?'

'Nothing, not a dicky-bird since whenever it was, what I said, 26 February.'

'And on that evening, what happened? She phoned you and asked you to drive her to Tancred House at — what? Eight? Eight fifteen?'

'I'd not have taken her anywhere if I'd known it was going to lead to trouble. You've got to believe that. She rung up like she always did around seven, said she had to be at Tancred by half eight. I said like I always did I'd pick her up a few minutes after eight, be ample time, but she said, no, she didn't want to be late, and to come at ten to. Well, I fetched her up and was at Tancred eight ten, eight fifteen. Going the shortest way. I'd be bound to, but she never listened, she was scared stiff of being late. That always happened. Sometimes I'd wait for her, she'd ask me to wait, she'd be an hour, and I'd take the opportunity to pop in and see my brother.'

Wexford was uninterested in this. He persisted. 'You're sure she didn't phone you on 11 March?'

'Believe me, I'd make a clean breast of it. Trouble's the last thing I want.'

'Do you think she ever used another taxi service?'

'Why would she? She's nothing to complain about with me. Time and time again she's said, I don't know what I'd do without you, Fred, to come to my rescue. And then she'd say I was the only one round here she'd trust to drive her.'.

There seemed no more to be got out of the nervous Fred Harrison. Wexford left him to teturn to Tancred. He was driving himself and he took the Pomfret Monachorum road. This was only the second time he had been this way. After yesterday's rain it was a fine mild day and the woods were full of life, the quiet, stirring, fresh life of early spring. The road wound as it ascended the shallow wooded hill to Tancred. It was too soon for the trees to show leaf except for the hawthorns which were already misted all over with green. Blossom hung on the wild plums like white spotted veils.

He drove slowly. As soon as his mind emptied of Fred Harrison and his anxieties, Sheila came in to fill it. He could almost have groaned aloud.

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