A bright yellow rectangle. His head cleared. He steadied and stilled himself. Jammed between a man in a leather coat and a girl in a fur coat, he looked through a tiny space that wasn't cluttered by skirts and legs and chair legs and handbags, looked through the blue acrid smoke at that yellow rectangle which was liquid in a tall glass, and saw it raised by a hand and carried out of his sight.

  Pernod. Not a popular drink in England. Ginge had drunk it mixed with Guinness as a Demon King. And one other, she that he sought, his chimera, his thing of fanciful conception, drank it diluted and yellowed by water. He moved

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  slowly, pushing his way towards that corner table where she was, but he could get only within three yards of her. There were too many people. But now there was a space clear enough at eye level for him to see her, and he looked long and long, staring greedily as a man in love stares at the woman whose coming he has awaited for months on end.

  She had a pretty face, tired and wan. Her eyes were smarting from the smoke and her cropped blonde hair showed half an inch of dark at the roots. She was alone, but the chair beside her was covered by a folded coat, a man's coat, and stacked against the wall behind her, piled at her feet and walling her in, were half a dozen suitcases. She lifted her glass again and sipped from it, not looking at him at all, but darting quick nervous glances towards a heavy mahogany door marked Telephone and Toilets. But Wexford lingered, looking his fill at his chimera made flesh, until hats ar d hair and faces converged and cut off his view.

  He opened the mahogany door and slipped into a passage. two more doors faced him, and at the end of the passage was a glass kiosk. Hathall was bent over the phone inside it, his back to Wexford. Phoning the airport, Wexford thought, phoning to see if his flight's on now the fog is lifting. He stepped into the men's lavatory, pulling the door to, waiting till he heard Hathall's footsteps pass along the passage.

  The mahogany door swung and clicked shut. Wexford let a minute go by and then he too went back into the bar. The cases were gone, the yellow glass empty. Thrusting people aside, ignoring expostulation, he gained the street door and flung it open. Hathall and the woman were on the pavement edge, surrounded by their cases, waiting to hail a taxi.

  Wexford flashed a glance at the car, caught Hutton's eye and raised his hand sharply, beckoning. Three of the car's

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  doors opened simultaneously and the three policemen it had contained were on their feet, bounced on to the wet stone as if on springs. And then Hathall understood. He swung round to face them, his arm enclosing the woman in a protective but useless hold. The colour went out of his face, and in the light of the misted yellow lamps the jutting jaw, the sharp nose and the high forehead were greenish with terror and the final failure of his hopes. Wexford went up to him.

  The woman said, 'We should have left last night, Bob,' and when he heard her accent, made strong by fear, he knew. He knew for sure. But he couldn't find his voice and, standing silent, he left it to Lovat to approach her and begin the-words of the caution and the charge.

  'Moray Grey . . .'

  She brought her knuckles to her trembling lips, and Wexford saw the small L-shaped scar on her forefinger as he had seen it in his dreams.

  23

  Christmas Eve.

  They had all arrived and Wexford's house was full. Upstairs, the two little grandsons were in bed. In the kitchen Dora was again examining that turkey, consulting Denise this time as to the all-important question of whether to hang it up or lay it on the oven shelf. In the living room-Sheila and her sister were dressing the tree while Burden's teenage children subjected the record player, which had to be in good order for the following day,-to a rather inexpert servicing. Burden had taken Wexford's son-in-law down to the Dragon for a drink.

  'The dining room for us then,' said Wexford to his nephew. The table was already laid for Christmas dinner, already decorated with a handsome centrepiece. And the fire was laid too, as sacrosanct as the table, but Wexford put a match to the sticks. 'I shall get into trouble about that,' he said, 'but I don't care. I don't care about anything now I've found her, nowyou,' he added generously, 'and I have found her.'

  'It was little or nothing I did,' said Howard. 'I never even found where she was living. Presumably, you know now?'

  'In Pembridge Road itself,' said Wexford. 'He only had that miserable room but he paid the rent of a whole flat for her. No doubt, he loves her, though the last thing I want is to be sentimental about him.' He took a new bottle of whisky from the sideboard, poured a glass for Howard and then, recklessly, one for himself. 'Shall I tell you about it?'

  RIO

  'Is there much left to tell ? Mike Burden's already filled me in on the identity of the woman, this Morag Grey. I tried to stop him. I knew you'd want to tell me yourself'

  'Mike Burden,' said his uncle as the fire began to crackle and blaze, 'had today off. I haven't seen him since I left him at London Airport yesterday afternoon. He hasn't filled you in, he doesn't know, unless - is it in the evening papers ? The special court, I mean?'

  'It wasn't in the early editions.'

  'Then there is much left to tell.' Wexford drew the curtains against the fog which had returned in the afternoon. 'What did Mike say?'

  'That it happened more or less the way you guessed, the three of them in the pay-roll fraud. Wasn't it that way?'

  'My theory,' Wexford said, 'left far too many loopholes.' He pulled his armchair closer to the fire. 'Good to relax, isn't it? Aren't you glad you haven't got to get your tailing gear on and go off up to West End Green ?'

  'I'll say it again, I did very little. But at least I don't deserve to be kept in suspense.'

  'True, and I won't keep you in it. There was a pay-roll fraud all right. Hathall set up at least two fictitious accounts, and maybe more, soon after he joined Kidd's. He was pulling in a minimum of an extra thirty pounds a week for two years. But Morag Grey wasn't in on it. She wouldn't have helped anyone swindle a company. She was an honest woman. She was so honest she didn't even keep a pound note she found on an office floor, and so upright she wouldn't stay married to a man who'd stolen two pounds fifty. She couldn't have been in on it, still less have planned and collected from the Mary Lewis account because Hathall didn't meet her till the March. She was only at Kidd's for a couple of weeks and that was three months before Hathall left.'

  ZII

  'But Hathall was in love with her, surely? You said so yourself. And what other motive . . . ?'

  'Hathall was in love with his wife. Oh, I know we decided he'd acquired amorous tastes, but what real evidence did we have of that ?' With a slight self-consciousness too well covered for Howard to detect, Wexford said, 'If he was so susceptible, why did he reject the advances of a certain very attractive neighbour of his ? Why did he give everyone who knew him the impression of being an obsessively devoted husband ?'

  'You tell me,' Howard grinned. 'You'll be saying in a minute that Morag Grey didn't kill Angela Hathall.'

  'That's right. She didn't. Angela Hathall killed Morag Grey.'

  A wail rose from the record player in the next room. Small feet scuttled across the floor above and there was a violent crash from the kitchen. The noise drowned Howard's low exclamation.

  'I was pretty surprised myself,' Wexford went on casually. 'I suppose I guessed when I found out yesterday about Morag Grey being so honest and only being at Kidd's for such a short while. Then when we arrested them and I heard her Australian accent I knew.'

  Howard shook his head slowly in astonishment and wonder rather than disbelief. 'But the identification, Reg ? How could he hope to get away with it ?'

  'He did get away with it for fifteen months. You see, the secretive isolated life they led in order to make the pay-roll scheme work was in their favour when they planned this murder. It wouldn't have done for Angela to get well known in case she was recognized as not being Mrs Lewis or Mrs Carter when she went to make withdrawals

  aid

  from those accounts. Hardly a soul knew her even by sight. Mrs Lake did, of course, and so did her cousin, Mark Somerset, but who on earth would have called on them to identify the body ? The natural person was Angela's husband. And just in case there was any doubt, he took his mother with him, taking care she should see the body first. Angela had dressed Morag in her own clothes, those very clothes she was wearing on the only previous occasion her mother-in-law had seen her. That was a fine piece of psychology, Howard, thought up, I'm sure, by Angela who planned all the intricacies of this business. It was old Mrs Hathall who phoned us, old Mrs Hathall who put doubt out of court by telling us her daughter-in-law had been found dead in Bury Cottage.

  'Angela started cleaning the place weeks ahead to clean off her own fingerprints. No wonder she had rubber gloves and dusting gloves. It wouldn't have been too difficult a task, seeing she was alone all week without Hathall there to leave his own prints about. And if we queried such extreme cleanliness, what better reason for it than that she was getting the cottage perfect for old Mrs Hathall's visit?'

  'Then the handprint and the L-shaped scar were hers2'

  'Of course.' Wexford drank his whisky slowly, making it last. 'The prints we thought were hers were Morag's. The hair in the brush we thought was hers was Morag's. She must have brushed the dead girl's hair - nasty, that. The coarser dark hairs were Angda's. She didn't have to clean the car in the garage or at Wood Green. She could have cleaned it at any time she chose in the previous week.'

  'But why did she leave that one print?'

  'I think I can guess at that. On the morning of the day Morag died, Angela was up early getting on with her cleaning. She divas cleaning the bathroom, had perhaps taken off

  2I3

  her rubber gloves and was about to put on the others to polish the floor, when the phone rang. Mrs Lake rang to ask if she could come over and pick the miracle plums. And Angela, naturally nervous, steadied herself with her bare hand on the side of the bath when she got up to answer the phone.

  'Moray Grey spoke, and doubtless read, Gaelic. Hathall must have known that. So Angela found out her address -they would have been keeping a close eye on her - and wrote to her, or more probably called on her, to ask if she would give her some assistance into the research she was doing into Celtic languages. Morag, a domestic servant, can only have been flattered. And she was poor too, she needed money. This, I think, was the good job she spoke of to her neighbour, and she gave up her cleaning work at this time, going on to the Social Security until Angela was ready for her to start.'

  'But didn't she know Angela ?'

  'Why should she? Angela would have given her a false name, and I see no reason why she should have known Hathall's address. On the nineteenth of September Angela drove over to Myringham Old Town, collected her and drove her to Bury Cottage for a discussion on their future work. She took Morag upstairs to wash or go to the loo or comb her hair. And there she strangled her, Howard, with her own gilt snake necklace.

  'After that it was simple. Dress Morag in the red shirt and the jeans, imprint a few mobile objects with her fingerprints, brush her hair. Gloves on, take the car down that tunnel of a lane, away to London. Stay a night or two in an hotel till she could find a room, wait for time to go by till Hathall could join her.'

  'But why, Reg ? Why kill her ?'

  'She was an honest woman and she found out what Hathall was up to. She was no fool, Howard, but rather one of those

  2I4

  people who have potential but lack drive. Both her former employer and her mother said she was a cut above the kind of work she was doing. Her feckless husband dragged her down. Who knows ? Maybe she would have had the ability to advise a genuine etymologist on demotic Gaelic, and maybe she thought this was her chance, now she was rid of Grey, to better herself. Angela Hathall, when you come to think of it, is a very good psychologist.'

  'I see all that,' said Howard, 'but how did Morag find out about the pay-roll fraud ?'

  'That,' Wexford said frankly, 'I don't know - yet. I'd guess Hathall stayed late one evening while she was working there, and I'd guess she overheard a phone conversation he had with Angela on that occasion. Perhaps Angela had suggested a false address to him and he called her to check up he'd got it right before he fed it into the computer. Don't forget Angela was the mainspring behind all this. You couldn't have been more right when you said she'd influenced and corrupted him. Hathall is just the sort of man to think of a cleaner as no more than a piece of furniture. But even if he'd spoken guardedly, that name, Mrs Mary Lewis, and that address, I9 Maynnot Way, would have alerted Morag. It was just down the road from where she and her husband lived and she knew no Mary Lewis lived there. And if, after that call, Hathall immediately began to feed the computer . . .'

  'She blackmailed him ?'

  'I doubt it. She was an honest woman. But she'd have queried it, on the spot perhaps. Maybe she merely told him she'd overheard what he'd said and there was no Mary Lewis there, and if he'd seemed flustered - my God, you should see him when he's flustered I - she could have asked more and more questions until she had some hazy idea of what was actually going on.'

  215

  'They killed her for that?'

  Wexford nodded. 'To you and me it seems a wretched motive. But to them ? They would ever after have been in a panic of fear, for if Hathall's swindle were uncovered he'd lose his job, lose his new job at Marcus Flower, never get another job in the one field he was trained for. You have to remember what a paranoid pair they were. They expected to be persecuted and hounded, they suspected even the innocent and harmless of having a down on them.'

  'You weren't innocent and harmless, Reg.' said Howard quietly.

  'No, and perhaps I'm the only person who has ever truly persecuted Robert Hathall.' Wexford raised his almost empty glass. 'Happy Christmas,' he said. 'I shan't let Hathall's loss of liberty cloud the season for me. If anyone deserves to lose it, he does. Shall we join the others? I think I heard Mike come in with my son-in-law.'

  The tree had been dressed. Sheila was jiving with John Burden to the thumping cacophony that issued from the record player. Having restored a sleepy little boy to his bed for the third time, Sylvia was wrapping the last of the presents, one of Kidd's Kits for Kids, a paint-box, a geo- graphical globe, a picture book, a toy car. Wexford put an arm round his wife and an arm round Pat Burden and kissed them under the mistletoe. Laughing, he put his hand out to the globe and spun it. Three times it circled on its axis before Burden saw the point, and then he said:

  'It does move. You were right. He did do it.'

  'Well, you were right too,' said Wexford. 'He didn't murder his wife.' Seeing Burden's look of incredulity, he added, 'And now I suppose I shall have to tell the story all over again.'

  On the following pages are details of Arrow Books that will be of interest.

  Ruth Rendell THE FACE OF TRESPASS

  Two years ago he had been a promising young novelist. Now he survived - you could hardly call it living - in a near derelict cottage with only an unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company.

  Two years of loving Drusilla. The bored, rich, unstable girl with everything she needed - and a husband she wanted dead.

  The affair was over. But the long slide towards deceit and violence was just beginning....

  Ruth Rendell SOME LIE AND SOME DIE

  For a while the pop festival at Sundays went well. The sun shone, the groups played well and everyone - except a few angry neighbours - seemed to enjoy themselves.

  Then the weather changed. And in a nearby quarry two lovers found a body that made even Inspector Wexford's stomach lurch.

  Dawn Stonor had been a local girl, back from London on a flying visit that not even her mother could explain - and the only clue that Wexford had was the strange connection with the star of the festival . . .

  NO MORE DYING THEN Ruth Rendell

  Was there a child-killer loose in Kingsmarkham?

  'I'm sorry to trouble you, but my little boy . . . He's well, he was out playing and he's - he's disappeared . . .'

  Two missing children - one almost certainly dead, another in terrible danger.

  With his trusted second-in-command still near breakdown after a personal tragedy, Chief Inspector Wexford must go it alone, relying on experience and his policeman's instinct to find his way through a tangle of false trails and misleading dues.

  MURDER BEING ONCE DONE Ruth Rendell

  What are right and wrong? Today one thing, another tomorrow. Death only is real.

  The grim epitaph on the family vault was appropriate enough. For it was here, amid the decay and desolation of Kenbourne Vale Cemetery, that the girl's body had been found.

  Detective Chief Inspector Wexford was in London for a rest, but not even his doctor's orders could keep him away from this case.

  Who was she, this polite, passionless girl who had called herself Loveday Morgan? And what was her connection with the sinister Children of the Revelation?

  DRAW BATONS!

  Bill I[DOX

  They found Harry Durrnan's body in the middle of a model railway layout - part of a community exhibition organized by the Glasgow police.

  That's where Glasgow C.I.D. men Thane and Moss come in.

  As the city is invaded by football fans arriving for an international match, Thane and Moss fight against back-street death: and a gang planning a robbery bigger than any Glasgow has ever seen before.

  TO KILL A WITCH Bill Knox

  The murder of Margaret Barclay looks a pretty routine affair - if murder can ever be called routine.

  But then the trail leads to a rich and refined Glasgow suburb - where Chief Inspector Colin Thane and Detective Inspector Phil Moss uncover a pattern of violence as vicious as that in any tenement jungle.

  As the wealthy, frightened members of a witch cult panic and scatter, COI;D Thane is drawn into one of the most terrifying experiences of his career.

  RALLY TO KILL A Thane and Moss Mystery Bill Knox

  When pretty young Doreen Ashton's body is found on a patch of wasteland, the Glasgow police seem to be faced with yet another senseless, brutal sex-killing.

 

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