Read Online Wexford 14 - The Veiled One by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ruth Rendell
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as if almost everything she thought and felt - perhaps momentous or amazing things - she kept veiled. She was so thin and wiry you would expect her to be a brisk woman, Wexford thought, but she was as languid as some slippery, rotund sea creature. Burden said as soon as she had gone, ‘Is she saying he’s potty?’
‘I should think that depends on how strict you are and - ’ Wexford looked up at Burden with a half-smile, ‘how out of date. Apparently he can hold down a job and drive a car and carry on a normal conversation. Is that what you mean?’
‘You know it isn’t. He sounds very much like a candidate for Lesley Arbel’s psychopath role to me.’
‘“The outstanding feature is emotional immaturity in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. These people are impulsive, feckless, unwilling to accept the results of experience and unable to profit by them . . .”’ Wexford faltered for a moment, then went on, ‘“ . . . sometimes prodigal of effort but utterly lacking in persistence, plausible but insincere, demanding but indifferent to appeals, dependable only in their constant unreliability, faithful only to infidelity, root less, unstable, rebellious and unhappy”.’
Burden gaped a bit. ‘Did you make that up?’
‘Of course I didn’t. It’s David Stafford-Clark’s definition of a psychopath - or part of it. I learned it by heart because I thought it might come in useful, but I can’t say it ever has.’ Wexford grinned. ‘I liked the prose too.’
The expression on Burden’s face rather indicated that he didn’t know what prose was. ‘I think it’s very useful. It’s good. I like that bit about dependable in their constant unreliability.’
‘Oxymoron.’
‘Is that another mental disease?’ When Wexford only shook his head, Burden said, ‘That bit you quoted - is it in a book? Can I get it?’
‘I’ll lend you my copy. I expect it’s out of print; it must be twenty years since I read it. But you can’t apply that to Clifford Sanders, you know. You’ve hardly talked to him.’
‘That can be remedied,’ said Burden grimly.
It was dark as Wexford drove along the street where he lived and approached his own house. A car was parked on his garage drive, Sheila’s Porsche. He felt a tiny dip of the heart and immediately reproached himself. He loved his daughters dearly and Sheila was his favourite, but for once he wouldn’t be elated to see her. A quiet evening was what he had looked forward to; it might be the last for a long time, for he had no faith in Burden’s forecast of the straightforwardness of this case. And now it would be given over not only to talk, but talk on serious matters.
Irritation of a different kind succeeded this initial flash of dismay. She had parked her car on the garage drive because she supposed him to be home already, even supposed this to be his day off as it should have been, and expected his car to be inside the garage. Now he would have to leave it out in the street. Unburdening her heart to her mother would have taken priority over everything. He could imagine her saying every ten minutes or so how she must rush out and move the car before darling Pop got home . . .
Thinking like that cheered him, made him smile to himself, hearing with his mind’s ear her enchanting, slightly breathless voice. He would say nothing, he resolved, of the wire-cutting, the reports of her coming divorce; he would utter no word of reproach, certainly no intimation of disappointment or upset, would cast on her no grave looks. He touched the Porsche lightly on its long, gleaming, nearly horizontal rear window as he passed it. Did she go to demonstrations in that? Well, it was only a small Porsche and black at that.
Would she come and kiss his cheek or would she hang back? There was no knowing. He went in the back way, into the hail from the kitchen, hung up his coat, hearing her voice from the
‘I should think that depends on how strict you are and - ’ Wexford looked up at Burden with a half-smile, ‘how out of date. Apparently he can hold down a job and drive a car and carry on a normal conversation. Is that what you mean?’
‘You know it isn’t. He sounds very much like a candidate for Lesley Arbel’s psychopath role to me.’
‘“The outstanding feature is emotional immaturity in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. These people are impulsive, feckless, unwilling to accept the results of experience and unable to profit by them . . .”’ Wexford faltered for a moment, then went on, ‘“ . . . sometimes prodigal of effort but utterly lacking in persistence, plausible but insincere, demanding but indifferent to appeals, dependable only in their constant unreliability, faithful only to infidelity, root less, unstable, rebellious and unhappy”.’
Burden gaped a bit. ‘Did you make that up?’
‘Of course I didn’t. It’s David Stafford-Clark’s definition of a psychopath - or part of it. I learned it by heart because I thought it might come in useful, but I can’t say it ever has.’ Wexford grinned. ‘I liked the prose too.’
The expression on Burden’s face rather indicated that he didn’t know what prose was. ‘I think it’s very useful. It’s good. I like that bit about dependable in their constant unreliability.’
‘Oxymoron.’
‘Is that another mental disease?’ When Wexford only shook his head, Burden said, ‘That bit you quoted - is it in a book? Can I get it?’
‘I’ll lend you my copy. I expect it’s out of print; it must be twenty years since I read it. But you can’t apply that to Clifford Sanders, you know. You’ve hardly talked to him.’
‘That can be remedied,’ said Burden grimly.
It was dark as Wexford drove along the street where he lived and approached his own house. A car was parked on his garage drive, Sheila’s Porsche. He felt a tiny dip of the heart and immediately reproached himself. He loved his daughters dearly and Sheila was his favourite, but for once he wouldn’t be elated to see her. A quiet evening was what he had looked forward to; it might be the last for a long time, for he had no faith in Burden’s forecast of the straightforwardness of this case. And now it would be given over not only to talk, but talk on serious matters.
Irritation of a different kind succeeded this initial flash of dismay. She had parked her car on the garage drive because she supposed him to be home already, even supposed this to be his day off as it should have been, and expected his car to be inside the garage. Now he would have to leave it out in the street. Unburdening her heart to her mother would have taken priority over everything. He could imagine her saying every ten minutes or so how she must rush out and move the car before darling Pop got home . . .
Thinking like that cheered him, made him smile to himself, hearing with his mind’s ear her enchanting, slightly breathless voice. He would say nothing, he resolved, of the wire-cutting, the reports of her coming divorce; he would utter no word of reproach, certainly no intimation of disappointment or upset, would cast on her no grave looks. He touched the Porsche lightly on its long, gleaming, nearly horizontal rear window as he passed it. Did she go to demonstrations in that? Well, it was only a small Porsche and black at that.
Would she come and kiss his cheek or would she hang back? There was no knowing. He went in the back way, into the hail from the kitchen, hung up his coat, hearing her voice from the
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