Read Online Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online

It wasn’t the first time Wexford had met him and he was no more impressed than on the last occasion. Callum Chapman was good-looking but neither clever nor a conversationalist. Did good looks in a man really mean so much to a woman? He had always supposed not but unless his daughter was the exception he must be wrong. Charm too was lacking. The man seldom smiled. Wexford had never heard him laugh. Perhaps he was like Diane de Poitiers whose good looks meant so much to her that she never smiled lest the movement wrinkle her face.
       Now Chapman was looking puzzled by Wexford’s anecdote. He said in his nasal Birmingham tones, ‘I don’t see the point of that. What does it mean?’
       Wexford tried to tell him. He explained how the theatre was virtually the playwright’s own, that his plays had all been performed there, he had put his heart and soul into it and now, before his eyes, it was being destroyed.
       ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
       ‘It’s an example of panache, light-hearted bravado in the face of tragedy.’
       ‘I just don’t see it.’
       Sylvia laughed again, quite unfazed. ‘Maybe by tomorrow Dad’ll be having a drink beside his own pond. Let’s go, Cal. The sitter will be fidgeting.’
       ‘Cal,’ said Wexford when they had gone. ‘Cal.’
       ‘She calls him “darling” too,’ said Dora mischievously. ‘Oh, don’t look so gloomy. I don’t suppose she’ll marry him. They’re not even living together, not really.’
       ‘What does “not really” mean?’
       She didn’t deign to answer. He knew she wouldn’t. ‘She says he’s kind. When be stays the night he makes her morning tea and gets the breakfast.’
       ‘That won’t last,’ said Wexford. ‘That New Men stuff never does. He reminds me of that Augustine Casey Sheila once brought here. The Booker shortlist bloke. Oh, I know he’s not in the least like him. I admit he’s not so obnoxious and he’s got a pretty face. But he’s not clever either or entertaining or . . .’
       ‘Or rude,’ said Dora.
       ‘No, it’s not that he’s like Casey, it’s just that I don’t understand why my daughters take up with these sorts of men. Ghastly men. Sheila’s Paul’s not ghastly, I’ll grant you that. He’s just so handsome and charming I can’t believe he won’t be off chasing some other woman. It’s not natural to look like him and be neither gay nor unfaithful to your wife or partner or whatever. I can’t help suspecting him of having a secret life.’
       ‘You’re impossible.’
       She sounded cross, not teasing or indulgent any more. He went to the window to look at the water, illuminated now by his neighbour’s lamp, and at the steadily falling insistent rain. Not long now. Another half-inch or whatever that was in millimetres and it would be at the wall. Another inch...
       ‘You said you wanted to see the news.’
       ‘I’m coming.’
       Just the bare facts coming after another rail crash, chaos on the railways, congestion on the roads, another child murdered in the north, another newborn baby left in a phone box. Just an announcement that the three were missing, then their photographs much magnified. A phone number was given for the public to call if they had information. Wexford sighed, thinking he knew well the kind of information they would have.
       ‘Tell me something. Why would a bright, good looking, middle-class teenage boy, a boy with a comfortable home who goes to a good school, why would he join a fundamentalist church? His parents don’t go there. His friends don’t.’
       ‘Perhaps it provides him with answers, Reg. Teenagers want answers. Lots of them find modern life revolts them. They think that if everything became more simple and straightforward, more fundamentalist, in fact, the world would be a better place. Maybe it would. Mostly they don’t care for ritual and facts that ought to be plain covered up in archaic words