Read Online Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ruth Rendell
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years ago, he was treated with coolness and a few people turned away from him without a word or a nod. His house was put up for sale. Wexford had seen it advertised in an estate agent's window for two thousand, five hundred pounds. Its reputation had reduced its price but not, he thought, by more than, say, three hundred pounds. Now that same house would fetch two hundred thousand.
Targo moved too. He waited to see George Carroll come home, be ostracised and excluded, and then he and his family disappeared. Or that was the way Wexford had seen it. That was the way it looked. It might, of course, have been only coincidence that when George Carroll returned to Jewel Road after the trial, an estate agent's board appeared outside number 32 advertising it for rent. Wexford had gone down there to look at the empty house and the board himself, though for what purpose he couldn't have said. He enquired of a neighbour and was told the Targo family had gone away, no one knew where, but Kathleen and her children had gone to one destination and Targo to another. Soon after that Wexford himself was leaving.
He said goodbye to Alison and gave a half-hearted promise to come back to Kingsmarkham at weekends when he was able to, fairly certain that he would hardly ever be able to. She was half-hearted too. She had gradually become so since their row over his intellectual pretensions and he could tell, to his relief, that the matter would be taken out of his hands, that she would soon break off their engagement. Strange that this made him fonder of her. Not fond enough to want them to be as they had been when they first met, but rather with a feeling of what might have been and what a pity it was that it could never come back.
As to the girl in the red dress, it had been only a glimpse he had had of her, not enough to make him go searching Sussex, just enough to make him think that one day he would like to marry a girl like her. Now he had his career to think of, his future. The breach with Alison came in a letter from her, the first letter he ever received in his new home, a room over a tobacconist's shop in Brighton. As he had thought, she had met another man, the one who had taken her to the pictures that night he went to St Joan . They were getting married almost at once. He wrote back, wished her happy and to keep the ring, hoping she wouldn't because he could do with the money he would sell it for, but she did keep it. Now, someone had told him, she had several grandchildren and no longer lived in this country.
One day, walking down the high street on his way to interview a man about the disappearance of a sackful of stolen goods, he passed Tina Malcolm. George Carroll's former girlfriend was with a man who wasn't Carroll and pushing a baby in a buggy. As people were always monotonously telling him, it was a small world, so it wasn't very surprising perhaps to see, on another occasion, Harold and Margaret Johnson, window-shopping in the Brighton Lanes. His friends he had left behind in Kingsmarkham and had so far made no new ones. Sometimes he went out to the pub in the evenings with DC Roger Phillips, but mostly he stayed in and read. Public libraries were in their heyday then, no nonsense about incorporating coffee shops and what technology there was, but lots and lots of good books. He read them, poetry and plays and novels. Worlds opened for him and far from distracting him from his duties (as Alison would have suggested) they seemed to make him a better policeman.
Considered kind and polite, the way to refer to black or Asian immigrants in those days was as 'coloured' people. Not that there were many of them. Wexford remembered a carpet seller who went from door to door with his wares. He wore a turban and must have been a Sikh but no one knew about that kind of thing then. A black man who swept the streets was probably from Africa but no one knew what brought him here or what misfortune made pushing a
Targo moved too. He waited to see George Carroll come home, be ostracised and excluded, and then he and his family disappeared. Or that was the way Wexford had seen it. That was the way it looked. It might, of course, have been only coincidence that when George Carroll returned to Jewel Road after the trial, an estate agent's board appeared outside number 32 advertising it for rent. Wexford had gone down there to look at the empty house and the board himself, though for what purpose he couldn't have said. He enquired of a neighbour and was told the Targo family had gone away, no one knew where, but Kathleen and her children had gone to one destination and Targo to another. Soon after that Wexford himself was leaving.
He said goodbye to Alison and gave a half-hearted promise to come back to Kingsmarkham at weekends when he was able to, fairly certain that he would hardly ever be able to. She was half-hearted too. She had gradually become so since their row over his intellectual pretensions and he could tell, to his relief, that the matter would be taken out of his hands, that she would soon break off their engagement. Strange that this made him fonder of her. Not fond enough to want them to be as they had been when they first met, but rather with a feeling of what might have been and what a pity it was that it could never come back.
As to the girl in the red dress, it had been only a glimpse he had had of her, not enough to make him go searching Sussex, just enough to make him think that one day he would like to marry a girl like her. Now he had his career to think of, his future. The breach with Alison came in a letter from her, the first letter he ever received in his new home, a room over a tobacconist's shop in Brighton. As he had thought, she had met another man, the one who had taken her to the pictures that night he went to St Joan . They were getting married almost at once. He wrote back, wished her happy and to keep the ring, hoping she wouldn't because he could do with the money he would sell it for, but she did keep it. Now, someone had told him, she had several grandchildren and no longer lived in this country.
One day, walking down the high street on his way to interview a man about the disappearance of a sackful of stolen goods, he passed Tina Malcolm. George Carroll's former girlfriend was with a man who wasn't Carroll and pushing a baby in a buggy. As people were always monotonously telling him, it was a small world, so it wasn't very surprising perhaps to see, on another occasion, Harold and Margaret Johnson, window-shopping in the Brighton Lanes. His friends he had left behind in Kingsmarkham and had so far made no new ones. Sometimes he went out to the pub in the evenings with DC Roger Phillips, but mostly he stayed in and read. Public libraries were in their heyday then, no nonsense about incorporating coffee shops and what technology there was, but lots and lots of good books. He read them, poetry and plays and novels. Worlds opened for him and far from distracting him from his duties (as Alison would have suggested) they seemed to make him a better policeman.
Considered kind and polite, the way to refer to black or Asian immigrants in those days was as 'coloured' people. Not that there were many of them. Wexford remembered a carpet seller who went from door to door with his wares. He wore a turban and must have been a Sikh but no one knew about that kind of thing then. A black man who swept the streets was probably from Africa but no one knew what brought him here or what misfortune made pushing a
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