An Unkindness of Ravens (32 page)

‘Ah,’ Wexford paused in the doorway. ‘Something I nearly forgot to tell you. About Williams’s young girlfriend.’

They looked at him. ‘Williams didn’t have a young girlfriend,’ Burden said.

‘Of course he did. She had nothing to do with his death, nothing to do with this case, so she hardly concerned us. But a man like Williams—it was in his nature, inevitable. Both his wives knew it, they sensed it. Probably he’d always had a young girlfriend, a succession of them.

‘This one—hers were the other set of prints on the car. No wonder she said her dad didn’t want me to take them. They met at Sevensmith Harding, of course. In the office.’

‘Jane Gardner ... ‘

‘That’s who he had his date with on April the fifteenth in Myringham. Join her for her baby-sitting, then spend the night together at the Cheriton Forest Hotel. Why else did he have a bag with him with a single change of underwear and a toothbrush and toothpaste? But the sleeping pills overcame him as he was driving through Pomfret, and instead of going on to meet Jane he was just able to make it to his own house. What she thought was that he’d stood her up. Then, when he disappeared, that he’d gone off with another woman. I had a word with her this morning and she admitted it—no more need to conceal it now we’d made an arrest.’

‘What put you on to her?’

‘I don’t know. Guesswork. She was the only person I ever spoke to who had a good word for Rodney Williams.’

Wexford let himself out, closing Burden’s blue front door behind him.

Ruth Rendell’s first novel, FromDoon with Death, came out in 1964, and she has now a number of awards for her work including two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America for her short stories; Current Crime’s silver cup for the best British crime novel of 1975 with Shake Hands for Ever; the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View; and the Arts Council National Book Award —Genre Fiction for Lake of Darkness in 1980.

 Her books have been translated into fourteen languages and are also published to great acclaim in the United States.

 Ruth Rendell is married and lives in a sixteenth century farmhouse in Suffolk.