Murder Being Once Done

Table of Contents

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Epub ISBN: 9781409068228

Version 1.0

 

Reissued by Arrow Books 2010

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Copyright © Ruth Rendell 1972

First chapter of Some Lie and Some Die © Ruth Rendell 1973

Ruth Rendell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain in 1972 by

Hutchinson

This edition was first published in paperback in 1994 by Arrow Books

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099534860

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Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with
A Demon in My View
; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, ‘The New Girlfriend’; and a Gold Dagger award for
Live Flesh
in 1986. She was also the winner of the 1990
Sunday Times
Literary Award, as well as the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

The new Chief Inspector Wexford novel,
Monster in the Box
, is now available in hardback.

ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL

The chapter heading quotations are taken from

Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia

in the Ralph Robinson translation of 1551

The sick . . . they see to with great affection, and let nothing at all pass concerning either physic or good diet whereby they may be restored to their health.

When Wexford came downstairs in the morning his nephew had already left for work and the women, with the fiendish gusto of amateur dieticians, were preparing a convalescent’s breakfast. It had been like that every day since he arrived in London. They kept him in bed till ten; they ran his bath for him; one of them waited for him at the foot of the stairs, holding out a hand in case he fell, a lunatic smile of encouragement on her face.

The other – this morning it was his nephew’s wife, Denise – presided over the meagre spread on the dining-room table. Wexford viewed it grimly: two circular biscuits apparently composed of sawdust and glue, a pat of unsaturated fat, half a sugarless grapefruit, black coffee and, crowning horror, a glass of wobbly pallid substance he took to be yoghurt. His own wife, trotting behind him from her post as staircase attendant, proffered two white pills and a glass of water.

‘This diet,’ he said, ‘is going to be the death of me.’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad. Imagine if you were diabetic as well.’

‘Who,’ quoted Wexford, ‘can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?’

He swallowed the pills and, having shown his contempt for the yoghurt by covering it with his napkin, began to eat sour grapefruit under their solicitous eyes.

‘Where are you going for your walk this morning, Uncle Reg?’

He had been to look at Carlyle’s house; he had explored the King’s Road, eyeing with equal amazement the shops and the people who shopped in them; he had stood at the entrance to Stamford Bridge football ground and actually seen Alan Hudson; he had traversed every exquisite little Chelsea square, admired the grandeur of The Boltons and the quaint corners of Walham Green; on aching feet he had tramped through the Chenil Galleries and the antique market. They liked him to walk. In the afternoons they encouraged him to go with them in taxis and tube trains to the Natural History Museum and Brompton Oratory and Harrods. As long as he didn’t think too much or tax his brain by asking a lot of questions, or stay up late or try to go into pubs, they jolted him along with a kind of humouring indulgence.

‘Where am I going this morning?’ he said. ‘Maybe down to the Embankment.’

‘Oh, yes, do. What a good idea!’

‘I thought I’d have a look at that statue.’

‘St Thomas More,’ said Denise, who was a Catholic.

‘Sir Thomas,’ said Wexford, who wasn’t.

‘St Thomas, Uncle Reg.’ Denise whisked away the unsaturated fat before Wexford could eat too much of it. ‘And this afternoon, if it isn’t too cold, we’ll all go and look at Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.’

But it was cold, bitingly cold and rather foggy. He was glad of the scarf his wife had wrapped round his neck, although he would have preferred her not to have gazed so piteously into his eyes while doing so, as if she feared the next time she saw him he would be on a mortuary slab. He didn’t feel ill, only bored. There weren’t even very many people about his morning to divert him with their flowing hair, beads, medieval ironmongery, flower-painted boots and shaggy coats matching shaggy Afghan hounds. The teeming young, who usually drifted past him incuriously, were this morning congregated in the little cafés with names like Friendly Frodo and The Love Conception.