Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell

you replace that torch, Mr Nightingale? Come, I want an answer. I shall sit here until I get one.’ There was a tap at the door and Wexford opened it to admit Burden. A quick glance passed between them. Burden raised his eyebrows at the silent slumped figure, and then moved without speaking towards the wall shelves as if fascinated by the books they held. ‘Pull yourself together, Mr Nightingale,’ Wexford said. ‘I’m waiting for an answer.’ He would have liked to shake the man, stir him into some sort of response. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Since I don’t believe in wasting time and Inspector Burden looks as if he might appreciate a little entertainment, I’ll tell you a story. You might find some parallels in it with your own conduct over the past days. Who knows?
    ‘There was a country gentleman,’ he began, ‘who lived with his beautiful wife in a manor house. They were happy together, even if their marriage might have been said to have grown a little rusty and dull with the years.’ Quentin moved a fraction at that, pushing his fingers hard into his white hair. ‘One day,’ Wexford said in the same pleasant conversational tone, ‘he discovered that his wife was being unfaithful to him, meeting another man in the woods at night. So, consumed with jealousy, he followed her, taking a torch with him, for the moon had gone and the night was dark. He saw her with this man, kissing each other, and heard them making plans and giving promises. Perhaps they even abused him. When the man had left her and she was alone, the husband confronted her, she defied him, and he struck out at her with the torch, struck again and again in his jealous frenzy until he had beaten her to death. Did you say something, Mr Nightingale?’
    Quentin’s lips moved. He moistened them, struggledforward in his chair and managed a strangled, ‘However … however it happened, it wasn’t … it wasn’t that way.’
    ‘No? The husband didn’t burn his bloodstained sweater on the still-smoldering bonfire? He didn’t pace the garden for hours in his anguish, finally locking himself in his own bathroom to spend more hours cleansing every trace of his wife’s blood from his person? Strange. We know he took a bath and that at what some would call an ungodly hour …’
    ‘Stop!’ Quentin cried, clutching the arms of his chair. ‘None of this is true. It’s a monstrous fabrication.’ He swallowed, then cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t take a bath.’
    ‘You told me you did,’ retorted Wexford.
    ‘Twice,’ said Burden, the word dropping like a bead of cold water.
    ‘I know. It was a lie.’ A fiery blush coloured Quentin’s face and he closed his eyes. ‘Would you get me a drink, please? Whiskey. It’s in there.’
    Burden looked at Wexford and Wexford nodded. The whiskey was in a small cabinet under the window. Burden poured about an inch into a glass and put it into the shaking hand, closing the fingers around it. Quentin drank, the glass chattering against his teeth.
    ‘I’ll tell you where I was,’ he said. Wexford noticed that he was at last making a determined effort to steady his voice. ‘But you alone. I should like it if the inspector could leave us.’
    And if he was about to confess to a murder …? Wexford didn’t like it much. But he had to know. He made a quick decision. ‘Will you wait outside, please, Inspector Burden?’
    Obediently Burden went, without a backward glance. Quentin gave a heavy sigh. ‘I don’t knowwhere to begin,’ he said. ‘I could just tell you badly, but I need to justify myself. God, if you knew the remorse, the shame … I’m sorry. I am trying to get a grip on myself. Well, I … I must start somewhere.’ He finished the last of his drink, putting off, Wexford thought, the evil moment as long as he could. Then he said: ‘I want you to know that it was quite correct what you said about my wife and me, being happy together, I mean, but with our marriage grown