Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell Page A

dull with the years. That was true. I accepted it. I thought it inevitable with people who had been married as long as we had, and who had no children. We never quarrelled. I think I should tell you now that if my wife had fallen in love with someone else I shouldn’t have been angry. I shouldn’t even have objected. I expect I would have been jealous, but I wouldn’t have shown my jealousy by violence, God forbid!—or in any other way. I want to make that clear now.’
    Wexford nodded noncommittally. The man’s words were simple and frank, carrying, he thought, an unmistakable ring of truth.
    ‘You said,’ Quentin went on, ‘that nobody involved in a murder case had any right to a private life. I’ll have to tell you about my private life to make you understand why I did what I did.’ He got up suddenly and walked swiftly to the bookshelves, pressing his hands flat against morocco and gilt bindings. Staring at the titles of the books and perhaps unseeing, he said, ‘I used to go to her room once a fortnight, always on a Saturday night. She would push back the bedcovers and say, always the same, “This
is
nice, darling,” and afterwards, when I left her to go back to my room, she’d say, “That was lovely, darling.” Shenever called me by my name. Sometimes I think she forgot what it was.’
    He stopped. Wexford wasn’t the sort of policeman who says impatiently, ‘Is all this really relevant, sir?’ He said nothing, listening with a grave face.
    ‘I was so bored,’ Quentin said to the books. ‘I was lonely. Sometimes I used to feel that I was married to a kind of beautiful animated statue, a doll that smiled and wore pretty clothes and even had a vocabulary of a certain limited kind.’
    ‘And yet you were happy?’ Wexford ventured quietly.
    ‘Did I say that? Perhaps because everyone else said I was, I grew used to telling myself I must be.’
    He moved away from the bookcase and began to pace the room. It seemed for a moment that he had changed the subject when he said, ‘We used to keep servants, a proper staff, but Elizabeth gave them notice. Then we had a succession of
au pair
girls, two French and one German. I think Elizabeth made a point of choosing plain girls.’ He swung round, faced Wexford and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Perhaps she thought Katje was plain. Fat and coarse was the way she once described her. I suppose—I suppose I was attracted to Katje from the start, but I never did anything about it. She was a young girl and I was—well,
in loco parentis.
I told myself I thought of her as a daughter. How we delude ourselves!’ He turned away his face. ‘It’s almost impossible for me to find the words to tell you. I …’
    ‘You slept with her?’ Wexford said expressionlessly.
    Quentin nodded.
    ‘The night before last?’
    ‘That wasn’t the first time. Chief Inspector, in all the sixteen years we’d been married, I’d never beenunfaithful to my wife. I’d had my opportunities. What man hasn’t? I loved my wife. All those years I hoped for a sign of warmth, just one spontaneous sign that she recognised me as a human being. I never gave up hoping until Katje came. Then for the first time I saw a woman who was close to me, a woman living under my roof, behaving like a woman. Perhaps not as a woman should behave. She had boy friends all over the place and she used to tell me about them. Sometimes in the evenings Elizabeth would be out, walking in the grounds or gone early to bed, and Katje would come in from some date and she’d tell me about it, giggling and laughing, talking as if the best thing in the world was to take and give pleasure.
    ‘One night, after one of these talks, I was lying in bed, waiting for Elizabeth to come in. I said I’d given up hope but that isn’t true. I always hoped. I never remember feeling such a depth of loneliness as I felt that night. I thought I’d give everything I possessed, this house, the fortune I’ve amassed, if she