Murder Being Once Done

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Authors: Ruth Rendell

BOOK: Murder Being Once Done
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This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781409068228
Version 1.0
 
Reissued by Arrow Books 2010
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
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
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099534860
The Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation.
All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at:
www.rbooks.co.uk/environment
Typeset by Replika Press Pvt Ltd, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX
About the Author
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.
Praise for Ruth Rendell:
‘One of the foremost of our writers of crime fiction’ PD James
‘The most brilliant mystery novelist of our time’ Patricia Cornwell
‘Through the quality of her writing she’s raised the game of the crime novel in this country’ Peter James
‘Probably the greatest living crime writer in the world’ Ian Rankin
‘She can make a scene between two women sitting in a cafe as violent as anything you’ve seen between a couple of guys with baseball bats’ Mark Billingham
‘Ruth Rendell, like all the great creators of crime fiction, keeps her pact with the reader. There’s a murder mystery, there are clues, there is a solution. It’s a very satisfying read’ Gyles Brandreth
‘As a page-turner there are few who can match Ruth’ Colin Dexter
‘She deals quite seamlessly with social issues. She’s got a real grip on what makes people do things’ Val McDermid
‘She gets into the mind not only of the hero; she gets into the mind of the villain’ Jeffery Deaver
‘Very good at recording social and political change . . . she’s bang up to the minute’ Andrew Thomas
‘Rendell is a great storyteller who knows how to make sure that the reader has to turn the pages out of a desperate need to find out what is going to happen next’ John Mortimer,
Sunday Times
‘Plenty of style and many a wry reflection on the human condition . . .’ Frances Fyfield,
Daily Express
‘The inspiration never seems to flag and the quality of the craftsmanship remains as high as ever’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Ruth Rendell’s mesmerising capacity to shock, chill and disturb is unmatched’
The Times
‘Ms Rendell exercises a grip as relentless as an anaconda’s’
Guardian
‘Ruth Rendell has quite simply transformed the genre of crime writing. She displays her peerless skill in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the potent murky impulses of desire and greed, obsession and fear’
Sunday Times
‘A brilliant piece of exhumation’
Observer
‘Cleverly plotted and conspicuously well written’
Daily Telegraph
‘Wonderful at exploring the dark corners of the human mind, and the way private fantasies can clash and explode into terrifying violence’
Daily Mail
‘Superb plotting and psychological insight make this another Rendell gripper’
Woman & Home
‘An unusual detective story . . . intelligent, well written, with a surprising twist at the end’
Times Literary Supplement
‘England’s premier detective-thriller writer’
Spectator
‘Intricate and ingenious’
Yorkshire Post
‘Unguessable and brilliant’
Listener
‘The best mystery writer anywhere in the English-speaking world’
Boston Globe
OMNIBUSES:
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES | COLLECTED STORIES 2 | WEXFORD: AN OMNIBUS | THE SECOND WEXFORD OMNIBUS | THE THIRD WEXFORD OMNIBUS | THE FOURTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS | THE FIFTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS | THREE CASES FOR CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD | THE RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS | THE SECOND RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS | THE THIRD RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS |
CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH | A NEW LEASE OF DEATH | WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER | THE BEST MAN TO DIE | A GUILTY THING SURPRISED | NO MORE DYING THEN | MURDER BEING ONCE DONE
ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL
|
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE | SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER | A SLEEPING LIFE | PUT ON BY CUNNING | THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN | AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS | THE VEILED ONE | KISSING THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER | SIMISOLA | ROAD RAGE | HARM DONE | THE BABES IN THE WOOD | END IN TEARS | NOT IN THE FLESH | THE MONSTER IN THE BOX |
SHORT STORIES:
THE FALLEN CURTAIN | MEANS OF EVIL | THE FEVER TREE | THE NEW GIRLFRIEND | THE COPPER PEACOCK | BLOOD LINES | PIRANHA TO SCURFY |
NOVELLAS:
HEARTSTONES | THE THIEF |
NON-FICTION:
RUTH RENDELL’S SUFFOLK | RUTH RENDELL’S ANTHOLOGY OF THE MURDEROUS MIND |
NOVELS:
TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL | VANITY DIES HARD | THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH | ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN | THE FACE OF TRESPASS | A DEMON IN MY VIEW | A JUDGEMENT IN STONE | MAKE DEATH LOVE ME | THE LAKE OF DARKNESS | MASTER OF THE MOOR | THE KILLING DOLL | THE TREE OF HANDS | LIVE FLESH | TALKING TO STRANGE MEN | THE BRIDESMAID | GOING WRONG | THE CROCODILE BIRD | THE KEYS TO THE STREET | A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES | ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME | THE ROTTWEILER | THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN | THE WATER’S LOVELY | PORTOBELLO
For Frits and Nelly Twiss
The chapter heading quotations are taken from
Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia
in the Ralph Robinson translation of 1551
MURDER BEING
ONCE DONE
Ruth Rendell
1
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.

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