Put on by Cunning

Table of Contents

Reissued by Arrow Books 2010

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Copyright © Kingsmarkham Enterprises 1981

Kingsmarkham Enterprises has asserted its 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 1981 by

Hutchinson

This edition was first published in paperback in 1982 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:
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099534938

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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 out now in hardback.

Against the angels and apostles in the windows the snow fluttered like plucked down. A big soft flake struck one of the Pre-Raphaelite haloes and clung there, cotton wool on gold tinsel. It was something for an apathetic congregation to watch from the not much warmer interior as the rector of St Peter’s, Kingsmarkham, came to the end of the second lesson. St Matthew, chapter fifteen, for 27 January.

‘For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man . . .’

Two of his listeners turned their eyes from the pattern the snow was making on a red and blue and yellow and purple ‘Annunciation’ and waited expectantly. The rector closed the heavy Bible with its dangling marker and opened an altogether more mundane-looking, small black book of the exercise variety. He cleared his throat.

‘I publish the banns of marriage between Sheila Katherine Wexford, spinster, of this parish, and Andrew Paul Thorverton, bachelor, of the parish of St John, Hampstead. This is the first time of asking. And between Manuel Camargue, widower, of this parish, and Dinah Baxter Sternhold, widow, of the parish of St Mary, Forby. This is the third time of asking. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.’

He closed the book. Manuel Camargue resigned himself, for the third week in succession, to the sermon. As the congregation settled itself, he looked about him. The same crowd of old faithfuls came each week. He saw only one newcomer, a beautiful fair-haired girl whom he instantly recognized without being able to put a name to her. He worried about this a good deal for the next half-hour, trying to place her, annoyed with himself because his memory had become so hopeless and glasses no longer did much for his eyes.

The name came to him just as everyone was getting up to leave. Sheila Wexford. Sheila Wexford, the actress. That was who it was. He and Dinah had seen her last autumn in that Somerset Maugham revival, though what the name of the play had been escaped him. She had been at school with Dinah, they still knew each other slightly. Her banns had been called before his but her name hadn’t registered because of that insertion of Katherine. It was odd that two people as famous as they should have had their banns called simultaneously in this country parish church.

He looked at her again. She was dressed in a coat of sleek pale fur over a black wool dress. Her eye caught his and he saw that she also recognized him. She gave him a quick faint smile, a smile that was conspiratorial, rueful, gay, ever so slightly embarrassed, all those things expressed as only an actress of her calibre could express them. Camargue countered with a smile of his own, the best he could do.