‘It must have been then that she assumed a man’s name, and perhaps this was when she submitted her first manuscript to a publisher. It was then or never, wasn’t it? If she was going to have a career and come into the public eye there must be no ambivalence of sex. By posing – or passing – as a man she had everything to gain: the respect of her fellows, a personal feeling of the rightness of it for her, the freedom to go where she chose and do what she liked, to walk about after dark in safety, to hobnob with men in bars on an equal footing. And she had very little to lose. Only the chance of forming close intimate friendships, for this she would not dare to do – except with unobservant fools like Vivian.’
‘Well,’ said Burden, ‘I’ve just about recovered from the shock, unlike Marie Cole who took some hours. But there’s something else strikes me she had to lose.’ He looked with some awkwardness in the direction of the Chief Constable, and Griswold, without waiting for him to say it, barked, ‘Her sexuality, eh? How about that?’
‘Len Crocker said at the start of this case that some people are very low-sexed. And if I may again quote Havelock Ellis, eonists often have an almost asexual disposition. “In people”, he says, “with this psychic anomaly, physical sexual urge seems often subnormal.” Rhoda Comfrey, who had had no sexual experience, must have decided it was well worth sacrificing the possibility – the remote possibility – of ever forming a satisfactory sexual relationship for what she had to gain. I am sure she did sacrifice it and became a man whom other men and women just thought rather odd.'
‘And she took pains to be as masculine as she could be. She dressed plainly, she used no colognes or toilet waters, she carried an electric shaver, though we must suppose it was never used. Because she couldn’t grow an Adam’s apple she wore high necklines to cover her neck, and because she couldn’t achieve on her forehead an M-line, she always wore a lock of hair falling over her brow.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Burden. ‘An M-line?’
‘Look in the mirror,’ said Wexford.
The three men got up and confronted themselves in the ornamented glass on the wall above their table. ‘See,’ said Wexford, putting his own hands up to his scanty hairline, and the other two perceived how their hair receded in two triangles at the temples. ‘All men,’ he said, ‘have to some degree, but no woman does. Her hairline is oval in shape. But for Rhoda Comfrey these were small matters and easily dealt with. It was only when she paid a rare visit to Kingsmarkham to see her father that she was obliged to go back to being a woman. Oh, and on one other occasion. No wonder people said she was happy in London and miserable in the country. For her, dressing as a woman was very much what it would be like for a normal man to be forced into drag. But she played it in character, or in her old character, that, but perhaps she ought to see the old man first and find out how the land lay.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘I mean that if he was very seriously incapacitated she would know that her greatest fear, that her father might have to be parked on her one day, would be groundless and she could go off to France with a light heart. But she had to go down there and find out, even though this would mean putting off her holiday for a day or two. Never mind. That was no great inconvenience. She phoned her aunt to tell her she would be coming and when she did so Polly Flinders was in the flat, but not all the time in the room.'
‘Now, if no one else did, Polly knew that Grenville West had once or twice before disappeared mysteriously at weekends. I think we can assume that Rhoda rather enjoyed keeping her in the dark about that, and guessed she was giving her cause for jealousy. On that Friday evening Polly had very likely been troublesome – she may, for instance, have wanted West to take her away on holiday with him and Rhoda vented her annoyance by calling Lilian Crown “darling”. Polly overheard, as she was meant to overhear, and believed that West was involved with another woman living in the country. No doubt she asked questions, but was told it was no business of hers, so she determined to go to Stowerton on the Monday and find out for herself what was going on.’
Burden interrupted him. ‘Why didn’t Rhoda or West or whatever we’re going to call him or her – it gets a bit complicated – go to Kingsmarkham that day? Then there wouldn’t have been any need to postpone the holiday. Where does the Trieste Hotel come in?’
‘Think about it,’ said Wexford. ‘Walk out of Elm Green in make-up and high-heeled shoes and a dress?’
‘I should have thought a public lavatory…’ Burden stopped himself proceeding further with this gaffe, but not in time to prevent Griswold’s hoot of laughter.
‘How does he manage to go in the Gents’ and come out of the Ladies’, Mike?’
Wexford didn’t feel like laughing. He had never been amused by drag or the idea of it, and now the humorous aspects of this particular case of cross-dressing seemed to him quenched by its consequences. ‘She used hotels for the changeover,’ he said rather coldly, ‘and usually hotels in some distant part of London. But this time she had left it too late to pick and choose, especially with the tourist season at its height. On that Saturday she must have tried to book in at a number of hotels without success. The only one which could take her was the Trieste which she had used once before – on the occasion of the visit to Dr Lomond. You can see, Mike, how she walked out of the Trieste on that day, crossed Montfort Circus, went up Montfort Hill, and chose an address from a street name and an advertisement.'
‘So back to the Trieste she went, with her car packed up for the French holiday and allowing Vivian to believe she was leaving directly for France. The car was left in a garage at the hotel with her passport and French currency locked up in the boot. On her person she retained the car keys and her new wallet, and these went into her handbag when on the following day she left the hotel as Rhoda Comfrey.’
‘That must have been as bad as walking out of Elm Green. Suppose she’d been seen?’
‘By whom? An hotel servant? She says she’s calling on her friend, Mr West. It would have been easy enough to mingle with the other guests or conceal herself in a cloakroom, say, if Hetherington had appeared. As a respectable middle-aged lady, she’d hardly have been suspected of being there for what you’d call an immoral purpose.’
‘Hotels don’t take much notice of that these days,’ said the Chief Constable easily. Forgetting perhaps that it was he who had told Wexford to get back to the nitty-gritty, he said, ‘This passport, though. I’m still not clear about it. I see she had to have a man’s name and a man’s identity, but why that one? She could have changed her name by deed poll or kept Comfrey and used one of those Christian names that will do for either sex. Leslie, for instance, or Cecil.’
‘Deed poll means a certain amount of publicity, sir. But I don’t think that was entirely the reason. She needed a passport. Of course she could have used some ambiguous Christian name for that. And with her birth certificate and her change of name document she could have submitted to the Passport Office a photograph that gave no particular indication of whether she was male or female…’
‘Exactly,’ said Griswold. ‘A British passport isn’t required to state the holder’s home address or marital status or,’ he added with some triumph, ‘the holder’s sex.’
‘No, sir, not in so many words. If the holder is accompanied by a child, that child must be declared as male or female, but not the holder. Yet on the cover and on page one the holder’s style is shown. It wouldn’t have helped her much, would it, to have a man’s Christian name and a man’s photograph but be described as Miss Cecil Comfrey?’