Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Reggie might have been in St. Blaise House while he was alive. Why not? Miss Chawcer had escaped him, but he might have come there after her. Mix, who thoroughly knew the details of Reggie's life after he came to Notting Hill, pictured her going to Rillington Place, as it then was, for an abortion, but getting cold feet and running away. A lucky escape. Had Reggie tried to persuade her to let him do the deed at her ownplace? No, because he had to get rid of the body. He went there to get her to return…

Were there ghosts and if so, was it the murderer whose spirit he had seen? Why had he come back? And why there and not to Rillington Place, which had been the graveyard for so many dead women? Why not was pretty obvious. He wouldn't know the place after what they'd done to it, his three-story Victorian house and all the others like it razed to the ground. All those smart new rows, the trees and the cheerful atmosphere would have put him off ever returning. He could have gone to the place in Oxford Gardens where his first victim, Ruth Fuerst, had had a room. She was the one whose leg bone they had found propping up the fence in Reggie's garden. Or to that of his second, Muriel Eady, who had lived in Putney. But St.Blaise House was nearer and unchanged. He would like that, a house just the same as it had been in the forties and fifties. He'd feel comfortable there, and besides, he still had unfinished business to attend to.

She was old now but he wasn't. He was the same age as when they'd hanged him and would always be. What more likely than that he had come back to find old Chawcer and take her back with him to wherever he came from?

Don't think like that, stop it, Mix said to himself as he climbed the fifty-two stairs, you'll frighten yourself to death.

In her house in Campden Hill Square, Nerissa Nash was getting ready to go to her parents' for supper. If it had been her mum alone she was going to see, say when her dad was at work, she would have put on jeans and boots and an old jumper under her sheepskin. But her dad liked to see her dressed up, he took such pride in her.

Though she had no idea of this, her life was one they didn't begin to understand. If not everyone could lead it, she supposed everyone would want to. It was bounded by the body and the face, hair-lots of it on the head and none anywhereelse-clothes, cosmetics, aids to beauty, homoeopathy, workouts, massage, sparkling water, lettuce, vitamin supplements, alternative medicine, astrology and having her fortune told, the images and activities of other celebrities, her mum and dad and her brothers and sisters. Of music she knew very little, of painting, books, opera, ballet, scientific advances, and politics she knew nothing and wasn't interested in them. Taking part in fashion shows, she had visited all the major capitals of the world and seen of them only the studios and changing rooms of designers, the insides of clubs and gyms, the premises of masseurs, and her own face in the mirrors of cosmeticians. But for one lack in her life, she was extremely happy.

From both parents, somewhere in the genes, she had inherited a sunny disposition, a faculty for enjoying simple pleasures,and a kindly nature. People said of her that Nerissa would do anything to help a friend. Almost everything she did she enjoyed. Especially delightful was sitting at her huge dressingtable, a white cotton cape covering her Versace trouser suit,her long hair looped back, making up her face. On the CD player Johnny Cash was singing her favorite song, loved by her because it was her dad's preference over all others, the one about the teenage queen, prettiest girl they'd ever seen, she who loved the boy next door, who worked at the candy store. Nerissa identified with this successful beauty in most respects.

Her dad liked her hair hanging loose, so she left it that way. If only it had been cold, she could have worn her new fake fur that was made to look like Arctic fox. No real fur for her, she loved animals too much. The very thought made her shudder. But no, it had better be something thin and silky. Dropping the cape on the floor, she inadvertently swept off the dressing table the lid of a pot and three earrings. What should she take her parents? She should have bought something but she'd been working out most of the day and hadn't got around to it. Nevermind. Two bottles of champagne came out of the drinks cupboard and a jar of cocktail sticks fell out, scattering everywhere. Next that huge box of chocolates Rodney had given her-he was so sweet but was he crazy, thinking she'd so much as look at a chocolate?

Nerissa left a trail of litter behind her through the house. Even the flowers toppled out of the vases. Magazines tumbled out of the rack, handfuls of tissues spilled onto surfaces and under tables, lamps fell over, glasses broke, and odd bits of jewelry glinted from the carpet pile and the windowsills. Lynette, who came to clean, was so well paid she didn't mind. She went about the house, picking everything up, admiring a ring here, a bottle of scent there, and if she was at home, Nerissa would give it to her.

It was raining, the heavy crashing rain of summer. Nerissa put on her white shiny raincoat over her silk shift and leapt into the car with her champagne and her chocolates, her wet umbrella-white and with a picture of the seafront at Nice on it-slung onto the backseat. She stopped in Holland Park on adouble yellow line to buy flowers for her mum, orchids and arum lilies, roses and funny green things the florist couldn't identify. Luck was with her, as it usually was. All the wardens were indoors watching Casualty on TV: She was going to be late-when wasn't she?-but Dad wouldn't mind. He liked eating closer to nine than eight.

They lived in Acton, in a street of semidetached mock-Tudor houses, theirs with an extra bedroom over the garage. Nerissa and her brothers had grown up there, gone to the local schools, visited the local cinema, and shopped at the localshops. Both of her brothers were older than Nerissa and both were now married. When she started to make a lot of money, she had wanted to buy her parents a house near her own, perhaps a smart cottage in fashionable Pottery Lane, but they would have none of it. They liked Acton. They liked their neighbors and the neighborhood and their big garden. All their friends lived nearby and they were staying put. Besides, her father had made three ponds in his garden, one in the front and two in the back, and filled them with goldfish. Where in Pottery Lane would he be able to have three ponds or even one? And the goldfish were very active tonight, enjoying the rain.

It was her father who answered the door. Nerissa threw her arms around him, then around her mother, presented her gifts. These were, as always, received rapturously. She never touched alcohol, she drank bottled water, but now she accepted with pleasure a large cup of Yorkshire tea. You could get very fed up with water thrust at you wherever you went. Her mum always announced dinner in the same way, and uttered it in an atrocious French accent. Nerissa would have wondered what waswrong if she had deviated from this practice.

"Mademoiselle est servie. "

She only ate food like this when she went to her parents' house. The rest of the time she picked at grapefruit and Japanese rice crackers at home or green salad in restaurants. It was a miracle, she sometimes thought, that her insides could weather with no ill effects the shock of digesting thick soup, rolls and butter, roast meat and potatoes, batter pudding, and Brussels sprouts. Her mother thought this was her normal diet.

"My daughter can eat as much as she likes," she told friends.

"She never puts on a scrap of weight."

When they had reached the apple charlotte and baked Alaska stage of the meal, Nerissa asked her mother about their neighbors. These people were great friends, as close as cousins.