Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

"I should have married Gwendolen," he would have said.

“She was my first love."

Gwendolen had never expressed her feelings to him. It wouldn't have been right for a woman to do that then but things seemed to be different now. He might not know how she felt, he might never have known. Somehow she must manageto tell him and then everything would come right.

He had read Christie's Victims before but a long time ago, six or seven years ago when he began collecting his Reggie library. Of course he remembered it. But it was still fascinating to retrace his steps through the Notting Hill of those days and through the life of one of the most famous serial killers ofall time.

"John Reginald Halliday Christie came to live in London in1938," Mix read while eating his breakfast,

and with him came his wife, Ethel. He was a curious man.There must be something strange, not to say appalling, about any necrophile. Not only is the idea of necrophilia repugnant to everyone, but in order to indulge his desire, the sufferer from this aberration must, unless he has unlikely accessto a morgue, first kill his victims .

Looking at it from the perspective of the twenty-first century,Christie's marriage was not a happy one. Five years after their wedding, Ethel left him and went to live in Sheffield. Their separation lasted for several years until Christie wrote to her, asking her to return to him. After their reunion, she was often away staying with her relatives in the north. Christie had been a cinema operative, a mill-worker and a postman, in connection with which last he was sent to prison for stealing postal orders. Imprisoned again for stealing a carfrom a Roman Catholic priest who had befriended him, he nevertheless volunteered for the Emergency Reserve of the London Police Force and was acceptedin the year he and his wife came to Rillington Place, Notting Hill, west London.

Apparently the police made no inquiries about his past, or if they did their findings were not serious enough to disqualify him, and in 1939 he became a full-time Special Constable. Four years later, while still a policeman, he met the girl who was to be his first murder victim…

Reluctantly, Mix raised his eyes and slipped a marker in between the pages. Having told Danila at Shoshana's Spa and Health Club that he would be arriving at ten to service five machines, he had better go. The book, by a certain Charles Q.Dudley, was the fourth or fifth he had read on the Rillington Place murderer and the facts he had just absorbed were already known to him. This he had expected. What he was looking for and expected to find, perhaps halfway through the book, was some hint or suggestion that Christie sometimes visited his prospective victims' homes. Had he noticed anything of this sort when he read the book for the first time? He couldn't remember.

Mix was taking the day off in lieu of working on a previous Sunday. It was useless trying to do the Shoshana job before or after work because these were the least likely times for Nerissa to be there. Models get up very late in the mornings, Mix had read somewhere, while their evenings are occupied with film premieres, clubs, public appearances, and parties at manorhouses in the Home Counties. When the happy time came, he fantasized, he and she would lie in together, maybe until midday or later. A maid would bring breakfast, but not before eleven, and when it came it would be what he had ordered, buck's fizz, caviar on toast, and eggs benedict.

He returned to reality and recognized that parking was going to be a problem. He knew that before he got there. Eventually he found a meter and paid for two hours, but it wasa long way from the health club. He told himself that all this walking must be improving his figure. Arriving on the dot often, he turned his eyes away from the chrome number thirteenand got quickly into the lift. Glancing round the girls and acouple of young men working out, he saw at once that Nerissa wasn't among them. Probably it was a bit early for her. His fussy eye appraised Danila and he decided that though skinny and scared, she wasn't so bad. Knowing her better might helphim in his quest.

"Madam Shoshana said to ask you not to fiddle about with the machines the clients are using. I'm only telling you what she said."

"You can trust me," he said. "I know what I'm doing."

"And she says not to use any oil or stuff like that because if it gets on the clients' gear they're going to go ballistic. It's what she said, not me."

"I only use invisible fat-free oil," Mix lied.

He had brought three new belts with him and spanners for adjusting the parts. Shoshana's hadn't been open very long, so servicing wasn't necessary, but he whiled away the time taking ellipticals apart and checking handlebar positions on stationarybikes. Whatever came out of it, he was really going to squeeze Madam Shoshana for putting him through this tedious business. Pity Danila had been told to keep an eye on him or he'd settle down in a corner and read a bit more of Christie's Victims.

Danila was very thin. So was Nerissa but hers was a different kind of thinness. You couldn't see her bones sticking out the way Danila's did. And Danila's face was like a bird's with a beaky nose and not much chin. Still, she had great legs and more tangled-up dark hair than Mix could ever remember seeing on a woman's head. He had almost given up looking for Nerissa that day. It was eleven-fifteen and if he wasn't going to get clamped or towed away or whatever they did around here, he had to be back at the car by ten to twelve.

Danila was sitting behind her counter, drinking a cup of black coffee.

"Would there be another one of those going?"

"There might be, but don't say a word, will you?" She disappeared into some inner recesses of the club and came backwith coffee, a milk jug, and sweetener in little tubular packs." Here you are. Shoshana'd kill me if she knew. We're not supposed to give coffee to anyone but staff."

"You're a star," said Mix and got a smile. No time like the present, he thought, and keeping his eye on the door in case Nerissa did just happen to come in at eleven-forty, said, "You feel like having a drink? Say Wednesday or Thursday if you want."

She was surprised. He would have liked her better if she'd taken such invitations for granted and as her due. "I don't mind," she said, and then, spoiling it, "Are you sure?"

"I'll pick you up then. Where d'you live?"

“Oxford Gardens." She gave him the number.

"Not far from me," he said. "We'll go to KPH," he said,forgetting she wouldn't know what those initials meant. "Eight suit you?"

No point, he thought, in spending the whole evening with her. Suppose Nerissa was one of those clients, the ones she'd talked about last time he was here, who only came to the club four times and then lost interest. He mustn't be impatient because she hadn't come today, she wouldn't come every day, no matter how keen she was on fitness. Next week he'd do his servicing on a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday. And maybe he'd psych himself up to walk here. It couldn't be more than a mile.

Olive had forgotten about leaving the bone behind in Gwendolen's house, had hunted for it all round the block's communal gardens and even grubbed about in various bins outsideshops. Kylie, the little white dog, had been frantic. So calling on Gwendolen was not to retrieve the bone, but to pour out her heart to a sympathetic ear.

Gwendolen's was never that. It was with some amusement that she listened to her friend's woes. The bone had been sent to Kylie by an American friend who shared Olive's love of poodles.Kylie had adored it from the first. Now it was lost and Olive had no idea what to do, it being impossible to buy such a toy here. Nor would she dare write to her friend in Baltimore, confessing her carelessness and asking for a replacement.