Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

She didn't quite ask her visitor what she was doing here. " Imust get those keys back. I suppose your aunt had another one cut. Without asking me of course."

"How are you?"

"Oh, I'm much better, my dear." Gwendolen was softening. She put the book down with the letter from the cystic fibrosis charity to mark the place. "What have you got there?" Seedlesswhite grapes, William pears, Ferrero-Rocher chocolates, and a bottle of Merlot. Gwendolen was less disapproving than usual. She never ate any fruit except stewed apples but she would enjoy the chocolates and the wine. "I see you're more discerning than your aunt and her friend."

Hazel didn't know what to say. She had realized she was going to find conversation difficult with this elderly lady whom once, long ago, her own father would have called a bluestocking.Hazel didn't read much and was aware she couldn't talk about books or any of the things that probably interested MissChawcer. She was struggling to comment on the weather, the improvement in Miss Chawcer's health, and the beauty of her house when the doorbell rang.

"Who on earth can that be?"

"Do you want to see anyone or shall I say to come back anothertime?"

"Just get rid of them," said Gwendolen. "Say what you like."

It might be a letter from Stephen Reeves come by special delivery. Gwendolen hadn't yet heard from him and she was growing quite anxious. Suppose the letter had gone astray? Hazel went to the door. A man of about sixty, tall and handsomeand wearing a turban, stood on the doorstep. To Hazel's eyes he looked very like a Pathan warrior she had once seen in a film about the North-West Frontier.

"Good afternoon, madam. Mr. Singh from St. Mark's Road to see Miss Chawcer, please."

"I'm afraid Miss Chawcer hasn't been well. She's been inhospital. Could you possibly come back tomorrow? Well, nottomorrow. Say Sunday?"

"Certainly I say Sunday, madam. I return eleven A.M."

"What did he want?" Gwendolen asked.

"I didn't ask. Should I have?"

"It doesn't matter. I know, anyway. It's about his wretched guinea fowl. Otto must have eaten them. I found feathers ont he stairs. Now I expect this man wants compensation."

Hazel was beginning to think this a very strange household,what with this old bluestocking and the stalker upstairs and now a person with a German name who ate the neighbors' poultry. She began to look forward to Nerissa's return and was relieved when the doorbell rang.

"Who is it this time? I can't think why I've suddenly become so popular."

"It's my daughter."

"Ah." Gwendolen inevitably associated the daughter, and would associate her for the rest of the life that remained to her,with uncontrolled amorous behavior in her hallway. "I don't suppose she will want to come in."

Hazel saw this as an unprovoked put-down and was veryglad to be leaving. "Why had Aunty Olive never told her what an old horror Miss Chawcer was? She said a cool good-bye and rushed out to Nerissa, who was waiting on the doorstep in a fever of nerves in case the man suddenly appeared.

Gwendolen fell asleep as soon as she was gone. Since her illness she was finding a rest in the afternoon wasn't goode nough; she needed to sleep. Dreaming she didn't need but the dream came to her, sharper and more vivid than any nighttime episode, apparently real and happening in the present. She was young, as she always was in dreams, and visiting Christie in Rillington Place. The war was on, the only one she ever thoughtof as "the war," discounting conflicts in Korea and Suez and the Falklands and Bosnia and the Persian Gulf. Sirens were sounding as she knocked on Christie's door, for in the dream that seemed real it was she who was pregnant and she who was going to him for an abortion. Only, like Bertha, but there was no Bertha in this reality, she was afraid of the man and his instructions and she fled, determined not to go back. When sh ecame out, as is the way with dreams, instead of in Rillington Place she was with Stephen Reeves in the drawing room at St.Blaise House and he was telling her he was the father of her child. It was a shock to her, a surprise and a relief. She thought then he would ask her to marry him, but the scene shifted again. She was alone in Ladbroke Grove, standing outside his surgery in the sudden dusk, and he was nowhere to be seen. She was running this way and that, looking for him, when she fell over, banged her head, and woke up.

Such daylight dreams take longer to recover from than any nightmare met with in the hours of darkness. For a moment or two she lay in the armchair, wondering where he was and when he would come back. She even looked at her hands and marveled that at her young age they were so wrinkled, the branching veins standing out like tree roots in dry soil. Gradually, ar eality that was welcome yet unwelcome came back and she sat up.

Whileshe slept and perhaps while she was talking to Hazel Akwaa, the brown paper bag containing the thong had slippeddown between the seat cushion and the arm of the armchair. Wide awake now, she had forgotten it was there.

Mix left the company for which he had worked for nine years more with a whimper than a bang. He felt very sore because no one had suggested buying him a drink, still less had anyone presented him with a clock or a dinner service, and no noises had been made about redundancy money. Worst of all he hadt o hand over the keys to the car, which he had left in the firm'sunderground car park.

But he comforted himself with the thought that he had securedundertakings from five of his clients that they would continue using him to service and repair their machines. Inquiring of a cash dispenser as to the state of his bank balance, he had been informed he was nearly five hundred pounds in credit. And that was before the sum went in which the firm owed him for the three weeks they didn't want him to work. Still he lacked the heart to go back to Campden Hill Square. Whenhe did make it down there he'd have no choice but to go on foot. At any rate, the walk would do him good.

On the Friday he went to the cinema on his own, passing on the way home pubs whose clientele spilled out onto the pavements and cafes where diners sat at tables outside. He bought Chinese takeaway for his supper, two bottles of wine, and abottle of Cointreau for the making of Boot Camps. The weather was as hot as it had been in July and as dry. One afternoon ithad rained heavily, the first rain for weeks, and while he watched it he relished the thought of all that water encouraging weeds to grow on the garden grave.

Going home was always an ordeal but less so if he could organize things so as to get back in daylight. That would soon bed ifficult with darkness coming earlier and earlier. Carrying his heavy bags, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as he climbedthe last flight of stairs, gazing hypnotically at his own frontdoor. Something had gone wrong with the street lamp immediately outside the house so that no light fell through the Isabella window. The top landing was pitch dark but once inside his flat he was all right. He was safe. And his back didn't hurt anymore. He must be pretty fit to have got over a back injury so fast.

He read Killer Extraordinary , watched television to the accompaniment of a Boot Camp, ate his takeaway and listened tothe singing and sighing of the Westway. If the police were going to question him about Danila they would have done it by now. Possibly, after years, after old Chawcer was dead, which might be ages away, someone would buy the house and dig up the garden. They wouldn't dig down four feet, would they? By then he'd be long gone and far away from this haunted house. Living with Nerissa, married to Nerissa, and maybe they'd buy a place in France or even Greece. Even if they found Danila's body they'd never connect it with Nerissa Nash's husband, the famous criminologist.