Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Heaven forbid that she should have her bed moved downstairs. Neither Queenie nor Olive had yet suggested it, but they would, they would. She would never submit to that, shethought, as she struggled, and failed, to remove her clothes andget into her nightgown. She did manage to take off the ruby ring and put it in the jewel box, thought of washing her hands but only thought of it. Reaching the bathroom seemed as impossible as, say, walking to Ladbroke Grove and back. She laydown and closed her eyes. Weakness enfeebled her wholebody, but sleep, which had come so easily and irresistibly during the past week, come when she didn't want it and even tried to fight against it, now backed away from her, banished by anger.

It wasn't only the wrath aroused by the lodger's behavior, though that was bad enough, but the rage of a lifetime welling up and bubbling, churning through her veins. Rage at Mama, who had taught her to be ladylike at the expense of freedom of speech, cultivation of the mind, liberty of movement, love, passion,adventure, and the pursuit of happiness; rage at Papa who hid his denial to her of a real education under a cloak of protecting her from the wicked world and who kept her at hometo be his nurse and amanuensis; rage at Stephen Reeves, whohad deceived her and married someone else and failed to answer her letters; rage at this enormous decaying house that had become her prison.

For a long while, she didn't know how long, she felt she had no physical existence and was only a mind that swirled with rage and thoughts of revenge. Then, at one moment she was in a fury of anger, at the next blank and still. It was like sleep andyet it was not. Her first thought when she emerged from it was that at least she could punish the lodger with the police. She struggled, and failed, to sit up. This wouldn't do for, tonight certainly, she must check on the rest of the jewelry in the box,see what, if anything, was missing and lying in a muddy hole in the garden. She must go down and look in the cabinet where the silver, untouched for many years, lay wrapped in green baize.

It seemed as if, for a few moments, she had lost consciousness.She doubted if she could stand up. This time it wasn't a fear of dizziness that might cause her to fall but an apparent inability to move her left side. Cramp, of course. She occasionally suffered from cramp and usually in the night. She rubbed her left leg and then her left arm and though she fancied a littlefeeling returned she could only put her foot to the floor by a huge effort. Her arm hung useless. As she thought she must try to get to the light switch and the door, it opened slowly and Otto strolled in. His sleek chocolate form became black in the faint light from those street lamps still in working order, while his eyes glowed the color of the limes for sale in the cornershop. She found herself thinking, incongruously, as she had never thought before, that his eyes were beautiful and that he, young and lithe, was the only perfect thing she ever saw. He took no notice of her but sat down in front of the empty grate and began picking pieces of twig and tiny stones out of his pads with sharp white teeth.

Gwendolen dragged her left leg back onto the bed, tugging it there with her right hand. The effort exhausted her. His manicure complete, Otto leapt gracefully onto the bed and curled up beside her feet.

From his bedroom window Mix watched Mr. Singh pinning upfairy lights along the fronds of the palm tree. It wasn't Christmas or that festival Indians had about the same time, so whatwas he playing at? Maybe it's just as well we can't have handguns here like they do in the U.S. If I had a gun I'd shoot that guy here and now, Mix thought. Mr. Singh climbed down theladder, went into the house, and switched the lights on, red and blue and yellow and green twinkling in the exotic tree. Then Mrs. Singh came out in a pink sari, and the two of them stoodlooking at the tree, admiring the effect.

Even at this hour, the places where Mix had dug the garden showed up quite clearly from a distance, a small patch of turned earth and a larger one. He should have done his digging under cover of darkness, he knew that now, but that would have meant after midnight. Lights were on in the houses along Mr. Singh's road but on this side he couldn't see the backs ofthe terrace, only their gardens. One of them had outside lights along the wall and among the evergreens. A woman who hadcome out to take in a blanket and a pair of jeans from the washingline he recognized as Sue Brunswick. Thoughts of buying! her husband's car now seemed like a half-forgotten dream, let alone the designs he had had on her. Even Nerissa, whom he often thought of romantically at this time of day like a song at twilight, faded from his mind. Nothing mattered, not jobs or livelihood, not lack of a car, not love, nothong but stopping old Chawcer phoning the police.

Yet ever since he had come upstairs he had been paralyzed with fear. The ibuprofen he had taken, far in excess of the maximum recommended dose, made his head swim and hadn't done much for his backache. He hadn't even been able to pour himself a drink or think about food or sit down, but had stoodhere at the window, holding on to the sill for support and staringout. She would do it, he was sure of that. He hadn't tried to dissuade her because he knew for certain that she'd do it. Sheonly put it off till tomorrow because she belonged to that generation who thought you didn't phone the police or a doctor or go to the shops on a Sunday. His gran was the same. They saw Monday as the day you got down to things, so she'd tell them first thing in the morning.

The twin gleams of Otto's eyes were nowhere to be seen. Mix, who had never given Otto much thought before, now imagined how glorious it must be to be him, fed and housed for free, no job and none needed, insomnia unknown, freedom to wander a rich hunting ground all day and night if he wished. Free of pain, supple and fearless and free to murder anything that got in his way. No sex of course. Otto, he was sure, had been fixed. But sex was a nuisance anyway, and what you'd never had you couldn't miss.

This small distraction from his troubles sent Mix into the living room where he mixed himself a Boot Camp with an extra shot of Cointreau. He should have had the sense to do this a couple of hours ago. Then maybe he wouldn't have felt so bad. The cocktail had its wondrous effect and almost instantly made him feel there was no problem he couldn't solve. Youhad to get things in perspective, you had to know your priorities. His priority, in the here and now, was to stop old Chawcer talking to the police. It was probable, he thought, that she didn't know the effect her words would have on them. He knew. Searching for Danila's body simultaneously with their hunt for her killer, they would immediately be alerted to the chance of discovering both and be around here in ten minutes. She had to be stopped.

He knew how to stop a woman's tongue. He had done itbefore.

How she got out of bed Gwendolen hardly knew. She crawled a few inches across the floor. In Mr. Singh's garden a palm tree had turned into a chandelier of colored lights. She must be imagining it, something had happened to her brain. To reach the door, let alone the stairs, the drawing room, and the silverc abinet, was impossible. She would have liked to phone her doctor or even Queenie or Olive, but she would have had to roll herself down the stairs to do so. But it was Sunday, still Sunday as far as she knew, and angry as she had been with her long-dead mother, Mrs. Chawcer's principle of not making a phone call to anyone but members of one's family on a Sunday- and never, on any day, after nine at night-died very hard. So she crawled back without the strength to wash or what her mother had called "relieve herself," saw that the imaginary tree was still there, still bright with twinkling colored stars, and fellon the bed still fully clothed, though she managed to pull off one shoe and kick off the other.