Аврам Дэвидсон: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

“If you found a nice friend to share, I wouldn’t object to putting up a single bed in the garden room. Then your friend could come and go by the side gate, provided you were prepared to promise me it would always be bolted at night.”

Della wasn’t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn’t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs. Swanson...

“Ooh, it’s lovely!” said Rosamund Vine. “It’s so quiet and clean. And you’ve got a garden! You should see the dump I’ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.”

“You don’t get mice,” said Della repressively, “unless you leave food about.”

“I won’t do that. I’ll be ever so careful. I’ll go halves with the rent and I’ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won’t disturb you if I come in late at night.”

“I hope you won’t come in late at night,” said Della. “Mrs. Swanson’s very particular about that sort of thing.”

“Don’t worry.” Rosamund sounded rather bitter. “I’ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter to twelve.”

Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs. Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn’t fallen to her, as she didn’t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs. Swanson.

Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn’t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn’t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ “followers,” noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.

The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room — necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit — it wasn’t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.

“Goodness,” Rosamund had said, “this place is like Fort Knox. All those keys and bolts! What are you so afraid of?”

“Mrs. Swanson likes to have the place locked up,” said Della, but the next night she made hot drinks for the two of them and sent Rosamund to wait for her in the bed-sitter before creeping out into the yard for a secret check-up.

When she came back Rosamund was examining her bedside table. “Why do you put everything in order like that, Della? Your book at right angles to the table and your cigarette packet at right angles to your book, and, look, your ashtray’s exactly an inch from the lamp as if you’d measured it out.”

“Because I’m a naturally tidy person.”

“I do think it’s funny your smoking. I never would have guessed you smoked till I came to live here. It doesn’t seem in character. And your glass of water. Do you want to drink water in the night?”

“Not always,” Della said patiently. “But I might want to, and I shouldn’t want to have to get up and fetch it, should I?”

Rosamund’s questions didn’t displease her. It showed that the girl wanted to learn the right way to do things. Della taught her that a room must be dusted every day, the fridge defrosted once a week, the table laid for breakfast before they went to bed, all the windows closed and the catches fastened. She drew Rosamund out as to the places she had previously lived in with a view to contrasting past squalor with present comfort, and she received a shock when Rosamund made it plain that in some of those rooms, attics, converted garages, she had lived with a man. Della made no comment but froze slightly. And Rosamund, thank goodness, seemed to understand her disapproval and didn’t go into details. But soon after that she began going out in the evenings.

Della didn’t want to know where she was going or with whom. She had plenty to occupy her own evenings, what with the work she brought home, her housework, washing and ironing, her twice-weekly letter to her mother and father, and the commercial Spanish she was teaching herself from gramophone records. It was rather a relief not to have Rosamund fluttering about. Besides, she could do her security rounds in peace. Not, of course, that she could check up on the side gate till Rosamund came in. Necessarily, it had to remain unbolted, and the back door to which Rosamund had the key, unlocked. But always by ten to twelve at the latest she’d hear the side gate open and close and hear Rosamund pause to draw the bolts. Then her feet tiptoeing across the yard, then the back door unlocked, shut, locked. After that, Della could sleep in peace.

The first problem arose when Rosamund came in one night and didn’t bolt the gate after her. Della listened carefully in the dark, but she was positive those bolts hadn’t been drawn. Even if the back door was locked, it was unthinkable to leave that side gate on nothing all night but its flimsy latch. She put on her dressing gown and went through the kitchen into the garden room. Rosamund was already in bed, her clothes flung about on the coverlet. Della picked them up and folded them. She was coming back from the yard, having fastened those bolts, when Rosamund sat up and said: “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

“Mrs. Swanson,” said Della with a light indulgent laugh, “wouldn’t be able to sleep if she knew you’d left that side gate unbolted.”

“Did I? Honestly, Della, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I can’t think of anyone but Chris. He’s the most marvelous person and I do think he’s just as mad about me as I am about him. I feel as if he’s changed my whole life.”

Della let her spend nearly all the following evening describing the marvelous Chris, how brilliant he was — though at present unable to get a job fitting his talents — how amusing, how highly educated — though so poor as to be reduced to borrowing a friend’s room while that friend was away. She listened and smiled and made appropriate remarks, but she wondered when she had last been so bored. Every time she got up to try and play one of her Spanish records, Rosamund was off again on another facet of Chris’s dazzling personality, until at last Della had to say she had a headache and would Rosamund mind leaving her on her own for a bit?

“Anyway, you’ll see him tomorrow. I’ve asked him for a meal.”

Unluckily, this happened to be the evening Della was going to supper with her aunt on the other side of London. They had evidently enjoyed themselves, judging by the mess in the kitchen, Della thought when she got home. There were few things she disliked more than wet dishes left to drain. Rosamund was asleep. Della crept out into the yard and checked that the bolts were fastened.