Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

13

————

When Anthony opened his eyes it was twenty past eleven. Winston was still reading Psychology and Life , Potter was still asleep. Both bars of the electric fire were on and the room was very hot.

“Where’s Brian?”

Winston closed the book. “He went off about half an hour ago. Said he was going to find this Dean character and have it out with him.”

“Oh God,” said Anthony. “Let’s get rid of Potter.”

“When you like,” said Winston equably. “I looked through his pockets while you were asleep. He’s got plenty of money and he’s staying at the Fleur Hotel in Judd Street.”

“Well done, Sergeant. You’ll go far.” A thought struck Anthony. “You were never in the police, were you?”

Winston grinned. “No, I never was. Shall we get him a cab?”

Anthony nodded and they managed to wake Potter. But, as always on waking, Potter had a call of nature or wanted to be sick. He departed for the lavatory, and Anthony and Winston waited for him in silence. They had to wait a long time, as it was fully ten minutes before Potter reappeared, green-faced, unsteady, and drooling.

Arthur came through the front door of 142 Trinity Road at twenty-five to twelve. He held his coat collar high up against his throat so that the absence of a tie wouldn’t be noticed. The bitter cold made such an action natural in someone who might be thought bronchial. But there was no one to see him and he wasn’t afraid.

At first the house appeared as dark as when he had left it all those hours before. No light showed in Li-li Chan’s window or in that of Winston Mervyn. The hall was dark and silent, but, pausing at the foot of the stairs, he saw a line of light under the door of Room 2, and the ill-fitting lavatory door had a narrow rim of light all the way round its rectangle. Anthony Johnson. It could be no one else. Arthur moved soundlessly up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, six steps before, he heard the lavatory door open and saw a blaze of light stream into the hall below. It seemed to him that Anthony Johnson must have paused, must be looking up the stairs—for why else should he hang about in the hall? He didn’t look down and by the time he was on the landing, he heard the door of Room 2 close.

Light flooded the courtyard below his bedroom window. But it was of no importance. The only danger to him lay in his being actually caught in the act of a killing, for he had been a stranger to the woman he had strangled, as he had been a stranger to Maureen Cowan and Bridget O’Neill. No one would care what time Arthur Johnson had come home that night because no one would think it necessary to enquire.

There was nothing to worry about. These were perhaps the only moments in his life when he had nothing to worry about. He savoured them, excluding thought, feeling an exquisite peace, an animal’s well-being. Not bothering, for once, to wash, he stripped off his clothes, leaving on top of the heap of them the stretched, twisted silver tie, and fell beneath the blue floral quilt In seconds he was asleep.

It was always, as Winston pointed out, next to impossible to secure a taxi in Trinity Road which wasn’t a through road and whose inhabitants in general couldn’t afford cabs.

“We could get him up to the rank by the station.”

“No, we couldn’t,” said Anthony. It had been bad enough lugging the somnolent, smelly Potter from Room 2 out into the street. He must have weighed at least sixteen stone. Now he sat where they had placed him, on the low wall that divided the patch of grass from the street, his head resting against the stump of a lime tree. The heavy frost that made them shiver had no effect on Potter who began once more to snore.

“I’ll go to the rank,” said Winston, “if you’ll stay here and see he doesn’t fall off on to the grass.” But as he spoke a taxi cruised out of Magdalen Hill and came to a stop outside 142. Li-li Chan, in a green satin boiler suit and pink feather boa, skipped out of it and thrust a pound note at the driver.

“Ninety-eight, lady,” said the driver, giving her back twopence.

“You keep change,” said Li-li, waving it away. While the driver stared after her in gloomy disbelief, she uttered a “Hallo, it’s fleezing,” to Anthony and Winston and danced off up the steps.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” said the driver, “if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes.” He scrutinised the coin as if he feared it might vanish in the wake of its bestower.

Winston grabbed Potter under one arm while Anthony took the other. They shoved him into the back of the cab. “This one’s loaded and he’s in no state to argue about your tip. Fleur Hotel, Judd Street. O.K.?”

“Long as he don’t throw up,” said the driver.

The night was growing quiet now and there had been no sound of fireworks for half an hour.

It took nearly an hour to air Room 2. Anthony was a long time getting to sleep and, as a result, he overslept. Waking at eight-thirty, he hadn’t time to shave or wash much, for he was determined to get down to work in the college library by half-past nine. There was a stranger in the hall, a nondescript, middle-aged man who nodded and said good morning in what seemed a deliberate and calculating way. Anthony had made up his mind he must be a plainclothes policeman even before he saw the police car parked outside the house, and at once he wondered if this visit had any connection with Brian Kotowsky. Brian had gone out the previous night, intent on quarrelling with Jonathan Dean—intent perhaps on fighting Dean?

But none of the occupants of the car attempted to speak to him, so he crossed the road towards Oriel Mews. Here his passage was barred. The mews entrance was blocked off by a tarpaulin sheet, erected on a frame some eight feet high, and none of its interior was visible.

The sound of knocking had awakened Arthur just before his alarm was due to go off. Someone was hammering on one of the doors, Kotowskys’ or Mervyn’s, on the floor below. Then he heard voices, Mervyn’s and another’s, but he was used to all sorts of unnecessary wanton noise, made at uncivilised hours, so he didn’t take much notice. Ten minutes later, when all the noise had stopped, he got up and had his bath. He cleaned bath and basin carefully, mopped the floor, plumped up the blue pillows and shook out the quilt, took a clean shirt and clean underwear from the airing cupboard.

A tramping up and down the stairs had begun. Perhaps someone else was moving out. It would be just like Stanley Caspian not to have told him. He went into the kitchen and plugged in his kettle, wondering in a detached kind of way if the body of the woman had yet been found. Imprudent of him really to have done the deed so near home, but prudence, of course, hadn’t entered into it. The evening newspaper would tell him, reveal to him as to any other stranger, the known facts. And this time he wouldn’t collapse and be ill from the culminating traumas of it, but would watch with relish the efforts of the police to find the killer.

A good strong pot of tea, two eggs, two rashers of bacon, two thin, piping-hot pieces of toast. If they had found the body, he thought as he washed up, they would in some way cordon off the mews. Its entrance was just visible from his living room window. His curiosity irresistible, he peered out between the crossover frilled net curtains. Yes, Oriel Mews was cordoned off, its arch blanked out with a big opaque sheet of something. A van had probably gone in to load or unload and the driver had found her. He scanned the area for police cars, found nothing until, focus-sing closer, he saw one where he least expected it, right under the window at the kerb.

Arthur’s heart gave a great lurch, and suddenly his chest seemed full of scalding liquid. But they couldn’t know, they couldn’t have come for him.… No one had seen him go into the mews and there was nothing to connect him with the dead woman. Pull yourself together, he told himself in the admonishing Auntie Gracie voice he kept for moments like this. Not that there ever had been a moment like this before.