Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

The police must have taken note of every event in Harold Myerson’s recent past, spoken to every acquaintance he had, all his neighbours, noted every visitor to his house. Their interest would have been aroused by the theft of Flora and the description of the thief given them by Myerson’s next-door neighbour. One, or perhaps more than one, witness had described to them the small young girl with the long silver hair seen in the neighbourhood of Myerson’s murder that Sunday morning, and later seen in a tube train. Might there be a connection between that girl and the thief of the statue? It was a long shot but the police did not neglect long shots.

Philip understood that if they had never seen Flora in his own garden, they would never have found him. They would never, except through him, have found Senta. It was he who had led them to Senta. He had led them to Senta by means of the statue she resembled.

All this passed through his mind while he was on his way to Tarsus Street. He hadn’t waited, had said nothing to Roy. It was strange how the old longing for Senta had come back to him when he heard Morris describe her. He had no idea what he would say or do when he got there, but he knew he had to go there and tell her and somehow help her. He couldn’t deceive himself that the police wouldn’t find her now.

The overcast sky had begun spilling out rain. First it came in separate isolated drops like large flat coins, then in a downpour such as falls in the tropics. But it didn’t simply fall—it tore out of the sky and lashed in a splintered wall of water, a steel shutter of water dropped with a harsh clang. Instead of lightening as the rain was shed, the sky seemed to grow darker and all along his route lights were coming on in houses and office blocks. Cars had their lights on. The beams of his headlights made misty paths in the torrent.

Joley and the old woman with the dog in the basket on wheels were sitting together in the shelter of the church porch. The dog looked like one of those you sometimes see on sentimental birthday cards, peeping over the rim of the basket with its face between its paws. Joley waved. Philip thought suddenly, remembering it for some reason, that this was the day he and Senta had been due to start work on the upstairs flat. Last weekend they had decided, that sunny lovely happy weekend that seemed a thousand years away. On Friday evening they would go up to the flat and see what there was to do, and he would help her with things she wanted done.

He had put the receiver down rather than answer any more of Detective Sergeant Morris’s questions. He had replaced the receiver and cut off the policeman’s voice. Morris would certainly have rung back immediately. When Lucy or Roy told him Philip had gone out, he would know the phone call hadn’t been accidentally cut off but deliberately terminated by Philip. He would know Philip was guilty or guilty by association or desperately anxious he shouldn’t find out the identity of his girl friend. And that would make him waste no time in finding it out—her identity and her address. It would be easy. He had only to ask Christine. He had only to ask Fee. In their innocence they would give it to him at once.

Philip parked the car outside the house as near to the steps as he could get it. The nearside wheels were in a lake of water on which the rain drummed. The rain was a great grey roaring lashing curtain between him and the house. He remembered the rain that first night they had made love, the evening of Fee’s wedding day, but it hadn’t been like this, it had been mild to this. This house was only half-visible, for the rain made an obscuring wall, foglike yet savage.

He threw open the car door, jumped out, and slammed it behind him. Those seconds on the pavement and the steps before he was in the shelter of the porch were enough to soak him. He shook himself and stripped off his jacket. As soon as he was inside the hall, he knew Rita and Jacopo were away. He could always tell, though he never really knew how. The house was rather dark. All houses would be dark due to the storm-induced twilight outside. He couldn’t have said why he didn’t switch the light on but he didn’t.

There was no smell of joss stick coming up the basement stairs. There was no smell except the ingrained one you got used to when you habitually came to this house. He had rushed to get here, but now that he was here, he hesitated outside her door. He had to brace himself for the sight of her. A long breath inhaled and expelled, his eyes squeezed closed and opened again, he let himself into the room. It was empty, she wasn’t there.

But she had been there very recently. A candle was burning in a saucer on the low table in front of the mirror. It was a new candle, its tapering top burnt down only a little way. The shutters were closed, the room dark as night. She couldn’t have gone out, not in this rain. He folded back the shutters. The rain streamed down the glass in a shaking, sobbing waterfall.

Her green dress, a dress that might have been made of rain, water transmuted into silk, hung over the wicker chair. The high-heeled silver shoes stood side by side underneath. There were some sheets of paper with typing on them, clipped together and lying on the bed, that he thought might be her television script. He left the room and went up the stairs and hesitated at the top. She often went upstairs. It was a sort of parental home to her. He went up the next flight, came to the rooms he had glanced at that day she had had the bath in Rita’s bathroom, the day on which she had come home in the morning and told him she had killed Arnham.

The rooms were just the same—the one that was full of bags of clothes and newspapers, the bedroom where Rita and Jacopo slept, with its window covered by a pinned-up bedspread and a foam underlay doing duty for a carpet on its floor. He opened the bathroom door. There was no one in there, but as he came back onto the landing, he heard a board creak above his head. He thought, this was the day we were to begin up there. She has started without me, she has decided to make a start before I came. All that happened between us since then, all I said, all my horror and hatred have gone for nothing. He understood quite suddenly that all this time, since he began his drive here, since he parked the car and entered the house, he had been afraid of what she might have done, that she might have killed herself and he might find her dead.

He went to the foot of the stairs, the last flight. There he gradually became aware of the smell. It was a very strong, appalling reek which leaked down those stairs. As he smelt it and felt it grow more powerful, as he was aware that it had been creeping down to him since first he set foot on this floor, he also knew that it was of something he had never smelt before. It was a new smell and one that, perhaps, few human beings were obliged to smell in the present day. The board above him creaked again. He went up the stairs, trying to breathe only through his mouth, shutting off his nose from sense.

The doors were all shut. He thought of nothing, he had ceased to think of how, once, they had planned to live up here. His movements were instinctive. He no longer heard the roar of the rain. He opened the door into the main room. The light was dim but it wasn’t dark, for there were neither curtains nor shutters at the two dormer windows. This was the back of the house and through the streaming glass could be seen above rooftops a sky as grey and rough as granite. There was nothing in the room but an old armchair and, on the floor between the half-open cupboard door and the left-hand window, something that looked like a stretcher or pallet but which was in fact a door with a grey blanket laid on it.

Senta was standing beside it. She was wearing the clothes she had worn for her visit to Chigwell, the red cotton top on which she said she had searched for bloodstains, the jeans, the running shoes. Her hair was tied up with a piece of red striped cloth. The smile she gave him transformed her. Her whole face became a smile, her whole body. She came to him with her arms out.