Ruth Rendell - From Doon with Death

‘The air conditioning works better when they’re shut,’ Burden suggested.

Wexford walked up and down, sniffing the sunlight.

‘It feels better this way’ he said. ‘We’ll wait till eleven. Then well go.’

They found the car Wexford had expected to see, parked discreetly in a lane off the Kingsbrook Road near where it joined the top end of Tabard Road.

‘Thank God,’ Wexford said almost piously. ‘So far so good.’

Parsons had given them the back-door key and they let themselves silently into the kitchen. Burden had thought this house would always be cold, but now, in the heat of the day, it felt stuffy and smelt of stale food and frowsty unwashed linen.

The silence was absolute. Wexford went into the hall. Burden following. They trod carefully lest the old boards should betray them. Parsons’ jacket and raincoat hung on the hallstand, and on the little square table among a pile of circulars, a dirty handkerchief and a heap of slit envelopes, something gleamed. Burden came closer and stared, knowing better than to touch it He pushed the other things aside and together they looked at a key with a horseshoe charm on the end of a silver chain.

In here’ Wexford whispered, mouthing the words and making no sound.

Mrs Parsons’ drawing-room was hot and dusty, but nothing was out of place. Wexford’s searchers had replaced everything as they had found it, even to the vase of plastic roses that screened the grate. The sun, streaming through closed windows, showed a myriad dance of dust particles in its shafts. Otherwise all was still.

Wexford and Burden stood behind the door, waiting. It seemed like an age before anything happened at all. Then, when it did. Burden could hardly believe his eyes.

The bay window revealed a segment of deserted street, bright grey in the strong light and sharply cut by the short shadows of trees in the gardens opposite. There was no colour apart from this grey and sunlit green. Then, from the right-hand side, as if into a film shot, a woman appeared walking quickly. She was as gaudy as a kingfisher, a technicolor queen in orange and jade. Her hair, a shade darker than her shirt, swung across her face like heavy drapery. She pushed open the gate, her nails ten garnets on the peeling wood, and scuttled out of sight towards the back door.

Helen Missal had come at last to her schoolfellow’s house.

Wexford laid his finger unnecessarily to his lips. He gazed upwards at the ornate ceiling. From high above them came a faint footfall. Someone else had heard the high heels of their visitor.

Through the crack between the door and its frame, a quarter-inch-wide slit. Burden could see a knife-edge section of staircase. Up till now it had been empty, a vertical line of wallpaper above wooden banister. He felt the sweat start in his armpits. A stair squeaked and at the same moment a hinge gave a soft moan as the back door swung open.

Burden kept his eyes on the bright, sword-like line. He tensed, scarcely daring to breathe, as the wallpaper and the wood were for a second obscured by a flash of black hair, dark cheek, white shirt shadowed with blue. Then, no more. He was not even certain where the two met, but it was not far from where he stood, and he felt rather than heard their meeting, so heavy and so desperate had the silence become.

Four people alone in the heat. Burden found himself praying that he could keep as still and at the same time as alert as Wexford. At last the heels tapped again. They had moved into the dining-room.

It was the man who spoke first and Burden had to strain to hear what he said. His voice was low and held under taut control.

‘You should never have come here’ Douglas Quadrant said.

‘I had to see you.’ She spoke with loud urgency. ‘You said you’d meet me yesterday, but you never came. You could have come, Douglas.’

‘I couldn’t get away. I was going to, but Wexford came.’ His voice died away and the rest of the sentence went unheard.

‘Afterwards you could. I know, I met him.’

In the drawing-room Wexford made a small movement of satisfaction as another loose end was tied.

‘I thought…’ They heard her give a nervous laugh, ‘I thought I’d said too much. I almost did…’

‘You shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘I didn’t, I stopped myself. Douglas, you’re hurting me!’

His reply was something savage, something they couldn’t hear.

Helen Missal was taking no pains to keep her voice down and Burden wondered why one of them should show so much caution, the other hardly any.

‘Why have you come here? What are you looking for?’

‘You knew I would come. When you telephoned me last night and told me Parsons would be out, you knew it…’

They heard her moving about the room and Burden imagined the little straight nose curling in disgust, the fingers outstretched to the shabby cushions, drawing lines in the dust on the galleried sideboard. Her laughter, disdainful and quite humourless, was a surprise.

‘Have you ever seen such a horrible house? Fancy, she lived here, she actually lived here. Little Meg Godfrey…’

It was then that his control snapped and, caution forgotten, he shouted aloud.

‘I hated her! My God, Helen, how I hated her! I never saw her, not till this week, but it was she who made my life what it was.’ The ornaments on the tiered shelves rattled and Burden guessed that Quadrant was leaning against the sideboard, near enough for him to touch him but for the intervening wall.

‘I didn’t want her to die, but I’m glad she’s dead!’

‘Darling!’

They heard nothing, but Burden knew as if he could see her that she was clinging to Quadrant now, her arms around his neck.

‘Let’s go away now. Please. There’s nothing here for you.’

He had shaken her off violently. The little cry she gave told them that, and the slithering sound of a chair skidding across lino.

‘I’m going back upstairs,’ Quadrant said, ‘and you must go. Now, Helen. You’re as conspicuous in that get-up as…’

They heard him pause, picking a metaphor, ‘… as a parrot in a dovecote.’

She seemed to stagger out, crippled both by her heels and his rejection. Burden, catching momentary sight of flame and blue through the door crack, made a tiny movement, but Wexford’s fingers closed on his arm Above them in the silent house someone was impatient with waiting. The books crashing to the floor two storeys up sounded like thunder when the storm is directly overhead.

Douglas Quadrant heard it too. He leapt for the stairs, but Wexford reached them first, and they confronted each other in the hall. Helen Missal screamed and flung her arm across her mouth.

‘Oh God!’ she cried, ‘Why wouldn’t you come when I told you?’

‘No one is going anywhere, Mrs Missal,’ Wexford said, ‘except upstairs.’ He picked up the key in his handkerchief.

Quadrant was immobile now, arm raised, for all the world. Burden thought, like a fencer in his white shirt, a hunter hunted and snared. His face was blank. He stared at Wexford for a moment and closed his eyes.

At last he said, ‘Shall we go, then?’

They ascended slowly, Wexford leading. Burden at the rear. It was a ridiculous procession. Burden thought. Taking their time, hands to the banister.

They were like a troop of house hunters with an order to view or relatives bidden upstairs to visit the bedridden.

At the first turn Wexford said:

‘I think we will all go into the room where Minna kept her books, the books that Doon gave her. The case began here in this house and perhaps there will be some kind of poetic justice in ending it here. But the poetry books have gone, Mr Quadrant. As Mrs Missal said, there is nothing here for you.’