by Ruth Rendell
Dot never seemed aware of her lies and prevarications. They had talked about it, of course they had, but such discussions usually ended with Dot saying that she couldn’t understand how a father could be so hard on his only child when that child was so devoted to him. As if to prove it, Lizzie got up and kissed him, letting her scented face rest for a moment against his cheek.
Believing he had chosen a subject for conversation unlikely to lead to lying, exaggeration or fantasising, Tom said that Stacey’s death had been a sad business. ‘I remember her of course from when she was a child in the neighbourhood. You and she used to walk to school together. You and Stacey were good friends.’ His wife brought him a glass of wine. ‘You’ll miss her.’
‘Oh yes, I do,’ Lizzie said. ‘So much. You don’t know how much I wish I hadn’t been in her flat and found the body. I don’t think I could ever set foot in there again.’
‘I don’t see why you should have to,’ said Tom.
‘Oh no, I don’t have to. I shan’t.’
She was lying. He could always tell. He could tell by the tone of her voice and the look on her face, a combination of piety and virtue. They sat down to supper, Lizzie picking delicately at the mushroom omelette that was one of her mother’s specialities. Dot wanted to know who owned Stacey’s flat now and Lizzie said she had no idea. She wished she did. It was a lovely flat, luxurious and very spacious.
‘That’s an estate agent’s word,’ said Tom.
‘I couldn’t think of another one. What would you say?’
‘Roomy,’ said Tom.
Lizzie went into detail about how beautiful the flat was, the carpets, the sleek black and white furniture, the Audubon bird drawings, and this time Tom knew she wasn’t lying. Lizzie’s love of and knowledge of bird artists and birds themselves was her only intellectual interest. He thought – he couldn’t help himself – about the place in Kilburn she lived in and on which he paid half the rent. Nobody would call it beautiful or luxurious, but she was the sole occupant, which was more than you could say for most of her friends, people who shared or had just one room or still lived at home with their parents. He felt hard done by, a state Lizzie’s presence usually left him in. She was telling her mother about the shopping spree in Knightsbridge she had been on that had resulted in the purchase of the green suit among other garments. He thought of the portion of her rent he paid, and then, looking at her face, knew that the Knightsbridge story was also a lie and she had spent nothing.
Stacey’s flat in Pinetree Court was in darkness when Lizzie got back. She had left the heating on low, and it was very pleasant to be lapped in warmth. She turned on the television to a police drama and went into the bedroom, where she took off the green suit and wrapped herself in the dark blue silk dressing gown she found in Stacey’s cupboard. Another cupboard, in the kitchen this time, was well stocked with all kinds of wines and spirits. Lizzie made herself a Tequila Sunrise and settled down in front of the screen with her golden drink.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IS EVERYTHING ALL right between you and Miss Townsend?’ said Dermot, passing Carl outside his bedroom door the next morning.
Carl thought this a fearful impertinence. ‘Of course it is. Why do you ask?’
‘Just being friendly. To tell you the truth, I thought you and she would have put things on a more permanent level by now.’
‘What does that mean?’
Dermot smiled, baring his awful teeth. ‘Well, once it would have meant marriage, wouldn’t it? More like getting engaged these days.’
Carl thought quickly. It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of Dermot. ‘It takes two to make an engagement,’ he said rather gruffly.
Shaking his head, Dermot said, ‘I hope I haven’t upset you. I wouldn’t do that for the world. The way Miss Townsend looks at you, anyone could tell she’s crazy about you.’ He hesitated, then, ‘How about a coffee? Your place or mine?’
‘I’ll make the coffee,’ said Carl, wishing he had said no. ‘You won’t mind instant?’
‘To be perfectly honest with you, I prefer it.’
When Dermot had finally drunk his coffee and gone back upstairs, Carl decided that now was the time to tell Nicola about Stacey. It was Saturday, and she was spending the weekend with her former flatmates. He tried the landline, but there was no reply. Strangely, he couldn’t bring himself to try her mobile number. Was it because she would almost certainly answer it?
He needed to talk to Nicola about Stacey, but for some reason, he couldn’t. At least not on the telephone. The last time he had gone to dinner with his mother, her friends Jane Porteus and Desmond Jones had been there, and as soon as he came in Jane had begun talking about Stacey and her horrible death. It would be the same with Nicola.
He asked himself why he didn’t want to talk about Stacey. He had done nothing wrong; in fact he had been doing her a favour as far as he knew. It wasn’t his fault that she had taken an overdose of the pills. She could have checked them on the web. The label had advised using care. All he had done was give her – well, sell her – fifty slimming pills that in some circumstances, for some people, caused nasty symptoms. ‘And death,’ an inner voice reminded him. Death could be caused by taking DNP. He had by this time been to several dinitrophenol websites, which all mentioned death as a possible result of taking the stuff. Not inevitable, of course, but possible. He had to accept that, painful though it was.
Really, the whole situation was his father’s fault. He had died after a heart attack, and one of the websites had said DNP could damage the heart. Could it be …? No, Wilfred had been an old man, and old men died from heart attacks. Young women didn’t.
Carl jumped suddenly out of his chair. It was a fine day, another fine day after many in this month of June, and he would go out, walk in the sunshine, think about Sacred Spirits and how best to get into it. He had made a false start with this book, and he must begin again. He must find the kind of creative inspiration he had felt when writing Death’s Door.
He made his way through the little streets of St John’s Wood, then turned down Lisson Grove. The June sunshine fell gently on his face, the kind of warmth sunshine should always bestow; not a punishing heat or a mildness spoilt by the wind, but steady and promising a permanence. He thought, why can’t I just appreciate things as they come? Why can’t I enjoy the moment? I have done nothing wrong. But that inner voice said to him, ‘You sold those pills to that girl and you never emphasised to her that they had side effects. You never even told her to google them. You wanted the money. You didn’t warn her.’
Nothing, he told himself as he let himself back into his house. There is nothing to be done. Put it out of your mind. Nothing will bring her back. Sit down at that computer and write something. Anything.
There must have been close to thirty children in the play centre that afternoon, but on a fine day like this it wasn’t so bad looking after kids. Only another half-hour to go and then Lizzie could get back to the beautiful flat in Primrose Hill Road. The playground had been quite a big area when she was a child herself, but over the years it had become smaller as more and more children reached school age, more and more classrooms were needed, as well as a bigger gym and a science lab, though what little kids needed a lab for she didn’t know. Now the children actually bumped into each other running about. Lizzie wasn’t supposed to have a whistle for the little ones, but she had and blew it often, trying to bring them to heel. Like dogs, said her mother, who didn’t approve.
It was worse when it rained and the children had to stay indoors. Another thing Lizzie wasn’t supposed to do was feed them with anything but their tea, which consisted of wholemeal bread and Marmite, and apples. Lizzie gave them crisps and sweets called star fruits to shut them up. It cost her a fortune, but it was worth it, especially now she had no gas or electricity to pay for.
On the dot of five thirty, when the parents would start coming for them, she shooed them indoors and counted them. She dreaded one going missing. Not
because she cared – if anything, she disliked children – but because of the trouble there would be and the loss of her job. But they were all there today, and they all wanted to get home. So did Lizzie.
It wasn’t far to Primrose Hill Road from West End Lane, just a short walk along Adelaide Road, and halfway along she sat down on a seat, tore up the four slices of wholemeal bread she had taken from the children’s snacks and scattered the crumbs on the pavement. Pigeons appeared at once and began gobbling up the bread. People said pigeons were grey, but Lizzie knew better. One was red and green, another was silver with a double streak of snowy white, and a third, perhaps the handsomest, jet black with a metallic emerald sheen to its feathers.
By this time, she had got into Stacey’s habit of keeping a set of keys in the recycling cupboard, not because she expected someone else to try to gain entry in her absence – there was no one – but because she was inclined to forget things and knew very well that if she inadvertently shut herself out of Stacey’s flat, she would have no means of getting back inside. Not for her the services of a locksmith when she couldn’t identify herself as the owner or legal occupant of the flat. No relative had come forward as far as she knew, no other friend who might possess a key. In putting the spare set in the recycling cupboard, in the hollow under the loose brick in the floor, Lizzie calculated she was safe. The only alternative she could think of was to carry the keys with her at all times, maybe on a chain round her neck. She disliked the idea because it spoilt her look when wearing Stacey’s clothes.
Una Martin wasn’t much of a cook. She relied on smoked salmon and the kind of pasta dishes you bought ready-made and just had to put in the microwave. Her son didn’t notice what he ate and seemed to be glad of anything he got. Una assumed that he and Nicola lived on ready meals and takeaways.
‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said as she and Carl began on their first course (there was no second), ‘who’s going to get poor Stacey’s flat? I mean, what happens to property if it’s not left to anyone and no one comes forward to claim it?’
‘It goes to the Crown,’ Carl said, guessing. He didn’t really know.
‘I’ve never been in her flat,’ Una continued. ‘I expect it’s very nice.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Carl helped himself to more pasta. ‘I’ve been a few times.’
‘Now if only you’d married her, it would be yours,’ said his mother.
Carl sighed. ‘I don’t need a flat. I’ve got a nice house. There was no prospect of me marrying her. You got this crazy idea into your head and I don’t know where it came from. Stacey was just a friend.’
‘There’s no such thing as a man and a woman just being friends.’
‘Is there any more wine?’ Carl asked.
No answer was forthcoming.
‘There was an aunt,’ he said, remembering.
‘What on earth do you mean, darling, there was an aunt?’
‘Stacey Warren had an aunt.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She lived with her after her parents died.’
‘So you’re saying that this aunt, whoever she is, would inherit that beautiful flat? What’s her name? Where does she live?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Carl said, but Una pursued the matter exhaustively. Who was the aunt? How would they find her? How long would it take?
While she talked, Carl sat eating everything that was left. It was a change for him to think about Stacey from a different aspect, not from the point of view of her death and whose fault it was. He also remembered where Stacey had kept her spare set of keys, though he was sure they wouldn’t be there any longer.
Una lived in Gloucester Avenue in Camden, which was not far from Primrose Hill Road but some way from the part of it where Stacey’s flat was. On a whim, he made a detour on his way home and, looking up at what had been Stacey’s windows, saw a faint light on. Someone was in there. Perhaps a solicitor? An estate agent? At twenty minutes to ten at night? It wasn’t his business. He had come to check on the keys in the recycling cupboard.
There was no one about. He shifted the recycling bin a few inches, surprised to find it half full of newspapers and packaging. The keys were there all right, underneath the floor brick. Suppose he went up in the lift and let himself into the flat – he had never done so in the past – and found Stacey in there, not as she had been in recent months, but a slim and beautiful ghost, waiting for him, waiting to accuse him of killing her.
Don’t be a fool, he said to himself as he made his way out on to Chalk Farm Road, where the pubs were spilling out and noisy crowds sat at the tables on the pavement.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TOM MILSOM GOT off the number 98 bus at Marble Arch and, having walked a few yards to the top of Park Lane, hopped on to the 414. It was amazing how you could get on and off buses and on again all for free. Well, not really free; you’d paid for it in taxes all your life. But he wondered if there was any other capital city in the world where, so long as you were over sixty, you could ride on any bus without paying. He felt a surge of affection for his country, so cruelly maligned by many people. The words of the hymn came into his head, ‘I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above’, and tears pricked the back of his eyes, but they were tears of warmth and love.
He went to the upper level. Most people of his age didn’t, but you saw so much from the top of a bus, especially when charging down the sloping part of Park Lane. He looked down at the Dorchester and Grosvenor House and the beautiful houses that remained, and there, walking along the pavement, was his next-door neighbour Mrs Grenville, holding the hand of a man who wasn’t her husband. Tom thought it should have been a woman observing this bit of scandal; gossip was wasted on him.
It was three in the afternoon, and the bus was three-quarters empty as it made its way down into Knightsbridge. To his surprise, it stopped right outside Harrods. No use to him, he thought. He might as well stay on and go to the bus’s destination, Putney Bridge. There was bound to be another bus waiting there for him, one he had never been on before, never even heard of, and if it didn’t take him all the way home, it would take him somewhere he could pick up a number 98 or even a 6, which passed the end of Mamhead Drive.
Carl was forcing himself to write three or four paragraphs every day, but now as he read his new pages, he admitted to himself that they weren’t very good. The prose was laboured, heavy, lifeless, the obvious result of pushing himself. But it’s about a philosopher, he thought, it’s bound not to have the witty lightness of Death’s Door. Perhaps he should look on his efforts as a practice run, a trial exercise to get himself back into novelist mode? He produced a few more lines and interrupted himself by remembering that today was the last of the month and tomorrow the first of July, rent day. Of course the rent wouldn’t come; it never now came the day before, though apologies sometimes did.
So he wasn’t surprised when Dermot tapped at his door. Letting him in, he awaited the excuses. But there were no excuses, only smiles and the handover of a brown envelope.
‘What’s this, then?’
‘Your rent, Carl. What else?’
‘You never pay me the day before,’ said Carl, ‘or the day itself, come to that.’ He opened the envelope and took out the so-desirable purple notes. ‘Still, I’m not complaining.’
‘Look at it this way. It may be the first time, but it may also be the last.’
‘You don’t mean you’re leaving?’
‘Oh, no. No, no.’
Dermot gave Carl another of his ghastly smiles, the yellow blotches on his teeth looking worse than usual. Carl noticed that a large pustule had appeared on his chin. He listened to him mounting the stairs, and then asked himself what that had meant. That stuff about Dermot’s payment being the last.
It meant nothing, he told himself. Dermot thought he was being funny. Put it out of your head. It was nonsense.
But that ‘no, no’ rang out and echoed in his head. He looked again at the contents of the envelope.
Perhaps there were twice as many notes this month? But he had counted them the first time and there were not. He wanted to get back to Sacred Spirits, but concentration was impossible.
‘Oh, no. No, no’ surely meant that Dermot wasn’t giving up his flat. It had been a very firm denial. Suddenly Carl saw that, firm or not, it had nothing to do with the contents of the envelope being Dermot’s last payment. He had plainly said it might be the last. Could he have meant instead that at the end of next month, there would be no envelope and no money? He couldn’t mean that. A tenant had to pay his rent. He would have to ask Dermot what he had meant. He couldn’t go another four weeks with the suspense of not knowing.
But a week went by without Carl doing anything about it. From his living room window he saw Dermot going off to work, and on the Sunday morning leaving for church. Some respite from the nagging anxiety came with the idea that Dermot had only meant that this was the last time the twelve hundred pounds would be paid in cash, and that in future he intended to pay by cheque or direct debit. The relief lasted only a few minutes. If he had meant that, he would have said so.