Dark Corners: A Novel

by Ruth Rendell

  Carl had rarely been to the top floor since Dermot had arrived. Now he determined to go up and ask for an explanation of their last bizarre exchange. What had it meant? Ten days had passed since he had encountered Dermot. Almost never in the course of their association – you couldn’t call it a friendship – had as much as ten days gone by without their seeing each other, even if only on the stairs.

  He left it another two days. There was still no sign of Dermot. But he wasn’t ill and confined to bed, and he hadn’t done a moonlight flit. Carl could occasionally hear footfalls on the bare boards of the top-floor flat, and once a burst of religious music indicated that Dermot’s front door was open. On the third day after he had come to his decision, he climbed the top flight and thumped on the door

  ‘Goodness me,’ said Dermot from inside. ‘Whatever’s wrong? Has something happened?’

  ‘Just open the door, will you?’

  The door came open, but slowly, rather reluctantly, as if it had been bolted on the inside. There had never been bolts on that door before Dermot came. From the kitchen came a strong smell of sausages and bacon frying. Stepping back to let Carl come in, Dermot said in the pleasantest, friendliest tone he had ever heard from him, ‘Now I do hope there isn’t going to be trouble, Carl. We have had such an amicable relationship up till now.’

  ‘I just want you to tell me something.’

  ‘If I can. You know I always bend over backwards to keep a peaceful atmosphere. Now what can I tell you? No, wait, let me make us a nice cup of coffee.’

  ‘I don’t want any bloody coffee,’ said Carl. ‘I want you to tell me what you meant when you handed me the last lot of rent. You said it was the first time and it might be the last. I said, “You’re not leaving, are you?” and you said, “Oh, no. No, no.”’

  Dermot smiled his ghastly smile, said, ‘Let me just pop into the kitchenette while I turn off the burner.’ He came back still smiling. ‘There, sorry about that. I couldn’t have my lunch ruined, could I? Yes, back to our last conversation. I don’t quite see where I went wrong. I said I wasn’t leaving, and I’m not. Does that satisfy you? Not leaving. Staying. Happy again?’

  Carl felt rage rising inside him. Dermot was playing with him. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but we have an agreement, signed by both of us, and witnessed. Right? And that agreement states that you pay me a certain sum each month while you occupy this flat. Right again?’

  Dermot had put a spoonful of instant coffee into each of two mugs and picked up the electric kettle. Through a window in the side of the kettle Carl could see the water boiling. Dermot held it very close to Carl’s face, and Carl flinched, jerking his chair back. Smiling, Dermot poured water on to the coffee.

  ‘Ah, but don’t you remember who the witness was? I do. It was Stacey Warren. A sheet of paper taken out of your printer, written on by you and witnessed by a woman who’s now passed away. Valueless, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’ Dermot took a gulp of the strong black coffee he had made. It would have choked Carl but it had almost no effect on the other man. ‘So yes, I’m staying, but I’d say it’s probable I’ll never pay you rent again.’

  ‘But you can’t live here rent-free.’

  ‘I think I can,’ said Dermot very calmly. ‘Shall I tell you why? It’s DNP. Dinitrophenol. I think you should know that while I’m a believer, a pretty strict follower of the Christian faith, a churchgoer, as you may have noticed, I haven’t any of what some people call honour. Now I know you had a cabinetful of DNP. It came from your dad, I heard you say, and I had a good scrounge round through all his medication. If you didn’t want that happening you should have locked your bathroom door. The first time there were a hundred capsules, the second time fifty. You sold fifty of those poisonous pills to Stacey Warren, didn’t you? As a matter of fact, I was passing your open bathroom door when the transaction – the sale, I mean – took place.’

  Carl would have expected someone in his situation to turn white. They did in books. In his own book. Conversely, his face had flushed, and he could feel the skin burning.

  ‘It’s not against the law. It’s not. You can’t make it against the law,’ he said in a tremulous voice, a voice that didn’t sound like his own,

  Without a word, Dermot got up and walked out of the room. He was back quickly, carrying a page cut from the Guardian. ‘You want to read that. You can keep it. I’ve got copies.’

  Killed by DNP, the line under the pictures said, photographs of a girl and a young man and a number of yellow capsules. The police believed that the man had given the pills to the girl with the specific intention of killing her. He had used DNP as a poison. Carl read in the article that the drug could kill even if doses of it had been safely taken previously. One woman had taken it for two years before she died. Another’s death had been mysterious until tests found that the pills by her bed were DNP. The drug was available online, and selling it wasn’t against the law, but it could too easily be lethal. Two MPs had expressed concern, and one said it might be helpful to have DNP brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

  Carl laid down the paper. He was sweating and could feel the drops of perspiration on his upper lip. ‘This means nothing. The drug is not illegal.’

  ‘So you’re not worried,’ said Dermot. ‘In two weeks’ time I pay your rent and you won’t mind if I chat to a few people about what you did. Fifty pills. That’s a lot. More than enough to kill. Perhaps you intended her to die? And what about your reputation as a brilliant young writer, such a promising new talent?’

  Carl stood up. ‘So you want to chat to people about me? That’s rich. And who are these people?’

  ‘Sit down a minute. There’s the press, of course. The anonymous tip here and there. And I’ve been doing my homework. Stacey Warren had an aunt, and this aunt has a son and a daughter. As it happens, I know the aunt quite well. Mrs Yvonne Weatherspoon was devoted to Stacey, and had her to stay when her parents died. She brings her cat to the clinic where I work, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to have a little chat with her about poor Stacey’s death. In fact she’s due to bring the cat in for her shots tomorrow.’

  Carl knew very well that you should never say ‘How dare you?’ to anyone, least of all someone who was threatening you. It sounded ridiculous. But he did say it. ‘How dare you threaten me, you blackmailer?’

  But Dermot seemed very calm and in command of the situation. ‘I’ve been threatening you for the past ten minutes, as you very well know. I can’t threaten you with police arrest. But it’s nasty stuff, isn’t it? Mrs Weatherspoon is a very strong-minded woman – do they still use that expression? You probably know better than I do. A strong character is what I mean. Once she knows where poor Stacey got the DNP, she will, as they say, take it further. The Hampstead and Highgate Express, for a start, and maybe that paper that operates around Muswell Hill? They may even send their photographer round to get a picture of you. Stacey was well known. You’re a novelist. The gossip columns will love it.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk any more about it,’ said Carl. ‘You have to pay the rent and that’s all there is to it.’

  He was barely out of the room when he heard his tenant putting the coffee cups in the sink and tipping the contents of the frying pan on to a plate.

  Without that rent, what was he going to live on? It would take him months, if not years, to finish Sacred Spirits, and already he had no confidence in his work. But this was all hypothetical. He would have his rent and let that criminal bastard, that blackmailer, do his worst. He would ignore him. He would get back to his writing.

  This brave stance buoyed Carl for a while. But when he sat down at the computer again, he found that nothing would come. All he wrote, without really knowing that he was doing so, were the words that kept running in a continuous loop through his head: it’s not against the law, it’s not against the law, it’s not against the law.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SUTHERLAND PET Clinic was within easy walking distance of Fa
lcon Mews. Dermot could be there in less than ten minutes. Like St Matthew, who was a kind of tax collector, he sat at the receipt of custom, but unlike the saint, since there was no animal welfare in the Holy Land, he made appointments and received payment for neutering, injections, operations, check-ups and, sadly, euthanasia. It was not unknown for Dermot to bow his head and weep a little when Jake or Honey had to be put to sleep. That was the terminology he preferred; he had been known to admonish a cat or dog owner who spoke of ‘putting down’ an animal.

  The area of his job he liked best was as a salesman, such as when he was called upon to advise a client about which variety of cat food he would recommend for sixteen-year-old Mopsy or kitten Lucy. Which artificial bones would he suggest for the incorrigible biter Hannibal or breath deodorant for ancient Pickwick? His finest contribution to the social life of the clinic was the Pet of the Month competition he had invented. This was very popular. Owners submitted their pet’s details to him with a photograph and some instances of bravery or achievement, and he judged which was the top dog or cat. Up on the wall for the rest of this month was a charming photograph of Pippa, a cuddly British Blue whose howls at midnight had alerted her owners to the presence of a burglar in the house. The announcement of the competition winner he timed – so that he couldn’t forget it – for his rent day. This of course would no longer be a factor, so he would have to fix on some other way of remembering to reveal the result.

  The day after his encounter with Carl, Dermot was sitting behind his desk at the clinic, contemplating the list of clients expected that day, when Yvonne Weatherspoon arrived with Sophonisba, her Maine Coon, in her cat box. Her appointment was for nine thirty and it was now twenty past. Sophonisba, always called Sophie, was due for a flea and worm check.

  Close on fifty but retaining her fine blonde good looks and slender figure, Yvonne had already confided in the sympathetic Dermot about her niece’s death, hugging Sophie and squeezing out a tear or two.

  ‘You know who I’m talking about, don’t you, Dermot?’

  ‘Ah, yes. That poor young lady Miss Stacey Warren, the beautiful actress. What a sad event that was.’

  ‘Well, we were very close, you know.’ Dermot did know, but continued to listen with great interest. ‘She left me her flat. Well, she didn’t actually leave it to me, but I am her next of kin, her heir. I’m not going to live in it. I’ve already got a lovely house of my own, what the government calls a mansion, and dear Sophie wouldn’t put up with moving. Cats hate a change of home, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘I’m going to hand it over to my son Gervaise. He and poor Stacey were very close.’

  ‘He’s a very fortunate young man,’ said Dermot.

  Further conversation was terminated by the appearance of Caroline, the head vet, come to fetch Yvonne and Sophie. The cat, no doubt aware of what was in store for her, set up a howling, and Dermot, left to his thoughts, said a thank you to God, but in a whisper, because the deity could hear everything.

  The thanks to the Almighty were not for the outcome of his interview with Carl, but for the news imparted by Yvonne Weatherspoon. Carl already knew about Dermot’s acquaintance with Yvonne, but not that her son was moving into Stacey’s flat. And this knowledge would confirm to him something that Dermot was sure Carl had doubted: that at almost any time, and in an intimate manner, he could impart the details of the DNP sale to Yvonne. Perhaps, if he could fix it, he could also tell Gervaise, he who had been so close to ‘poor Stacey’.

  Carl had called him a blackmailer. Dermot hadn’t liked that. Not at all. He didn’t see himself that way. You could almost say he was the reverse of a blackmailer, because instead of taking money from Carl as the price of his silence, he was withholding it. He had never disliked Carl, and didn’t now. To dislike anyone would be unchristian. To love your neighbour as yourself was a tenet of his faith, and Dermot was proud of loving himself a lot. In any case, there was nothing in the Bible about blackmail. Or reverse blackmail.

  The street door opened and Mr Sanderson came in with his Dalmatian, Spots. Not Spot, but the plural – ‘Because he’s got lots of them,’ the dog’s owner had once said. ‘I counted, and there were a hundred and twenty-seven.’

  Very privately, Dermot thought all the clients were mad.

  Carl was forcing himself to write. He read and reread what he had written, and tinkered with words, but with no noticeable effect. He was writing stiffly: the little dialogue he attempted was stilted and strangely outdated, and his characters spoke to each other as if they lived in the middle of the last century.

  The reason for his failings was obvious. His mind was full of Dermot’s threat to withhold the rent or ruin his reputation. The rent was due on 31 July, though in the usual course of things it would not be brought to him until the first or second day of August. Would it be brought at all this time? Would Dermot carry through on his threat? Carl had avoided his tenant since their conversation, but he often heard his footsteps on the stairs. He thought about him constantly, and if he could manage to fall asleep at all, he woke in the small hours and stayed awake for the rest of the night, tossing and turning and no doubt disturbing Nicola, creating all possible variations on what would happen if the rent didn’t come, what he would do and what Dermot would do.

  He had said nothing about Dermot’s threat to Nicola, reasoning that if he told her, he would also have to tell her about selling the DNP to Stacey. He should have told her long ago. She knew that something was worrying him. Would she understand? Nicola was almost indifferent to money, seldom bought clothes like other girls did, never used make-up. Unlike the other women he knew, she was always reading books – books made of paper, not cyberspace – and listening to what he called classical music and she called real music. That was one reason he had been attracted to her. She had loved Death’s Door. She was his biggest fan. So why hadn’t he told her about Stacey?

  The longer he waited, the more difficult it became. Once, anticipating her return from work at six thirty, he found himself wishing she hadn’t moved in. He reproached himself for that, telling himself that this dread would pass, that one day it would be gone but he would still have her.

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve got any food in the house,’ she’d said the previous evening. ‘I think you’ve lost weight, and you can’t afford that.’ A note of anxiety came into her voice. ‘You look as if you’ve been ill, which you haven’t, I know.’

  ‘I’ve been a bit under the weather,’ he said, in Dermot mode.

  On the way back from doing the shopping together, he thought he might tell her. He’d make her promise not to tell anyone, and once he’d got that undertaking from her, he’d confide in her, tell her everything he’d done, starting with the collection of medicines and remedies he had inherited from his father. She had, of course, seen them in the bathroom they shared, but they had never discussed them. Then he’d go on to talk about Stacey and her weight, her despair and how she had begged him to let her have the yellow capsules. If he put it like that, Nicola would see how impossible it’d been for him to refuse.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ she said now. ‘You really are worrying about something, aren’t you? I’ve sensed it for a while.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘As soon as we get home, we’ll have a glass of that Chablis. We could both do with it. I’ve had a bit of a rough day.’

  Not compared to his day, Carl thought, or the eleven or twelve days he’d lived through since Dermot threatened him. And as he thought of Dermot, as they made their way into Falcon Mews, his tenant approached from the other end. He was walking jauntily, in Carl’s eyes, and carrying tulips.

  ‘Snap!’ said Dermot, and to Nicola, ‘What a coincidence. Long time since we’ve seen you round this neck of the woods.’

  Carl muttered to himself that he had never before seen a man buy flowers for himself, but Dermot didn’t hear because Nicola was telling him how nice it was to see hi
m. She was out all day and their paths never seemed to cross. They let him go into the house first. Carl was thinking with longing of that glass of Chablis. He seldom bought wine. He had let Nicola buy two bottles, explaining in the shop that he couldn’t afford it, though he still had some money from this month’s rent. But was it the last he would receive?

  Nicola put the food in the fridge and poured the wine generously. ‘Waiters and barmen always fill your glass only half full. Have you noticed? It never used to be like that.’

  He didn’t say anything. He could hear Dermot pacing around two floors up. It sounded as if he was leaping up and down. He took his wine into the living room.

  ‘Shall we have some music, Carl? I’ve bought you a new CD.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  The face she turned to him was aghast. It was the only possible word.

  ‘No, no. Nothing that’s going to affect you,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, don’t look like that.’ He set his glass down, hesitated, and then picked it up again to take a great gulp of his wine. Seated now on the sofa, he patted the cushion beside him; when she sat down, he took her face in his hands and kissed her with a gentleness that surprised even him. ‘There,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’ll think. And better not say a word to Dermot after what I tell you; I mean, if you felt like going up there and having it out with him.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It has to do with Stacey Warren. You didn’t really know her, did you?’

  ‘I’d met her, of course. She was your friend. Is that what’s been bothering you? Her death?’

  He waited for her to say how fat Stacey had become, but she didn’t.