by Ruth Rendell
Carl couldn’t help thinking that her words might have been Dermot’s.
Lizzie had managed to pass the whole day of her return without telling her parents about her abduction, and she was sure she had done the right thing. Now she had to figure out what to tell the school where she worked. She probably no longer had a job. She didn’t much care. There was no way she could tell them the truth.
She phoned Stacey’s apartment in Pinetree Court on the landline. The phone was answered by Elizabeth Weatherspoon. Had she already moved in? When Lizzie asked if she could come round and collect her handbag, which she had left there some days previously, Elizabeth said it was with the concierge. If Lizzie wanted it – she spoke as if the matter was in doubt – she could pick it up from his office.
Lizzie got a very cool reception from the concierge, but she also got the bag. Her phone was still in it, and the key to her own flat, and possibly what money she had, though she couldn’t remember how much this should be.
She returned to the flat in Iverson Road, and while she was resolving not to go near her parents until she absolutely had to, in case they asked her more questions about her disappearance, her mother phoned. Eddy next door, as he was usually referred to by the Milsoms, had a virus and was bedbound. The pug too was ill and his mother wanted it taken to the vet.
‘Why doesn’t she take it then?’
‘She says she can’t leave Eddy.’
‘He’s not a baby, he’s a grown man,’ said Lizzie.
‘It’s not what I say, it’s what she says. Your father’s gone somewhere on the number seven bus, and I’ve got an appointment with the dentist.’
‘Tell me you’re not expecting me to take the bloody dog to the vet?’
‘That silly Eddy’s in an awful state. Eva said he was crying.’
So Lizzie got on the number 6 bus and, with an ill grace, picked up Brutus the pug from her parents’ neighbours. ‘I’ve made an appointment with someone. I don’t know who, since the tragedy, but it’ll be all right,’ said Eddy’s mother.
Lizzie didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘I won’t ask you in to see Eddy in case he’s infectious. I’ve booked a taxi for you and Brutus.’
The taxi came and Lizzie got in with the dog in a rather grand basket.
At the Sutherland Pet Clinic, Melissa the vet was sitting at the reception desk, looking harassed.
‘Where’s the man who used to work here?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Dermot?’ said Melissa. ‘Didn’t you know? It was a shocking thing: he was murdered.’
Lizzie didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’ Melissa continued. ‘It seems callous to talk about it so soon, but we’re desperate for someone to take his place. If you hear of anyone, you’ll let us know, won’t you?’
Melissa took Brutus into the surgery and Lizzie waited in reception. It wasn’t her first visit to the clinic – she had of course been there before to talk to Dermot and get hold of the Weatherspoons’ phone number, but on that occasion she had taken little notice of the room. It was rather nice, she thought now, quiet, and different from what she would have expected in that it didn’t smell of dog. The swivel chair drawn up to the counter and the computer she was already familiar with. There was one of those water dispensers in the corner of the room, surely for people, not dogs. Up on the wall was a photograph of the current Pet of the Month, a Great Dane who had jumped into the Regent’s Park lake to rescue a child’s teddy bear. Quite a pleasant place to work, thought Lizzie, not to be compared to running around for half the afternoon after a bunch of five-year-olds, which she seriously didn’t want to do any more.
Melissa came back with Brutus and told Lizzie she had given him antibiotics and to keep him warm.
‘This job,’ said Lizzie. ‘I mean the job that Dermot had …’ She hesitated. ‘I mean, I don’t want to be pushy, but could I have it?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what Caroline would say.’
Lying came naturally to Lizzie. ‘I’ve had two jobs working as a veterinarian’s receptionist, one in London and the other in …’ she thought rapidly, ‘Peterborough. I know all about it.’
‘Could you come back at three? Caroline will be free then to talk to you.’
Lizzie phoned for a taxi, planning the reference she would have to forge, signing it with a name she could easily get off the internet. How on earth did people manage to live at all in the days before the World Wide Web?
She went back to the clinic at three, walking from Iverson Road. Not having written it down, she had forgotten the name of the place she had said she had worked at – somewhere beginning with a P, she thought. Portsmouth, Pontypridd, Penge? Never mind, Caroline didn’t care and didn’t ask. She read the letter of recommendation Lizzie had forged and asked her when she could start. Lizzie said how about tomorrow? So much for the school and having to fabricate excuses for her absence.
Walking home, she met her father getting off a bus and told him that the pet clinic had head-hunted her.
Head-hunted women don’t need their fathers to pay half their rent, Tom thought hopefully. But Lizzie said nothing about financial independence, only that she’d had a long day and needed to put her feet up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IN THE DAYS following the murder, Carl thought of almost nothing else. Only a psychopath or a hitman or perhaps a soldier in battle could kill someone and put the killing out of his mind. He had hated Dermot but just the same found it impossible to be sanguine about the murder. A much more satisfactory solution to the problem would have been Dermot’s removing himself to a different address, or his getting married and buying a flat somewhere with Sybil. Carl found himself close to resenting the fact that he had brought his death on himself by his stupid inverted blackmail. A strange thought it was, that Dermot had directly courted murder by refusing to pay his rent.
But he still couldn’t stop thinking about it all the time and every day. Nicola, who knew the murder preyed on his mind, told him he must get over it.
‘You’re not involved,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say you ought to be glad. Of course not. But it has taken a weight off your mind. It’s removed a worry.’
‘I wouldn’t want to think like that,’ he said, conscious of outrageous hypocrisy. ‘It must be wrong in anyone’s philosophy to feel relief at someone’s death, especially death by violence.’
That night he had the first of his dreams. He could hear a moaning from upstairs that grew in volume and suddenly broke off. He climbed the stairs and it was a slow climb, his steps made sluggish by some unseen force, but he reached the top at last and made his way into the living room. All was silent. Dermot lay on the floor, his face and head a bloody mass of torn flesh and broken bones. Carl tried to cry out, but only a whimpering sound came. He was sitting up in bed when he woke and the whimpering went on. Nicola was asking him what was wrong. He didn’t answer her.
He forced himself to lie down and breathe steadily. She reached out and took hold of his hand. He thought, I killed someone. I murdered a man. That’s something that will never go away. It will be with me for ever, for the rest of my life and beyond, if there is a beyond. Nothing I can do will ever get rid of it, because I did it and it is written in my past.
Dermot’s funeral took place at one of the churches he had attended. The first Carl knew of it was when Sybil brought two older women to the house and rang the doorbell.
‘I could have let us in,’ she said. ‘I’ve got Carl’s key, but I didn’t want to be rude.’
She didn’t introduce the women. The one that looked a lot like Dermot said, ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Dermot’s mum and this is his auntie. I should say, I was his mum. We’ll go upstairs and help clean out his clothes and bits and pieces if you’ve no objection.’
They were exactly as Carl would have expected Dermot’s mother and aunt to be, both short and squat, wearing black straw hats and black coats. Sybil was
dressed in the same black clothes she had worn when she called round last time; no hat, but a black headscarf tied under her chin. They went upstairs and stayed there for over an hour.
It was impossible for Carl to relax while they were in the house, but was relaxation ever to be thought of now? He faced the horrible truth that the mother of the man he had murdered was in his house, was upstairs. It was both unbelievable and true. He had returned to pacing, to walking up and down, opening doors and closing them, sitting down and getting up and pacing again, the way he had done when he first realised how Dermot intended to withhold the rent.
When they came down, should he make them tea, or at least offer it? he wondered. The thought of sitting down with them and talking about Dermot – what else could they talk about? – was so dreadful that he gasped aloud. He went out into the hall when he heard their feet on the stairs. They were all carrying bags that must have been Dermot’s, and the bags were stuffed full of the bits and pieces Dermot’s mother had talked about. Carl wondered if much of it was his property, as almost all the furnishing of the flat had been, all of it inherited from his father. But he didn’t care.
Dermot’s mother expressed his own desire precisely. ‘We’ll go and leave you in peace.’
The aunt said, ‘It was nice to meet you,’ and Sybil, nodding as if to confirm this meaningless statement, added, ‘See you soon.’
From the window he watched them make their way along Falcon Mews in the direction of the tube station, or perhaps a bus. They had shown no overt grief, no horror at what had happened, only a dull acceptance. Carl felt sick. He asked himself if there would be any further developments, any more visits, police inquiries, relatives or friends of Dermot turning up. If so, it must be faced, and it was nothing compared to what he had been through these past months.
You’re free now, he told himself, You didn’t mean to kill him, not at first, and when you did, no one saw you or connected you with his death. It’s all over. Hold on to that.
Nicola came home earlier than usual, carrying two bags full of food: a roast chicken, a selection of cheeses from the local delicatessen, white grapes, a mango and a large pineapple and the ingredients for a special kind of salad. The wine she had bought was being sent, she said, but for one bottle of rosé, which she had with her.
‘I’ll soon have money,’ Carl said. ‘Just wait a couple of weeks and then I’ll advertise the flat. There’s such a demand round here that it’ll go at once.’
She put her arms round him. ‘There’s no hurry, sweetheart. Wait a little. It will look rather … well, not like you or me, come to that … grasping. We could go away somewhere first. You’re in need of a holiday and I’ve got a couple of weeks owing.’
He wanted to tell her not to remind him he had no work and no money, but he restrained himself. Maybe he could start writing again soon. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘What I’d like to do would be to go out to eat – to celebrate.’
She pulled away, and stared at him. ‘Celebrate what?’
‘I don’t know why I said that. I wasn’t thinking.’ He started to tell her about the visit that afternoon of Dermot’s mother and aunt. ‘I think they live up north somewhere. They were going to take huge carrier bags full of bric-a-brac on the train.’
‘I’m sure you were nice to them, Carl,’ she said, but her tone was that of someone who believed the reverse was true.
It was scarcely a quarrel, but it left him feeling sore and resentful. Nicola put away the food and drink she had bought and opened the wine, still cold from the chill cabinet of the shop. They sat side by side on the sofa and she said, ‘Let’s go to one of those boat cafés on the canal. That wouldn’t trouble your conscience so much because they’re cheap.’
The phone rang. He knew it must be his mother because no one else used the landline. Her astonishment and horror at Dermot’s murder had already been voiced. This time she wanted to tell him about his grandmother’s shingles. Carl made appropriate noises.
‘Now, darling, the most important thing: I’ve got a tenant for your flat. Aren’t I clever? An estate agent, that’s me, and I don’t charge a fee.’
‘No, Mum, not yet, it’s too soon. I mean, thanks, it’s brilliant, but I don’t want to let it yet.’
‘But why not, darling? You’re in need of the rent, aren’t you? You told me you were.’
‘Of course I am. But I can wait a few weeks. You haven’t told this person they can have it, have you?’
‘No, of course not. And by the way, it’s horrible the way you use a plural when you mean a singular. It’s not just you, it’s everyone under thirty, and a lot over.’
Carl said, ‘Sorry, Mum. I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise.’
Nicola asked what that was about. He told her. ‘You were quite right to say no. Let’s go out, shall we?’
They had another glass of the rosé first. Nicola’s approval was nice, but still he asked himself why he had turned down his mother’s offer.
‘Why was I right to say no?’ he asked Nicola as they walked down the mews. ‘I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have.’
‘It shows respect for Dermot. I know he treated you badly, but he had such a horrible death. Any decent person would feel pity and – well, indignation. You didn’t want another tenant in there yet; you wanted to wait.’
Carl said nothing. It really didn’t matter if he waited, say, a couple of weeks.
There was no sign of Sybil the next day. Carl hoped that she might have gone away on holiday with her parents, although the season appeared to be over, and most people were back at work.
While Nicola was having a shower in his bathroom, he went upstairs to use the bathroom that had been Dermot’s and found the place full of what Sybil would call ‘toiletries’. These bottles and jars were the sort that came from back-street pharmacies or the soap and shampoo department of a supermarket. She might not want them but she need not think she could dump them on him. He was thinking how he must tell her to take them away when he realised he had no phone number for her, and although he knew where she lived, no email or postal address.
Just as he was deciding he must go to Jerome Crescent and put a note through her door, he heard her footsteps on the stairs. But now that his chance had come, he felt rather awkward telling her he had had a shower in the bathroom that had been Dermot’s. He waited, listening, and when he heard her leave, he felt sure she wouldn’t come back again. She would have completed whatever tasks had brought her back to Dermot’s rooms. He went upstairs and found the bathroom just as it had been. Full of her things. What did it really matter that a few jars of bath oil and sachets of cheap shampoo were left behind? Leave it a day or two and then he would throw them all away.
Carl found that he was becoming acutely aware of Sybil’s presence, though he didn’t know how. On Saturday evening, Nicola asked him how he knew Sybil was in the house, and he couldn’t tell her, he just knew. Nicola had heard nothing. She conceded he had been right when she saw Sybil walking down the mews next morning on her way to church, prayer book in hand. She had clearly spent the night upstairs. It was another fine, sunny day, and Carl and Nicola went to Hampstead Heath, Carl painfully conscious that every item of food and every drop of drink they bought was still purchased with Nicola’s money.
That kind of one-sided spending looked like coming to an end on Monday morning, however, when the post brought a letter from Carl’s agent telling him that a short story he had written three years before, and forgotten about, was to be read on radio, for which he would be paid a hundred pounds.
Susanna apologised for the smallness of the sum, but it felt like a fortune to Carl. Income from his writing, recognition of his talent! A happy start to the day, it seemed, not to be spoilt by the sound of Sybil’s feet in heavy shoes marching about on the top floor. So she hadn’t gone. She had spent two nights up there. It was time to tell her to leave, and take her pots and jars with her. He went upstairs and knocked on the door.
&nb
sp; She looked at him, unsmiling, as if she had never seen him before. He noticed that it wasn’t shoes she was wearing, but heavy brown leather boots.
‘What was it you wanted?’
Not to be left on the doorstep, he thought. ‘Can I come in?’
‘If you want.’
He stepped over the threshold. She left the door open. She was still in the mourning clothes that were perhaps to become a permanency.
‘I’d like you to take your things out of the bathroom,’ he said. ‘When you go home.’
‘I’m going out now. I’ve got to go to work.’
‘Yes, of course. But later on you must come back here and take your stuff.’
She nodded, a meaningless gesture. ‘Dermot told me when we first started courting that we would live here together.’
Courting: it was the word that shocked him rather than the content of what she said. He had never before heard anyone actually use it.
‘Yes, it’s very sad what happened. I’ll see you later,’ he said.
From his front window he watched her go. There was in her walk a familiarity with her surroundings that made her look as if she had lived here all her life. He realised he didn’t know where she worked or what she did: why should he know or care? She would be gone by the end of today and he would never have to see her again.
Sybil returned from work before Nicola did. Carl wouldn’t have known this if he hadn’t been watching for her. He went out into the hall just as she had her heavily booted right foot on the lowest stair.
‘Sybil?’ Had he ever before called her by what she would no doubt refer to as her Christian name? ‘You’ll be going home this evening, I assume. Don’t forget to take your stuff from the bathroom.’
In a calm, straightforward tone she said, ‘This is my home. This is where I live.’