The Secret House of Death

by Ruth Rendell

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  About the Author

  The Secret House of Death

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Classic British crime fiction is the best in the world—and Ruth Rendell is crime fiction at its very best. Ingenious and meticulous plots, subtle and penetrating characterizations, beguiling storylines and wry observations have all combined to put her at the very top of her craft.

  Her first novel, From Doon with Death, appeared in 1964, and since then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new book. She has now received eight major awards for her work: three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award for 1976’s best crime novel for A Demon in My View; the Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for Lake of Darkness; the Crime Writers’ Silver Dagger Award for 1985’s best crime novel for The Tree of Hands; the Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award for 1986’s best crime novel for Live Flesh, and in 1987 the Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award for A Fatal Inversion, written under the name Barbara Vine.

  THE SECRET

  HOUSE OF DEATH

  Ruth Rendell

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409068815

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Arrow Books Limited

  62–65 Chandos Place, London WC2N 4NW

  An imprint of Century Hutchinson Limited

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  Johannesburg and agencies throughout

  the world

  First published by Hutchinson 1968

  Arrow edition 1982

  Reprinted 1984, 1987 (twice) and 1988 (twice)

  © Ruth Rendell 1968

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it

  shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without

  the publisher’s prior consent in any form of

  binding or cover other than that in which it is

  published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the

  subsequent purchaser.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Anchor Brendon Limited, Tiptree, Essex

  ISBN 0 09 928660 2

  For

  Dagmar Blass

  Then is it sin

  To rush into the secret house of death

  Ere death dare come to us?

  Antony and Cleopatra

  1

  The man was heavily built and he drove a big car, a green Ford Zephyr. This was his third visit to the house called Braeside in Orchard Drive, Matchdown Park, and each time he parked his car on the grass patch in the pavement. He was in his early thirties, dark and not bad-looking. He carried a briefcase. He never stayed very long but Louise North who lived at Braeside with her husband Bob was always pleased to see him and admitted him with a smile.

  These were facts and by now everyone who lived in the vicinity was aware of them. The Airedale who lived opposite and who belonged to some people called Winter obligingly kept them informed of the big man’s visits. At day-long sentry-go behind his gate, the Airedale barked at strangers, kept silence for residents. He barked furiously now as the man strolled up Norths’ path, knocked at the front door, and, thirty seconds later after a whispered word with Louise, disappeared inside. His duty done, the dog nosed out a brown earth-encrusted bone and began to gnaw it. One by one the women his outburst had alerted retreated from their windows and considered what they had seen.

  The ground had been prepared, the seed sown. Now all that remained was for these enthusiastic gardeners to raise their crop of gossip and take it to market over the fences and over the tea-cups.

  Of them all only Susan Townsend, who lived next door to Braeside, wanted to be left out of this exchange of merchandise. She sat typing each afternoon in her window and was no more proof than they were against raising her eyes when the dog barked. She wondered about the man’s visits but, unlike her neighbours, she felt no rubricious curiosity. Her own husband had walked out on her just a year ago and the man’s visits to Louise North touched chords of pain she hoped had begun to atrophy. Adultery, which excites and titillates the innocent, had brought her at twenty-six into a dismal abyss of loneliness. Let her neighbours speculate as to why the man came, what Louise wanted, what Bob thought, what would come of it all. From personal experience she knew the answers and all she wanted was to get on with her work, bring up her son and not get herself involved.

  The man left forty minutes later and the Airedale barked again. He stopped abruptly as his owner approached and, standing on his hind legs—in which position he wriggled like a belly dancer—fawned on the two little boys she had fetched from school.

  Susan Townsend went into her kitchen and put the kettle on. The side gate banged.

  ‘Sorry we’re so late, my dear,’ said Doris Winter, stripping off her gloves and homing on the nearest radiator. ‘But your Paul couldn’t find his cap and we’ve been rooting through about fifty lockers.’

  ‘Roger Gibbs had thrown it into the junior playground,’ said Susan’s son virtuously. ‘Can I have a biscuit?’

  ‘You may not. You’ll spoil your tea.’

  ‘Can Richard stay?’

  It is impossible to refuse such a request when the putative guest’s mother is at your elbow. ‘Of course,’ said Susan. ‘Go and wash your hands.’

  ‘I’m frozen,’ Doris said. ‘Winter by name and Winter by nature, that’s me.’ It was March and mild, but Doris was always cold, always huddled under layers of sweaters and cardigans and scarves. She divested herself gradually of her outer coverings, kicked off her shoes and pressed chilblained feet against the radiator. ‘You don’t know how I envy you your central heating. Which brings me to what I wanted to say. Did you see what I saw? Louise’s boy-friend paying her yet another visit?’

  ‘You don’t know he’s her boy-friend, Doris.’

  ‘She says he’s come to sell central heating. I asked her—got the cheek of the devil, haven’t I?—and that’s what she said. But when I mentioned it to Bob you could see he didn’t have the least idea what I meant. “We’re not having central heating,” he said. “I can’t afford it.” There now. What d’you think of that?’

  ‘It’s their business and they’ll have to sort it out.’

  ‘Oh, quite. I couldn’t agree more. I’m sure I’m not interested in other people’s sordid private lives. I do wonder what she sees in this man, though. It’s not as if he was all that to write home about and Bob’s a real dream. I’ve always thought him by far the most attractive ma
n around here, all that cool fresh charm.’

  ‘You make him sound like a deodorant,’ said Susan, smiling in spite of herself. ‘Shall we go in the other room?’

  Reluctantly, Doris unpeeled herself from the radiator and, carrying shoes, shedding garments in her wake, followed Susan into the living-room. ‘Still, I suppose good looks don’t really count,’ she went on persistently. ‘Human nature’s a funny thing. I know that from my nursing days . . .’

  Sighing inwardly, Susan sat down. Once on to her nursing days and the multifarious facets of human idiosyncrasy to be observed in a hospital ward, Doris was liable to go on for hours. She listened with half an ear to the inevitable spate of anecdote.

  ‘. . . And that was just one example. It’s amazing the people who are married to absolutely marvellous-looking other people and who fall in love with absolute horrors. I suppose they just want a change.’

  ‘I suppose they do,’ Susan said evenly.

  ‘But fancy trusting someone and having complete faith in them and then finding they’ve been deceiving you all along. Carrying on and making a fool of you. Oh, my dear, forgive me! What have I said? I didn’t mean you, I was speaking generally, I was——’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Susan cut in. She was used to tactlessness and it wasn’t the tactlessness she minded but the sudden belated awareness on the part of speakers that they had dropped bricks. They insisted on covering up, making excuses and embarking on long disquisitions aimed to show that Susan’s was an exceptional case. Doris did this now, giggling nervously and rubbing her still cold hands.

  ‘I mean, of course, Julian did carry on behind your back, meeting what’s-her-name, Elizabeth, when he was supposed to be working. And you’ve got a trusting nature like poor Bob. But Julian never did it on his own doorstep, did he? He never brought Elizabeth here.’ Doris added transparently, ‘I know that for sure. I should have seen.’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ said Susan.

  The two little boys came downstairs, their arms full of miniature cars. Susan settled them at the table, hoping Doris would take the hint and go. Perhaps she was over-protective but Paul was, after all, the child of a broken marriage and on her rested the responsibility of seeing he didn’t grow up with too jaundiced a view of matrimony. She glanced at Doris now and slightly shook her head.

  ‘Just listen to my dog,’ Doris said too brightly. ‘It’s a wonder the neighbours don’t complain.’ She trotted to the window, gathering up shed garments as she went, and shook her fist at the Airedale, a gesture which inflamed him to a frenzy. He stuck his big woolly head over the gate and began to howl. ‘Be quiet, Pollux!’ Susan often wondered why the Airedale had been named after one of the Gemini. Orchard Drive must be thankful the Winters had no Castor to keep him company. ‘It’s the new baker’s roundsman that’s set him off this time,’ Doris said sagely. ‘He never barks at us or you or the Gibbses or the Norths. Which just goes to show it’s fear with him and not aggressiveness, whatever people may say.’ She glared at her son and said, as if instead of placidly eating bread and butter, he had been urging her to stay, ‘Well, I can’t hang about here all night, you know. I’ve got Daddy’s dinner to get.’

  Susan sat down with the children and ate a sandwich. If you had no ‘Daddy’s dinner’ to get, you certainly prepared none for yourself and tea was a must. Paul crammed a last chocolate biscuit into his mouth and began pushing a diminutive red fire engine across the cloth and over the plates.

  ‘Not at the table, darling.’

  Paul scowled at her and Richard, whose hands had been itching to reach for a dumper truck, hid them under the table and gave him a virtuous glance. ‘Please may I leave the table, Mrs Townsend?’

  ‘I suppose so. Your hands aren’t sticky, are they?’

  But both little boys were on the floor by now, trundling their fleet of vehicles and making realistic if exaggerated engine sounds. They wriggled across the carpet on their stomachs, making for Susan’s desk.

  This was a Victorian mahogany affair full of niches and cubby-holes. Susan had sufficient empathy to understand its fascination for a five-year-old with a mania for Lilliputian vehicles and she tried to turn a blind eye when Paul used its shelves for garages, her writing paper boxes for ramps and her ribbon tins for turntables. She poured herself a second cup of tea and jumped, slopping it into her saucer, as the paper clip box fell to the floor and fasteners sprayed everywhere. While Richard, the ingratiating guest, scuttled to retrieve them, Paul stuck a jammy hand on Miss Willingale’s manuscript and began to use it for a racing track.

  ‘Now that’s quite enough,’ Susan said crisply. ‘Outside both of you till bedtime.’

  She washed the tea things and went upstairs. The children had crossed the road and were poking toys at Pollux through the curlicues of the wrought-iron gate. Susan opened the window.

  ‘You’re to stay on this side,’ she called. ‘All the cars will be along in a minute.’

  The Airedale wagged his tail and made playful bites at a lorry bonnet Paul had thrust into his face. Susan, who hadn’t been thinking about Julian nearly so much lately, suddenly remembered how he used to call Pollux an animated fun fur. This was the time Julian used to come home, the first of the commuting husbands to return. Pollux was still there and unchanged; as usual the children littered the front garden with their toys; the cherry trees were coming into bloom and the first lights of evening appearing in the houses. Only one thing had altered: Julian would never come again. He had always hated Matchdown Park, that detestable dormitory as he called it, and now he had a flat ten minutes from his office in New Bridge Street. He would be walking home now to vent upon Elizabeth his brilliance, his scorn, his eternal fussing over food, his didactic opinions. Elizabeth would have the joy and the excitement—and the fever-pitch exasperation—until the day came when Julian found someone else. Stop it, Susan told herself sternly, stop it.

  She began to brush her fair shiny hair—thinner and less glossy since the divorce. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered. There was no one to see her but a little boy and the chance of a friend dropping in was almost nil. Married couples wanted to see other married couples, not a divorcee who hadn’t even the advantage of being the guilty and therefore interesting party.

  She had hardly seen any of those smart childless friends since the divorce. Minta Philpot had phoned once and cooled when she heard Susan hadn’t a man in tow, much less was planning on remarriage. What had become of Lucius and Mary, of lovely remote Dian and her husband Greg? Perhaps Julian saw them, but he was Julian Townsend, the editor of Certainty, eternally sought after, eternally a personage.

  The children were safely occupied on the lawn by now and the first homing husband had arrived, Martin Gibbs with a bunch of flowers for Betty. That, at any rate, awoke no painful memories. Julian had never been what he called a ‘hothouse hubby’ and Susan had been lucky to get flowers on her birthday.

  And here, exactly on time, was Bob North.

  He was tall, dark and exceptionally good-looking. His clothes were unremarkable but he wore them with a grace that seemed unconscious and his masculinity just saved him from looking like a male model. The face was too classically perfect to suit modern cinematic requirements and yet it was not the face of a gigolo, not in the least Italianate. It was an English face, Celtic, clear-skinned and frank.

  Susan had lived next door to him and his wife since they had moved to Braeside two years before. But Julian had despised his neighbours, calling them bourgeois, and of them all only Doris had been sufficiently pushing and thick-skinned to thrust her friendship on the Townsends. Susan knew Bob just well enough to justify the casual wave she now gave him from her window.

  He waved back with the same degree of amiable indifference, took the ignition key from his car and strolled out on to the pavement. Here he stood for a few seconds gazing at the ruts the green Zephyr had made in the turf. His face had grown faintly troubled but when he turned and glanced upwards, Susan retr
eated, unwilling to meet his eyes. Herself the victim of a deceiver, she knew how quickly a fellow-feeling for Bob North could grow, but she didn’t want to be involved in the Norths’ problems. She went downstairs and called Paul in.

  When he was in bed, she sat beside him and read the nightly instalment of Beatrix Potter. Strong-featured, flaxen-haired, he was his mother’s son, as unlike Julian as could be.

  ‘Now read it all again,’ he said as she closed the book.

  ‘You must be joking. It’s ten to seven. Ten to seven.’

  ‘I like that book, but I don’t think a dog would ever go to tea with a cat or take it a bunch of flowers. It’s stupid to give people flowers. They only die.’ He threw himself about on the bed, laughing scornfully. Perhaps, Susan thought, as she tucked him up again, he wasn’t so unlike Julian, after all.

  ‘I tidied up all your papers,’ he said, opening one eye. ‘I can have my cars on your desk, if I tidy up, can’t I?’

  ‘I suppose so. I bet you didn’t tidy up the garden.’

  Immediately he simulated exhaustion, pulling the bedclothes over his head.

  ‘One good turn deserves another,’ Susan said and she went out into the garden to collect the scattered fleet of cars from lawn and flower-beds.

  The street was deserted now and dusk was falling. The lamps, each a greenish translucent jewel, came on one by one and Winters’ gate cast across the road a fantastic shadow like lace made by a giant’s hand.

  Susan was groping for toys in the damp grass when she heard a voice from behind the hedge. ‘I think this is your son’s property.’ Feeling a little absurd—she had been on all-fours—she got up and took the two-inch long lorry from Bob North’s hands.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It would never do to lose this.’

  ‘What is it, anyway?’

  ‘A kind of road sweeper. He had it in his stocking.’

  ‘Good thing I spotted it.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ She moved away from the fence. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with Bob North and she felt it had been deliberately engineered, that he had come out on purpose to speak to her. Once again he was staring at the ruined turf. She felt for a truck under the lilac bush.