by Ruth Rendell
Barry loafed in just before one to say he had had his lunch and would be around to answer the phone while Arthur was out. It was still teeming with rain. Arthur put up his umbrella and set off for Trinity Road via the mews. He passed the spot where he had strangled Vesta Kotowsky, feeling a tickle of nostalgia and a fretful resentment against a society which had given him the need to commit such acts yet would condemn him with loathing for yielding to them.
The house was empty. Nothing on the table had been disturbed. Arthur checked that the flap of the mauve-grey envelope was securely gummed down, and then he placed it in the very centre of the glossy mahogany table.
The house was semidetached, with the uncluttered lines of sixties building, of pale red bricks with big windows to let in ample light. The family who had lived there since it was new had planted each January in its front garden their Christmas trees, and these Norway spruces, ten of them, stood in a row, each one a little taller than its predecessor. Anthony, as he left the house with Winston, thought of Helen and the delight she would have taken in those Christmas trees, seeing in their arrangement, the almost ritualistic placing of them, evidence of domestic harmony, quietude, and a sense of permanent futurity.
The street was very quiet, a cul-de-sac. Children could play there in safety. But there were no children playing now, for it was dark, dark as midnight at six o’clock.
“What d’you think?” said Winston.
“Very nice, if you’ve got twenty thousand pounds. But you’ll have to get married. It’s no place for a bachelor. You must get married, have children, and with luck you’ll be able to plant at least forty more Christmas trees.”
“Do I detect a note of sarcasm?”
“Sorry,” said Anthony. Viewing the house had made him bitter. It wasn’t his ideal, too bourgeois, too dull, too sheltered, and yet—could you find a better place in which to build a marriage and raise a family? Relationships are hard to come by, and one woman may make a man very discriminating, very selective. He saw his youth wasted in hanging after Helen, their dream children vanishing in their dream mother’s vacillations.
Winston said, “I think I shall buy it. I shall come and live here among the nobs.” He pointed as they turned the corner to a grander street. “Caspian lives in one of those minimansions, and all made out of grinding our faces.”
They walked towards the K.12 stop. A thin, cold drizzle was falling. It laid a slimy sheen on pavements and on the darker tarmac of the roadway, which threw back glittering yellow and red reflections of lamps. The neighbourhood changed abruptly as London neighbourhoods do. Once again they were among the tenements, the dispirited rows of terraced cottages without gardens or fences, the corner shops, the new housing blocks.
“You can always tell council flats by the smallness of their windows,” said Anthony. “Have you noticed?”
“And their hideous design. It comes of giving second-rate architects a chance to experiment on people who can’t afford to refuse.”
“Unlike lucky you.”
“In a filthy temper tonight, aren’t you? Excuse me, I’m going in here to get a paper.”
Anthony waited at the door. What was happening to him that he could be rude and resentful to this new friend he liked so much? He stood in the now fast-falling rain, feeling depression settle on him. Friday night, Friday, November 22. He had to get through another five days of this, five days till the last Wednesday of the month. But then he would phone her, certainly he would. He thought of her face that he hadn’t seen for two months. It appeared before his eyes like a ghost face in mist, delicate, sensitive, contrite, wistful. The last time he had made love to her—he remembered it now, her eyes open and watching his eyes, her smile that had nothing to do with amusement. To have that again, even impermanently, even deferred, wasn’t it worth sacrificing his pride for that, his ideal of himself as strong and decisive, for that? Yes, on Wednesday he would beg and persuade all over again, he would begin again.…
Winston came out of the shop, holding the paper up, reading the front page. He came up to Anthony, thrust the paper at him.
“Look.”
The first thing Anthony saw was the photograph of Brian, the uncompromising passport photograph that had appeared so many times already, day after day, in every newspaper. The mop of hair, the wizened yet flaccid face, the eyes that ever seemed to implore, ever to irritate with their silliness. First the picture, then the headline: VESTA’S HUSBAND FOUND DROWNED. The account beneath those huge black letters was brief.
The body of a man washed up on the beach at Hastings, Sussex, was today identified as that of Brian Kotowsky, 38, husband of Vesta Kotowsky, strangled on Guy Fawkes Day in Kenbourne Vale, West London. Mr. Kotowsky had been missing since the day following his wife’s death.
Mr. Kotowsky, an antique dealer, of Trinity Road, Kenbourne Vale, was known to have relatives in Brighton.
His aunt, Mrs. Janina Shaw, said today that she had not seen her nephew for nine years.
“We were once very close,” she said. “We lost touch when Brian married. I cannot say if my nephew visited my house prior to his death as I have been ill in hospital.”
An inquest will be held.
Anthony looked at Winston. Winston shrugged, his face closed and expressionless. The rain fell onto the newspaper, darkening it with great heavy splashes.
On the way home they hardly spoke. With a kind of delicacy but without communicating that delicacy to each other, they avoided the mews and walked to Trinity Road by the long way round. Then Winston said:
“I shouldn’t have let him go out. I should have dissuaded him and put him to bed and then none of this would have happened.”
“No one is responsible for another adult person.”
“Can you define an adult person?” said Winston. “It isn’t a matter of years.”
Anthony said no more. Entering the hall, he remembered meeting Brian there for the first time. Brian had been sitting on the stairs doing up his shoelaces and he had come up to him and said, “Mr. Johnson, I presume?” Now he was dead, had walked out into the wintry sea until he drowned. He heard Winston say, as from a long way off, that he had a date at seven-thirty, that he must hurry.
“And I must do some work. Have a good time.”
“I’ll try. But I wish I hadn’t seen a paper till tomorrow morning.”
Winston set his foot on the bottom stair, then, having glanced over the banisters, turned and walked up to the table. He picked up three envelopes. “Now I’ve decided on my house, I must remember to tell these agents to stop sending me stuff.” He handed a fourth envelope to Anthony, a mauve-grey one with a Bristol postmark. “Here’s one for you,” he said.
At last, after so long, she had written. To say she wanted his patience a little longer? That she had been ill? Or, wonder of wonders, that she was coming to him? He unlocked his door and kicked on the switch of the electric fire. A single thumb thrust split open the flap of the envelope. He pulled out the sheet of flimsy. Just one sheet? That must mean she had hardly anything to say, that she had settled in his favour. On the brink of a happy upheaval of his life, of consummation, he read it.
Tony, Forgive me. I’m sorry not to have written to you before as I promised. I knew you would be angry if I said I couldn’t make up my mind. I have made it up now and I am going to stay with Roger. I am his wife and it is my duty to stay with him.
I never really loved you. It was just infatuation. You must forget me and it will soon be as if you hadn’t known me.
Do not phone me. You mustn’t try to get in touch with me at all. Not ever. Roger will be angry if you do. So remember, this is final. I shall not see you again and you must not contact me. H
Anthony read it again because at first he simply couldn’t believe it. It was as if a letter for someone else and written by someone else had got into one of those envelopes whose colour and shape and texture had always held a magic of their own. This—this obscenity—couldn’t be intended for him, c
ouldn’t have been written by her to him. And yet it had been. Her typewriter had been used, those distinctive errors were hers. He read it a third time, and now rage began to conquer disbelief. How dare she write such hideous, cliché-ridden rubbish to him? How dare she keep him waiting three weeks and then write this? The language appalled him almost as much as the sentiments it expressed. Her duty to stay with Roger! And then that lonelyhearts novelette word “infatuation.” “Contact” too—journalese for approach or communicate. He examined the letter, analysing it, as if close scrutiny of semantics could keep him from facing the pain of it.
The truth flashed upon him. Of course. She had begun it and the remainder had been dictated by Roger. Instead of serving to pacify him, this realisation only made him angrier. She had confessed to Roger and he had compelled her to write like this. But what sort of a woman was it who would let a man take her over to that extent? And when did she think she was living, she who was self-supporting and had the franchise and was strong and healthy? A hundred years ago? A deep humiliation enclosed him as he imagined them composing that letter in concert, the woman abject and grateful for forgiveness, the man domineering, relegating him, Anthony, to the status of some gigolo.
“You give that presumptuous devil his marching orders. Let him know whose wife you are and where your duty lies. And put in something about not contacting you if he values his skin. For God’s sake, Helen, make him see it’s final …”
Final.
He screwed the letter up, then unscrewed it and tore it into tiny shreds so that the temptation to read it again was removed.
17
————
The news of Brian Kotowsky’s death reached Arthur at nine o’clock that night by way of the television. The announcer didn’t say much about it, only that a drowned corpse had been identified and that there would be an inquest. But Arthur was satisfied. He had never even considered that honourable promptings of conscience might bring him qualms when Brian was tried for Vesta’s murder. Brian Kotowsky was nothing to him, his indifference towards the dead man tempered only by a natural dislike of someone who got drunk and was noisy. But Kotowsky might have been acquitted. Nothing could now acquit him. His self-dealt death marked him as plainly a murderer as any confession or any trial could have done. The police would consider the case as closed.
He slightly regretted his forgery of the morning. So much of his life had been ruined by terror, so much of his time wasted by gruelling anxiety. All of it in vain. But he consoled himself with the thought that, at the time, he had had no choice. Undoubtedly, Kotowsky’s death hadn’t appeared in the early editions of the evening papers so, even if he had bought one, he still wouldn’t have known in time to avoid the substitution of the letter. But now, if Anthony Johnson were to find him out, there was no damaging action he could take. The police had a culprit, dead and speechless.
And so to get on with the business of living. Arthur watched a very old film about the building of the Suez Canal, starring Loretta Young as the Empress Eugénie and Tyrone Power as de Lesseps, till eleven. He enjoyed it very much, having seen it before with Auntie Gracie when he was thirteen. Those were the days. In euphoric mood, he really thought they had been. Saturday tomorrow. The new attendant at the launderette was Mr. Grainger’s nephew’s wife, earning a bit of pin money, and he thought he could safely leave his washing with her while he went to the shops. Maybe he’d treat himself to a duck for Sunday by way of celebration.
There are ways and ways of ending a love affair. Anthony thought of the ways he had ended with girls in the past and the ways they had ended with him. Cool discussions, rows, pseudo-noble renunciations, cheerful let’s-call-it-a-day farewells. But it had never been Helen’s way. No one had rid herself of him with a curt note. And yet any of those other girls would have been more justified in doing so, for he had claimed to love none of them and offered none of them permanency. A last meeting he could have taken, a final explanation from her or even an honest letter, inviting him to phone her for a last talk. What he had received was more than he could take and he refused it. There still remained the last Wednesday of the month. Tomorrow. He would ask Linthea for the use of her phone so that there wouldn’t be that hassle with the change. And Helen should learn she couldn’t dismiss him as if he were some guy she’d picked up and spent a couple of nights with.
Leroy was still at school when he called at Linthea’s on his way home from college. “You’re welcome,” she said, “but I have to go out around eight, so when you’ve done your phoning, would you sit with Leroy for an hour or two?”
This wasn’t exactly what Anthony had envisaged. He had seen himself needing a little comfort after speaking his mind to Helen. On the other hand, this way Linthea wouldn’t have to know whom he was phoning and why. And there would be plenty of time later in the week, next week, the week after, for consolation. All the time in the world …
Linthea was ready to go out when he got there and Leroy was playing Monopoly in his bedroom with Steve and David. Because it was still only ten to eight, Anthony passed the time by reading the evening paper’s account of the inquest on Brian Kotowsky. Evidence was given of the murder of Brian’s wife three weeks before, of his disappearance but not a hint was breathed that Brian might have been responsible for that murder. The body had been in the sea for a fortnight and identification had been difficult. No alcohol had been present, but the cumulative effects of alcohol were found in the arteries and the liver. The verdict, in the absence of any suicide note or prior-to-death admission of unhappiness on Brian’s part, was one of misadventure. In a separate paragraph Chief Superintendent Howard Fortune, head of Kenbourne Vale C.I.D., was quoted as saying simply, “I have no comment to make at this stage.”
Eight o’clock. He would give it till ten past. Steve and David went home, and Anthony talked to Leroy, telling him stories about a children’s home where he had once worked and where the boys had got out of the windows by night and gone off to steal cars. Leroy was entranced, but Anthony’s heart wasn’t in it. At eight-fifteen he put the television on, gave Leroy milk and biscuits and shut himself up in Linthea’s bedroom where she had a phone extension.
He dialled the Bristol number and it began to ring. When it had rung twelve times he knew she wasn’t going to answer. Would she, after all there had been between them, just sit there and let the phone ring? She must know it was he. He dialled again and again it rang unanswered. After a while he went back to Leroy and tried to watch a quiz programme. Nine o’clock came and he forgot all about sending Leroy off to bed as he had promised. Again he dialled Helen’s number. She had gone out, he thought, guessing he would phone. That was how she intended to behave if he tried to “contact” her. And when Roger was at home and the phone rang they would have arranged it so that he answered.… He put the receiver back and sat with a contented little boy who didn’t get sent to bed until five minutes before his mother came home with Winston Mervyn.
“I don’t owe you anything for the call,” said Anthony. “I couldn’t get through.”
He went home soon after and lay on his bed, thinking of ways to get in touch with Helen. He could, of course, go to her house. He could go on Saturday, it was only two hours to Bristol in the train. Roger would be there, but he wasn’t afraid of Roger, his guns, and his rages. But Roger would be there, would possibly open the door to him. With Roger enraged and belligerent, Helen frightened and obedient according to what she had the effrontery to call her duty, what could he say? And nothing would be said at all, for Roger wouldn’t admit him to the house.
He could phone her mother if he knew what her mother was called or where she lived. The sister and brother-in-law? They had hardly proved trustworthy in the past. In the end he fell into an uneasy sleep. When he awoke at seven it occurred to him that he could phone her at the museum. He had never done so before because of her absurd neurosis about Roger’s all-seeing eye and all-hearing ear, but he’d do it now and to hell with Roger.
&nb
sp; He had planned to spend the day in the British Museum library but it didn’t much matter what time he got there. At nine he went out and bought a couple of cans of soup at Winter’s in order to get some change. On the way back he passed Arthur Johnson in a silver-grey overcoat and carrying a briefcase, the acme of respectability. Arthur Johnson said good morning and that the weather was seasonable, to which Anthony agreed absently. A hundred and forty-two was quite empty, totally silent. The seasonableness of the weather was evinced by a high wind, and little spots of coloured light cast through the wine-red and sap-green glass danced on the hall floor.
He went upstairs to the phone and dialled. Peep-peep-peep, and in went the first of his money. A girl’s voice but not hers.
“Frobisher Museum. Can I help you?”
“I want to speak to Helen Garvist.”
“Who is that calling?”
“It’s a personal call,” said Anthony.
“I’m afraid I must have your name.”
“Anthony Johnson.”
She asked him to hold the line. After about a minute she was back. “I’m afraid Mrs. Garvist isn’t here.”
He hesitated, then said, “She must be there.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Then he understood. She would have come to the phone if he hadn’t given his name, if he had insisted on anonymity. But because she didn’t want to talk to him, was determined at any cost not to talk to him, she had got the girl to tell this lie.
“Let me speak to the curator,” he said firmly.
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
The pips started. Anthony put in more money.
“Norman Le Queuex speaking,” said a thin academic voice.
“I’m a friend of Mrs. Helen Garvist and I’m speaking from London. From a call box. I want to speak to Mrs. Garvist It’s very urgent.”