by Ruth Rendell
Becky drove Will home to Star Street. She knew she shouldn’t drive, she had had far too much to drink, but at this point she was so desperate not to hurt him again that she couldn’t bring herself to send him away to make the awkward journey by two buses or on foot. It was after eleven, long past his bedtime, but he was too happy to notice.
‘How is Kim?’ she asked him, reminded as she passed near to Abbey Road.
He looked at her, puzzled, then said, ‘She’s Keith’s sister. She’s all right.’
‘Have you seen her again?’
‘We went to see a film,’ was all he said.
She went to the door with him and stood in the little hall while he climbed the stairs and she was so touched by the way he went on tiptoe so as not to disturb anyone, turning round once to lay his finger on his lips, that she felt the tears start in her eyes. But when he was gone and the door closed, if she had cried it would have been for herself. She didn’t cry, she let those suppressed thoughts take shape.
Back in Gloucester Avenue it was useless to attempt to sleep. To be in the dark, lying in bed alone and staring at an invisible ceiling would be the worst thing. Better sit here in a soft chair with a cup of tea. It was always better to be miserable in comfort. Obviously, she had lost James. He had gone and he wouldn’t come back. She couldn’t blame him. Better end a possible relationship at such an early stage than go deeper into it and find oneself involved with a woman closely associated with a drug-addicted layabout. She understood, but if only he had been a little more forbearing, a little patient, willing to wait and see … Still, it was too late for that now. Her first thought should have been for Will and what he must have gone through. She must never never let that happen again. As a matter of course he must be invited here for one day in every weekend.
But even as she thought that, she was aware of an unfamiliar sensation rising in her, rising, it seemed, up through her body, making her convulse and shiver. It was a little while before she recognised it for what it was: panic. The meaning of what she had been thinking about hit her with full force. It wouldn’t stop, this inviting of Will over once a week, this sacrifice of one day a week to someone she could no more have a real conversation with than she could with a child of ten, it would go on till he was middle-aged and she was old, till she was dead. She would never be able to ease herself out of it, slacken the frequency. Look what happened when she dared to try. Like a faithful dog, he slept on her doorstep, he broke his heart, he starved from misery.
One possible—more than possible—lover had been frightened away. Looking back, she saw that this had happened to at least one other since Will left the house he shared with the other former inmates of the home. She hadn’t realised at the time why this man had unaccountably stopped seeing her, stopped phoning, but she did now. Wouldn’t any successor of James’s also be scared off, perhaps further on in the relationship certainly, but sooner or later, by this unwelcome presence, this spectre at the feast, dominating her, clinging to her, uttering banalities about the weather and food and spring flowers? She hated herself for thinking this but at the same time she knew it was true. In a way you could say that while Will was in it, and he would always be in it, there could never be anyone else, man or woman, friend or lover, in her life. All unknowing, he had made a cage, put her in it and thrown away the key.
So when she finally got up after her almost sleepless night she had known she couldn’t face work that day. Not that there was anything she could do at home. Nothing was to be done. While she lived and Will did, the situation would endure for ever. Very obviously, he hadn’t given Kim Beatty another thought, he much preferred her, Becky. And she must forget James and, come to that, any other men, it was all pointless. Panic had given way to a dull despair.
Will also had been subject to an exchange of mindsets. His hopeless misery forgotten, memories of the treasure surfaced. Now to find out where it was, or rather, where Sixth Avenue was. He knew about America, more or less where it appeared on a world map, that films and television shows came from there, and the people spoke differently from the way he and Becky and Inez and Keith did. The actors in The Treasure of Sixth Avenue were American, you could hear it in their voices. Did that mean the street was in America? Those sirens had sounded like London but he didn’t know. He could ask Becky but she would ask why and again he came back to the question of the surprise. If Becky, who was clever, knew there was a treasure buried in the back garden of a house and he was looking for it, she would guess a lot of things and there would be no surprise. In Abbey Road, applying a coat of gloss paint in a shade called Cultured Pearl to the dining room window frames, he asked Keith, ‘Where’s Sixth Avenue?’
Although Keith had probably heard of the film, he appeared not to make the connection. ‘Don’t know, mate. I can tell you where Fifth Avenue is. It’s in New York.’
‘This is Sixth Avenue,’ said Will, disappointed.
They went back to their work, Will to his painting, Keith to french-polishing the cupboard doors. Ten minutes went by and Keith said, ‘You seen any more of my sister, have you?’
Why did everyone keep asking him about Keith’s sister? ‘No, I haven’t.’
What was he going to do now? The kind of simple research most people take for granted, looking up names in the phone book, finding out entertainment showing times, even checking out sales outlets and prices on the Internet, all this was beyond Will.
Inez might help him, but something indefinable made him shy of asking her. Not quite indefinable; he had a vague notion that she might be cross with him. She hadn’t exactly been cross that time when he’d asked her about the streets in the film her husband was in, but she’d shushed him and told him not to talk. If he did it again she might not be so nice.
Keith finished making figures of eight in french polish on the last door, put down the cotton wool and rag pad, and said, ‘We can wrap this up today, mate. You nearly done?’
Nodding, Will indicated the last bit of frame to be painted. It would take no more than half an hour. ‘Early home, then,’ said Keith. ‘Take the afternoon off, right? Tomorrow we’re starting bright and early on them flats down Ladbroke Grove.’
With a sigh, Will said, ‘All right.’
‘I’ll pick you up in Star Street eight sharp, OK?’
He couldn’t ask Becky and he couldn’t ask Inez. Keith didn’t know. Will found Ludmila and Freddy overpowering. He never spoke to them unless they spoke to him first. As for Mr Quick, Will was afraid of him. Something about him made him think of the doctor who had once come to talk to him and take his blood to find out something, the tone of his voice perhaps, or his eyes which were a mauvish-grey, the colour, Will thought, of dying tulips. They weren’t like human eyes but not like animal eyes either and when he encountered Mr Quick on the stairs, as occasionally happened, he tried not to look at him.
Monty might know where Sixth Avenue was but now it was some weeks since Monty had been in touch to ask him out for a drink. Although Will had his phone number, he wouldn’t call him, he never phoned anyone. Reaching home so much earlier than usual, he plucked up his courage to go into the newsagent’s in the Edgware Road and ask him. First he bought a Mars bar and then he asked, ‘Where’s Sixth Avenue?’
‘Sixth Avenue?’ The man had come to London from Turkey a few years before, married a Lebanese woman and lived in a flat on the Lilestone Estate. Apart from Antalya, the only part of the world he knew well was that which lay between here and Baker Street. ‘I don’t know.’ He took a copy of the London Street Atlas from a shelf and handed it to Will. ‘You look,’ he said.
But Will didn’t know where to look or even how to look. He turned pages hopelessly, handed the book back. By this time the Turkish man was selling Vogue and the Evening Standard to another customer. Will meant to go back to his flat by the street door at the foot of the stairs but he had to pass the window of the shop and as he did so, Inez waved to him and smiled. So, hesitantly, he went in. Zeinab was standing b
y the till holding an enormous bunch of flowers, wrapped in pink paper and tied with pink ribbon.
‘You’re finished early, Will,’ said Inez.
Will nodded, saying nothing, though remarks of that sort pleased and comforted him. They were true and he could understand them.
Zeinab read aloud the card attached to the flowers. ‘“To the only woman in the world for me, Happy Birthday, sweetheart, with all my love for ever and ever, Rowley.”’
‘I didn’t know it was your birthday,’ said Inez.
‘It’s not but he thinks it is,’ said Zeinab, giving another clue to character analysts like Inez that she might not always be too extravagant with the truth. ‘What am I going to do with them? I mean, give me a break. I can just picture my dad’s face if I take this lot home.’ Without asking him, she suddenly thrust the tulips, anemones, narcissi, hyacinths and multicoloured freesias into Will’s arms. ‘There you are, give them to your girlfriend.’
She inhabited a world in which it was unthinkable that any young person could be without a partner. Will stammered out his thanks and hurried to the door at the back before she could change her mind. Flowers he loved but no one ever before had given him any. He spent the next hour happily arranging them in every vessel he could find that would hold water.
At five the white van with the notice about not washing reappeared in Star Street. A man got out of the cab and ran up the street before Inez could catch more than a glimpse of him. Traffic wardens were always up and down here but they never seemed to be around when that van was parked outside. A turquoise-coloured Jaguar pulled up behind it.
‘Here’s Morton,’ said Zeinab. ‘He’s early. I said half past. Men!’
For the past half-hour she had been sitting on a mahogany and pink velvet stool in front of the mirror she called hers, repairing the ravages of the day, brushing her hair, remaking up her face with such sophisticated utensils as lip pencils, eyebrow gel and a lash curler, and painting her fingernails iridescent purple. She kicked off the sandals she wore for work, slipped her feet into pumps with four-inch heels, tripped out and over to the car. Seconds later, her head round the door, she said to Inez, ‘Can I go? Morton’s got champagne waiting on ice and he wants to talk about a date for our wedding.’
‘Off with you,’ said Inez, laughing. ‘How you’ll ever get out of this one I don’t know.’
She noticed that on the hand which held the door ajar Zeinab had changed Rowley’s engagement ring for Morton Phibling’s fingernail-sized rock. You had to laugh. Alone, she waited till six and then she closed and locked the street door. Customers had been in and out most of the day but no one had bought anything since eleven in the morning. Just as she had turned the hanging sign to ‘closed’ she had the satisfaction of seeing Ludmila and Freddy cross the street, look at the sign and confer, while Freddy tried in vain to turn the door handle. They gave up, Ludmila burrowed in her red velvet shoulder bag, found her key and let them in by the tenants’ street door.
The shop was looking uncared-for and frowsty, Inez thought, in spite of Zeinab’s daily efforts with the feather duster. She found clean cloths and spray polish, and set to work. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of small objects, bric-a-brac, inside these four walls, and each of them seemed to draw dust as if it were iron filings and they magnets. She worked methodically, first lifting every little vase and clock and wineglass and picture frame on to a tray before she dusted the surface where it had stood, then replacing everything and starting on the next table or plant stand or cabinet.
It was strange, as she always thought when she performed this task, how many tiny objects came to light that she couldn’t recall ever having seen before. She must have seen them because nothing came into the shop without her knowing, and everything was numbered and catalogued. Sure enough, there was a number on a small label on the underside of this quite unfamiliar cut-glass scent bottle and another on this Egyptian cat with rings in its ears, but she could remember nothing of their provenance nor their previous owner.
The worst bit she always left till last. Perhaps she should think about rearranging things in this dark corner, now guarded by the jaguar, where the plaster statue of the goddess beside it excluded most of the light. On the round table behind them must be at least fifty plates and cups and silver spoons and little enamel boxes and pieces of glass fruit and brooches and Victorian hatpins. Patiently, she began lifting them one by one on to her tray.
It was then that she saw it, a silver cross on a broken chain, the cross itself chased with a tiny design of leaves. On the television news the night before she had seen that cross, hugely magnified and filling the screen. She stood back, her hand up to her mouth. It couldn’t be. Not Gaynor Ray’s, not this one. There must be hundreds of such crosses …
She turned it over, looking for the assay mark that would prove it was silver. It was there, on the underside of the cross, but the label with the catalogue number was not. Was it possible that it had found its way here quite legitimately without being entered in the catalogue? If Zeinab had bought it for the shop perhaps, but that hardly ever happened and, anyway, Zeinab was meticulous enough except in matters of punctuality. Inez had no recollection of ever having seen the cross before. She abandoned her cleaning and took the catalogues, three heavy volumes of them, out of the drawer where they were kept. Three hours later, having forgotten all about a drink or eating or watching a video, she had been through each volume with great care from start to finish.
The silver cross wasn’t there. The nearest thing to it was of gold on a black velvet ribbon she remembered buying at least two years before. The silver cross which might be Gaynor Ray’s, which surely was, appeared nowhere in the lists. Inez, who had been holding the cross and broken chain in her hand, dropped it when she realised this was very likely the murder weapon.
CHAPTER 8
Unable to sleep much, Inez got up early and was downstairs in the shop before eight. Now, in April, it was broad daylight. She saw Keith Beatty’s van arrive and heard him give a blast on his horn. They could have heard it at Paddington Station, it was so loud. There was no need to make that noise at all as Will was always ready, and before the final reverberations had died away, was out in the street opening the passenger door. Inez sighed and once more told herself she must get out of the habit of sighing.
The night before, she had touched the silver cross once before thinking that she shouldn’t touch it at all, and after that had picked it up by its chain. But if the chain had been used for the purpose she could hardly bear to think about, should she be touching it at all? When Martin (or Forsyth) found a piece of evidence of this sort he always slipped it inside a sterile bag for forensic examination. Inez had gone up to her kitchen and torn a plastic bag off a new roll. The cross inside the bag had spent the night with her, on her bedside table. Though not usually paranoid, she had had the unpleasant idea, now it had been shown on television, that whoever had put the cross there might come back to the shop in the small hours to retrieve it.
She had brought it downstairs with her. In half an hour or so she would phone the police and ask for Inspector Crippen. Should she search the rest of the place, go over the area, nearly a third of the shop space, she hadn’t touched last evening? In case she found a silver cigarette lighter with Nicole Nimms’s initials in garnets, a black and gilt keyring with an onyx Scottie dog suspended from it and a gold fob watch? No, let the police do that. Inez was thinking about the implications of what she had found and where she had found it, that the Rottweiler or some accomplice of his, must have been inside Star Antiques, when a tap on the interior door announced the arrival of Jeremy Quick for his cup of tea. Inez went quickly to put the kettle on.
He was wearing a new suit. His shirt was snowy white, his tie a plain deep bluish-green.
‘How nice you look,’ said Inez.
‘Well, thank you. I actually bought this suit with my wedding in mind but it looks as if that’s a long way off, so I thought I might
as well wear it.’
Should she tell him? She badly needed someone to confide in about this, preferably before she called the police. Oh, how she needed Martin! But seeing that was impossible, would Jeremy do? ‘How is Mrs Gildon?’ she said.
‘Much the same. It’s very thoughtful of you to ask. Belinda is still staying at the hospital four nights a week out of the seven. I don’t get her to myself much.’
He drank his tea while Inez thought again of telling him, then rejected it. There was something else she needed to clear up. ‘I suppose she’s very attached to her mother?’
‘Very,’ he said, and Inez thought his voice had grown sad. ‘I sometimes think adopted children can be closer to their adoptive parents than natural children, don’t you?’
Inez hardly knew why she was so relieved. Belinda’s age and her mother’s had been teasing at her mind ever since her conversation with Jeremy in her flat. The only explanation for her being the child of a fifty-two-year-old was of course the true one. ‘Oh, is Belinda adopted?’
‘Yes, didn’t I say? Mrs Gildon adopted her when she was two months old. She and her husband had already adopted a boy five years before, but he can’t give Belinda much support, he lives in New Zealand.’
Should she tell him? She was sitting at her desk and the bag with the cross in it was in the desk drawer. As she touched the handle Jeremy said, ‘I’d better go. I want to be in bright and early, I’ve got a meeting of top management at nine fifteen.’