by Ruth Rendell
‘Please don’t touch the pendulum, Freddy. She’s off sick. Some sort of virus.’
‘Dear, oh dear. You’re all on your lonesome then?’
Inez could see it coming. Helplessly, she let it come.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a hand, take her place.’ He must have seen her look of dismay but misinterpreted it. ‘Don’t you worry, I won’t want paying.’ He looked over his shoulder in case Department of Social Security spies were lying on the pavement with their ears to the crack under the door. ‘Between you and I, I mustn’t be paid, or I’ll lose my Benefit.’ He added hopefully, ‘Unless you and me can think of some way to outwit them.’
‘I can manage on my own, Freddy, really,’ Inez said feebly.
‘No, you can’t.’
Such argument was bound to degenerate into a pointless no-you-can’t-yes-I-can wrangle and Inez gave way. ‘I’ll just nip up and tell Ludo,’ said Freddy, opposing the action to the word by strolling towards the inside door with extreme slowness, examining small ornaments on his way.
Feeling a need for fresh air, Inez went outside to stand for a while in the sunshine. Mr Khoury, who had the same idea, was already there, smoking a large cigar heavily scented with oriental spices. Tuberose and spikenard, thought Inez, coughing, cardamom and coriander. Morton Phibling’s speech patterns were infectious.
‘You will notice, madam, that the one-time white van is back,’ said Mr Khoury, ‘the van that is dirty and it is forbidden to clean for the scientific experiment.’
By now it was so dirty that Inez wouldn’t have known it was white if she hadn’t seen it before. ‘Who does it belong to?’
Mr Khoury shrugged, blowing out tuberose fumes. ‘He has RP but does he display the proof in his windscreen? No, he thinks him very funny. When the warden comes he show the proof and tear up the PT. This I have seen.’
Interpreting RP as residents’ parking and PT as a parking ticket, Inez said the owner must be crazy.
‘Many, many are crazy,’ said Mr Khoury sorrowfully and, pointing again, ‘Here is another.’
Another white van, he meant, not another madman. The purchaser of the grandfather clock had come back, all smiles. Welcoming him in, Inez hoped Freddy hadn’t damaged its pendulum.
Will hadn’t been taking the day off but was going in late, having been sent by Keith to order supplies from the builder’s merchant. While there he had bought a spade, taken it home and walked down to the new job they had in Kendal Street. The evening was fixed for digging operations to begin.
The radio was, of course, on, Keith’s indispensable background to making good and plastering, a dull beat and throb, and occasionally a human voice keening miserably or in manic bliss, which Will didn’t even notice, he was so used to it. But he noticed the weather forecast at midday and he turned the sound up. Not everything that was said was comprehensible to him.
‘Does he mean it’s going to rain here?’ he said to Keith.
‘Search me. The south-east is here, presumably. They never say London, do they? Norwich and Kent and Bristol and whatever but they never say the place most people live in. He says it’ll be raining in the south-east tonight.’
‘A lot of rain or not much?’
‘What do you want to know for, anyway? You going somewhere exciting?’
Will hoped to be going somewhere very exciting, the most exciting somewhere of his whole life. But he mustn’t tell Keith where or what he would be doing. It had to be a surprise to everyone. He didn’t answer the question but finished his sandwiches in silence and while Keith made his daily protracted phone call to his wife, returned to his task of sanding-down doors.
They went home as usual at four. Coming this way, Will had to pass the window of Inez’s shop. Neither Inez nor Zeinab was anywhere to be seen and Freddy Perfect, dressed in a brown overall, was sitting behind the desk. Will didn’t question this or even think about it very much. Many of the ways of those he still thought of as ‘the grown-ups’ were strange to him and he accepted them the way children do without wanting to enquire further into them.
Once more in his own domain, he made himself tea and opened a packet of lemon curd tarts. Eating, particularly sweet things, was one of the great delights of his life and eating in Becky’s company the primary pleasure. Although he could afford an entirely adequate diet, he knew there were deficiencies which finding the treasure would remedy. At present he couldn’t buy Belgian chocolates or real cream cakes (not every day, anyway) or whole cheesecakes and glazed strawberry tarts of the kind he saw in the windows of expensive patisseries. Will found it hard to pass these shops without stopping and pressing his nose in longing against the glass. When he had the treasure he wouldn’t have to do that, he would be able to go inside and buy.
Not all of it would go on Becky’s house. He thought of it now as ‘Becky’s house’. Enough would be left over for him to eat the food he took delight in. While he was thinking along these lines and carefully washing up his cup and plate, the phone started ringing. Hardly anyone phoned him but Becky. He would have approached the phone in trepidation had he believed it could be someone else but as it was he thought it would be Becky telling him which day to come at the weekend, or even which two days, if he was very lucky. He picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hello, Becky.’
A woman’s voice said, ‘It’s not Becky, whoever she is, it’s Kim. Remember me?’
He remembered her. She was Keith’s sister. She had been with him when he first heard about the treasure. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Well, I thought …’ Almost anyone else would have noticed how awkward this was for her, how much she needed encouragement. ‘I thought—sorry, I’m finding this quite hard, but would you—well, would you like to come to this party I’m going to? I mean, it’s this friend of mine, she’s going to be twenty-one and she said to me to bring someone and I thought, why not you? It’s on Saturday night.’
‘I’ll be at Becky’s on Saturday.’ He might not be, it might be Sunday or even Friday, but saying he’d go somewhere on Saturday was a risk he couldn’t take. ‘I can’t go out on Saturday.’
Some childhood memory returned to Kim. He sounded like her friend next door had, years and years before, saying she couldn’t come out to play. What was it with him? ‘Some other time, then,’ she said, and now the disappointment in her voice did penetrate.
‘I do like you,’ Will said earnestly, for he could tell he had hurt her. ‘But I mustn’t go out on Saturdays.’
He remembered that terrible day when Becky hadn’t invited him at all—because he had been out on a Saturday?—and that could happen again. He said goodbye to Kim rather sadly, for he was grateful to her. If it hadn’t been for her suggesting it he would never have gone to the cinema nor learnt where the treasure was. The phone rang again almost immediately after he had put the receiver down. This time it was Monty, wanting to know if he’d fancy a drink in the Monkey Puzzle one evening this week.
‘I can’t go out this week,’ Will said. ‘I’m busy.’
‘Some other time, then,’ Monty said, using the same words as Kim had. Anyone but Will would have noticed the relief in his voice.
When Becky did phone, about an hour later, he was examining his new spade and looking out of the window at the now softly falling rain.
‘Would you like to come over on Friday evening, Will?’
Fridays he didn’t like because he couldn’t be there very long and he couldn’t have lunch but he said yes, so as not to miss the chance, and then, daringly, ‘Can I come on Sunday too?’
There was silence. Something like a little sigh made him think poor Becky must be very tired. ‘Yes, of course you can.’
So that was all right. Better than all right. He might take three visits to Sixth Avenue to unearth the treasure if it was buried deep or he couldn’t find it at once. That would be tonight and Wednesday and Thursday, which meant he would be able to tell Becky all about it on Friday. Will went to the window. It was
still raining.
He couldn’t start work in this. He and Keith had once done an outside job, digging up someone’s drain, but when it rained heavily they had had to stop. Where you dug filled up with water and the soil turned to mud the spade couldn’t budge. But he went downstairs to check, taking the spade with him and opening the tenants’ street door, where he extended a hand to feel the frequency of the drops.
All this was witnessed by Finlay Zulueta, sitting in his car on the opposite side of Star Street. A very pleased Crippen, all broad grin and approval, had detailed him to do this with the occasional help of Osnabrook. He had seen Will Cobbett buy the spade and watched him walk down to Kendal Street. Keith’s van outside told him Cobbett’s business there was legitimate. But buying a spade couldn’t be. Keith Beatty must have spades enough for anything above-board. And here was Cobbett standing outside in the rain now, spade in hand. Still, there was nothing much the chap could do tonight, not in this rain. The car windows were getting steamed up on the inside and obscured by streaming water on the outside.
And Will himself, though bitterly disappointed, unwillingly accepted that the rain had increased even in the short time he had stood here on the doorstep. It was coming straight down now like rods of glass, pounding on the pavement and defying the gutter to contain it. A passing car sent up a spray that drove him back inside. He would have to give it up for tonight, start tomorrow instead. After watching from the shelter of the doorway for a moment or two, noticing Zulueta in his car but seeing nothing significant in his being there, Will went upstairs and began to prepare his evening meal.
It was rare but by no means unknown for Jeremy Quick to come through the shop on his way home from work. He had no such intention that evening, particularly as he was later than usual, having worked an hour longer on account of losing the time in the morning while he was buying the earrings. But Inez was still in the shop and the lights were still on, so Jeremy went in, conscious that it would be wise to reinstate himself in her good opinion, but with another purpose in mind as well. He might have stayed away and used the tenants’ street door if he had known Freddy Perfect would be in there, bustling about, not so much fingering the ornaments as flicking a feather duster over them. He wore a brown overall, of the kind favoured by very old-fashioned ironmongers.
Inez couldn’t imagine where this overall had come from. Did Freddy have it handy in case of a chance of working in the shop? Would he have a uniform if offered a job somewhere as doorman or a tailcoat if a vacancy for a butler came up? She was not very pleased to see Jeremy and told herself that if he was expecting tea at this hour, he could forget it. What she would have liked best was to be left alone to watch Zulueta, apparently watching this house. For what? If only Zeinab hadn’t been so stupid as to give a false address …
‘You see I’ve got myself a job, Jeremy,’ Freddy was saying. ‘Under-manager. I’ve no objection to that, I’m not proud.’
Jeremy loathed being called by his first name—or his alternative first name—by such lowlife as Freddy Perfect but he wasn’t going to make an idiot of himself by saying so. ‘You’re open late.’
‘We’re not really open,’ Inez said and, with one of the sighs she had so nearly succeeded in banishing, ‘I did ask you at least half an hour ago to turn the sign to “Closed”, Freddy.’
‘I know you did, Inez, but we’d just had those two nice ladies in who bought the Big Ben snowstorm and the little glass vase. I didn’t care to discourage custom in these difficult times.’
Times had never been easier but Inez dreaded provoking an argument. ‘Do it now, will you? And then you’d really better go back … er, upstairs.’ That often-repeated platitude about Ludmila wondering where he was had lost its impact.
By now desperate for something pleasant to say, Jeremy offered to buy a Crown Derby plate. It would look nice on his living room wall. ‘Please don’t bother to wrap it.’
While Inez turned away to write his receipt and Freddy ambled reluctantly towards the inside door, he slipped the earrings out of his back pocket and dropped them silently on to the green baize surface of the jewellery table.
CHAPTER 13
It was Freddy who found the earrings on the following morning. He had come down to the shop much earlier than he was needed, just after eight and long before Jeremy Quick’s arrival for his morning tea and at much the same time as Will left in Keith Beatty’s van. Inez had to admit afterwards that Freddy working for her had some advantages. If Zeinab had been there it might have taken weeks before anyone came across them. On the other hand it was horrible having Crippen and Zulueta in the shop yet again.
‘Things are starting to look very serious,’ said Crippen gloomily.
‘I quite agree.’ Inez didn’t like the look he gave her.
‘That makes three of these missing articles that have been found on your premises, Mrs Ferry.’
‘What do you expect me to do about it? I didn’t put them there.’
‘Four, actually,’ said Freddy. ‘Seeing as there are two earrings.’
He was ignored. Osnabrook arrived and he and Zulueta began once more searching the shop.
‘We may have to close you down.’ Crippen was shaking his head, something he had been doing spasmodically ever since he walked in five minutes before. ‘It may be necessary to get an order.’
What kind of order wasn’t specified. ‘What good would that do?’ Inez asked. ‘Whoever is doing it would only take them somewhere else.’
‘That’s true.’ Zulueta, who had come out from the back where he had been going through jewellery drawers, whispered something to Crippen.
‘I see what you mean,’ said Crippen, suddenly brightening. ‘Let us see what the day brings forth.’
They left abruptly, abandoning the search.
‘What was that all about?’ Inez’s enquiry was rhetorical but Freddy answered it all the same.
‘They are on someone’s track. No doubt, someone who lives in this neighbourhood. It’s someone who has got it in for you, Inez. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that Jeremy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I wouldn’t be entirely astounded.’
‘Then why didn’t you say something to Inspector Crippen?’
‘Betray a fellow tenant? I haven’t sunk as low as that, I hope.’
Inez saw that she had offended him, probably for the first time. She had thought it an impossible feat. But Freddy had stalked to the street door and gone outside to say hello to Anwar Ghosh who happened to be passing. They stood and chatted, Freddy enjoying a restorative cigarette. It was amazing what unlikely things upset different people, Inez thought. She didn’t know how many times she had told him not to be silly, to stop picking up things in the shop, and once at least come near to accusing him of theft. None of that had riled him but suggesting he might rat on Jeremy Quick, a man he scarcely knew and one who had never been even commonly polite to him, had got under his skin. Anyway, it was all completely absurd, the suggestion and Freddy’s ruffled feathers.
The day was dry and clear, and where they were to be seen, grass and leaves were of a fresher green after many hours of steady rain. Near as it was to Hyde Park, Kendal Street had far more in the way of lawns and trees than any areas further up the Edgware Road. Will, who liked fresh air and would have been happy in the country, went out for half an hour at lunchtime and walked into the park and across as far as the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. He liked that statue with its animals and fairylike people, and he stood in front of it for a full five minutes. Then he had to hurry back to avoid being late. All the time, except when he was looking at Peter Pan, he had been thinking about Becky’s house and how maybe it should be in the country, only then she wouldn’t be able to go to work. But she wouldn’t need to go to work when he had the treasure. You could see it wasn’t going to rain today, the sky was all wrong for it, and he’d be up in Sixth Avenue by eight, as soon as the sun was gone.
He had forgo
tten all about Kim Beatty till Keith reminded him. ‘You’ve given up on my sister, then?’ Keith didn’t look too pleased; he had been quieter than usual all morning. ‘I mean, you’re not going out with her any more?’
‘I don’t know.’ Will didn’t know what else to say.
‘You’re wrong there, you know, Will. You’re making a big mistake and I’m not just saying that because Kim’s my sister.’ Keith turned down the radio. ‘Now, I’m a lot older than you and a family man and all that, so you’ll know this is for your own good, else I wouldn’t say it. You’ve got the looks all right but you’re not every girl’s cup of tea, I reckon you know that, but Kim really likes you and she’s a good kid, she’s not one of these scrubbers that’ll go with anything in trousers, or out of them, I should say.’ He smiled at his own wit and, if the truth be told, at his own worldly wisdom. ‘Now, why not give it a rethink, eh? A chance like this may not come your way again.’
Scarcely a word of this had been understood by Will. The cup of tea and trousers metaphors were completely lost on him. Any circumlocution always was. He didn’t know what to say, so he said, ‘All right.’
‘Good. That’s what I like to hear. I wouldn’t have said it, you know, if I hadn’t your welfare at heart. And now I’ve got that off my chest I’d best give the wife a bell. Look at the time.’
Will gave little more thought to any of it. He understood vaguely that Keith knew he had told Kim he couldn’t go out with her on Saturday because he was going to Becky’s and, for some reason, didn’t like it, and understood too that he really could have gone because his visits to Becky were now arranged for Friday and Sunday. It troubled him a bit that he had said something untrue. Was that why Keith had at first seemed cross with him? Anxiety didn’t last long because he had other more important things to think about.
The look of the day was entirely different from yesterday when he got home. The sun was shining, the air still and warm as midsummer, and there was a feel in the atmosphere of settled weather to come. Will longed to be outdoors again and to get on with the job in hand. But now was not the time to start digging up a garden. People would be about everywhere, working outside, sitting in deckchairs or on front steps, and no one must know his secret until Becky did. He must wait. Leave it till at least eight. Making his tea and setting a chocolate croissant and an almond slice on a plate, he gave himself up to dreams of the weekend ahead. If it was still fine, maybe he and Becky would go up on Primrose Hill or even up on the Heath, as they had done once before on a summer’s day, walking from Kenwood to Highgate, and when they were there he would tell her about the treasure and her house, giving up her job and living in the country, just the two of them for always.