by Ruth Rendell
‘Take the rest of the time off till after the new year.’
‘I won’t do that,’ said Jimmy. ‘Better that I have something to do, keep my mind off things.’
None of the members of the Saint Zita Society knew exactly what was happening with the police and Preston Still but everyone speculated and produced theories. It began on New Year’s Eve when early in the morning Freud’s little Honda turned up outside number 7. Freud and Rickards, observed by June who was walking Gussie, went up to the front door, spoke to Zinnia and came down again almost immediately. June asked them who they were looking for and when there was no answer said that Mrs Still was in Chipping Campden and Mr Still now lived in Medway Manor Court.
The car disappeared into Lower Sloane Street. Later that day a radio news bulletin led on a story about a suspect in the Rad Sothern death. The police were releasing no name yet but a man had been arrested and was being questioned. Henry, over the moon, as he put it, after his engagement party, told Sondra who had been serving the drinks, that Beacon had told him the man was Mr Still. Sondra, who had never said anything about it before, said Zinnia had told her this was because Rad Sothern had been having a fling with Lucy. Not that this surprised her as it had always been her opinion that Lucy had been round the block a few times. Beacon was very shocked and seriously considered giving in his notice but had taken no steps so far.
The soon-to-be happy couple collected Jimmy from Dr Jefferson’s where he had settled in, and took him to the Dugong to cheer him up. Jimmy had heard that the police had got a search warrant and been to Gallowmill Hall hunting for a roof-rack box but had failed to find it.
‘That’ll be my box I sold to Montsy,’ said Henry. ‘Well, sold – gave away is more like.’
‘Rad Sothern’s body was in that box,’ said Jimmy. ‘I think I’ll have another rum and Coke since it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m not driving. Anyway, they haven’t found it. Another thing, they’ve been talking to an RAC man who changed the wheel on Mr Still’s car that same night. You’d think a big so-called intelligent guy like him could change a wheel, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Ciaran who had just come in.
Montserrat put her arm through his. ‘And nor do I.’
‘They’ll keep questioning Mr Still all night, Dr Jefferson says. He’s really upset about it, I can tell you, being a mate. He says they can keep him there for thirty-six hours. I keep thinking if only Thea was here – it’d be quite a drama for her, wouldn’t it?’
‘Maybe he killed her too,’ said Huguette, but not till she and Henry were outside and on their way to yet another celebration, this time in Soho.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
While not wishing to sound callous, Damian and Roland said to each other in Zinnia’s hearing that, shocking as it was, Thea’s murder would make very little difference to their way of life. It might even be to their advantage as they would now be able to let the top floor at a higher rent. Zinnia listened to Roland’s phone call to the agent, and if she couldn’t quite guess this woman’s responses, she could hear the disappointment in Roland’s voice. No doubt he’d been way off the mark in expecting a thousand pounds a week for that flat and that was before the agent had even seen it. As for Thea’s contribution to their domestic arrangements, it seemed they had underrated what she did. Zinnia could have told them but didn’t, that Thea had been secretary, housekeeper, gardener and occasionally caterer all rolled into one, getting no thanks for it and no money. They needn’t think that she, Zinnia, was going to make up the shortfall, though she might if they paid her.
No mention had yet been made of anything of the sort. Both Damian and Roland grumbled all the time about running out of soap, rubbish bags and light bulbs, the house plants dying for want of water, having to serve their own drinks and do their own shopping. Who would now do the catering for their civil partnership party?
Zinnia told June she nearly died laughing when she heard Damian on the phone to his mother, tentatively enquiring if she and his aunt who sometimes cooked for Belgravia dinner parties, would produce luncheon for 119 people at number 8 Hexam Place on 27 January. This was even funnier than the call to the estate agent and she told June all about it, not leaving out his mother’s ‘Bloody hell, Damian!’ you could have heard all over the house if not in Hexam Place itself.
‘I knew what would happen,’ she said to June, ‘and I was right. They’ve had to send cards to all those people they invited, apologising and telling them the wedding’s off. Of course it’s not. It’s just going to be very quiet and the two of them having lunch at the Ivy with their mums and Lucy Still and Lord and Lady Studley.’
‘And that non-gay pal of theirs, Martin Gifford,’ said June, ‘so there won’t be too many women.’
The population returned more or less to normalcy on the first Tuesday in January. It was Jimmy’s birthday, a sad occasion. If Thea hadn’t met such an awful fate they would have gone out to dinner and celebrated and talked of wedding plans. Or so Jimmy told himself, tears in his eyes as he opened the rear door of the Lexus for Dr Jefferson. This went straight to the paediatrician’s heart; he discovered that it was his driver’s birthday, and telling Jimmy to wait ‘just a second’ while he went back into the house, reappeared with an envelope in which Jimmy later discovered was a cheque for two hundred pounds.
This was Dex’s first day back at work. He arrived at nine thirty, carrying his big cloth bag containing the pointed trowel, the hand fork, the secateurs and the shears, just as Jimmy got back from Great Ormond Street Hospital. Jimmy barely spoke to him but went quickly indoors, telling himself it was too cold, the wind too sharp, to stay out there longer than he had to.
Dex was used to the cold. When he was a child his mother used to shut him in the outside toilet, sometimes for hours at a time, only in the winter, though. There was no point in doing it in the summer. She got one of his stepfathers to put a bolt on the outside specially for this purpose. So the cold was nothing when he had a warm coat and those stretchy gloves you could buy for a pound in the market. The ground was free of frost, though might not be for many mornings if the pictures on the TV were true, little white pellets fluttering about on the grey and the green. Frost and then snow had prevented a lot of the cutting back he would have done in early December. He began trimming the lilac and the philadelphus, remembering to be careful with the latter; no blossom would come this year on those branches which had been pruned. The cut wood he placed in a large plastic bag. Better if he could have used the green carriers whose contents could be recycled, but because of the cuts Westminster Council had ceased providing them. Each branch and twig he cut up into small pieces for the sake of neatness.
He was starting on the dogwood when his mobile began to ring. This didn’t happen very often and when it did Dex always hoped it might be Peach. Once or twice since Christmas it had been but not to speak to him, only printed messages Dex thought were telling him good things about the phone, things that would save him money. This call wasn’t from Peach but from Mrs Neville-Smith. Would he call next door and collect his money for sweeping up her path and the pavement outside and while there trim the hedge? Dex always said yes. While he liked Dr Jefferson very much, he didn’t like Mrs Neville-Smith at all. This wasn’t so much because she wasn’t nice to him, but because of her name. His second or third stepfather, the one who put the bolt on the toilet door, was called Smith, Brad Smith. He was the first evil spirit Dex ever encountered. Dex didn’t know then that it was his mission in life to destroy evil spirits, so Brad Smith was still in the world, doing wicked things. He said yes to Mrs Neville-Smith because of the money.
He worked till the clock face on his phone said eleven thirty, then he knocked on the back door to tell Jimmy he was finished and to ask for his money. Sometimes he wondered how Jimmy, who was only a driver and a working man like himself, managed to live in Dr Jefferson’s house, eat there and watch TV and sleep in a bed there, but he would never
ask. Occasionally, in the past, Jimmy had made a him a cup of tea or, a wonderful moment, a mug of chocolate when he was having one himself. There was nothing like that this morning.
Jimmy handed over the money. ‘Dr Jefferson’ll give you a bell when he wants you again.’
‘He said Thursday.’
‘Sure of that, are you? I’ll check with him. Don’t count on it till you hear from me.’
This was perhaps calculated to make Dex wonder where the next pound was coming from. He took his tools with him next door to Mrs Neville-Smith’s. Jimmy sat down in front of the television and put his feet up on the coffee table. There were things to do, go home to his own flat, check that all was well, give it a bit of a clean, clean and polish the Lexus, see to the paperwork Dr Jefferson left to him, renew the tax disc, check that the residents’ parking wasn’t about to expire. But not on his birthday and not when he was sick at heart. He was bereaved, practically a widower, and he needed to look after himself at least till the end of the week and maybe till Monday. Dr Jefferson must be fetched from Great Ormond Street, of course, but apart from that today would be a day of rest. Remote in hand, he switched the channel to the Tuesday lunchtime quiz programme and leaned back against the cushions.
Without exactly regretting the anonymous letter – the first letter she had written to anyone for five years – Montserrat felt nervous about it. It was possible to know practically everything these days. She was vaguely aware that it hadn’t always been like that but it was now. Where someone or something came from, where anyone lived, who had touched something, worn something, who had written something, sent something, got in a train or on a bus – the list was endless. Did that mean the police knew who had sent that letter? Wouldn’t they have come and seized her if they did?
‘Stop worrying,’ said Ciaran. ‘What can they do to you? We’ve got ninety thousand people in prison and the jails are bursting at the seams. Get real, Montsy.’
She didn’t want to see Preston Still or phone him. The police might be tapping his phone and as soon as they heard her voice they would know she was the author of the anonymous letter. He might still be at the police station or they might have let him go back to Medway Manor Court. But surely, if they took the proper notice of her letter that they should, he would never go back there.
Lucy had arrived home in a hire car. Zinnia had told Montserrat that Beacon had refused to drive her on account of her immoral life but Montserrat wondered if it wasn’t that Preston wouldn’t let him. There was nothing in the papers about Preston. Montserrat was afraid to look but Ciaran told her. Surely they had questioned him? Surely they had got a warrant to search Gallowmill Hall and the luggage room? She hadn’t mentioned the changing of the wheel on her car because naming her car would have led them directly to her. Nor had she written a word about the RAC man. But the roof-rack box would be enough, wouldn’t it? Rad Sothern’s hairs inside it, his DNA, all those traces which these days were so helpful in bringing criminals like Preston to justice. They would get a warrant to search. They would have done that by now but what was the outcome? If only she wasn’t so frightened of asking.
Number 6 Hexam Place was the property of the Princess, not June. In most of their altercations, the Princess made this point. ‘You want to remember,’ she would say, ‘that this house belongs to me,’ or, ‘I am the mistress of this house.’ There was no danger of June’s forgetting it for, every so often, after the Princess was asleep, she would open the top drawer in the drawing-room bureau and read the Princess’s will or the copy of it, the original being in Mr Brookmeadow’s office in Northumberland Avenue. The will, witnessed by Damian Philemon and Zinnia St Charles, left ‘everything of which I die possessed’ to June Eileen Caldwell and was signed by Susan Geraldine Angelotti, known as Hapsburg, and dated ‘this fourteenth day of October 1999’.
June had seen it many times but never been permitted to see it. Damian and Zinnia (an unlikely pairing) must have been roped in, as she put it to herself, while she, June, was taking Gussie’s predecessor on one of those long walks needed by a Labrador, up to and round the park. It was Zinnia who had told her of its existence or, rather, that it was the latest testamentary replacement. Now, one evening in the first week of January, the Princess having gone to bed early, she was examining the will again. It was the last of several wills made over the years, each one securing this inheritance to herself. In all the years she and the Princess had been together, notwithstanding a couple of lovers for each of them, an occasional woman friend and an Italian family connection attempting to sponge, there had been no serious contenders to be beneficiaries. Things looked different now.
Some few hours earlier, June, returning from a walk with Gussie, had come upon Rocksana easing the Princess into her wheelchair preparatory to taking her for a trip to Harrods. June had said nothing but later on, after the Princess had retired to her room, going in with a cup of cocoa and a small Irish whiskey on a tray, had found Rocksana sitting on the bed holding the Princess’s hand. It was this sight which had led to the checking up on the will. Rocksana had talked about going home – wherever home might now be – after Christmas, then about going home after the new year, but here it was past Twelfth Night (according to Roland) and she was still here.
June’s indignation had nothing to do with liking or disliking Rocksana. If anything, she was indifferent to her. But the young woman, model, actress, whatever she might be, was nothing to the Princess. She was, if not a relative, a family connection of June’s, or almost. Being engaged these days practically meant being married. If poor Rad had lived they probably would have been married by now and she, June, would have been Rocksana’s great-aunt-in-law. Next day Zinnia told her that when she went up to the second floor to ‘give it a quick flip round with a duster’ she had found Rocksana there with a tape measure.
‘Frankly,’ said June, ‘I’m surprised she knows what a tape measure is.’
‘It’s amazing what you know when it’s loot that’s in question.’
‘That’s true.’
June was writing up the minutes of the last Saint Zita meeting and preparing the agenda for the next one. Part of the time should be devoted to a memorial for Thea. Jimmy would be invited to speak but perhaps he wouldn’t feel up to it. Beacon might be a wiser choice so long as he didn’t bring in too much religion. She was interrupted by Rocksana asking if she would mind her taking Gussie out for his walk. The Princess had suggested it (or so the girl said, thought June) and she, Rocksana, would be happy to lighten June’s load.
June was on the alert two days later when the Princess asked her if she would give the little dog a rather longer walk than usual and reminded her that the vet had said he shouldn’t put on any more weight. Mr Brookmeadow was coming to tea. No, nothing important, only something that had to be done before a notary public, and Mrs Neville-Smith would also be there. Did she want anything special for tea? Rocksana was seeing to all that, fetching a cake from Patisserie Valerie. June was convinced a new will was to be made and in Rocksana’s favour. She cheered up a bit next morning when, although Rocksana told her she was moving into the two top floors, the Princess demanded a short lease renewable after six months.
The Saint Zita Society meeting was well attended. Beacon who wasn’t working that day came over to the Dugong specially, complimented Jimmy on the excellence of the duck and made a stirring speech about Thea’s fine qualities. Apparently she had confided in him that she intended to be married in church and had asked him to give her away. Jimmy wept a bit and bought him a Drambuie. It was rare for Beacon to drink alcohol and taken as a good omen. Dex again sat on his own at a table in the corner listening to his mobile and looking at messages which appeared on it. Jimmy, who was turning the meeting into a wake, bought him a Guinness but said afterwards that his smile when he thanked him ‘made your blood run cold’.
Dex had gone by then. The proceedings had mystified him. They seemed to be about some woman who had died but who it was, where the
death had taken place and why these people cared, he didn’t know. They were all people, not evil spirits, that was clear. The Guinness had been nice and he had forced a smile of thanks for it, but smiling was unusual with him, he had few occasions for it. Sometimes, when a plant he had grown came into flower and it was a good colour or a pretty shape, then he would smile, but that could only be a summer event and never happened at this bitter time of the year. January and February were the times when he best remembered being shut up in that cold place and the door bolted on him.
On the way home he picked up a tin of sardines and a bag of chips for his supper. His room was cold, and though he couldn’t afford it, he put on the electric fan. The old lady on the floor below got something called the winter fuel allowance, two hundred pounds. Dex couldn’t understand why he didn’t get it but when he asked he was told he wasn’t old enough and he couldn’t understand that either. Why was it better to be old than young? He put on the television. The woman who had found his knife in her bag was talking again and then a policeman was talking about tests being done on his knife. With her black hair and fluffy coat the woman reminded him of the evil spirit he had destroyed, but he had got rid of her so he was no longer either afraid or angry.
His mobile phone made a little sound just as he was getting ready for bed, two little musical notes and then another one. He had a look at his screen and to his mounting excitement saw that a message from Peach had come.