Dark Corners

by Ruth Rendell

  In the steaming-hot bathroom she shuddered, ducked her head under the water, and massaged in the shampoo. No, what she wanted most to do was dry her hair and put on some makeup. She knew that her mum had kept some of her old clothes, so she should be able to find something clean to wear. She’d go out and enjoy her freedom, maybe go for a walk around Willesden, or follow her father’s example and have a bus ride.

  Never explain was a good way to live, she decided, getting out of the bath. It would be far easier for all concerned if no one knew where she had been these past few days.

  Picking up the disgusting black-and-white dress, she rolled it into a ball, determined to drop it into the first litter bin she came to.

  HE WOULDN’T TELL anyone, Carl decided, falling asleep as soon as he got into bed and sleeping soundly all night.

  No dreams came, no sudden awakenings to horrid realisation, no remembering in the warm darkness what had happened. When he’d got in the previous night, Nicola had brought him a glass of water and some sort of hot drink, but he hadn’t touched either of them. When he woke, he had no idea of the time except that it must be morning, maybe early morning, though it might have been light for hours.

  The silence was broken by the ringing of the doorbell, Dermot’s bell, as audible down here as in the upstairs flat. He wouldn’t answer it; he was sure he couldn’t speak of Dermot, might never speak of him again. The bell rang once more, and this time Nicola went to the door. She had left the bedroom door open, so he could hear what she said.

  “He lives in the top flat. You should go upstairs and ring at the door that’s facing you.”

  It must be the police. Of course. Someone had found Dermot’s body, established where he lived, and had come here to ask about him, to tell his wife or girlfriend or parents or whichever of his people lived in Falcon Mews. Carl heard their feet on the stairs, then Dermot’s doorbell ringing, and turned over to bury his face in the pillow. He remembered a favourite saying of Dermot’s that was supposed to be funny: “No answer was the stern reply.”

  Nicola had a clear, rather beautiful speaking voice, and he heard her telling the police officers that Dermot might have gone early to work, told them about the pet clinic and where it was. After some conversation, Nicola said, “Oh, no!” and he knew they must have told her Dermot was dead.

  They left. He heard the front door close, and Nicola came into the bedroom.

  “I heard,” he said, his voice sounding dulled and broken as anyone would say it should have done.

  “They don’t know how it happened. Or they didn’t say. They didn’t say anything about foul play. That’s the term, isn’t it?”

  “Newspapers’ term, I expect.”

  “He was found in Jerome Crescent. It’s a shock, I must say. Sudden death is always a shock, isn’t it, even if you didn’t much like the dead person? I must go to work now, but I expect they’ll come back, they’ll want to search the place, or they will if his death was suspicious. You’ll talk to them? You know more about Dermot than anyone, I should think.”

  He listened to her going, her high heels on the stairs, the pause while she picked up her bag, the creak the front door made and the click as she closed it as softly as she could behind her.

  It must be Monday morning, Carl supposed. He got up and walked into the shower, not waiting for the water to heat up but stepping into it and shivering at its cold touch. Jeans, sweatshirt, trainers. All much as usual, though it wasn’t as usual, was it? Eating was impossible. He would never eat anything again. Stretched out on his father’s sofa, he wondered why he always thought of this piece of furniture as Dad’s. Almost everything in the house had been his father’s, yet he never thought of the tables and chairs and beds as his, only this sofa. The police would know by now that Dermot had been killed, that his death had not been an accident. Murdered why don’t you say? he thought. You mustn’t say it, though, when they come and talk to you. You must just answer what they ask.

  His throat was parched and his mouth dry, no matter how much water he drank. There must be some reason for that but he didn’t know what it was. He waited a long time for the police. Perhaps they would never come. Perhaps they thought Dermot had been killed in a road accident and they were searching for the driver of the car that hit him. Such a thing could hardly happen in narrow, bendy Jerome Crescent.

  The police arrived at ten to one, when Carl had almost given them up. He had to tell himself as he was walking towards the front door not to speak to them unless they spoke to him, not to express any opinions about Dermot, not to ask questions; above all, not to speak of murder, or of Dermot as “the murdered man.”

  They told him rather baldly what had happened. They asked only one question, and that was whether they could go into Dermot’s flat. No reason was given. If he were an innocent man, nothing more than Dermot’s landlord, would he ask if they had seen Miss Soames? Did they know he had a fiancée? Did she know what had happened? Oh, yes, they would take care of notifying her, said the older man. Carl gave them a key and they went upstairs.

  Carl hadn’t given a thought to Sybil until now. Picturing her hearing the news, understanding that the man she was going to marry had been killed in the street, more or less outside her own home, would be what the newspapers would call “a devastating blow.” Poor Sybil. Perhaps she had loved Dermot, been in love with him, and now this had happened. Don’t be a fool, Carl told himself. Pull yourself together.

  The police came back downstairs. The younger one was carrying a briefcase, and it seemed to Carl to have more in it than when they had gone up. Papers, certificates, records of something or other? Of no interest to him, nothing to do with him, nothing to incriminate him. The older one said it might be helpful to have Carl’s phone number in case they needed to get in touch, and Carl gave it to him. He saw them out, went into the living room, and sat down. From what he had read and seen, he might have expected them to ask where he had been the previous evening, but they hadn’t asked. They must believe that the only connection between him and Dermot was the usual relationship between landlord and tenant: remote, a matter of business—one paid the rent, the other received it. Of course it hadn’t been like that, but how would they know?

  Lying on the sofa in the living room, he had nothing to do, almost nothing to think about. But after a time, his mind filled with scenes of the previous evening, of the dark waters of the canal and his backpack floating, then sinking with that queer sucking sound, and of the fat, round goose as green as the grass and the oak leaves, sitting on the hall table, quietly mocking him.

  25

  NICOLA CAME HOME early, just after five, bringing with her the Evening Standard. Carl had no desire to read the details, but he looked at the picture of Dermot—when he was alive, of course; there was no picture of him dead—and read the story to please Nicola.

  She wanted to talk about what had happened, as more or less everyone in Maida Vale would now be discussing the case. Why would anyone kill Dermot? Money was the general consensus, or even to steal his phone. Was his phone missing? The newspaper didn’t say. Someone with a lively imagination suggested that a former lover of Sybil Soames’s, jealous of this new fiancé, had done it. Several residents of Falcon Mews who had never spoken to Carl before approached him in the street when he and Nicola went out to eat, to express their amazement, disgust, horror, or disbelief. What a shock it must have been for him and the young lady, said Mr. Kaleejah, walking his dog for the third time that day. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the vicinity of Elgin Avenue, said someone else. That it hadn’t been anywhere near Elgin Avenue, Carl didn’t say. He smiled and nodded. Nicola shook her head and thanked them for their concern.

  They walked to the Canal Café on the Edgware Road and ate fish and chips and drank lager. Soon, thought Carl, when I find a new tenant, I’ll have money to pay for things myself.

  TWO DAYS PASSED and the police didn’t return. Nor did they phone. The only caller was Sybil. Carl wasn’t pa
rticularly surprised by this visit, though he hadn’t exactly expected to see her. What astonished him was her appearance. She was dressed in deep mourning: long black skirt, big black shoulder bag, high-necked black blouse, and black jacket, her head wrapped in a black scarf like a Muslim woman. He knew he ought to say how sorry he was for her loss, and he did say it, hesitating over the words, almost stammering.

  She came into the hallway. “Yes, it’s been terrible for me. I shall never get over it.”

  He thought he should ask her to sit down, offer her something to drink, remembering that she wouldn’t touch alcohol. But the need to offer her a seat and a glass of orange juice failed to arise as she walked straight upstairs and, with the key Dermot must have given her, let herself into the top flat. She had come for some of her things she had left behind, Carl supposed. Nothing could be more likely, seeing that she had spent day after day here with Dermot. And sure enough, after about ten minutes she came back down the stairs, the black bag stuffed with what appeared to be heavy objects. Opening the door, she said to him—oddly, he thought—that he hadn’t seen the last of her.

  Carl couldn’t help thinking that her words might have been Dermot’s.

  LIZZIE HAD MANAGED to pass the whole day of her return without telling her parents about her abduction, and she was sure she had done the right thing. Now she had to figure out what to tell the school where she worked. She probably no longer had a job. She didn’t much care. No way could she tell them the truth.

  She phoned Stacey’s apartment in Pinetree Court on the landline. The phone was answered by Elizabeth Weatherspoon. Had she already moved in? When Lizzie asked if she could come round and collect her handbag, which she had left there some days previously, Elizabeth said it was with the concierge. If Lizzie wanted it—she spoke as if the matter was in doubt—she could pick it up from his office.

  Lizzie got a cool reception from the concierge, but she also got the bag. Her phone was still in it, and the key to her own flat, and possibly what money she had, though she couldn’t remember how much this should be.

  She returned to the flat in Iverson Road, and while she was resolving not to go near her parents until she absolutely had to, in case they asked her more questions about her disappearance, her mother phoned. “Eddy next door,” as he was usually referred to by the Milsoms, had a virus and was bedbound. The pug too was ill, and Eddy’s mother wanted it taken to the vet.

  “Why doesn’t she take it then?”

  “She says she can’t leave Eddy.”

  “He’s not a baby, he’s a grown man,” said Lizzie.

  “It’s not what I say, it’s what she says. Your father’s gone somewhere on the number seven bus, and I’ve got an appointment with the dentist.”

  “Tell me you’re not expecting me to take the bloody dog to the vet?”

  “That silly Eddy’s in an awful state. Eva said he was crying.”

  So Lizzie got on the number 6 bus and, with an ill grace, picked up Brutus the pug from her parents’ neighbours. “I’ve made an appointment with someone. I don’t know who, since the tragedy, but it’ll be all right,” said Eddy’s mother.

  Lizzie didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I won’t ask you in to see Eddy in case he’s infectious. I’ve booked a taxi for you and Brutus.”

  The taxi came and Lizzie got in with the dog in a rather grand basket.

  At the Sutherland Pet Clinic, Melissa the vet was sitting at the reception desk, looking harassed.

  “Where’s the man who used to work here?” Lizzie asked.

  “Dermot? Didn’t you know? It was a shocking thing: he was murdered.”

  Lizzie didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it?” Melissa continued. “It seems callous to talk about it so soon, but we’re desperate for someone to take his place. If you hear of anyone, you’ll let us know, won’t you?”

  Melissa took Brutus into the surgery and Lizzie waited in reception. It wasn’t her first visit to the clinic—she had of course been there before to talk to Dermot and get hold of the Weatherspoons’ phone number, but on that occasion she had taken little notice of the room. It was rather nice, she thought now, quiet, and different from what she would have expected in that it didn’t smell of dog. The swivel chair drawn up to the counter and the computer she was already familiar with. One of those water dispensers was in the corner of the room, surely for people, not dogs. Up on the wall was a photograph of the current Pet of the Month, a Great Dane who had jumped into the Regent’s Park lake to rescue a child’s teddy bear. Quite a pleasant place to work, thought Lizzie, not to be compared to running around for half the afternoon after a bunch of five-year-olds, which she seriously didn’t want to do anymore.

  Melissa came back with Brutus and told Lizzie she had given him antibiotics and to keep him warm.

  “This job. I mean the job that Dermot had . . .” Lizzie hesitated. “I mean, I don’t want to be pushy, but could I have it?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what Caroline would say.”

  Lying came naturally to Lizzie. “I’ve had two jobs working as a veterinarian’s receptionist, one in London and the other in”—she thought rapidly—“Peterborough. I know all about it.”

  “Could you come back at three? Caroline will be free then to talk to you.”

  Lizzie phoned for a taxi, planning the reference she would have to forge, signing it with a name she could easily get off the Internet. How on earth did people manage to live at all in the days before the World Wide Web?

  She went back to the clinic at three, walking from Iverson Road. Not having written it down, she had forgotten the name of the place she had said she had worked at—somewhere beginning with a P, she thought. Portsmouth, Pontypridd, Penge? Never mind, Caroline didn’t care and didn’t ask. She read the letter of recommendation Lizzie had forged and asked when she could start. Lizzie said how about tomorrow? So much for the school and having to fabricate excuses for her absence.

  Walking home, she met her father getting off a bus and told him that the pet clinic had headhunted her.

  Headhunted women don’t need their fathers to pay half their rent, Tom thought hopefully. But Lizzie said nothing about financial independence, only that she’d had a long day and needed to put her feet up.

  26

  IN THE DAYS following the murder, Carl thought of almost nothing else. Only a psychopath or a hit man or perhaps a soldier in battle could kill someone and put the killing out of his mind. He had hated Dermot but just the same found it impossible to be sanguine about the murder. A much more satisfactory solution to the problem would have been Dermot’s removing himself to a different address, or his getting married and buying a flat somewhere with Sybil. Carl found himself close to resenting that Dermot had brought his death on himself by his stupid inverted blackmail. A strange thought it was, that Dermot had directly courted murder by refusing to pay his rent. But Carl still couldn’t stop thinking about it all the time and every day.

  Nicola, who knew the murder preyed on his mind, told him he must get over it. “You’re not involved. I wouldn’t say you ought to be glad. Of course not. But it has taken a weight off your mind. It’s removed a worry.”

  “I wouldn’t want to think like that,” he said, conscious of outrageous hypocrisy. “It must be wrong in anyone’s philosophy to feel relief at someone’s death, especially death by violence.”

  That night he had the first of his dreams. He could hear a moaning from upstairs that grew in volume and suddenly broke off. He climbed the stairs, a slow climb, his steps made sluggish by some unseen force, but he reached the top at last and made his way into the living room. All was silent. Dermot lay on the floor, his face and head a bloody mass of torn flesh and broken bones. Carl tried to cry out, but only a whimpering sound came. He was sitting up in bed when he woke and the whimpering went on. Nicola was asking him what was wrong. He didn’t answer her.

  He forced himself to
lie down and breathe steadily. She reached out and took hold of his hand. He thought, I killed someone. I murdered a man. That’s something that will never go away. It will be with me for ever, for the rest of my life and beyond, if there is a beyond. Nothing I can do will ever get rid of it because I did it and it is written in my past.

  DERMOT’S FUNERAL TOOK place at one of the churches he had attended. The first Carl knew of it was when Sybil brought two older women to the house and rang the doorbell.

  “I could have let us in,” she said. “I’ve got Carl’s key, but I didn’t want to be rude.”

  She didn’t introduce the women. The one that looked a lot like Dermot said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Dermot’s mum, and this is his auntie. I should say, I was his mum. We’ll go upstairs and help clean out his clothes and bits and pieces if you’ve no objection.”

  They were exactly as Carl would have expected Dermot’s mother and aunt to be, both short and squat, wearing black straw hats and black coats. Sybil was dressed in the same black clothes she had worn when she called round last time; no hat, just a black head scarf tied under her chin. They went upstairs and stayed there for over an hour.

  Carl could not possibly relax while they were in the house, but was relaxation ever to be thought of now? He faced the horrible truth that the mother of the man he had murdered was in his house, was upstairs. It was both unbelievable and true. He had returned to pacing, to walking up and down, opening doors and closing them, sitting down and getting up and pacing again, the way he had done when he first realised how Dermot intended to withhold the rent.