The Killing Doll

by Ruth Rendell

  8

  One hundred and four people passed through the tunnel before the fateful one. Diarmit counted them. Three or four a day they came, occasionally more, and he had been stationed behind his barricade for twenty-three days before the attack came on the twenty-fourth.

  By then he was becalmed in a false security. Huge though they were, they kept to the center of the tunnel and he was just outside the range of their sweeping strides and great stamping feet. But the girl on the twenty-fourth day left the path and came juggernauting towards the mattress. She was in search of something, he thought in his terror, the roll of wire perhaps or the wooden cask or the old chair with which, through the weeks, he had bolstered his fortifications. Her head reached the roof, and her great flailing arms, swinging above the mattress, made a gale in the air. He jumped up in his fear, though he knew himself too small and too faint in substance to be seen, but he jumped up with a spurt of courage, a knife in each tiny feeble hand to defend himself.

  The sound she made was a screaming roar of fury. He almost quailed at that, he almost yielded. It was as much as he could do to keep on his feet, not to shrivel into the ground and scuttle, certain prey for her foot. But he remained there with unflinching bravery, stabbing his sting at her, his double sting, pounding into that vast threatening mass, until the weight of it subsided, sinking on to him, a bloodied hulk.

  He had done it, he had won. He struggled free. He stepped back, gasping, looking at the thing at his feet as a knight might have looked at a slain dragon. His hands were red and sticky with blood. In death his attacker had shrunk rapidly. Her body was no bigger than an ordinary girl’s now, a small young girl. Diarmit marveled that such things might be, that courage and defiance might reduce a powerful aggressor to this little dead thing.

  Perhaps he should reduce it more. After all, he knew all about dismemberment. Wishing he had a saw, he got to work with the cleaver, then the knives. He abandoned the task because he got tired and, as he heard in the distance by the chiming church clock, it was 5:00 now and safe to go home.

  The sunshine felt as strong as at noon. A warm curtain of it met him as he came out of the tunnel mouth, carrying the hatchet and the knives in his Harrods bag. The buddleias and willow herb and marguerite daisies were thronged with bees, a white butterfly pursued its waving, fluttering flight, and a ginger cat walked along the edge of the old station platform, but he met no one and passed no one until he had gone up the steps and was in Mount Pleasant Gardens.

  Although he was covered with blood, the splashes and great soaked areas did not look like bloodstains on the red shirt and the red cords. In any case, no one looked at him, he remained invisible. On the demolition site beyond the green the workmen had knocked off for the day and the dust had settled. There was very little left of the houses; there were only bricks and rubble and an empty site. Diarmit went upstairs, up and up and up to his top floor. There was one bathroom for all the rooms on the top and in the mornings and the evenings it was always occupied but it was empty now. He took the cleaver and the knives out of the Harrods bag and washed them under cold running water. Then he turned the bag inside out and washed that.

  In his room he felt more safe and sound than he had done for a long time. He made himself a pot of tea and sat drinking it by the open window. The Dalmatian and the collie lay on the grass, sleeping in the sunshine. How good it would be if Conal Moore were to come now! Diarmit felt somehow that his existence, his selfhood, was seeping back; first, the act of defense in the tunnel, then the warm sun, then the tea—all this was bringing him out of limbo, out of nothingness. Conal would see him, know him, he felt sure of that. Kathleen would know him if he went to her door now. The brave stand and the shed blood had made him recognizable, solid, whole.

  I kill, therefore I am.

  It was not until the next day that the woman with the Pyrenean mountain dog found the girl’s body and not until two days after that that Diarmit knew it had been found. He saw a newspaper which someone had left on top of a pile of them on a dustbin in the side entrance. The photograph was of that face which, hugely enlarged and violently colored, had loomed over him in the tunnel and had let out those terrible sounds. He sat on a bench on the green and deciphered the headlines, then the text, working very slowly and moving his forefinger along the lines of print.

  It was then that he understood they were calling him a murderer. “The Headsman,” they called him.

  That was like calling a soldier in a war a murderer! If anyone came and asked him why, he had his explanation ready. You see how you would feel, driven out of the only home you’ve got by a threat of being buried under tons of rubble, only allowed home during the hours of darkness, forced to take shelter out of doors and barricade yourself in lest the stampeding hordes trample you. You try it and see how you’d feel when a huge scavenger threatens to crush you. You’d lash back with all your poor little strength, wouldn’t you? If you had the nerve, if you were brave enough.

  They had not worked on the site the day before and no workmen had appeared today. Diarmit sat on the bench and watched the site and the house where his room was. The weather was still warm and sunny and the stains on his clothes began to give off a hot fetid reek. The Dalmatian came and sniffed at him. A woman, passing, pushing a bicycle, wrinkled her nose, stared at him and turned away. These evidences of his existence pleased Diarmit, but after a time the dogs annoyed him, the Dalmatian and the collie had been joined by a rough-haired mongrel, and all three sniffed him and followed him. They followed him to the door of the shop where he bought his bread and milk and teabags and they followed him back across the green to his doorstep.

  Diarmit took off his clothes for the first time for many weeks and washed them in the bathroom, using Camay soap for he had nothing else. It was Sunday tomorrow and he could stay in. No demolition was ever done on a Sunday. His clothes dry—he had spread them over the window sill and closed the sash on them—he put them on and watched for Conal. A strong presentiment told him Conal would come back today but the hours passed and still no Conal and the sun departed in a long, slow sunset, followed by a long, smoky-violet dusk, and he had not come. When it was dark Diarmit tore up the note and the postcard and flushed the pieces down the lavatory in the bathroom.

  Next morning he was dressed and ready to leave when there came a sharp knocking on the room door. That would be the men come to tell him they were about to begin demolishing the house. They could see him now, they could be aware of him, he had a real existence. He opened the door.

  Outside on the landing, in plainclothes, were two policemen.

  They told him their names. They were a detective sergeant and a constable. Diarmit let them come in and they stood, looking about the room. The longer and larger of the knives lay on the table where he had used it to cut a slice of bread.

  The sergeant said, “We’re anxious to know the whereabouts of Conal Patrick Moore.”

  Diarmit smiled at them. He felt how much he liked them, how grateful he was that they had said nothing about the girl in the tunnel. Their eyes had rested with indifference on the knife.

  “So am I,” he said. “So am I anxious. I don’t know where he is at all.”

  “And who might you be, sir?”

  Diarmit told them his name. He told them his story, how he had come to London to Conal and a job but there had been no Conal and no job. To speak and be spoken to was enjoyable, to exist and be recognized. He talked on and on because it was such a novelty. The sergeant had to stop him.

  “Don’t you want to know what we want him for?”

  This had not crossed Diarmit’s mind. He didn’t much care, no. He savored only the delight of being addressed as “you,” of being able to communicate, of being treated as a normal ordinary person.

  “There’ve been a lot of robberies from shops in this area,” said the sergeant. “They stopped round about the time you say Mr. Moore went away. Now there’s a similar pattern of robberies in a district of Birmingham.
Would he go there?”

  “He might,” said Diarmit. Mary’s husband and his brothers had an old father in Birmingham. He told the sergeant this. He was shocked. The Bawnes and their family connections had always been law-abiding, respectable people. “You’ll be letting me know when you find him?”

  “And you let us know if you hear anything.”

  They left. Diarmit reflected on what they had told him. Of course, no supermarket would give a job to a friend or relative of a thief, he could understand that. It was a blessing, too, that Conal had been gone before he came. He had no wish to be associated with a criminal. So the room was all his now. He was free. He felt strong and brave and young and free and, stretching up his arms, he capered about the room, doing a little dance of freedom and happiness. What a clearing and cleansing of his life had taken place these past few days!

  The realization that today being Monday might be the day for starting demolition of the house sobered him. He was pretty sure they would know of his presence and come to warn him but he ought to go out and be on the safe side. Besides, it was a fine morning. He took up the Harrods bag with the knives in it and ran down the stairs. No point in leaving valuable things to be buried under rubble.

  Once he was out in the street, a daring idea came to him. Why shouldn’t he try to find himself work? Why not start looking for a job?

  9

  From her bed, lying there propped up on pillows, Mrs. Brewer could see the green valley through which the old railway line ran. At previous times when she had been ill, she had liked to watch the people coming and going, using the green track as a short cut—schoolchildren, dog walkers, young people who seemed to spend so much of their lives aimlessly wandering. Since the murder no one used it. Only Gingie could be seen, stalking through the long grass, in quest of real or imaginary prey.

  It was August, red-hot, sultry, dry as a bone. Mrs. Brewer was going to get up at about twelve in time to think about lunch. This gastritis or whatever it was knocked you sideways; she didn’t know when she had felt so tired. And it wasn’t as if she was old yet, only sixty-four and good surely for another twenty years.

  She would have to get up in a minute to open the window, the heat in there was getting unbearable and the sweat was beginning to roll off her. Mrs. Brewer had always been proud of not sweating much and had sometimes boasted of this to Myra. Perspiration was so unfeminine. She began to wish Myra would come in. Thursday was her day off and there was nothing to stop her. For God’s sake, it was her duty and she only lived next door!

  Gingie had appeared outside the window, making soundless mews, or soundless no doubt because he was on the other side of the glass.

  “All right, I’m coming,” said Mrs. Brewer and she pushed back the bedclothes and put her feet over the side of the bed and got them on to the floor. Another wave of heat washed over her and she broke into sweat.

  The phone was in the living room. She would have to phone Myra. But should she try to reach the phone first or open the window to Gingie first? Fresh air might be what she needed. She could walk—just. Very slowly she shuffled towards the window. Gingie was on the sill, screaming silently.

  “I’m coming, boy,” said Mrs. Brewer.

  Suddenly she was filled with passionate tender love for the little cat and it seemed to her that never before, not for long-dead John Brewer or the infant Myra, had she felt as she now did for this mewing scrap of orange fur. Her love made her pant and gasp. She wanted to feel Gingie against her, to squeeze him in her arms. She struggled with the window, the heavy sash bar, while the cat’s face grew enormous, a huge open mouth of misery and frustration. The iron vice and the iron claws which had grasped her on the evening after the party clamped again, resuming their grip. Her love burst inside her like a shower of needles.

  She hung on to the window but her knees and then her whole body gave way and drooped to the floor in an agony no one could endure for long.

  It was not long before Mrs. Brewer ceased to endure it.

  Myra had rather disliked her mother but it was a shock to see her lying there, so great a shock as to make her feel faint and have to sit down with her head between her knees. Later that day, when the doctor had been and the undertakers, when the body had been removed to the undertakers’ chapel of rest and Gingie had been taken home with Mrs. Buxton, Myra sat down with a glass of sherry and realized that her mother was dead.

  She had thought her mother would live for twenty years. Her mother had even seemed quite young as mothers went. Now she would never again be told that Mrs. Brewer thought she was never coming or that she had made her bed and must lie in it or have her clothes and her manners and her cooking criticized. Harold was kind, made no complaint about being given a defrosted TV dinner and kept saying, “It’s a bad business, a bad business.”

  Dolly remembered how she had felt when her mother died, and though it went against the grain with her, she made herself go downstairs and say stiffly to Myra: “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  When Myra woke up in the morning, the first thought that came to her was that her mother was dead and the second, a new one, that the flat next door for which her mother had paid 30,000 pounds two years before might now be hers.

  She phoned George Colefax’s home in Shelley Drive off the Bishop’s Avenue. Yvonne answered.

  “I shan’t be in till Monday. My mother passed away yesterday. It’s been quite a shock.”

  “Your mother?” Yvonne’s little girl voice rose an octave. “But I was only talking to her last week,” as if this guaranteed Mrs. Brewer could not have died, must be shamming. “But that’s incredible, Myra, that’s really awful.”

  “She had a very peaceful end,” said Myra. “Very quick. She didn’t suffer. Could you tell George, please, Yvonne?”

  Yvonne said she couldn’t because George hadn’t spent last night at home, he had been working late so had stayed at the flat over the surgery, but she would phone him, of course she would do that. Myra had her own ideas about George working late and where he stayed but she was too preoccupied to think about that now.

  During a quarrel some months before, indeed before Myra’s marriage, Mrs. Brewer had said she would get herself a will form and dispose of her property not to Myra, the natural legatee, but to the Cat Survival Trust. She even went so far as to look their address up in the phone book. Myra, enraged, bought the will form herself and gave it to Mrs. Brewer next time she went over.

  Had her mother ever filled it in and signed it and had it witnessed? It was unlikely but she must find out. Her mother had cooled down and come round, of course, and been very gratified about the marriage, but suppose she had made the will in the heat of the moment and never unmade it? Myra was in possession of a key to the flat next door. She went off and registered Mrs. Brewer’s death. She went to the undertaker and fixed up the cremation, and when she got home again, the police phoned her to say the coroner’s officer’s decision was that no inquest would be necessary. Pup and Harold came home and still she hadn’t been next door. By now she felt sick with anxiety. She served Harold with his beef stroganoff and chocolate mousse, and when he had finished, she said she really thought she ought to pop next door and check everything was locked up and as it should be, et cetera. Her hand shook as she inserted the key in the lock.

  Dolly and Pup had a pot noodle snack, Ryvita and Sainsbury’s pâté, Waldorf salad, tinned peaches and cream. Pup changed into his best jeans, the pink and gray shirt, and a new black velour sweatshirt. Dolly wore a dress she had just finished making for herself, a long-sleeved shirtwaist, the dark green material with a pattern of tiny strawberries chosen to go with her talisman. It was a very warm evening and there was as yet no autumnal chill in the air. The sky was a deep clear blue and the sun sinking in dazzling gold as they walked down Manningtree Grove towards Mount Pleasant Hall. Dolly had their tickets for Mrs. Roberta Fitter’s seance, at five pounds apiece, in her black suede handbag. She wore rather smart, lowish-heeled black court shoe
s. For most of the way Pup talked about magic, about self-initiation and spiritual exercises, about providing new insights into the psyche.

  A corrugated iron fence had been put up round the demolition site. The plaster dust had subsided but it still clung like pale mold to the leaves on the shrubs in the hall garden, the laurel leaves and the rosemary and the lemon mint. The hall doors stood wide open. Dolly handed over their tickets.

  The medium was late in arriving. The twenty-three people who had come to see Roberta Fitter do her stuff sat waiting patiently on the twenty-three rush-bottomed chairs Mrs. Collins had assembled for them. Each bore a card with the intended occupant’s name printed on it. Dolly and Pup were in the front row.

  At the end of the hall in one corner a curtain rail had been fixed diagonally across, a little way down from the ceiling, and from this rail hung a pair of black curtains. Inside it was a chair with a padded seat and back and wooden arms, and behind the chair, another pair of curtains, dark green this time, hung flat against the wall.

  Miss Finlay was sitting next to Dolly and next to Pup sat a very old man who wore, in spite of the heat, a raincoat and a cloth cap. He was chewing tobacco, a habit Pup had never actually come across before. Miss Finlay pointed out to Dolly a big frog-faced woman sitting in the row behind them up against the left-hand wall.

  “That’s the lady who travels with Mrs. Fitter. It’s her job to look after her.”

  “A sort of road manager,” said Pup but smiling so sweetly that no one could have taken offense.

  “She’s called Mrs. Leebridge and Mrs. Fitter’s control is called Hassan. He was a sepoy that was killed in the Indian Mutiny defending a British officer from a maddened subahdar.”

  From a room at the back of the stage, Mrs. Collins appeared with her arms full of black clothing: a loose dress, a pair of knickers, a pair of tights, and black velvet Chinese button-up slippers. These she dropped in Miss Finlay’s lap.