by Ruth Rendell
Junk mail was mostly what came through the letter-box, flyers from restaurants and car-hire companies, carpet cleaners and plumbers. Coals to Newcastle, this last, in the opinion of Agnes Tawton, though no plumber lived there now. She had taken to popping in once a week, picking up the post and looking for unconsidered trifles.
A check for a hundred pounds from a Marjorie J. Trent and made out to T. Brex was useless to her. She had no bank account. The only other item of interest was a ring in an envelope. Agnes recognized it as her daughter’s engagement ring, though she hadn’t seen it for many years.
The proper thing to do with a ring is put it on one’s finger and this Agnes did, the little finger of her left hand, all the others being too big for it. Of her son-in-law she had always had a low opinion, so she doubted if the ring could be worth much—he had probably picked it up in Wembley market for a couple of quid.
But she kept it on. Her friend Gladys said it was “dressy,” so she wore it on the Over-Sixties spring outing to Felixstowe. After tea in a restaurant on the front she went into the ladies’ cloakroom to powder her nose and wash her hands. Agnes had never had an engagement ring of her own and now, so late in her life, it gave her a thrill to take off the ring and lay it on the side of the basin like all the other ladies lined up at all the other basins.
There were no towels, only those hand dryers that blew out hot air, and blew it slowly. One alone was in working order and Agnes had to queue up. By the time her hands were dry Gladys was calling to her to hurry up, the coach was going, and she trotted off, rather flustered, leaving the ring on the side of the basin.
In their advertisements the estate agents described Orcadia Cottage as “the bijou home immortalized in the internationally acclaimed artwork of Simon Alpheton,” though the photograph they took looked nothing like the painting. In the depths of winter Orcadia Cottage displayed its true self, its shape and proportions. The cherry-colored brickwork, usually concealed under festoons of green or gold or crimson leaves, was now veiled only by a network of fine ginger-colored tendrils like cobwebs made by a red spider. Anthea, who understandably had always disliked the place, said it looked as if it had taken its clothes off and stood revealed in its dirty underwear.
But Franklin soon got an offer. The purchasers, an American businessman and his wife, wanted to move in quickly. When Franklin offered them the report his surveyors had made thirty years before they were happy to dispense with a survey.
After all, the house had been there for two hundred years and wasn’t likely to fall down now.
FOR DON
AGAIN
ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
The Keys to the Street
Blood Lines
The Crocodile Bird
Going Wrong
Live Flesh
The Tree of Hands
Master of the Moor
The Lake of Darkness
A Judgement in Stone
A Demon in My View
To Fear a Painted Devil
CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS
The Fallen Curtain
Road Rage
Simisola
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter
The Veiled One
An Unkindness of Ravens
Speaker of Mandarin
Death Notes
A Sleeping Life
Some Lie and Some Die
Murder Being Once Done
No More Dying Then
A Guilty Thing Surprised
The Best Man to Die
Wolf of the Slaughter
Sins of the Fathers
A New Lease of Death
From Doon with Death
Harm Done
BY RUTH RENDELL WRITING AS BARBARA VINE
The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy
No Night Is Too Long
Anna’s Book
A Dark-Adapted Eye
