by Ruth Rendell
Two nights later he was taking Leonora out. She was living with her father and stepmother in Bloomsbury.
Anthony Chisholm was nicer to him than any of the other people who were close to Leonora. Anthony and Susannah. She was nice to him as well. Of course she was only eight years older than he was, there was no feeling that here was another parent. Like an old-fashioned suitor, Guy called for Leonora in Lamb’s Conduit Street and took her home.
He got there early. He always got there early when he went to fetch Leonora. She was in the bath. Anthony, who was an architect, a partner in a city firm called Purdey Chisholm Hall, was not yet home from work. Susannah did PR for a cosmetics company and some toymakers and handled her accounts from home. She gave him a drink, said they had people coming and she was cooking something tricky—would he excuse her? The evening paper that Leonora had brought in with her was lying on the arm of the settee.
Guy drank his drink and read the front page. There was a bizarre story about a man in South London being stung to death by bees.
The man’s name was Cornelius “Con” Mulvanney, which meant nothing to Guy, who read the story, and then another about a tennis player’s divorce, and had started on one about a fire in Fulham, when Anthony came in.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Guy phoned Leonora’s flat on the day after their lunch at Clarke’s, Rachel Lingard took the call.
“I’m afraid Leonora isn’t here.”
“Where is she then?”
“I’m not my sister’s keeper.”
“What?”
“We may not know what God said to Cain after he made the statement I paraphrased but I emphatically dissociate myself from that kind of involvement.”
She talked like that. She often did. He had long ago ceased to ask her what she was on about.
“She’s round at the ginger dwarf’s, I suppose. Okay, you needn’t answer that. I’ve got his number.”
There was no reply from Georgiana Street. He tried again an hour later and an hour after that and then every half-hour. He took Celeste out to dinner and then to a drinking club in Green Street called Greens. From there, at eleven, he again dialed William Newton’s number and again there was no answer. It wasn’t very late for him but he knew it was late for most people. There were either not in or Newton had a plug-in phone that made a ringing tone to the caller even if unplugged. Newton had unplugged his phone to make it impossible for Leonora to speak to him. Most likely, almost certainly, Leonora did not know this.
Next day he tried her at home. There was no reply. The phone was not answered throughout the evening and the phone in Georgiana Street was not answered. Just before ten he asked directory inquiries for the number of an M. Mandeville in Sanderstead Lane, South Croydon, obtained it and phoned Tessa.
When she heard who it was she said first of all that she had no idea where Leonora was. Leonora—she called her “my daughter”—was twenty-six and “her own woman.” Then she said, “You know it’s only right to tell you I think you must be a very seriously disturbed person. You ought to be having therapy. Though it may be too late for anything like that to do any good. Permanent damage was done long long ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I used to think of you as a criminal, but it’s more pity I feel now. I pity you, I really do. All that filth you took into your system over the years is bearing fruit now. You’re reaping the whirlwind.”
Guy put the phone down, badly shaken. It was the first hint he had ever received that she, or anyone connected with Leonora, knew what he had once done for a living. Was there anything the Mandevilles didn’t know about him? Leonora herself had said Magnus knew about his protection network in Kensal. Tessa, however, had got it wrong. He had never been an addict. Had Leonora told her he was? The notion of Leonora talking derogatorily to her mother about him was deeply painful.
But there was another way she might know, or think she knew. Tessa lived in South London. So did Poppy Vasari, so had Con Mulvanney. Of course there must be about five million people living in the vast metropolitan area south of the river, but Poppy Vasari was a sort of social worker. And so in another way was Tessa Mandeville. Hadn’t Leonora told him about her mother’s doing voluntary work in a hospital and having some sort of job at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau? What more likely than that she and Poppy had encountered each other?
Suppose Tessa and Poppy had met regularly, at the CAB or chauffeuring geriatrics about. Guy was vague in his ideas about this but it could be something like that. Poppy, talking about the death of Con Mulvanney, might so easily have described him, Guy, to Tessa, and told Tessa in her indignation what he had done. She knew his name, she had found that out. She could have told Tessa his name.
There had been no mention of Poppy in that original story, the account of Con Mulvanney’s death he had read while in Anthony Chisholm’s flat. But Poppy was not Con’s lover, didn’t live with him, perhaps wasn’t even all that close a friend. Some of those do-gooders could get very steamed up about what they called “social injustice” or “outrageous” breaches of something or other. As for him, he had read it and been interested, mildly appalled at Con Mulvanney’s fate, an awful fate however you looked at it. This Mulvanney, whoever he was, seemed to have taken the roof or lid off a beehive and been stung all over his head and face and neck by bees. Could you die of that? Apparently. There would be an inquest. Con Mulvanney was described as being thirty-six and unemployed, living in the “garden flat,” or ground floor, of a house in Upper Tooting.
Anthony Chisholm arrived home. Since his second marriage he had more than ever that look of a handsome teddy bear, his smile more boyish, his eyes less tired. No wonder. Any man would feel himself in a seventh heaven of bliss to have escaped the clutches of that bitch Tessa. It was a mystery to Guy how he had stuck her so long. At that time, that summer four years past, Anthony was being very nice to Guy, very pleasant.
“Have you got a drink, Guy? Oh, good, Susannah’s been looking after you. Where’s that girl of mine? No, don’t tell me, I can guess. I thought two bathrooms were more than anyone could want in a mere duplex, that’s what the Americans call them, you know, duplexes, but I now see three are needed.”
Guy asked if he minded his smoking. He wouldn’t have asked Tessa, just got one out and lighted it.
“D’you know, I think I’ll have one too. Officially, let’s say matrimonially, I’ve given it up, but having one of yours doesn’t count.”
What could be more comfortable? More matey? The easygoing, cultivated, urbane and affectionate parent with his prospective son-in-law. His wealthy, jet-setting, successful prospective son-in-law. Guy was sure Anthony saw him in that light. He did then. Anthony wasn’t any more worldly or greedy than the rest of them, but he was a sensible realist, he had an eye to the main chance. Whatever Leonora herself might have thought of this attitude, she with her feminist ideas, Anthony saw a rich, successful husband as a snip for his daughter. Guy had had a Porsche at that time. Anthony would have seen the Porsche outside (on a double-yellow line before the days of clamping—who cared about the fine?), would have heard from Leonora about Guy’s house, knew from that none-too-happy birthday party of Guy’s business interests. He might in his heart have preferred some intellectual for Leonora, but intellectuals aren’t often rich and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
So Guy reasoned in those days and was pleasant to Anthony, accepted another drink, gave him another cigarette, said what an awful case that was in the evening paper. Who would have thought a man could die from bee-stings?
Guy, who remembered everything that had happened during those days, recalled that on the following morning he went to his rifle club for the first time. He was taking lessons, it was his first lesson. The instructor said he had a good eye and his control was good. After that he took a taxi into the West End to pick up his air tickets for the holiday on Samos. The travel agency he and Bob Joseph were setting up was still at the
planning stage. Guy had booked the hotel’s “honeymoon hut,” which was actually on the private beach. They were flying first-class and he was wondering if he could possibly trick Leonora into believing that this luxurious mode of travel was in fact economy class. She insisted on paying for herself from the proceeds of some holiday job she had taken. Perhaps he could make her think the airline had “upped” their seats because there were vacancies in first class.
He foresaw trouble with Leonora over payment. She would realize that the hotel was astronomically beyond her means. They might even have the price of the honeymoon hut up on a notice somewhere, inside the clothes cupboard or behind a door. By that time, however, it would be too late for her to do anything about it, she would have to put a good face on it and let him pay as he wanted and indeed longed to do.
Guy had a lunch date with Bob Joseph and a lawyer who was fixing up the lease of their new premises in Milner Street in the most advantageous-possible way. He intended to go to Gladiators for a workout later, so he thought he was justified in drinking rather a lot. When he got home it was nearly four.
There was a woman in a car outside, having an argument with a traffic warden. Scarsdale Mews had residents’ parking throughout most of its length and five meters at the Marloes Road end. Guy pointed out to her that someone had just pulled away from one of the meters. If he had known this was Poppy Vasari and what she had come about, he wouldn’t have given her any help, he’d have liked to see her car towed away. She didn’t say who she was or that she wanted him. He let himself into the house.
Two or three minutes later the doorbell rang. There she was.
She said her name and that she was a friend of Con Mulvanney’s. Guy, who had forgotten the name of the man in the bee-sting story though not the story itself, said he had never heard of Con Mulvanney.
“Oh yes, you have, Mr. X,” she said.
“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” He did, though, or he had an inkling.
“You gave him a hallucinogenic drug,” she said.
She said it out loud, in her normal voice or louder. Guy thought he was going to faint, fall on the floor. He said, “For God’s sake,” and then, because anything was better than having her go on like that out here, “you’d better come in.”
She was a big, gypsyish woman, wearing large gold hoop ear-rings and gold chains and strings of coloured beads round her neck. She had a lopsided, raddled, much-lined but vivid face, a hooky nose, black burning eyes. She was dark and her long wild hair was black. Her clothes were draperies, perhaps worn to conceal bulk or just for their loose, floppy comfort: a red tunic, a black layered skirt, a long loose grey cotton jacket, a red-and-blue shawl. Bare legs, bare feet, sandals.
He must have taken all that in later, he certainly wasn’t capable of it at the time. In those first moments she was Nemesis, come to make him mad and then destroy him. Her wild look, her clothes were even appropriate. But he smelt her smell as she pushed past him. Instead of perfume and toilet water and bath oil and body shampoo, which the women he knew smelt of, there emanated from her a powerful reek of sweat. She smelt like a cheap hamburger restaurant. Ever since, he had associated the smell of cooking hamburger with her.
“You’ll have read about it,” she said when they were in his drawing-room. “You’ll know all about it or what the papers know.”
“I didn’t know it was him,” Guy said.
She looked at him. She laughed. It was the most unpleasant laugh he had ever heard. “So this has been a shock?”
“You could put it that way, yes.”
“Good. I like to think your punishment is beginning.”
She wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. She was a woman, a good fifteen years older than he was and out of condition, she was in a strange house with someone she no doubt thought of as a criminal, at his mercy, but she wasn’t afraid. She held her head high and looked fiercely into his eyes. And she was right not to be afraid. The strength had gone out of him. The drink had too. None of its magic remained to give him false nerve.
“He begged me to give him something. He pestered me, he gave me no peace.” Guy knew he was being indiscreet, worse than that, but there were no witnesses. “I didn’t take any money,” he said, as if this were a defence. “I warned him to take it under supervision.”
“He did. My supervision.”
“Yours?”
“I was there. I’d been working in a drugs rehabilitation centre, I ought to have known better.”
“Yes, you ought.” Guy clutched at this straw. “Fine bloody supervisor you were.”
“Shut up,” she said. “Shut up. Don’t you dare speak to me like that. D’you want to know happened? I’m going to tell you anyway. It’ll all come out at the inquest. D’you want to know?”
“Of course I want to know.”
“Well, then. He didn’t know your name, only where you live. I know it, I asked the people next door before you came back. He told me he was going to take the tablets you gave him in order to get into his inner consciousness. Some tripe like that. I told him not to. I said he didn’t know enough about it, didn’t know how long you’d had it, for instance, or where it came from. I said its use had to be properly controlled. He talked a lot more rubbish. If I wouldn’t be with him he’d take it on his own, he said. He was as daft as a brush anyway, all that reincarnation tripe. I used to be a nurse on a psychiatric ward and I can tell you that’s one of the first signs of a psychosis, people claiming they’re reincarnated.
“He was the last person should have been allowed near a substance like that. But you can’t tell people what to do, not without putting them under restraint. That bloody acid filth—God, and I thought that was the end of it when it went out in the seventies. Okay, well, the upshot was he took it and he—I was going to say he had a bad trip, but he didn’t, he had a good trip. He kept saying he could see lovely things, lovely colours. There’s a garden where he lives—lived. The flowers in it weren’t marvellous, well, they wouldn’t be, but he started describing the flowers, daisies they were that you get in lawns, he said they were sunflowers, as big as dinner plates and with the scent of roses. The sparrows were kingfishers and parakeets and God knows what. He started talking to the butterflies. They were cabbage-white ones but he said their wings were blue and purple and scarlet.”
“What about the bees?” said Guy, dry-mouthed.
She looked grim. She stretched her mouth into a nasty smile. “The bees, yes. The bees were in a hive in the garden at the end of his garden. Some of the neighbours had complained to the council—I work for the council—but there were just as many liked the bees on account of they were good for flowers and fertilized their fruit trees. This’ll be the end of them now, that’s for sure.” Her eyes came back to meet his. “He climbed over the fence.”
“But why?”
“To talk to the bloody bees. He was Saint Francis—remember? Brother Bee and Sister Butterfly. There was a lot of that, and then he got over the fence. It wasn’t very high and there was a wooden box he stood on on his side. I couldn’t stop him—how could I? He did what he wanted, people do. The couple who lived in the house, the bee-keepers, they were out at work. Everyone was at work or somewhere.
“He went up to the beehive, talking to the bees. He liked bees, though I don’t think he talked to them when he was—well, normal. It’s a wooden hive with a top that comes off. He leaned very close and said to me it would be all right, the bees would recognize him, they would know their friend. I got hold of him and he pushed me away. He said I’d upset the bees and maybe I would have, maybe I did. Anyway, he took the top off the hive.
“The bees came out. I mean, hundreds, it seemed like hundreds. A great swarm of them, all angry. I knew they were stinging him because he was shouting and slapping at them. He ran and fell and the bees came after him. Bees aren’t like wasps, they do come after you. They sting you and they leave the sting inside you and half of themselves with it. That’s why the
y die. Christ, it’s amazing, people actually believe in a God that’d make a creature whose way of defending itself is its own death.”
The tears were running down her face. She made no attempt to wipe them away. Guy felt he was gaping at her and he turned aside.
“They stung me,” she said. “They got in my hair. They stung my hands and my neck. I was full of stings and bits of bee.”
“You didn’t die, though,” he said stupidly.
“I’m not allergic.”
“He was allergic? You’d have thought that’d have stopped him. Why did he go near the bees if he was allergic?”
“He didn’t know he was,” she said. “He can’t have known. You don’t if you’ve only been stung once before. The first time nothing much happens, it’s a question of getting sensitized. It causes a strong adverse reaction to later contacts with the substance, whatever it is. Bee-stings or shellfish or poison ivy, it’s all the same.”
“And that’s what he had?”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I tried to drag him back. Those bloody bees … I started screaming, you can scream a hell of a lot in London before people take notice. A man did come. I said to get help, a doctor, ambulance, the police, anything. The bees were there, everywhere and angry, it was hell.”
“The police,” he said. “Did the police come?”
She jeered at him, “Is that what worries you? Is that all that worries you? No, they didn’t. They’re never there when you want them. Another thing, it’s bloody hard to convince people in a situation like that; they don’t believe you, they don’t believe someone’s going to die of bee-stings. I could tell he had an allergic reaction, they would have been able to tell in a hospital if we could have got him there in time. He was dead before that, he was dead in less than an hour. He choked to death. He swelled up and choked to death.”
