The Lake of Darkness

by Ruth Rendell

  “Okay, well, would you like to get hold of directory enquiries and find if they’ve got a number for Brown of Flat 10, Swan Place, Stanhope Avenue, Highgate?”

  She came back after about five minutes. “No, they haven’t, Martin, and I’m quite positive. He was a very nice man at directory enquiries, got a voice just like Terence Stamp.”

  So the Post Office hadn’t yet got around to fixing Francesca’s phone. She was probably waiting in for them, which could be why she hadn’t phoned him from a call box. It didn’t matter particularly, he would just go straight there on his way from work.

  He left at five-thirty sharp. Swan Place was, if anything, more attractive than Cromwell Court. The block was newer and there were lifts and carpet on the stairs. Martin smiled to himself to think he had spent more on Francesca’s home than he had on his own. He went up in the lift and rang the bell of number 10.

  No one came. He rang again. She was out. What on earth was she doing out now? Wasn’t she expecting him? He wondered where she could have gone at this hour when nearly all the shops were closed. Perhaps to tea with some friend who had a child of Lindsay’s age? Martin had never heard of any friend of Francesca’s apart from Annabel. He hung about outside the door, wishing he had thought of calling in at the estate agents to collect those other keys. They would be shut now.

  He waited nearly half an hour for her. Then he wrote a note on the back of an envelope he found in his pocket and put it through the letter box. The note said to phone him as soon as she got in.

  It began to worry him thinking something might have happened to her. Suppose Russell had asked her to go back and have a talk with him and was preventing her from leaving again? He drank some whisky, not too much because he was sure to have to drive again that evening. There was nothing to eat in the flat apart from bread and cheese and things in tins.

  The phone didn’t ring but at just before eight the doorbell did. Martin was sure it was Francesca who had thought that if she had to go out into the street to find a call box, she might as well get in a taxi and come straight to him. On the doorstep stood Mr. Cochrane and a very small woman in a scarlet coat and black fur pixie hood. He had forgotten all about them.

  “Evening, Martin. This is Mrs. Cochrane, Martin. Rita, this is Martin.”

  Mr. Cochrane was in casual gear, denim jeans, a fairisle pullover and a kind of anorak with fur trimmings. Martin felt bereft of ideas and almost of speech by the sight of them. But there was no help for it. Mr. Cochrane hadn’t waited to be invited in or asked to sit down. He had gone in, taken his sister-in-law’s coat and hat, seated her on the sofa, hung up her coat and his own in the hall cupboard, and was now alternately rubbing his hands and warming them on a radiator.

  “Would you like a drink?” Martin said.

  “Whisky for me, Martin, and Mrs. Cochrane will have a lemonade with a drop of port in it.”

  Martin had neither port nor lemonade. Every bottle had to be removed from the drinks cupboard before Mr. Cochrane could decide on a substitute. His sister-in-law hadn’t opened her mouth. When she was at last given a wine glass containing a mixture of sweet red vermouth and soda she nodded her head very fast and on and on as if she had a spring where her neck should be. Her mouth had set into a pinched, tight, and intensely nervous smile.

  Mr. Cochrane, now sitting on the radiator, launched into a speech. His attitude was one which Martin hadn’t met before in his dealings with the objects of his charity. His sister-in-law was prepared to accept Martin’s offer-here Mrs. Cochrane, who hadn’t ceased to smile, began nodding again-provided she was allowed absolute freedom of choice as to where she lived and what kind of dwelling she lived in. Also Martin must understand that one must move with the times, things had changed out of all knowledge in the past few years and you couldn’t buy anything worth considering in the London area for less than fifteen thousand pounds. At this point the phone rang and Martin leapt for it. It was a wrong number. Mr. Cochrane said that he supposed it was all right to help himself to more whisky, did so, and terminated his speech with words to the effect that now they understood each other and had cleared the air he would start house-hunting in the morning.

  Martin felt he only wanted to get rid of them. If it cost him his last five thousand did it so much matter? He realised that that was what it would do, it would all be gone. Deliberately and methodically he half-filled his glass with whisky and drank it at a gulp.

  “I’m glad to be of help,” he said. “It’s good we’ve been able to arrange things so easily.”

  The phone rang. It was Norman Tremlett to ask if Martin and Francesca could make it Saturday fortnight instead of Saturday week. Martin said yes and he would call Norman back. Mr. Cochrane had got himself into his anorak and his sister-in-law into her coat and pixie hood and was staring piercingly at the stack of saucepans and china and towels and bed linen.

  “If I don’t see madam on Friday, Martin, you can tell her I mean to commence the spring cleaning. Subject to her approval, of course.”

  Martin didn’t know what to say to this.

  “Come along, Rita.”

  Martin closed the door on them and finished his whisky. There was only about an inch left in the bottle so he had that too. After the phone had rung the second time he had made up his mind to drive round to Swan Place as soon as the Cochranes had gone. But he couldn’t go now, he had drunk too much. He slept heavily and dreamlessly that night, awakening early with a headache.

  But a quarter to nine he was ringing Francesca’s doorbell. He continued to ring it long after there was no point. Then it occurred to him that she might still be taking Lindsay to the nursery and he wrote her another note, on the back of the bill for the sheets and towels this time, asking her to phone him before lunch.

  When it got to twelve, to half-past, and she hadn’t phoned he began to feel real anxiety for the first time. He excused himself to Gordon Tytherton with whom he had said he would have lunch, and went back to Swan Place. Francesca was still out. He simply didn’t know what to do, and then he remembered the two spare keys. He drove up to Highgate Village and was given the keys without demur by the estate agent’s receptionist.

  His notes were still on the doormat. That was the first thing he absorbed. The second-though this took some time fully to register-was that no one had occupied the place since the departure of the Butlers. There were the carpets on the floors and the curtains at the windows, the chairs and tables, the fridge and the cooker and an electric kettle, but there was no food in the kitchen, the fridge door still stood open after Mrs. Butler’s final defrosting, and in the bathroom there was no soap, no toothbrush. Martin went into both bedrooms to find that the beds hadn’t been made up. The cupboard in the main bedroom was empty but for five wire coat hangers.

  For a while he was nonplussed. He sat down in the penthouse living room by the window that was even bigger than his own in Cromwell Court. But almost immediately he jumped up again. The first thing he must do, obviously, was phone her at home in Fortis Green Lane. For some reason, because she was ill or Lindsay was ill or Russell had intervened and used force, she had been prevented from leaving home on Monday.

  Rejecting the idea of phone boxes, which he had hardly ever in his life had occasion to use, he drove home to Cromwell Court. There, for the first time, he dialled the number the directory gave for H. R. Brown of 54 Fortis Green Lane, N. 10. The bell rang unanswered. She couldn’t be at home ill. He felt rather sick, with a hangover perhaps or hunger. He made himself a cheese sandwich but he couldn’t eat it. The idea of taking the afternoon off to look for Francesca didn’t cross his mind. He tried the phone again and then he went back to work, remembering a fear that had come to him during the first days of their acquaintance when she had told him nothing of her circumstances or history and had withheld from him her address. He had wondered what he would do if she left her job, for the flower shop had been the only place where he could be sure of finding her.

  Bloomers was agai
n closed and unlit when he drove past it just before six. He went home and poured himself a stiff brandy because all the whisky was gone. He thought inconsequentially how a week ago he could have afforded cases of whisky without thinking about it, but not now. He had no more money now than on the last occasion he sent in Tim’s pools perm.

  No one was answering the phone at 54 Fortis Green Lane. He tried it four times between six and seven. Immediately after he put the phone back for the fourth time it rang. Norman Tremlett. Why hadn’t he rung back last night as he had promised? Martin dealt with Norman as best he could, trying not to lose his temper at facetious questions about his “lovely betrothed” and when the “happy day” was to be. As soon as he could terminate the conversation he did. He grilled the steak he had brought in with him and ate it without enjoyment. The brandy bottle beckoned him, but he knew that if he drank any more he wouldn’t dare drive up to Finchley.

  He could tell the house was empty before he even got out of the car. What now? Enquire of the neighbours as he had enquired for Annabel? After sitting in the car for an aeon of minutes, after some painful soul-searching, he tried number 52.

  A girl of about fifteen came to the door. He might have been speaking to her in Hausa or Aramaic for all her comprehension.

  At last she said, “You what?”

  He realised he had asked questions which, in these lawless times, give rise to deep suspicion. The girl went away to fetch her mother. Martin rehearsed in his mind better ways of eliciting information, but they weren’t much better. The woman appeared, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  “I’m sorry,” Martin began, “I know you must think this very odd, but I only want to know if Mr. and Mrs. Brown next door are away. I’m”-it wasn’t exactly true but what else could he say?-“a friend of theirs.”

  It was as if he had demanded payment for goods she hadn’t bought or even wanted. She gave a humourless, cynical laugh.

  “That’s not true for a start. There is no Mrs. Brown. He’s a widower. He’s been a widower for all of five years.”

  Martin couldn’t speak.

  Perhaps she sensed that he had had a shock. Her manner softened. “Look, you could be anybody, couldn’t you, for all I know? Such a lot of funny things go on these days. He’s not in, you can see that. I haven’t seen him since Saturday, but that doesn’t mean a thing. He keeps himself to himself.”

  She had closed the door before Martin was half-way down the path. His hands shook when he got hold of the steering wheel. He flexed them and took deep breaths and tried to blank out his mind. When he tried again his hands were steady. It wasn’t more than a couple of miles down to Highgate, though he was slowed up by the rain which had suddenly begun and now was lashing down.

  The phone was ringing as he walked into the flat. He thought that if it was Francesca he wouldn’t know what to say, he would be able to find no words in which to speak to her, to ask, even to begin. What she had done to him he didn’t know, only that it was terrible.

  He picked up the phone. There were pips, six of them.

  A voice said, “This is Finn speaking.”

  XX

  “Yes,” Martin said, “yes?” He had forgotten who Finn was and the flat low voice meant nothing to him.

  “I thought I’d, have heard from you by now.”

  Heard from him? Oh, yes. Finn was Mrs. Finn’s son and Mrs. Finn was … He was surprised to hear his own voice sounding so normal, so characteristic even. “You’ve been successful, have you?”

  A short toneless “Yes.”

  Martin was getting used to ingratitude. He no longer cared. “I’ll send the rest round like I did the first lot, okay?”

  “In cash again,” said Finn and put the phone down.

  It was still only nine o’clock. Martin poured himself some more brandy but he couldn’t drink it, the smell of it made him feel sick. Was it possible that the woman in the house next door had been lying? Why should she, except from madness or motiveless malevolence? Francesca didn’t live there, had never lived there. But he had seen her go into the house … No, he had never quite seen that. He remembered little things, that insistence on taxis, her refusal ever to invite him into the house. Where was she now?

  She must have a home somewhere. She hadn’t come to him like some fairy woman out of the sea or from another world. Surely she had loved him …? There must be some motive for the lies she had told him, but that motive might not in itself be evil. He tried to think of reasons for it, sitting there in the chair by the window long into the night. At last he drank up the brandy and went to bed. London went on glittering down there as if nothing had happened.

  Next day the world had become a different place. The day was cold and wet, a high wind blowing. He awoke to some sense of indefinable misery. A moment later it was no longer indefinable but had settled into the knowledge that Francesca had deceived him.

  The wind was blustery and sharp. He saw it blow someone’s umbrella inside out as he crossed the Archway Road. The lights weren’t on in Bloomers but it wasn’t yet nine-thirty. Stuck up on the door, on the inside of the glass, was a notice that hadn’t been there last week. Closed till Monday, March 5. He turned away. Kate Ross could be ill or just taking a holiday. He went back to his car and drove to work.

  Kate would be bound to have Francesca’s true address. There were a dozen or so people in the phone book called K. Ross but none in Highgate where Kate lived. Or where Francesca had said she lived. Could he believe anything Francesca had told him?

  Her parents lived in Chiswick. Her maiden name had been Blanch. But was that true? There was an E. Blanch in a place called Petrarch Court, Barrowgate Gardens, Chiswick. She had said they lived in a flat, an old mansion block. She had said, she had said … He dialled the number, tried to resign himself to hearing a voice say she had no daughter, had never even been married.

  A man answered. He sounded elderly, as if he might be retired.

  “I’m trying to get in touch with your daughter, Francesca Brown.”

  There was a dense silence. Then, “I might say I don’t have a daughter.”

  Martin didn’t know what to say. He nearly put the receiver down. But the old voice, very dry now, said, “I haven’t seen Francesca for five years.” There came a crackling chuckle. “She was never very filial. A cold-hearted girl. I can give you her husband’s phone number, though God knows when she left him. She leaves everybody.”

  Martin said he would have the number. He wrote it down.

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Blanch. “Russell Brown’s his name, but he’ll be out now. At work. She hasn’t by any chance left you, has she?”

  The exchange was an East London one, Ilford or Stratford. Had Francesca given him the Fortis Green Lane address because she was ashamed of her real one? He seemed to hear the dry rasping voice again, “God knows when she left him. She leaves everybody.” There had been a bitter cynical amusement underlying Mr. Blanch’s words. For the first time Martin felt the absurdity of his position, the humiliation. How was he going to explain to his parents, to Norman and Adrian, that he had bought Francesca a flat and she had left him without even living in it. “She leaves everybody …”

  He couldn’t think of an excuse for getting out of dinner with his parents. His mother, drinking oloroso, said she had half-expected Francesca too, though she supposed that would have meant a baby-sitter for the little girl. Mr. Urban leant against the mantelpiece with his amontillado. Martin had three glasses of Tio Pepe, wondering where Francesca was now and who Lindsay’s father was and why she had lied to him so that it seemed almost everything she had said was a lie.

  “Do you think Francesca would like me to make her a patchwork skirt?” said Mrs. Urban.

  Martin said he didn’t know, which was the answer he would have been obliged to make to any question put to him about Francesca.

  “I don’t care for them myself,” said his mother, “but she looks the type to wear them.”

  Martin left e
arly, having taken from the bathroom cabinet one of the sleeping pills his mother had for when she went on holiday. He was home by half-past nine. What did he hope to learn, anyway, by phoning Russell Brown? According to her father, “God knows when” Francesca had left him, years ago perhaps; he couldn’t be Lindsay’s father. At last he did try the number that Mr. Blanch had given him, but there was no answer. He took the Mogadon tablet and washed it down with brandy and went to bed.

  Mr. Cochrane, arriving at eight-thirty in the morning, made no reference to the events of Tuesday evening. He had brought Martin’s letters up with him, having encountered the postman on the way in. Martin didn’t open them, didn’t so much as glance at them. He was in no mood for bills or for querulousness from Miss Watson or the Gibsons which he felt those envelopes might contain.

  He carried the saucepans and the frying pan, the dinner service, the two lamps, the bed linen and towels into his bedroom and stuffed them into the bottom of the clothes cupboard. They would come in useful one day, he thought with dry anger, for other people’s wedding presents.

  Mr. Cochrane, in his ironmonger’s coat, was emptying cupboards and shelves on to the kitchen floor, the first stage of his spring cleaning. On the table were the two piles of newspapers, the broadsheets and the tabloids.

  “Beats me what you want all this muck for, Martin,” said Mr. Cochrane. “Hoarding up rubbish like an old woman.”

  Martin took no notice. He was looking through the Posts for the copy of December 8, the one that had contained the paragraph about Russell Brown. Surely it had been on the top because it was the last one he had ever received; after that he had stopped taking the Post. Then he remembered. He must have used it to wrap up Mrs. Finn’s money. Naturally he had used the paper that was on top of the pile. Mrs. Finn. Some time today, he thought, he had better go to the bank and draw out the other five thousand, phone them first maybe as he had done last time …

  He had been at work ten minutes when Adrian Vowchurch phoned. He said it was rather embarrassing (he didn’t sound embarrassed), but he simply had to know whether his account for the conveyance was to go to Francesca or to Martin.