by Ruth Rendell
Arthur went inside and the bus began to move. But it slowed again and stopped for the flying figure of a woman in a long, black, hooded cloak who had rushed from the Grand Duke to catch it. There were no more seats inside and she went upstairs.
The bus moved along fast because there wasn’t much traffic at that time of night. It passed the cemetery where Maureen Cowan had plied her trade and where Auntie Gracie lay in the family plot beside her father and mother. It detoured along a one-way street and returned briefly to the High Street before turning up Kenbourne Lane. And still, all along the route, red and green and silver flashes pierced the cold dark curtain of sky, breaking at their zeniths into tumbling cascades of sparks.
They took the right-hand turn into Balliol Street, and Arthur—who seldom rode on buses but who, when he did, was always ready to get off them a hundred yards before his stop—began to edge out of his seat. The black hooded shape was already waiting on the platform. Like a monk or a great bird, he thought. She was the first to alight, as if nervously anxious to get home.
The Waterlily was closed. All the shops were closed, and as he looked along the length of Balliol Street, he saw the light in the window of Kemal’s Kebab House go out. But lights there were in plenty, amber squares dotted haphazardly across house fronts, street lights like wintergreen drops, the high-rise tower a pharos with a hundred twinkling eyes. Scattered on the pavement were the blackened paper cases of used fireworks. But there were no people, no one but he and the cloaked woman who fluttered away across the mews entrance towards Camera Street. An occasional car passed.
Arthur stood still. He looked through the window of the public bar of the Waterlily, but he watched the woman from the corner of his eye. A cruising car had drawn up beside her, delaying her. The driver was saying something. Arthur thought he would count up to ten, by which time she would have turned into Camera Street or gone with the man, be lost to him, he and she safe, and then he would turn and make for Magdalen Hill. But before he had got to five, he saw her recoil sharply from the car and begin to run back the way she had come. His heart ticked, it swelled and pounded. There were three white posts under the mews arch. No car could pass into it from this end. But she passed into it. The car seemed to give a shrug before it slid away down the hill, leaving her for easier, more complaisant prey.
Arthur too went into Oriel Mews, walking softly as a cat. It was dark in there, sensuously, beautifully dark. She was walking fast—he could just make out the grotesque flapping shape of her—but he walked faster, passing her and hearing the sharp intake of her breath as he brushed the skirts of her cloak.
Then, behind him, she fell back, as he had known she would. She would linger until she saw his silhouette against the lighted mouth at the Trinity Road end, until she saw him disappear. He let her see him. But instead of stepping out into the light, he pressed himself against the cold bricks of the mews wall and eased back a yard, two yards. He smelt her. He couldn’t see her.
His tie was very tightly fastened and he had to wrench at it to get it off. His strength was such that if it had indeed been made of the metal it resembled he would still have possessed the power to get it free. Fireworks were hissing and breaking in his head now. The last of them fell into a million stars as the flapping hooded creature closed upon him and he upon her.
She didn’t cry out. The sound she made came to his acute ears only, the gurgle of ultimate terror, and the smell of her terror was for his nostrils alone. He never felt the touch of her hands. She fell on the stones like a great dying bird, and Arthur, rocking with an inner tumult, let her weight rest heavily on his shoes until at last, precisely and fastidiously, he shifted his feet away.
13
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When Anthony opened his eyes it was twenty past eleven. Winston was still reading Psychology and Life, Potter was still asleep. Both bars of the electric fire were on and the room was very hot.
“Where’s Brian?”
Winston closed the book. “He went off about half an hour ago. Said he was going to find this Dean character and have it out with him.”
“Oh God,” said Anthony. “Let’s get rid of Potter.”
“When you like,” said Winston equably. “I looked through his pockets while you were asleep. He’s got plenty of money and he’s staying at the Fleur Hotel in Judd Street.”
“Well done, Sergeant. You’ll go far.” A thought struck Anthony. “You were never in the police, were you?”
Winston grinned. “No, I never was. Shall we get him a cab?”
Anthony nodded and they managed to wake Potter. But, as always on waking, Potter had a call of nature or wanted to be sick. He departed for the lavatory, and Anthony and Winston waited for him in silence. They had to wait a long time, as it was fully ten minutes before Potter reappeared, green-faced, unsteady, and drooling.
Arthur came through the front door of 142 Trinity Road at twenty-five to twelve. He held his coat collar high up against his throat so that the absence of a tie wouldn’t be noticed. The bitter cold made such an action natural in someone who might be thought bronchial. But there was no one to see him and he wasn’t afraid.
At first the house appeared as dark as when he had left it all those hours before. No light showed in Li-li Chan’s window or in that of Winston Mervyn. The hall was dark and silent, but, pausing at the foot of the stairs, he saw a line of light under the door of Room 2, and the ill-fitting lavatory door had a narrow rim of light all the way round its rectangle. Anthony Johnson. It could be no one else. Arthur moved soundlessly up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, six steps before, he heard the lavatory door open and saw a blaze of light stream into the hall below. It seemed to him that Anthony Johnson must have paused, must be looking up the stairs—for why else should he hang about in the hall? He didn’t look down and by the time he was on the landing, he heard the door of Room 2 close.
Light flooded the courtyard below his bedroom window. But it was of no importance. The only danger to him lay in his being actually caught in the act of a killing, for he had been a stranger to the woman he had strangled, as he had been a stranger to Maureen Cowan and Bridget O’Neill. No one would care what time Arthur Johnson had come home that night because no one would think it necessary to enquire.
There was nothing to worry about. These were perhaps the only moments in his life when he had nothing to worry about. He savoured them, excluding thought, feeling an exquisite peace, an animal’s well-being. Not bothering, for once, to wash, he stripped off his clothes, leaving on top of the heap of them the stretched, twisted silver tie, and fell beneath the blue floral quilt In seconds he was asleep.
It was always, as Winston pointed out, next to impossible to secure a taxi in Trinity Road which wasn’t a through road and whose inhabitants in general couldn’t afford cabs.
“We could get him up to the rank by the station.”
“No, we couldn’t,” said Anthony. It had been bad enough lugging the somnolent, smelly Potter from Room 2 out into the street. He must have weighed at least sixteen stone. Now he sat where they had placed him, on the low wall that divided the patch of grass from the street, his head resting against the stump of a lime tree. The heavy frost that made them shiver had no effect on Potter who began once more to snore.
“I’ll go to the rank,” said Winston, “if you’ll stay here and see he doesn’t fall off on to the grass.” But as he spoke a taxi cruised out of Magdalen Hill and came to a stop outside 142. Li-li Chan, in a green satin boiler suit and pink feather boa, skipped out of it and thrust a pound note at the driver.
“Ninety-eight, lady,” said the driver, giving her back twopence.
“You keep change,” said Li-li, waving it away. While the driver stared after her in gloomy disbelief, she uttered a “Hallo, it’s fleezing,” to Anthony and Winston and danced off up the steps.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” said the driver, “if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes.” He scrutinised the coi
n as if he feared it might vanish in the wake of its bestower.
Winston grabbed Potter under one arm while Anthony took the other. They shoved him into the back of the cab. “This one’s loaded and he’s in no state to argue about your tip. Fleur Hotel, Judd Street. O.K.?”
“Long as he don’t throw up,” said the driver.
The night was growing quiet now and there had been no sound of fireworks for half an hour.
It took nearly an hour to air Room 2. Anthony was a long time getting to sleep and, as a result, he overslept. Waking at eight-thirty, he hadn’t time to shave or wash much, for he was determined to get down to work in the college library by half-past nine. There was a stranger in the hall, a nondescript, middle-aged man who nodded and said good morning in what seemed a deliberate and calculating way. Anthony had made up his mind he must be a plainclothes policeman even before he saw the police car parked outside the house, and at once he wondered if this visit had any connection with Brian Kotowsky. Brian had gone out the previous night, intent on quarrelling with Jonathan Dean—intent perhaps on fighting Dean?
But none of the occupants of the car attempted to speak to him, so he crossed the road towards Oriel Mews. Here his passage was barred. The mews entrance was blocked off by a tarpaulin sheet, erected on a frame some eight feet high, and none of its interior was visible.
The sound of knocking had awakened Arthur just before his alarm was due to go off. Someone was hammering on one of the doors, Kotowskys’ or Mervyn’s, on the floor below. Then he heard voices, Mervyn’s and another’s, but he was used to all sorts of unnecessary wanton noise, made at uncivilised hours, so he didn’t take much notice. Ten minutes later, when all the noise had stopped, he got up and had his bath. He cleaned bath and basin carefully, mopped the floor, plumped up the blue pillows and shook out the quilt, took a clean shirt and clean underwear from the airing cupboard.
A tramping up and down the stairs had begun. Perhaps someone else was moving out. It would be just like Stanley Caspian not to have told him. He went into the kitchen and plugged in his kettle, wondering in a detached kind of way if the body of the woman had yet been found. Imprudent of him really to have done the deed so near home, but prudence, of course, hadn’t entered into it. The evening newspaper would tell him, reveal to him as to any other stranger, the known facts. And this time he wouldn’t collapse and be ill from the culminating traumas of it, but would watch with relish the efforts of the police to find the killer.
A good strong pot of tea, two eggs, two rashers of bacon, two thin, piping-hot pieces of toast. If they had found the body, he thought as he washed up, they would in some way cordon off the mews. Its entrance was just visible from his living room window. His curiosity irresistible, he peered out between the crossover frilled net curtains. Yes, Oriel Mews was cordoned off, its arch blanked out with a big opaque sheet of something. A van had probably gone in to load or unload and the driver had found her. He scanned the area for police cars, found nothing until, focus-sing closer, he saw one where he least expected it, right under the window at the kerb.
Arthur’s heart gave a great lurch, and suddenly his chest seemed full of scalding liquid. But they couldn’t know, they couldn’t have come for him.… No one had seen him go into the mews and there was nothing to connect him with the dead woman. Pull yourself together, he told himself in the admonishing Auntie Gracie voice he kept for moments like this. Not that there ever had been a moment like this before.
He had slumped into a chair and now, looking down at his hands, he saw that he was holding the dishcloth just as he had held that silver tie last night, taut, his fingers flexed at its ends. He relaxed them. Was it possible the police car was parked outside because earlier there had been no other space in which to park? Again he looked out of the window. Anthony Johnson was crossing the road towards the closed mews. The long trill of his doorbell ringing seemed to go through the soft tissues of Arthur’s brain like a knife. He swayed. Then he went to the door.
“Mr. Johnson?”
Arthur nodded, his face shrivelling with pallor.
“I’d like a word with you. May I come in?”
The man didn’t wait for permission. He stepped into the flat and showed Arthur his warrant card. Detective Inspector Glass. A tall, lean man was Inspector Glass with a broad, flat bill of a nose and a thin mouth that parted to show big yellow dentures.
“There’s been a murder, Mr. Johnson. In view of that, I’d be glad if you’d tell me what your movements were last evening.”
“My movements?” Arthur had rehearsed nothing. He was totally unprepared. “What do you mean?”
“It’s quite simple. I’d just like to know how you spent last evening.”
“I was here, in my flat. I was here from the time I got in from work at six-thirty. I didn’t go out.”
“Alone?”
Arthur nodded. He felt faint, sick. The man didn’t believe him. A blank, almost disgusted, incredulity showed in his face, and his lip curled above those hideous teeth.
“According to my information, you spent the evening with Mr. Winston Mervyn, Mr. Brian Kotowsky and a man called Potter.”
And now Arthur didn’t understand at all. Fleeting images of the Grand Duke, of Dean’s profile, appeared on his mind’s eye, but surely … Then came light.
“I think you are mistaking me for Mr. Anthony Johnson who lives on the ground floor. Room 2.” Firmly now, as he saw he had been right, that Glass had made a mistake, he added, “I was at home on my own all evening.”
“Sorry about that, Mr. Johnson. An understandable confusion. Then you can’t help us as to the whereabouts of Mr. Kotowsky?”
“I know nothing about it. I hardly know him. I keep myself to myself.” But Arthur had to know, had to discover before Glass departed, why he had come to this house—why here? “This murder—you’re connecting Mr. Kotowsky with it?”
“Inevitably, Mr. Johnson,” said Glass, opening the front door. “It is Mrs. Vesta Kotowsky who has been murdered.”
14
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Anthony spent the day in the college library and it was nearly five when he reached Kenbourne Lane tube station on his way home. There on the newsboards he read: Murder of Kenbourne Woman and Kenbourne Killer slays again? Though he was necessarily interested in what leads men to kill, murder itself fascinated him not at all, so he didn’t buy a paper. Helen’s letter would be waiting for him, and since leaving the library his whole mind had been possessed by speculating as to what she would say.
The hall table was piled with correspondence, a heap of it, for once not carefully arranged. Anthony leafed through it. Three specifications from estate agents for Winston, Li-li’s Taiwan letter, a bill for Brian, a bill for Vesta, a bill that would have to be redirected for Jonathan Dean. Nothing for him. Helen hadn’t written. For the first time since he had moved into 142 Trinity Road, a Tuesday and a Wednesday had gone by without a letter from her. But before he could begin to wonder about this omission, whether he had been too harsh with her, whether she was afraid to write, the front door opened and Winston Mervyn and Jonathan Dean—who as far as he knew didn’t know each other, had never met—came into the hall together.
“When did they let you off the hook?” said Winston. “We must have missed you.”
“Hook?” said Anthony.
“I mean we didn’t see you at the police station.”
Anthony thought he had never seen Jonathan Dean look so grim, so spent, and at the same time so much like a real person without pose or role. “I’m not following any of this.”
“He doesn’t know,” said Jonathan. “He doesn’t know a thing. Vesta was murdered last night, Tony, strangled, and Brian’s disappeared.”
They went up to Winston’s room because it was bigger and airier than Anthony’s. Jonathan looked round his old domain with sick eyes, and finding no hackneyed line of verse or prose to fit the situation, stretched himself full-length on the old red sofa. A freezing fog, white
in the dusk, pressed smokily against the window. Winston drew the sparingly cut curtains.
“The police came here at half-past seven this morning,” he said. “They couldn’t get an answer from Brian, so they came to me. They wanted to know when I’d last seen Brian and what sort of a mood he was in. I told them about last night. I had to.”
“You told them about all those insinuations of Potter’s, d’you mean?”
“I had to, Anthony. What would you have done? Said Brian was sober and calm and went off to bed in a happy frame of mind? They rooted Potter out, anyway. He must have missed his match. Presumably, after that, they thought they wouldn’t bother with you. And Potter must have remembered, hangover or not, because they got me down to the station and asked me if Brian had been in a jealous rage. I had to say he’d gone off looking for Vesta and him.” Winston waved his hand in the direction of the recumbent Dean.
“But it was rubbish,” said Anthony. “It was Potter’s drunken fantasy. There wasn’t any foundation for it, we all know that.”
“But there was,” said Jonathan Dean.
“You mean, you and Vesta …?”
“Oh God, of course. That’s why I moved away. We couldn’t do it here, could we? In the next room to the poor old bastard. Christ, I was with her yesterday. We spent the afternoon and most of the evening together and then we went off for a drink in the Grand Duke. She left me just before eleven to get the last bus.”
