by Ruth Rendell
‘A wife should be at home waiting for her husband to return from breadwinning.’
‘That’s a bit outdated, isn’t it?’
‘If everyone behaved themselves like what you call outdated,’ said Beacon, ‘the world would be a better place.’
Nevertheless, she tried again.
‘Mr Still’s keys are his own business.’
‘I was only trying to be helpful,’ said Montserrat.
‘The best help you can give is to open Mr Still’s front door when he rings his bell. If he’s forgotten his keys which I personally doubt.’
Lunch in a pub with Ciaran, which ended in a row because Montserrat told him he couldn’t come that evening, was followed by a walk round the shops in Sloane Street with Rabia and Thomas and a visit to Harrods to buy Thomas a tracksuit.
‘Does she give you an American Express card?’
‘Just to buy clothes for Thomas and pay for his haircuts.’
‘I expect you buy bits for yourself as well, don’t you? She’d never notice.’
‘She trusts me,’ said Rabia, shocked. ‘I would never do that.’
‘Pity Beacon’s married. You and him were made for each other.’
They bought Thomas a pale blue fleecy tracksuit with a white rabbit appliquéd on the breast pocket.
‘Could you be at home to let your cousin in when he comes tomorrow?’
‘If you like,’ said Rabia. ‘A chat with Mohammed would be good. He’s my favourite cousin. I shall introduce him to Thomas, he loves children.’
As if the child were her own, thought Montserrat.
‘You won’t mind,’ said June, ‘if Her Highness and me watch our recording of Avalon Clinic, series one, episode one, while you’re here, will you?’
Rad made a face, pretending to be shy, but June knew he was secretly delighted. She looked critically at him, wondering why women found men with long hair attractive. Her own tastes in that area had been fixed in the 1950s when a man would only have worn his hair in a ponytail if he had been acting in a film about the French Revolution. She operated the remote with swift skill in a way the Princess had never learned, and the Avalon’s nationwide introductory music blasted into the room, vying with the fireworks which were now well under way. Both women were rather deaf. The Princess sighed her appreciation as handsome Rad in his white coat, bristling with stethoscopes, a sphygmomanometer dangling from one hand, strode into the room. The real live Rad was sitting next to her on the sofa. She reached for his real live hand and squeezed it.
‘Let’s have a bottle of TDTINW,’ she said to June.
June recognised these initial letters as The Drink That Is Never Wrong and fetched a bottle of champagne, thus missing a vital part of the plot. Rad wasn’t going to open it, not he, so he sat tight, periodically squeezing the Princess’s hand in turn, while June filled the glasses.
‘Going to see Montserrat, are you?’
She asked because she knew that for some reason he disliked being asked. It was such a comedown for him after that model and that socialite divorcee.
‘Not tonight,’ he said.
June couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not. The commercial break she didn’t know how to cut out of the recording came to an end and they all watched till it finished just before seven.
‘Have another one before you go,’ said the Princess.
Rad said he wouldn’t but gave her a kiss which was more than he was inclined to do to June. Neither woman watched him go. His association with Montserrat, if indeed it existed, lacked glamour. Next door in the area of number 8 Miss Grieves had come out of the basement door to shoo the urban fox away. A chicken carcass in its jaws, it scooted up the steps with Miss Grieves in pursuit. Not hot pursuit but a cold, slower variety, a clumsy plodding which succeeded in getting to the top in the end, by which time the fox and the chicken had disappeared. A brilliant flare burst in the front garden of number 5, illuminating the whole front as well as the area of number 7. The fox was revealed tucking into the chicken in the front garden and Rad Sothern in his hidey-hole, just in fact stepping out of it, as Montserrat opened the basement door. Miss Grieves turned away and lumbered back down the stairs.
Montserrat had also run downstairs, the basement stairs, avoiding the faulty banister. She let Rad in and said a not very cordial ‘Hi’. Having his hair tied back like that made his face look very thin. He wasn’t as tall as Ciaran and his front teeth needed crowning. That must be why he smiled so seldom in his role as Mr Fortescue. She stepped back for him to pass along the passage.
‘Look out for the loose banister,’ she said.
He took no notice, cursed when it wobbled in his hand. She didn’t knock on Lucy’s door but opened it, pushed Rad inside and then ran upstairs to Rabia. Hero and Matilda had eaten their dinner in the nursery kitchen and were now playing computer games in their shared bedroom. Having completely changed his sleeping habits as small children will, Thomas was fast asleep and Rabia was ironing the white blouses and navy-blue pleated skirts the girls would wear for school on Monday.
‘Why aren’t they out at someone’s bonfire party?’
‘Mr Still says it’s dangerous,’ said Rabia.
‘Lucy’s got company this evening,’ said Montserrat, ‘so keep the girls up here, will you?’
Rabia said she didn’t want to hear and put her fingers in her ears.
The fireworks reached a zenith of explosive noise at about eight. The flashes of light, zigzags and branches, the pyrotechnic displays of feathers and banners and fountains, red, white, emerald green and sapphire blue, achieved their maximum brilliance on the far side of the river half an hour later and then gradually began to subside. By nine, when Beacon drew up in the Audi outside number 7 Hexam Place, the occasional rocket still split the sky but most of the celebrations were over, to begin again the following night with equal force.
Beacon got out of the car to open the nearside rear door for Mr Still. It was his habit to stand there courteously until his employer had let himself in by the front door. Mr Still mounted the first four steps before he started feeling in his pockets. A puzzled frown on his face, he came down the steps again, said, ‘I didn’t drop my keys on the back seat, did I, Beacon?’
‘Can’t see them, sir. Let me look.’
Preston Still also looked. No keys.
‘Montserrat will be there to let you in, sir.’
‘No, no, not necessary. I’ve got my key to the area gate and the one to the basement door.’
The gate in the area railings was never locked, as far as Beacon knew. He watched Mr Still descend the stairs, cast his eyes up to watch a rocket explode above the roof of number 4 and caught sight of Montserrat’s face at a window on the ground floor. Time to go home, with luck getting there just as Avalon Clinic started.
From the window it was impossible for anyone to see more than the six lowest steps. Montserrat could no longer see Mr Still but she guessed that he must be climbing the remaining stairs to the front door where he would ring the bell. He was earlier than she expected and she had no time to waste. She called Lucy on her mobile, then ran up to the first floor where Rad Sothern was just coming out of Lucy’s room. ‘He’s on the doorstep,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll ring the bell any minute.’
‘Oh God.’
‘It’ll be OK. Come with me and you can wait in my flat while I let him in.’
This was never to happen but a lot of others things did. Montserrat led Rad down the staircase from the first floor and along the passage towards the basement stairs. A light was on in the passage but not at the foot of the stairs. As Rad with Montserrat behind him was within a yard or so, Preston Still appeared at the top of the basement stairs, first his head, then his chest, the whole of him quite rapidly emerging. Montserrat had never before noticed what a big man he was, very tall, broad and heavy. She gave a sort of hoarse gasp. Rad said, ‘Oh God,’ for the second time and stopped.
Mr Still advanced towards him, sai
d, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and then, ‘I’ve seen you before.’
Considering that the whole country had seen Rad before, that half of them were watching him on their screens at that moment, it was a remark that meant very little. Montserrat could see it had a different meaning for Preston Still who was seldom at home in time to watch television. ‘At the Princess’s party,’ he said, ‘making unwelcome advances to my wife.’
It apparently dawned on him before the words were out that the advances had been anything but unwelcome, and as Rad tried to push past him and reach the stairs, he seized him from behind, gripping him by the shoulders. Things happened fast after that. Montserrat would never have believed Preston Still capable of such athletic feats. He slammed his foot into the small of Rad’s back and, lurching forward with a grunt, shoved with all his force. It was a kicking downstairs, the classic violent way of expelling a man from a house.
Rad might have slithered forward, bumping down the stairs, if he hadn’t clutched at the faulty banister. It came away in his hand with a grinding crunch of splintered wood and he toppled over, shouting out, plunging head first down the dark well of the staircase to land on his head on the tiled floor. It was like a dive into water that wasn’t there. The crash the impact made was drowned by the noisiest explosion of the evening, a firework let off in Eaton Square.
CHAPTER TEN
The fireworks were over and no sound came from the children’s rooms on the second floor. It seemed from her silence that Lucy had heard nothing. Montserrat stood listening to that silence before following Preston Still down the stairs. Rad Sothern’s head lay in a pool of blood that was spreading across the black-and-white tiles. If anyone had told Montserrat that she would react to such a scene as this not with horror and fear but with mounting excitement she would not have believed them. But so it was. Whatever happened next, she wanted to be involved in it. Everything would come out now, Lucy’s affair with a TV personality, a celebrity, the part she, Montserrat, played and was forced into in order to keep her job and her accommodation, Preston Still, insurance magnate in the City, millionaire, driven to madness by his wife’s infidelity …
He was kneeling by Rad. He said in a small thin voice, quite unlike his own, ‘I think he’s dead.’
‘He can’t be,’ she said, and again. ‘He can’t be.’
‘He’s not breathing, he’s got no pulse.’
In creating her scenario, she hadn’t thought for moment Rad Sothern could be dead. People don’t die from falling downstairs. The excitement was still there but mixed now with awe. ‘What shall we do?’
‘Get the police, of course.’
She said inconsequentially, ‘He doesn’t look very heavy.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We could wrap him up in something and pull him into my flat. We can’t leave him here.’
‘My God,’ said Preston Still, ‘I can’t believe he’s dead. I feel as if I’m asleep, I’m going to wake up in a minute.’
‘People always feel like that when something horrendous happens.’
Montserrat went into her flat and came out with a blanket. She knelt down and began easing Rad Sothern’s body onto the blanket and gradually to roll him over.
‘How can you?’ Preston Still’s voice rose an octave. ‘Stop it. Stop doing that. You’re never supposed to move someone who’s been – well, who’s met a violent death. We have to get the police.’
The idea of that frightened her more than the fact that Rad was dead. ‘You want to be arrested, do you? They’ll say it’s murder.’
‘For God’s sake, I only gave him a push. It was that banister that was responsible for his death.’
‘Help me get him through that door,’ said Montserrat.
She could tell that Mr Still, whom she was already in her thoughts calling Preston, was far more squeamish than she was. He had to look away as she pushed and he pulled Rad Sothern’s body into her flat. He would have closed the door if she hadn’t said, ‘We can’t leave that blood there like that.’
‘It has to be left there for the police.’
She said nothing but cast up her eyes. Probably he’d never in his life mopped a floor, he wouldn’t know how to do it. He was a man. Montserrat was no housewife but she hadn’t reached the age of twenty-two without, at any rate once, washing a tiled floor. There was a bucket in the cupboard under the sink. It had never been used as far as she knew but it was capable of holding water and it had a handle. With a sponge from the bathroom and a bottle of washing-up liquid, she set to work. When Preston saw the red water, itself like foaming blood, he shuddered and once more turned away.
‘I think I’ve got it all up. It wouldn’t do for a real police examination, tests and all that, but we aren’t going to have that, are we? We’re not getting the police.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You haven’t got any blood on you, have you?’
‘You’re like Lady Macbeth,’ he said in a slow level voice like a zombie. ‘Wash your hands, put on your nightgown –’
‘Come on now. Get yourself together. I’m going to get us a drink. There’s some whisky in the drawing room.’
They hadn’t really done anything, she thought, as she went upstairs to fetch the whisky. All Preston had done was give that TV guy a hard push. Rad would be alive now if the people she’d called to mend the banister had come immediately. Try telling the police that, though. The trouble with Preston was that, big insurance tycoon he might be, he’d led a sheltered life. Didn’t know he was born, as her father might say. His natural solution to anything that smacked of the illegal was to call the police. Never mind that they’d take it for granted he’d killed Rad because Rad was his wife’s lover. No question. Of course Preston was so naive that he still didn’t realise this. She would tell him, she had to. He was sitting in one of the two armchairs when she went into the flat, lying back with his hands hanging, staring into space.
She had already had a swig of whisky from the bottle. She handed him a glass, set her own down on the coffee table. He spoke without looking at her. ‘I suppose that man had been visiting Lucy.’ She nodded, took a gulp of the whisky. ‘Where did you come into it?’
‘We weren’t a threesome if that’s what you’re thinking. I always let him in by the basement door and took him along to her room.’
Now he turned his eyes on her and she saw anger there. She also saw that he was quite good-looking and his voice was beautiful.
‘You were the psychopomp,’ he said.
‘The what?’
‘A conductor of souls to hell.’
Montserrat, who was rather superstitious, found herself shuddering. She touched the body in its concealing blanket with the tip of her toe. ‘What are we going to do with him?’
‘Oh, well, nothing. He’s in here now and you obviously won’t want to sleep here yourself. You take one of the spare rooms for the night and in the morning I’ll call the police. After all, it was an accident. All that forensic stuff won’t be necessary. Once they’ve heard what I have to say and you have to say and they’ve seen the broken banister everything will be cleared up.’
‘Don’t forget they’ll have to know Lucy was in a relationship with Rad Sothern. That’s what makes all the difference. And he’s famous, was famous. Whoever’s boyfriend he was it’d still be enormous in the media. Don’t you see?’
It was the word ‘boyfriend’ that brought a dark flush to Preston’s face. ‘It was an accident,’ he said.
‘I know that and you know that but they won’t.’
Did she know it? Did he? He had pushed the man downstairs about as hard as anyone could. She felt like saying that he lived out of the world in a land of figures and statistics, stocks and shares and markets, while she knew very well what the media were and how they would react. Her earlier excitement returned when she thought of the pictures in the papers, the excerpts from Avalon Clinic on Sky News, the pictures of number 7 Hexam Place and of Lucy with her children, of Preston getting into his
car, Beacon holding the door open – and that was only if Rad had vanished, nothing to what it would be if he was found dead. ‘Best if he disappears, even better if he’s never found.’
‘We can’t do that, Montserrat.’ It was the first time – the first time ever? – he had used her given name.
‘We have to do that. It’s the only way. Think about it. Think what happens to Lucy and your children and your business and everything connected with you if you tell the police you pushed Rad Sothern down the stairs. They’ll arrest you and the media will eat you alive.’
There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘You really are Lady Macbeth. Give me some more of that Scotch, will you?’
She refilled his glass. ‘That’s enough. You’ve got to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.’
‘What does that mean?’
A recollection of the only time she had seen Macbeth came back to her. On TV it had been. It was all about a woman telling her weak husband how to behave when he’d murdered someone, wasn’t it? Appropriate. ‘You go to bed. Lucy’ll be asleep. It’s Saturday tomorrow. Tell her you’ve got to work all day. I’ve known you do that, she won’t wonder –’
‘I don’t give a shit if she does!’ he said violently.
‘I’ll sleep here – with that.’ She waved her hand in the direction of Rad’s body. ‘You come back here and we’ll put the body into something and take it away.’ Her glance fell on the car-roof box. ‘Into that thing. I got it to carry my skis on holiday but we can use it.’
‘Take it where?’
‘You’ve got a place in the country, haven’t you? Not far?’
‘In Essex. I can’t take the Audi. Beacon will have put it away for the weekend. We usually rent a car to go to Gallowmill Hall but that’s obviously not possible … Look, Montserrat, the whole thing’s not possible.’
