The Saint Zita Society

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to join you? The storm’s over and it’s stopped raining.’

  ‘Jimmy, I think it’s best for us sometimes to have an evening apart, don’t you?’

  No true lover has ever been known to make that remark. Jimmy said, ‘Mind you call me when you’re leaving and I’ll pick you up.’

  The vodka elicited a glum thank-you from Montserrat. ‘I can’t just let it go. I shall have to raise it at the next meeting of the Saint Zita Society.’

  ‘Well, that won’t be for ages. We’ve only just had a meeting.’

  ‘That was an extraordinary general meeting. We’re still due for November’s. I shall tell June and put it on the agenda.’

  She cheered up a bit after that and the two of them returned to the Chardonnay, of which they drank rather a lot. ‘We’ll have a taxi home,’ said Thea. ‘I’ll pay.’

  Another call came from Jimmy but this time Thea didn’t answer. She and Montserrat had to walk all the way to the top of Regent Street because all the cabs were taken. The place had been taken over by drunken teenagers, a revelation to Thea but nothing new to Monserrat. They waited for a bus – or a cab if one came – and one of the boys started shouting abuse at a man with ginger hair.

  ‘It’s what they do,’ Montserrat said. ‘Ginger hair, red hair, whatever, it’s the latest thing. You want to cover up your head in case they start on you.’

  For the boy, who was now shouting obscenities, had been joined by a gothic-looking girl. Thea had nothing to cover her head with, and when Montserrat offered her the scarf that was wrapped round her own neck, it was too late. If Montserrat herself had been the target of ‘fucking carrots’ and ‘ginger shithead’, she could have withstood it and returned abuse of her own, but Thea was made of more tender stuff.

  ‘Let’s go, let’s go.’ The scarf wound round her head but inadequate to cover all her hair, she was almost in tears. ‘We can walk, let’s walk.’

  ‘God knows why you didn’t accept Jimmy’s offer.’

  Shouts and shrieks pursued them. Just as they set off, determined to walk all the way if necessary, the wind and rain buffeting at them, a taxi stopped at the lights. ‘Sod’s Law,’ said Montserrat. They got in, gasping with relief.

  Yesterday’s copy of the Evening Standard lay on the back seat. Montserrat was too affected by three vodkas and several Chardonnays, too tired she called it, to notice the Standard’s front page. Thea found herself trembling from the teenagers’ insults, an attack she had never anticipated or considered possible. She read the piece in the paper to distract herself but without much interest in its subject. Bodies found in Epping Forest could be of no concern to her. It looked as if this one had been found by a yellow Labrador. In the absence of a picture of the corpse, the newspaper showed one of the dog.

  The fox was sauntering down Hexam Place. As the taxi drew up it squeezed through the railings at number 8 and ran down the area steps of number 6 in the vain hope of a find comparable to Miss Grieves’s bin. Bits of twig, plane-tree leaves the size of dinner plates and torn plastic bags lay all over the roadway, scattered by the storm. Thea paid the driver. She tried to help Montserrat to her door but her offer was indignantly refused. Thea watched her just the same and satisfied herself that her friend was more or less in control of herself.

  Number 7 was in silence, all the lights off. Montserrat, in a fuddled state but well able to walk, let herself into her flat and fell on to the bed. A raging thirst drove her into the bathroom where she drank first from the cold tap, then filled an empty wine bottle with water for the night. Funny the things you think of for no reason in the middle of the night. Her mother always said that whatever you did before you went to bed you must without fail clean your teeth and take off your make-up with cleansing cream and astringent. Montserrat hadn’t any astringent, had never possessed any, and the cleansing cream was all used up. She dropped her clothes on the floor and fell on to the bed for the second time, sinking at once into a deep sleep.

  According to the green figures on the digital clock, it was 2.37 when she woke up. It might have been thirst that woke her or a footfall in the passage outside. She drank without putting the light on, thought, must be Ciaran, maybe he said he’d come, and rolled back into half-sleep. The darkness was dense, thick like black velvet. Ciaran got into bed beside her, smelling unlike himself of some expensive male cologne. It made such a pleasant change that she turned over into his arms.

  Neither of them spoke for half an hour, during which time Montserrat drifted in and out of sleep. Whatever had happened, and it was quite involved and complicated, it was unlike any previous experience of hers for at least the past year. She felt the face that was close to hers, the arms wrapped round her, then put her hands inside the open neck of his shirt. The skin was thickly furred with hair, a forest of hair, in complete contrast to the smooth chest of Ciaran.

  ‘Oh my God, Preston,’ said Montserrat and fell immediately asleep once more.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Studleys at number 11, the Neville-Smiths at number 5 and Arsad Sohrab and Bibi Lambda at number 4 all had their Sunday and their weekday papers delivered. The others fetched them from Choudhuri’s the Newsagent’s, known as the corner shop, though it was not on a corner but halfway along Ebury Lane, or went without. Thea fetched the papers for Roland and Damian (the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph), June for the Princess and herself (the Mail on Sunday), Jimmy for Simon Jefferson (the Observer and the Independent on Sunday) and Montserrat for the Stills (also the Sunday Times) when she was fit to walk up the street.

  That Sunday morning she had a headache but nothing worse than that. She got up, wondering if she had dreamt Preston’s visit of the night before. But no, she could still smell that Hugo Boss scent and two coarse dark hairs lay on the pillow next to hers. Hexam Place was deserted as was usual on a Sunday. Winter had come. There was frost on the windscreen of the Neville-Smiths’ Mercedes. Gussie, visible on the drawing-room windowsill of number 6, was wearing his quilted coat. Montserrat made her way down to Ebury Lane. Mr Choudhuri had put the papers out onto the street, the quality ones looking discreet on the top shelf of the rack and the red tops blatant below. In spite of saying she would never look at the Mirror or the Star, it was one of their headlines that first caught her eye: IS EPPING FOREST BODY MR FORTESCUE? She stood there, reading it and the story beneath it, turned the page to see a full-page spread of a forest scene with upturned soil, police and a police car.

  ‘I hope you are buying that paper, Miss Montsy.’ Mr Choudhuri had been standing just inside the door, watching her. ‘Not just having a free look.’

  ‘Yes. Sure I am. And the Sunday Times.’

  ‘If that is for Mr Still there is no need. Already he has been here and bought his.’ Mr Choudhuri looked at his watch. ‘It is, after all, ten minutes to midday.’

  As if it was any business of his what time she got up or came for the paper. The story, which she began to read as soon as she got back, was just like all stories of bodies being found in woodland and open spaces. Foul play was suspected. There would be an inquest. The difference was that most of the other bodies had not been those of celebrities as familiar to the nation’s television viewers as their own family members. On an inside page was a photograph of Rad Sothern wearing a white coat with a stethoscope hanging round his neck, although the body had not yet been confirmed as his.

  Across the street at number 8 Damian and Roland sat having a pre-lunch sherry and reading about the discovery of the body, the former with the Sunday Times, the latter with the Sunday Telegraph. Thea had brought them the newspapers and was about to go out with Jimmy in the Lexus.

  ‘Have you ever seen this sitcom or whatever it is this guy Sothern is in?’ said Damian to Roland.

  ‘Good heavens, no.’

  ‘I may have seen him. In the flesh, I mean. He seems to be a family connection or “loved one”, as we are supposed to say these days, of someone round here. Ho
wever, if there’s any sort of police inquiry I shall deny it.’

  ‘Better to keep entirely out of anything like that,’ said Roland. ‘And you should too, Thea. Don’t let that friend of yours, Manzanilla or whatever she’s called, draw you into it.’

  ‘Montserrat,’ said Thea. ‘Manzanilla is the sherry.’

  ‘So it is. Shall we have another glass?’

  Simon Jefferson’s musical horn sounded in the street below, a cadence rather like the Last Post. She ran downstairs to Jimmy. No, he hadn’t seen a Sunday paper, he never read papers. Why bother when you had the telly? Thea was realising how different a person can turn out to be from what you thought he was when first you tried to fall in love with him. Should she tell him about those teenagers in Regent Street last night? If she was going to get engaged to him she ought to be able to confide in him, tell him about things that worried her.

  ‘It was because I’ve got red hair,’ she said.

  His advice disappointed her. ‘Just ignore it, sweetheart.’

  The front page of Friday’s Evening Standard, greasy from Thai takeaway, had floated over the railings during the night and come to rest on top of the bin in the area of number 8. Miss Grieves saw it from her front window and read the headline but waited until the butter-coloured Lexus had gone before putting on her dressing gown and coming out to retrieve it. Missing persons always interested her, especially in the unlikely but possible event of their being celebrities. Newspapers were not among her regular purchases but she intended to buy one now. It took her, as always, a long time to dress and put on the beaver lamb coat which had been her mother’s and the Ugg boots she had got Thea to buy for her the previous winter. These boots, reduced in the sales on account of their being pink in colour, she had practically lived in during February and March and was now returning to with relief.

  With no Thea to help her up the steps, she had to manage on her own. It was ten years since she had been to the paper shop and when she got there – it took her a quarter of an hour – she found that it was no longer run by Mr and Mrs Davis but had been taken over by an Indian man. She would have found things less bewildering if the shop had been hung with Indian streamers and mass-produced statuettes of many-armed gods but it was full of Christmas decorations, cards and wrapping paper and artificial coniferous trees. However, the man called her madam which she liked and fetched the paper of her choice, the Sunday Telegraph. The price appalled her but she said nothing. The cost of everything had rocketed since she had been out of the world.

  Back at home she read the story, using a magnifying glass as well as her glasses. The photograph of Rad Sothern left her in no doubt. Their saying his identity hadn’t been confirmed meant nothing to her. That was who it was, the same man as she had seen on her television and also seen sneaking into the basement of number 7.

  There was nothing on the television to say whether the body was that of Rad Sothern. June sat by the phone with Gussie on her lap, waiting for the police to call her, probably Detective Sergeant Freud, to ask her to come down to this or that police station or mortuary and make an identification. They were bound to ask her as Rad’s great-aunt. The Princess was spending the evening watching a rerun of the second series of Avalon Clinic, the steamy episodes where Mr Fortescue got very sexual with Staff Nurse Debbie Wilson. When it got to nine and they hadn’t phoned June went back to the drawing room with two stiff gins. She took off Gussie’s coat for the night and the Princess said, ‘There’s no point in doing that. You’ll only have to put it on again to take him out.’

  June sighed. She had decided it was too cold to go out but the Princess said a dog had to have his walk no matter what the weather. ‘I don’t know why you thought the police would phone you when that girl Rocksana is obviously his next of kin.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it next of kin,’ said June. ‘That’s what I am.’

  Round the corner in St Barnabas Mews she met Montserrat putting her car away.

  ‘I’m ever so sorry, June.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘It was on the news just now. It was your grandson.’

  ‘My great-nephew.’

  ‘Comes to the same thing really, doesn’t it?

  ‘We shall have the police round here in droves tomorrow,’ said June. ‘You needn’t worry. I shan’t tell them anything about you and him.’

  ‘Me and him? I only spoke to him once.’

  ‘That’s the best angle to take, my dear. What I think is it’s best for everyone not to know a thing. It’s different for me and the Princess of course. We were his friends. We’re very close to Miss Castelli, as a matter of fact.’

  June said goodnight and walked back, tugged by the now shivering Gussie. A figure descending the area steps at number 7 gave her a bit of a shock. It was like seeing a ghost, only in black robes, not white. But the features that turned to her, peeping out of a dark cloth, were not a skull but the pretty face of Rabia returning from her weekend off. The Stills’ nanny raised one hand in a polite gesture of greeting, dipped her head and passed on down the steps to let herself in by the basement door.

  On the other side of that door, Montserrat waited for Preston. Would he just arrive again without warning? Would the identification of the body as Rad’s make any difference? Just before eleven he phoned. He would like to talk to her on a matter of business. Now? said Montserrat. Yes, now. She had taken her clothes off but she put them on again, leggings – funny how they’d come right back into fashion – and a tight dark red sweater. Waiting for him, she asked herself what he could possibly mean by business but came up with no answer. This time he tapped on the door.

  He looked pale and worried. Business or not, she had been sure he would bring a bottle of wine with him but he was empty-handed. Montserrat was sitting on the bed.

  ‘Lucy’s in a dreadful state,’ he said. ‘screaming and crying over that man.’

  ‘You mean she’s screaming and crying at you?’

  He sat down on the one chair in the room. ‘Who else has she got? But I didn’t come down to tell you that. They know it’s Rad Sothern now, as I expect you know. Now you and I won’t say a word if the police question us. We didn’t know him, never saw him, and that’s all it amounts to. But what about Lucy?’

  ‘She’s not going to tell them he was shagging her.’

  ‘Oh, please. Must you use that word? No, she’s not going to say they were having some kind of – well, relationship, but she’s afraid he may have told someone about her. After all, she’s a well-known socialite. She had her picture in the Evening Standard only a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know what you think you’re laughing at.’

  Montserrat composed her features. ‘Do men do that? I mean, tell their mates?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t do that sort of thing.’

  This time she did laugh and heartily. ‘Come on. What were you up to here last night or were you sleepwalking?’

  He blushed, the way she had never seen a man of forty blush before. His whole face and neck became the colour of her sweater. She shook her head, smiling at him. ‘Now listen. You haven’t been so crazy as to tell Lucy anything about us taking Rad out to Essex and all that, have you? No? Sure?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, don’t. If the police come here to talk to any of us we just say we didn’t know him, we never met him. June at number 6, she was his great-aunt or his grandma, I don’t know, but she says she won’t say she saw him speak to me, she wants to keep it looking like he was faithful to that Rocksana woman. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘There’s no one else saw anything. You’re not getting back with Lucy, are you?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. I can never forgive her.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘Gone to sleep. I gave her a sleeping pill.

  ‘Then why don’t you go and find a bottle of wine somewhere and come back here for the night?’

  Comin
g out of Tesco with shopping for Miss Grieves, her regular Monday-morning task before she had her first class at eleven thirty, Thea almost bumped into Henry coming out of Homebase. Henry had been buying a bolt, or rather two bolts, for his room (or studio flat as his employer called it) at number 11. He smiled, said hi and it was a lovely day but nothing about the bolts. Convinced that it was a good idea to have the means to make his door secure, he was worried just the same that if Lord Studley found out he might make a fuss about damage to the woodwork. All the doors on the upper floors of number 11 were made of beautiful tropical hardwoods and even those in the basement similarly panelled, painted ivory and with brass fingerplates. But for his peace of mind he could no longer risk Huguette coming to his room or, come to that, her mother coming to his room while she was there, without adequate safety measures being taken.

  It would do no harm for Thea to know, but still, better safe than sorry was an excellent maxim. He had walked to the shops from Hexam Place, leaving the Beemer on the residents’ parking. Another thing Lord Studley made a fuss about was his car being used for anything but fetching and carrying himself and his family. He was no Simon Jefferson, Henry often thought ruefully. He might just as well use the few hours before returning to pick up His Lordship from the Peers’ Entrance in putting the new bolts on his door. Then, later on, there was yet another extraordinary general meeting of the Saint Zita Society.

  Its purpose, Thea was recalling as she banged hard on the basement door, was to discuss what was to be done about the exclusion of the ‘staff’ from Damian and Roland’s guest list. Miss Grieves came, shuffling along in the Ugg boots she wouldn’t take off again till the spring, maybe not even at night, Thea thought. She handed over the lighter bag of shopping and brought the other in herself.

  As was often the case, Miss Grieves was ready with a question expecting the answer no. ‘You don’t want a cup of tea, do you?’