by Ruth Rendell
Once let Ethel arrive and the eventual outcome was inevitable. Stanley glanced up at the old kitchen clock. Half-past one. Three and a half hours and she would be here.
He wandered into the dining room to find himself a more comfortable chair but it was chilly in there and the excessive neatness had about it an almost funereal air. The laid and spread table was covered by a second cloth, as white as snow. Indeed, the whole arrangement, stiff and frigid-looking, gave the impression of a hillocky landscape blanketed by crisp fresh snow. Stanley approached the table and lifted the cloth, then pulled it away entirely.
In the centre of the table stood a pillar of red salmon, still keeping the cylindrical shape of the can from which it had come, and surrounded by circles of cucumber and radishes cut to look like flowers. This dish was flanked by one of beetroot swimming in vinegar, another of potato salad and a third of cole slaw. Three cut loaves of different varieties awaited Maud’s attention when her guest arrived. The butter, standing in two glass dishes, had been cut about and decorated with a fork. Next Stanley saw a cold roast chicken with a large canned tongue beside it, and on the perimeter of the table three large cakes, two iced and bound with paper frills and one Dundee. Chocolate biscuits and ginger nuts had been arranged in patterns on a doily and there were half a dozen little glass dishes containing fish paste, honey, lemon curd and three kinds of jam.
All that fuss, Stanley thought, for an old woman who was no better than a common servant. Sausages or fish fingers were good enough for him. So this was the way they meant to live once they’d got all their sneaking underhand plans fixed up? He dropped the cloth back and wondered what to do with himself for the rest of the afternoon. He couldn’t go out, except into the garden, for he hadn’t a penny to bless himself with.
Then he remembered he’d seen Vera drop some loose change into the pocket of her raincoat the night before. She hadn’t worn that coat this morning because the early part of the day had been bright and summery. Stanley went upstairs and opened his wife’s wardrobe. Hoping for a windfall of five bob or so which would take him to the pictures, he felt in the pockets, but both were empty. He swore softly.
It had begun to rain, a light drizzle. Vera would get wet and serve her damn well right. Five past two. The whole grey empty afternoon stretched before him with an old women’s tea party at the end of it. Might as well be dead, he thought, throwing himself on the bed.
He lay there, his hands behind his head, miserably contemplating the cracked and pock-marked ceiling which a fly traversed with slow determination like a single astronaut crossing the bleak surface of the moon. The Telegraph was on the bedside table where he had left it that morning, and he picked it up. He didn’t intend to do the puzzle—that he was saving to alleviate the deeper gloom of the coming evening—but looked instead at the deaths’ column which ran parallel to the crossword clues.
How different his life would be if between the announcements of the departure of Keyes, Harold, and Konrad, Franz Wilhelm, there appeared Kinaway, Maud, beloved wife of the late George Kinaway and dear mother of Vera…. He scanned the column unhappily. Talk about threescore years and ten being man’s allotted span! Why, to find a man or woman dying in their late eighties was commonplace, and Stanley counted three well over ninety. Maud might easily live another twenty years. In twenty years’ time he’d be sixty-five. God, it didn’t bear thinking of…
Stanley was aroused from this dismal reverie by the front doorbell ringing. Only the girl come to read the gas meter, he supposed. Let her ring. By now Maud was snoring so loudly that he could hear her through the wall. So much for all that rubbish about being a light sleeper and hearing every sound.
She had overtired herself with all that unaccustomed work. A tiny shred of hope returned as Stanley wondered if the work and the excitement had perhaps been too much for her. All that polishing and bending down and reaching up …
The bell rang again.
It could be his new bale of peat arriving. Stanley got off the bed. The rain had stopped. He poked his head out of the window and, seeing no seedsman’s van parked in the street, was about to withdraw it when a stout figure backed out on to the path from under the overhanging canopy of the porch.
Stanley hadn’t seen Ethel Carpenter since his wedding but he had no doubt that this was she. The frizzy hair under the scarlet felt helmet she wore was greyish white now instead of greyish brown but otherwise she seemed unchanged.
She waved her umbrella at him and called out, “It’s Stanley, isn’t it? I thought for a minute there was nobody in.”
Stanley made no reply to this. He banged down the window, cursing. His first thought was to go into the next room and shake Maud till she woke up, but that would put Maud into a furious temper, which she would assuage by abusing him violently in the presence of this fat old woman in the red hat. Better perhaps to let Ethel Carpenter in himself. Two or three hours’ chatting alone with her was Stanley’s idea of hell on earth, but on the other hand he might use the time profitably to put in some propaganda work.
On his way down, he peered in at Maud but she was still snoring with her mouth open. He trailed downstairs and opened the front door.
“I thought you were never coming,” said Ethel.
“Bit early, aren’t you? We didn’t expect you till five.”
“My landlady’s new lodger came in a bit before time, so I thought I might as well be on my way. I know Maud’ll be sleeping, so you needn’t wake her up. Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?”
Stanley shrugged. This old woman had an even more shrewish and shrill manner than Maud and he could see he was in for a fine time. Ethel Carpenter trotted past him into the hall, leaving her two suitcases on the doorstep. Treating me like a bloody porter, thought Stanley, going to pick them up. God, they weighed a ton! What had she got in them? Gold bars?
“Heavy, aren’t they? I reckon I’ve nearly broke my back lugging them all the way from the station. I’m not supposed to carry weights, not with my blood pressure, but seeing as you haven’t got no car and couldn’t put yourself out to meet me, I didn’t have much option.”
Stanley dumped the cases on the gleaming mosaic floor. “I was going to meet you,” he lied. “Only you were coming at five.”
“Well, we needn’t have a ding-dong about it. By all accounts, you’re fond of a row. There, I’m coming over dizzy again. The room’s just going round and round.”
Ethel Capenter put one hand up to her head and made her way somewhat less briskly than before into the seldom used front room Vera and Maud called the lounge.
“I had a couple of dizzy spells on my way here,” she said, adding proudly, “my blood pressure was two hundred and fifty last time I saw my doctor.”
Another one, thought Stanley. Another one moaning about something no one could prove and using it to get out of doing a hand’s turn. For his part, he was beginning to believe, despite all his reading, that there was no such thing as blood pressure.
“Don’t you want to take your things off?” he said gloomily. Get her upstairs and maybe Maud would wake up. He saw that any anti-Maud propaganda he might have in mind would fall on stony ground. “D’you want to see your room?”
“May as well.” Ethel took her hand from her head and shook herself. “The giddiness has passed off. Well, that’s a relief. I’ll have my cases up at the same time. Lead on, Macduff.”
Stanley struggled up the stairs after her. Anybody would think by the weight of them that she was coming for a fortnight. Maybe she was…. Christ, he thought.
In the spare room Ethel took off her hat and coat and laid them on the bed. Then she unpinned her scarf to stand revealed in a wool dress of brilliant kingfisher blue. She was about Maud’s build but fatter and much redder in the face. She surveyed the room and sniffed the daffodils.
“I’ve been to this house before,” she said. “There, you didn’t know that, did you? I came with Maud and George when they were thinking of buying it for Vee.” Stanl
ey clenched his teeth at this reminder, certainly intentionally made, of the true ownership of the house. “I thought you’d have bettered yourself by now.”
“What’s wrong with it? It suits me.”
“Tastes differ, I daresay.” Ethel patted her hair. “I’ll just have a peep at Maud and then we’ll go down again, shall we? We don’t want to wake her up.”
Grimly resigning himself to fate, Stanley said, “You won’t wake her. It’d take a bomb falling to wake her. She always sleeps her three hours out.”
A sentimental smile on her face, Ethel gazed at her friend. Then, closing the door, she resumed a more truculent and severe expression.
“That’s no way to talk about Vee’s mother. Everything you’ve got you owe to her. I knew you’d be here when I came, being as you’re on the dole, and I thought we might have a little talk, you and me.”
“You did, did you? What about?”
“I don’t want to stand about on the landing. The giddiness is coming over me again. We’ll go downstairs.”
“It strikes me,” said Stanley, “you’d be better lying down if you feel queer. I’ve got to go out, anyway. I’ve got things to see to.”
Once in the lounge she sank heavily into a chair and lay back in silence, her breath coming in rough gasps. Stanley watched her, convinced she was putting on a show for his benefit. No doubt, she thought she’d get a cup of tea out of him this way.
Presently she sighed and, opening her large black handbag, took out a lace handkerchief with which she dabbed at her face. For the time being she seemed to have forgotten her plan to take him to task, for when she spoke her voice was mild and shaky and her attention caught by a framed photograph of Vera and Stanley which stood on the marble mantelpiece. It had been taken at their wedding and Vera, deriving no pleasure from looking at it, usually kept it in a drawer. But Maud, determined to brighten up this gloomy room, had got it out again along with a pair of green glass vases, a Toby jug and a statuette of a nude maiden, all of which were wedding presents.
“I’ve got that picture myself,” said Ethel. “It stands by my bed. Or stood, I should say, seeing that it’s packed in the trunk I’m having sent on with all my other little bits.”
“Sent on to Green Lanes?” asked Stanley hopefully.
“That’s it. Fifty-two Green Lanes, to Mrs. Paterson’s.” She stared at the picture. “No, I don’t reckon that’s the same as my one. My one’s got the bridesmaids in, if I remember rightly. Let’s have a closer look.”
As soon as she got to her feet she became dizzy again. Although it went against the grain with him, Stanley got up to give her his arm. But Ethel made a little movement of independence, a gesture of waving him away. She took a step forward, and as she did so, her face contorted and she gave a hollow groan, an almost animal sound, the like of which Stanley had never heard before from a human being.
This time he started forward, both arms outstretched, but Ethel Carpenter, groaning again, staggered and fell heavily to the floor before he could catch her.
“My Christ,” said Stanley, dropping to his knees.
He took her wrist and felt for a pulse. The hand sank limply into his. Then he tried her heart. Her eyes were wide open and staring. Stanley got up. He had no doubt at all that she was dead.
It was twenty-five to three.
Stanley’s first thought was to go for Mrs. Blackmore. He knocked at the front door of number 59 but there was no one in. There was no need to knock at Mrs. Macdonald’s. Underneath the figures 63 a note had been pinned: “Gone to shops. Back 3:30.” The street was deserted.
Back in the house a thought struck him. Who but he knew that Ethel Carpenter had ever arrived? And immediately this idea was followed by another, terrible, daring, wonderful and audacious.
Maud would sleep till four at least. He looked dispassionately at the body of Ethel Carpenter, speculatively, calculatingly, without pity. There was no doubt she had died of a stroke. She had overdone it. Her blood pressure had been dangerously high and carrying those cases three quarters of a mile had been the last straw. It was cruelly unfair. No one profited by her death, no one would be a scrap the happier, while Maud who had so much to leave behind her …
And of a stroke too, the one death Maud had to have if he was ever going to get his hands on that twenty thousand. Why couldn’t it have been Maud lying there? Stanley clenched his hands. Why not do it? Why not? He had a good hour and a half.
Suppose it didn’t work out? Suppose they rumbled him? There wasn’t much they could do to him if one of them, Maud or Vera or some nosy neighbour, came in while he was in the middle of his arrangements. They might put him inside for a bit. But a couple of months in jail was better than the life he lived. And if it came off, if the hour and a half went well, he’d be rich and free and happy!
In his last term at school, when he was fifteen, Stanley had taken part in the school play. None of the boys had understood what it was all about; nor, come to that, had the audience. Stanley had forgotten all about it until now when some lines from it came back to him, returning not just as rubbish he had had to learn by heart, regardless of their meaning, but as highly significant advice, relevant to his own dilemma.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current while it serves
Or lose our ventures.
If ever a man was afloat on a full sea it was Stanley Manning. These iambic pentameters, hitherto meaningless, had come into his mind as a direct command. If he had been a religious man, he would have thought them from God.
The telephone was in the lounge where Ethel Carpenter lay. He ran upstairs two at a time to make sure Maud was still asleep and then he shut himself in the lounge, drew a deep breath and dialled the number of Dr. Moxley’s surgery. Ten to one the doctor wouldn’t be in and they’d tell him to phone for an ambulance and then it would all be over.
But Dr. Moxley was in, his last afternoon patient just gone. So far, so good, thought Stanley, trembling. The receptionist put him through and presently the doctor spoke.
“Ill come now before I make any of my other calls. Mr. Manning, you said? Sixty-one Lanchester Road? Who is it you think has died?”
“My mother-in-law,” said Stanley firmly. “My wife’s mother, Mrs. Maud Kinaway.”
2
Across
7
When he put the phone down Stanley was shaking all over. He’d have to take the next step before the doctor came and his courage almost failed him. There was a half bottle of brandy, nearly full, in the sideboard and Stanley, sick and shivering, got it out and drank deep. It wouldn’t matter if Dr. Moxley smelt it on his breath as it was only natural for a man to want a drink when his mother-in-law had fallen down dead in front of him.
Vee would have to see the body, a body. That meant he’d have to be careful about how he did it. God, he couldn’t do it! He hadn’t the strength, his hands weren’t steady enough to swat a fly, let alone … But if Maud were to come down while the doctor was there …
Stanley drank some more brandy and wiped his mouth. He went out into the dark still passage and listened. Maud’s snores throbbed through the house with the regularity of a great heart beating. Stanley’s own had begun to pound.
The doorbell rang and he nearly fainted from the shock.
Dr. Moxley couldn’t have got there already. It wasn’t humanly possible. Christ, suppose it was Vee forgotten her key? He staggered to the door. This way he’d have a stroke himself…
“Afternoon, sir. One bale of peat as ordered.”
It was in a green plastic sack. Stanley looked from it to the man and back again, speechless with relief.
“You all right, mate? You look a bit under the weather.”
“I’m all right,”
Stanley mumbled.
“Well, you know best. It’s all paid for. Shall I shove it in your shed?”
“I’ll do that. Thanks very much.”
Dragging the sack through the side entrance, Stanley heard Mrs. Blackmore pass along the other side of the fence. He ducked his head. When he heard her door slam he tipped the peat out on to the shed floor and covered it with the empty sack.
Seeing two other people circumstanced very much like himself, the delivery man who lived, he knew, in a poky council flat, and Mrs. Blackmore, a tired drudge with a chronic inability to manage on her housekeeping, brought Stanley back to reality and hard fact. He must do it now, vacillate no longer. If he had been as familiar with Hamlet as he was with Julius Caesar, he would have told himself that his earlier hesitation, his moment of scruples, was only the native hue of resolution sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.
He closed the front door behind him and mounted the stairs, holding his hands clenched in front of him. Maud was quiet now. God, suppose she was up, dressed, ready to come down …? Outside her door he knelt down and looked through the keyhole. She was still asleep.
It seemed to Stanley that never in his life had he been aware of such silence, the traffic in the street lulled, no birds singing, his own heart suspending its beats until the deed was done. The silence, heavy and unnatural, was like that which is said to precede an earthquake. It frightened him. He wanted to shout aloud and break it or hear, even in the distance, a human voice. He and Maud might be alone in an empty depopulated world.
The hinges of the door had been oiled a week before because Maud complained that they squeaked, and the door opened without a sound. He went to the bed and stood looking down at her. She slept like a contented child. His thoughts were so violent, so screwed to courage that he felt they must communicate themselves to her and wake her up. He drew a deep breath and put out his hands to seize the pillow from under her head.
