by Ruth Rendell
The sun was coming up, for it was very early morning, and Stanley struck across the meadow, soaking his trousers in dew up to his knees. In the village no one was up yet. But his mother would be up. She had always been an early riser. The cottage door opened when he pushed it in and he went in, calling her.
He heard her coming down the stairs and went to the foot of them, looking up. His mother came down. She had grown old and she used a stick. First he saw her legs and her skirt, for the stairs had become long and steep in his long absence, and at last her face. He started back, crying something aloud. It wasn’t his mother’s face, but Maud’s, waxen yellow, the teeth bared, blood running from a wound in her scalp….
He awoke screaming, only the screams came out as a strangled groan. It took him several minutes to re-orientate himself, to realise it had been a dream and that Maud was dead. After that he couldn’t sleep again. He got up and walked about the house, looking first in on Maud and then into the spare room. The daffodils Maud had picked for Ethel gleamed whitely at him in the thin moonlight.
He went downstairs where he felt it was safe to put a light on. The house smelt of food, tinned fish and cold meats which wouldn’t keep long because there was nothing to preserve them. Now that he had come to himself and the dream was fading, he was struck by a sudden anxiety that he had failed to take some important step. He had forgotten to do something but he couldn’t think what that something was. He sat down and put his head in his hands.
Then he remembered. Nothing so very important after all. For the first time in twenty years he had passed a day without doing the crossword puzzle.
He found the Daily Telegraph and a ballpoint pen. The sight of the virgin puzzle sent a little thrill of pleasure through him. Funny how just looking at the empty puzzle frame, the exquisitely symmetrical mosaic, brought him peace and steadied his shaking hands. He must have done thousands of them, he thought. Six a week times fifty-two times twenty. God, that was six thousand, two hundred and forty puzzles, not counting all the ones in his crossword paperbacks and annuals.
Stanley picked up the pen.
One across: “Calf-love may decide one to take this German language course” (two words, six, eight). Stanley pondered only for a moment before filling in “Wiener Schnitzel.” His body relaxed as if it was immersed in a warm bath and he smiled.
9
The alarm went off at seven.
Vera was out of bed and halfway to the bathroom before she remembered. She came back, wondering whether there was any point in waking Stanley, but he was awake and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
“I’m up now,” she said. “I may as well go to work.”
“I should. It’ll take your mind off things.”
But he couldn’t be sure she really would, she dithered and hesitated so much, until he saw her actually going down the path. As soon as she was out of sight he fetched in the empty peat sack and took it upstairs. Better remove Maud’s wedding ring and slip it on Ethel’s finger. Funny, the way it made him feel so squeamish. He was glad he hadn’t eaten the eggs and bacon Vera had offered him for breakfast.
Ethel had a ring of her own which she wore on the little finger of her right hand. His own hands shaking, Stanley pulled it off. It was an odd little ring, a thin circle of gold with two clasped hands, tiny gold hands, where there might have been a stone. Stanley put it on Maud’s finger and then he bundled her body into the sack.
There was no one about in Blackmore’s garden—they lay in bed till all hours on Saturdays and their bedroom was in the front. Gasping with the weight of it, Stanley dragged the sack across the narrow strip of concrete outside the back door and humped it into the shed. Next Ethel’s suitcases. They were of the expanding kind and not fully expanded, although they were so heavy. Stanley opened the lighter of the two and crammed in Ethel’s coat and hat and the umbrella which, to his relief, he found was of the telescopic variety. He lugged them downstairs and put them in the shed beside the sack. Nobody but he ever went to the shed, but just to be on the safe side, he shovelled peat all over the sack and the cases. Anyone going in and just giving things a cursory glance would think Stanley Manning had a ton of peat in there instead of a couple of hundredweight.
Things were going well.
By half-past nine he had got Ethel lying where Maud had been, on the back room bed, covered by a sheet. It would be a nice touch, he thought, and one likely to impress the undertakers if the corpse they came for had flowers by it so he fetched the vase of daffodils and put it among Maud’s pills.
On the dot of ten the undertakers arrived, and having given Stanley a form to fill in, applying for permission to cremate, took away the body of Ethel Carpenter.
When she had registered Maud’s death during her lunch hour, Vera telephoned the Brixton cafá next door to Ethel’s former landlady.
“I’m ever so sorry to bother you. My dad was in business and I know you’re busy, but could you ask Mrs. Huntley to ring me back?”
It was ten minutes before the phone rang and when it did Vera was filling in time by placing newly cleaned blankets into polythene bags.
“I just wondered,” she said to Mrs. Huntley, “if Miss Carpenter’s still with you. She never turned up at our place yesterday.”
“Never turned up? She left here—let’s see—it would have been about twenty to one. She had her two cases with her and she left a trunk for me to send on to her new address in Green Lanes, 52, Green Lanes, Croughton. The men came for it just now.”
Vera had to sit down, she felt so weak at the knees.
“Did she say anything about coming to us?”
“The last thing she said to me was, ‘They won’t be expecting me so early, Mrs. Huntley, but I may as well go. Mr. Manning’s bound to be in,’ she said, ‘and I can have a chat with him.’ She said she’d take it slow on account of her cases being so heavy.”
“Did you say twenty to one?”
“Might have been a quarter to,” said Mrs. Huntley.
“Then she should have been here by two!”
“Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe she went straight to Green Lanes after all.”
“I suppose she must have done,” said Vera.
But it wasn’t like Ethel. To arrange to come to stay, arrange it by letter, putting everyone out, and then just not turn up would be a churlish way to behave. And Ethel, though sometimes sharp and malicious and difficult, wasn’t churlish or unpunctual or casual at all. She belonged to the old school. Vera couldn’t understand it.
At five, when things were slack and the High Street shops emptying, Vera left the cleaners in charge of Doris, her assistant, and caught the bus that went down Green Lanes.
Number 52 was a much nicer house than her own in Lanchester Road. Although semi-detached, it had a double front with imposing gables, a big front garden that was mostly elaborate rockery and a half-timbered garage. A thin middle-aged woman came to the door with a boy and a girl tagging along behind her who might have been either her children or her grandchildren.
“Won’t you come in?” she said when Vera had introduced herself.
“I mustn’t. My husband will worry if I’m late.” Stanley had never worried in the past when she was late but he had been so nice to her since Maud died, so considerate, that the possibility didn’t seem so fantastic as it might have been once. “I only wanted to know if Miss Carpenter was here.”
“I’m not expecting her till Monday,” said Mrs. Paterson in a breathless harassed voice. “Monday she said definitely. I couldn’t cope with anything extra now.” The hall behind her was cluttered with toys and from the depths of the house came sounds suggestive of a hungry bitch with a litter of puppies. “My daughter’s had to go into hospital and left the children with me, and my dog’s just whelped…. Really, if I’d known there was going to be all this trouble, I wouldn’t have considered letting the room at all.”
Vera looked at her helplessly. “I thought she must be here,” she said. “She’s dis
appeared.”
“I expect she’ll turn up,” said Mrs. Paterson. “Well, if you won’t come in, perhaps you’ll excuse me while I go and get all this lot fed.”
Stanley was waiting on the doorstep for her, the anxious husband she had never quite believed in even when she was boasting of his concern for her to Mrs. Paterson.
“Where have you been? I was worried about you.”
Vera took off her coat. That he should have worried about her brought her such intense pleasure that it was all she could do not to throw her arms around him.
“The undertakers came,” he said. “I’ve fixed up the cremation for Thursday. We’ll have to get cracking asking all the family along. Leave getting the tea for a bit. I’ve got a form here I want you to sign.” Completing it had been interesting but somewhat frightening as well. Stanley had not much cared for that bit where the applicant was asked if he had any reason to suspect foul play or negligence. Nor had he enjoyed telephoning Dr. Moxley to ask for the name of the second certifying doctor, although it had been a relief when Moxley had called him back to say all was done and that the other doctor was some character called Diplock. Blake’s name hadn’t been mentioned.
“Just sign here,” he said, putting the pen into Vera’s hand.
Vera signed.
“Oh, Stan, you’ve been so marvellous in all this. I can’t tell you what a comfort you’ve been, taking everything off my hands.”
“That’s O.K.,” said Stanley.
“Now the only real worry I’ve got is Auntie Ethel.” Briefly Vera told him about her phone call and her visit to Mrs. Paterson. “D’you think we ought to go to the police?”
Every scrap of colour left Stanley’s face. “Police?”
“Stan, I’ll have to. She may be lying dead somewhere.”
Stanley couldn’t speak properly. He cleared his throat. “The police aren’t interested when women go missing.”
“That’s only when it’s young girls, when it’s women who may have gone off with men. Auntie Ethel’s seventy.”
“Yeah. I can see that.” Stanley thought quickly, wishing he didn’t have to think at all. And now, just when everything was going so well…. “Look, don’t you do anything till Monday. Wait and see if she turns up at Mrs. Paterson’s. Then if you don’t hear from her we’ll get on to the police. Right?”
“Right,” said Vera doubtfully.
All day long John Blackmore had been stuck on a ladder outside his back door painting his house. And as soon as he had gone in for tea Vera had come home. Stanley peeped into his shed, noting that the pile of peat was just as he had left it. He locked the door and put the key in his trousers pocket. Then he went over to the heather garden where the deep trench was still unfilled. In the cool May twilight the heathers stood brilliant white against the soft chestnut-coloured peat. White heather, he thought, white heather for luck….
The following day, Sunday, was bright and hot. Vera got the piece of beef topside out of the larder and sniffed it. Just on the turn again. It was always the same. Every hot weekend the Sunday joint was high before she could cook it and she had to soak it in salt water to try and take away the sweetish fetid taint.
“You’ll be able to buy a fridge now,” said Stanley. He could see she didn’t quite know what reply to make to this. Casually he gave her arm a light pat. Tears came into Vera’s eyes. “I’ll just walk up the road and get myself a paper,” he said. “I miss the crossword on Sundays.”
It was years since he had felt so happy and light-hearted. Everything had gone perfectly. And what had he done wrong? Nothing. It would have been unpleasant if he had actually had to—well, smother Maud, but that hadn’t been necessary. Maud had died through her own fault. Now all that remained to stop any awkward questions being asked was to pay a visit to Mrs. Paterson.
He jumped on the Green Lanes bus. It stopped right outside the house and within two minutes Stanley was smiling ingratiatingly at Mrs. Paterson whom he quickly summed up as a tired grandma, a busy woman who would be only too glad to have one of her problems taken off her shoulders.
“Name of Smith,” he said. A dog was howling and he raised his voice to a shout. “Miss Ethel Carpenter asked me to call.”
“Oh, yes?” Over her shoulder, Mrs. Paterson bellowed, “Shut the dog in the garden, Gary. I can’t hear myself speak. There was a lady here,” she said to Stanley, “asking after her.”
“Well, it’s like this. She’s stopping with me. I’ve got this room going, you see, and she looked at it last week. Couldn’t make up her mind between this place and mine.”
“These old dears!” said Mrs. Paterson, clearly relieved.
“Yeah. It’s good of you to take it this way. Fact is, she came round Friday afternoon and said she’d settled for my place, after all. I reckon she didn’t like to tell you herself.” With some reluctance, Stanley felt in his pocket for the wad of notes he had taken from Ethel’s handbag. “She wouldn’t want you to be out of pocket. She reckoned five quid would make it all right.”
“You don’t want to bother,” said Mrs. Paterson, taking the notes just the same. “I’m not sorry things have turned out this way, I can tell you. Now I can let my grandson have her room.”
“There’ll be a trunk coming,” said Stanley. “Being sent on it is. I’ll call round for that.” Was she going to ask for his address? She wasn’t.
“You can leave that to me. I’ll take it in. It was good of you to come.”
“My pleasure,” said Stanley.
He bought a paper from the kiosk on the corner and by the time the bus got to the top end of Lanchester Road he had done half the clues in his head. “Frank takes a well-known stage part.” Candida, thought Stanley, wishing he had brought a pen with him. Marvellous, really. Whatever would they think of next? Good training for the mind, crossword puzzles. He marched up the path, whistling.
10
Throughout that Sunday John Blackmore stood on his ladder, painting the side of his house, and every time Stanley put his nose outside the back door, Blackmore acknowledged him with a wave of his brush or a remark to the effect that it was all right for some. It was still light at eight and Blackmore was still painting.
“Don’t you worry about me if I’m late home tomorrow,” said Vera as they went to bed. “I’m going straight round to Mrs. Paterson when I’ve finished work to see if Auntie Ethel’s turned up.”
“Sometime,” said Stanley casually, “I suppose we’d better have a word with your mother’s solicitor.”
“That can wait until after the funeral.”
“Oh, sure. Sure it can,” said Stanley.
He slept well that night and when he got up Vera had gone. Everything was clean and tidy downstairs and Vera had left his breakfast on a tray as usual, cornflakes poured out for him, milk already in his teacup and water in the kettle. Blackmore’s car was gone; he had left for work. Stanley felt considerable relief. He was beginning to be afraid his neighbour might be taking his summer holiday and intended to devote an unbroken fortnight to house painting.
Mrs. Blackmore’s Monday wash was flapping on the line, but she was still coming and going with pegs and odds and ends of small linen, adjusting the clothes prop and disentangling sheets which had wound themselves round the line in the stiff breeze.
“Lovely drying day!”
“Uh-huh,” said Stanley.
“Things are getting back to normal with you, I daresay. Mrs. Manning bearing up all right?”
Stanley nodded, trying not to look at the shed.
“Well, I’ll get these last few bits out and then I’m off to my sister’s.”
Feeling more cheerful, Stanley pottered about the garden. He pulled a couple of groundsel plants and a sow thistle out of the rose bed but he wasn’t in the mood for weeding this morning and his attention kept wandering back to the heather bed with its blanket of peat and the yawning trench in the middle of it. Mrs. Blackmore’s voice made him jump.
“What are you going
to put in that great hole?”
A light sweat broke out on Stanley’s forehead.
“I’m going to fill it up with peat. I’m putting a whole sack of peat in there.”
“That’s what I said it was for,” said Mrs. Blackmore. “John and me, we noticed it, you see, and John said …” She giggled embarrassedly and bit her lip. “Well, never mind what he said. I wondered if you were going to bury some new potatoes in a tin. They say if you do that you have them all fresh for Christmas.”
“It’s for peat,” said Stanley doggedly. He knew what Blackmore had said all right. He could just picture the two of them gossiping and sniggering and Blackmore saying, “Maybe that’s for Mrs. Kinaway, save him paying out for the funeral.”
He moved over in the direction of the Macdonalds’ garden. Mrs. Macdonald, whose husband had a better job than Blackmore, was hanging her wash on a metal whirl line with plastic strings. She, too, glanced up in happy anticipation of a chat but Stanley only nodded to her.
The two women began shouting amicably to one another across his intervening lawn. Stanley went back into the house and did the crossword puzzle.
In the end, by a stroke of luck, the two women set off out together. From his vantage point behind the piano in the lounge, Stanley watched Mrs. Macdonald come out of her own house with her basket on wheels and wait at Mrs. Blackmore’s gate. The Blackmores’ door closed with a crash and then Mrs. Blackmore, dressed for a day out in a summery pink coat and floral hat, trotted up to her friend and whispered something to her. They both looked hard at Stanley’s house. Blackening my character again, he thought. He watched them move off towards the bus stop.
