by Ruth Rendell
She walked slowly up the street and rang the bell of Crescent Guest House and when Mrs. Horton herself opened the door, Vera was almost too moved to speak. Inside, the house looked just the same. Vera looked wonderingly at the beach ball and the spade a child had left by the umbrella stand, just where she had left hers.
“Brings back the past a bit, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Horton kindly. “You look all in. Would you like to go up to your room and have a lie-down?”
“I’m not tired,” said Vera, smiling. “I was just thinking how nothing’s changed.”
“We don’t like changes in Bray.”
“No, but how do you avoid them? I mean, everywhere else has changed utterly since the war.”
Mrs. Horton led the way upstairs. “Well, down here, you see, we like to keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re a bit like Frinton in Essex. Other places want the money, but we don’t care so much about that. We don’t let the coach parties in and our preservation society sees to it that the place doesn’t get all built up. And we’ve got a good council. I only hope things stay this way.”
“So do I,” said Vera as Mrs. Horton showed her into the room Maud and George used to share.
“Your mother was so fond of this room. How is your mother, Mrs. Manning?”
“Dead,” said Vera.
“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that.” Mrs. Horton looked searchingly at Vera and then she said, before she went downstairs, “You have had a bad time, one loss after another.”
Stanley lay on the sofa all Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t used to whisky and it made him sleep heavily. The phone ringing awakened him but before he could get to it it had stopped. Ten minutes later it rang again. Pilbeam. Would Stanley meet him for what he called a short snort in the Lockkeeper’s Arms at eight and discuss business? Stanley said he would and had Pilbeam phoned him before?
“Not me, my old love. Maybe it was your stockbroker.”
Well, suppose it had been? The solicitor, that is, to say the money had come through. But he wouldn’t be working on a Saturday, would he? Stanley considered calling the number of Finbow and Craig but then thought better of it. Early days yet.
He opened a can of beans for his tea and he was making himself a piece of toast to go with them when the phone rang again. Vera, he supposed, to tell him she’d arrived safely just as if he’d be worrying himself in case the train had crashed.
He gave the number and it was a girl’s voice he heard.
“Mr. Manning? Mr. Stanley Manning?”
Finbow’s secretary. Bound to be. “Speaking,” Stanley said smoothly.
“You won’t know me, Mr. Manning. My name’s Caroline Snow. I was given your phone number by a Mrs. Huntley.”
Mrs. Huntley? Mrs. Huntley? Where had he heard that name before? In some unpleasant connection, he was sure. Stanley felt a very faint disquiet, nothing amounting to a shiver, but a kind of sense of coming events casting their shadows before them. He cleared his throat. “What were you wanting?”
“Well, to talk to you or your wife, actually. I’m making some enquiries about a Miss Ethel Carpenter.”
Stanley lowered himself gingerly into the chair Ethel Carpenter had occupied a few minutes before her death. His mind was curiously blank and he found himself temporarily quite unable to speak.
The girl’s voice said, “Could I come over and see you? Would you be very kind and let me come tomorrow evening?”
A faint squeak that Stanley hardly recognised as coming from himself said, “No, but … look, what exactly …?”
“Then, may I come at eight? That’s marvellous. I’ll be over at eight and I’ll explain everything. Thank you so much.”
“Look, don’t ring off. I mean, could you give me some idea …?” The phone clicked and went dead in his hand.
He found that he was trembling very much as he had done when, sitting in this very chair, he had held the receiver in his hand after Dr. Moxley had promised to come. Then he had been at the height, the very zenith of his troubles, but now they were all over. Or were they? He found that the palms of his hands were sweating and he wiped them on the knees of his trousers.
This was trouble from the least expected quarter. The beauty of making use of Ethel Carpenter in his plan had been her solitary state, her lack of any friends in the world but Maud and the extreme unlikelihood of anyone ever enquiring about her. This was the last thing he had anticipated. He went back into the dining room and finished off the whisky, but he had no appetite for his beans and he dropped the can into the pedal bin.
The whisky comforted him a little but it also made him feel slightly sick. Suppose that girl had been a policewoman? Unlikely. She had sounded young, nervous and eager. Who the hell could she be, this Caroline Snow? She didn’t sound more than twenty-five, if that. Not one of Mrs. Huntley’s friends or she wouldn’t have said “a Mrs. Huntley” like that. Some child, now grown up, whose family Ethel had worked for?
That would be it. He wished he had bothered to listen when Maud had told all those interminable stories about where Ethel had worked and whom she had worked for and the names of their kids. But he hadn’t and it was too late now. Still, the more he thought about it the more likely it appeared that this was who she was, some upper-class little madam looking up her old nanny. In London on holiday from the provinces, no doubt, and taking it into her head to go and be patronising to the family retainer. Mrs. Huntley would simply have told her the Mannings were Ethel’s friends and their house the best place to root her out. In that case, why hadn’t Mrs. Huntley sent her along to Green Lanes?
There would be, no doubt, a perfectly simple explanation. Feeling a good deal better, Stanley decided to tell her Ethel was lodging with some people called Smith but that he didn’t know where they lived. A girl like that, spoilt and used to having everything done for her, would soon get fed-up. He belched loudly, looked around for his crossword and then remembered he had already done it.
Still rather queasy, Stanley made his way down to the Lockkeeper’s Arms at eight o’clock. He took a single pound note with him for, since Vera wasn’t about to borrow from, he’d have to make his pay last him a week.
Pilbeam was already there and he looked as if he had been drinking steadily for several hours. The whisky he was putting away had put him in an aggressive, prickly mood.
“Your round, I think,” he said to Stanley. Evidently he had a long memory. Reluctantly Stanley bought two double whiskies.
“Well, old man, when can I expect the first instalment?”
“The what?” said Stanley, his mind still on Caroline Snow.
“Don’t give me that,” said Pilbeam loudly. “You heard. The first instalment of this capital of yours we hear so much about.”
“There’s been a hold-up at my solicitor’s.”
“Well, you’d better get twisting your solicitor’s arm, then, hadn’t you?”
“It’s coming. A week or two and we’ll be able to get started.”
“O.K. But just remember I’m an impatient man. I’ve got the lease and I had to touch the missus for the lolly. She’ll want it back and quick, make no mistake about that.”
“I won’t,” said Stanley feebly, and then more firmly, “your round, I reckon.”
“We’ll drink to a glorious future,” said Pilbeam more amiably and he fetched two more whiskies.
“By the way,” said Stanley, remembering Caroline Snow who might be a policewoman and might have a search warrant or something, “by the way, I’ve got a few bits to show you, pieces we might flog.”
“That’s my boy. What sort of bits?”
“A carriage clock and some china stuff.”
“Where are they?”
“Back at my place.”
“I tell you what,” said Pilbeam. “Why don’t you and me go back there now and give the stuff the once over? Your wife there, is she?”
“My wife’s away.”
“No kidding? You nip round the Off, Stan old boy, and get us a bot
tle of Haig and we’ll make an evening of it.”
Stanley had to tell him he hadn’t got any money and Pilbeam, his bad temper returning, said in a very nasty tone that he’d buy it just this once but Stanley would have to stump up his share when they got to Lanchester Road.
Still in an ill humour, Pilbeam hardly spoke until they were inside the house and then he said he wasn’t impressed by Stanley’s domestic arrangements.
“Don’t do yourself very well, do you?” Pilbeam looked scornfully at the worn carpet and Vera’s framed photographs. “No wonder you’ve capital. You haven’t spent much on this place.”
“I’ll get the stuff I told you about. It’s upstairs.”
“You do that, old man. And while you’re about it, I’ll relieve you of twenty-six and nine.”
“That’s upstairs too,” Stanley muttered.
There was no help for it. He’d have to use a couple of Ethel’s notes. Stanley opened the crossword annual for 1954 and took two from between the pages. Then he got the parcels out of his wardrobe and went back to Pilbeam who was already drinking whisky from one of Vera’s sherry glasses.
“Funny pong they’ve got about them,” he said, sniffing the notes. “Where’ve you kept them? In a tin of talcum powder? Right old miser you are, Stan.” He pocketed the notes but he didn’t produce any change.
“Are you going to have a dekko at these, then?”
Pilbeam examined the shepherdess, the bowl, the jug and the clock, sniffed and pronounced them saleable but of no great value. Then he put his feet up on the sofa and, without waiting for an invitation, told Stanley the story of his life.
It made an interesting narrative, full as it was of accounts of Pilbeam’s brushes with the law, his escapades with women and the fortunes he had nearly made. But Stanley found his attention wandering constantly back to Caroline Snow. Who was she? What was she going to ask him? Would she come alone? Stanley drank for comfort until his head was thick and fuddled and when Pilbeam reached a point in his story where he had nearly married an heiress old enough to be his mother, he nodded off into a jumpy stupor.
The last thing he remembered that night was Pilbeam getting up, pocketing the three-quarters empty bottle and saying, “I’ll give you a ring in a day or two.”
“No good,” Stanley murmured thickly, “before next week.”
“You leave that to me, Stan old boy. I’ll twist your arm so as you know how to twist your stockbroker’s.”
It was noon the next day before Stanley came down after a night spent stretched on his bed, fully clothed. Pilbeam had left all Ethel’s property behind, but he had taken the bottle and Stanley’s change.
Unused to heavy drinking, Stanley had a blinding headache. He felt as if there was someone standing inside his head, pressing with all his force against the bony walls of his prison in a splitting effort to get out.
The sight of food made him give a slow, painful retch. Tentatively, he peeled the paper from the joint of beef Vera had left him and which he had forgotten to leave, soaking in salt water, on the tiled larder shelf the night before. It was on the turn, not exactly high but too far gone to eat when you felt as queasy as he did. He tipped it into the bin to join the beans. Well, he didn’t feel up to eating anything, anyway. Instead he took two aspirins and wandered out into the garden.
Suddenly, for the first time since he got up, he was aware that it was a very hot day, blindingly, oppressively hot for late April, the kind of day that makes weather records and gives rise to newspaper articles about people fainting from the heat and the tar melting on the roads. The garden was virtually without shade. Never a sun worshipper, Stanley gave a malevolent glare over the fence to where the Macdonalds sat, eating their Sunday lunch under a striped awning. Some people didn’t know what to do with their money, he thought, eyeing their new garden furniture with scorn and Mrs. Macdonald’s bikini with disgust. She was forty-five if she was a day and she ought to know better, she with a son of fifteen. The boy, who was wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, glared back at Stanley and Stanley went indoors.
The dining room, shut up since the night before, its french windows beaten on by the sun since seven, was as hot as a furnace and it stank of Pilbeam’s cigars. Stanley retched again and staggered into the cooler kitchen. He might have taken a chair out on to the concrete into the shade by the back door but he didn’t want to be overlooked by John Blackmore who, still painting his house, was perched on his ladder.
Presently he made himself a cup of tea and took it upstairs. He lay on the rumpled bed, sweating profusely, but he couldn’t relax. In seven hours’ time he was going to have to deal with Caroline Snow.
His feelings about the coming interview were considerably less sanguine than they had been on the previous evening. It was difficult to understand how a few words on the telephone and the revelation of certain aspects of Pilbeam’s character could have drawn so sudden and so dark a cloud across his happiness. Only hours, not years, had passed since he had sat without a care in the world on the steps of the war memorial.
At last he fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed that he could hear Maud snoring through the wall. It was only the Blackmores’ lawn mower, he discovered when he awoke, but the notion that his subconscious was translating commonplace sounds into aural hallucinations of his late mother-in-law upset him. That was the first dream he had had of her since the night of her death.
The sun had moved round to the front of the house and penetrated the thick curtains, suffusing the bedroom with hot glowing light. All Stanley’s clothes seemed to be sticking to him. When it was nearly six he got up and put on a clean shirt. He went downstairs and re-wrapped Ethel’s bowl and jug and clock and china and pushed them inside the sideboard.
He hadn’t had a thing to eat all day but the very thought of food made him queasy again. Maybe he’d go out, go for a bus ride or see what was on at the pictures. Then Caroline Snow would find an empty house and serve her right. But Stanley knew he wouldn’t go. To postpone for another day or even days finding out who Caroline Snow was and what she wanted would be unbearable.
At half-past seven he found he had started to pace up and down. It was cooler now but not very much and he kept the french windows shut. The Macdonalds were still outside, still laughing and playing with a beach ball and exchanging badinage with John Blackmore on his ladder as if, because they hadn’t a care in the world, they thought no one else should have either. Stanley forced himself to sit down. A muscle in the corner of his mouth had started to twitch and jump.
Suppose she brought her husband with her? Or Mrs. Huntley or—God forbid—a policeman? She’d be at the station by now, he thought, looking at his watch, just about to catch the bus up. Ten minutes and she’d be here. Stanley went upstairs and looked out of all the windows which gave on to the street. It was deserted, but for one brave spirit washing his car down. That’ll be me in a week or two, Stanley told himself for comfort, me with my Jaguar and my van parked side by side. By that time Caroline Snow would be in the past, a bad dream….
What could they do to him, anyway? What could anyone do? Ethel Carpenter was a handful of ashes in an urn and he’d yet to learn any clever sod could analyse ashes and find out whose they were. In any case, he hadn’t laid a finger on her. Was it his fault she’d fallen down dead in his lounge? He’d given her a damn’ good funeral, far better than she’d have had if that Mrs. Huntley had found her dead in her own room. Really, he’d done her a service. Very dignified that cremation had been and in the best of taste. The way he worried you’d think he was a murderer or something.
Five past eight. Stanley found that his heart had begun to grow very gradually lighter as the crucial hour passed by. He went downstairs and opened the french windows. The Macdonalds were packing up their furniture and their stupid toys. Stanley felt almost sufficiently well and relaxed to mow the lawn. He muttered something in reply to Blackmore’s greeting and got the mower out of the shed. Up and down the lawn twice, t
he shorn grass spraying into the box. Perhaps it would be just as well to pop indoors and check she hadn’t turned up, after all.
Stanley ran quite lightly up the stairs, leaving a trail of grass cuttings behind him. His bedroom windows showed him a deserted street. Even the car washer had finished and gone in. A beautiful, calm evening. Not normally a man to derive peace and tranquillity from communing with nature, Stanley now felt that nothing bad could happen on such a serene and tender night. The sky was a cloudless pastel violet, the shadows long and still. How beautiful his lawn would look when close-cut, its edges trimmed with the long shears.
Almost placid now, he returned to it.
The mower cut smoothly in long clean sweeps and Stanley worked evenly and methodically, for he liked his lawn to have a neat ribbed look like a piece of corded velvet or a very expert sample of knitting. The heather garden was in shadow now, sleeping under its quilt of peat and mowings. Up and down, up and down … Twenty-five past eight. What a fool he had been to get into a state!
He came down towards the house, pushing the machine. What the hell was Blackmore up to, making signs to him?
“There’s someone at your door, mate.”
Stanley’s mouth dried.
“What?”
“A young lady ringing your door bell.”
“O.K., O.K.,” said Stanley. His palms were running with sweat. He wiped them on his trousers and went into the dining room. The whole house seemed to reverberate with the vibration of the bell. Momentarily, Stanley put his damp hands over his ears. Why shouldn’t he just go upstairs and keep his ears covered until she had gone? But Blackmore had seen her, Blackmore would tell her where he was….
