by Ruth Rendell
“You said you wouldn’t nag me,” said Stanley. He reached for the sheet of paper on which he was composing a larger and more ambitious crossword. Nag would fit into that three-letter space, he thought. Nag, nag, nag. How about, “The horse may pester?” Yes, that would do. Nag meant “horse” and “pester” …
“I don’t mean to nag. But have you formed a sort of company or a partnership? Have you had it done legally, Stan?”
“I trust my partner and he trusts me,” said Stanley. “Pity I can’t say the same for my wife.” He printed in “nag” and then tacked “wife” on to the W in “window.” Wife: “If in two compass points find a spouse.” Vera was looking at his eye now, although the twitching had stopped.
“Don’t you think you ought to see the doctor about that tic you’ve got?” she said.
James was as good as his word. He phoned Vera at home and, getting no reply, phoned the cleaner’s.
“Well, Vee, I said he wouldn’t eat you, didn’t I? What was it all about, a simple mistake on someone’s part?”
“My husband forgot to tell me he’d written rather a large cheque.” Loyally, Vera lied, “He’s put it all back out of his business.”
“That’s fine.” James didn’t sound as if he thought it was fine at all. He sounded as if he didn’t believe her, a notion which was confirmed when he said, “Vee, if you’re ever worried about anything, you’ll get in touch with me, won’t you?”
“I’ve got Stanley,” Vera said.
“Yes, of course. I hadn’t forgotten. But there might be a time when … Good-bye, Vera. Take care of yourself.”
It was time she did, Vera thought, time she took care of herself. Really, it was ridiculous for a woman in her financial position, or prospective financial position, to keep on working in a cleaner’s. She handed a customer two newly cleaned pairs of trousers and then she sat down to write her resignation as manageress of the Croughton Laundry.
Thursday. Her afternoon off. Vera left the shop at one and called in at the nearest estate agent. He would be pleased to handle the selling of her house, he said. What kind of figure had she thought of asking? Vera hadn’t thought about it at all, but the estate agent knew the type of house and suggested four thousand, five hundred pounds. He promised to come to Lanchester Road during the afternoon and look the place over.
Vera made herself some scrambled eggs for lunch and finished up the chocolate mousse they could now keep overnight because they had the refrigerator. It was unlikely the estate agent would get there before three and that would give her an hour to make things look a bit shipshape upstairs.
Before the house was sold she’d have to make an effort and clear out Maud’s room properly, all those clothes that Aunt Louisa didn’t want, all those papers and the bottles and jars whose contents had kept Maud alive for four years.
After the funeral Vera had shut them up in one of the dressing table drawers. She opened it now and contemplated Maud’s various medicines, anti-coagulants, diuretics, mineral salts, vitamins, sleeping tablets and tranquillizers. I wonder if the chemist would take them back? Vera thought. It seemed a wicked waste just to throw them away.
Now for the clothes. She was packing them into an old bolster case when the doorbell rang. Vera was expecting the estate agent and she was surprised to see a young woman on the doorstep.
“Good afternoon. I’m collecting for the Chappell Fund.”
Vera thought she said “chapel fund” and was about to say she was Church of England when she remembered the young policeman who had been shot during the Croughton Post Office raid. She opened her purse.
“Thank you so much. Actually, we’re trying to get a thousand pounds collected privately for Mrs. Chappell and some of us are getting up a few stalls at the Police Sports next week. If you do happen to have …”
“Would you like some cast-off clothing?” Vera asked. “My mother died recently and all her clothes were good. Nobody wants them now and I’d be glad if you’d take them off me.”
The young woman looked delighted, so Vera went upstairs, fetched the bolster and handed it to her.
“These were your mother’s, you say?”
“That’s right. I’ve no use for them, really.”
“Thank you very much. You’ve been a great help.”
The only thing that worried him now was the money. Once get his hands on that and life would be serene. It was obvious he was never going to hear another word from Caroline Snow.
Relishing the picture, Stanley imagined her bursting into her home in Gloucester and pouring out the whole story to Snow, tired, poor devil, after a hard day’s work toiling to keep women in luxury. Probably Snow was watching the box or even doing a crossword. In his mind’s eye, Stanley saw the man’s face fall when he heard how he was expected first to find a mother-in-law he had never before considered as a serious menace and then welcome her to his hearth and home.
“We must find her, mustn’t we, Daddy? You’re so marvellous in a crisis. I knew you’d know what to do.”
Stanley chuckled at this piece of silent mimicry. And what would Snow say?
“You leave it to me, darling.” Soothing tone, brain sorting it all out like a computer. “I’d like to talk it over with your mother when we’re alone.”
Shift to scene with marvellous Mummy, tête-à-tête, lights dimmed, Caroline off somewhere with dog or boy friend.
“She’s such an impetuous child, dear.”
“Yes, I know. But I can’t destroy her faith in me, can I?”
“She adores you so, darling. I must say for my part, I don’t exactly relish a reunion with a mother I haven’t seen for forty years.”
“There’s no question of that. Nothing would induce me to pal up with the old lady and have her here. Good heavens, I’m not a glutton for punishment….”
“Why not just say you’ve got in touch with the police, dear? Say they’re making enquiries. Caroline will have forgotten the whole thing when she’s been home a week.”
“Of course she will. You’re so marvellous, darling.”
Stanley laughed uproariously at this invented cameo of the set-up and dialogue chez Snow. He could almost see them sitting there among their refined middle-class G-plan furniture. It was a pity he had to keep it to himself and couldn’t tell anyone about it. He wiped his eyes and when he had stopped laughing his eye began to twitch ferociously.
He was trying to hold the eyelid steady, seeing if he could control it by an effort of will, when Pilbeam walked into the shop, holding a plastic bag full of horse brasses.
You want to get that eye of yours seen to, old man. I had an aunt with the same trouble, St. Vitus’s Dance.”
“What happened to her?”
Pilbeam tipped the horse brasses on to the floor and sat down. “She got to jerking all over. It was embarrassing being with her.” He scratched his nose with the nailless finger. “Why don’t you go and see the quack? I can cope here.”
The group practice whose list he was on held an afternoon surgery three times a week. His worry over getting his hands on his inheritance had long since driven any apprehension over the part he had played in Maud’s death from Stanley’s mind so, after waiting forty minutes, he walked more or less serenely into the surgery where Dr. Moxley sat behind his desk.
“What seems to be the trouble?”
The swine might take the trouble to look at me, Stanley thought sourly. He explained about his eye and as he spoke it fluttered obligingly.
“They call it ‘live flesh.’”
“They do, do they? And who might ‘they’ be?”
“A medical book.”
“Oh, dear, I wish you lay people wouldn’t be always poking about in medical books. You only frighten yourselves. I suppose you thought you’d got muscular dystrophy.”
“Well, have I?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Dr. Moxley, laughing breezily. “Been worrying about something, have you?”
“I’ve got a lot o
n my mind, yes.”
“Stop worrying, then, and your twitch’ll stop.” Just like that, Stanley thought indignantly. As if telling someone not to worry would stop them. Bloody doctors, they were all the same. He took the prescription for a sedative and was halfway to the door when Dr. Moxley said, “How’s your wife? Getting over Mrs. Kinaway’s death all right?”
What business was it of his? Stanley muttered something about Vera being all right. The doctor, a past master, Stanley thought, at switching moods, smiled and said genially, “I ran into old Dr. Blake the other day. He was quite upset to hear Mrs. Kinaway had died. Surprised, too. He said he’d seen her in the street only a couple of days before and she looked very fit.”
Stanley was speechless. The scare over Caroline Snow, now past, had been bad enough. The last thing he had anticipated was that questions might be asked at this late date about Maud. Why, it was weeks and weeks …
“He couldn’t understand Mrs. Kinaway having another stroke when she was on Mollanoid.” Moxley gave an innocent yet somehow sinister smile. “Still, these things happen. Dr. Blake’s very conscientious. I advised him not to give it another thought.”
Stanley walked out in a daze. Who would have thought Maud’s old doctor would still be hanging about the neighbourhood? Probably it meant nothing. He had enough troubles without bothering about that.
To get his prescription made up Stanley went in to the same chemist he had been to when buying Shu-go-Sub and suddenly he remembered that two and a half tubes of saccharine tablets still remained in Maud’s Mollanoid cartons. The first thing he’d do when he got home was get hold of those tablets and burn them just in case Moxley and the conscientious Blake were planning to make a swoop on the house and investigate.
“What’s happened to all your mother’s stuff,” he asked Vera.
“All gone. I’ve been having a turn-out. The estate agent said we could get a better price if the place was smartened up so I thought I’d do some decorating.”
Decorating was a dirty word to Stanley. Sourly he watched Vera come down the steps, wipe her brush and put the lid on the distemper tin. Distemper was a good word for a puzzle and he couldn’t remember ever doing one in which it had been used. Distemper: “Paint prescribed for the dog’s disease.” Very good.
“You’ve thrown everything out?” he asked casually.
“Everything but her clothes. Someone came round collecting for the police.”
Stanley felt the sweat break out on his upper lip. “The what?”
“Whatever’s the matter? You’re jerking all over.”
Stanley clenched his hands. Even they were jumping. He couldn’t speak.
“Well, not the police really, dear.” Vera was sorry she had put it that way. Stanley had always been afraid of the police. “They were collecting for that policeman’s widow, Mrs. Chappell, and they were so pleased when I gave them Mother’s clothes. Stan, dear, let me make you a cup of tea. You’re overwrought, you’re worrying about your eye. Come along. You can do your crossword while I’m making the tea.”
“I’ve done it.”
“Then make one up. You know you like doing that.”
Still jumping and shivering, Stanley tried to sketch a crossword frame. He wrote in “distemper” and then “policewoman” going down from the P. Perhaps the woman had come on an innocent errand; perhaps Moxley had meant nothing sinister. But suppose instead that Moxley had dropped a hint or two to the police and they had sent this woman round because … What could they find out from Maud’s clothes? Perhaps there was some substance present in a person’s sweat when they had high blood pressure or when they were taking saccharine or weren’t taking Mollanoid. For all Stanley knew, Moxley might be an expert in forensics. He wrote “forensics” in, going down from the R in distemper.
They might go round all the chemists and find that a man answering his description had bought a lot of saccharine…. Then they’d dig Maud up. The gash on her head might be gone by now. They’d analyse the contents of her stomach and find Shu-go-Sub, masses of it. But no Mollanoid. Maud hadn’t taken any since early March.
His eye winked, half-blinding him, so that he couldn’t see the words he had printed across the white squares.
3
Down
19
It was high summer now, a fine, beautiful summer. Hot day succeeded hot day and this sameness was reflected in the Mannings’ life. Nothing changed for the better or—Stanley comforted himself—for the worse either. The police showed no further interest in him and he hadn’t been back to Dr. Moxley, although his eye still twitched. He couldn’t stop worrying about the money.
Letters went back and forth between Vera and Mr. Finbow but there was no hint in anything the solicitor wrote that it would now be prudent to sell those tin and tobacco shares. Vera refused firmly though kindly to sell them against Mr. Finbow’s advice or to ask for another advance, even though Stanley had shown her the reminder which had come from Pilbeam’s decorators with “please settle outstanding payment at once” scrawled across it. Pilbeam made Stanley’s life a misery with his nagging about the shop’s need for more capital.
A “For Sale” board had been put up outside the house. No one came to view it. It lacked, the agent told Vera, certain amenities which these days were indispensable.
“We might have a garage built,” said Vera. “Only it would mean sacrificing your heather garden.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Stanley. A garage would keep Maud hidden forever. On the other hand, how much unearthing would the builders have to do to lay foundations?
“I’ll see about it, then, and I’ll carry on with my decorating. We ought to get an offer soon. The agent says sales are booming.”
“Dare say it to the goose in front of the vase for a big bang…”
“What did you say, dear?”
“A clue in my crossword. Booming. Dare say it to … Oh, never mind.”
“You don’t seem to think about anything but crosswords these days,” said Vera.
It was true. Puzzles, inventing them and solving them, had become an obsession with him. He even did them secretly in the shop while Pilbeam was out, so that when his partner came back his head was full of floating words and puns and anagrams, and when Pilbeam started afresh on his demands, as he did every day, he could turn a vague, half-deaf ear.
“Remember that old bag we flogged the Georgian table to?” Pilbeam would say. “She wants to do her whole flat over in period. With me working day and night and you coming up with the cash to buy in, we could make five hundred on this deal alone.” Or, “We’re hamstrung, Stan. It makes me weep the opportunities we’re missing.” And always he ended up with, “We’ve got to have that money. Now, Stan, not in the sweet by-and-by.”
Stanley was too much in awe of Pilbeam to do more than placate him with soothing promises. He saved his rage for Vera.
“I tell you, I’ve got to have that money for the business. It’s ours but we can’t touch it. We’re as poor now as when your bloody old mother was still alive. The business’ll go bust if I don’t have the money. Can’t you get that into your head?”
Vera flinched away from him, afraid of his greed and the wild light in his eyes. His face twitched dreadfully when he was angry. But she was most frightened when instead of answering her properly he replied with some meaningless conundrum.
One day towards the end of July Vera started work on the small spare bedroom and as she was turning out she came upon Maud’s collection of pills which she had put in here while she was painting her mother’s room. It seemed wasteful to discard them all, especially as one of the little plastic cartons hadn’t been opened and the other was only half empty. There would be no harm in asking the chemist about them while she was out shopping.
As she left the house she encountered the builders bringing in bags of cement and a concrete mixer.
“No need to wait in for us, lady,” said the foreman. “We shan’t make a start on your garage til
l next week what with this strike at the brickworks. You won’t mind us leaving our gear in readiness, will you?”
Vera said she wouldn’t. She went straight into the chemist and asked if it would be all right to return the carton of tablets as none of them had been used.
The pharmacist smiled. “Sorry, madam, we don’t do that. We advise our customers to throw away all unused drugs. To be on the safe side, you see.” He removed the cap and looked at the contents of the carton.
“They’re called Mollanoid, I believe.”
Pharmacists, like doctors, prefer lay people to be in utter ignorance of such esoteric matters. This one was no exception. He frowned at Vera. Then he took out a single tablet, looked closely at it and said:
“What makes you think these tablets are Mollanoid?”
Vera said rather tartly, “You made up the doctor’s prescription and you wrote Mollanoid on the label. My mother always took Mollanoid for her blood pressure.”
“Certainly I made up the prescription and wrote the label, but these are not the tablets I put in the carton. Mollanoid is what we call an anti-coagulant; in other words it helps prevent the formation of clots in the bloodstream. As I say, these tablets aren’t Mollanoid.”
“What are they, then?”
The pharmacist sniffed the tablet he was holding and put it to his tongue. “Some compound of saccharine, I imagine.”
“Saccharine?”
“The stuff slimmers use to sweeten tea and coffee,” the pharmacist said in the tone of one addressing a retarded child.
Vera shrugged. Rather confused and puzzled, she finished her shopping. Was it possible that the pharmacist himself had made a mistake in his dispensing and the carton had always contained saccharine? It seemed unlikely but more probable than that Maud had been secretly taking saccharine. If that had been the case, what had she done with the Mollanoid? Certainly she wouldn’t have stopped taking them. She depended on them utterly as a lifeline and often said that but for them she would have had a second stroke.
