One Across, Two Down

by Ruth Rendell

  Choosing a cheap but pretty wallpaper and deciding on a colour scheme distracted Vera’s mind but, for all that, she decided to mention the matter to Stanley when he came in. He was rather late and as soon as Vera saw him she knew he was in no tate to be interested in other people’s medical problems.

  “My eye’s killing me,” he said.

  For the first time in their married life he left his dinner, lamb chops, chips and peas, untouched, and Vera, who formerly would have been anxious and solicitous, hardened her heart. If she told him to go to the doctor again he would only snap at her. She couldn’t talk to him, they had no real communication any more. Often these days days she thought of James Horton who was sympathetic and gentle and with whom it was possible to have conversation.

  “What’s the matter with you now?” she asked at last, trying to keep her tone patient.

  “Nothing,” said Stanley. “Nothing. Leave me alone.”

  His eye blinked and squeezed shut as if fingers inside his head were squeezing it. The something that was doing the squeezing seemed to laugh at him and at the success of its tricks which he couldn’t combat. But that something must be himself, mustn’t it? God, he thought, he’d go off his rocker at this rate.

  Vera was watching him like a hawk. He couldn’t tell her that he was trembling and twitching and off his food because he was terribly frightened, because something had happened that day to reduce him to a far worse state than he had been in when the Chappell Fund woman had called or even when he had first seen Maud fall to her death. His teeth were chattering with fear and he ground them tightly together as if he had lockjaw.

  That afternoon, while he was out in the van, a policeman had called at the Old Village Shop.

  He had been to Hatfield to relieve an old woman of an eighteenth-century commode for approximately a fifth of its true value, and driving back had tried to calm his pulsating eye by finishing off an imaginary crossword. Stanley could now invent and complete crosswords in his head just as some people can play chess without a board. He drove the van into the yard at the back of the shop, murmuring under his breath, Purchase: “An almost pure hunt for this buy,” when he saw a uniformed policeman leave the shop and cross to a waiting car. His eye moved like a pump, jerked and closed.

  “What was that copper doing in here?” he asked Pilbeam in a strangled thin voice.

  “Just checking on the stock, old man.” Pilbeam stroked the side of his nose with the nailless sausage-like finger. He often did this but now Stanley couldn’t bear to see it. It made him feel sick. “They often do that,” Pilbeam said. “In case we’re harbouring stolen goods in all innocence.”

  “They’ve never done it before. Did they ask for me?”

  “You, old boy? Why would he ask for you?” Pilbeam smiled blandly. Stanley was sure he was lying. He was always up to something when he stared you candidly in the eye like that. “Been a good day, me old love. I reckon we can each take ten quid home with us tonight.”

  “I see that china and silver of mine went.”

  “A lady from Texas, she had them. Crazy about anything English, she was. I reckon she’d have paid anything I’d asked.” Pilbeam laid his hand on Stanley’s sleeve, the finger stump just touching the bare skin at the wrist. His eyes weren’t frank and friendly any more. “I promised my old woman I’d pay her back next week. Money, Stan, loot, lolly. My patience, as the old exfuhrer put it, is getting exhausted.”

  Stanley wanted to ask him more about the policeman’s visit but he didn’t dare. He desperately wanted to believe Pilbeam. Surely if the policeman had wanted to talk to him he would have called at Lanchester Road. Perhaps he had called and found no one in.

  If he’d been right and somehow or other they’d analysed Maud’s clothes, if Moxley had been shooting his mouth off, if Vera had boasted to all the neighbours about the garage they were going to have built…Suppose, all these weeks, the police and the doctors had been building up a case against him from hints and hearsay…He was afraid to go home, but he had nowhere else to go. All the evening he could sense Vera had something she wanted to tell him but was too sulky or too subtle to come out with it. Maybe the police had been getting at her too.

  He couldn’t sleep that night. Every muscle was twitching now and the remedy seemed almost worse than the disease. He began to wish he’d never done a crossword in his life, so compulsive was this need to keep inventing clues, to slot words across, fit others down. All that night and Saturday night he had a chequer board pattern in front of his eyes.

  He felt he was on the edge of a nervous collapse.

  Vera couldn’t stay in the same bed with him when he twitched like that. He slept on Sunday night, from sheer exhaustion, she guessed, and his whole body rippled galvanically in sleep. In the small hours she made tea but she didn’t wake him. Instead she took her own tea into the spare room.

  She switched on the light, stepped over paint pots and got into the spare bed. As soon as she saw Maud’s pills all her bewilderment of the morning came back to her. She reached for the half-empty carton of Mollanoid, the ones Maud had been taking right up to her death, and removed the lid.

  I wonder, she thought, if Mother planned to stop taking sugar because Dr. Blake told her she should lose weight? Perhaps she had bought saccharine and had used a Mollanoid carton to keep it in.

  It was beginning to get light. Vera could hear a thrush singing in the Blackmores’ laburnum. The meaningless and not really musical trill depressed her. She felt very cold and she pulled the bed covers up to her chin.

  But as she prepared to settle down and snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, her eye fell once more on the carton she had opened. Mollanoid. Of course they were Mollanoid. They looked exactly like the tablets Maud had been taking three times a day, every day, for four years. But they also looked exactly like the ones she had taken to the chemist on the previous morning. Again Vera sat up.

  Maud hadn’t touched those, hadn’t taken a single one of them. These, on the other hand, were three-quarters used, and the carton which contained them had stood by Maud’s plate at her last breakfast. Vera knew that. In the increasing light she noticed the smear on the label the chemist had made, handing her the carton before the ink had quite dried. And casting her mind back to that breakfast—would she ever forget it or forget Maud’s elation?—she recalled her mother’s taking two of the tablets just after spooning sugar plentifully into her tea.

  Her heart began to pound. Slowly, as if she were a forensic expert about to test poison at some risk to himself, she picked out one of the tablets and rested it on her tongue.

  For a moment there was no taste. Vera’s heart quietened. Then, because she had to know, she pressed the tip of her tongue with the tablet on it against the roof of her mouth. Immediately a rich sickly sweetness spread across the surface of her tongue and seeped between her teeth.

  She spat the tablet into her saucer and then lay face downwards, numb and very cold.

  It was ten when Stanley woke up. He stared at the clock and was out of bed and half across the room before he remembered. This was the day he was going to the doctor’s. He’d told Pilbeam he wouldn’t be in before lunch.

  Just thinking the word doctor started his eye twitching again. He cursed, put on his dressing gown and went into Maud’s room to see if the builders had started work yet. It was imperative to keep an eye on them in case they got too enthusiastic and began digging the earth they were to cover. But the garden was empty and the concrete mixer idle.

  It wasn’t like Vera not to bring him a cup of tea. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to disturb him. Poor old Vee. She wasn’t much to look at any more and, God knew, she’d always been as dull as ditch-water, but a man could do worse.

  No breakfast tray either. Come to that, no Vera. The house stank of paint. Stanley felt the beginnings of a headache. He’d missed Moxley’s morning surgery but there was another one at two and he’d go to that. Everywhere was tidy and clean. Obviously, Vera had cleaned the pl
ace and gone out shopping.

  He mooched back to the kitchen, his eye opening and shutting in a series of painful winks. She hadn’t even left the cornflakes out for him. He got the packet out of the larder, poured out a dishful and looked around for the Telegraph. Might as well do the puzzle. There was no question any more whether he could do it or not or even whether he could do it at a single sitting. The only amusement it still afforded Stanley was seeing if he could beat his record of seven minutes.

  The newspaper was folded up, lying on top of the refrigerator, Stanley picked it up and saw that underneath it was a letter poking half out of its envelope. The envelope was addressed to Vera but that had never deterred him before and it didn’t deter him now. He pulled it out with shaking fingers and read it.

  The money had come through.

  Mr. Finbow would expect Vera at her earliest convenience and would hand her a cheque.

  Stanley rubbed his eyes. Not because they were twitching but because tears were running down his face.

  20

  Years and years he had waited for this moment. Ever since he’d first set eyes on Maud and heard how well-heeled she was, he’d dreamed of today, now or long ago, now or in time to come, the shining hour with it would all be his. Twenty-two thousand pounds.

  His eye hadn’t twitched once since he had read that letter. He also now saw clearly that in imputing sinister motives to a harmless housewife collecting for a sale and a policeman on routine duty he had been letting his imagination run away with him. Money cured all ills, mental and physical. No doctors for him. Instead he would take a bus down to the old village.

  Pilbeam was in the shop, polishing a brass warming pan. “You’re early,” he said morosely. “What did the quack say?”

  Stanley sat down on the piecrust table. He felt like a tycoon. Laconically he said, “I’ve got a thousand quid for you. I may as well write a cheque for the decorators at the same time and you can give it to them. There’ll be loads more next week if we need it. We’re laughing now, boy. No more worries. No more struggling on a shoestring.”

  “You won’t regret it, Stan. I’ll promise you you won’t regret it. My God, we knew what we were doing when we started this little lark!” Pilbeam slapped him on the back and pocketed the cheques. “Now, I’ll tell you what. We’ll go down the Lockkeeper’s and we’ll split a bottle of scotch and then I’ll treat you to a slap-up lunch.”

  Not quite half a bottle, but four double whiskies on an empty stomach, followed by a heavy meal of steak, fried potatoes, french beans, carrots, mushrooms, raspberry pie and cream, sent Stanley reeling towards Lanchester Road at half-past two. He badly wanted to burst into song as he made his way unsteadily along the respectable streets of dull little villas, but to be arrested on this glorious golden day, one of the happiest days of his life, would be a disastrous anti-climax.

  The sky which, when he first got up, had been overcast had cleared while they were in the Globe and now it was very hot. One of the hottest days of the year, Stanley thought, immensely gratified that the weather matched his mood. He passed the Jaguar showrooms and wondered whether it would be possible to buy a car that very afternoon. That scarlet Mark Ten, for instance. He didn’t see why not. It wasn’t as if he was after some little mass-produced job like Macdonald’s tin can which lesser mortals, miserable wage-earners, had to wait months for. He must sober up. Have a cup of tea perhaps and then he’d buy the car and take Vera for a ride in it. Maybe they’d go out Epping Forest way and have a meal in a country pub.

  These pleasant fancies sliding across the surface of his fuddled brain, he marched into the kitchen and called, “Vera, where are you?” There was no answer. Sulking, he thought, because I didn’t hang about to tell her what the doctor said. Doctor! The last thing he needed.

  He could hear her moving about upstairs. Probably she was toiling away painting that bedroom. Well, she’d have to buck her ideas up, expand her horizons. People with his sort of money didn’t do their own decorating. He moved carefully into the hall. Better on the whole not to let her see he’d been drinking.

  He called her name again and this time he heard a door close and her face appear over the banisters. For a woman who had just come into twenty-two thousand pounds, she didn’t look very happy.

  “I thought you’d gone in to work,” she said.

  “The doctor said I was to take the day off. Come down here. I want to talk to you.”

  He heard her say something that sounded like, “I want to talk to you, too,” and then she came slowly down the stairs. She was wearing the blue and white spotted dress and she hadn’t any paint on her hands. A sudden slight chill took the edge off his joy. What a moody, difficult woman she was! Just like her to find something to nag about on this day of days. He knew she was going to nag. He could see it in the droop of her mouth and her cold eyes.

  “Did you get the money?” he said heartily. “I couldn’t help seeing old Finbow’s letter. At last, eh?”

  She was going to say she hadn’t got it. She’d asked Finbow to hang on to it, re-invest it, something diabolical. Christ, she couldn’t have!

  “You did get the money?”

  He’d never heard quite that tone in her voice before, that chilling despair. “Oh yes, I got it.”

  “And paid it into the bank? What’s up, then, love? Isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for, planning for?”

  “Don’t call me love,” said Vera. “I’m not your love. You mean you’ve been planning for, don’t you? But you haven’t planned quite well enough. You should have disposed of your saccharine tablets after you’d killed my mother.”

  Momentarily Stanley thought that this couldn’t be real. He’d drunk too much and passed out and that bloody awful puzzle dream was starting again. But we always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real, and Stanley, after the first sensation of nightmare unreality, had no need to pinch himself. Vera had said what she’d said. They were in the kitchen at 61, Lanchester Road and both were wide awake. She had said it, but he asked her to repeat it just the same.

  “What did you say?”

  “You said for two pins you’d kill her and she said you would and, God forgive me, I didn’t believe either of you. Not until I found what was in those medicine cartons.”

  There is a great difference between anticipating the worst, dreading, dreaming and living in imagination through the worst, and the worst itself. Stanley had visualised this happening, or something like this, over and over again, although usually his accuser had been a doctor or a policeman, but he found that all these preparations and rehearsals did nothing to mitigate the shock of the reality. He felt as if he had been hit on the head by something heavy enough to half-stun but not heavy enough to bring blissful unconsciousness.

  In a feeble trembling voice he said what he had planned to say when “they” started asking, “I didn’t kill her, Vee. Just taking saccharine didn’t kill her.”

  “She died of a stroke, didn’t she? Didn’t she? Isn’t that what she had while I was out? You know it is. Dr. Moxley came and said she’d died of a stroke.”

  “She’d have had that stroke, anyway,” Stanley muttered.

  “How do you know? Have you got medical degrees? You know very well you wanted her to die, so you took away her tablets and put saccharine in the carton and she died. You murdered her. You murdered her just as much as if you’d shot her.”

  Vera went out of the kitchen and slammed the door behind her. Alone, Stanley felt his heart pounding against his ribs. Why hadn’t he had the sense to burn those bloody saccharines after Maud had died? And how had Vera found out? That hardly mattered now. He put his head into the sink and drank straight from the cold water tap. Then he went upstairs.

  She was in their bedroom, throwing clothes into a couple of suitcases. He fumbled in his mind, trying to find the words. At last he said, “You wouldn’t go to the police about this, would you, Vee?”
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  She didn’t answer. Her hands went on folding mechanically, slipping sheets of paper between the clothes, tucking in a pair of rolled-up stockings. He stared at her stupidly and suddenly the meaning of what she was doing came home to him.

  “Are you off somewhere, then?”

  She nodded. There were little beads of sweat on her upper lip. It was a very hot day.

  Stanley managed a hint of sarcastic bravado. “May I ask where?”

  “I’ll tell you whether you ask or not.” Vera marched into the bathroom and came back with her sponge-bag. “I’m leaving you,” she said. “It’s all over for us, Stanley. It was over years ago really. I could take you treating me like a servant and having that girl here and living off my money, but I can’t stay with a man who murdered my mother.”

  “I did not murder your mother,” he shouted. “I never murdered anyone. Anyone’d think you liked having her here. Christ, you wanted her out of the way as much as I did.”

  “She was my mother,” Vera said. “I loved her in spite of her faults. I couldn’t live with you, Stanley, even if I managed to forget what you’ve done. You see, I can’t stand you near me. Not now. Not any more. After what I found out last night, you make me feel sick just being in the same room with me. You’re really wicked, you’re evil. No, please don’t come near me.” She moved away as he came towards her and he could see that she was trembling. “Mother always wanted me to leave you and now I’m going to. Funny, isn’t it? It was what she wanted and now she’s getting what she wanted but not until after she’s dead. I suppose you could say she’s won at last.”

  Stanley’s head was splitting. “Don’t be so stupid,” he said.

  “You’ve always thought me stupid, haven’t you? I know I’m not brainy, but I can read, and once I read somewhere that people mustn’t be allowed to profit from their crimes. I can’t think of anything worse than letting you have any of Mother’s money when it was you that killed her. So I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lead you on and then let you down. Up till this morning I meant the money to be yours as much as mine, more yours than mine if you wanted it. But I’ve hardened myself now.” Vera closed the lid of one of the suitcases and looked at him. “Mother left it to me and I’m keeping it.”