Thirteen Steps Down (2 page)

whether he would be famous through knowing Nerissa or through his

expert knowledge of Reggie. There was probably no one alive today, not

even Ludovic Kennedy who had written the book, who knew more. It

might be his mission in life to reawaken interest in Rillington Place and

its most famous occupant, though how this was to come about after

what he had seen that afternoon was as yet a mystery. He would solve it,

of course. Perhaps he would write a book about Reggie himself, and not

one full of feeble comments on the man's wickedness and depravity. His

book would draw attention to the murderer as artist.

It was getting on for six. Mix poured himself his favorite drink. He had

invented it himself and called it Boot Camp because it had such a savage

kick. It mystified him that no one he had offered it to seemed to share his

taste for a double measure of vodka, a glass of Sauvignon, and a

tablespoonful of Cointreau poured over crushed ice. His fridge was the

kind that spewed out the crushed ice all prepared. He was just savoring

the first sip when his mobile rang.

It was Colette Gilbert-Bamber to tell him she was desperate to get her

treadmill repaired. It might be no more than the electric plug or it might

be something bigger. Her husband had gone out but she had had to stay

at home because she was expecting an important phone call. Mix knew

what all that meant. Being in love with his distant star, his queen and

lady, didn't mean he was never to treat himself to a bit of fun. Once he

and Nerissa were together, a recognized item, it would be a different

thing.

Regretfully but getting his priorities right, Mix put his Boot Camp into

the fridge. He cleaned his teeth, gargled with a mouthwash that tasted

not unlike his cocktail without the stimulus, and made his way down the

stairs. In the midst of the house you wouldn't have guessed how fine the

day was and bright andhot the sunshine. Here it was always cold and

strangely silent too, it always was. You couldn't hear the Hammersmith

and City Line running above ground from Latimer Road to Shepherd's

Bush, or the traffic in Ladbroke Grove. The only noise came from the

Westway, but if you didn't know you wouldn't have imagined you were

listening to traffic. It sounded like the sea, like waves breaking on the

shore, or what you hear when you hold a big seashell up to your ear, a

soft unceasing roar.

These days Gwendolen sometimes needed the help of a magnifying glass

to read small print. And, unfortunately, most of the books she wanted to

read were printed in what she understood to be called l0-point, Her

ordinary glasses couldn't cope with Papa's edition of The Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire,for instance, or what she was reading now, a very

old copy of Middlemarch, published in the nineteenth century.

Like her bedroom above it, the drawing room encompassed the whole

depth of the house, a pair of large sash windows overlooking the street,

French windows at the back giving onthe garden. When she was reading,

Gwendolen reclined on a sofa upholstered in dark brown corduroy, its

back surmounted with a carved mahogany dragon. The dragon's tail

curved round to meet one of the sofa arms, while its head reared up as it

snarled at the black marble fireplace. Most of the furniture was rather

like that, carved and thickly padded and covered in velvet that was

brown or dull green or the dark red of claret, but some was made of dark

veined marble with gilt legs. There was a very large mirror on one wall,

framed in gilt leaves and fruit and curlicues, which had grown dull with

time and lack of care.

Beyond the French windows, open now to the warm evening light, lay

the garden. Gwendolen still saw it as it used to be, the lawn closely

mown to the smoothness of emerald velvet, the herbaceous border a light

with flowers, the trees prunedto make the best of their luxuriant foliage.

Or, rather, she saw that it could be like that with a little attention,

nothing thatcouldn't be achieved by a day's work. That the grass was

knee high, the flowerbeds a mass of weeds, and the trees ruined by dead

branches, escaped her notice. The printed word was more real to her

than a comfortable interior and pleasing exterior.

Her mind and her memories too were occasionally stronger than the

book; then she laid it down to stare at the brownish cobweb-hung ceiling

and the dusty prisms on the chandelier, to think and to remember.

The man Cellini she disliked, but that was of small importance. His

inelegant conversation had awakened sleeping things, Christie and his

murders, Rillington Place, her fear, Dr. Reeves, and Bertha. It must be at

least fifty-two years ago, maybe fifty-three. Rillington Place had been a

sordid slum, the terraces of houses with front doors opening onto the

street, an iron foundry with a tall chimney at the far end of it. Until she

went there she had no idea such places existed. She had led a sheltered

life, both before that day and after it. Bertha would have married--those

sort of people always did. Probably had a string of children who by now

would be middle-aged, the first one of them the cause of her misfortunes.

Why did women behave like that? She had never understood. She had

never been tempted. Not even with Dr. Reeves. Her feelings for him had

always been chaste and honorable, as had his for her. She was sure of

that, in spite of his subsequent behavior. Perhaps, after all, she had

chosen the better part.

What on earth made Cellini so interested in Christie? It wasn't a

healthy attitude of mind. Gwendolen picked up her book again. Not in

this one but in another of George Eliot's, Adam Bede, there was a girl

who had behaved like Bertha and met a dreadful fate. She read for

another half hour, lost to the world, oblivious to everything but the page

in front of her. A footfall above her head alerted her.

Poor as her sight was becoming, Gwendolen's hearing was superb. Not

for a woman of her age but for anyone of any age. Her friend Olive

Fordyce said she was sure Gwendolen could hear a bat squeak. She

listened now. He was corming down the stairs. No doubt he thought she

didn't know he took his shoes off in an attempt to corme and go secretly.

She was not so easily deceived. The lowest flight creaked. Nothing he

could do would put a stop to that, she thought triumphantly. She heard

him padding across the hall but when he closed the front door it was

with a slam that shook the house and caused a whitish flake to drop off

the ceiling onto her left foot.

She went to one of the front windows and saw him getting into his car.

It was a small blue car and, in her opinion, he kept it absurdly clean.

When he had gone she went out to the kitchen, opened the door on an

ancient and never-used spindryer to take out a netting bag which had

once held potatoes. The bag was full of keys. No labels were attached to

them but she knew very well the shape and color of the one she wanted.

The key in the pocket of her cardigan, she began to mount the stairs.

It was a long way up but she was used to it. She might be over eighty

but she was thin and strong. Never in her life had she had a day's

illness. Of course she couldn't climb those stairs as fast as she could fifty

years ago but that was only to be expected. Otto was sitting halfway up

the top flight, dismembering and eating some small mammal. She took

no notice of him nor he of her. The evening sun blazed through the

Isabella window and since there was no wind to blow on the glass, an

nearly perfect colored picture of the girl and the pot of basil appeared

reflected on the floor, a circular mosaic of reds and blues and purples

and greens. Gwendolen stopped to admire it. Rarely indeed was this

facsimile so clear and still.

She lingered for only a minute or two before inserting her key in the

lock and letting herself into Cellini's flat.

All this white paint was unwise, she thought. It showed every mark.

And gray was a bad furnishing color, cold and stark. She walked into his

bedroom, wondering why he bothered to make his bed when he would

only have to unmake it at night. Everything was depressingly tidy. Very

likely he suffered from that affliction she had read about in a newspaper,

obsessivecompulsive disorder. The kitchen was just as bad. It looked like

one of those on show at the Ideal Home Exhibition, to which Olive had

insisted on taking her sometime in the eighties. A place for everything

and everything in its place, not a packet or tin left on the counter,

nothing in the sink. How could anyone live like that?

She opened the door of the fridge. There was very little food to be seen

but in the door rack were two bottles of wine and, in the very front of the

middle shelf, a nearly full glass of something that looked like faintly

colored water. Gwendolen sniffed it. Not water, certainly not. So he

drank, did he? Shecouldn't say she was surprised. Making her way back

into theliving room, she stopped at the bookshelves. Any books, nomatter

of what kind, always drew her attention. These were not the sort she

would read, perhaps that anyone should read. All of them, except for one

called Sex for Men in the 21st Century, were about Christie. She had

scarcely thought about the man for more than forty years and today she

seemed not to be able to get away from him.

As for Cellini, this would be another of his obsessions. The more I know

people, said Gwendolen, quoting her father, the more I like books. She

went downstairs and into the kitchen.There she fetched herself a cheese

and pickle sandwich, ready made from the corner shop, and taking it

and a glass of orange juice back to the dragon sofa, she returned to

Middlemarch.

Chapter 2

It was a funny part of the world altogether. Mix hadn't got used to it yet,

the Westway to the north and Wormwood Scrubs and its prison not far

away, a tangle of little winding streets, big houses, purpose-built blocks,

ugly Victorian terraces, Gothic places more like churches than homes,

cottages cunningly designed on different levels to look as if they had been

there for two hundred years, corner shops, MOT testing centers,

garages, meeting halls, real churches for Holy Catholic Apostolics or

Latter Day Saints and convents for Oblates and Carmelites. The whole

place populated by people whose families had always been there and

people whose families came from Freetown and Goa and Vilnius and

Beirut and Aleppo.

The Gilbert-Bambers also lived in West Eleven but the upmarket

fashionable part. Their house was in Lansdowne Walk, not as big as Miss

Chawcer's but more imposing, with Corinthian columns all along the

front and urns with bushes in them on the balconies. It took Mix no

more than five minutes to drive there and another five to park his car on

a meter, costing him nothing after six-thirty. Colette gave him one of her

sexy looks as she opened the door, a look that wasn't in the least

necessary as both knew why she had sent for him and what he had come

for. For his part, he put up a show of formality, smiling as he marched in

with his case of tools and saying it was upstairs if he remembered

rightly.

"Of course you remember rightly," Colette said, giggling.

More stairs, but these were wide and shallow and anywaythere was only

one flight to go up. "How's Miss Nash these days?"

He'd known she wouldn't like that and she didn't. "I'm sure she's fine. I

haven't seen her for a couple of weeks."

It was at the Gilbert-Bambers' that he had first met Nerissa Nash.

"Encountered" might be the better word. Until he saw her he had thought

Colette beautiful, her slenderness and her long blond hair and her full

lips, even though she'd told him about the collagen implants. The

difference between them, he had thought, was that between the

Hollywood star and the prettiest girl in the office.

Colette preceded him into the bedroom. "What she called her gym was

really a dressing room that opened out of it next to the bathroom, and

had been originally designed for the master of the house.

"He'd knock on her door when he wanted a bonk," Colette had

explained. "They were all bonkers in those days. Isn't that funny it's the

same word?"

The room was now furnished with a treadmill, a step machine, a

stationary bicycle, and an elliptical cross-trainer. There was a rack of

weights, a rolled-up yoga mat, a turquoise colored inflatable ball, and a

fridge that had never seen the like of Boot Camp but held only sparkling

spring water. Mix could see at once why the treadmill wouldn't start.

Colette was no fool and was probably well aware of the reason herself.

The machine had a safety device in the form of a key that slotted into a

keyhole and a string attached to it with a clip on the other end. You were

supposed to fasten it to your clothes while you used it so that if you fell

over the key would be pulled out and the motor stop running. Mix held

up the key.