Thirteen Steps Down (31 page)

expected messages from at least one of the three clients he'd let down on

Friday but, as it turned out, all three had phoned him, one disappointed

and pleading, another furious, and the third threatening to take her

business elsewhere. Nothing from head office. Nothing from Jack

Fleisch.He'd have been amazed if Mr. Pearson bothered with him, andt

here was nothing from him either. No doubt he had thought better of

further reproaching such an asset to the firm as Mix was with his

experience and his efficiency.

The day had as usual become very fine and warm. The Indianman's

geese were grooming each other under a palm treein the sunshine. It was

the only tree in the garden Mix was able to identify and he recognized it

from an illustration in his grandmother's Bible. What had become of that

Bible he had no idea. But he remembered the picture. The Indian man's

palm looked as if it had been there for years and years, long before he

and his wife came. Mix was surprised that it survivedthe winters, Notting

Hill being a lot colder than Jerusalem. He had never noticed it till this

morning. But he had never spent so much time watching the garden as

he did now.

The two patches of freshly dug earth looked very obvious to him, the

one where he had dug at first and where the heavinessof the soil defeated

him, and the other that he had chosen for Danila's resting place. There

was nothing to be done about it. He must wait for the weeds to grow

back and he had no ideahow long this would take. If only he'd had more

time he would have dug deeper. It troubled him a little that her body lay

only three feet down, less than three feet really, because although she

was thin, a section through her at the rib cage would be severalinches.

Still, who was going to look?

Old Chawcer never went out there, or never had to his knowledge, and

was even less likely to do so now. He had nevers een Ma Winthrop or Ma

Fordyce venture into the garden. The old man on the side with the

conservatory never looked over the wall, as far as he could tell. The

house on the otherside was all flats, but the basement, or "garden flat,"

had been empty all the time Mix had been there and he imagined that

the damp made it impossible to live in. No one would be interested in two

rectangular dug-over plots. Bodies buried in the earth, according to Dr.

Camps in Medical and Scientific Investigationsin the Christie Case,

became skeletons after a few months. Not that long. By next spring she

would be just bones.

He had left her just as she was, naked and wrapped in the red sheet.

The plastic bag he had slid off her, brought it back upstairs and carefully

cut it up, depositing the small pieces in his rubbish sack for collection.

Twice he had checked the copperto be sure nothing was left behind. It

was dark in the washhouseand impossible to see to the bottom of the

copper but hecould tell there was no room for anything to be left behind

...

A cold tremor passed through him. The thong. What had become of the

thong? Now he remembered clearly feeling the bulge of it in his pocket

and dropping it into the copper after he had heaved the body in. He had

never retrieved it, of that he was sure. It must still be there. What does it

matter, he thought, no one will look in there, she hadn't lifted that lid for

years, probably never will again. Besides, he could go downand get it,

almost whenever he liked. Now if he wanted. He was nearly certain she

had still been in bed when he came back from his walk to Campden Hill

and even when she got up,s he'd take herself straight to that sofa in the

drawing room.

He pocketed his keys and came out onto the landing. Bright sunshine

streamed through the window above the stairs, so ofcourse Reggie's

ghost was hiding itself away in some dark corner.As he started down the

tiled staircase he heard the frontdoor open and close and a voice,

unmistakably belonging to Ma Fordyce, called out, "Hiya, Gwen! You still

in the land of the living?"

Old fool. Now he'd have to wait for her to leave again andthat might not

be for hours.

Hoping she wouldn't have to climb all those stairs, Olive went straight

into the drawing room, still carrying the two bags of food she had bought

on the way. She was wearing her newblack trousers and a lemon-colored

linen jacket that matchedher new hair tint. To her relief Gwendolen was

up, though still in her nightclothes and lying on the sofa.

"I've brought you some goodies, dear."

"Timeo Danaos et donaferentes, " said Gwendolen.

"I don't know any Tim, Gwen," said Olive with a heartylaugh, "and I

can't understand a word of that lingo. How are you?"

"As well as can be expected. I've no appetite so you needn't have

bothered with goodies, as you call them."

"Don't be such an old curmudgeon. I'm trying to help. I'm going to make

us a coffee each, won't be long."

While she was gone Gwendolen investigated the carrierbags. Chocolatewell, she could eat that--biscuits, marzipanfruits, a nasty sponge cake

with mock cream. Still, Olive hadn't done badly. At least there wasn't a

lot of salad stuff and green apples with no taste to them.

Olive reappeared with milky coffee and ginger nuts on a plate. "You're

so thin you can eat as much as you like. Aren'tyou lucky?"

"You don't mean you're dieting. At your age?"

"I always say you're never too old to take pride in yourappearance. "

"On the subject of appearance, is this yours?"

The object that was put into Olive's hands made her giggle.

"Are you joking, Gwen? Is this some sort of game?"

"I found it in the bottom of my copper, in my washhouse. Is it yours and

what is it?"

" Well, Gwen, you've never been married and I knew you were innocent

about a lot of things, but I didn't know it went that far." So Olive took her

revenge for years of rudeness andingratitude. "Even a child would know

what that is."

"Thank you. You've said quite enough. Now perhaps you'll tell me what

it is."

This caused Olive some embarrassment, which she triednot to show.

"Well, it's a--it's a kind of pair of--well, knickers. Girls wear them. Once

I'd have said 'only that sort of girl,' but things have changed, haven't

they? Now even nice girls, I mean, not actresses or-well, stripteasers, if

you know what I mean."

"Oh, I know what you mean. In spite of my profound naivete and

resemblance to a retarded child ... "

"I didn't say that, Gwen." Though not a slave to political correctness,

Olive shuddered at some of the things that snapped off Gwendolen's

tongue.

“No? I think you did. In spite of all my cerebral deficiencies, I do just

about know what you mean. Don't, please don't, tell me it’s yours. "

Olive was really incensed by now. "Of course it isn't mine. Do you

suppose that would go around my hips even if I was so--so ... "

"Meretricious? Licentious? Concupiscent? Vain?"

"Oh, I've no patience. If you weren't unwell and didn'tknow what you're

saying I'd be really cross."

At last Gwendolen saw that she had gone too far. Sustaining this kind

of altercation took more energy than she was capable of today. She drank

her coffee, which she had to admit (though not aloud) was very good. "Do

you suppose it could be Queenie's?"

"Of course not. This has been worn by some young woman. A girl of

twenty."

Nerissa immediately came into Gwendolen's mind and along with her,

the lodger, Cellini. The minute she arrived home, he had been coming

out of her kitchen. Why? He had a kitchen of his own. "Did you or

Queenie put my bag of old clothes on top of the copper?"

"Certainly not. I found a bag of clothes in the washhouse and I left them

there. Very musty and smelly they were, but there--it's not my business."

"No, indeed." After that, Gwendolen decided to be gracious. "It was

very kind of you to buy me the chocolate and those other things. What do

I owe you?"

"Nothing, Gwen. Don't be absurd. If you want my opinion and I dare say

you don't, that Mr. Cellini had a girl here while you were in hospital and

they were larking about where they shouldn't have been. People these

days--well, I don't like talking about these things--but they do--well, have

baths together,and it's just possible ... You see, you could stand up in a

copper which you can't in an ordinary bath."

"I've no idea what you mean," said Gwendolen. "I needs omething lighter

than Darwin to read. Before you go, would you see if you can find The

Golden Bowl? Henry James,you know."

He watched Ma Fordyce leave and once he had seen her

disappeararound the corner, he went downstairs, careful to tread softly.

The drawing room door was open and on the sofa he saw old Chawcer

lying on her back, asleep with her mouth open. Always one to notice

domestic order and its reverse, he observed that the kitchen was fast

reverting to its normalc haos. The old girl had only been home twentyfour hours.

Confident he would find the thong where he had left it, he tiptoed into

the washhouse and lifted the lid of the copper. Of course it was

impossible to see down to the bottom of it. How did women ever get the

water out of there? Perhaps they didn't. Perhaps there was always some

lingering, stagnant and smelly, in the depths. There must be a flashlight

somewhere. Nearly sure he'd once seen her with a flashlight in her hand,

hepadded

around

the

kitchen,

looking

into

cupboards

and

openingdrawers. No flashlight, but he did find a candle and a box of

matches. Afraid she'd hear the match striking, he waited and listened,

holding the lit candle in his hand. Once he was sure he wasn't dragging

herself off the sofa to come and find him, he put the hand holding the

candle as far as he could down the deep well of the copper. The light was

quite adequate to show him walls and a base apparently made of some

sort of bluish pottery--and nothing else. Nothing. No thong. The copper

was empty.

Still he held the candle there as if continuing to light the hollow space

would ultimately reveal that it wasn't as empty as he'd thought at iirst.

He stared down, closing his eyes and opening them again until a drop of

boiling wax fell on his thumb, making him jump back and very nearly cry

out. Instead he cursed under his breath, pinched out the flame and put

candle and matches back where he had found them. He walked back

slowly, passing the drawing room door. Old Chawcer was still asleep.

Had she found the thong? Or was it one of the other two? It seemed to

him that they must immediately have known it had belonged to the

missing girl whose picture appearedalmost daily in the papers. Only

today there had been a bold headline: HAVE YOU SEEN DANILA?

Upstairs in his own flat, he asked himself if he should doanything. Ask

old Chawcer or ask one of the others? But he was very alive to the

awkwardness of it. How to explain what he was doing in the washhouse,

why he was even touching thecopper? They would want to know who the

thong belonged to.He couldn't think of any explanation except the true

one for how the thong got where it was. Perhaps they wouldn't ask. Mix

had very little idea of how other people might react to his own activities

or whether they might think things he regarded as normal and ordinary

as quite different from that. But he had some small inkling through

remarks made by the three elderly women that an older, a much older,

generation than his own might be embarrassed by a garment so blatantly

sexual as a G-string. If only they were, they might not mention it, they

might prefer to pretend they had never found it, might throw it away in

disgust or shock. You wish, he said to himself, but he began to think

there was a possibility of this.

While she was still asleep, he went into her bedroom and examined the

bottles and packets she had brought back from the hospital and left on

her bedside table. Among them was a jar with a label on its side that

said: Two to be taken at night to promotesleep. Certain she wouldn't have

counted them, he helped himself to eight. If he needed more after four

nights he could always come back. Instead of two, he took three and

slept hea-ily for three hours. After that he was wide awake and passed

the rest of the night uneasily.

He kept thinking of arguments against his optimistic theory of the three

(or one or two) of the old women disposing of the thong. Suppose Ma

Fordyce, say, had read all that stuff about Danila working in what the

papers called a "beauty salon and gym," suppose she knew very well

what the thong was and decided a girl from a place like that would be

more than likely to wear a thong--suppose all that and then would she go

to the police? Easy to say, as he had in the bright light of afternoon,that

this was a crazy farfetched idea. In the small hours itseemed reasonable.

He had to see the Holland Park woman at nine-thirty and he was

twenty minutes late. She was too pleased he had come at all to reproach