Thirteen Steps Down (34 page)

he'd be long gone and far away from this haunted house. Living with

Nerissa, married to Nerissa, and maybe they'd buy a place in France or

even Greece. Even if they found Danila's body they'd never connect it

with Nerissa Nash's husband, the famous criminologist.

Backache woke him in the small hours. It was so bad that he groaned

aloud, put the light on and saw it was ten past three. I Just his luck

when he'd been congratulating himself on his total recovery. This felt the

way they said it did when you slipped a disc. Four ibuprofen and a cup of

neat gin sent him off to sleep again but he woke at seven. No chance of

beginning on his exercise regimen, as he had intended to do today.The

backache felt as if it was there to stay and it was far worse than the last

time. It seemed to affect the whole length ofhis spine.

A hot bath and two more ibuprofen helped, though he was left feeling

rather dizzy. He took the bus along WestbourneGrove and got off at the

Portobello Market, for food had to be bought. The market was always

crowded, particularly around the stalls, but Saturdays you could only

move by becoming part of the throng and going where it took you. He

bought takeawaya nd a roast chicken, bread and cakes, his only

concessionto what the papers called "healthy food" a bunch of bananas.

Any more and he wouldn't be able to carry it, not with his backi n agony

like this.

In a halfhearted attempt to scan the ads for a job to tide him over until

he'd established his own business, he bought an Evening Standard and

walked down to Notting Hill high street to find a pharmacist. More

ibuprofen was needed if sleep werenot to be a problem and he'd better

get something to rub on his back. Outside the big Boots a man was

begging. He was sitting on the pavement with an open biscuit tin in front

of him,but no dog to win sentimental hearts and no sign proclaiming that

he was blind or homeless or had five children. Mix never gave money to

beggars and there were already twenty or so coins in the box, but

something made him look at the man, a sense of familiarity, perhaps a

kind of chemistry between them. He found himself staring into the face of

Reggie Christie. It was him to the life, the clear-cut jaw, the narrow lips,

the bignose, and the glasses over cold eyes.

Mix went quickly into Boots and bought his analgesic. If there had been

another way out he would have taken it but he had to go back into the

high street. The beggar had gone. Mixcrossed the road to wait for a bus

that would take him home.There was no sign anywhere of Reggie. Had he

really been there? Had his own mind invented him as a result of thinking

of him so much and of looking at those pictures? And was it theresult of

stress? The horrible idea that Reggie's ghost had followedhim down here

or had come down, expecting to see him, was too frightening to think of.

Gwendolen had looked everywhere for the object she hadcome to call "the

thing," "thong" being a word she associated with sandals. Supposing she

must have put it in "a safe place," she investigated, among many other

possibilities, the ovenand the space behind the dictionaries in one of the

numerousbookcases. She even unzipped the stomach of the toy spaniel

nightdress case her mother had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. It

wasn't in any of these potential hiding places. She was irritable with

frustration. How could she take the lodger to task without the thing to

prove her case?

No letter had come from Stephen Reeves. She was sure now that he had

written to her but the letter had gone astray. It was the only explanation.

Before she wrote again she would talk to the lodger. What more likely

than that he had taken her letter, either by mistake or with malice? She

was beginning to think that many of her present problems stemmed from

Cellini. Mysteries and misfortunes had seldom come her way before he

moved in. He had probably infected her with the germ that brought on

her pneumonia.

She meant to catch him when she heard him come down the stairs

preparatory to going out. Or when he entered the house. Her difficulty

was that since her illness she fell asleep far more easily than she used to

do and she was afraid she must have dozed off when last he came in or

left the house. Climbing all fifty-two stairs to his flat was too much for

her at present,though she would have admitted this to no one. Nor would

she have told Olive or Queenie that making her way up to her bed-room

and getting ready for bed exhausted her so enormouslythat she barely

had the strength to wash her face and hands.

No doubt the lodger did enter the house at some time in the late

morning. She was almost sure she heard his footsteps mounting the

stairs. Would he come down again? She doubted she could tell for she

fell into catnaps throughout the afternoon. Olive came in at about five

but she didn't offer to go upand see ifhe was at home. She wasn't weak

from illness, Gwendolenthought scornfully, but far too fat.

"You could phone him."

Gwendolen was shocked. "Make a telephone call to someoneliving in the

same house! 0 tempora, 0 mores."

"I don't know what that means, dear. You'll have to speak English."

"It means, a times, a customs. That was my reaction when you

suggested phoning an individual who lives upstairs."

Olive decided. Gwendolen must be exhausted to speak in that

ridiculous way, and offered to make "your evening meal,Gwen." Her

friend's adamant refusal had no effect. She had brought all the materials

for a meal with her."

Not 'meal,' Olive," Gwendolen said feebly. "Please not 'meal.' Dinner-or

supper if you must."

The moment Olive had gone she prepared to go to bed. It took her an

hour to get up there and into her nightgown. The house was silent, more

silent than usual it seemed to her, and not at all warm. The forecast on

her wireless had said it wouldbe a fine day, the temperature in the high

twenties, whatever that meant, and the night exceptionally mild for the

time of year. The wind was supposed to be westerly and therefore warm,

but it felt cold to her as it penetrated ill-fitting windows and plaster

cracks. There were two windows in her bedroom, but from the front one

she could see nothing but darkness and gray branches. The street lamp

had gone out, its glass broken,probably by the thugs with bottles who

roamed the street. Down in the garden, seen from the other window, the

shrubs bent and twisted in the wind and the tree branches swayed this

way and that.

Earlier she had heard Mr. Singh's geese cackling but now they were

quiet, shut up for the night. There was nothing alive in the windswept

garden but Otto sitting on the wall, eatings omething he had caught

himself. From the window in the darkness, glazed by yellow light,

Gwendolen could just see or divine that he was making his supper off the

pigeon that roosted in the sycamore. She wrapped a thick wool cardigan

about her shoulders, went to bed and fell asleep before she had pulled

the bedclothes up to cover her.

Sunday had meant nothing to Mix since the death of his grandmother.

Now it was just a pallid version of Saturday, rather unpleasant and

irritating because some of the shops were shut,s treets were empty, and

men who had girlfriends or wives or families took them out in cars. Still,

it was also the day he had resolved to renew his campaign of really

getting to know Nerissa. He hadn't yet got used to being without a car

and, as he had yesterday, he went downstairs at nine-thirty and

sauntered outside to begin the drive to Campden Hill Square. No car, and

then he remembered what had happened to it, cursin groundly. Heavy

doses of ibuprofen had numbed his back and he set off to walk.

The wind was cooler this morning. Autumn was coming.Being used to

the warm interior of a vehicle, he was inadequately dressed in a T-shirt

and he shivered as he walked. As he approached her house he saw that

the Jaguar was on the frontdrive and his spirits rose. He had forgotten to

supply himselfwith something to take to her door, a campaign leaflet or

anenvelope to be filled for a children's charity, so all he could do was wait

and trust to the inspiration of the moment.

He began to shiver and goose pimples came up on his arms.To warm

himself up, he marched to the bottom of the hill,along Holland Park

Avenue and up the other side of thesquare. He was breathless when he

got back to the top but no warmer. To his horror, he saw the Jaguar

reversing out of the drive. He had missed her.

She drove past him down the hill and though he waved, she couldn't

have seen him. She kept looking straight ahead and gave him no

answering smile. There was nothing for it but to make his way back

home and nothing to do when he got there but rub the stuff he had

bought on his back and write applications to the two jobs he had seen in

the Evening Standard, both of which looked likelier than the others.

The lodger had lived in her house for nearly four months now and

sometimes weeks had passed without her seeing him or wanting to see

him. They had spoken only when they encounteredeach other by chance

and then not for long. He was another kind of person, she had told

herself, and no doubt she was not his. Therefore she found it strange

how much she now needed to see him. It seemed to her essential that at

some point during this Sunday she should confront him and have out

with him this business of the thing and the missing letter. There was

also the matter of his failure, according to Queenie and Olive,to feed

Otto in her absence. Her own indifference to Otto was not the question. It

had been Cellini's duty to feed the cat, he had promised. Besides, she

was sure Otto would never have killed and eaten those guinea fowl and

that pigeon if he had been properly fed.

Thinking of the guinea fowl reminded her that Mr. Singh was due to

call on her at 11 A. M. She was so sure he would be late, everyone always

was these days, that she was astonishedand nearly disbelieving when the

doorbell rang promptly on the hour. When she got to her feet she felt so

dizzy she had tograb hold of the back of the sofa so it took her a few

minutes toget to the door; he rang again, which gave her an excuse to be

irritable.

"All right, all right, I'm coming," she said to the empty hallway.

He was a handsome man, taller and paler than she had expected, with

a small iron--gray mustache and instead of the anticipated nightshirt-like garment, he wore gray flannel trousers, a sports jacket, and a pink

shirt with a gray and pink tie. The only incongruous note (to

Gwendolen's eyes) was his snowwhite intricately wound turban.

He followed her into the drawing room, patiently walking at her own

slow pace. "It is a fine place you have here," he said.

Gwendolen nodded. She knew it. That was why she stayed. She sat

down and motioned to him to do the same. Siddhartha Singh did so, but

slowly. He was looking around, carefully taking in the spaces and

corners, the peeling walls and cracked ceiling, the shaky and splintered

window frames, the prototype radiators dating from the twenties, and the

carpets, one piled on another, all eaten by moths and apparently chewed

by smallmammals. Only in the slums of Calcutta, years ago, had h eseen

such a degree of disintegration.

"If it is about your birds," Gwendolen began, "I really don't know what

I'm supposed ... "

"Excuse me, madam." Mr. Singh spoke very politely. "Excuse me, but

the bird episode is a thing of the past. History, if I may so put it. I cut my

losses and turn over a new leaf. And on this subject, perhaps you,

obviously an English lady; can tell me why 'leaf.' Is it perhaps that we go

out into the woods and turn over a leaf to discover a secret beneath?"

Gwendolen would, in normal circumstances, have made a withering

rejoinder but this man was so good-looking (and not just for an Oriental)

and so charming that she felt quite weak in his presence. Like the Queen

of Sheba when confronted by Solomon, there was no more spirit in her:"

" 'Leaf' means a page," she said unsteadily. "A page in the well, the book

of life, I suppose."

Mr. Singh smiled. It was just such a smile as the sun god might bestow,

broad, benign, lighting his whole handsome face and displaying the kind

of teeth possessed by American adolescents, shiny, white, and even.

"Thank you. Sometimes, although I have been in this country for thirty

years, I feel I dwell in a new age of enlightenment."

Gwendolen smiled back helplessly. She made an offer the like of which

she hadn't extended to a casual visitor since Stephen Reeves disappeared

from her life. "Would you likesome tea?"

"Oh, no, thank you. I am here only for a jiffy. Let me come to the point.

While you were unwell and not in residence, I see your gardener working

away, a most industrious young man, and I say to Mrs. Singh, look, this

young man is just what we need to set things to rights here. And that is

why I come to you. For the name and, please, the telephone number of

your gardener, in the hope that he requires more work."

Various emotions fought each other. in Gwendolen's head. She hardly

knew why she had felt a sinking of the heart when a Mrs. Singh was

mentioned, though she could understand the astonishment and incipient

anger that rose in her at the same time. She sat up straighter, wondering

fleetingly if he might take her for ten years younger than she actually

was and said, "I haven't got a gardener."

"Oh, yes, indeed, madam. You have. Perhaps it has slipped your mind. I

understand you have been indisposed and in a hospital. That was when

he was here. No doubt you engaged him and he came to begin the work

in your absence."

"I did not engage him. I know nothing about it." Impossible to delude

herself. He was looking at her pityingly as if he saw her not as ten years

her own junior but as an old woman suffering from senile dementia.

"What did he look like?" she asked him.

"Let me see. About thirty years old, fairish hair, a Britishf ace, blue

eyes, I think, and handsome. Not as tall as I or"--he sized her up

critically--"as you, I would respectfully say,madam."

"What exactly was he doing?"

"Digging the garden," said Mr. Singh simply. "He dug in two places. The

ground, you know, is very heavy, like rock, like"--he ventured a flight of

fancy--"adamantine stone."

He even spoke, she thought, the same language as she did. If she had

known him sooner, would he have replaced Stephen Reeves in her

affections? "The man you're talking about," she said, her anger surfacing

again, "is my lodger. He lives upstairs,on the top floor."

"Then I apologize for troubling you."

Mr. Singh got to his feet, affording Gwendolen another sight of his tall

soldierly figure, his height, and the boardlike flatness of his stomach.

She wanted to cry, "Don't go!" Instead she said, "His name is Cellini and

he is not permitted access to my garden."

Another smile, but sad this time. "I won't say I'm not disappointed.No,

please don't get up. You are a convalescent lady and not, if I may say so,

quite in the first youth." He caught sight of himself in one of Gwendolen's

many fly-spotted, desilvered mirrors. "Who is?" he said more tactfully.

"Now I say good morning, thank you for your trouble and I let myself

out."

With his departure the sun went in. Anger remained, hotter than

before. She would lie in wait for Cellini now, drink black coffee, do

anything to stay awake until she heard him come in. The thing, the

letter, and now this, she thought. She'd get rid of him and find a nice

quiet lady, not in the first youth. Oh, the hurt the phrase had done her!

Even though he bracketed himself with her in that category. But Cellini.

She would evict Cellini just as soon as she could.

Chapter 23

He had begun to walk home, but when he was passing a bus stop and a

bus came, he got on it. It was too wild a day for a walk to be enjoyable. A

few yellow leaves were already fallingfrom the plane trees, whirling past

the windows of the bus.Something seemed to be pinching his spine with

iron fingers and whatever it was stabbed his lumbar region as he was

getting off on the corner of St. Mark's Road. The rest of the way he had to

go on foot, the pain subsiding a little with enforced movement.

Cars were as usual parked nose to tail all along the residents' parking

in St. Blaise Avenue, and he noticed what he had had no need to notice

before. One of them, an ancient Volvo, had a For Sale sign in its

windscreen and underneath, the price: £300. Volvos were good cars,

supposed to last for years, and this one appeared quite well cared for. He

was walking roundi t, looking in the windows, when a woman emerged

from one of the houses on the St. Blaise House side and came up to him.

"Are you interested?"

Mix said he didn't know, he might be. Though no longer young, she was

quite good-looking with the kind of hourglass figure he liked.

"It's my husband's. We're called Brunswick-Brian and Sue Brunswick.

Brian's away but he'll be back on Wednesday. He'd go with you on a trial

run if you'd like .”

"You're not a driver yourself?" He wouldn't have minded going on any

sort of trial run with her.

"I'm afraid it's years since I was at the wheel of a car."

"Shame," said Mix. "I'll think about it."

Padding across the hallway in St. Blaise House, his hand pressed to the

small of his back, he noticed that the drawin groom door was ajar and he

peered in. Old Chawcer was lyingo n the sofa fast asleep. He began to

climb the stairs. Though cold in comparison to what it had been, the

weather was brighter and the sun had come out. Sunbeams striking the

walls of the stairwell showed up every crack, hairline as well as wide, the

flyspots on the crookedly hung pictures and the flies that had got in

between the print and the glass and died there, the cobwebs that clung

to frames and cords and light fittings. He wondered where Reggie's ghost

went in the daytime and told himself no tto think about it unless he had

to. The pain in his lumba rregion sharpened. If it didn't improve he'd

have to go to the doctor.

The first thing Gwendolen thought of when she woke up was Mr. Singh's

revelation. Mr. Singh htmself was not for her and she knew it, while

Stephen Reeves was. Momentarily she had been carried away by his

looks and his charm but, anyway, she didn't approve of cross-cultural

marriages--miscegenation,they had called it when she was young--and

the wife was a considerable stumbling block. The unknown and unseen