Thirteen Steps Down (35 page)

Mrs. Singh she dismissed as a "tottering native woman in a veil." What

Mr. Singh had told her now excluded almost everything else from her

mind.

While she was absent, and not only absent but ill in the hospital,that

man, that lodger, had been in her garden, twice been there, and dug

holes in the flowerbeds. Once upon a time, in the days of Chawcer

prosperity, a real gardener had attended to horticultural matters, the

beds had blossomed with lupins and delphiniums, zinnias and dahlias,

the shrubs had been trimmedand the lawn mown to a velvet carpetlike

texture. To some extentGwendolen saw it like that still, or she saw it as

allowed togrow a little shabby, but nothing that a handyman and a

lawnmower wouldn't set to rights in an hour or so. And into this small

paradise the lodger had ventured with a spade-almost certainly her

spade-and dug holes. He had gone into the garden and dug holes without

her permission, without even attemptingto get her permission, and in

order to do so musthave passed though her kitchen, her washhouse,

probably depositing the thing in the copper on his way. Why had he? To

bury something, of course. Possibly, no, probably, he had stolen

something of hers, something valuable, and buried it out there until he

could find a receiver of stolen goods. She would have to go all over the

house, finding out what was missing. Rage returned, banging in her

blood vessels. It was no wonder that, now she was wide awake, she felt

distinctly strange, her head swimming and her body very weak.

For all that, she would very likely have attempted the stairs,taking them

slowly and with rests at every landing, but for Queenie "Winthrop

arriving as she was making up her mind. She heard the door open,

hoped it might be the lodger to save her climbing fifty-two stairs, and had

her hopes dashed by Queenie's voice calling, "Yoo-hoo, it's only me."

Gwendolen wondered how long they were going to keepthis up, she and

Olive, calling on her with presents every day.For weeks perhaps, for

months. Forever? She didn't want anymore chocolates, cereal bars,

pears, or grapes. The bottle of port Queenie took out of her shopping

trolley was far more acceptable and Gwendolen, cheering up, actually

thanked her friend.

"I hope I'm not becoming an alcoholic," she said. "I'm sure I would if you

and Olive had your way. Of course it's my lodger who has driven me to it.

I never used to drink anything stronger than orange juice."

She had been going to tell Queenie about the encounter with Mr. Singh

and what he had unwittingly revealed to her. But somehow she didn't

want to discuss her neighbor withQueenie or anyone else and she

couldn't describe the lodger'scrimes without involving Mr. Singh. Instead

she said, "I really don't like to ask. It's something of an imposition. But

could youbring yourself to go upstairs and knock on his door and tell

himI would like to see him this evening at six? Please," she said,though it

went against the grain. "I have several matters I mus tbring up with

him."

"Well, dear, I will if you don't mind waiting a bit. I've still got to catch

my breath after walking all the way here. I waited and waited for a bus

but it never came. I'll go up before I go. I promise. Now shall I get you

something to eat?" Queenie looked longingly at the bottle. "Or a drink?"

"Ye could both have a small glass of port."

"We could, couldn't we? After all, it's Sunday."

"Surely it's communion wine one drinks on a Sunday,not port."

"Possibly, dear, but not being a churchgoer I wouldn't know.Shall I be

mother?"

Gwendolen shuddered. "It's fortified wine, Queenie,not tea."

She thought this habit of bringing a present to a sick friend and then

expecting to share it, deplorable. But even a lifetime of rudeness hadn't

taught her to drink exclusively in front of someone else. She watched

Queenie pouring measures she considered too liberal into the wrong sort

of glasses, raised hers and said what the professor used to say in like

circumstances,"Your health!"

A snack of cheese and biscuits, fruit, and a slice each of the carrot

cake, an offering from Queenie's elder daughter, was eaten off trays laid

with ancient yellowing lace-trimmed cloths found in a sideboard drawer.

"You look as if you might drop off to sleep at any moment," Queenie said.

"The thing isn't the only matter I have to complain to the lodger about,"

said Gwendolen as if she hadn't spoken. "I was expecting a very

important letter while I was in hospital. It should have come here and

apparently it didn't." She had nointention of disclosing much about the

nature of this letter orits sender to Queenie. "I suspect Cellini of

tampering with it. "She had long dropped the "Mr." "Unless you or Olive

havebeen interfering with my post, which," she added in a

moreconciliatory tone, "seems unlikely."

"Of course we didn't, dear. Where would this letter have come from?"

"The postmark would probably be Oxford. And now I really do want to

sleep so perhaps you'd go upstairs to the lodger. Sixo'clock he's to

present himself."

Queenie lumbered up the stairs, looking longingly at the telephone as

she passed it. But she would only have had to lift the receiver for

Gwendolen to hear it and be down upon her like a ton of bricks. For all

her seniority, Gwendolen had bette rhearing than she had. On the first

landing she removed her punishing high-heeled shoes and, taking deep

breaths, struggledon, shoes in hand. If he wasn't in she'd have

something tosay to Gwendolen. Her friend needn't think she had a

prerogativein rudeness. Two could play at that game.

He was in. He came to the door with a cardigan tied roundhis shoulders

and his feet bare. "Oh, hi. What is it?"

Ever since she was fifteen Queenie had believed, and acted according to

her belief, that if you want anything out of a man, if you simply want to

exist in his presence, you must be extravagantly polite, sweet, winning,

and even flirtatious. It hadn't contributed to her comfort, but to the

happiness of her marriage it had. "Oh, Mr. Cellini, I'm so sorry to bother

you and on a Sunday too, but Miss Chawcer says will you be an angel

and give her just five minutes of your time at about six o'clock this

evening. If you'd just pop down and have a word with her. I'm sure she

won't keep you, so if you could ... "

"What's it about?" "

"She didn't say." Queenie flashed him an enormous toothy smile of the

kind some man had once told her lit up her whole face, and proceeded to

run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. "You know what she is, Mr.

Cellini," she said, betraying Gwendolen without knowing she was doing

so, "awfully fussy about every little thing. Not that you'd think so, would

you, from the state of this house?"

"Too right." Mix wanted to get back to the video he'd made.a couple of

weeks back of Man U playing some Central European team. "Tell her I'll

be there around six. Cheers, then."

When she got back to the drawing room Gwendolen was asleep. She

wrote on a scrap of paper. Mr. Cellini will come at six. Love, Queenie.

Up in the top flat the football remained unwatched. Taking the message

without much thought; Mix had gone back inside and become an

immediate prey to misgivings. She must have found the thong, he

thought. Someone had and who morelikely than old Chawcer? He must

think up some reason for its being in the copper and the only one he

could think of, that he had been doing a girlfriend's washing because her

machine had broken down, was obviously not feasible. Who washed in

antiquated holeslike that anymore? What was wrong with the

launderette? Anyway, it wouldn't account for the fact that he shouldn't

have been in her washhouse.

Perhaps he could deny all knowledge of it. That might bebest. Even

better, if he could manage it, would be to suggest Ma Fordyce or Ma

"Winthrop had something to do with it. Hecould even say he'd seen one

of them with the thong in he rhand. Don't worry about it, he said to

himself, don't even think about it. Think about something else. Like

what? That Frankfrom the Sun in Splendour might be with the police at

this moment? That Nerissa was out with another bloke? No, think about

the possibility of offering Brian Brunswick two-fifty for the Volvo. Why

shouldn't he go back to the house tomorrow and ask Sue Brunswick to

come out in the car with him? She didn't have to be a driver, she only

had to sit beside him. That would be brilliant. He could drive her down to

Holland Parkor, better still, to Richmond and suggest they had lunch in

oneof those trendy pubs. She couldn't refuse, not if she wanted to sell

her car. Then, afterward, with the old man, this Brian, out of the

way,when they got back to her place ...

It would probably be a one-off and just as well. Once he'd got inside

Nerissa's house and talked to her over coffee he wouldn't need secondrate women like Sue Brunswick or secondhand cars, he'd have the

Jaguar and, above all, he'd have Nerissa. By next Sunday his whole

circumstances could have changed. He wouldn't even be here in this flat,

attractive as itwas, he'd be moving into Campden Hill Square, he

wouldn't need a job or a car or care about what a bunch of old women

thought of him. There'd be no murderer's ghost in her house. He'd tell

her about the thong and they'd have a good laugh over it together,

especially the bit about when he'd told old Chawcer the thong belonged

to Ma "Winthrop. As if she couldeven begin to get it round her fat arse!

He took three 400 milligram strength ibuprofen, put socks and shoes

on and his arms into the cardigan sleeves and went down at ten past six.

Gwendolen wasn't lying down, she wasn't even sitting down, but pacing

the room because the lodger wasover ten minutes late. When he

appeared, she was so angry she couldn't control herself.

"You're late. Doesn't time mean anything to people anymore?"

"What was it you wanted?"

"You'd better sit down," said Gwendolen.

Was it a fact that anger made your blood pressure rise and that you

could feel it rise, pounding in your head? Sometimes she thought about

her arteries, lined as they must be by now with stuff like the plaque you

got on your teeth. Her head swam. She had to sit down, though she

would have preferred to stand and tower over him. But she was afraid of

falling and thus making herself vulnerable in his presence.

"A very charming neighbor of mine called on me this morning,"she said,

taking a deep breath. "These immigrants to ourshores could teach some

people around here what good manners are. However, be that as it may,

he had something to tell me. Possibly you can guess what it was."

Mix could. Though he had been turning over in his mind possible

reasons for old Chawcer wanting to see him, this wasn't one of them. He

had no explanation to offer. "With increasing disma, he listened to her

long account of Mr. Singh's visit, his misapprehension as to Mix's

presence in the garden and her own indignation.

"Now perhaps you'll tell me what you thought you were doing."

"Digging the garden," said Mix. "You can't say it doesn'tneed it."

"That's no business of yours. The garden has nothing to do with you."

Gwendolen had decided not to mention the thing. The letter was another

matter. "And I've reason to believe you've been tampering with my post."

"That's a lie, for a start."

"Don't speak to me like that, Mr. Cellini. How dare you suggest I might

be untruthful? You still haven't given me any reason for digging up my

garden, not to mention going into my kitchen and my washhouse."

There had been a teacher like her at his comprehensive school. He even

remembered her name: Miss Forester. She'd taught his mum before him

and his grandma too, for all he knew. But his generation of kids gave her

a hard time and she'd had to leave before she had a nervous breakdown.

He'd been one of them but in those days he'd had nothing to lose. This

was different. He'd like to have said what he remembered sayingto Miss

Forester but somehow the words, "Piss off, you oldcow," died on his lips.

"Either I get a satisfactory explanation of your conduct or I shall serve

you notice to quit the premises."

"You can't do that," he said. "It's an unfurnished flat. I've got a

protected tenancy."

Gwendolen knew that very well, iniquitous though it was, but she had

still tried it on. "What did you bury? Some piece of property of mine, I

suppose. A valuable piece of jewelry? Or perhaps the silver? I shall

check, have no fear, I shall make an inventory of missing things. Or

maybe you murdered someone and buried the body. Is that it?"

The stain on the base of the Psyche notwithstanding, Gwendolen didn't

for a moment believe this was what had happened. It was the stuff of

fiction and as such something she had readof many times over the years.

She said it, not because she gave it credence or even saw it as remotely

likely, but to insult him. She even failed to notice that Mix had gone