Thirteen Steps Down (36 page)

white, his expressionless face no longer blank. But he said nothing, only

lowering the eyes that had been fixed on hers.

Triumphantly, she saw that she had utterly vanquished himand now

she would finish the job. "Tomorrow morning, with-out fail, I shall inform

the police. When you come out of prison I doubt if you will wish to

return--here even if that be allowed."

"Have you finished?" Mix asked.

"Almost," said Gwendolen. "I simply repeat that I shall inform the police

of your activities tomorrow morning."

When he had gone she had to lie down. Once she heard his door close-he slammed it and the whole house seemed to shake--she hauled herself

off the sofa and began to crawlt oward the stairs. Later on, she might

lack the strength to managethem as she lacked it now to begin the climb.

For about tenminutes she remained sitting on the floor and then she

startedto crawl up the stairs on hands and knees. It seemed like hours

later that she reached her bedroom and got inside.

Heaven forbid that she should have her bed moved downstairs. Neither

Queenie nor Olive had yet suggested it, but they would, they would. She

would never submit to that, shethought, as she struggled, and failed, to

remove her clothes andget into her nightgown. She did manage to take

off the ruby ring and put it in the jewel box, thought of washing her

hands but only thought of it. Reaching the bathroom seemed as

impossible as, say, walking to Ladbroke Grove and back. She laydown

and closed her eyes. Weakness enfeebled her wholebody, but sleep,

which had come so easily and irresistibly during the past week, come

when she didn't want it and even tried to fight against it, now backed

away from her, banished by anger.

It wasn't only the wrath aroused by the lodger's behavior, though that

was bad enough, but the rage of a lifetime welling up and bubbling,

churning through her veins. Rage at Mama, who had taught her to be

ladylike at the expense of freedom of speech, cultivation of the mind,

liberty of movement, love, passion ,adventure, and the pursuit of

happiness; rage at Papa who hid his denial to her of a real education

under a cloak of protecting her from the wicked world and who kept her

at hometo be his nurse and amanuensis; rage at Stephen Reeves,

whohad deceived her and married someone else and failed to answer her

letters; rage at this enormous decaying house that had become her

prison.

For a long while, she didn't know how long, she felt she had no physical

existence and was only a mind that swirled with rage and thoughts of

revenge. Then, at one moment she was in a fury of anger, at the next

blank and still. It was like sleep andyet it was not. Her first thought

when she emerged from it was that at least she could punish the lodger

with the police. She struggled, and failed, to sit up. This wouldn't do for,

tonight certainly, she must check on the rest of the jewelry in the box,see

what, if anything, was missing and lying in a muddy hole in the garden.

She must go down and look in the cabinet where the silver, untouched

for many years, lay wrapped in green baize.

It seemed as if, for a few moments, she had lost consciousness.She

doubted if she could stand up. This time it wasn't a fear of dizziness that

might cause her to fall but an apparent inability to move her left side.

Cramp, of course. She occasionally suffered from cramp and usually in

the night. She rubbed her left leg and then her left arm and though she

fancied a littlefeeling returned she could only put her foot to the floor by

a huge effort. Her arm hung useless. As she thought she must try to get

to the light switch and the door, it opened slowly and Otto strolled in. His

sleek chocolate form became black in the faint light from those street

lamps still in working order, while his eyes glowed the color of the limes

for sale in the cornershop. She found herself thinking, incongruously, as

she had never thought before, that his eyes were beautiful and that he,

young and lithe, was the only perfect thing she ever saw. He took no

notice of her but sat down in front of the empty grate and began picking

pieces of twig and tiny stones out of his pads with sharp white teeth.

Gwendolen dragged her left leg back onto the bed, tugging it there with

her right hand. The effort exhausted her. His manicure complete, Otto

leapt gracefully onto the bed and curled up beside her feet.

Chapter 24

From his bedroom window Mix watched Mr. Singh pinning upfairy lights

along the fronds of the palm tree. It wasn't Christmas or that festival

Indians had about the same time, so whatwas he playing at? Maybe it's

just as well we can't have handguns here like they do in the U.S. If I had

a gun I'd shoot that guy here and now, Mix thought. Mr. Singh climbed

down theladder, went into the house, and switched the lights on, red and

blue and yellow and green twinkling in the exotic tree. Then Mrs. Singh

came out in a pink sari, and the two of them stoodlooking at the tree,

admiring the effect.

Even at this hour, the places where Mix had dug the garden showed up

quite clearly from a distance, a small patch of turned earth and a larger

one. He should have done his digging under cover of darkness, he knew

that now, but that would have meant after midnight. Lights were on in

the houses along Mr. Singh's road but on this side he couldn't see the

backs ofthe terrace, only their gardens. One of them had outside lights

along the wall and among the evergreens. A woman who hadcome out to

take in a blanket and a pair of jeans from the washingline he recognized

as Sue Brunswick. Thoughts of buying! her husband's car now seemed

like a half-forgotten dream, let alone the designs he had had on her.

Even Nerissa, whom he often thought of romantically at this time of day

like a song at twilight, faded from his mind. Nothing mattered, not jobs

or livelihood, not lack of a car, not love, nothong but stopping old

Chawcer phoning the police.

Yet ever since he had come upstairs he had been paralyzed with fear.

The ibuprofen he had taken, far in excess of the maximum recommended

dose, made his head swim and hadn't done much for his backache. He

hadn't even been able to pour himself a drink or think about food or sit

down, but had stoodhere at the window, holding on to the sill for support

and staringout. She would do it, he was sure of that. He hadn't tried to

dissuade her because he knew for certain that she'd do it. Sheonly put it

off till tomorrow because she belonged to that generation who thought

you didn't phone the police or a doctor or go to the shops on a Sunday.

His gran was the same. They saw Monday as the day you got down to

things, so she'd tell them first thing in the morning.

The twin gleams of Otto's eyes were nowhere to be seen. Mix, who had

never given Otto much thought before, now imagined how glorious it

must be to be him, fed and housed for free, no job and none needed,

insomnia unknown, freedom to wander a rich hunting ground all day

and night if he wished. Free of pain, supple and fearless and free to

murder anything that got in his way. No sex of course. Otto, he was sure,

had been fixed. But sex was a nuisance anyway, and what you'd never

had you couldn't miss.

This small distraction from his troubles sent Mix into the living room

where he mixed himself a Boot Camp with an extra shot of Cointreau. He

should have had the sense to do this a couple of hours ago. Then maybe

he wouldn't have felt so bad. The cocktail had its wondrous effect and

almost instantly made him feel there was no problem he couldn't solve.

Youhad to get things in perspective, you had to know your priorities. His

priority, in the here and now, was to stop old Chawcer talking to the

police. It was probable, he thought, that she didn't know the effect her

words would have on them. He knew. Searching for Danila's body

simultaneously with their hunt for her killer, they would immediately be

alerted to the chance of discovering both and be around here in ten

minutes. She had to be stopped.

He knew how to stop a woman's tongue. He had done itbefore.

How she got out of bed Gwendolen hardly knew. She crawled a few

inches across the floor. In Mr. Singh's garden a palm tree had turned

into a chandelier of colored lights. She must be imagining it, something

had happened to her brain. To reach the door, let alone the stairs, the

drawing room, and the silverc abinet, was impossible. She would have

liked to phone her doctor or even Queenie or Olive, but she would have

had to roll herself down the stairs to do so. But it was Sunday, still

Sunday as far as she knew, and angry as she had been with her longdead mother, Mrs. Chawcer's principle of not making a phone call to

anyone but members of one's family on a Sunday--and never, on any

day, after nine at night--died very hard. So she crawled back without the

strength to wash or what her mother had called "relieve herself," saw that

the imaginary tree was still there, still bright with twinkling colored

stars, and fellon the bed still fully clothed, though she managed to pull

off one shoe and kick off the other.

Lying there on her back, she pulled the quilt over her withher sound

right hand. What was wrong with her she guessed,and had done so for

the past hour, but only now could she put it into silent words. She had

had a stroke.

Mix had come out onto the landing because she made such anoise

getting out of bed. What was wrong with her? Perhaps she always made

that much noise about going to bed. He wouldn't know. He never

remembered noticing her bedtime before.

He asked himself if he'd be able to kill her in cold blood. Danila had

been different. Danila had driven him into an uncontrollablerage with her

insults and her unprovoked attackon Nerissa. The light on the landing

went out and the Isabellal ights had disappeared while the street lamp

was out of order. Once I'm alone here, he thought, I'm going to get all the

lights in the place changed so that they stay on longer and I'm going to

buy normal-size bulbs for them, hundreds or hundred and fifties, not

this rubbish. It won't be for long, I'll soon be gone.

He looked across to the thin shaft of light coming from hiss lightly open

front door, then, his eyes becoming used to thedark, along the left-hand

passage. A figure was walking silently away with his back to Mix, as if he

had come out of the neares troom. He turned as he reached the farthest

door, saw him and grew still. Mix saw the gleam on the glasses on his

beaky nose.Then the ghost lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. He put

out his hands in the sort of gesture that indicates doubt or despair ,and

his lips parted. No sound came from them. Mix shut his eyes and when

he opened them the ghost was gone.

The fear he usually felt seemed to have been partly banished by the

greater terror of the police. He remained where he was, staring at the

place where the ghost had been. The shrug had meant something. The

ghost had been trying to tell him something. Perhaps it had been

advising him to do what he had almost decided on. He, Reggie, had killed

six women and been not much fazed by it. No one knew why he'd killed

his own wife, but opinion was that she had found out about his murders

and not only refused to protect him but threatened to do just what old

Chawcer was doing to him. So was that what his ghost had been saying?

Kill her. I never thought twice about it. Kill her and do what I did with

Ethel.

**

Thoughts had begun to run out of Gwendolen's head, leaving it almost

empty. Stephen Reeves appeared fleetingly before vanishing down a long

road where those thoughts ran and where in the distance, on the edge of

something indefinable, she could make out misty shapes who might or

might not be Papa and Mama. Gradually they too faded and slipped

overthat edge where Stephen had gone. She was alone in the worldbut

there was nothing unusual in that. She had always been alone. And now,

as something rumbled and murmured inside the place where thoughts

had been, she knew she was goingout of the world alone. For no reason,

with no particular desire, she told her hands and her arms to move, but

they no longer obeyed her and she was too tired to tell them again. She

breathed very slowly, in and out, in and after a long time out, in again

very lightly and out on a long rattling sigh. If there had been watchers

they would have waited for the next inhalation and when none came,

have risen from their chairs, closed her eyes, and drawn the sheet up

over her face.

Bright moonlight poured into the bedroom. When she camet o bed

Gwendolen had been too ill and too tired to draw the curtains, and in the

four hours that had passed, an almost fullmoon had mounted into the

clear sky. Because of the positionof the large double bed and the height

and width of the window,the moon between the half-open curtains

spread a paleband across the bedclothes, a stripe of whiteness, leaving