The Secret House of Death (11 page)

So it was unforgivable to feel this mounting anger when she went to her desk and saw how he had left it, a multistoried car park with miniscule bonnet and fender protruding from every slot and cranny. Black tyre marks were scored across each of the top three sheets of her typescript. Unforgivable to be angry, cruel perhaps not to control that anger.

But the words were out when she was halfway up the stairs, before she could stop herself and count to ten through set teeth.

‘How many times have I told you to leave my things alone? You're never to do it again, never! If you do, I won't let you wear your watch for a whole week.'

Paul gave a heart-breaking wail. He made a grab for the watch, pulling it from its velvet-lined case, and cradling it against his face. Desperately near tears herself, Susan fell on her knees beside him and took him in her arms.

‘Stop crying. You mustn't cry.'

‘I'll never do it again, only you're not to take my watch.' How quickly a child's tears evaporated! They left no trace, no ugly swollen redness. Louise's weeping had left her face furrowed, old, distraught.

Paul watched her with a child's sharp intuition. ‘I can't go to sleep, Mummy,' he said. ‘I don't like this house any more.' His voice was small and muffled against her shoulder. ‘Will they catch the man and put him in prison?'

‘He's dead too, darling.'

‘Are you sure? Roger's mother said he'd gone away, but she said Mrs North had gone away too. Suppose he isn't dead and he comes back here?'

Susan left the light on in his bedroom and the light on on the landing. When she got downstairs again she lit the twentieth cigarette of the day, but the smoke seemed to choke her, starting a long spasm of coughing. It left her shivering with cold. She ground out the cigarette, turned up the central heating and, going to the phone, dialled Julian's number.

Tonight, when nothing went right and all things seemed antagonistic, it would have to be Elizabeth who answered.

‘Hallo, Elizabeth. Susan.'

‘Susan . . .' The echoed name hung in the air. As always, Elizabeth's gruff schoolgirlish voice held a note of doubt. The impression was that she knew quite ten Susans, all of whom were likely to telephone her and announce themselves without surname or other qualification.

‘Susan Townsend.' It was grotesque, almost past bearing. ‘May I have a word with Julian?'

‘Sure, if you want. He's just finishing his mousse.' How those two harped on food! They had plenty in common; one day, no doubt, they would share obesity. ‘Good thing you rang now. We're just off for our weekend with Mummy.'

‘Have a good time.'

‘We always have a great time with Mummy. I do think all this killing in Matchdown Park is the end, and you up to your neck in it. But I expect you kept cool. You always do, don't you? I'll just fetch Julian.'

He sounded as if his mouth was full.

‘How are you, Julian?'

‘I am well.'

Susan wondered if her sigh of exasperation was audible at the other end. ‘Julian, I expect you've read about all this business out here. What I want to ask you is, d'you mind if we sell this house? I want to move as soon as possible. I can't remember the way our joint property is tied up but I know it's complicated and we both have to agree.'

‘You must do exactly as you like, my dear.' Had he brought the mousse with him? It sounded as if he was eating while he talked. ‘You're absolutely free. I shan't interfere at all. Only don't think of taking less than ten thousand and wherever you choose to make your new home, see it's within distance of a decent school for my son and a good prep school when the time comes.' He swallowed and said breezily, ‘Just put it in some agent's hands and let him do the lot. And if I meet anyone pining to vegetate in salubrious Matchdown Park I'll send him along. Tell me, were we ever on more than nodding terms with these Norths?'

‘You weren't on more than nodding terms with anyone. Sneering terms might be more accurate.'

For a moment she thought he was offended. Then he said, ‘You know, Susan, you've got a lot more waspish since we parted. It's rather becoming, almost makes me . . . well, no I won't say that. Rather a sexy-looking fellow, this North, as I recall, and a quasi-professional job, surely?'

‘He's a quantity surveyor.'

‘Whatever that may be. I suppose you and he are living in each other's pockets now, popping in and out of each other's houses. No wonder you want to move.'

‘I don't imagine I shall ever speak to him again,' said Susan. Julian muttered something about finishing dinner, packing, setting off for Lady Maskell's. She said good-bye quickly because she knew she was going to cry. The tears rolled down her cheeks and she didn't bother to wipe them away. Every time Julian talked to her she hoped for kindness and consideration, forgetting for the moment that this was how he had always spoken to other people, waspishly, lightly, frivolously. She was the other people now and the tender kindness was Elizabeth's.

And yet she didn't love him any more. It was the habit of being a wife, of coming first in a man's scheme of things, that she missed. When you were married you couldn't ever be quite alone. You might be on your own which was different. And whoever she begged to come to her now would look on her necessarily as a nuisance, a bore that separated them from the person they would prefer to be with.

For all that, she considered phoning Doris or even Mrs Dring. Her pride prevented her as her fingers inched towards the receiver.

Paul had fallen asleep. She covered him up, washed and redid her face. There was no point in it, but she sensed that if she were to go to bed now, at seven-thirty, it might become a precedent. You went to bed early because there was nothing to stay up for. You lay in bed late because getting up meant facing life.

She was going to move. Cling on to that, she thought, cling on to that. Never again to see the cherry trees come into crêpe paper bloom, the elms swaying above the cemetery, the three dull red pinpoints burning by the roadworks trench. Never again to run to a window because a dog barked or watch Bob North's headlights swing across the ceiling and the in a wobble of shadow against the wall.

They were glazing through the room now. Susan pulled the curtains across. She opened a new packet of cigarettes and this time the smoke didn't make her cough. Her throat felt dry and rough. That must be the intense heat. Why did she keep feeling alternately cold and hot? She went outside to adjust the heating once more, but stopped, jumping absurdly with shock, when the front door bell rang.

Who would call on her at this hour? Not surely those friends of her marriage, Dian, Greg, Minta, their consciences alerted by the evening papers? The dog hadn't barked. It must be Betty or Doris.

The man on the doorstep cleared his throat as she put her hand to the latch. The sound, nervous, gruff, diffident, told her who it was before she opened the door. She felt an unpleasant thrill of trepidation that melted quickly into pure relief that anyone at all had come to call on her. Then, coughing again, as nervous as he, she let Bob North in.

At once he made it clear that this wasn't a mere doorstep call and Susan, who had told Julian she would probably never be on more than remote terms with her neighbour, was curiously glad when he walked straight into the living-room as if he were a friend and a regular visitor. Then she told herself with self-reproach, that Bob had far more cause to be lonely and unhappy than she.

His face now bore no sign of the misery and bitterness to which he had given vent in court and although he again apologised for Susan's involvement in his affairs, he said nothing of why he had come. Susan had already put her sympathy and her sorrow for him into awkward words and now she could find nothing to say. That he had come with definite purpose was made clear by his nervous manner and the narrow calculating look he gave her as they faced each other in the warm untidy room.

‘Were you busy? Am I interrupting something?'

‘Of course not.' His loss made him different from other men, a pariah, someone you had to treat warily, yet appear to be no different. She wanted to behave both as if the tragedy had never happened and at the same time as if he were deserving of the most solicitous consideration. An odd reflection came to her, that it was impossible to feel much pity for anyone as good-looking as Bob. His appearance called for envy from men and a peculiarly humiliating admiration from women. If the tragedy hadn't happened and he had called like this, she would have felt ill-at-ease alone with him.

‘Won't you sit down?' she said stiffly. ‘Can I get you a drink?'

‘That's very sweet of you.' He took the bottle and the glasses from her. ‘Let me.' She watched him pour gin into a glass and fill it high with bitter lemon. ‘What can I get you? No, don't shake your head . . .' He gave a very faint crooked grin, the first smile she had seen on his face since Louise's death. ‘This is going to be a long session, Susan, if you'll bear with me.'

‘Of course,' she murmured. This, then, was the purpose of his visit, to talk to one near enough to listen, far enough to discard when the unburdening was complete. Louise had tried to do the same, Louise had died first. Somewhere in all this there was a curious irony. Bob's dark blue eyes were on her, fixed, cool, yet doubtful as if he had still a choice to make and wondered whether he was choosing wisely.

She moved away from him to sit down and the sofa suddenly seemed peculiarly soft and yielding. A moment ago she had been glad to see Bob; now she felt only deeply tired. Bob walked the length of the room, turned sharply and, taking a roll of paper from his pocket, dropped it on the coffee table between them. He had an actor's grace, an actor's way of moving because he had studied and learnt those movements. Susan thought this with slight surprise and then she wondered if his gestures looked calculated because he was keeping them under a painful control.

She reached for the papers, raising her eyebrows at him. He nodded sharply at her. Could these quarto sheets be connected with some legal business? Could they even possibly be Louise's will?

Susan unfolded the first page without much curiosity. Then she dropped it with a sharp exclamation as if it had been rolled round something red hot or something slimily disgusting.

‘No, I can't possibly! I can't read these letters!'

‘You recognise them, then?'

‘Parts of them were read in court.' Susan's face burned. ‘Why . . .' She cleared her throat which had begun to feel sore and swollen. ‘Why do you want me to read them?' she asked fiercely.

‘Don't be harsh with me, Susan.' His brow puckered like a little boy's. She thought suddenly of Paul. ‘The police gave me these letters. They
belonged
to Louise, you see, and I've—well, I've inherited them. Heller sent them to her last year.
Last year
, Susan. Since I read them, I haven't been able to think of anything else. They haunt me.'

‘Burn them.'

‘I can't. I keep on reading them. They've poisoned every happy memory I have of her.' He put his face in his hands. ‘She wanted to be rid of me. I was just an encumbrance. Am I so loathsome?'

She avoided the direct answer, for the question was absurd. It was as if a millionaire had asked for her opinion on the low state of his finances. ‘You're overwrought, Bob. That's only natural. When people are having a love affair, they say things they don't mean, things that aren't true, anyway. I expect Julian's wife said a lot of exaggerated unpleasant things about me.' She had never considered this before. It cost her an effort to put it into words.

He nodded eagerly. ‘That's why I came to you. I knew you'd understand.' Swiftly he got up. The letters were written on stiff quarto-size paper and they had once again sprung back into a roll. He flattened them with the heel of his hand and thrust them at Susan, holding them a few inches from her face.

She had spoken of the possibility of Elizabeth's having written defamotory things about her. If this had happened and such a letter come into her possession, nothing would have induced her to show it to a stranger. And yet the majority of strangers would jump at the chance. She must be exceptionally squeamish or perhaps just a coward, an ostrich. How avidly Doris, for instance, would scramble to devour Heller's words if, instead of coming here, Bob were baring his soul in the house across the street!

Susan reached for a cigarette. The thought came to her that she had never read a love-letter. During their courtship she and Julian had seldom been separated and when they were they phoned each other. Certainly she had never read anyone else's. Bob, who valued her for her experience, would be astonished at such innocence.

Perhaps it was this innocence that still held her back. Louise's love affair, a housewife and a salesman, a hole-in-the-corner ugliness, seemed to her merely sordid, unredeemed by real passion. The letters might be obscene. She glanced up at Bob and suddenly she was sure he would expose her to nothing disgusting. With a little sigh, she brought Heller's looped sloping writing into focus, the address: Three, Hengist House, East Mulvihill, S.E.29, the date, November 6th, ‘67, and then she began to read.

My darling,

You are in my thoughts night and day. Indeed, I do not know where dreaming ends and waking begins, for you fill my mind and I go about in a daze. I am a bit of a slow stupid fellow at the best of times, sweetheart – I can picture you smiling at this and maybe (I hope) denying it—but it is true and now I am half-blind and deaf as well. My love for you has made me blind, but I am not so blind that I cannot see into the future. It frightens me when I think we may have to go on like this for years, only seeing each other occasionally and then for a few snatched hours.