The Secret House of Death (7 page)

It was a still day, not quite foggy, but uniformly grey. Rain threatened in the clammy air. Susan quickened her pace as she approached Braeside and then she remembered. Bob's car was in for a service. He would go to work by train today, so therefore he had probably left much earlier, had certainly left by now. Her spirits lifted absurdly. Really, it was stupid to work herself up to such a nervous pitch because in a couple of hours time one of her neighbours was going to confide something rather unorthodox to her. That was all it amounted to.

Braeside had a dull dead look. The upstairs curtains were all drawn as if the Norths were away. Perhaps Louise was lying late in bed. Unhappiness made you want to do that. Jane Willingale would have attributed it to a desire to get back to the womb but Susan thought it was only because you felt there was nothing to get up for.

As usual there was not a single open window, not even a fanlight lifted an inch or two. It must be cold and stuffy in there, the air stale with angrily exhaled breath and tears and quarrels.

Mrs Dring would arrive at any moment. Susan let herself into her own warm house and began to grease tins and beat mixture for Paul's party cakes. Her hall clock chimed nine and as the last stroke died away, the pneumatic drills began.

Breaking across this shrill sound, the Airedale's bark sounded hollow. He was used to Mrs Dring by now and wouldn't bark at her arrival. Not for the first time Susan wondered why this canine summons was impossible to resist. Hardly anyone really interesting ever came to Orchard Drive and yet Pollux never barked in vain. She was as vulnerable to the alert as any of the women, although, unlike them, a change of delivery man or a new meter reader left her indifferent. She didn't want to speculate as to why Fortnum's van had called at Gibbs's or a couple of nuns at O'Donnells'. Sometimes she thought she rushed to the window when Pollux barked because, against all experience to the contrary, she always hoped the roar announced a newcomer into her own life, someone who would change it, who would bring hope and joy.

How pathetic and childish, she thought as, in spite of herself, she ran into the living-room and drew aside the curtain. Winters' gate clanged between its concrete posts and Pollux, who had half-mounted it in his rage, dropped back on to the path with a thump.

Susan stared. On the grass patch in the pavement, its tyres buried in the ruts they had made on Monday, stood the green Ford Zephyr.

Once again Louise North was entertaining her lover.

‘Good morning, dear. Did you think I wasn't coming?'

Mrs Dring always bellowed this question on a triumphant note if she was more than a minute late. A large raw-boned redhead of forty-five, she put immense value on herself and the work she did, confident that her employers, in the event of her non-appearance, must be reduced to a helpless and desperate panic like abandoned infants.

‘I'll do downstairs, shall I?' she said, putting her head round the door. ‘Make it nice for the boy's party.' Cleaning a room before a children's party seemed pointless to Susan, but it was useless arguing with Mrs Dring. ‘Want me to come and give you a hand tomorrow? There's nothing anyone can tell me about running kids' parties. Famous for them I am.'

Mrs Dring didn't explain how she came to know so much about the organisation of children's parties. She had no children of her own. But she was always making statements of this kind in a dark tone, as if implying that all her acquaintances were aware of her omnipotent versatility and took repeated advantage of it. She had a good word for no one except her husband, a man whose competence in the most unlikely fields rivalled her own and who possessed in equal measure to his manual and administrative skills a superhuman intelligence quotient.

‘There's nothing that man doesn't know,' she would say.

Now she advanced into the room and went straight up to the window where she stood tying up her hair, almost scarlet this morning, in a scarf.

‘I've been meaning to ask you,' she said, her eye on the green car, ‘what's going on next door?'

‘Going on?'

‘You know what I mean. I got it from my friend who helps Mrs Gibbs. Mind you, my friend's a proper little liar and I reckon anyone who'd believe a word Mrs Gibbs says must want her head tested.' Drawing breath, Mrs Dring proceeded at once to place herself in this lunatic category. ‘She says Mrs North is carrying on with the central heating fellow.'

‘Do you know him?' Susan couldn't stop herself asking.

‘I've seen him about. My husband could tell you his name. You know what a wonderful memory he's got. We was thinking about central heating ourselves and I said, You want to talk to that fellow—Heffer or Heller or something—who's always about in a green car. But my husband put the pipes in himself in the end. There's nothing he can't do it he puts his mind to it.'

‘Why shouldn't he be calling on Mrs North just for business?'

‘Yes, funny business. Well, it stands to reason he's in the right job for that kind of thing if he fancies it. It's her I'm disgusted with.' Seeing Susan wasn't to be drawn, Mrs Dring dropped the curtain and pulled two kiss-curls, as fluorescent red as Day-glo paint, out on to her forehead. ‘What d'you think of my hair? It's called flamingo, this shade. My husband did it last night. I always tell him he ought to have gone into the trade. He'd have been in the West End by now.'

Susan began typing desultorily. Mrs Dring was never silent for long and these mornings she was on edge, constantly distracted from work by futile remarks. Her cleaner, engaged in the first place ‘to do the rough' had soon made it clear that she preferred polishing and cleaning silver to heavy work and her favourite tasks were those which kept her at a vantage point near one of the windows.

Now, having observed all there was to see in Orchard Drive, she had stationed herself at the french windows with the plate powder and a trayful of Susan's silver ornaments. It was half past nine. Although it had begun to rain, the drills had scarcely ceased in the past half-hour. Susan could hardly believe there was anything of interest to see from that window, but Mrs Dring kept craning her neck and pressing her face against the streaming glass until at last she said, ‘They won't get no tea this morning.'

‘Mmm?' Susan looked up from her typewriter.

‘Them men. Look, he's going down the path now.' The summons couldn't be refused without rudeness. Susan joined her at the window. A tall workman in a duffel coat, its hood pulled up over his head, was making his way down Norths' garden from the back door towards the gate at the far end. ‘I heard him banging on the back door. Wants his tea, I said to myself. Canteen's closed this morning, mate. Madam's got other things on her mind. Funny that dog of Winters didn't bark, though. Have they got it shut up for once?'

‘No, it's out.'

It was raining steadily. The workman opened the gate. His companions were deep in their trench where one of them was still plying his drill. The solitary man warmed his hands at the bucket fire for a moment. Then he turned, his shoulders hunched, and strolled off along the road that skirted the cemetery.

Nodding her head grimly, Mrs Dring watched him disappear. ‘Gone to fetch himself a cup from the cafe,' she said and added because Susan had retreated, ‘Is the car still there?'

‘Yes, it's still there.' The rain streamed down its closed windows and over the pale green bodywork. Someone else was looking at it, too, Eileen O'Donnell, who was putting up her umbrella after scuttling out of Louise's garden.

‘Mrs O'Donnell's coming round to the back door, Mrs Dring,' Susan said. ‘Just see what she wants, will you?'

She was sure she would be called to the conference that was about to ensue, but after a short conversation at the back door, Mrs Dring came back alone.

‘Mrs North asked her to bring some fish fingers in for lunch in case her husband comes home. She says she's banged and banged at the front door but she can't make no one hear. She says the upstairs curtains are all drawn but that's on account of Mrs North not wanting the sun to fade the carpets. I reckon some folks go about with their eyes shut, don't know they're born. Sun, I said, what sun? A kid of five could tell you why she's drawn them curtains.'

Susan took the package, noting with amusement that it was wrapped in last week's edition of
Certainty.
How pained Julian would be! Its use as insulating material for frozen food was only one step up the scale from wrapping it round fish and chips.

‘What am I supposed to do with them?'

‘Mrs O'Donnell said you was going in there for coffee. And could you take them in with you just in case that poor wretch she's doing dirt to comes home for his lunch?'

But Susan had begun to doubt whether she was expected to keep that appointment. By the time Mrs Dring had finished the living-room and moved into what used to be Julian's study it was half past ten and the car was still outside. It looked as if Louise had forgotten. Love was generally supposed to conquer all and, although this was perhaps not what the adage meant, it certainly in Susan's experience, banished from the lover's mind firm promises and prior engagements. Curious, though. Louise had been so insistent.

But between ten-thirty and eleven the time went slowly. There was no need to watch the window. The Airedale, now sheltering in Winters' porch, would warn her of the man's departure. Eleven struck and on the last stroke Susan's oppression lifted. The rain was filling Monday's ruts with yellow clayey water, making pools round the wheels of the green car. Its driver was still inside Braeside and Susan sighed with relief. She wouldn't have to go now. There was no need for tact or kindness or firm advice because, by her own actions, Louise had cancelled the consultation.

Mrs Dring wrapped herself in a cocoon of blue polythene and trotted off into the rain, pausing to glower at the car and the curtained windows. Susan tried to remember how many times and for how long each time the car had been there before. Surely not more than three times and the man had never stayed as long as this. Didn't he have a job to go to? How could he afford to spend so much time—an entire morning—with Louise?

She opened the refrigerator door to make sandwiches for her lunch. The fish finger packet lay slightly askew on the metal slats. Did Bob ever come home to lunch? Eileen O'Donnell had seemed to think he might and now, as Susan considered, she remembered how Bob himself had told her he might come home one lunchtime.

Well, let him come home. Let him find them together. A show-down might be the best way out of this mess for all of them. But Susan took the packet from the refrigerator and went round to the front of the house from where she could see Braeside.

There was no one sitting in the through-room or in the little room at the other side of the front door. They must be still in the bedroom behind those closed curtains. Susan glanced at her watch and saw that it was gone half past twelve. How would she have felt if she had walked into that hotel, or wherever they had met, and found Julian in bed with Elizabeth? It would almost have killed her. Julian had been far more discreet than Louise—he was far cleverer—but still the process of discovery had been dreadfully painful to his wife. If Bob North came now it would be a far worse pain than that which would meet him.

That decided her. It was all very well deciding to have as little as possible to do with the Norths. Circumstances altered cases and this was a hard case with circumstances as different from those of everyday life as Susan's present existence was from that of a year ago. She went back into the house and slipped her arms into the sleeves of her raincoat. Then she banged hard on Norths' front door, banged and rang the bell, but no one came. They must be asleep.

Reluctantly she went round to the side. What she was about to do would save Louise, at least for a time, from ignominy and possibly from violence, but Louise wouldn't be grateful. What woman would ever again be able to bear the sight of a neighbour who had found her in what the lawyers called
flagrante delicto
?

Better not to think about it. Get in, wake them up and go. Susan cared very little what Louise thought of her. She was going to give the Norths a very wide berth in future.

The back door was unlocked. If Louise was going to carry on with this sort of thing, Susan thought, she had a lot to learn. Julian would have made her a good adviser. The kitchen was untidy and freezing cold. Louise had stacked the breakfast things in the washing-up bowl but not washed them. There was a faint smell of cold fat from a water-filled frying-pan.

On the kitchen table stood the briefcase Susan had once or twice seen Louise's lover carrying up the path, and over the back of a chair was his raincoat. Susan put her package down and moved into the hall, calling Louise's name softly.

There was no answer, no sound from upstairs at all. In the little cloakroom a tap dripped. She came to the foot of the stairs and stood by the wall niche in which a plaster Madonna smiled down at her Child. It was grotesque.

No fires had been lighted in the house this morning and the ashes of yesterday's lay grey in the living-room hearth. All the windows streamed with water so that it was impossible to see out of them. Such heavy rain as this enclosed people like hibernating creatures, curled up dry, yet surrounded by walls of water. So it must have been for Louise and her lover, kissing, whispering, planning, while outside the rain fell and blotted out time.

Susan went upstairs. The bathroom door was open and the bathmat, a purple affair with a yellow scroll design in its centre, lay crookedly on the tiles. It looked as if none of the routine morning cleaning had been done. All the bedroom doors but one were open. She stood outside the closed door and listened.