Chapter 7

He had read Christie's Victims before but a long time ago, six or seven years ago when he began collecting his Reggie library. Of course he remembered it. But it was still fascinating to retrace his steps through the Notting Hill of those days and through the life of one of the most famous serial killers ofall time.

" John Reginald Halliday Christie came to live in London in1938, " Mix read while eating his breakfast,

and with him came his wife, Ethel. He was a curious man. There must be something strange, not to say appalling, about any necrophile. Not only is the idea of necrophilia repugnant to everyone, but in order to indulge his desire, the sufferer from this aberration must, unless he has unlikely accessto a morgue, first kill his victims.

Looking at it from the perspective of the twenty‑ first century, Christie's marriage was not a happy one. Five years after their wedding, Ethel left him and went to live in Sheffield. Their separation lasted for several years until Christie wrote to her, asking her to return to him. After their reunion, she was often away staying with her relatives in the north. Christie had been a cinema operative, a mill‑ worker and a postman, in connection with which last he was sent to prison for stealing postal orders. Imprisoned again for stealing a carfrom a Roman Catholic priest who had befriended him, he nevertheless volunteered for the Emergency Reserve of the London Police Force and was acceptedin the year he and his wife came to Rillington Place, Notting Hill, west London.

Apparently the police made no inquiries about his past, or if they did their findings were not serious enough to disqualify him, and in 1939 he became a full‑ time Special Constable. Four years later, while still a policeman, he met the girl who was to be his first murder victim…

Reluctantly, Mix raised his eyes and slipped a marker in between the pages. Having told Danila at Shoshana's Spa and Health Club that he would be arriving at ten to service five machines, he had better go. The book, by a certain Charles Q. Dudley, was the fourth or fifth he had read on the Rillington Place murderer and the facts he had just absorbed were already known to him. This he had expected. What he was looking for and expected to find, perhaps halfway through the book, was some hint or suggestion that Christie sometimes visited his prospective victims' homes. Had he noticed anything of this sort when he read the book for the first time? He couldn't remember.

Mix was taking the day off in lieu of working on a previous Sunday. It was useless trying to do the Shoshana job before or after work because these were the least likely times for Nerissa to be there. Models get up very late in the mornings, Mix had read somewhere, while their evenings are occupied with film premieres, clubs, public appearances, and parties at manorhouses in the Home Counties. When the happy time came, he fantasized, he and she would lie in together, maybe until midday or later. A maid would bring breakfast, but not before eleven, and when it came it would be what he had ordered, buck's fizz, caviar on toast, and eggs benedict.

He returned to reality and recognized that parking was going to be a problem. He knew that before he got there. Eventually he found a meter and paid for two hours, but it wasa long way from the health club. He told himself that all this walking must be improving his figure. Arriving on the dot often, he turned his eyes away from the chrome number thirteenand got quickly into the lift. Glancing round the girls and acouple of young men working out, he saw at once that Nerissa wasn't among them. Probably it was a bit early for her. His fussy eye appraised Danila and he decided that though skinny and scared, she wasn't so bad. Knowing her better might helphim in his quest.

" Madam Shoshana said to ask you not to fiddle about with the machines the clients are using. I'm only telling you what she said. "

" You can trust me, " he said. " I know what I'm doing. "

" And she says not to use any oil or stuff like that because if it gets on the clients' gear they're going to go ballistic. It's what she said, not me. "

" I only use invisible fat‑ free oil, " Mix lied.

He had brought three new belts with him and spanners for adjusting the parts. Shoshana's hadn't been open very long, so servicing wasn't necessary, but he whiled away the time taking ellipticals apart and checking handlebar positions on stationarybikes. Whatever came out of it, he was really going to squeeze Madam Shoshana for putting him through this tedious business. Pity Danila had been told to keep an eye on him or he'd settle down in a corner and read a bit more of Christie's Victims.

Danila was very thin. So was Nerissa but hers was a different kind of thinness. You couldn't see her bones sticking out the way Danila's did. And Danila's face was like a bird's with a beaky nose and not much chin. Still, she had great legs and more tangled‑ up dark hair than Mix could ever remember seeing on a woman's head. He had almost given up looking for Nerissa that day. It was eleven‑ fifteen and if he wasn't going to get clamped or towed away or whatever they did around here, he had to be back at the car by ten to twelve.

Danila was sitting behind her counter, drinking a cup of black coffee.

" Would there be another one of those going? "

" There might be, but don't say a word, will you? " She disappeared into some inner recesses of the club and came backwith coffee, a milk jug, and sweetener in little tubular packs. " Here you are. Shoshana'd kill me if she knew. We're not supposed to give coffee to anyone but staff. "

" You're a star, " said Mix and got a smile. No time like the present, he thought, and keeping his eye on the door in case Nerissa did just happen to come in at eleven‑ forty, said, " You feel like having a drink? Say Wednesday or Thursday if you want. "

She was surprised. He would have liked her better if she'd taken such invitations for granted and as her due. " I don't mind, " she said, and then, spoiling it, " Are you sure? "

" I'll pick you up then. Where d'you live? "

“Oxford Gardens. " She gave him the number.

" Not far from me, " he said. " We'll go to KPH, " he said, forgetting she wouldn't know what those initials meant. " Eight suit you? "

No point, he thought, in spending the whole evening with her. Suppose Nerissa was one of those clients, the ones she'd talked about last time he was here, who only came to the club four times and then lost interest. He mustn't be impatient because she hadn't come today, she wouldn't come every day, no matter how keen she was on fitness. Next week he'd do his servicing on a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday. And maybe he'd psych himself up to walk here. It couldn't be more than a mile.

Olive had forgotten about leaving the bone behind in Gwendolen's house, had hunted for it all round the block's communal gardens and even grubbed about in various bins outsideshops. Kylie, the little white dog, had been frantic. So calling on Gwendolen was not to retrieve the bone, but to pour out her heart to a sympathetic ear.

Gwendolen's was never that. It was with some amusement that she listened to her friend's woes. The bone had been sent to Kylie by an American friend who shared Olive's love of poodles. Kylie had adored it from the first. Now it was lost and Olive had no idea what to do, it being impossible to buy such a toy here. Nor would she dare write to her friend in Baltimore, confessing her carelessness and asking for a replacement.

Gwendolen laughed. " Your troubles are over. It's here. "

" Kylie's bone? "

" You left it here. I did call to give it to you but of course you were out. "

If Olive disliked that " of course" she gave no sign of it. Gwendolen hunted about for the bone in her dirty cluttered kitchen, finding it at last on top of a heap of newspapers dating from the professor's time and under a twenty‑ five‑ year‑ oldpack of vacuum cleaner bags.

" You have made a little dog very happy, Gwen. "

" That's a relief. "

Gwendolen's sarcasm wasn't lost on Olive, but she was too happy at the recovery of the bone to take much notice. She went off cheerfully in the direction of Ridgemount Mansions. Gwendolen, who preferred her own company to that of her friends, was glad to see the back of her. In the past few dayssince she had decided, daringly, to try and find where Stephen Reeves now was, she had considered asking her tenant for help. He possessed a computer. She had seen him carrying it one day when they had met by chance in the hall.

" You'll think I'm asking for trouble carrying this about with me, " he had said, " but I won't leave it on one of the seats. It'll go in the boot. "

Gwendolen hadn't thought anything like that as she had no idea what he was talking about. " What is it? "

He looked at her warily, the way the unthinking look at the mentally disturbed. " It's a PC, isn't it? " Her blank look was maintained. " A computer, isn't it? " he said desperately.

" Really? " She shrugged her thin old shoulders. " Then you'd better go and do whatever you have to do with it. "

The information she needed‑ was it somehow automatically shut up in that thing in the small flat case? Would all of, them provide it? Or did you have to have a special kind of machine attached to it? And where was the screen she'd seen on them in shops? She was well aware that Mr. Cellini had found her ignorance ridiculous and she was anxious not to make a fool of herself again. Not that there was anything intrinsically foolish in someone who had read the whole of Gibbon and the complete works of Ruskin not knowing how these modern inventions worked. Just the same, she preferred not to ask him. She preferred not asking Olive too. If she went round to Golborne Mansions she would have to witness Kylie's ecstasy, hear the tale of the lost bone all over again, and maybe‑ something she always, unreasonably, dreaded‑ that paragon of a niece would be there or her mother.

It would do no harm to visit one of those Internet restaurants‑ no, cafes. She was clever, she knew that. Stephen Reeveshad called her an intellectual and even Papa had several timestold her she had a good brain for a woman. Surely therefore she could master the handling of one of those computers andget it to disgorge its information. She put on her hat, reflectingon the one Olive had been wearing‑ bright red grosgrain tomatch her nails‑ then the black silk coat and black net gloves because it was hot. Papa had given them to her for her fiftysecond birthday and it was wonderful how they had lasted. No need for the trolley today.

It was bright and sunny. All the days this summer were hot and the temperature was going up. Several young men and girls about the streets were wearing short‑ sleeved T‑ shirts and sandals. One girl had a bikini top on and a boy appeared to have left his shirt somewhere, for he was wearing only a vest. Gwendolen shook her head, wondering what her mother would have said if she had tried going outdoors in her brassiere.

Nerissa had been to the gym, had an all‑ over body massage and a facial, and now, once more wearing the dark glasses she hadput on to walk here and not be recognized, she was going upstairs to Madam Shoshana.

The stairs were steep and narrow. Covered in brown linoleum of a vintage before Nerissa's mother was born, they had metal rims to the treads, which, coming away in places, made tripping likely and the risk of a nasty accident great. She trodcarefully. A model friend of hers had fractured her tibia on death‑ trap stairs and when the break had mended one anklewas noticeably thicker than the other. The stairs smelled nasty, like stale cabbage and cheap burgers, in spite of the little window halfway up being wide open. A very dirty lace curtain blewout and flapped against Nerissa's face. She was used to it. She came here once a week to have her future foretold.

A notice on the sagging brown door said: Madam Shoshana, Soothsayer. Please knock, and below this in straggly ballpoint, (Even if you have appointment). Nerissa knocked. A low, thrilling voice called out, " Come. "

The room was the most crowded and cluttered and stuffed with bric‑ a‑ brac that Nerissa ever went in. It was also almost too hot even for her and she liked heat. Strange things not only filled the shelves and covered the surfaces but sprouted from the floor and hung from the ceiling. Artificial plants in pots, mostly cypress trees but lilies too and passion flowers, stoodabout like stalagmites while stalactitic rods and chimes and mobiles and crystal pendants hung from the ceiling. The strangest thing of all was Madam Shoshana herself, a skinny old woman enveloped in layers of robes in many shades, but all of them the colors of a stormy sky, indigo and charcoal, dovegray and slate gray, grubby white and violet, angry blue and silver. Her waist‑ length yellowish white hair hung in straggly locks over her shoulders and down her back, entangling in places with the silver chains and crystal strings she wore around her neck. Though she had developed a range of cosmetics that she sold on the premises at inflated prices, she never wore make up herself and looked as if she didn't wash her face much. Nerissa thought her nails looked like birds' talons, not human at all.

The velvet curtains were drawn and, for some reason known only to Madam Shoshana, pinned together in several places with old‑ fashioned brooches of Celtic design. A number of stuffed birds, dominated by a large white owl, were arranged to stare at the supplicant as she or he entered the room, but perhaps its most disquieting feature was the figure of a man in Merlin‑ like (or Gandalf‑ like) gray robes, holding inexplicably a staff of Aesculapius. This waxwork stood behind Madam Shoshana as she sat at her wide marble table as if advising her on ancient lore, witchcraft, necromancy, astrological prognostication, or whatever she might require. A single low‑ wattagetable lamp, vaguely art nouveau in design, all pewter and dullstained glass, gave the only light.

On the marble table was arranged a ring of crystals, rose quartz, Iceland spar, amethyst quartz, olivine schist, basalt, and lapis lazuli, in the center of which lay a small round lace matlike a crocheted doily. Shoshana's chair was of ebony inlaid all along the back and arms with white and yellow crystals, but the chair provided for the client was the Windsor type, plain wood, here and there stained with what looked like blood but was probably tomato ketchup.

" Sit. "

Nerissa knew the routine and obeyed. At Madam Shoshana's command she laid her hands, manicured that morning, the nails lacquered a slightly paler gold than the skin of her fingers, on the lace mat in the ring of stones. Shoshana gazed at Nerissa's hands and let her eyes rove in circles from crystal to crystal, rather like a cat following a moving spot of light.

" Tell me which of the sacred stones you can feel drawn closer to your fingers? Which two are gradually drawing toward you? "

It was a source of dismay to Nerissa that she could never feel, and certainly not see, any of the crystals moving. She was always reproached for this failure. Madam Shoshana seemed to imply it was due to some insensitivity on her part or to lack of concentration. Certain she would once more be found wanting, she said, " I think it's the dark blue one and the pink one. "

" Try again. "

" The dark blue one and the green one. "

Shoshana shook her head, more in sorrow than in anger. Some of her clients she had known for years, but she never etreated them with any more friendship or intimacy than she had done on their first visit. She looked at Nerissa as if she hadnever seen her before.

" The basalt and the amethyst are in your Ring of Fate today. " Shoshana's voice sounded as if it came from a long wayoff and long in the past. So might a mummy sound if it could speak. " Both are pushing hard to break the energy barrier between themselves and your fingers. You must relax and let them come. Relax now and bid them appraoch you. "

Many times before had Nenssa been through this routine. She tried to let her hands go limp, but she was very aware of the white owl and the gray‑ robed waxwork staring at her, she thought, accusingly. " Come, come, come, " she intoned. It suddenly occurred to her that this was exactly what an arrogant former boyfriend used to whisper to her while they were making love, and she bit her lip to stop herself giggling.

" Concentrate, " said Shoshana sternly.

Nerissa thought how frightened she would be if she actually saw the basalt and the amethyst move at her bidding. But only Madam Shoshana could see that happening. She began to speak.

" Your fateful balance is badly out of truth. The stones speak of confusion, doubt, and fear. They tell me of a dark man, his name beginning with a D. He is your fate, for good or ill. His destiny is to live by water… You are pushing the stones away‑ ah, too late. They have ceased to speak. You see how they shrink as the soul comes out of them. "

The stones looked the same to Nerissa but she knew that was due to her spiritual blindness. Shoshana had told her so on previous occasions. She was too worldly, the soothsayer had said, too preoccupied with her own appearance, with possessions and with artifacts. She wasn't sure what " artifacts" meant, and although she meant to look the word up she always forgot. The stuffed birds and the wizard figure were all looking at her with contempt. Nerissa cast her eyes down, humiliated.

The session was over. Her homework was to pay close attentionto the man whose name began with a D and to waterwith creatures swimming in it, though not fish. She stood upand felt in her bag for her wallet. Madam Shoshana on her feetwas rather different from Madam Shoshana sitting down. Shebecame more practical and businesslike, less aware of the souland more of the pocket.

" Forty‑ five pounds, please, no euros and no credit cards, " she said, as if the client had never been before.

Nerissa left and walked thoughtfully along Westbourne Grove. When Madam Shoshana said that the dark man was her fate, her heart had leapt for she was sure she must mean Darel Jones. But suppose she hadn't, suppose she had meant Rodney Devereux?

She could have asked but she'd known it would have been useless. Shoshana would only have said the stones told her no more and implied that this was Nerissa's fault for obstructing them with her energy. As for the water, immediately to mind came the Pacific Rim restaurant Rodney loved and where he was always taking her, though Nerissa didn't like watching the fish swimming about in the huge mirror‑ backed tanks and tenminutes later eating one of them. She couldn't tell why it was different from just buying fish at Harrods Food Hall and having it later, but somehow it was.

Still, this must be what Shoshana had meant, speaking of it so soon after mentioning the man with the initial D. Of courseshe had specifically said not fish, but there were other things in those tanks, snails with colored shells and little creeping things and a creature like a water snake. Last time they'd been there she was afraid Rodney would eat the snake and that made her queasy. She'd been on the point of saying to him that she'd never go to Pacific Rim again, but for some reason she hadn't. Now she'd have to go there. It was her fate.

Christie's first victim, as far as is known, was a young woman of Austrian origin called Ruth Fuerst. She had been a nurse, but when Christie first met her in 1943 was working in amunitions factory and as a part‑ time prostitute. Whether he first met her while a policeman on the beat or in a cafe or pub is a matter of doubt, but he claimed that she came to see him in Rillington Place while Ethel Christie was at work in Osram's factory.

No one involved in the case could say if he ever visited her in the single room she rented at 41 Oxford Gardens.

Mix looked up from the book, keeping his finger on thepage. What an amazing thing! Although he had read everybook on Christie he could get hold of, mainly from hunting through secondhand bookshops, none of them had stated precisely where Ruth Fuerst had lived. But here it was, a few houses along the street from the address Danila had given him. If only it had been the same house, he thought with a stab of regret. If only she had had the same room! He imagined going back there with her, maybe screwing her in the very place… Still, what he'd discovered made going out with her quite an exciting experience rather than a chore.

He read on. " Christie killed Ruth Fuerst one day in the middle of August. 'She undressed, ' he said, 'and wanted me to have intercourse with her. ' " In his book 10 Rillington Place, which Mix had among the rest of his library, Ludovic Kennedy, writing that their relationship developed gradually, suggeststhat it was far more likely she had a straightforward transactionwith him, prostitute and client, or granted her favors as hisprice for not reporting her soliciting in his capacity as a specialconstable.

" During sexual relations, he strangled her with a piece of rope. Then he wrapped her leopard‑ skin coat round her" ‑ a fur coat in August! ‑ " took her into the front room and placed her under the floorboards with the rest of her clothes.

" That same evening, Ethel, who had been away in Sheffield with her relations, arrived home with her brother Henry Waddington, who intended to stay the night. Because they had only one bedroom and that was occupied by Christie and Mrs. Christie, Henry Waddington slept in the front room, a few feetaway from the temporarily interred body of Ruth Fuerst… "

Mix had to stop there. He was calling for Danila at eight and he meant to leave early in order to stand outside and contemplate the house where that first victim had lived. Number41 Oxford Gardens was on the other side of Ladbroke Grove, rather shabby, much in need of painting and general refurbishment. No doubt it would now be worth some enormous sum, incredible to its wartime occupants if any of them were still alive. A cat, rather like Otto but older and with a gray muzzle, came over the wall and stopped when it saw Mix staring. Mix shooed it and made a face, but it was streetwise and experienced. It gave him an inscrutable look and strolled slowly into a clump of bushes.

Had Reggie ever stood where he was, then making up his mind, gone up the path and rung the bell? There may have been other occasions when he came here before that final fatal meeting. Hadn't the author of the best‑ known book on Reggie suggested they had known each other for a long time? Very probably all his relationships with his victims developed gradually. It stood to reason he must sometimes have gone to their places. After all, Ethel Christie was usually at home in Rillington Place and he couldn't always just have met them in cafes and pubs.

Mix was growing more and more convinced that Reggie had visited Gwendolen at St. Blaise House. When he first began renting the flat, she had mentioned in passing her mother and father with whom she had lived in those far‑ off days and she had also mentioned her mother's death soon after the war. The father would have been working as a professor, whatever that meant, certainly that he'd be away from home. Mix could imagine Gwendolen letting Reggie in, taking him into the kitchen for a cup of tea‑ snob that she was‑ while they talked about the abortion, her need for it and his ability to perform the operation. Perhaps she couldn't afford the fee Reggie asked, but Mix couldn't remember reading anywhere that he evercharged…

Approaching the house where Danila lived, at two minutes after eight, he found her waiting for him just inside the frontgate. This didn't please him, as it was too much of a sign of desperation. He would have preferred her to keep him waiting, even if it had been half an hour. But now she was with him, dressed up to the nines as his gran used to say, in skin‑ tightleather trousers, a frilled shirt, and a fake leopard‑ skin jacket. Just like Ruth Fuerst, he thought, and he wondered if Fuerst had looked like this, skinny and dark and sharp‑ featured. He tried to recall if he'd ever seen photographs of her. They walked up to Ladbroke Grove and the Kensington Park Hotel.

He loved KPH, not because there was anything special about it but because all those years ago Reggie had used it. It was historic. They ought to have a sign up telling the clientele thatit had once been the local of west London's most infamous killer. But when you had people ignorant enough to pull down Rillington Place and destroy all signs of that celebrated site, what could you expect?

" You're very quiet, " said Danila, a vodka and blackcurrant in front of her. " Kayleigh'd want to know if the cat had gotyour tongue. "

It was an unpleasant reminder of Otto. " Who's Kayleigh? "

" The girl who does the evening shift at the spa. She's my friend. " When Mix made no reply, she said eagerly‑ or desperately? ‑ " I had my fortune told today. "

Mix was going to say he'd no time for that and it was a load of rubbish when he remembered reading how Nerissa patronized faith healers, fortune‑ tellers, and had some guru. Besides, he half believed in ghosts now, didn't he? " I reckon there maybe something in it. There's lots of things we don't know, aren't there? I mean, some of them'll turn out to be scientific all along. "

" That's exactly what I say. Madam Shoshana at the spa does mine. She's the boss but she's a soothsayer too, got all sorts of qualifications, letters after her name and all. "

" What did she say? "

" You mustn't laugh. My fate's bound up with a man whose name starts with a C. And I thought, I wonder if it's achap who does the pedicures at the spa. He's called Charlie, Charlie Owen. "

Mix laughed. " It might be me. "

" Your name begins with an M. "

" Not my surname. "

" Yeah, but that's an S. "

" No, it's not. I ought to know. It's C, E, double L, I, N, I. "

She stared into his face. " You're kidding. "

" D'you want another drink? " he said.

On the way back to Oxford Gardens he bought two bottles ofCalifornia white, cheap‑ offer bin ends, in the wine shop. They drank it on her bed and afterward Mix didn't think he acquitted himself very well. But what did it matter? They were both drunk and she wasn't the sort of girl for whom you felt you had to put up a good performance. Outside her door, the floor and the ceiling rocked like the waves of the sea, rising and sinking and quivering. Heading for the stairs, clutching the banisters, he stumbled and nearly came to his knees, his jacket falling forward over his head. Adjusting it as best he could and starting down, he passed a man coming up who stood back, unmistakably flinching at a blast from his breath. Another tenant, his fuddled mind conjectured, Middle Eastern chap, sallow face, black mustache, they all looked the same. He didn't look back to see the Middle Eastern chap pick up a small white card from the landing outside Danila's room.

Mix shambled home through the close humid night. Colder air might have sobered him up a bit but this was like a lukewarm bath. Otto was on the stairs again, washing his face as if he'd just been eating something. To Mix there was something odd and perhaps not pleasant about the cat being up here on the stairs so much. It never happened when he first came. Their dislike was mutual, so he wasn't the attraction. What was?