Chapter 29

The train for Norwich, calling at Witham, Colchester, and Ipswich, was scheduled to depart from platform thirteen. For amoment he thought of giving up the whole trip or leaving thestation and trying to go by coach instead. No, he'd bought his ticket and a terrible price it was. The last time he had traveled by rail he had sat in first class, but things were different now. He had to be careful. It was coming up to lunchtime. He walked down to the buffet car, bought a burger and chips and acan of Coke. Then‑ thinking, what the hell? ‑ had a miniature of gin to put in his drink.

It was going to be grim at Shannon's. I hate children, he thought, and felt nauseous at the idea of sharing a bedroom with those kids of hers. The younger one, he remembered, had a perpetual cold and was always sniffing. They never washed, either of them, and Shannon was too overworked and too tired to check up on them. Suddenly it came back to him, the day he had tried to kill her. But had he? Had he really? Was that wha the really meant, to beat her to death with that bottle? He hadn't actually touched her, Javy had got there first.

When he came to think of it, all his troubles had started with Javy's flogging him for that. Then his hitting his mother so that he had to leave and fend for himself. That was two things. After that, what? Working for Fiterama in Birmingham had been okay, but he should never have accepted promotion and moved south. He hadn't much cared much about Crippen, but still it was a disappointment to find his house gone, though nothing to the shock of Rillington Place. Moving to Notting Hill was a mistake and doing up that flat another. Self‑ pity washed over him until he felt a stinging behind his eyes.

His whole life had been dogged by ill‑ luck. He'd gone to Shoshana's Spa and his fate had made him meet Danila, and she'd incriminated him by forcing him to kill her. The Indian had told Chawcer about seeing him digging the garden, his back was so injured it would never be the same again, and he'dk illed a woman who was already dead. Now he was in a train that left from platform thirteen.

He'd been counting as he reflected on his misfortunes. Thirteen. There were thirteen of them. Not meaning to, he letout a low groan and a young woman sitting opposite him stared.

" Are you all right? "

He nodded, tried and failed to force a smile. Thirteen steps down to where he was now, jobless, his money dwindling, haunted probably for the rest of his life, deserted by his friends. Thirteen steps, like the flight down from his flat to her darkdomain. And what lay in store? Shivering, he poured the gin into his half‑ empty can of Coke. The girl who had asked if hewas all right was darting anxious looks at him and whispering to the boy with her.

He should have been used to it, but the gin and Coke mixture knocked him out. He felt exhausted. Though the carriagewas full of people, mostly very young people and all of them eating and drinking the sort of food he'd had, dropping greasy wrappings and cans on the floor, he dropped off to sleep. He couldn't keep awake.

In the dream he had he was at the top of those stairs, lookingdown. A voice in his head was telling him not to go down but to step back. Stay where you are, even the first step will be fatal. But something seemed to be pulling him, drawing himforward and downward, one, two, three… He took a step, then another, and now at the bottom he could see Reggie waitingfor him. He woke up with a cry. The girl opposite him wasn'tsympathetic anymore. She was whispering to her boyfriend, and Mix knew she was saying he was drunk. Perhaps he was. The air of outside would clear his head andmaybe it was just as well there would be no drink at Shannon's. A voice. over the public address system said, " The train willshortly be arriving in Colchester. Colchester next stop. "

Mix took his bag down from the rack and moved toward thedoor. It was already crowded with young people loaded with backpacks and bags and surrounded by more. The train cameslowly into the station and the alighting passengers jostled each other out and onto the platform. Mix stepped down but he didn't get very far.

No one put a hand on his shoulder. That was only in the movies. That was for TV: The words the older policeman spoke to him he'd heard a hundred times on TV; he knew them by heart. All of the stuff about saying what you had to say nowor you might harm your defense if you wanted to rely on it incourt. Well, he'd want to rely on it because it was true.

" The girl was in self‑ defense, " he said. " And the old woman was dead before I touched her. I'm not a murderer, I'm not Christie. "

Olive had lost her reading glasses. The only pair she had dated from fifteen years before and they no longer did the job. Shew as on the point of ringing her optician for a new pair when she remembered she had very likely left them behind in St. Blaise House.

For a week it had been forbidden ground, accessible only to the police, to pathologists and forensic experts. They had all gone now, Michael Cellini had been arrainged with the murdersof Gwendolen and Danila Kovic in the magistrates' court, and things had quieted down. Olive let herself into the house, resolving that before she left, glasses or no glasses, she would leave the key behind. Perhaps put it where important keys were kept, in the tumble‑ drier. Restoring it to this ridiculous place, honoring as it were its former owner's bizarre wishes, seemed to her to be a tiny tribute to Gwendolen.

Olive went into the drawing room, wondering what wouldhappen to this house. Was there anyone to inherit it? Gwendolen had never spoken of relatives except some old cousin of her mother's who had been at her funeral. But Mrs. Chawcer's funeral was fifty years ago this year. Gwendolen had been the only child of, as far as Olive knew, only children. Had she evenmade a will? St. Blaise House would be worth millions to ap roperty developer.

She tried to remember where she had been during thehours she had spent here. In the drawing room, of course, in the kitchen‑ she wouldn't have needed reading glasses there up in the bedroom she had slept in. She climbed the stairs. Queenie had wept over Gwendolen, but she hadn't, she had been angry, but glad too that Cellini hadn't been anywhere near her when the truth came out. I'd have attacked him, she said to the empty house, dragged my nails down his face. Keeping them long and pointed would have been well worth itjust for that. She went into the sad, dirty, neglected bedroom. Searching it took about three minutes and then she had towash her hands.

The glasses came to light in the drawing room. They were under one of the armchairs in a little enclave of dust and fluff and dead flies. She went into the kitchen and was about to wash them under the tap, when the doorbell rang. Some vendor of fish or sharpener of knives, she thought as she went to answer

An elderly man and a middle‑ aged woman stood there. Two of Gwendolen's forgotten relatives?

" My name is Reeves, " the man said, all smiles. " Dr. Stephen Reeves. I happened to be in the neighborhood and thought of dropping in on Miss Chawcer. This is my wife, Diana, by the way. Is Miss Chawcer about? "

" I'm afraid not. " Olive realized she would have to say why not, though in expurgated form. " Gwendolen has passed away. It was very sudden. "

Dr. Reeves shook his head, attempting to look sad. " Dear, oh dear. Well, she was getting on. It comes to us all. We just thought we'd look in. As a matter of fact" ‑ he allowed his smileto break through‑ " we're down here on our honeymoon. "

Ruth Rendell

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