Helen Benson had known what the stairs would be like. She knew those old Edinburgh houses. She had spent her childhood in one of them. But what she had not realised was that the furnished flat that Colin had rented for them while she was in hospital was on the top floor.
He told her that only when they were on their way through the town in a taxi from the airport. He had met her there and had helped her out of the wheelchair that the air-line had laid on for her and into the taxi and they were already past the suburbs and entering the region of tall, formidable, dark stone houses before he mentioned that she would have three flights of stairs to climb.
“Three flights?” she said in a startled, disbelieving voice. “But, Colin, I can’t! How can I get this thing up three flights of stairs?”
She used one of her sticks to hit the plaster on her leg.
He looked apologetic and distraught, a look that always made it difficult for her to hold anything against him for long. It frequently appeared on his face when he was compelled to deal with anything practical.
“But honestly I couldn’t find anything else,” he said, “and the rent’s so low and it’s really quite pleasant when you get there. I’m sure you’re going to like it. The thing is to take the stairs slowly. You’ll manage all right.”
“I’ll have to, shan’t I?”
She looked out of the taxi window. There had been a powdering of snow in the night, which had turned to dirty slush on the pavements. A sky of tarnished grey hung low above the rooftops, promising more snow. After five years in one of the small, new African countries where the sun shone every day and flowers bloomed all the year round, it felt bitterly cold.
“I did my best,” Colin said unhappily.
“I’m sure you did.” She patted his hand. He was wearing his defensive face now, which made him look as if he were preparing to be deeply, unjustifiably hurt, but bravely to put up with it. Only the trouble was that he never did put up with it bravely when he was hurt. He could lose his temper in a flash and be far more deadly than Helen ever was to him. Or that was how she saw it herself, perhaps mistakenly. But the last thing that she wanted at the moment, when they were trying so hard to make a new beginning, was one of their scenes. She had enough to put up with without that.
The taxi turned into a street that she remembered from her childhood, though she did not think that she had ever been into any of the houses. They were tall and stark, with two centuries of grime upon them, yet with a good deal of dignity, although the street, which might once have been considered a fine one, now had a depressing air of decay. There was a seedy-looking tobacconist at one corner, opposite a greengrocer, whose goods, outside his window, spilled out of their boxes on to the pavement. The stone steps up to the doorways were worn and looked slimy with the morning’s slush. As the taxi stopped at one of the houses the first big, damp flakes of a new snow-fall drifted waveringly down.
Colin jumped quickly out of the taxi, paid the driver and turned to lift Helen’s two suitcases out of it. Then he reached up to help her down. She gritted her teeth at the pain as she moved. He handed her her two sticks to support her weight as she stood on the pavement, where he left her for a moment while he carried her luggage into the house. She realised that the effect of the pills that she had taken before she started on the journey had worn off. She would take two more as soon as she reached the flat, but first, she had those three flights of stairs to face. She felt a little dizzy when she thought of them, wondering if in fact there was any possibility that she would be able to climb them.
But what would she do if she could not? The taxi was already moving off. It was too late to call it back and say that she wanted to be taken to a hotel, one with a lift and no stairs to trouble her. And the snow was coming down faster. There was nothing for it but to try to reach the flat.
The stairs were just as she had imagined them, bleak stone worn hollow by two hundred years of footsteps. The house was of a type common in Edinburgh, with the two lower storeys a self-contained dwelling with an entrance of its own, and with these stairs mounting at the side of it to the flat above, without any doors opening on to any of the landings where the stairs turned back on themselves. Each flight was long, because all the rooms in the lower house were very high. There was a cold iron handrail.
Colin left the suitcases at the foot of the stairs, put an arm round Helen’s waist, and while she put an arm round his shoulders, took most of her weight as she hobbled from step to step. After every few of them she paused to draw a shuddering breath, trying to pretend that it was not hurting as much as it was.
“Once I get to the top I’ll never be able to come down again,” she said as they reached the first landing.
“You won’t need to,” he said. “I’ll see to everything. Just take it slowly. You’re doing fine. And really, you’ll like it when you get there.”
She knew that that was possible. When this house had been built, staircases like this were regarded as part of the street and were most of them bare and unlovely. But often the flats opening off them had rooms of the greatest magnificence, with nobly lofty ceilings, finely proportioned windows and Adam fireplaces. She tried to hope for the best, and somehow, after she did not know how long, reached the top landing.
There were evidently two flats there, for there were two doors, side by side. Colin let go of Helen to feel for the key in his pocket. As he did so, one of the doors opened a few inches, as far as the chain holding it would allow, and singularly blue eyes in an aged, wrinkled face peered out at them. Red hair in a tangle hung over the lined forehead. A thin hand held the collar of a green quilted dressing-gown close up to the withered neck.
“You won’t ring the bell, will you?” the old woman said abruptly. “If you ring it, she comes, but she doesn’t like it. Remember that.”
The door closed.
Helen looked at Colin in astonishment. “What was that?”
“Just a lonely old body, gone a little peculiar,” he said. “She’s quite harmless. In fact, she’s been very kind to me since I moved in last week.”
“But why should we ring the bell? There’s no one to answer it.”
“Why indeed?” He fitted the key into the lock and opened the door. “Now just a little further,” he said. “Then you can sit down and be comfortable and I’ll bring you a drink.”
“What about my luggage?”
“I’ll get that in a minute.”
He helped her forward into the flat.
Except for the smell of dry rot that was wafted to her as soon as she entered it, it was more or less as she had expected. There was a spacious hall, with an elegant archway halfway along it and a polished floor of thick, broad old boards with a narrow runner of red carpet up the middle of it. Several doors opened off the hall, immensely solid-looking. Colin pushed one of them open and led Helen into a big room with two tall sash windows, a high ceiling with a cornice of delicately moulded plaster and a fine marble chimney-piece.
There was no fire in the old black basket grate, but an electric fire stood on the hearth in front of it, with three bars alight, and in spite of the snow now beginning to swirl thickly against the window-panes, the room felt pleasantly warm.
“I turned the fire on before I went out to meet you, so that it’d be nice when you got here,” Colin said, “but actually the place is surprisingly easy to heat. The walls are about a yard thick and once you’ve managed to warm things up inside, they keep it in.”
Helen took off her coat and lowered herself into a chair beside the fireplace.
“That old woman next door,” she said. “Are we going to have trouble with her?”
“I told you, she’s just mildly eccentric,” he said. “Actually she’s helped me quite a bit. She told me where the best shops are locally and advised me about getting in supplies, and when she knew you were coming she brought round a chicken casserole that we’ve only got to warm up when we want it. Now I’ll go and get your things. I shan’t be a moment.”
He went out, closing the door behind him to keep the warmth in the room.
Helen leant back in her chair and looked round her, taking in the room with its curious mixture of grandeur and decay. Once, she thought, it must have been beautiful. It would have been a fine background for elegantly dressed ladies with hoops and powdered hair and patches. But in those days it would not have been filled with shabby Victorian furniture, sufficiently comfortable and not positively ugly, but without any particular character. It would not have had that faint, pervasive smell of mildew. Other smells, perhaps, even more disagreeable, for the sanitation would have been primitive, but that would have been normal and would have gone unnoticed. Exhausted by her climb up the stairs, she closed her eyes for a moment, then, opening them, suddenly noticed the bell beside the fireplace.
It was the kind of bell that consists of a circle of painted china, with a handle at the side of it, with a small china knob that would have to be pulled downwards to set wires jangling and bells ringing in the kitchen. The bell was white and its decoration was a pretty little wreath of rosebuds. It was a dainty, charming object, but it had probably not been in use for fifty years. On an impulse, Helen reached out and pulled the handle.
There was only silence. No bell rang. The wires that the handle had once set working, had no doubt been broken long ago.
Opening her handbag, she took out the bottle with her pills in it and swallowed two, then closed her eyes again. The pills took some time to work. It would be at least half an hour before they began to give her any relief from pain, but meanwhile it would be pleasant to doze. But suddenly she became aware of a draught on the back of her neck, a very chill draught, and looking round to see where it was coming from, she saw that the heavy door, which she remembered Colin had closed, was standing open.
He reappeared in the room a moment later, carrying the suitcases. He closed the door. Then, after one look at Helen, he asked quickly, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Is the pain bad?”
“Just about average. I’ve just taken my pills. They’ll help soon.”
“But you look as if—I don’t know what—something had happened to you.”
She gave an uncertain laugh. “It’s just silly. I don’t know why, but I suddenly took it into my head to ring that bell there, and of course it’s broken and doesn’t work, but a moment afterwards the door opened by itself, and I felt just as if—no, it’s too silly.”
“What was it?”
“I felt just as if someone had answered the bell and come into the room.”
He hit his forehead with the back of his hand. “Oh, God, are you going to take it into your head that the place is haunted? Don’t you like it? Won’t it do till we can look for something together? We’ll do that as soon as you can walk.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I like it very much.”
“That door’s got a way of opening by itself,” he said. “I’ve noticed it before. I think the latch probably needs a drop of oil. I’ll see to it.”
“Yes, of course that’s it.”
“And perhaps you were a bit upset by what Mrs. Lambie said.”
“Mrs. Lambie?”
“Our neighbour. What she said about not ringing the bell. I expect the journey and then climbing those stairs were a bit too much for you. I’ve blundered, haven’t I, taking this flat? Somehow I can never manage to do the right thing. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
He was beginning to work himself up into one of his states of self-accusation, which were really a way of accusing Helen of failing to understand him. She flinched at the thought of the scene that could develop now if she did not manage to stop it in time.
“You’re quite right,” she said placatingly. “I told you it was silly of me, didn’t I? Of course it was just the awful state of nerves I’ve been in ever since the accident. Perhaps I ought to be on tranquilizers.”
“We’d better get you a doctor as soon as possible, anyway. Mrs. Lambie gave me the name of one who lives quite near, who she says is very competent.”
“You seem to have been seeing a lot of her.”
“I told you, she’s been very helpful. She’s given me dinner a couple of times and told me a great deal about the neighbourhood. She’s got all sorts of stories about it. She seems to have lived here most of her life. In her way, she’s very interesting. By the way, she’s our landlord. I got the flat through a lawyer who’d advertised in the Scotsman, but when I got here it was she who showed me round. Now I’ll get those drinks. And don’t worry if the door opens. I’ll get some oil this afternoon and see to it.”
He meant it when he said it, but it was the kind of thing that he forgot to do, and by the afternoon the snow was coming down thickly, covering the pavements and the dark slate roofs of the houses, and Helen did not feel inclined to send him out again into such weather. It turned out that the door would stay shut if it was slammed hard enough. They had an omelet for lunch, and after it Helen went to lie down. The pain in her leg had been dulled by the pills and she soon drifted off to sleep.
Colin did not wake her until six o’clock, when he told her that he had sherry waiting for her and that he had put Mrs. Lambie’s chicken casserole to warm up in the oven. They sat by the electric fire in the living-room, with the faded red velvet curtains drawn over the windows, shutting out darkness and snow, and Helen, to her own surprise, found herself in a mood of quiet contentment that she had not known for a long time. Not for many months before they had decided to return to Europe. Not for at least a year, when that woman Naomi had come into their lives.
But she was thousands of miles away now and Helen had Colin to herself, and at last he seemed satisfied that it should be so. The unfamiliar, gracious room, with the dim light almost concealing the cracks in the plaster and the patches on the wallpaper where someone else’s pictures had hung, began to feel strangely homelike.
Mrs. Lambie appeared in the door next morning, carrying a plate of beautifully cut little three-cornered sandwiches. Colin was not there. He had gone out shopping with a list that Helen had made out for him. He was not working at present. He was a schoolmaster, a teacher of history, and the Christmas holidays had begun. So far he had said very little of how it felt to be facing the teaching of Scottish children in one of Edinburgh’s more distinguished schools after five years of teaching in East Africa, but it was Helen’s impression that he was looking forward to it with some eagerness, though the thought of it intimidated him a little.
The snow had stopped, but there had been a heavy frost in the night and the roofs of the houses opposite were a shining white, in which small rainbows of colour were trapped, under a blue, cloudless sky. Helen had stood at the window to watch Colin set out and had seen him skid and nearly fall on the icy pavement. Apparently it was the morning that the rubbish van came round, for there were two rows of dust-bins along the edges of the pavements, some of them with their contents spilling out into the gutters. They detracted from the dignity of the street and gave it an air of squalor. At one of the bins a lean, black cat was trying to extract what looked like the backbone of a herring, and at last succeeding, sat there, chewing it with great satisfaction. It was as she saw this that Helen heard the front door bell ring.
Using her two sticks, she hobbled along the hall to answer it, and found Mrs. Lambie standing there, holding the plate of sandwiches.
“I do hope I’m not intruding, but I thought these might help you with your lunch,” she said, “though I’m not sure if they’re substantial enough for a gentleman. There’s just pâté inside them, which I made myself, so I can assure you there’s nothing unwholesome in them.”
Her accent took Helen back to her childhood in Edinburgh. Fully dressed, Mrs. Lambie seemed a different person from the grotesque figure who had peered out from her doorway the morning before and had spoken so mysteriously. She looked about eighty, with a small, pointed, deeply wrinkled face, but a straight back and slim, straight legs with excellent ankles. She was a small woman and very trim, and was dressed in a neat gray tweed suit with a cameo brooch on her lapel and a string of small pearls round her throat. The red hair, which yesterday had fallen in a tangle over her forehead, was brushed smoothly back from it into a small bun. To Helen’s surprise, she realised that its colour was its own. The day before she had assumed that it was dyed, but now she could see that there was enough white mixed into it for that not to be possible.
“You’re very kind,” she said. “Won’t you come in? My husband’s out at the moment, but he’ll soon be back.”
The old woman accepted the invitation with an air of eagerness, walking ahead of Helen into the sitting-room.
“He’s so charming,” she said. “I took a fancy to him at once. And you’re both young. I like that. I like having young people living next to me. But of course you won’t stay. Nobody stays long in this flat, isn’t it strange? I’ve made it as nice as I can and the rent isn’t high, but still they don’t stay. Sometimes I wonder if it’s something to do with that old murder, that there’s still a feeling of evil in the place. Do you think that could be possible? Do you believe in that sort of thing?”
She spoke in as matter-of-fact a tone as if she had just mentioned some minor fault in the plumbing, but her blue eyes, on Helen’s face, were watchful. They were very fine eyes. Helen thought that when Mrs. Lambie had been young, she had probably been very striking to look at.
Hoping that she too sounded calm about it, Helen said, “Murder? In this flat?”
“Yes, indeed. Of course it happened long, long ago. These houses are very old, you know. All kinds of things must have happened in them.”
Helen had taken the plate of sandwiches and put it down and they sat down on either side of the fire.
“About two hundred years old, aren’t they?” she said.
Mrs. Lambie nodded. “And in those days these two flats were all one. I had it divided myself when I bought it after my dear husband died, because of course it was far too big for just me, but it was cheap and really so handsome, I couldn’t resist it. And I’ve always liked this part of Edinburgh. It’s got a special sort of character of its own. And I thought I could make a little extra income by letting this half, but people don’t stay. Yet I’ve never felt anything wrong in my own flat. I’m very fond of it.”
“What happened?” Helen asked. “Who was murdered?”
“A young woman, the wife of a young advocate. He was very handsome and she was very jealous, because she was older than he was and rather plain, and consumptive too, as so many people were in those days, and they had a maid who was very beautiful, with whom he soon fell in love. And the lady of the house did everything she could to get rid of the maid, but her husband wouldn’t have it, so the lady did her best to make the maid leave of her own accord, ringing that bell for her over and over again, and abusing her, and at last the girl told her master that she couldn’t stand it any more and was leaving, and he fell into a great rage and threw his wife down the stairs, and she broke her neck and died.”
“And what happened to him and the girl?” Helen asked.
“Well, he was executed, naturally. They hanged people in those days. And the girl went nearly mad with grief, and the story is, as it was once told to me long ago by an old neighbour, that if you ring the bell there, she answers it, because she wants revenge on her mistress.”
“But it was her mistress who was killed,” Helen said. “Wasn’t that revenge enough?”
“But it was all her fault, don’t you see, because she was so jealous? Jealousy’s a terrible thing.”
“So that’s why you told us not to ring the bell.” Helen was rather wishing that she had not heard the story.
The old woman gave a cheerful little laugh. “But of course it wasn’t necessary. I can see you aren’t at all superstitious. I’ve never felt at all worried here myself. But then I’m not in the least bit psychic, and I don’t know what to think about the people who say they are. Is there any truth in it? I honestly don’t know and I should never go so far as to deny it’s possible that some people experience things that the rest of us don’t. But I thought the story would interest you anyway. Tell me about your accident now. Your husband mentioned it, of course, and told me how helpless you’d be for a time, so that’s why I’ve been trying to help. I believe in helping other people whenever I can. I’ll always do anything for anyone.”
“It was my own fault really,” Helen said. “When we got to London we bought a secondhand car and drove up to stay with some friends of ours who live in a village near Birmingham. I was doing the driving, and I had a feeling there was something wrong with the brakes, not seriously wrong, but I thought we ought to have them seen to. And my husband said he’d attend to that, and I thought he had, and I took the car out one day and its brakes went and I went slap into a lorry that was coming outof a turning when I had the right of way, and I couldn’t stop myself. The car was a write-off, of course, and I was lucky to get off with only a broken leg and shock. I was taken to hospital, then I stayed on for a time with our friends, but I didn’t feel it was fair to stay with them for ever, so I came after Colin, who’d come on ahead of me to find somewhere for us to live.”
Mrs. Lambie looked at her thoughtfully. “And he found something for you at the top of three flights of stairs, and he hadn’t had those brakes seen to when he said he was going to. I’m afraid he isn’t the most practical of people, is he? But so charming. I understand how easily you can forgive him when that accident certainly wasn’t your fault, but his.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Helen said. “He’d never told me he’d had the brakes put right, I just took it for granted he had.”
“But didn’t he know you were going to take the car out? Shouldn’t he have warned you?”
Helen gave a worried shake of her head. “I can’t really remember. Perhaps he did and I forgot about it. Everything about that time’s a bit hazy.”
“Yes, of course. Most natural. But such a misfortune, when you were coming to start your new life here. Well, let me know if there’s ever anything I can do to help. I can easily go shopping for you. It isn’t the sort of thing that gentlemen like to do, though of course they do it much more willingly now than they did when I was young. And I know your husband would do anything for you, even if he’s a little thoughtless sometimes. Such very attractive young men sometimes get just a wee bit spoilt and grow up a little irresponsible. But you mustn’t hold it against him. I’m sure he can’t help it. I hope you enjoy your sandwiches.”
With further offers of help, she left.
Soon afterwards Colin returned, having omitted to buy the oil for the latch of the sitting-room door, although Helen had put it on her list, but with everything else that she had written down. When he realised that he had forgotten the oil, he offered to go straight out again to buy it, but he had snow on his shoes and looked so cold that Helen assured him that it was unimportant, and urged him to come to the fire.
“I’ve had a visit from your friend Mrs. Lambie,” she said. “She’s overcome by your charm.”
“Splendid,” he said, sitting down and holding out his hands towards the glowing bars of the fire. “I’m glad I’ve not lost my touch with aged ladies. I thought it would be a good idea to get on the right side of her, since you’d be stuck up here alone so much and she might easily be useful.”
“She told me we’ve got a resident ghost—did she tell you that?” Helen asked.
“No,” he said. “What kind of ghost?”
“Believe it or not, a live-in maid, who comes when you pull that bell.” She nodded towards the pretty little bell-pull with its wreath of rosebuds. “Which reminds me, what are we going to do about cleaning this place? I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to cope with it.”
He did not answer at once, but after a moment, looking at her with a troubled frown, he said, “You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re pretending to laugh at it, but yesterday you pulled that bell and the door opened and you were quite frightened, and you’re remembering that now.”
“No, that was nothing,” she said. “I was just startled.”
“Why is this woman supposed to haunt the place?” he asked.
Helen told him the story of the old murder, as Mrs. Lambie had told it to her.
The frown deepened on Colin’s face. “I wonder why she told you that story, not me,” he said. “The other night, when I had dinner with her, she told me a number of fairly gruesome stories about Edinburgh. She seems to like them. She told me the old Burke and Hare yarn, of course, and how the senate room of the University is built over the site where they murdered Darnley, and a particularly nasty story of how some idiot son of a local nobleman roasted a scullion on a spit. And sometimes I got the feeling that her sense of time was all mixed up and that she wasn’t sure these things hadn’t happened yesterday. But she never told me anything about our domestic ghost.”
“She may have been afraid she’d frighten you off the place. As I said, she’s really taken to you.”
“But she doesn’t mind frightening you.”
“Or even enjoyed it. Actually I’m more afraid of being haunted by Mrs. Lambie herself than by her ghost. She says people never stay in this flat. It could be, couldn’t it, that they have to put up with just a bit too much of Mrs. Lambie?”
“But she is awfully helpful,” Colin said. “You were asking what we’re going to do about cleaning the flat. Well, of course, I can manage that, but I met her on the staircase just now and she told me the address of an agency where we may be able to get a daily. I’ll go and see them this afternoon—no, I’ll have to leave it till tomorrow. This afternoon I’m going to go and see that doctor she told me about. We want him to come and see you as soon as possible.”
“Damn the woman, is she going to run our lives?” Helen exploded, suddenly unaccountably angry. “Can’t we do anything without her?”
He gave her a startled look, and they stared at one another blankly. Then Colin’s face assumed his deeply hurt look, which changed almost at once into one of rage, and in a high, furious voice, he cried, “Christ, you’re jealous of her! She’s eighty at least, but you’re jealous of her! You can’t stand it if I talk to anyone. If this sort of thing goes on, don’t you realise what it’s going to do to us? I can’t stand it—get that into your head—I can’t stand it!”
“But of course I’m not jealous of her,” Helen said, “and I’m sure she means well. It’s just that if I have to have too much to do with her, I may go slightly mad.”
“That’s the kind of thing you said about Naomi. And that’s why we’re here—just to get away from Naomi. I told you she meant nothing to me—”
“You meant plenty to her,” she interrupted swiftly.
“Did that matter? Could I help it? And didn’t I agree to come here just to satisfy you that the thing wasn’t important?”
“I thought we came here because we’d agreed there was no future for whites in Africa.”
“Oh yes, that’s what we told everyone else. But Naomi was the real reason. And now you’re jealous of an old woman of eighty, who’s only been doing her best to help us.”
“Well, d’you realise she tried to put it into my head that my accident was your fault, even though I’d told her it was mine? Is that helping us?”
“So that’s it! That’s the grievance you’ve been nursing against me all this time! I knew there was something. But didn’t I tell you not to take the car out till I’d had the brakes checked?”
“You know, I thought you’d had them seen to. You didn’t try to stop me taking it out.”
“I didn’t know you were going to.”
“I could have been killed.”
“And you think I wanted that!”
They were equally angry, but while Colin’s voice had stayed loud, Helen’s was low and bitter. As she always did, once she had become involved in a quarrel with him, she almost at once started wondering desperately how to put a stop to it. She could have drawn back from it herself in an instant, apologising, even grovelling, but once Colin was sufficiently angry, it took hours, sometimes even days, to persuade him to forget it. He was looking at her with a strange look in his eyes, which she found peculiarly disturbing.
“I’m not a murderer,” he said, suddenly speaking only just above a whisper, “but for God’s sake, don’t provoke me too far.”
Then he picked up the overcoat that he had dropped on a chair, struggled into it and walked out of the room. Helen heard the outer door slam as he let himself out of the flat.
She knew that he would be gone for most of the rest of the day, perhaps going to a cinema, or pottering about bookshops, or merely walking along the slushy streets, encouraging the black mood that had gripped him, assuring himself over and over again that he was in the right, which, as it happened, this time he really was, or so Helen thought, as she turned her anger, once he was gone, against herself. Of course Naomi had been the real reason why they had come home. And hadn’t she sworn to herself that whatever happened she would never blame him for her accident? If she loved him, she had to accept him as he was, moody, casual, forgetful, but after his fashion loving her.
Or could that be wrong?
Sooner or later, after one of their quarrels, she always arrived at this point. Did he really love her, or did he merely feel entangled in something from which he could not break free? Was that the explanation of his moods? Did they mean something far more important than she had ever let herself believe?
She ate most of Mrs. Lambie’s sandwiches for her lunch. She was halfway through them when she heard the rattle of the letter-box, and leaning on her sticks, made her way along the hall to the front door to see what had been delivered. One letter lay on the mat inside the door. She picked it up, looked at the address on it, then grew stiff with shock. It was addressed to Colin, and the handwriting was Naomi’s, and the postmark was London.
For a moment Helen could not believe it, thinking that she must be mistaken about the handwriting. But she knew it well. There had been a time when Naomi, who had been a secretary working for the High Commission, had been her friend rather than Colin’s, and Helen had often had notes from her. It was a distinctive writing, not easily mistaken.
Limping slowly back to the sitting-room, she put the letter down on a table, where it would catch Colin’s eye when he came back again, then returned to the sandwiches.
Dusk came early, only halfway through the afternoon. The days were just at their shortest. Going to the windows to draw the curtains against the deepening darkness, Helen stood for a moment, gazing down into the street, which just then was empty of traffic. She thought how noble the old houses looked when the light was too dim to show up their state of decay. It was easy to imagine coaches driving along the street, and fine ladies alighting from them and sweeping grandly in at one of the handsome old doorways.
But then, as she drew the curtains, she found herself thinking of a young woman who had once lived here, and perhaps had worn a hoop and powdered her hair, and who might have stood at this window long ago, just as Helen was doing now, watching for her husband to come home, then perhaps seen him hurrying along, but not for her sake, A young woman who had gone to her death down the long stone stairs, because of her jealousy.
Helen looked at the envelope lying on the table and felt an impulse to destroy it and say nothing to Colin about its having arrived, but the impulse was followed by a chilling little tremor of fear. Leaving the envelope lying where it was, she sat down and picked up a newspaper that Colin had brought in with him, and did her best to read.
The doctor called soon after four o’clock. Though Colin had not returned, he had not omitted to call on the doctor recommended by Mrs. Lambie and ask him to visit Helen as soon as possible. He was a short, square man, with a loud, hearty manner, full of reassurance. He wanted the address of the doctor who had treated Helen after her accident, so that he could send for her x-rays and records. Then he stayed chatting for a little, commiserating with her for living at the top of a staircase that would keep her virtually a prisoner until the plaster came off her leg, and for the weather that had welcomed her to Edinburgh. Then he went away, saying that he would call again in a few days.
Colin returned about six o’clock, with a parcel of fish and chips for their supper. He said nothing about how he had spent the day, and looked tired and sullen. Seeing the letter on the table, he ripped it open, read it quickly, then held it out to Helen.
“Here, d’you want to read it?” he asked.
“Not unless there’s some reason why I should,” she answered, looking away.
He tucked the letter into his pocket and said no more about it.
He was not openly antagonistic to her that evening, but he hardly spoke. They went to bed early. In the morning, soon after he had washed up the breakfast things for her, he left the flat, without telling her where he was going or when he would be back. Helen would have given a great deal at that time to be able to leave the flat too, to be able to go rapidly down the stairs and along the street to investigate the local shops and perhaps take a bus to Princes Street and see how much everything had changed since she had been here last. She felt restless and tense. There had been a partial thaw in the night and most of the white covering of the roofs had slid down on to the pavements, lying there in dirty heaps, but the sky looked low and heavy, as if more snow might be coming soon. Helen sat down in her usual place, near to the electric fire, and wondered how she was going to pass the time.
It was only a few minutes later that she felt the draught on her neck which meant that the door behind her had swung open. It did it so silently that she still found it eerie. Looking towards it and gripping the arms of her chair, she started to heave herself to her feet so that she could go and close it. But as she did so, a slim, ethereal figure in grey moved into her line of vision in the hall. She dropped back into her chair, wanting to scream, and shuddering from head to foot in helpless panic.
The figure moved forward.
“Did I startle you, dear?” she asked. “I’m sorry. The gentleman gave me the keys and said it would be all right if I came straight in, else I might disturb you.”
She was a young woman of about twenty-five, tall and vigorous-looking, with short auburn hair and a bright, healthy complexion, and she was wearing a transparent white plastic raincoat, which she started to unbutton as she came into the room. Under the coat she was wearing dark brown slacks and a heavy Aran sweater. She was not in the least ghost-like.
“I said to the gentleman, I said I’m not sure you should give me the keys,” she said. “Who kens, I might be anybody, you never ken what I might do with them, but he said it would be better than having me ring the bell and making you come tae the door with your sore leg, and he seemed tae think he could trust me. So I came in, like he said, and if you’ll just tell me what you want me tae do, I’ll get ahead with it.”
“Who are you?” Helen demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“My name’s Mrs. MacNab,” the girl answered “but most folks call me Fiona.”
“Why have you come?”
“Because I just happened tae meet the gentleman in the agency yesterday afternoon, when I went in tae see if they’d a wee job for me, and he said how you couldn’t get around yourself because of your leg being broken, and he wanted someone tae keep the Hat clean and I said I could manage, and he gave me the keys and I let myself in, like he said. Were you not expecting me?”
“Yes—yes, of course I was,” Helen said. “I’d just forgotten about it. I don’t think he told me what time you’d be coming, or if he did, I didn’t remember. It’s very good of you to come.”
“He was so awful anxious about you, I couldn’t say no to him,” the girl said. “Now, where will I start?”
“Oh, anywhere you like. If you can, just give the place a general clean-up. That would be fine.”
“Will do,” the girl said cheerfully, and disappeared to the kitchen to look for brooms and dusters.
Helen found herself wanting to laugh helplessly, but she felt that there was a danger of hysteria getting into the laughter and took hold of herself, not to let it escape her. How like Colin it was to have taken the girl on after only a few minutes’ talk in an employment agency, almost certainly without asking a single question about her references, and then, on the spot, to have handed over the keys of the flat, and then to have said nothing to Helen about what he had done. That had probably been because when he had returned to the flat the evening before he had still been angry with her, and had half hoped that the girl’s sudden appearance would frighten her. He could sometimes be remarkably cruel. But also it demonstrated to her that even when the two of them had quarrelled, he could still be magnanimous enough to go to the trouble of finding this girl to help her.
And of course he had charmed the girl. It had not been concern at Helen’s helplessness that had brought her here to work this morning, but Colin’s smile, his diffidently courteous manner, his appearance of interest in her. Helen had seen this in operation so often that she could imagine exactly how the scene had gone. She herself was the only person on whom he hardly ever troubled to exercise his charm, and when he did, she found that she had lost the ability to respond to it. She preferred him to be what she considered his natural self, with all his difficult moods, since she was accustomed to them and thought that she understood them reasonably well.
Halfway through the morning Fiona brought her a cup of coffee, then stayed to chatter about herself for a time. She was an unmarried mother with a child of five, she said, whom she had left for the morning in a nursery school. She spoke of the child’s father with an amused kind of contempt, but no bitterness, seeming to be glad that he had removed himself from her life. With only a little more warmth she mentioned someone whom she called her boy-friend. Her attitude to men seemed to be placidly uncomplicated. Helen envied her. When the girl had gone, promising to come again in three days’ time, Helen thought how comic it had been to confuse someone so robust, even for a moment in the dim light of the hall, where she had looked grey and wraith-like, with the beautiful maid of long ago, who had been the cause of murder.
Colin again returned to the flat at about six o’clock in the evening, bringing with him some packages of Chinese carry-out food, and told Helen that he had spent the day in the National Library, reading up on Scottish social history.
“It’s appalling how little I know about it,” he said. “If you’re educated in England, it’s extraordinary how little you learn about the rest of the British Isles. I’ve a lot to catch up on.”
He seemed to be in a better mood this evening than he had been the evening before, glad that Fiona MacNab had arrived to clean the flat, as she had promised, and he presented Helen with two paperback thrillers that he had bought for her during the day.
“You must be getting pretty bored,” he said. “Isn’t there anyone here whom you used to know in the old days whom you could ask to come and see you?”
“I thought of trying that,” she said, “but it’s more than ten years since we moved away and I haven’t kept in touch with anyone.”
“Let’s see, all the same.”
But something gave Helen the feeling that he was forcing himself to be amiable, to make up for their quarrel the day before, and when they had eaten their king prawn chow mein and drunk some tea, he seemed to have forgotten his suggestion. Helen did not remind him of it. When she thought about the schoolgirls whom she had once known in Edinburgh, they seemed utterly remote. Even if they still lived here, they had very likely got married and changed their names, and if she tried to find them in the telephone directory, there would be no trace of them. In any case, the chances were that they had completely forgotten her. She must face it, her only acquaintance here was Mrs. Lambie. She settled down to read one of the thrillers that Colin had brought her, while he picked up a history that he had bought for himself, but which he left unopened on his knee while he gazed broodingly at the fire.
After a little while, Helen glanced up at him and found that that brooding gaze had been transferred to her face, as if he were asking himself some profound question about her. She smiled and asked him what he had on his mind.
He muttered, “Nothing,” and opened his book. But he went on staring at the first page for so long that she knew he was not reading it.
At breakfast next day he told her that he was going back to the library, and as soon as he had done the washing up he left the flat again. He had hardly spoken at breakfast, but once he had gone, the complete silence in the flat seemed suddenly unbearable. Limping from room to room, she tried to fight off a new and terrifying sense of claustrophobia. She had never suffered from it in this way before. It felt as if the walls of the flat were closing in on her and were going to crush her.
The kitchen seemed specially sinister. It had a modem sink and a gas cooker, but the floor was of great, uneven blocks of stone, which must have been there since the house was built, for at no later time would a floor so many storeys up have been paved with such slabs. They were very cold to stand on. Helen found herself thinking of the maid of long ago, so beautiful and so dangerous, who had probably had to live in this kitchen, feel the chill of the floor through her shoes and get down on her knees to scrub it. The thought of her sent Helen back as fast as she could go to the sitting-room, wishing that somehow, if only for a little while, she could get out of the flat and talk to the butcher and the greengrocer and the baker, flesh-and-blood ordinary people who had never driven any man or woman to their deaths.
Going to the window, she wondered if, after all, she made up her mind to it, she could get down the stairs alone and breathe in some of the fresh, cold air of the streets. Getting down should not really be too difficult. She could do it sitting down, manoeuvering herself from step to step without ever putting any weight on her painful leg. It was the thought of trying to get up again without Colin there to support her that she found intimidating. She might actually find it impossible and might have to stay below in the cold for she did not know how long until, if she were lucky, she could persuade some kind passer-by to help her up again.
While she was thinking of this, she saw an old man on the far side of the street slither and fall and lie helplessly where he had fallen on the pavement. It was then that she realised that there had been another heavy frost in the night, and that the half-melted snow of the day before had hardened into a sheet of ice. A passing milkman helped the old man to his feet, brushed him down and made sure that he had not hurt himself before leaving him to go on again down the street, holding tightly to the iron railings of the areas as he went. But the sight had put Helen off any thought of trying to go out herself. She must accept the fact, she was imprisoned here in this silent dwelling.
If only it had not been so silent! If only she could have heard other people moving about in it!
Knowing how foolish she was being, but all at once exasperated beyond bearing, she crossed to the fireplace, grasped the bell-pull beside it and wrenched it and wrenched it over and over again, feeling as if, sooner or later, if only she went on long enough, it would make some sound. Then suddenly it did. A bell pealed clearly in the silence.
She snatched her hand back from the bell as if it had burnt her. Then she realised that of course it was not this bell that had rung, but the front door bell. Leaning on her sticks, she made her way along the hall to the front door and opened it. As she had expected, it was Mrs. Lambie who stood there, dressed in her neat grey tweed suit and holding a saucepan.
“I’ve just been making a pot of lentil soup,” she said, “much too much for just myself, and I thought in this weather you might find it acceptable. There’s nothing like a good soup when the weather’s so inclement. Do you care for it?”
“How very good of you,” Helen said. “Won’t you come in?”
“Are you sure it’s not inconvenient? I don’t want to intrude.” Mrs. Lambie was already inside the door by the time she spoke. Helen closed it behind her. “You’ll find there’s nothing unwholesome in it, none of that tinned stuff, just good ham bones and lentils and plenty of vegetables. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you and your delightful husband are happy here. I know it isn’t very grand, but I did my best to make it comfortable.”
“It’s fine,” Helen said, taking the saucepan and carrying it to the kitchen, then rejoining Mrs. Lambie, who had gone into the sitting-room and sat down by the fire. She was patting her red hair, so bizarre above her aged face.
“Yes, I did my best,” she said, “but you aren’t happy here, are you? I can always tell. You won’t stay.”
“Well, of course we never meant to stay for long,” Helen said. “As soon as I can get about better we want to find ourselves a small house somewhere and have our own furniture moved in. We had it sent to Edinburgh when we left to come home, and it’s in store now.”
“Yes, yes, your husband made that quite clear to me when we signed the lease,” Mrs. Lambie said. “I knew you’d only be here temporarily. But when I said you aren’t happy here, that isn’t what I meant. It’s nothing to do with the flat, is it? There’s trouble between the two of you, anyone can see that. So sad, when you’re both so charming. And you’re both trying so hard to make a success of things now. I think that’s what I noticed first, how hard you were trying. It didn’t seem quite natural. Of course I realise you may think I’m very interfering, but I’m a very old woman and I always say what I think now, and I know that sometimes it’s a help to have someone to talk to, even someone like me. So tell me, my dear, was the trouble another woman? Was that the real reason why you left Africa, and why you think your husband let you take that unsafe car out on purpose?”
“On purpose?” Helen said sharply. “Whatever made you think that?”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“No, of course not. I’ve never thought of such a thing.”
“Dear, dear,” Mrs. Lambie said with a sigh. “How very sad. Because it’s what your husband thinks himself, you know. He says you blame him for your accident. He told me so himself only yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Helen said.
“Yes, when he dropped in for a drink with me when he got back from the library. I happened to be coming up the stairs myself when he got home and I asked him in for a chat. And we had a wee drink together. I do so enjoy company for a wee drink. It isn’t the same when you’re by yourself. And he told me how you blamed him for not having had the brakes of the car seen to, just as I was saying to you the other day. And he said how angry you were with him for taking a flat at the top of so many stairs and how you’d stopped trusting him in any way. And I asked him if the real trouble was another woman, because that’s what it generally is, and he didn’t answer, but I could tell from the way he coloured up that I’d hit on the truth. Oh dear, it’s so sad. He’s so very unhappy about it. If only I could persuade you not to blame him, because young men like him can’t help attracting women, you know. They’ll always pursue him. There are people who are like that without meaning any harm, women as well as men. They can’t help it. So if you can’t make up your mind to put up with it, you’ll never be happy yourself. Do take my advice and try to conquer your jealousy. There’s been enough unhappiness in this flat because of jealousy. I told you all about that, didn’t I—about the young advocate and the beautiful maid? Yes, I remember I did. Well, we don’t want any more tragedy here, do we?”
Helen had been only half listening to what the old woman had been saying. She had taken in the fact that Colin had visited Mrs. Lambie the evening before when he returned from the library, had apparently unburdened himself to her, and then had said nothing about this to Helen. And the fantastic thing about this was that what Helen felt about it was a kind of jealousy. That he should have kept the visit to himself made it seem important, overwhelming her for a moment with as deep a fear of losing him as she had ever felt when she had known that he was with Naomi. For if he was afraid to tell her such a thing, it must mean, surely, that she had completely lost his confidence.
Determined above all things that the old woman should not see how she had been shaken, she asked, “Wouldn’t you like a drink now, Mrs. Lambie?”
“No, no, thank you, it’s much too early in the morning for me,” Mrs. Lambie replied. She stood up. “I hope you enjoy the soup. I’m very fond of a good lentil soup myself, and it’s as easy to make a big potful as a small one. And think over what I’ve been saying, because I’ve had a great deal of experience of life and I know what I’m talking about. Good-bye for now. Don’t bother to come to the door. I’ll let myself out.”
Helen let her do so, then got to her feet and poured out the drink for herself that Mrs. Lambie had refused. Before she drank it, she took two of her pills. Her leg was hurting more than usual. Nerves, she thought. She had actually let that old creature upset her.
Colin came home earlier than he had the day before, bringing with him a cold roast chicken and the makings of a salad. It would have been a chilly meal for such an evening, if it had not been for the lentil soup. As they sat drinking sherry before it by the fire, Helen told Colin how Mrs. Lambie had brought it to her in the morning.
He smiled and said, “She’s a kind old thing really, isn’t she?”
“I think she’s horrible!” Helen said with sudden violence. “She’s been doing her best to put evil thoughts into my mind.”
“Aren’t they there already?” he asked with an edge on his voice.
“Don’t, don’t!” she exclaimed. “I’m getting the feeling she’s putting us against one another. And we’d made up our minds to stop quarrelling, hadn’t we? We wanted this to be a really new start.”
“Of course, but it isn’t her fault if it isn’t, it’s our own.”
She gave a sigh. “I know you’re right. It’s this being cooped up with the snow and everything that’s making me unreasonable. I’m sorry, Colin. But d’you know, it was rather funny this morning. I was in a vile mood and I started pulling that bell, as if it would ring if only I pulled it hard enough—and suddenly she came—Mrs. Lambie—just as if I’d summoned her.”
“Coincidence.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, the bell there wouldn’t have been the one that that woman who got murdered used to ring. I’m pretty sure this is a Victorian thing, not Georgian. The works may be original, the wires and so on, but the bell itself isn’t really old.”
Helen turned to look at the pretty, painted bell-pull, and her face became thoughtful.
“The fact is, you know,” she said, “Mrs. Lambie’s never told me when that murder happened. She said it happened long ago, but that could mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean two hundred years. Suppose it was only fifty, she might actually have been in Edinburgh herself at the time, and remembered quite a lot about it. Perhaps she even knew the people.”
“You’re letting it obsess you,” Colin said. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“It obsesses her.”
“Because it’s nice and dramatic and she’s lonely and old and hasn’t much else to think about. Now I’ll get that soup, and let’s forget the ghosts.”
“But if it did happen only fifty years ago …”
But Helen did not finish her sentence. She was not sure what she wanted to say. It was a new thought to her that Mrs. Lambie might have more knowledge of the murder that had happened here in this building than she had implied and that that perhaps was why she had such a pressing need to talk about it. Perhaps, now that she was old and her own death was close to her, she even wanted to confide in someone some secret that she had nursed all these years.
Helen sipped her sherry and tried to adjust her picture of the people who had once lived here in this flat from the hoops and powdered wigs of the eighteenth century to the brief skirts, flesh-coloured stockings and shingled hair of the nineteen-twenties.
Next morning Colin said again that he was going to the library. Helen nearly asked him to stay at home for a change, partly because she was afraid of the mood of yesterday morning returning once she was left alone, but she knew that he would have nothing to do in the flat, and that if he had nothing to do he would soon become restless and irritable. It was fortunate really that he had found something to interest him in the library.
But was it true that he had?
The question sprang so abruptly into her mind that for a moment it made the room spin about her. But once she had asked it of herself she realised that it had been troubling her since the day before. For if Naomi had arrived in London, as it had been plain from the postmark on her letter that she had, might she not have come the small distance further to Edinburgh? Might Colin not be spending his time with her?
The thought filled Helen with sudden terror, more because she felt that she was losing her grip on herself than because she really believed in it. Yet it might be right. Why should it not be right? And if it was, what was to become of her?
In a mood of needing to distract herself at any cost, she fetched the saucepan that had contained the lentil soup from the kitchen, let herself out of the flat and rang Mrs. Lambie’s bell.
There was silence for a little while, then the door opened a few inches and Mrs. Lambie peered out cautiously, just as she had when Helen had first arrived. She was dressed as she had been then, in an old quilted dressing-gown, with her red hair tangled about her face. For a moment she gazed at Helen as if she did not know her, but then she gave a vague little smile and said, “Oh, it’s you. I couldn’t think who it could be. I’m sorry, I’m not dressed.”
“I just came to bring you back your saucepan,” Helen said.
“Oh dear, you shouldn’t have troubled. Any time would have done. But do come in, if you don’t mind everything being in a mess. I haven’t started to tidy up yet.”
It looked to Helen, when she went into the flat, as if Mrs. Lambie had not tidied up for a long time. The room into which she took Helen was very like the sitting-room next door, and it was furnished in much the same way, but there was thick dust everywhere and cobwebs trailed from the ceiling. There were heaps of old newspapers on the floor and stuffing showed through slits in the worn upholstery of the chairs. A small table had been drawn close to the electric fire and had a cup and a coffee-pot on it.
“Really I’m just having my breakfast,” Mrs. Lambie said. “I don’t get up very early. I’ve nothing to get up for. But you’ll join me in a cup of coffee, won’t you?”
Holding her dressing-gown closely about her, as if it might reveal nakedness if she let it go, she went away to the kitchen to fetch another cup.
Sitting down, Helen looked with interest at a row of photographs on the mantelpiece. All but one were of young men, one in the uniform of a subaltern in the First World War, two or three in the plus fours of the nineteen-twenties, a few more who looked as if they belonged to ten years later, and one who was in the timeless wig and gown of an advocate. The one exception to this parade of youth was the photograph in the place of honour in the centre of the mantelpiece. It was of a man of at least seventy, with a plump, mild face, a bald head and vague, troubled eyes, as if, even at his age, he had not got over finding life a bewildering puzzle.
Mrs. Lambie, returning from the kitchen, saw Helen looking at this photograph.
“Ah, you’re looking at my picture of my dear husband,” she said. “He was a wonderful man, so good and kind and generous. We’d only been married three years when he had a stroke and died, but I’d been his housekeeper for years before that, and understood him perfectly. The rest …” She gave a little laugh. “Well, we all have our memories, haven’t we? And they keep me company. They were all very dear to me at different times. It may surprise you now, but I was often told when I was young that I was very beautiful. Now, how do you like your coffee? Cream? Sugar?”
Helen said that she would like it black, without sugar.
“Ah, you’re worrying about your figure,” Mrs. Lambie said with a smile. “I never had to do that.”
She handed Helen her cup. Like all Mrs. Lambie’s cooking, the coffee was excellent.
She went on, “ ‘But beauty passes; beauty vanishes; However rare, rare it be …’ I kept my looks till I was well into my sixties, you know, and even then I had distinction. So that’s why I can tell you so much about the dangers of jealousy, my dear. Women were always jealous of me. It used to make me very unhappy, and truly it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it if men pursued me. It was just something about the way I was made and not my fault at all. Why, one man even died for me.”
Suddenly Helen could not drink any more of her coffee. She put the cup down abruptly. Looking at the photograph of the advocate, she asked, “On the gallows?”
The old woman stared at her blankly. “What did you say?”
“Didn’t he die on the gallows? Wasn’t he convicted of murdering his wife? Didn’t he throw her down those stairs out there, and weren’t you the maid who caused all the trouble? Fifty or sixty years ago. And didn’t you come back here when the flat was for sale because you couldn’t keep away from it? It was the scene of your greatest triumph, the most wonderful memory of all.”
Mrs. Lambie let her mouth fall open. She also let her dressing-gown fall open, and Helen saw that under it she was wearing a transparent black nightdress, frilly with lace, a private fantasy of youth and beauty.
“Are you mad, woman?” Mrs. Lambie demanded, her voice trembling a little. “What have I ever done to you since you got here but try to help you? Why do you hate me?”
“You’ve done all you could to turn my husband and me against one another,” Helen said. She stood up, grasping her sticks. “You keep giving us advice, but all it comes to is dropping horrible thoughts into our minds.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry —I shouldn’t have said that. Perhaps you don’t mean to do it. I’d better go.”
Mrs. Lambie was on her feet, facing her. “Yes, yes, go. I know your type. You’re a wicked, jealous woman, that’s what you are. You’re jealous of me, even at my age. You’re jealous of my past and all that I’ve had. You’ve never known what it is to be adored, worshipped. You’re a plain, ordinary woman who isn’t even sure she can keep her husband’s love.”
“But you were the maid for whom the handsome young advocate was hanged, weren’t you?” Helen said. Suddenly she felt absolutely certain of it. “Isn’t that true?”
“Go!” the old woman shrieked at her. “Go!”
Helen turned and limped as quickly as she could to the door.
When Colin came home that evening, she told him what had happened. By now she felt quite detached from the scene in the flat next door. It was almost as if it had never occurred.
“I’m sorry,” she ended. “I don’t know what got into me, but at the time it seemed quite obvious to me that she must have been the maid in the story of the murder. I’m not sure what made me so certain of it—something to do with your pointing out that that bell there isn’t really old, and then the photograph of the lawyer. But of course I’ve no evidence. Only the way she took it makes me feel I may have hit on the truth.”
Colin had brought home fish and chips again for their supper. He carried the packages out to the kitchen and put them in the oven to keep warm, then returned to the sitting-room with an unusually grim look on his face. He poured out sherry for them both,
“Tomorrow I’m going house-hunting,” he said. “I don’t know, perhaps this place is haunted. Anyway, I’ve got to get you out of it, because I think you’re going mad. If we stay on, I don’t know what’ll happen.”
“I’m not mad,” she said. “Don’t you see, it’s because of her part in the story that she’s so obsessed with it and can’t let it rest.”
“Did you say that to her?”
“More or less.”
“For God’s sake, don’t say it to anyone else,” he said. “It’s slanderous in the extreme.”
“I never see anyone else,” she said.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s the trouble. Anyway, it’s obvious I’ve got to get you out of here. I don’t know what’ll happen next if you stay. I’ll go looking for another flat tomorrow, and try to find one on the ground floor, so that you can get out for a little when you want to.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m quite all right here.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “You’re making the situation intolerable.”
“But suppose I’m right.”
He gave his head an impatient shake. “No, something’s got to be done. We can’t go on like this, or I’ll go crazy myself. Perhaps we ought to talk to that doctor. Anyway, I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”
He went out to the kitchen to fetch them their fish and chips.
In the morning he repeated that he was going out to hunt for another flat, and when Helen tried to dissuade him, his face took on a set, obstinate look, which meant, she knew, that there was no chance that he would listen to her. And after all, she realised, it might be that he was doing what would be best for them both. Even if she was totally wrong about Mrs. Lambie, there was not much chance that the old woman would forgive her for what she had said, and living next door to her, with no one else at the top of the long stairs, would become more and more impossible. But when Colin left the flat, saying that he was going straight to a house-agent, Helen followed him out on to the landing.
“Please leave things as they are,” she pleaded. “I’m not sure that I could face another move.”
“You might have thought of that sooner,” he said. “But don’t worry. I’ll pack our things and get you down the stairs.”
“But, Colin—”
“No, we’ve got to go.” His voice began to rise.
“But haven’t we signed a lease or something?”
“Oh, we’ll lose some money, but what’s that compared with peace of mind? I’ll try to find something that’ll suit you better.”
Her voice rose to match his. “Ask Naomi to choose it for you then. She may know better than you what a woman wants.”
He had been about to start down the stairs, but he checked himself, turning to stare at her with a startled look of understanding.
“So you think she’s here,” he said. “That’s been the trouble all along, hasn’t it? You think I deliberately got you cooped up here so that there’d be no danger of your finding out that we were meeting.”
“Haven’t you been meeting?” she asked. “At least since she wrote to you.”
“You should have read that letter when I offered to show it to you,” he said, “but you were too bloody proud. You tried to pretend you didn’t care. Well, what it told me was that Naomi’s come home to get married and it said good-bye—quite finally. You need never be afraid of her again. And if you don’t believe me, the letter’s in the wastepaper-basket in our bedroom. Get it and read it for yourself. And get it into your head that if you can’t trust me, we can’t go on. I may be a hopeless, useless character, but try to realise that I love you, you damned woman, that I always have! There’s never been anyone else.”
He turned back to the stairs and went running down them.
Helen stumbled towards them.
“Colin—wait!” she called out. “Please wait! Don’t go like that!”
But she only heard his running footsteps on the stone stairs, then the slam of the outer door as he reached the bottom.
Then she felt a pair of hands in the middle of her back and a violent thrust. Her scream as she fell echoed in the empty stairwell, where there was no one to hear her.
It was Fiona MacNab, arriving just afterwards to clean the flat, who found the body. She went out, screaming for the police, who arrived in a panda car after only a few minutes. She told them that she had passed Mr. Benson in the street, that he had been almost running, had been muttering to himself and had seemed to be in a state of extreme excitement.
Mrs. Lambie, when they questioned her before the ambulance arrived, said that she had heard the Bensons quarrelling violently on the landing that morning, that they often quarrelled and that it was very tragic, because they were such an attractive young couple. There had been some trouble about another woman, she believed. Colin was picked up later in the National Library, where he had gone after two or three unsuccessful visits to house-agents. Later Mrs. Lambie went into the flat next door and wandered round it, wondering what she ought to do with the belongings that the Bensons had left in their flat. There were only a few clothes and a few books. If no one appeared to claim them, she decided, she would send them to the Salvation Army.
She felt an agreeable sense of peace. During her long life as maid, as housekeeper, and finally as wife, she had committed several murders, the first of them, of course, having been of that irritating, ailing woman who had kept on ringing the bell for attention, and whose good-looking young husband had been Mrs. Lambie’s first love. A pity that they had hanged him, he had really been very attractive. But how could she have helped it? And no one had ever come near to guessing her secret but that wretched girl with her broken leg, who had had too much time on her hands and become fanciful, and so had come too close to the truth for comfort. A pity about her husband too, a nice-mannered young man who understood that even a very old woman enjoys a friendly chat once in a while. But at least they wouldn’t hang him. It would only be life-imprisonment.
Letting herself out of her flat, she returned to her own. As she did so, it seemed to her that very faintly she heard a bell ringing. She had often heard it throughout her life, and she knew quite well that it was simply in her own head. But the odd thing was that it still frightened her. One day soon, she felt, it might turn into an imperative summons that she would have to answer, and what would happen then?