Free The Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell Page A

with woad. Maybe the blue stuff on this roughneck’s beard was woad. Bean determined not to look as he passed him, to walk past at a steady pace as if the man wasn’t there or as if for some reason he hadn’t
noticed
that he was there. He pulled the leash tight so that Boris was close up to him on his right side. This was the kind of thug that wouldn’t think twice about kicking a dog.
    The man turned his head to stare when Bean was about two yards from him. And Bean had to look, he had to return that stare for a single second before jerking his eyes away. In that second he received an impression of metal, of glitter, as of the man being covered in slivers of metal. It reminded him, unpleasantly but irresistibly, of Maurice Clitheroe’s indulgence in S and M—Bean had no idea what those initials stood for, but he knew what it was all right—and of some of those who came to the flat in Mr. Clitheroe’s time. Leather, zip fasteners, body piercing, there had been a lot of that, and a great deal of metal in many shapes and forms, most of it sharp.
    Thinking of all this got Bean past the man, and the dog past the man, up the steps and out into the light. His mind had been distracted at exactly the right time. Safe, unmolested, his camera safe, he indulged himself in a spot of what the late Anthony Maddox called
l’esprit de l’escalier
and thought what he might, ought to, have said. Like, “What authority do you have to use this tunnel?” or “By whose permission are you in this private foot passage?”
    James Barker-Pryce CMG, MP would have done that, so would Bertram Cornell. They had the right accent, they had been to the kind of school where they taught you to think of yourself as a king of the earth. Money did that for you too. As Bean walked out of thegardens and crossed the road to the Park Crescent pavement, he realized what those metal things were. They were keys. The man had keys hanging off him everywhere and no doubt one of them was the key to this garden. Something would have to be done.
    Boris’s home was not the house where the blue plaque testified to Marie Tempest’s having once lived there, but a few doors along. The Cornells’ housekeeper did what she always did and opened the basement door in the area. What was wrong with the front door? If she didn’t know it, his days of being treated like a servant were over. Her attitude, meant he had to go round the corner into Portland Place and all the way down the iron staircase.
    The borzoi trotted in, ignoring the housekeeper, leaving Bean without the least sign of affection, without a backward glance. It pushed a door open with its long nose and disappeared into the room beyond, a cold dog with no feelings.
    “It’s Russian, you see,” said the housekeeper as if that explained everything.
    Bean nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Cornell away, Valerie?”
    The housekeeper said her employers were in France, coming back tomorrow. Even they called her Miss Conway. Apart from her friends, only Bean took upon himself the right to call her by her given name. She was getting up her nerve to tell him not to, but she hadn’t got it up yet. Her revenge was to make him walk down those steps and necessarily, of course, up them again. She told him there had been another burglary in the Crescent, two in fact, one of them only next door.
    “That must make you nervous being here on your own,” said Bean.
    It did. But she disliked being reminded of it. “I’ve got the dog.”
    Bean laughed lightly, shaking his head. “More of a pussy cat, that one,” he said. “There are some rough characters about. I just saw something barely human in the tunnel, more like an alien. You don’t want to open your front door to no one.”
    “Thanks a bunch,” said Valerie.
    She slammed the door. Bean winced a little to show his sensitivity for the benefit of any passersby who might be watching. He favored the statue with a passing glance, Queen Victoria’s father, Prince Edward, Duke