Free The Fallen Curtain by Ruth Rendell

Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ “followers,” noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.
    The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room—necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit—it wasn’t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.
    “Goodness,” Rosamund had said, “this place is like Fort Knox. All those keys and bolts! What are you so scared of?”
    “Mrs Swanson likes to have the place locked up,” said Della, but the next night she made hot drinks for the two of them and sent Rosamund to wait for her in the bed-sitter before creeping out into the yard for a secret check-up.
    When she came back Rosamund was examining her bedside table. “Why do you put everything in order like that, Della? Your book at right angles to the table and your cigarette packet at right angles to your book, and, look, your ashtray’s exactly an inch from the lamp as if you measured it out.”
    “Because I’m a naturally tidy person.”
    “I do think it’s funny your smoking. I never would have guessed you smoked till I came to live here. It doesn’t sort of seem in character. And your glass of water. Do you want to drink water in the night?”
    “Not always,” Della said patiently. “But I might want to, and I shouldn’t want to have to get up and fetch it, should I?”
    Rosamund’s questions didn’t displease her. It showed that the girl wanted to learn the right way to do things. Della taught her that a room must be dusted every day, the fridge defrosted once a week, the table laid for breakfast before they went to bed, all the windows closed and the catches fastened. She drew Rosamund out as to the places she had previously lived in with a view to contrasting past squalor with present comfort, and she received a shock when Rosamund made it plain that in some of those rooms, attics, converted garages, she had lived with a man. Della made no comment but froze slightly. And Rosamund, thank goodness, seemed to understand her disapproval and didn’t go into details. But soon after that she began going out in the evenings.
    Della didn’t want to know where she was going or with whom. She had plenty to occupy her own evenings, what with the work she brought home, her housework, washing and ironing, her twice-weekly letter to her mother and father, and the commercial Spanish she was teaching herself from gramophone records. It was rather a relief not to have Rosamundfluttering about. Besides, she could do her security rounds in peace. Not, of course, that she could check up on the side gate till Rosamund came in. Necessarily, it had to remain unbolted, and the back door to which Rosamund had the key, unlocked. But always by ten to twelve at the latest she’d hear the side gate open and close and hear Rosamund pause to draw the bolts. Then her feet tiptoeing across the yard, then the back door unlocked, shut, locked. After that, Della could sleep in peace.
    The first problem arose when Rosamund came in one night and didn’t bolt the gate after her. Della listened carefully in the dark, but she was positive those bolts had not been drawn. Even if the back door was locked, it was unthinkable to leave that side gate on nothing all night but its flimsy latch. She put on her dressing gown and went through the kitchen into the garden room. Rosamund was already in bed,