Free The Fallen Curtain by Ruth Rendell Page B

disuse and she couldn’t shift them. Trembling now, she sat down on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. For the first time in her life she was in an insecure place by night, alone in a London flat, with nothing to separate her from hordes of rapacious burglars but a feeble back-door lock which any tyro of a thief could pick open in five minutes.
    How criminally careless of Mrs Swanson not to have provided the door between the bed-sitter and the kitchen with a lock! There was no heavy piece of furniture she could place against the door. The phone was by her bed, of course. But if she heard a sound and dialled for the police, was there a chance of their getting there before she was murdered and the place ransacked?
    What Mrs Swanson
had
provided was one of the most fearsome-looking breadknives Della had ever seen. She fetched it from the kitchen and put it under her pillow. Its presence made her feel slightly safer, but suppose she didn’t wake up when the man came in, suppose …? That was ridiculous, she wouldn’t sleep at all. Exhausted, shaken, feeling physically sick, she crawled under the bedclothes and, after concentrated thought, put the light out. Perhaps, if there was no light on, he would go past her, not know she was there, make his way into the main part of the house, and if by then she hadn’t actually died of fright…
    At twenty minutes past one, when she had reached the point of deciding to phone for a car to take her to an hotel, the side gate clicked and Rosamund entered the yard. Della fell back against the pillows with a relief so tremendous that she couldn’t even bother to go out and check the bolts. So what if it wasn’t bolted? The man would have to pass Rosamund first, kill her first. Della found she didn’t care at all about what might happen to Rosamund, only about her own safety.
    She sneaked out at half past six to put the knife back, and she was sullenly eating her breakfast, the flat immaculate, when Rosamund appeared at eight.
    “I missed the last bus. I had to get a taxi.”
    “You could have phoned.”
    “Goodness, you sound just like my mother. It was bad enough having to get up and …” Rosamund blushed and put her hand over her mouth. “I mean, go
out
and get that taxi and…. Well, I wasn’t all that late,” she muttered.
    Her little slip of the tongue hadn’t been lost on Della. But she was too tired to make any rejoinder beyond saying that Mrs Swanson would be very annoyed if she knew, and would Rosamund give her fair warning next time she intended to be late? Rosamund said when they met again that evening that she couldn’t give her fair warning as she could never be sure herself. Della said no more. What, anyway, would be the use of knowing what time Rosamund was coming in when she couldn’t bolt the gate?
    Three mornings later her temper flared.
    On two of the intervening nights Rosamund had missed the last bus. The funny thing was that she didn’t look at all tired or jaded, while Della was worn out. For three hours on the previous night she had lain stiffly clutching the breadknife while the old house creaked about her and the side gate rattled in the wind.
    “I don’t know why you bother to come home at all.”
    “Won’t you mind if I don’t?”
    “Not a bit. Do as you like.”
    Stealthily, before Rosamund left the flat by the front door,Della slipped out and bolted the gate. Rosamund, of course (being utterly imprudent), didn’t check the gate before she locked the back door. Della fell into a heavy sleep at ten o’clock, to be awakened just after two by a thudding on the side gate followed by a frenzied ringing of the front-door bell.
    “You locked me out!” Rosamund sobbed. “Even my mother never did that. I was locked out in the street and I’m frozen. What have I done to you that you treat me like that?”
    “You said you weren’t coming home.”
    “I wasn’t going to, but we went out and Chris forgot his key. He’s had to sleep at a