Free The Secret House of Death by Ruth Rendell Page A

presently.
    â€˜I . . . Well, it was common knowledge,’ Susan began. ‘I know she was very unhappy about it. She was a Catholic and couldn’t be divorced.’ Her voice shook. ‘She was terribly distressed when she came to see me yesterday.’
    â€˜Distressed to the point of taking her own life, or to agreeing to a suicide pact?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’ This sudden taking of responsibility frightened Susan. Her hands were icy cold and trembling. ‘A Catholic wouldn’t commit suicide, would she? But she was in a bad state. I remember thinking she was at the end of her tether.’
    He asked her quietly about the events of the morning and Susan, trying to keep her voice steady, told him how she had seen Heller’s car outside soon after nine; how she had waited and waited for Heller to leave; how Mrs O’Donnell had called and how, at last, she had come here to Braeside to alert Louise and Heller, believing them to be asleep.
    â€˜No one else came to this house during the morning?’ Susan shook her head. ‘Did you see anyone leave?’
    â€˜Only Mrs O’Donnell.’
    â€˜Well, that’s all for now, Mrs Townsend. I’m afraid you’ll have to be present at the inquest. Now, if I were you, I should telephone your husband and see if he can come home early. You shouldn’t be alone.’
    â€˜I’m not married,’ Susan said awkwardly. ‘Well, that is, I’m divorced.’
    Inspector Ulph made no reply to this, but he came with Susan to the door, lightly supporting her with one hand under her elbow.
    As she came out into the garden, she blinked and started back. The crowd on the pavement affected her as bright sunlight shocks someone coming out of a dark room. Wrapped in coats, Doris and Betty and Eileen stood outside Doris’s gate with the old woman who lived alone next to Betty, the bride from Shangri-La, the elderly couple from the corner house. Everyone who didn’t go out to work was gathered there and everyone, their tongues stilled, was silent.
    Even Pollux had been stunned into silence by those unprecedented comings and goings. He lay exhausted at his mistress’s feet, his head between his paws.
    The rain had ceased, leaving the roadway a glistening mirror of pools and wet tarmac. Raindrops dripped steadily from the cherry buds on to umbrellas and coat collars. Doris looked colder and more miserable than Susan had ever seen her, but for once she said nothing about the cold. She stepped forward, putting her arms around Susan’s shoulders, and Inspector Ulph said:
    â€˜Will one of you ladies kindly look after Mrs Townsend?’
    Susan let Doris lead her past the green Zephyr, the police car and the black mortuary van and into her own house. All the time she expected to hear her neighbours’ chatter break out behind her, but there was only silence, a silence broken only by the steady drip-drip of water from the trees.
    â€˜I’ll stay with you, Susan,’ Doris said. ‘I’ll stay all night. I won’t leave you.’ She didn’t cite her nursing experience as qualification for this duty and she didn’t clutch at the radiators. Her face was grey and huge-eyed. ‘Oh, Susan, Susan . . . ! That man, did he kill her and himself?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I think he must have.’
    And the two women, friends only from propinquity and mutual practical need, clung together for a moment, their heads bowed on each other’s shoulders.
    It was curious, Susan thought, how tragedy seemed to bring out in everyone the best qualities, tact, kindness, sympathy. Afterwards the only really tactless action she could remember was the arrival of Roger Gibbs at Paul’s party with the present of a toy revolver.
    â€˜I reckon some women are downright daft,’ said Mrs Dring. ‘Fancy, a gun! You’d think Mrs Gibbs’d have had more thought. And