Free A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell

note, his deliberate shunning of him, his sneaking out like that followed by his purposeful illumination of the courtyard just as Arthur was emerging from the cellar?
    The euphoria he felt after one of his killings totally ruined, Arthur passed a bad night. He sweated profusely so that he fancied the pink sheets smelt bad, and he stripped them off in a frenzy of disgust. Li-li had put her rent envelope under his door at some time in the small hours. By half-past nine he had assembled hers, the two envelopes of the Kotowskys—Vesta insisted on paying her half-share separately from that of her husband—and his own, and was seated downstairs waiting for Stanley Caspian. No more rent from Jonathan Dean, who would be leaving today, thank God, and none to collect (thank God again) from Anthony Johnson, who had paid two months in advance.
    The hall was cold and damp. It was a foggy morning, an early harbinger of the winter to come. Stanley stumped in at ten pastten, wearing a checked windcheater that looked as if it was made from a car rug, and carrying a huge cellophane bag containing cheese puff cocktail snacks. Arthur began to feel queasy because the cheese puffs, orangey-brown, fat, and curvy, reminded him of overfed maggots.
    Stanley split the bag open before he had even sat down, and some of the cheese larvae spilt out onto the desk.
    “Put the kettle on, me old Arthur. Have a ‘Wiggly-Woggly’?”
    “No thank you,” said Arthur quietly. He cleared his throat. “I was down in the cellar last night.” Forcing the carefully planned lie out with all the casualness he could muster, he said, “Looking for a screwdriver, as a matter of fact. The wires had come out of one of my little electric plugs.”
    Stanley looked at him truculently. “You’re always grumbling these days, Arthur. First it was the dustbin, now it’s the electricity. I suppose that’s your way of saying I ought to have the place rewired.”
    “Not at all. I was simply explaining how I happened to be in the cellar. In case—well, in case anyone might think I was snooping.”
    Stanley picked cheese puff crumbs off the bulge of his belly whose ridges seemed as if they had been artfully designed to catch everything their possessor spilt. “I couldn’t care less if you go down the cellar, me old Arthur. Have yourself a ball. Ask some girls round. If you like spending your evenings in cellars, that’s your business. Right?”
    Somehow, though he had intended wit, Stanley had got very near the truth. Arthur blushed. He was almost trembling. It was all he could do to control himself while Stanley filled in his rent book, banging in the full stops until it looked as if he would break his pen. Arthur put it back in its envelope himself and, muttering his usual excuse about Saturday being a busy day, made for the stairs. Half-way up them, he heard Anthony Johnson come out of Room 2 and use to Stanley—in mockery? He must have been listening behind the door—his own words of a few moments before:
    “I was down in your cellar last night.”

8
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    Winter’s being out of stock of all but forty-watt light bulbs, Anthony had been obliged to go as far as the open-till-midnight supermarket at the northern end of Kenbourne Lane. This unsettled him for work, and when he saw Arthur Johnson coming out of the cellar its possibilities intrigued him. He had penetrated no further than the first room, but that was enough.
    Stanley Caspian burst into gales of laughter. “I suppose you were looking for a screw?”
    Anthony shrugged. Bawdy talk from a man of Caspian’s age and girth disgusted him. “You’ve got a lot of wood and cardboard and stuff down there,” he said. “If you don’t want it, can I have it? It’s for a Guy Fawkes bonfire.”
    “Help yourself,” said Stanley Caspian. “Everyone’s got very interested in my cellar all of a sudden, I must say. You weren’t planning to have this here bonfire on my premises, I hope?”
    Anthony said