Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ruth Rendell
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Copyright
About the Book
‘Someone had told Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still he liked the idea that she was his neighbour.’
Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances.
When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex’s most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits …
Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place.
About the Author
Ruth Rendell was an exceptional crime writer, and will be remembered as a legend in her own lifetime. Her ground-breaking debut novel, From Doon With Death, was first published in 1964 and introduced readers to her enduring and popular detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford.
With worldwide sales of approximately 20 million copies, Rendell was a regular Sunday Times bestseller. Her sixty bestselling novels include police procedurals, some of which have been successfully adapted for TV, stand-alone psychological mysteries, and a third strand of crime novels under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Rendell won numerous awards, including the Sunday Times Literary Award in 1990. In 2013 she was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE, and in 1997 became a Life Peer.
Ruth Rendell died in May 2015.
Also by Ruth Rendell
OMNIBUSES: COLLECTED SHORT STORIES
COLLECTED STORIES 2
WEXFORD: AN OMNIBUS
THE SECOND WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE THIRD WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE FOURTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THE FIFTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS
THREE CASES FOR CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD
THE RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
THE SECOND RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
THE THIRD RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS
CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS: FROM DOON WITH DEATH
A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER
THE BEST MAN TO DIE
A GUILTY THING SURPRISED
NO MORE DYING THEN
MURDER BEING ONCE DONE
SOME LIE AND SOME DIE
SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER
A SLEEPING LIFE
PUT ON BY CUNNING
THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS
THE VEILED ONE
KISSING THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER
SIMISOLA
ROAD RAGE
HARM DONE
THE BABES IN THE WOOD
END IN TEARS
NOT IN THE FLESH
THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
THE VAULT SHORT STORIES: THE FALLEN CURTAIN
MEANS OF EVIL
THE FEVER TREE
THE NEW GIRL FRIEND
THE COPPER PEACOCK
BLOOD LINES
PIRANHA TO SCURFY
NOVELLAS: HEARTSTONES
THE THIEF
NON-FICTION: RUTH RENDELL’S SUFFOLK
RUTH RENDELL’S ANTHOLOGY OF THE MURDEROUS MIND
NOVELS: TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL
VANITY DIES HARD
THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH
ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN
THE FACE OF TRESPASS
A DEMON IN MY VIEW
A JUDGEMENT IN STONE
MAKE DEATH LOVE ME
THE LAKE OF DARKNESS
MASTER OF THE MOOR
THE KILLING DOLL
THE TREE OF HANDS
LIVE FLESH
TALKING TO STRANGE MEN
THE BRIDESMAID
GOING WRONG
THE CROCODILE BIRD
THE KEYS TO THE STREET
A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME
THE ROTTWEILER
THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN
THE WATER’S LOVELY
PORTOBELLO
TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS
For my cousin Sonia with love
CHAPTER ONE
SOMEONE HAD TOLD Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still, he liked the idea that she was his neighbour. He liked quite a lot about the new life he had been living for the past few months. He had this job with Dr Jefferson which meant he could work in a garden three mornings a week and Dr Jefferson had said he would speak to the lady next door about doing a morning for her. While he was drawing his incapacity benefit he had been told he shouldn’t get any wages, but Dr Jefferson never asked and maybe the lady called Mrs Neville-Smith wouldn’t either.
Jimmy, who drove Dr Jefferson to work at the hospital every day, had asked him round to the pub that evening. The pub, which was on the corner of Hexam Place and Sloane Gardens, was called the Dugong, a funny name that Dex had never heard before. There was going to be a meeting there for all the people who worked in Hexam Place. Dex had never been to a meeting of any sort and he didn’t know if he would like it but Jimmy had promised to buy him a Guinness which was his favourite drink. He would have drunk a Guinness every evening with his tea if he could have afforded it. He was halfway along the Pimlico Road when he got out his mobile and looked to see if there was a message or a text from Peach. There sometimes was and it always made him feel happy. Usually the message called him by his name and said he had been so good that Peach was giving him ten free calls or something like that. There was nothing this time but he knew there would be again or even that Peach might speak to him. Peach was his god. He knew that because when the lady upstairs saw him smiling at his mobile and making a message come back over and over she said, Peach is your god, Dex.
He needed a god to protect him from the evil spirits. It was quite a while since he had seen any of them and he knew this was because Peach was protecting him, just as he knew if there was one near him that he should look out for, Peach would warn him. He trusted Peach as he had never trusted any human being.
He stopped outside the Dugong which he knew well because it was next door to Dr Jefferson’s house. Not joined on to but next door, for Dr Jefferson’s was big and standing alone and with a large garden for him to look after. The pub sign was some kind of big fish with half its body sticking out of blue wavy water. He knew it was a fish because it was in the sea. He pushed the door open and there was Jimmy, waving to him in a friendly way. The other people round the big table all looked at him but he could tell at once that none of them were evil spirits.
‘I AM NOT a servant.’ Thea helped herself to a handful of mixed nuts. ‘You may be but I’m not.’
‘What are you then?’ said Beacon.
‘I don’t know. I just do little jobs for Damian and Roland. You want to remember I’ve got a degree.’
‘Blessed is she who sitteth not in the seat of the scornful.’ Beacon moved the bowl out of Thea’s reach. ‘If you’re going to eat from the common nuts you ought not to put your hand in among them when it’s been in your mouth.’
‘Don’t quarrel, children,’ said June. ‘Let’s be nice. If you’re not a servant, Thea, you won’t be eligible to join the Saint Zita Society.’
It was August and the day had been sunny and very warm. The full complement of those who would compose the society couldn’t be there. Rabia, being a Muslim and a nanny, never went out in the evening let alone to a pub; Zinnia, cleaner for the Princess and the Stills and Dr Jefferson, didn’t live in, and Richard was cooking dinner for Lady Studley’s guests while Sondra, his wife, waited at table. Montserrat, the Stills’ au pair, said she might come but she had a mysterious task to perform later, and the newly arrived Dex, gardener to Dr Jefferson, never opened his mouth except to say, ‘Cheers.’ But Henry was still expected, and as June was complaining about the Dugong’s nuts being unsalted and therefore tasteless, he walked in.
With his extreme height and marked resemblance to Michelangelo’s David, in days gone by he would have been footman material. Indeed, it was a matter of fact that in 1882 his great-great-great-grandfather had been footman to a duke. He was the youngest of the group after Montserrat and although he looked like a Hollywood star of the thirties, he was in reality driver and sometime gardener and handyman to Lord Studley, performing the tasks that Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t do. His employer referred to him with a jovial laugh as his ‘general factotum’. He was never called Harry or Hal.
Beacon said it was Jimmy’s round and what was Henry going to have. ‘The house white, please.’
‘That’s not for men. That’s lady juice.’
‘I’m not a man, I’m a boy. And I’m not drinking beer or spirits till next week when I’m twenty-five. Did you see there’s been another boy stabbed? Down on the Embankment. That makes three this week.’
‘We don’t have to talk about it, Henry,’ said June.
One who plainly didn’t want to talk about it was Dex, who drank the last of his Guinness, got up and left, saying nothing. June watched him go, said, ‘No manners, but what can you expect? Now we have to talk about the society. How do you set up a society, anyway?’
Jimmy said in a heavy ponderous tone, ‘You pick a chairman, only you mustn’t call him a chairman because he may be a lady. You call him a chair.’
‘I’m not calling any bloke a piece of furniture.’ Thea reached for the nuts bowl. ‘Why can’t we make Jimmy the chairperson and June the secretary and the rest of us just members? Then we’re away. This can be the inception meeting of the Saint Zita Society.’
Henry was sending a text on his iPhone. ‘Who’s Saint Zita?’
It was June who had found the title for the society. ‘She’s the patron saint of domestic servants and she gave her food and clothes to the poor. If you see a picture of her she’ll be holding a bag and a bunch of keys.’
‘This boy that was stabbed,’ said Henry, ‘his mum was on the TV and she said he was down to get three A levels and he’d do anything for anyone. Everybody loved him.’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘Funny, isn’t it? All these kids that get murdered and whatever, you never hear anyone say they were slimeballs and a menace to the neighbourhood.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t when they’d died, would they?’ Henry’s iPhone tinkled to tell him a text had come. It was the one he wanted and he grinned a little at Huguette’s message. ‘What’s the society for, anyway?’
‘Solidarity,’ said Jimmy. ‘Supporting each other. And we can have outings and go to shows.’
‘We can do that anyway. We don’t have to have a servants’ society to go and see Les Mis.’
‘I’m not a servant,’ said Thea.
‘Then you can be an honorary member,’ said June. ‘Well, that’s my lot. It’s got quite dark and the Princess will start fretting.’
Montserrat didn’t come and no one knew what the ‘mysterious task’ was. Jimmy and Thea talked about the society for an hour or so, what was it for and could it restrain employers from keeping their drivers up till all hours and forced to drink Coke while they awaited their employers’ call. Not that he included Dr Jefferson who was an example to the rest of them. Henry wanted to know who that funny little guy with the bushy hair was, Dex or something, he’d never seen him before.
‘He does our garden.’ Jimmy had got into the habit of referring to Simon Jefferson’s property as if it belonged equally to the paediatrician and himself. ‘Dr Jefferson took him on out of the kindness of his heart.’ Jimmy finished his lager, said dramatically, ‘He sees evil spirits.’
‘He what?’ Henry gaped as Jimmy had intended him to.
‘Well, he used to. He tried to kill his mother and they put him inside – well, a place for the criminally insane. There was a psychiatrist saw to him and he was a pal of Dr Jefferson and when the psychiatrist had cured him they let him out because they said he’d never do it again and Dr Jefferson gave him that job with us.’
Thea looked uneasy. ‘D’you think that’s why he left when he did without saying goodbye? Talking about stabbing was too near home? D’you think that’s what it was?’
‘Dr Jefferson says he’s cured,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’ll never do it again. His friend swore blind he wouldn’t.’
Henry left last because he fancied another glass of lady juice. The others had all gone in the same direction. Their employers’ homes were all in Hexam Place, a street of white-painted stucco or golden brickwork houses known to estate agents as Georgian, though none had been built before 1860. Number 6, on the opposite side to the Dugong, was the property of Her Serene Highness, the Princess Susan Hapsburg, a title incorrect in every respect except her Christian name. The Princess, as she was known to the members of the Saint Zita Society among others, was eighty-two years old and had lived in this house for nearly sixty years, and June, four years younger, had been there with her for the same length of time.
Steps ran down into the area and June’s door but when she came home after having been out in the evenings she entered by the front door even though this meant climbing up eight stairs instead of walking down twelve. There were evenings when June’s polymyalgia rheumatica made that climbing up a trial but she did it so that passing pedestrians and other residents of Hexam Place might know she was more of a friend to the Princess than a paid employee. Zinnia had bathed Gussie that day and brought in a new kind of air-freshener so that the doggy smell was less pronounced. It was very warm. Mean in most respects, the Princess was lavish with the central heating and kept it on all summer, opening windows when it got too hot.
June could hear the Princess had Holby City on but she marched in just the same. ‘Now, what can I get you, madam? A nice vodka and tonic or a freshly squeezed orange juice?’
‘I don’t want anything, dear. I’ve had my vodka.’ The Princess didn’t turn round. ‘Are you drunk?’ It was a question she always asked when she knew June had been to the pub.
‘Of course not, madam.’ It was the answer June always gave.
‘Well, don’t talk any more, dear. I want to know if this chap has got psoriasis or a malignant melanoma. You’d better go to bed.’
It was a command, and friend or no friend, even after sixty years, June knew it was wiser to obey. The young ones in Saint Zita’s might be pals with their employers, Montserrat even called Mrs Still Lucy, but when you were eighty-two and seventy-eight things were different; the rules had not relaxed much since the days when Susan Borrington was running away with that awful Italian boy and she was going with her to his home in Florence. June went off to bed and was falling asleep when the internal phone rang.
‘Did you put Gussie to bed, dear?’
‘I forgot,’ June murmured, barely conscious.
‘Well, do it now, will you?’
THE AREAS OF these houses were all different, some with cupboards under the stairs, others with cupboards in the wall dividing this area from next door’s, most with plants in pots, tree ferns, choisyas, avocados grown from stones, even a mimosa, the occasional piece of statuary. All had some kind of lighting, usually a wall light, globular or cuboid. Number 7, home of the Stills and next door but three to the Dugong, was one of those with a cupboard in the wall and no pot plants. The hanging bulb over the basement door had not been switched on but enough pale light from a street lamp showed Henry a figure standing just inside the wall cupboard. He stopped and peered over the railings. The figure, a man’s, retreated as far as it could go into the shallow recesses of the cupboard.
Possibly a burglar. There had been a lot of crime round here recently. Only last week, Montserrat had told him, someone had just walked through the window of number 5, home of the Neville-Smiths, taken the television, a briefcase full of money and the keys to a BMW, and walked out of the front door to drive away in the car. What could you expect if you had no window locks and you had actually left a downstairs window open two inches? This man was obviously up to no good, a phrase Henry had heard his employer use and which he liked. Lord Studley would tell him to call the police on his mobile but he didn’t always do what Lord Studley recommended and was in fact off to do something of which he would have deeply disapproved.
He was turning away when the basement door opened and Montserrat appeared. She waved to Henry, said hi and beckoned the man out of the cupboard. Must be her boyfriend. He expected them to kiss but they didn’t. The man went inside and the door closed. Fifteen minutes later, having forgotten about the burglar or boyfriend, he was in Chelsea, in the Honourable Huguette Studley’s flat. These days the pattern of Henry’s visits followed the same plan, bed first, then arguing. Henry would have preferred to forgo the arguing and spend twice as long in bed but this was seldom allowed. Huguette (named after her French grandmother) was a very pretty girl of nineteen with a large red mouth and large blue eyes and hair her grandmother would have called frizzy but others recognised as the big curly bush made fashionable by Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson’s War. The argument was always begun by Huguette.
‘Don’t you see, Henry, that if you lived here with me we could stay in bed all the time? There wouldn’t be any arguing because we’d have nothing to argue about.’
‘And don’t you see that your dad would sack me. On two counts,’ said Henry, who had picked up a certain amount of parliamentary language from his employer, ‘to be absolutely clear, like not living at number 11 and like shagging his daughter.’
‘You could get another job.’
‘How? It took me a year to get this one. Your dad’d give me a reference, would he? I should cocoa.’
‘We could get married.’
If Henry ever thought of marriage it would be when he was about fifty and to someone with money of her own and a big house in the suburbs. ‘No one gets married any more,’ he said, ‘and anyway, I’m outta here. You want to remember I have to be outside number 11 at 7 a.m. in the Beemer waiting for your dad when he chooses to come which may not be till nine, right?’
‘Text me,’ said Huguette.
Henry walked back. An urban fox emerged from the area of number 5, gave him an unpleasant look and crossed the road to plunder Miss Grieves’s dustbin. Upstairs at number 11 a light was still on in Lord and Lady Studley’s bedroom. Henry stood for a while, looking up, hoping their curtains might part and Lady Studley look down, preferably in her black lace nightgown, bestow on him a fond smile and purse her lips in a kiss. But nothing happened. The light went out and Henry let himself in by the area door.
INSTEAD OF OPENING the door to her bedsit with en suite bathroom (called a studio flat by her employers), Montserrat had led the caller up the basement stairs to the ground floor and then the next flight which swept round in a half-circle to the gallery. The house was silent apart from the soft patter of Rabia’s slippered feet on the nursery floor above. Montserrat tapped on the third door on the right, then opened it and said, ‘Rad’s here, Lucy.’ She left them to it, as she put it to Rabia five minutes later. ‘If they’re all asleep why don’t you come down for a bit? I’ve got a half-bottle of vodka.’
‘You know I don’t drink, Montsy.’
‘You can have the orange juice I got to go with the vodka.’
‘I wouldn’t hear Thomas if he cries.
He’s teething.’ ‘He’s been teething for weeks, if not months,’ said Monserrat. ‘If he belonged to me I’d drown him.’
Rabia said she shouldn’t talk like that, it was wicked, so Montserrat started telling the nanny about Lucy and Rad Sothern. Rabia put her fingers in her ears. She went back to the children, Hero and Matilda fast asleep in the bedroom they shared, baby Thomas restive but silent in his cot in the nursery. Rabia puzzled sometimes about calling a bedroom a nursery because as far as she knew – her father worked in one – a nursery was a place for growing plants. She never asked, she didn’t want to look foolish.
Montserrat had called out goodbye and left. Time passed very slowly. It was getting late now and Rabia thought seriously of going to bed in her bedroom at the back. But what if Mr Still came up here when he got home? He sometimes did. Thomas began to cry, then to scream. Rabia picked him up and began walking him up and down, the sovereign remedy. The nursery overlooked the street, and from the window, she saw Montserrat letting the man called Rad out by way of the area steps. Rabia shook her head, not at all excited or amused as Montserrat had expected her to be, but profoundly shocked.
Thomas was quiet now but he began grizzling again when laid down in his cot. Rabia had great reserves of patience and she loved him dearly. She was a widow, and both her children had died very young. This, according to one of the doctors, was due to her having married her first cousin. But Nazir himself hadn’t lived very long either and now she was alone. Rabia sat in the chair beside the cot, talking to Thomas softly. When he began to cry again she picked him up and carried him to the table where the kettle was and the little fridge in the corner and began making him a warm milky drink. She was too far from the window to see or hear the car and the first she knew of Preston Still’s arrival was the sound of his rather heavy feet on the stairs. Instead of stopping on the floor below where his wife lay sleeping, they carried on up. As she had expected. Like Jemima Puddle-Duck, – a book Rabia sometimes read to the children and which, they said, sounded funny in her accent – Preston was an anxious parent. Quite a contrast to his wife, Rabia often thought. He came in, looking tired and harassed. He had been at a conference in Brighton – she knew because Lucy had told her.
‘Is he all right?’ Preston picked up Thomas and squeezed him too hard for the child’s comfort. Playing with Thomas or even talking to him were rare occurrences. His care was concentrated in concern for his health. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? If there’s the slightest thing we should call Dr Jefferson. He’s a good friend, I know he’d come like a shot.’
‘He’s very all right, Mr Still.’ The use of given names to Rabia’s employer did not extend to the master of the house. ‘He doesn’t want to sleep, that’s all.’
‘How peculiar,’ Preston said dismally. The idea of anyone not wanting to sleep, especially someone of his own blood, was alien to him. ‘And the girls? I thought Matilda had a bit of a cough when I saw her yesterday.’
Rabia said that Matilda and Hero were sound asleep in the adjoining room. There was nothing wrong with any of the children and if Mr Preston would just lay Thomas down gently he would certainly settle. Knowing what would please him, get rid of him and let her go back to her own bed, she said, ‘He was just missing his daddy and now you are here he will be fine.’
No paediatrician then, no more disturbance. She could go to bed. She could sleep for maybe five hours. What she had said to Mr Still about Thomas missing his daddy wasn’t true. It was a lie told to please him. Secretly, Rabia believed that none of the children would miss either of their parents for a moment. They seldom saw them. She put her lips to Thomas’s cheek and whispered, ‘My sweetheart.’
CHAPTER TWO
ON THE TRAY was a small tub of the kind of yogurt that claims to regulate the consumer’s bowel movements, a fig and a slice of buttered toast, marmalade and a pot of coffee. The Princess was halfway through her yogurt phase. June knew she was halfway through because her phases always lasted about four months and two had elapsed. She fished out the tray-on-legs – neither of them knew its name – and set it up on top of the duvet. The Princess always put her hair in rollers at bedtime and now proceeded to take them out, shedding dandruff on to the toast.
‘Sleep well, dear?’
‘Not so bad, madam. How about yourself?’
‘I had a most peculiar dream.’ The Princess often had peculiar dreams and now began to recount this one.
June didn’t listen. She pulled back the curtains and stood in the window, looking down at Hexam Place below. Lord Studley’s black BMW stood outside number 11 on the opposite side, poor Henry at the wheel. June knew for a fact he would have been there for two hours. He looked as if he had fallen asleep and no wonder. It was a pity really that the Saint Zita’s Society wasn’t a union but perhaps it could take on some of the prerogatives of a union and put its spoke in at such heartless treatment of an employee. June wondered if Henry’s human rights might be infringed.
The classy school bus, silver with a blue stripe along its side, came round the corner from Lower Sloane Street. Hero and Matilda Still were already waiting outside number 7, each holding one of Rabia’s hands. She saw them on to the bus and it bore them off to their very expensive school in Westminster. Now why couldn’t their mother have done that? Still in bed, thought June. Still by name and still by nature. What a world! Damian and Roland had emerged from number 8 whose front door June couldn’t see from where she stood. Those two always went everywhere together. If they had been of opposite sexes they would have held hands and June, an ardent progressive, thought it a crying shame that this was a development in the fight against prejudice and bigotry not yet attained. Mr Still had just come out of number 7 when the Princess wound up her dream story. June had an instinct, born of years of experience, as to when this point was reached.
‘… and it wasn’t my mother at all but that girl with the red hair that cleans for those queers, and then I woke up.’
‘Fascinating, madam, but we don’t say “queers”, do we? We say “gay couple”.’
‘Oh, all right. If you insist. I’m sure Lady Studley doesn’t allow Sondra to talk to her like that.’
‘Probably not, madam,’ said June. ‘Is there anything else you’d like me to bring you?’
There wasn’t. The Princess would sulk for a while and then get up. June had heard Zinnia arrive. She went downstairs, happy to have won that round and prepared, once she had persuaded the cleaner to wash the paint in the dining room, to get on with the agenda of the next Saint Zita meeting.
June Caldwell had been fifteen when her mother, a widow and housekeeper to Caspar Borrington, had got her the job of lady’s maid (well, maid of everything really) to Susan Borrington, his daughter. Within two months of her eighteenth birthday Susan had got herself engaged to Prince Luciano Hapsburg, scion of a dubiously aristocratic Italian family she met while skiing in Switzerland. Perhaps not exactly the scion as he had two older brothers and was a ski instructor. There was no money and the title was inclined to make Italians laugh, for Luciano’s father had changed his name from Angelotti to Hapsburg some years before. He had a couple of lingerie shops in Milan. This, oddly enough, gave them something in common. Caspar Borrington, who had plenty of money and who owned three houses and a flat in Mayfair, had made it out of something not dissimilar but even less dignified. His factories produced sanitary towels. The advent of Tampax ruined that but when Susan met Luciano the family was enormously rich and Susan was an only child.
They got married and June went to live with them in the apartment Susan’s father paid for in Florence. The city amazed her, the people and their funny talk, the weather, always glorious (Susan got married in May), the buildings, the Arno, the bridges, the churches. She was just getting used to it, learning to say ‘Buon giorno’ and ‘Ciao’, when Susan and Luciano had a more than usually spectacular row, coming to blows, and Susan told June to pack, they were going home.
They were never divorced, Susan having an idea divorce was impossible in Italy. Caspar Borrington gave Luciano a very large sum of money to shut him up and she never saw him again. Years later he got the marriage annulled. He was not a Serene Highness, there was some doubt if he was a prince at all, but Susan called herself Her Serene Highness the Princess Susan Hapsburg, had this name printed on her cards and entered it on the register of voters in the City of Westminster. Her father bought her number 6 Hexam Place, not quite so smart an address as it later became, and she had lived there ever since, finding herself a circle of friends among the widows of generals, ex-wives of sportsmen and superannuated single daughters of company directors. There had been lovers but not many and not for long.
Zinnia was another who had a name she had adopted, disliking Karen with which she had been baptised in Antigua. She genuinely had the surname St Charles. Working for a princess in the heart of Knightsbridge brought her a lot of kudos and made it easy for her to get jobs cleaning at number 3, number 7 and number 9. Having got her to agree to washing the dining-room paint, June asked her if she’d like to join the Saint Zita Society.
‘What does it cost?’
‘Nothing. And the chances are you get a good many free drinks.’
‘OK,’ said Zinnia. ‘I don’t mind. Is Henry Copley a member?’
‘He is,’ said June. ‘But don’t get your hopes up. He’s got enough on his plate.’
She went into the study which the Princess never entered, sat down at the desk the Princess never used, began composing the society’s constitution and teaching herself to write minutes.
ALL THE HOUSES in Hexam Place had gardens, front and rear, and number 3 had a bit more round the side dividing it from the Dugong. The front gardens needed very little attention, consisting of pebbled squares with a tree planted in the middle of each, a Japanese flowering cherry, for instance, in the squares in front of number 4, two monkey puzzles at Simon Jefferson’s. Dex was glad there was little to do in that front garden as the monkey puzzles rather alarmed him. They looked unlike any trees he had ever seen before, more like something you might expect to find growing under the sea near a coral reef. Dex knew about such things from his television viewing. The television went on the moment he entered his room and remained on, irrespective of what might be showing, until he went to bed. Sometimes, if he was frightened or simply wary and Peach wasn’t speaking to him, he left it on all night.
He liked Dr Jefferson’s back garden because it was big and walled and it had a lawn. He cut that lawn more often than he needed to because the lawnmower was so beautiful and smooth. Dr Jefferson said he could buy plants if he wanted to and got Jimmy to give him the money, so Dex went along to the Belgrave Nursery and bought annuals in May and hebes and lavender in September on the advice of the big tall Asian man called Mr Siddiqui. Dr Jefferson was pleased with his work and recommended him to Mr and Mrs Neville-Smith at number 5. So now Dex had two jobs which he could easily handle.
He had seen no evil spirits since he came to work in Hexam Place but the fact was that he was not always sure about identifying evil spirits. Sometimes it took him weeks of observing them, often following them, before he could be sure. But he had to remember that he had made a promise to Mr Jefferson’s friend, Dr Mettage, the psychiatrist in the hospital, that he would do nothing to them unless they threatened him. He said that depended on what you meant by ‘threaten’. Women themselves were a threat to him, but he had never told Dr Mettage or Dr Jefferson that. He told his god but Peach had not responded.
If he had no work to do in the front garden of number 3 there was plenty in the front garden of number 5. A hedge grew round the pebble patches on either side of the front steps and there were narrow flower borders round the hedge. Dex knelt to weed these borders, first laying down an old doormat given him by Mrs Neville-Smith to protect his knees from the little stones.
He liked to watch the people of Hexam Place without wanting to talk to them, the red-headed woman opposite who sat on the steps to smoke a cigarette, the old lady called June taking a fat little dog round the block, the young man who looked as if he ought to be on TV, sitting at the wheel of a big shiny car, doing more sitting and waiting than driving. There were two men who lived in the same house with the red-headed one. They always left together in the morning just after Dex had started work, always wore suits and ties and, on cold days, tight-fitted overcoats.
He had to go and work in the back and then he saw nothing but clematis and dahlias and roses. Mr Neville-Smith was very fond of roses. Next door at number 7 lived a lot of children, two and a baby, and a girl Jimmy said was an au pair. Dex saw her go up and down the area steps at number 7 and he saw a lady in a long black gown wearing a black headscarf and pushing the baby in a pushchair. But if he had chanced to see any of them away from the places where they lived he wouldn’t have recognised them. Faces meant nothing to him. He saw them as blank featureless masks.
CHAPTER THREE
FEW OF ITS patrons knew what a dugong was. The hanging sign above its doors showed a picture of an animal halfway between a seal and a dolphin with a woman’s pretty face. This led some to say it was a mermaid and others a manatee. The licensee said to google it but if anyone did the results weren’t known. It didn’t seem important. The Dugong was one of those London pubs which were surviving the recession and the drink-driving laws and the adjurations to everyone to drink less. This was because it had a wealthy and mainly youthful clientele, was tastefully appointed with a garden at the rear and a wide pavement at the front on which to gather, drink Sauvignon and chat.
When the Saint Zita Society had its first meeting it was round the biggest table in the garden, the evening being fine and warm for mid-September. Jimmy should have been in the chair but, if he didn’t exactly panic, he protested that he had no idea what to do. He’d never actually said he’d be chairman. Let June do it. So June read the rather sparse minutes of the inception meeting and they were agreed as a true record by Jimmy, Beacon, Thea, Montserrat, who hadn’t been there, and Henry. The first item on the agenda was the question of Henry’s human rights.
June had scarcely begun on the speech she had written describing poor Henry waiting for hours at the wheel of the BMW for Lord Studley to arrive, had in fact not reached the point of uttering Lord Studley’s name, when the subject of her complaint leapt to his feet with a cry of ‘Stop, stop, stop!’
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ The Dugong’s garden was infested with wasps. ‘Have you been stung?’
‘You want me to lose my job?’ Henry lowered his voice, in the belief that not only walls but bushes and plants in tubs have ears. ‘It took me a bloody year to get my job – and what about my flat?’ He continued in a sibilant whisper, ‘You want me to lose my flat?’
‘Well, I’m sure I’m very sorry,’ said June. ‘I meant well. It went to my heart seeing you half asleep at the wheel at that hour of the morning.’
‘We’ll change the subject if you don’t mind. Come to that,’ Henry said with a glare at her, ‘even if you do mind.’
‘Time for another drink,’ said Beacon. ‘What are we all having?’ He was trying to think up a suitable biblical quotation but there were no cars and not much in the way of human rights in the Bible. ‘What’ll it be, Henry?’
Henry and Montserrat wanted white wine, June a vodka and tonic and Thea Merlot. Jimmy had lager and Beacon settled for sparkling water ‘with a hint of blackcurrant’ because there was always a chance Mr Still might call him on his mobile for a lift from Victoria Station.
With nothing more on the agenda but ‘expenditure and income’, as yet a blank page, ‘Any Other Business’ was quickly reached. Monserrat suggested that there should be a recruiting drive to find more members. Even if membership was confined to Hexam Place, they were still lacking Rabia, Richard and Zinnia. Beacon said everyone had been given notice of the meeting and and you couldn’t make people come if they didn’t want to.
‘You can persuade them,’ said June. ‘You can appeal to their public-spiritedness.’ She suggested that an outing to ‘a show’ should be discussed at the next meeting and a date fixed. The kind of fidgety apathy that often settles on meetings that continue for too long was causing eyes to close, shoulders to slump, and pins and needles to cramp legs. Everyone was relieved to agree to the outing, especially as it was not to be raised again until October. The meeting was over and serious drinking began.
While sticking to his no-spirits rule, Henry had drunk his wine and was in need of something stronger. Eyebrows were raised when he ordered a Campari and soda, and go easy on the soda. Ahead of him was an ordeal which he both looked forward to and dreaded, but there was no escape from it. Huguette expected to see him, and knowing that her father was away on a two-day parliamentary visit to Brussels, also knew that Henry could not be on call to drive the Beemer. She would have to wait in vain, for he had another engagement in the Studley family at nine.
Beacon was the first to leave. His call had come through. Mr Still was on a train heading for Euston, not Victoria, and was due to arrive in twelve minutes. This was also a cue for Montserrat who watched him go, checked that the Audi had left and ran upstairs at number 7 to knock on Lucy’s door and warn Rad to be out of there in three minutes at the most. When she had escorted him down to the drawing-room floor, down the steep and narrow staircase to the basement and the area, and seen him disappear in the direction of Sloane Square, she ran all the way to the top. Thomas, for once, was asleep, the girls were watching television while they got ready for bed and Rabia was having a cup of tea.
Number 11, home of the Studleys, was the largest house in Hexam Place, not only bigger but different from those in the terraces, being detached, and with more elaborate rails round its balconies. You entered it between fluted columns and through double doors. Above these doors French windows opened from the principal bedroom on to a large balcony on which stood palm trees and pampas in Grecian urns. This window, though fastened and locked, somehow made the bedroom seem more exposed and less secure than if a solid wall had been there, and this was why Oceane Studley preferred to visit Henry than have him visit her.
He was back from the Dugong at ten to nine, quickly changing the sheets on his bed, pulling down the blinds and setting out out the wine glasses. She would bring the wine, she always did. Not that it had happened more than twice – this would be the third time. He hadn’t time for a shower but he’d had one that morning. That would have to do. Henry couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to see Oceane or if he wouldn’t really prefer his mobile to ring and it to be her saying she couldn’t make it. The truth was that all the time she was here in his room he was terrified. It was due only to his youth, he supposed, that he could function at all and not be inhibited by fear. Things were quite different with Huguette because they did it in Huguette’s flat which was a mile away and not her dad’s, though no doubt her dad paid the rent. The whole of this house was Lord Studley’s, Henry’s room as much as the master bedroom, and even when he knew his employer was in Brussels he was still afraid of spies. Letting himself in here this evening, he had encountered Sondra on the stairs and though she had been perfectly pleasant he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that she had been keeping an eye on him.
The trouble was that Oceane was a very attractive woman and not yet forty. Henry thought her basically more attractive than her daughter but Huguette was young and that was a great advantage. Anyway, while he hadn’t even thought about refusing Huguette he had been afraid to say no to Oceane. Henry was unacquainted with the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife but the plot was obvious to anyone who imagined the scenario. You say no, thanks, you’d rather not, and she tells her husband who happens to be your boss that you made a pass at her.
He was coming to the end of envisaging this outcome when the door opened and Oceane came in. She never knocked. Whatever else he might be to her, Henry was her husband’s driver. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘are you in a seventh heaven to see me?’ She pressed her pelvis against him and stuck her tongue in his mouth.
Henry responded. He hadn’t really any option.
MONTSERRAT KNEW ALL about it. She made it her business to know who was having an affair with whom, who was skiving off and who was borrowing a Beemer or a Jaguar when such a loan was strictly forbidden. She had never blackmailed anyone but she liked to keep the possibility of a modified sort of blackmail in reserve. The only friend she had in Hexam Place was Thea and the only member of the Saint Zita Society who possessed a car of their own was herself, keeping her rather old VW in a garage in the mews that belonged to number 7.
Attempts at persuading Rabia to join the society had failed. ‘You wouldn’t have to drink anything. I mean, you wouldn’t have to drink anything alcoholic. You’d just sit at a table and talk. And then you could come with us to shows.’
Rabia said she couldn’t afford it and if she asked her dad if she could go into a pub he would say no.
‘Why tell him?’
‘Because he’s my father,’ said Rabia in her simple direct way. ‘I no longer have a husband to tell me what to do.’ Ignoring Monserrat’s rolling eyes, she offered her another cup of tea.
Monserrat said she’d rather have a glass of wine and she didn’t suppose Rabia would let her bring the bottle up here. ‘No, that’s right,’ said Rabia. ‘I’m sorry but this is the children’s place,’ and she went to see to Thomas who had begun whimpering.
JUNE AND THE Princess and Rad Sothern, who was June’s great-nephew, were having coffee in the drawing room at number 6. The Princess only tolerated this relative of June’s because he was a professional man, an actor and a celebrity. Besides this, he was very good-looking and played Mr Fortescue, the orthopaedic surgeon, in one of her favourite hospital sitcoms. Mr Fortescue was an important character in Avalon Clinic, appeared every week and was a famous face when seen crossing Sloane Square. June was fond of him in a half-hearted way but she was well aware that he only came round when he had nothing better to do. She had seen him admitted to number 7 by the basement door and disapproved of his having an affair with Montserrat whom she thought of as sly. It puzzled her how he had ever managed to meet the Stills’ au pair. As far as she knew, Rad’s only contact with the occupants of number 7 had been when the Princess had introduced him to Lucy Still at a party the Princess had given in this house a few months before.
The Princess addressed him as ‘Mr Fortescue’ because she thought this was funny. Rad had told her not to but she took no notice. The conversation was always centred on gossip. Film and TV gossip, not Hexam Place scandal-mongering as this might be rather close to the bone for Rad. June knew he came to number 6 as often as he did not because of his fondness for the Princess but so that when he was seen the neighbours would think his visits were to his great-aunt rather than to Montserrat.
The Princess, as always, wanted him to tell her about the private lives of the cast of Avalon Clinic and he obliged with a diluted version. It seemed to satisfy her.
‘Can I offer you a brandy, Mr Fortescue?’
‘Why not?’ said Rad.
None was offered to June but she helped herself just the same. She was tired and she still had to walk Gussie round the block. Rad wouldn’t leave for hours if she didn’t give him what she called a nudge, though it was rather more than that. ‘Time you went, Rad. HSH wants to go to bed.’
Gussie was put on his lead and Rad, in June’s habitual phrase, was seen off the premises, out of the front door and down the steps. It was a fine night but growing cold. Rad picked up a taxi in Ebury Bridge Road and June and Gussie walked on round the block. It was very late but some lights were on in bedrooms, while Damian and Roland were still up in their living room, though the blinds were down. There was no one about, no one to see June let herself in by the front door, so she and Gussie entered the house by the more comfortably negotiated stairs to the basement.
THEA LIVED INunpaid