A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

waiting. And even Giles was there. Passing through at that particular moment, looking vaguely for his Hindi primer, he had been collared by his mother and persuaded to remain for an introduction.
    “Good evening, Miss Parchman. Did you have a good journey? This is my son Giles.”
    Giles nodded absently and escaped upstairs without a backward glance. Eunice hardly noticed him. She was looking at the house and its contents. It was almost too much for her. She was like the Queen of Sheba when she saw King Solomon—there was no more spirit in her. But none of her wonderment showed in her face or her demeanour. She stood on the thick carpet, among the antiques, the bowls of flowers, looking first at the grandfather clock, then at herself reflected in a huge mirror with gilded twirls round the edge of it. She stood half stunned. The Coverdales took her air for poise, the silent self-sufficient containment of the good servant.
    “I’ll take you to your room,” said Jacqueline. “There won’t be anything for you to do tonight. We’ll go upstairs and someone will bring your bags up later.”
    A large and pleasant room met Eunice’s eyes. It was carpeted in olive-drab Wilton, papered in a pale yellow with a white vertical stripe. There were two darker yellow easy chairs, a cretonne-covered settee, a bed with a spread of the same material, and a long built-in cupboard. The windows afforded a splendid view,
the
view, which was better seen from here than from any other room in the house.”
    “I hope you find everything to your liking.”
    An empty bookcase (destined to remain so), a bowl of white lilac on a coffee table, two lamps with burnt orange shades, two framed Constable reproductions,
Willy Lott’s Cottage, The Leaping Horse
. The bathroom had light green fittings, and olive-green towels hung on a heated rail.
    “Your dinner will be ready for you in the kitchen in half an hour. It’s the door at the end of the passage behind the stairs. And now I expect you’d like to be left alone for a while. Oh, here’s my son with your bags.”
    Giles had been caught by George and coaxed into bringing up the two cases. He dumped them on the floor and went away. Eunice disregarded him as she had largely disregarded his mother. She was staring at the one object in those two rooms which really interested her, the television set. This was what she had always wanted but been unable to buy or hire. As the door closed behind Jacqueline, she approached the set, looked at it, and then, like someone resolved upon using a dangerous piece of equipment that may explode or send a shock up one’s arm, but knowing still that it must be used, it must be attempted, she pounced on it and switched it on.
    On the screen appeared a man with a gun. He was threatening a woman who cowered behind a chair. There was a shot and the woman fled screaming down a corridor. Thus it happened that the first programme Eunice ever saw on her own television dealt with violence and with firearms. Did it and its many successors stimulate her own latent violence and trigger off waves of aggression? Did fictional drama take root in the mind of the illiterate so that it at last bore terrible fruit?
    Perhaps. But if television spurred her on to kill the Coverdales, it certainly played no part in directing her to smother her father. At the time of his death the only programmes she had seen on it were a royal wedding and a coronation.
    However, though she was to become addicted to the set, shutting herself up with it, drawing her curtains against the summer evenings, that first time she watched it for only ten minutes. She ate her dinner cautiously, for it was like nothing she had evereaten before, was taken over the house by Jacqueline, instructed in her duties. From the very beginning she enjoyed herself. A few little mistakes were only natural. Annie Cole had taught her how to lay a table, so she did that all right, but on that first morning she made tea instead of