The Lake of Darkness by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

help toyou. I would be prepared to advance you any reasonable sum for the purchase of a small house or flat preferably not in London or the Home Counties. If you would care to get in touch with me as soon as possible, we might meet and discuss this, whether you feel you can accept the money as a gift or would prefer to think of it as a lifetime loan, whether you feel able to consider living outside London, and so on.
    Yours sincerely,
Martin W. Urban.
    Dear Mrs. Cochrane
,
You may have heard of me through your brother-in-law. He has told me that you are suffering considerable hardship owing to your housing conditions and are anxious to move. The purpose of this letter …
    Martin had found these letters very difficult to write. He abandoned temporarily the one to Mrs. Cochrane because he still hadn’t found out her address. Dr. Ghopal must have had his letter by now, though he hadn’t yet replied to it. It was pleasant to think of the incredulous delight of those two elderly people when the post came on Monday morning. They would understand without resentment, wouldn’t they, what he meant by asking them to choose homes away from London? If he was to benefit four or five people, he couldn’t rise to London property prices. He posted the letters on his way to have his usual Saturday lunchtime drink with Norman Tremlett in the Flask.
    Dr. Ghopal phoned him at the office on Monday morning. He would be seeing Mrs. Bhavnani that day and then he hoped to be in touch with the great heart surgeon in Australia. The accented voice that always sounds Welsh to English ears cracked a little as Dr. Ghopal said how moved he had been by Mr. Urban’s more than generous offer. Martin couldn’t help feeling gratified. His mother had said Suma was reputedly good at his schoolwork. Suppose, as aresult of his, Martin’s, timely intervention, the boy should grow up himself to be a famous surgeon or a musician of genius or a second Tagore?
    Gordon Tytherton came in in the middle of this daydream to say that he and his wife had a spare dress circle seat for
Evita
on Saturday night and would Martin like it and come with them? Martin accepted with alacrity. He passed the rest of the day on the crest of a wave, and it was some time before it occurred to him that perhaps he ought to have asked for Dr. Ghopal’s discretion in the matter of the source of the money. Still, you could hardly imagine a doctor, a general practitioner, telling the press a thing like that. He thought very little more about it until Thursday when, as he came in from lunch, Caroline told him Mr. Sage had phoned and would call back.
    Had Tim found out, maybe from the Bhavnanis? Not that Martin had said anything about the source of his wealth to Dr. Ghopal, but Tim was no fool. Tim would put two and two together. If Tim wanted a story for the
Post
tomorrow, this would be just about his deadline, Martin calculated. He pictured the headlines in thirty-six point across the front page …
    “If he does call back, tell him I’m not available, will you?”
    “What, even though you’re really here?”
    “I’ll be too busy to talk to him this afternoon.”
    Caroline shrugged and pouted her shiny, blackberry-painted mouth. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. He’s got a lovely voice on the phone, just like Alastair Burnet.”
    Whether Tim had phoned again Martin didn’t bother to enquire. It would now, in any case, be too late for this week’s
Post.
He went alone to the house in Copley Avenue, his father having an engagement with a client in Hamp-stead, and on an impulse told his mother about his £50,000 charity and his offer to Suma Bhavnani. She listened, drinking oloroso, and Martin could see that she wastorn between admiration for his magnanimity and a natural maternal desire to see him spend the whole hundred and four thousand on a house for himself.
    “I suppose I shouldn’t ask why,” she said.
    It would have been embarrassing to give his reasons, that life