The Secret House of Death by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

older.’ He got up. ‘There doesn’t seem much point in anything, does there?’ Without offering to buy David a drink, he said. ‘Can I drop you anywhere? Northern Line for you, isn’t it?’
    David lived alone in a bachelor flat. He wasn’t going anywhere that night and he intended to eat out. ‘Look, I don’t want to be a bore about this,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but if you’re going straight home, would you mind if I came along with you and collected my projector?’
    â€˜Now, d’you mean?’
    â€˜Well, yes. You’re going in May and I dare say you’ve got a lot on your mind.’
    â€˜All right,’ Heller said ungraciously. They got into the car and David’s spirits improved slightly when the other man said, with a ghost of his old grin, ‘Bear with me, old man. I’m not very good company these days. It was decent of you to lend us the projector. I didn’t intend to hold on to it.’
    â€˜I know that,’ David said, feeling much better.
    They went over one of the bridges and down past the Elephant and Castle. Heller drove by a twisty route through back streets and although he seemed to know his way, he was careless about traffic lights and once he went over a pedestrian crossing with people on it.
    Silence had fallen between them and Heller broke it only to say, ‘Nearly there.’ The street was full of buses going to places David knew only by name, Kennington, Brixton, Stock-well. On the left-hand side a great blank wall with small windows in it ran for about two hundred yards. It might have been a barracks or a prison. There wasn’t a tree or a patch of grass in sight. At a big brightly lit Odeon Heller turned right and David saw that they were at a typical South London crossroads, dominated by a collonaded church in the Wren style, only Wren had been dead a hundred and fifty years when it was put up. Opposite it was a tube station. David didn’t know which one. All he could see was London Transport’s Saturn-shaped sign, glowing blue and red. People streamed out over the crossing, their faces a sickly green in the mercury vapour light.
    Some of them took a short cut home through a treeless park with a cricket pavilion and public lavatories. Heller drove jumpily on the inside lane of the stream. The street was neither truly shopping centre nor residential. Most of the big old houses were in the process of being pulled down. Shops there were, but all of the same kind, thrust shabbily together in a seemingly endless rhythmic order: off-licence, café, pet foods, betting shop, off-licence, café . . . If he were Heller he wouldn’t have been able to wait for May. The prospect of Zürich would be like heaven. What kind of a slum did the man live in, anyway?
    Not a slum at all. A fairly decent, perhaps ten-year-old block of flats. They were arranged in four storeys around a grass and concrete court. Hengist House. David looked around for Horsa and saw it fifty yards ahead. Some builder with Anglo-Saxon attitudes, he thought; amused.
    Heller put the car into a bay marked with white lines.
    â€˜We’re on the ground floor,’ he said. ‘Number three.’
    The entrance hall looked a bit knocked about. Someone had written, ‘Get back to Kingston’ on a wall between two green doors. David didn’t think they had meant Kingston, Surrey. Heller put his key into the lock of number three. They had arrived.
    A narrow passage ran through the flat to an open bathroom door. Heller didn’t call out and when his wife appeared he didn’t kiss her.
    Seeing her gave David a jolt. Heller was only in his early thirties but he was already touched by the heavy hand of middle-age. This girl looked very young. He hadn’t been thinking about her so he had no preconceived idea as to how she would look. Nevertheless, he was startled by what he saw and as he met her eyes he knew