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

she expected him to be startled and was pleased.
    She wore blue jeans and one of those skinny sweaters that there is no point in wearing if you really are skinny. Her figure was the kind that is photographed large and temptingly in the non-quality Sundays. Long black hair that a brush touch would set sparking fell to her shoulders.
    â€˜I don’t think you’ve met,’ Heller mumbled, and that was all the introduction David got. Mrs Heller peeled herself from the wall and now her glance was indifferent. ‘Make yourself at home. I won’t be a minute finding the projector.’ He looked at his wife. ‘That slide projector,’ he said. ‘Where did you put it when Carl brought it back?’
    â€˜In the bedroom cupboard, I suppose.’
    Heller showed him into the living-room, if pushing open a door and muttering could be called showing anyone anywhere. Then he went away. The room had three white walls and one red one with a stringed instrument hanging above an Equatair radiator. A little bit of haircord clung to the centre of the floor space. Mrs Heller came in and rather ostentatiously placed cutlery for two persons on the table. It amused David to reflect on the domestic surroundings of real salesmen-executives. In the films and plays he did sets for they had open-plan apartments, forty feet long, split-level with wall-to-wall carpeting, room dividers festooned with ivy, leather furniture. He sat down in an armchair that was a woven plastic cone in a metal frame. Outside the buses moved in a white and yellow glare.
    â€˜Sorry to come bursting in on you like this,’ he said. She put two glasses of water on the table. In his films they had bottles of Romani Conti served in straw baskets. ‘I happened to run into Bernard and I remembered my projector.’
    She swivelled, tilting her chin. ‘Ran into him, did you?’ Her voice had the remnants of a burr he couldn’t place. ‘D’you mind telling me where?’
    â€˜In Berkeley Square,’ he said, surprised.
    â€˜Sure it wasn’t Matchdown Park?’
    â€˜Quite sure.’ What was all this? The man was legitimately employed in Matchdown Park, wasn’t he? He watched her as she finished laying the table. An orchidaceous face, he thought. Horrible word, but it just described that lush velvety skin, the little nose and the full pink pearl lips. Her eyes were green with gold sparks. ‘I hear you’re going to Switzerland. Looking forward to it?’
    She shrugged. ‘Nothing’s settled yet.’
    â€˜But surely Bernard said . . .’
    â€˜You don’t want to listen to everything he says.’
    David followed her into the kitchen because he couldn’t hang about there any longer with the glasses of water and the mandoline or whatever it was. The blue jeans were provocative as she bent to light her cigarette from the gas. He wondered how old she was. Not more than twenty-four or twenty-five. In the next room he could hear Heller banging about, apparently shifting things from a high shelf.
    A pan of water was heating on the cooker. Already cooked and lying dispiritedly on a plate were two small overdone chops. When the water in the pan boiled the girl took it from the gas and emptied into it the contents of a packet labelled, ‘Countryman’s Supper. Heavenly mashed potatoes in thirty seconds.’ David wasn’t sorry they weren’t going to ask him to share it.
    â€˜Magdalene!’
    Heller’s voice sounded weary and fed-up. So that was her name, Magdalene. She looked up truculently as her husband lumbered in.
    â€˜I can’t think where it’s got to,’ Heller said worriedly, glancing with embarrassment at his dusty hands.
    â€˜Leave it,’ David said. ‘I’m keeping you from your meal.’
    â€˜Maybe it’s up there.’ It was the girl who had spoken, indicating a closed cupboard on top of the dresser. David was a