Thirteen Steps Down by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

in silence up to Hornsey, Mix imagining Reggie luring
    her to Rillington Place on the grounds of curing her hay fever with his
    inhaler, which would actually gas her. He'd make her sit in his deckchair
    and breathe in the chloroform ...
    "Why have you been so horrible?" she asked him after his distant "Good
    night" and opening of the passenger door for her. He didn't answer, but
    turned his face away. She let herself in through the front door of number
    thirteen--it would be—and banged it loudly after her. There were
    probably at least ten other occupants of that building and all of them
    would have woken up. It seemed to Mix that the place was still
    reverberating when he got back into the driving seat.
    The night was cold and out here the wind screens of parked cars had
    frost on them. He didn't know the area very well, missed his turning and,
    after driving for what seemed like hours, found himself around the back
    of King's Cross station. Nevermind. He'd take the Marylebone Road and
    the fly over. Day and night it was busy. Traffic never ceased. But the side
    streets were deserted, the lamps which should have cheered them
    making them seem more stark and less safe than darkness.
    He had to drive up and down St. Blaise Avenue and up again before he
    found a space in the residents' parking to put his car. If he left it on the
    yellow line he'd have to be out there before eight-thirty in the morning to
    move it. At this hour of the night, the street was packed with cars and
    empty of people. It was so dark between the pillars and inside the portico
    that it took him awhile to find the lock and slide the key into it.
    Crossing the hall, he saw himself in the big mirror like a stranger,
    unrecognizable in the dimness. All the lights on staircase and landings
    were on time switches and turned themselves off, he'd calculated, after
    about fifteen seconds. The bulbs in the hanging lamps in hall and stairs
    being of very low wattage, great pools of darkness lay ahead in the twists
    and bends. Cursing the length of this staircase, he began to climb. He
    was very tired and he didn't know why. Perhaps it had something to do
    with the emotional stress of tracking down Nerissa and discovering
    where she went, or it was due to that Lara who was such a contrast to
    her. His legs dragged and the calf muscles began to ache. After two
    flights, at the first landing, where Miss Chawcer slept behind a big oak
    door set in a deep recess, the lights grew even dimmer and went out
    faster. It was impossible to see the top of the next flight. From here the
    floor above was lost in dense black shadow.
    The place was so big and the ceilings so high that it had a creepy feel
    even on a bright day. By night the flower and fruit carvings on the
    woodwork turned into gargoyles and in the silence he seemed to hear soft
    sighs coming from the darkest corners. Mounting slowly because he was
    as usual panting, here called, as one does in such situations, his halfbelief in ghosts. He had often said, of some particular old house, that he
    didn't believe in ghosts but he wouldn't spend a night there for anything.
    The habit he had got into of counting the stairs in this top flight as if he
    could make the figure twelve or fourteen was hard to break. He seemed
    to do it automatically once he had pressed the switch at the foot. But he
    had reached only to three when he seemed to see, in the light's feeble
    gleam, a figure standing at the top. It was a man, tallish, glasses on its
    beaky nose catching the colored light from the Isabella window.
    The sound that rose to his mouth came out as a thin whimper, the kind
    you utter in a bad dream when you think you are screaming loudly. At
    the same time, he squeezed his eyes shut. With one hand stretched out,
    he stood there until a darkening inside his eyelids told him the light had
    gone out again. He took a step backward, pressed the switch again,
    opened his eyes and looked. The figure was gone. If it had ever