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

been
    there, if he hadn't imagined it.
    It still took all the nerve he could summon to go up those stairs past
    the spot where it had stood and across the spots of Isabella light to let
    himself into his flat.

    A bright morning and the terrors of the night were dispelled by sunshine.
    Mix was having a lie-in because it was Saturday. He lay in bed in the
    stifling warmth of his overheated bedroom, watching a flock of pigeons, a
    single heron flying low, an aircraft leaving a trail like a string of cloud
    across the blue sky. Now he could tell himself the figure on the stairs
    was a hallucination or something caused by that stained glass window.
    Drink and darkness played strange tricks on the mind. He had drunk
    quite a bit and that house where she lived being thirteen was the last
    straw.
    Getting up to make tea and take it back with him, he saw Otto far
    below, a dark chocolate silhouette, sitting on one of the crumbling walls
    against which ancient trees leaned and from which an ancient trellis
    drooped. In the almost identical wilderness at the end of this garden, two
    guinea fowl with crinolines of gray feathers pottered among dead weed
    stalks and brambles. Otto spent hours watching these guinea fowl,
    plotting how to catch and eat them. Mix had often watched him,
    disliking the cat but half hoping to witness the hunt and the kill. Keeping
    the birds was almost certainly illegal but the local authority remained in
    ignorance of their existence and no neighbor ever told.
    He lifted out of a drawer his Nerissa scrapbooks and took them back to
    bed with him. This bright morning would be a good time to take a
    photograph of her house and perhaps another of the health club. And
    there would be a chance of seeing her again. Turning the pages of this
    collection of Nerissa pictures and cuttings, he slipped into a fantasy of
    how he could meet her. Really meet her and remind her of their previous
    encounter. A party would be the sort of occasion he wanted, one that she
    was attending and to which he could get himself invited. A niggling fear
    crept into his mind that she might have spotted him outside her house
    and known it was he following her to the health club. He must be more
    careful.
    Could he persuade Colette Gilbert-Bamber to give a party? More to the
    point, could he persuade her to invite him to it if she did? The husband,
    whom he'd never met, was an unknown quantity. Mix had never even
    seen a picture of him. Maybe he hated parties or only liked the formal
    kind, full of business people drinking dry wine and fizzy water and
    talking about gilts and a bear market. Even if the party happened, would
    he have the nerve to ask Nerissa out? He'd have to take her somewhere
    fabulous, but he'd started saving up for that, and once he'd been seen
    out with her--or, say, three times--he'd be made, the TV offers would
    start rolling in, the requests for interviews, the invitations to premieres.

    He must hedge his bets. He'd call the health club this morning and ask
    about joining. Suppose he found out who her guru was, or her
    clairvoyant or whatever? That would be easier than a party. He knew she
    had one. It had been in the papers. He wouldn't have to be invited to a
    guru's place. He could just go, provided he paid. There were ways of
    finding out when Nerissa's appointments were and then somehow he
    would get his to precede or follow hers. It wouldn't be all pretending
    either, it wouldn't just be a ploy. He wouldn't mind seeing someone who
    knew about the supernatural. If there really were ghosts and spirits and
    whatever or if sighting them was always in the mind. A guru or a
    medium could tell him.
    Mix finished his tea, closed the scrapbook, and forced himself to walk
    over to the long mirror that was a cheval-glass framed in stainless steel.
    He shut his eyes and opened them again. There--nothing and no one
    behind him, what a mad idea! Naked, he confessed to himself that there
    was room for improvement. In his job