Thirteen Steps Down (45 page)

forcing him to kill her. The Indian had told Chawcer about seeing him

digging the garden, his back was so injured it would never be the same

again, and he'dk illed a woman who was already dead. Now he was in a

train that left from platform thirteen.

He'd been counting as he reflected on his misfortunes .Thirteen. There

were thirteen of them. Not meaning to, he letout a low groan and a young

woman sitting opposite him stared.

"Are you all right?"

He nodded, tried and failed to force a smile. Thirteen steps down to

where he was now, jobless, his money dwindling, haunted probably for

the rest of his life, deserted by his friends. Thirteen steps, like the flight

down from his flat to her darkdomain. And what lay in store? Shivering,

he poured the gin into his half-empty can of Coke. The girl who had

asked if hewas all right was darting anxious looks at him and whispering

to the boy with her.

He should have been used to it, but the gin and Coke mixture knocked

him out. He felt exhausted. Though the carriagewas full of people, mostly

very young people and all of them eating and drinking the sort of food

he'd had, dropping greasy wrappings and cans on the floor, he dropped

off to sleep. He couldn't keep awake.

In the dream he had he was at the top of those stairs, lookingdown. A

voice in his head was telling him not to go down but to step back. Stay

where you are, even the first step will be fatal. But something seemed to

be pulling him, drawing himforward and downward, one, two, three ... He

took a step,then another, and now at the bottom he could see Reggie

waitingfor him. He woke up with a cry. The girl opposite him

wasn'tsympathetic anymore. She was whispering to her boyfriend,and

Mix knew she was saying he was drunk. Perhaps he was. The air of

outside would clear his head andmaybe it was just as well there would be

no drink at Shannon's.A voice. over the public address system said, "The

train willshortly be arriving in Colchester. Colchester next stop."

Mix took his bag down from the rack and moved toward thedoor. It was

already crowded with young people loaded with backpacks and bags and

surrounded by more. The train cameslowly into the station and the

alighting passengers jostled each other out and onto the platform. Mix

stepped down but he didn't get very far.

No one put a hand on his shoulder. That was only in the movies. That

was for TV: The words the older policeman spoke to him he'd heard a

hundred times on TV; he knew them by heart. All of the stuff about

saying what you had to say nowor you might harm your defense if you

wanted to rely on it incourt. Well, he'd want to rely on it because it was

true.

"The girl was in self-defense," he said. "And the old woman was dead

before I touched her. I'm not a murderer, I'm not Christie."

Olive had lost her reading glasses. The only pair she had dated from

fifteen years before and they no longer did the job. Shew as on the point

of ringing her optician for a new pair when she remembered she had very

likely left them behind in St.Blaise House.

For a week it had been forbidden ground, accessible only to the police,

to pathologists and forensic experts. They had all gone now, Michael

Cellini had been arrainged with the murdersof Gwendolen and Danila

Kovic in the magistrates' court, and things had quieted down. Olive let

herself into the house, resolving that before she left, glasses or no

glasses, she would leave the key behind. Perhaps put it where important

keys were kept, in the tumble-drier. Restoring it to this ridiculous place,

honoring as it were its former owner's bizarre wishes, seemed to her to be

a tiny tribute to Gwendolen.

Olive went into the drawing room, wondering what wouldhappen to this

house. Was there anyone to inherit it? Gwendolen had never spoken of

relatives except some old cousin of her mother's who had been at her

funeral. But Mrs. Chawcer's funeral was fifty years ago this year.

Gwendolen had been the only child of, as far as Olive knew, only

children. Had she evenmade a will? St. Blaise House would be worth

millions to ap roperty developer.

She tried to remember where she had been during thehours she had

spent here. In the drawing room, of course, in the kitchen--she wouldn't

have needed reading glasses there up in the bedroom she had slept in.

She climbed the stairs. Queenie had wept over Gwendolen, but she

hadn't, she had been angry, but glad too that Cellini hadn't been

anywhere near her when the truth came out. I'd have attacked him,she

said to the empty house, dragged my nails down his face. Keeping them

long and pointed would have been well worth itjust for that. She went

into the sad, dirty, neglected bedroom. Searching it took about three

minutes and then she had towash her hands.

The glasses came to light in the drawing room. They were under one of

the armchairs in a little enclave of dust and fluff and dead flies. She went

into the kitchen and was about to wash them under the tap, when the

doorbell rang. Some vendor of fish or sharpener of knives, she thought as

she went to answer

An elderly man and a middle-aged woman stood there. Two of

Gwendolen's forgotten relatives?

"My name is Reeves," the man said, all smiles. "Dr. Stephen Reeves. I

happened to be in the neighborhood and thought of dropping in on Miss

Chawcer. This is my wife, Diana, by the way. Is Miss Chawcer about?"

"I'm afraid not." Olive realized she would have to say why not, though in

expurgated form. "Gwendolen has passed away. It was very sudden."

Dr. Reeves shook his head, attempting to look sad. "Dear, oh dear. Well,

she was getting on. It comes to us all. We just thought we'd look in. As a

matter of fact"--he allowed his smileto break through--"we're down here

on our honeymoon."

The End