Thirteen Steps Down

Look at her father. Not that he had married any long-lost sweetheart, but Mr. Iqbal from the Hyderabad Emporium had done just that, meeting outside the mosque in 'Willesden a lady he had known from the same village in India fifty years before.

And now Eileen was dead…

Stephen Reeves was a widower now. Would he come backfor her? If she had married someone else and that someone had died, she would look for him. The bond between them must be as fixed and enduring for him as it was for her. Perhaps she should take steps to find him…? He might be shy, he might even feel guilty about what he had done and be afraid to face her. Men were such cowards, that was a well-known fact. Look how squeamish the professor had been about taking on any of the tending of her mother when she was so ill.

It was half a century since last she had seen Stephen, or it soon would be. There were ways of finding people these days, much easier and surer ways than when she was young. You didi t somehow with a computer. You used this computer and got into something called the 'net' or the 'web' and it would tell you. There were places-there was one in Ladbroke Grove called Internet cafes. For a long time Gwendolen had thought that meant a place to have coffee in and eat cakes, but Olive, laughing stupidly, had set her right. If she went to such a place would she be able to find Stephen Reeves after fifty years?

She thought about all this as she walked home with her shopping. After he had told her she was a nice girl and he was fond of her, she sat up in her bedroom and practiced writing her name as it would soon be. Gwendolen Reeves or G. L. Reeves, she would sign herself, but on invitation cards she would be Mrs. Stephen Reeves. Mrs. Stephen Reeves at home and Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Reeves thank you for your kind invitation but regretthey cannot accept… As it turned out, these last had been reserved for Eileen. That need not trouble her now, for Eileen was dead. Somehow she knew it hadn't been a happy marriage, in spite of that 'beloved wife.' He had to put it like that, everyone did, it was the convention. Possibly, when he and Eileen quarreled, as no doubt they often did, he told her he should never have married her.

'I should have married Gwendolen,' he would have said.

“She was my first love.'

Gwendolen had never expressed her feelings to him. It wouldn't have been right for a woman to do that then but things seemed to be different now. He might not know how she felt, he might never have known. Somehow she must manageto tell him and then everything would come right.

Chapter 7

He had read Christie's Victims before but a long time ago, six or seven years ago when he began collecting his Reggie library. Of course he remembered it. But it was still fascinating to retrace his steps through the Notting Hill of those days and through the life of one of the most famous serial killers ofall time.

'John Reginald Halliday Christie came to live in London in1938,' Mix read while eating his breakfast,

and with him came his wife, Ethel. He was a curious man.There must be something strange, not to say appalling, about any necrophile. Not only is the idea of necrophilia repugnant to everyone, but in order to indulge his desire, the sufferer from this aberration must, unless he has unlikely accessto a morgue, first kill his victims.

Looking at it from the perspective of the twenty-first century,Christie's marriage was not a happy one. Five years after their wedding, Ethel left him and went to live in Sheffield. Their separation lasted for several years until Christie wrote to her, asking her to return to him. After their reunion, she was often away staying with her relatives in the north. Christie had been a cinema operative, a mill-worker and a postman, in connection with which last he was sent to prison for stealing postal orders. Imprisoned again for stealing a carfrom a Roman Catholic priest who had befriended him, he nevertheless volunteered for the Emergency Reserve of the London Police Force and was acceptedin the year he and his wife came to Rillington Place, Notting Hill, west London.

Apparently the police made no inquiries about his past, or if they did their findings were not serious enough to disqualify him, and in 1939 he became a full-time Special Constable. Four years later, while still a policeman, he met the girl who was to be his first murder victim…

Reluctantly, Mix raised his eyes and slipped a marker in between the pages. Having told Danila at Shoshana's Spa and Health Club that he would be arriving at ten to service five machines, he had better go. The book, by a certain Charles Q.Dudley, was the fourth or fifth he had read on the Rillington Place murderer and the facts he had just absorbed were already known to him. This he had expected. What he was looking for and expected to find, perhaps halfway through the book, was some hint or suggestion that Christie sometimes visited his prospective victims' homes. Had he noticed anything of this sort when he read the book for the first time? He couldn't remember.

Mix was taking the day off in lieu of working on a previous Sunday. It was useless trying to do the Shoshana job before or after work because these were the least likely times for Nerissa to be there. Models get up very late in the mornings, Mix had read somewhere, while their evenings are occupied with film premieres, clubs, public appearances, and parties at manorhouses in the Home Counties. When the happy time came, he fantasized, he and she would lie in together, maybe until midday or later. A maid would bring breakfast, but not before eleven, and when it came it would be what he had ordered, buck's fizz, caviar on toast, and eggs benedict.

He returned to reality and recognized that parking was going to be a problem. He knew that before he got there. Eventually he found a meter and paid for two hours, but it wasa long way from the health club. He told himself that all this walking must be improving his figure. Arriving on the dot often, he turned his eyes away from the chrome number thirteenand got quickly into the lift. Glancing round the girls and acouple of young men working out, he saw at once that Nerissa wasn't among them. Probably it was a bit early for her. His fussy eye appraised Danila and he decided that though skinny and scared, she wasn't so bad. Knowing her better might helphim in his quest.

'Madam Shoshana said to ask you not to fiddle about with the machines the clients are using. I'm only telling you what she said.'

'You can trust me,' he said. 'I know what I'm doing.'

'And she says not to use any oil or stuff like that because if it gets on the clients' gear they're going to go ballistic. It's what she said, not me.'

'I only use invisible fat-free oil,' Mix lied.

He had brought three new belts with him and spanners for adjusting the parts. Shoshana's hadn't been open very long, so servicing wasn't necessary, but he whiled away the time taking ellipticals apart and checking handlebar positions on stationarybikes. Whatever came out of it, he was really going to squeeze Madam Shoshana for putting him through this tedious business. Pity Danila had been told to keep an eye on him or he'd settle down in a corner and read a bit more of Christie's Victims.

Danila was very thin. So was Nerissa but hers was a different kind of thinness. You couldn't see her bones sticking out the way Danila's did. And Danila's face was like a bird's with a beaky nose and not much chin. Still, she had great legs and more tangled-up dark hair than Mix could ever remember seeing on a woman's head. He had almost given up looking for Nerissa that day. It was eleven-fifteen and if he wasn't going to get clamped or towed away or whatever they did around here, he had to be back at the car by ten to twelve.

Danila was sitting behind her counter, drinking a cup of black coffee.

'Would there be another one of those going?'

'There might be, but don't say a word, will you?' She disappeared into some inner recesses of the club and came backwith coffee, a milk jug, and sweetener in little tubular packs.' Here you are. Shoshana'd kill me if she knew. We're not supposed to give coffee to anyone but staff.'

'You're a star,' said Mix and got a smile. No time like the present, he thought, and keeping his eye on the door in case Nerissa did just happen to come in at eleven-forty, said, 'You feel like having a drink? Say Wednesday or Thursday if you want.'