It was a source of dismay to Nerissa that she could never feel, and certainly not see, any of the crystals moving. She was always reproached for this failure. Madam Shoshana seemed to imply it was due to some insensitivity on her part or to lack of concentration. Certain she would once more be found wanting, she said, 'I think it's the dark blue one and the pink one.'
'Try again.'
'The dark blue one and the green one.'
Shoshana shook her head, more in sorrow than in anger. Some of her clients she had known for years, but she never etreated them with any more friendship or intimacy than she had done on their first visit. She looked at Nerissa as if she hadnever seen her before.
'The basalt and the amethyst are in your Ring of Fate today.' Shoshana's voice sounded as if it came from a long wayoff and long in the past. So might a mummy sound if it could speak. 'Both are pushing hard to break the energy barrier between themselves and your fingers. You must relax and let them come. Relax now and bid them appraoch you.'
Many times before had Nenssa been through this routine. She tried to let her hands go limp, but she was very aware of the white owl and the gray-robed waxwork staring at her, she thought, accusingly. 'Come, come, come,' she intoned. It suddenly occurred to her that this was exactly what an arrogant former boyfriend used to whisper to her while they were making love, and she bit her lip to stop herself giggling.
'Concentrate,' said Shoshana sternly.
Nerissa thought how frightened she would be if she actually saw the basalt and the amethyst move at her bidding. But only Madam Shoshana could see that happening. She began to speak.
'Your fateful balance is badly out of truth. The stones speak of confusion, doubt, and fear. They tell me of a dark man, his name beginning with a D. He is your fate, for good or ill. His destiny is to live by water… You are pushing the stones away-ah, too late. They have ceased to speak. You see how they shrink as the soul comes out of them.'
The stones looked the same to Nerissa but she knew that was due to her spiritual blindness. Shoshana had told her so on previous occasions. She was too worldly, the soothsayer had said, too preoccupied with her own appearance, with possessions and with artifacts. She wasn't sure what 'artifacts' meant, and although she meant to look the word up she always forgot.The stuffed birds and the wizard figure were all looking at her with contempt. Nerissa cast her eyes down, humiliated.
The session was over. Her homework was to pay close attentionto the man whose name began with a D and to waterwith creatures swimming in it, though not fish. She stood upand felt in her bag for her wallet. Madam Shoshana on her feetwas rather different from Madam Shoshana sitting down. Shebecame more practical and businesslike, less aware of the souland more of the pocket.
'Forty-five pounds, please, no euros and no credit cards,'she said, as if the client had never been before.
Nerissa left and walked thoughtfully along Westbourne Grove. When Madam Shoshana said that the dark man was her fate, her heart had leapt for she was sure she must mean Darel Jones. But suppose she hadn't, suppose she had meant Rodney Devereux?
She could have asked but she'd known it would have been useless. Shoshana would only have said the stones told her no more and implied that this was Nerissa's fault for obstructing them with her energy. As for the water, immediately to mind came the Pacific Rim restaurant Rodney loved and where he was always taking her, though Nerissa didn't like watching the fish swimming about in the huge mirror-backed tanks and tenminutes later eating one of them. She couldn't tell why it was different from just buying fish at Harrods Food Hall and having it later, but somehow it was.
Still, this must be what Shoshana had meant, speaking of it so soon after mentioning the man with the initial D. Of courseshe had specifically said not fish, but there were other things in those tanks, snails with colored shells and little creeping things and a creature like a water snake. Last time they'd been there she was afraid Rodney would eat the snake and that made her queasy. She'd been on the point of saying to him that she'd never go to Pacific Rim again, but for some reason she hadn't. Now she'd have to go there. It was her fate.
Mix looked up from the book, keeping his finger on thepage. What an amazing thing! Although he had read everybook on Christie he could get hold of, mainly from hunting through secondhand bookshops, none of them had stated precisely where Ruth Fuerst had lived. But here it was, a few houses along the street from the address Danila had given him. If only it had been the same house, he thought with a stab of regret. If only she had had the same room! He imagined going back there with her, maybe screwing her in the very place… Still, what he'd discovered made going out with her quite an exciting experience rather than a chore.
He read on. 'Christie killed Ruth Fuerst one day in the middle of August. 'She undressed,' he said, 'and wanted me to have intercourse with her.' ' In his book
'During sexual relations, he strangled her with a piece of rope. Then he wrapped her leopard-skin coat round her'-a fur coat in August!-'took her into the front room and placed her under the floorboards with the rest of her clothes.
'That same evening, Ethel, who had been away in Sheffield with her relations, arrived home with her brother Henry Waddington, who intended to stay the night. Because they had only one bedroom and that was occupied by Christie and Mrs.Christie, Henry Waddington slept in the front room, a few feetaway from the temporarily interred body of Ruth Fuerst… '
Mix had to stop there. He was calling for Danila at eight and he meant to leave early in order to stand outside and contemplate the house where that first victim had lived. Number41 Oxford Gardens was on the other side of Ladbroke Grove, rather shabby, much in need of painting and general refurbishment. No doubt it would now be worth some enormous sum, incredible to its wartime occupants if any of them were still alive. A cat, rather like Otto but older and with a gray muzzle, came over the wall and stopped when it saw Mix staring. Mix shooed it and made a face, but it was streetwise and experienced. It gave him an inscrutable look and strolled slowly into a clump of bushes.
Had Reggie ever stood where he was, then making up his mind, gone up the path and rung the bell? There may have been other occasions when he came here before that final fatal meeting. Hadn't the author of the best-known book on Reggie suggested they had known each other for a long time? Very probably all his relationships with his victims developed gradually. It stood to reason he must sometimes have gone to their places. After all, Ethel Christie was usually at home in Rillington Place and he couldn't always just have met them in cafes and pubs.
Mix was growing more and more convinced that Reggie had visited Gwendolen at St. Blaise House. When he first began renting the flat, she had mentioned in passing her mother and father with whom she had lived in those far-off days and she had also mentioned her mother's death soon after the war. The father would have been working as a professor, whatever that meant, certainly that he'd be away from home. Mix could imagine Gwendolen letting Reggie in, taking him into the kitchen for a cup of tea-snob that she was-while they talked about the abortion, her need for it and his ability to perform the operation. Perhaps she couldn't afford the fee Reggie asked, but Mix couldn't remember reading anywhere that he evercharged…
Approaching the house where Danila lived, at two minutes after eight, he found her waiting for him just inside the frontgate. This didn't please him, as it was too much of a sign of desperation. He would have preferred her to keep him waiting,even if it had been half an hour. But now she was with him, dressed up to the nines as his gran used to say, in skin-tightleather trousers, a frilled shirt, and a fake leopard-skin jacket. Just like Ruth Fuerst, he
