happen to know if woodworm
'I really don't know, Gwen. I've never heard of it smelling.'
'Perhaps it was my imagination. I'd take you up and showyou only that great-niece of yours is coming in five minutes.'
Hazel came back, followed by Otto. 'Your lovely cat rubbed himself against me and when I stroked him he followed me down.'
'Yes, it does seem to bestow its favors on some people,' said Gwendolen in the sort of voice that implied there was no accounting for tastes.
Watching outside Nerissa's house in Campden Hill Square, Mix was rewarded by the sight of her coming out of her front door soon after half-past four and getting into her car. This time she was elegantly dressed in a honey- colored trouser suit and a large golden hat that she took off and deposited on thepassenger seat. She drove past him down the hill, slowing and turning her head briefly to stare at him. He was pleased. She'll know me again, he thought.
He had one more call to make before going home. This was at a house in Pembroke Villas, home of one of those rare clients who possessed a treadmill and actually used it, if not daily, three or four times a week. The belt on the machine hadshifted on its rollers too far to the left and Mrs. Plymdale wasn't strong enough, despite all her working out, to ply the spanner and fix it herself.
Her house had a drive on which he could park his car. He congratulated her on her adherence to exercise, adjusted the belt and oiled the machine. But the belt really needed renewing and he advised her to order a replacement now. The visit was completed in fifteen minutes and he was free for the rest of the day. He drove home via the Portobello Road, LadbrokeGrove, and Oxford Gardens, stopping on the way to buy a half-bottle of gin, a bottle of red wine, and a frozen chicken masala.
The late afternoon was very hot and the wind had dropped.He thought, I wonder if they've started looking for that girl,that Danila, there's been nothing in the papers so no one's told the police. He was afraid to find out but at the same time he wanted to know. If Shoshana's Spa didn't care, surely the people she'd rented that room from, surely they'd be wondering. He turned into St. Blaise Avenue. Outside the house where he lived, on a single yellow line, was parked a golden Jaguar. Funny, it looked a lot like Nerissa's from here. But, great cars as they were, one Jaguar was very much like another. That sharp-faced traffic warden he'd spotted round the corner wouldbe down on its owner like a ton of bricks.
He couldn't help wishing he'd noted Nerissa's registration number but he never had. There had seemed no point. He put his own car on the residents' parking, locked it, and wentacross the street to the Jaguar. Her large golden hat was lyingon the passenger seat. So the car was hers. He lifted his eyes,turned around and came face to face with her. He couldn't beI dreaming, it must be real…
'Nerissa,' he said, 'it's wonderful to get to talk to you at last.'She raised her large black eyes to his but said nothing. She was standing quite still, as if in shock.
'You're parked on a yellow line, Nerissa,' he said. 'The traffic warden will catch you. Let me move the car for you,Nerissa.'
'Miss Nash to you,' said a voice from behind her. He had had eyes only for her, he hadn't seen either of the other two women. They were the kind who might have been invisible,and he never noticed them. The one who had spoken said, 'My daughter will drive her own car, thank you. She is about to do so.'
Nerissa smiled at him. It was such a radiant smile, sweet, kindly, and forbearing, that he almost fell on his knees at her feet. 'That was very thoughtful of you,' she said, got into the car and tossed the hat onto the backseat. The window was wound down. 'Bye, now.'
The car disappeared around the corner just as the warden appeared, almost running, documentation in hand. Mix stood for a moment on the hallowed ground where the Jaguar had been, now occupied only by an empty beer can, a strip of oilyrag, and a Magnum ice-cream wrapper.
The warden fancied himself as a wit. 'Stay there and you'llget clamped, sir.'
'Ha, ha,' said Mix.
He drifted toward the house. So much of what happened to him these days had this dreaml ike quality about it. The dreamswere either glorious like the most recent, or nightmarish. What had become of reality? Well, it was real that he had spoken to Nerissa and-wonder of wonders!-she had spoken to him. And she had been so nice, so charming. She had called him thoughtful. If that old woman who said she was her mother hadn't interfered she'd probably have let him move the car, would even have got in beside him and let him drive her home. But the old woman had interfered. Mix would have liked to knock her down and trample on her. How could she be Nerissa's mother with that reddish-gray hair and that pale dog-face?
The house was always quiet, but this afternoon it seemed unusually silent. He began to climb the stairs. Nerissa wouldr ecognize him another time. She would come out and speak to him, maybe invite him in for a coffee. When that happened it would be his chance to ask her out. He'd take her to that double-barreled Italian place with the funny name that won the Italian Restaurant of the Year award. Luckily, he'd been able to save a bit. He'd wanted it for one of those flat-screen TVs, but Nerissa was far more important.
As he reached the top flight, thoughts of Reggie and his ghost invariably drove out everything else. Even Nerissa hadn't sufficient power over him to displace that. It was early, of course, but already dusk and the passages up here were always dark. Sometimes he thought of shutting his eyes when he got to the top and letting himself blind into his flat, but he feared ahand touching him on the shoulder if he did that or a voice whispering in his ear. Better to face up to it and look. No one was there, nothing was there. Everything was as it ought to be. Or was it? Mix stood still, trying to remember. He was almost positive he had shut the door to the room where Danila lay under the floorboards. He knew he had because he always did. It had never been left ajar like that in all the time he'dbeen here.
Tiptoeing for some reason, he approached the door, thought that flinging it open would be the best way but opened it stealthily just the same. The room was empty and very hot. Sun blazed down on the glass. A smell, not very strong but quite unpleasant, must be coming in through the open window, only the window wasn't open. He crossed to it and triedt o raise the sash but found this impossible, the sashcords werebroken, one of them dangling. Some of the smells you got in London were untraceable and seemed to make their way in through cracks in the fabric of a house. He looked out of the window. The Indian man's guinea fowl were huddled together on the roof of a low shed, watched by Otto on the wall.
Closing the door behind him, Mix put his key into his own lock. Not only a strange smell but strange music too. It must have started up while he was in that room, the sort of music he had never been able to follow or understand, while some people seemed to like it. He suspected they didn't really like it but pretended to because it made them seem clever. A piano, possibly two pianos, tinkled away while someone sawed at a violin. Where was it coming from? No doubt, the old bat's bedroom. He went into the flat, thinking about that girl under the floorboards.
Was he going to leave her there? He hadn't intended that at first. The room next door was just a temporary resting place.,He'd meant to put the body in the boot of his car and disposeof it somewhere. Reggie had never gone so far as that. His victims had all been buried inside the house or in the garden, but Reggie hadn't got a car, few had in those days. Of course his own experience was very different from Reggie's. The necrophile had killed all those women in order to have sex with them as they lay dying or were recently dead while he, Mix, had killed someone in self-defense because she said such dreadful things to him. What he had done was no more than manslaughter.
In Reggie's day, forensics hadn't reached anywhere like thepeak of expertise they had achieved now. Mix knew all about it, as anyone must who watched television. Now, with all the tests they did, they'd be able to tell if he'd carried a girl's body in hiscar, they'd know who she was by DNA testing. Reggie had to conceal those bodies from his wife until she became his victim too. He was forced to bury them. Surely things would be far safer for himself if he left Danila where she was, where no onewould ever have reason to go. But who had been in that room today? Probably old Chawcer, hunting for more rubbish in the drawers of that cabinet.
Suppose it had been Reggie's ghost, fascinated by someone else's concealment of a body? Suppose Reggie, instead of haunting him with intent to frighten, was watching over him? He'd feel better about it when he'd been back to Madam Shoshana and heard what she had to say.
But a ghost was equally frightening, he thought, whether it was threatening you or protecting you. The fact
