The Secret House of Death

Table of Contents

Classic British crime fiction is the best in the world—and Ruth Rendell is crime fiction at its very best. Ingenious and meticulous plots, subtle and penetrating characterizations, beguiling storylines and wry observations have all combined to put her at the very top of her craft.

Her first novel,
From Doon with Death
, appeared in 1964, and since then her reputation and readership have grown steadily with each new book. She has now received eight major awards for her work: three Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America; the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for 1976's best crime novel for
A Demon in My View
; the Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981 for
Lake of Darkness
; the Crime Writers' Silver Dagger Award for 1985's best crime novel for
The Tree of Hands
; the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for 1986's best crime novel for
Live Flesh
, and in 1987 the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for
A Fatal Inversion
, written under the name Barbara Vine.

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Epub ISBN: 9781409068815

Version 1.0

  

For
Dagmar Blass

The man was heavily built and he drove a big car, a green Ford Zephyr. This was his third visit to the house called Braeside in Orchard Drive, Matchdown Park, and each time he parked his car on the grass patch in the pavement. He was in his early thirties, dark and not bad-looking. He carried a briefcase. He never stayed very long but Louise North who lived at Braeside with her husband Bob was always pleased to see him and admitted him with a smile.

These were facts and by now everyone who lived in the vicinity was aware of them. The Airedale who lived opposite and who belonged to some people called Winter obligingly kept them informed of the big man's visits. At day-long sentry-go behind his gate, the Airedale barked at strangers, kept silence for residents. He barked furiously now as the man strolled up Norths' path, knocked at the front door, and, thirty seconds later after a whispered word with Louise, disappeared inside. His duty done, the dog nosed out a brown earth-encrusted bone and began to gnaw it. One by one the women his outburst had alerted retreated from their windows and considered what they had seen.

The ground had been prepared, the seed sown. Now all that remained was for these enthusiastic gardeners to raise their crop of gossip and take it to market over the fences and over the tea-cups.

Of them all only Susan Townsend, who lived next door to Braeside, wanted to be left out of this exchange of merchandise. She sat typing each afternoon in her window and was no more proof than they were against raising her eyes when the dog barked. She wondered about the man's visits but, unlike her neighbours, she felt no rubricious curiosity. Her own husband had walked out on her just a year ago and the man's visits to Louise North touched chords of pain she hoped had begun to atrophy. Adultery, which excites and titillates the innocent, had brought her at twenty-six into a dismal abyss of loneliness. Let her neighbours speculate as to why the man came, what Louise wanted, what Bob thought, what would come of it all. From personal experience she knew the answers and all she wanted was to get on with her work, bring up her son and not get herself involved.

The man left forty minutes later and the Airedale barked again. He stopped abruptly as his owner approached and, standing on his hind legs—in which position he wriggled like a belly dancer—fawned on the two little boys she had fetched from school.

Susan Townsend went into her kitchen and put the kettle on. The side gate banged.

‘Sorry we're so late, my dear,' said Doris Winter, stripping off her gloves and homing on the nearest radiator. ‘But your Paul couldn't find his cap and we've been rooting through about fifty lockers.'

‘Roger Gibbs had thrown it into the junior playground,' said Susan's son virtuously. ‘Can I have a biscuit?'

‘You may not. You'll spoil your tea.'

‘Can Richard stay?'

It is impossible to refuse such a request when the putative guest's mother is at your elbow. ‘Of course,' said Susan. ‘Go and wash your hands.'

‘I'm frozen,' Doris said. ‘Winter by name and Winter by nature, that's me.' It was March and mild, but Doris was always cold, always huddled under layers of sweaters and cardigans and scarves. She divested herself gradually of her outer coverings, kicked off her shoes and pressed chilblained feet against the radiator. ‘You don't know how I envy you your central heating. Which brings me to what I wanted to say. Did you see what I saw? Louise's boy-friend paying her yet another visit?'

‘You don't know he's her boy-friend, Doris.'

‘She says he's come to sell central heating. I asked her—got the cheek of the devil, haven't I?—and that's what she said. But when I mentioned it to Bob you could see he didn't have the least idea what I meant. “We're not having central heating,” he said. “I can't afford it.” There now. What d'you think of that?'

‘It's their business and they'll have to sort it out.'

‘Oh, quite. I couldn't agree more. I'm sure I'm not interested in other people's sordid private lives. I do wonder what she sees in this man, though. It's not as if he was all that to write home about and Bob's a real dream. I've always thought him by far the most attractive man around here, all that cool fresh charm.'

‘You make him sound like a deodorant,' said Susan, smiling in spite of herself. ‘Shall we go in the other room?'

Reluctantly, Doris unpeeled herself from the radiator and, carrying shoes, shedding garments in her wake, followed Susan into the living-room. ‘Still, I suppose good looks don't really count,' she went on persistently. ‘Human nature's a funny thing. I know that from my nursing days . . .'

Sighing inwardly, Susan sat down. Once on to her nursing days and the multifarious facets of human idiosyncrasy to be observed in a hospital ward, Doris was liable to go on for hours. She listened with half an ear to the inevitable spate of anecdote.

‘. . .  And that was just one example. It's amazing the people who are married to absolutely marvellous-looking other people and who fall in love with absolute horrors. I suppose they just want a change.'

‘I suppose they do,' Susan said evenly.

‘But fancy trusting someone and having complete faith in them and then finding they've been deceiving you all along. Carrying on and making a fool of you. Oh, my dear, forgive me! What have I said? I didn't mean you, I was speaking generally, I was——'

‘It doesn't matter,' Susan cut in. She was used to tactlessness and it wasn't the tactlessness she minded but the sudden belated awareness on the part of speakers that they had dropped bricks. They insisted on covering up, making excuses and embarking on long disquisitions aimed to show that Susan's was an exceptional case. Doris did this now, giggling nervously and rubbing her still cold hands.

‘I mean, of course, Julian
did
carry on behind your back, meeting what's-her-name, Elizabeth, when he was supposed to be working. And you've got a trusting nature like poor Bob. But Julian never did it on his own doorstep, did he? He never brought Elizabeth here.' Doris added transparently, ‘I know that for sure. I should have seen.'

‘I'm sure you would,' said Susan.

The two little boys came downstairs, their arms full of miniature cars. Susan settled them at the table, hoping Doris would take the hint and go. Perhaps she was over-protective but Paul was, after all, the child of a broken marriage and on her rested the responsibility of seeing he didn't grow up with too jaundiced a view of matrimony. She glanced at Doris now and slightly shook her head.

‘Just listen to my dog,' Doris said too brightly. ‘It's a wonder the neighbours don't complain.' She trotted to the window, gathering up shed garments as she went, and shook her fist at the Airedale, a gesture which inflamed him to a frenzy. He stuck his big woolly head over the gate and began to howl. ‘Be quiet, Pollux!' Susan often wondered why the Airedale had been named after one of the Gemini. Orchard Drive must be thankful the Winters had no Castor to keep him company. ‘It's the new baker's roundsman that's set him off this time,' Doris said sagely. ‘He never barks at us or you or the Gibbses or the Norths. Which just goes to show it's fear with him and not aggressiveness, whatever people may say.' She glared at her son and said, as if instead of placidly eating bread and butter, he had been urging her to stay, ‘Well, I can't hang about here all night, you know. I've got Daddy's dinner to get.'

Susan sat down with the children and ate a sandwich. If you had no ‘Daddy's dinner' to get, you certainly prepared none for yourself and tea was a must. Paul crammed a last chocolate biscuit into his mouth and began pushing a diminutive red fire engine across the cloth and over the plates.

‘Not at the table, darling.'

Paul scowled at her and Richard, whose hands had been itching to reach for a dumper truck, hid them under the table and gave him a virtuous glance. ‘Please may I leave the table, Mrs Townsend?'

‘I suppose so. Your hands aren't sticky, are they?'

But both little boys were on the floor by now, trundling their fleet of vehicles and making realistic if exaggerated engine sounds. They wriggled across the carpet on their stomachs, making for Susan's desk.