Dark Corners: A Novel by Ruth Rendell Page A

‘It would look a lot better.’
    He knew she would. He’d get to work on her clothes next. Maybe persuade her to lose a bit of weight. After all, people were going to see her with him.
     
    Lizzie was going to visit Dermot at the Sutherland Pet Clinic. She remembered Stacey once telling her that her Aunt Yvonne took her cat there for its injections. She’d also worked out that Gervaise, who’d taken her number but not yet called her, might still be living at home, if he hadn’t already gone travelling.
    When she had handed over to its parent the last of what the head teacher called ‘the kiddiwinks’, she got on her bus in the middle bit, which you were not supposed to do because if you were lucky the driver wouldn’t see you and you could get away without having a ticket or a pass. This worked very well if you were going no more than two stops. But Lizzie was going a lot further, and the driver was leaning out of his window shaking his fist at her as she tripped lightly down Sutherland Avenue.
    Dermot was happy to talk to her when he learned that she knew Carl and had been one of Stacey’s closest friends. He told her about Stacey’s aunt, Mrs Weatherspoon, whose son and daughter both lived with her in her mansion at Swiss Cottage.
    ‘Poor Stacey left her apartment in Primrose Hill to her aunt, as I expect you know. I shouldn’t say it, but it doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? “To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not everything shall be taken away, even that which he hath.”’
    ‘Is that right?’ Lizzie had no idea what he meant, and didn’t care. ‘You know, Stacey once gave me her aunt’s phone number, but I’ve mislaid it. Would you let me have it?’
    ‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Dermot in unctuous tones. ‘But I could give her yours and ask her to call you.’
    She’s already got it, or her son has, thought Lizzie. It was a piece of luck that at that moment the vet called out to Dermot to come and give her a hand with Dusky. ‘Excuse me,’ said Dermot.
    By another piece of luck, he had also left Yvonne Weatherspoon’s details on the computer. Lizzie, popping behind the counter, committed landline and mobile numbers to her excellent memory, then, on the principle of better safe than sorry, exited the file and quickly afterwards the clinic.
    Back in Kilburn by six, a good time to phone anyone, Lizzie was soon speaking to Gervaise Weatherspoon, who happened to answer his mother’s phone.
    ‘I’m so glad to have caught you,’ she said. ‘I was hoping we might have a talk before you go on your trip. About the apartment in Pinetree Court, I mean.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘It’s just an idea I had. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.’
    He sounded strangely hostile. ‘Where did you want to talk about it then?’
    ‘I thought perhaps in the apartment?’
    ‘OK. Tomorrow morning? Ten a.m.? I’ll be there.’
     
    The first time Lizzie had seen Gervaise, she had been dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. The idea today would be to create a glamorous image, so she put on the green suit she had worn for that evening visit to her parents. Getting on the bus in Kilburn High Road, she presented her pass this time and settled into her seat, conscious that she was the best-dressed woman there. Not that there was much competition from this bunch, who looked as if they were all off to clean out someone’s drains.
    She was five minutes late, but Gervaise wasn’t there. Irritated, she waited outside Stacey’s front door and wondered what she would do if he didn’t come. But he did, arriving just as she was making her contingency plans and letting them both in.
    Inside, he looked her up and down. ‘That thing you’re wearing looks exactly like one Stacey had in her slimmer days.’
    ‘Does it? Well, it isn’t hers. Stacey was never as thin as me.’
    He laughed. ‘Don’t you girls ever watch films from the fifties? All the women in them are what you call fat. Marilyn