The House of Stairs by Ruth Rendell Page A

to her for days, you know what children are like, so elusive and of course quite indifferent to one’s very real terrors. It’s a simple relief just to know she’s around and in possession of her faculties, answering the phone and so forth. And now tell me all about you.”
    That can easily be avoided. “Miranda told me you’d spoken to Bell Sanger. I thought you might give me her address.”
    A silence. Then the voice changes, becoming stagey. “Oh, my dear, I don’t have it. I have a phone number. Do you remember those wonderful London phone exchanges, Ambassador and Primrose and Flaxman? So easy to remember. This is six-two-four something. What on earth would six-two-four have been?”
    “Maida. It’s Maida Vale and Kilburn.” So that is where Bell lives. I feel a little bit faint; I am breathless to know more, afraid we shall be cut off, that I shall never learn those four remaining digits. “Six-two-four what?”
    And I am right to be afraid, my fear is justified, for she has it written down somewhere, but just where she can’t remember.
    “You know the size of this house, Elizabeth!”
    “How was she?” I say, unable to keep this back, unable to contain it. “How was Bell? Did she seem-well, not happy, no—resigned?”
    But Felicity isn’t going to answer this, perhaps has no opinion on it. She was, and no doubt is, a self-absorbed woman, interested not in the feelings of others but only in her own feelings about them. “I wish I could have seen you to have a good talk when all that happened,” she says. “After the trial, ideally. I had such a lot of things to tell you, inside stuff really. I mean there was such a lot I knew about Silas, personal, intimate things, though of course she was always a mystery. But you disappeared and one does have some reticence. Running you to earth wasn’t really on. Oh, dear, that does remind me! Do you remember that awful old woman I used to wind up about fox hunting? My mother-in-law’s still alive, can you believe it? Eighty-six and sound as a bell—Oh, God, you wanted Bell Sanger’s number, didn’t you? Look, I’ll have to find it and call you back.”
    “I would very much like you to do that, Felicity.”
    “Of course I will. I’m going to ask you something and if you think it’s too awful of me, just don’t answer. Don’t put the phone down but don’t answer, you don’t have to. Now, then. Did it ever cross your mind Bell might have shot Silas herself?”
    I do reply. I say in a silly, faint, mealymouthed sort of way, “Not then.”
    “Well, no, not then, of course. But at the time of the trial? I mean when all those other things about Bell’s past came out. It did mine, I can tell you. And I knew all about his games. I knew all about what he got up to and his drinking and I still thought Bell might have shot him. Oh, Elizabeth, I wish we could meet and really talk this through. I mean it’s fascinating, don’t you think? Are you ever down in this neck of the woods?” Mercifully, she goes on without waiting for an answer. “No, I don’t suppose you are. We shall have to meet in London sometime. We still have the flat, but of course you know that if you’ve talked to Miranda. Look, I’ll call you back without fail and give you that number and then we can fix something. I can’t promise when but it’ll be today absolutely without fail. Good-bye till later. We’ll speak again soon.”
    She has always had that power of exhausting those she is with or just talking to. With some people it may be enjoyable, but it is also a wearisome battle to be in their company. And there are others, like Cosette, who revive their companions, revitalize them, leave them feeling restored and content simply by their own attentive listening and ability to ask the right small questions at the right time. When I got home from Thornham after the death of Silas Sanger—and Elsa and I were peremptorily dispatched by Lady Thinnesse on the following day—I gave an