The Secret House of Death by Ruth Rendell Page B

her.’
    â€˜It wasn’t quite the same. You’ll understand when you’re older.’
    â€˜That’s what you always say.’ The smile had gone, and with a quick glance at her, Paul went over to his toy box. The gun Roger Gibbs had given him lay on top of the little cars in their coloured boxes. He picked it up, looked at it for a moment and then dropped it listlessly. ‘Can I wear my watch?’ he said.
    â€˜Yes, darling, I suppose so.’
    â€˜Can I wear it right up until I go to bed?’
    Susan heard Bob’s car reverse out into the road. This time she went to the window and watched him. For a long time she stood there, staring at the empty street and remembering how she had told him of her loneliness on the night Julian had gone.

7
    The inquest report was given a four-column spread on an inside page of the Evening Standard. David Chadwick bought a copy from a West End newsvendor and, reading it as he went, strolled along through the evening rush to where he had parked his car some ten minutes’ walk away. Wednesday’s evening paper had carried photographs of Magdalene Heller, of Robert North and of the young woman, a neighbour, who had found the bodies, but tonight there was only a shot of Mrs Heller leaving the court arm-in-arm with a man. The caption said he was Bernard’s twin brother and from what David could see of him—his face and the girl’s were shielded by a magazine he was holding up—the resemblance between the brothers was striking.
    It must be he for whom the slide projector had been borrowed. David had unwrapped it on Tuesday night, a little amused by the care Heller had taken of it, swaddling it in newspapers under its outer covering of bown paper. And then he hadn’t been quite so amused, but moved and saddened. For one of the newspapers, some South London weekly, yellowed now and crumpled, contained a tiny paragraph reporting Heller’s wedding to a Miss Magdalene Chant. David only noticed it because the paragraph was ringed in ink and because Heller had written, just outside the ring, the date 7.6.62.
    He had kept that paper as a souvenir, David thought, as simple people will. He had kept it until his marriage went wrong, until he had met Mrs North and wedding souvenirs were only a reminder of an encumbrance. So he had taken it, perhaps from a pile of other significant newspapers, and used it for wrapping someone else’s property.
    In the light of this notion and when he read of Heller’s death, David had looked again at the sheets covering his projector and found, as he had suspected, newsprint commemorating Heller’s success in some suburban swimming event and his inclusion among the guests at a darts club annual dinner. To Heller, evidently, these tiny claims to distinction, these printed chronicles, had once afforded the same pride as the record of his Order of Merit in The Times might give to a greater man. They had meant much and then suddenly, because his life had somersaulted and lost its meaning, they had meant nothing at all.
    David thought of all this as he walked along Oxford Street and he thought also how strange it was that he, an acquaintance merely, should have been with Heller on the eve of his death, should indeed have spent more time with him on that occasion than at any time during the two or three years since their first meeting. He wondered if he should have attended the inquest, but he could have told them nothing that was not already known. Now he asked himself, as men do under such circumstances, whether he had failed Heller in his last hours, if he could have shown more sympathy and, worst of all, if there was any word he could have spoken of hope or encouragement that might have deflected the man from his purpose.
    Who could tell? Who could have suspected what Heller had in mind? Nevertheless, David felt guilty and a sense of failure and inadequacy overcame him. He often thought of himself as a