To Fear a Painted Devil by Ruth Rendell

her roughly. It looked as if he was going to leave without another word, but he stopped at the door and took Tamsin’s hand. Their eyes met, Tamsin’s wary, his, unless Greenleaf was imagining things, full of pleading disappointment. Then whenNancy kissed her, he followed suit, touching her cheek with the sexless peck that was common politeness in Linchester.
    When they had gone, taking the Gavestons with them, and the Willises and the Millers had departed by the garden gate, Greenleaf went over to Patrick. He examined his eye and asked him how he felt.
    ‘Lousy.’
    Greenleaf poured him a cup of coffee.
    ‘Had I better send for Dr. Howard, Max?’ Tamsin didn’t look anxious or excited or uneasy any more. She just looked annoyed.
    ‘I don’t think so.’ Howard, he knew for a fact, wasn’t on the week-end rota. A substitute would come and—who could tell?—that substitute might be himself. ‘There’s not much you can do. Perhaps an anti-histamine. I’ll go over home and fetch something.’
    Bernice and Marvell went with him, but he came back alone. The Carnabys were still there. Tamsin had left the front doors open for him and as he crossed the hall he heard no voices. They were all sitting in silence, each apparently nursing private resentment. Freda had moved a little away from Patrick and had helped herself to coffee.
    As if taking her cue from his arrival, Tamsin said sharply: ‘Isn’t it time you went?’ She spoke to Edward but she was looking at Freda. ‘When you’ve quite finished, of course.’
    ‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to be
de trap
.’ Edward blushed but he brought out his painfully acquired French defiantly. Freda lingered woodenly. Then Patrick gave her a little push, a sharp sadistic push that left a red mark on her arm.
    ‘Run along, there’s a good girl,’ he said and she rose obediently, pulling her skirt down over her knees.
    ‘Night,’ Patrick said abruptly. He pushed past Edward, ignoring the muttered ‘We know when we’re not wanted.’ At the door he said to Greenleaf, ‘You’ll come up?’ and the doctor nodded.
    W hen he entered the balcony room behind Tamsin, Patrick was already in bed and he lay with his arms outside the sheets, the stings covered by blue pyjama sleeves.
    By now his face was almost unrecognisable. The cheek had swollen and closed the eye. He looked, Greenleaf thought, rather as if he had mumps.
    Queenie was stretched beside him, her feet at the foot of the bed, her jowls within the palm of his hand.
    ‘You’ll be too hot with him there,’ the doctor said.
    ‘It’s not a him, it’s a bitch.’ Tamsin put her hand on Queenie’s collar and for a moment Patrick’s good eye blazed. ‘Oh, all right, but I shan’t sleep. I feel like hell.’
    Greenleaf opened the windows to the balcony. The air felt cool, almost insolently fresh and invigorating after the hot evening. There were no curtains here to sway and alarm a sleeper, only the white hygienic blinds.
    ‘Do you want something to make you sleep?’ Prudently Greenleaf had brought his bag back with him. But Tamsin moved over to the dressing-table with its long built-in counter of black glass and creamy wood textured like watered silk. She opened one of the drawers and felt inside.
    ‘He’s got these,’ she said. ‘He had bad insomnia last year and Dr. Howard gave them to him.’
    Greenleaf took the bottle from her. Inside were six blue capsules. Sodium Amytal, two hundred milligrammes.
    ‘He can have one.’ He unscrewed the cap and rattled a capsule into the palm of his hand.
    ‘One’s no good,’ Patrick said. He held his cheek to lessen the pain talking caused him, and Tamsin, white and fluttering against her own reflection in the black glass wardrobe doors, nodded earnestly. ‘He always had to have two,’ she said.
    ‘One,’ Greenleaf was taking no chances. He opened his bag and took out a phial. ‘The anti-histamine will help you to sleep. You’ll sleep like a log.’
    Patrick