To Fear a Painted Devil by Ruth Rendell Page A

took them all at once, drinking from the glass Tamsin held out to him. ‘Thanks,’ he said. Tamsin waited until the doctor had fastened his bag and replaced the capsules in the immaculately tidy drawer. Then she switched off the light and they went downstairs.
    ‘Please don’t say Thank you for a lovely party,’ she said when she and Greenleaf were in the hall.
    Greenleaf chuckled. ‘I won’t,’ he said.
    The swans had gone to bed long ago in the reeds on the edge of the pond. From the woods between Linchester and Marvell’s house something cried out, a fox perhaps or just an owl. It could have been either for all Greenleaf knew. His short stocky body cast a long shadow in the moonlight as he crossed The Green to the house called Shalom. He was suddenly very tired.

    M arvell, on the other hand, was wide awake. He walked home through the woods slowly, reaching out from time to time to touch the moist lichened tree trunks in the dark. There were sounds in the forest, strange crunching whispering sounds which would have alarmed the doctor. Marvell had known them since boyhood, the tread of the fox—this was only a few miles north of Quorn country—the soft movement of dry leaves as a grass snake shifted them. It was very dark but the darkness was not absolute. Each trunk was a grey signpost to him; leaves touched his face and although the air was sultry they were cold and clean against his cheek. As he came out into Long Lane he heard in the distance the cry of the nightjar and he sighed.
    When he had let himself into the house he lit one of the oil lamps and went as he always did before going to bed from room to room to look at his treasures. The porcelain gleamed, catching up what little light there was. He held the lamp for a moment against the mezzotint of Rievaulx. It recalled to him his own work on another Cistercian abbey and, setting the lamp by the window, he sat down with his manuscript, not to write—it was too late for that—but to read what he had written that day.
    Red and white by the window. The snowflake fronds of the Russian Vine and beside it hanging like drops of crimson wax, Berberidopis, blood-red, absurdly named. The moonlight and the lamplight met and something seemed to pierce his heart.
    Moths seeing the light, came at once to the latticeand a coal-black one—Marvell recognised it as The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy—fluttered in at the open casement. It was followed by a larger, greyish-white one, its wings hung with filaments, swans-down in miniature. For a second Marvell watched them seek the lamp. Then, fearful lest they burn their wings, he gathered them up, making a loose cage of his hands, and thrust them out of the window.
    They spiralled away from yellow into silvery light. He looked and looked again. There was someone in the garden. A shape, itself moth-like, was moving in the orchard. He brushed the black and white wing dust from his hands and leaned out to see who was paying him a visit at midnight.

7
    O n Sunday morning Greenleaf got up at eight, did some exercises which he told his patients confidently would reduce their waist measurements from thirty-four to twenty-nine, and had a bath. By nine he had looked at
The Observer
and taken a cup of coffee up to Bernice. Then he sat down to write to his two sons who were away at school.
    It was unlikely that anyone would call him out today. He had done his Sunday stint on the Chantflower doctors’ rota, the previous week-end, and he intended to have a lazy day. Bernice appeared at about ten and they had a leisurely breakfast, talking about the boys and about the new car which ought to arrive in time to fetch them home for the holidays. After awhile they took their coffee into the garden. They were near enough to the house to hear thephone but when it rang Greenleaf let Bernice answer it, knowing it wouldn’t be for him.
    But instead of settling down to a good gossip Bernice came back quickly, looking puzzled. This was odd, for