To Fear a Painted Devil by Ruth Rendell Page B

Bernice seldom hurried.
    ‘It’s Tamsin, darling,’ she said. ‘She wants you.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘She’s in a state, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. All she said was I want Max.’
    Greenleaf took the call on the morning room phone.
    ‘Max? It’s Tamsin.’ For almost the first time since he had met her Tamsin wasn’t using her affected drawl. ‘I know I shouldn’t be ringing you about this but I can’t get hold of Dr. Howard.’ She paused and he heard her inhale as if on a cigarette. ‘Max, I can’t wake Patrick. He’s awfully cold and I’ve shaken him but … he doesn’t wake.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Just now, this minute. I overslept and I’ve only just got up.’
    ‘I’ll be right over,’ Greenleaf said.
    She murmured, ‘Too kind!’ and he heard the receiver drop.
    Taking up his bag, he went by the short cut, the diameter of The Circle across the grass. On the face of it it seemed obvious what had happened. In pain from his stings Patrick had taken an extra one of the capsules. I ought to have taken the damned things away with me, Greenleaf said to himself. But still, it wasn’t for him to baby another man’s patients. Howard had prescribed them, they were safe enough unless … Unless! Surely Patrick wouldn’t have been fool enough to take
two
more? Greenleaf quickenedhis pace and broke into a trot. Patrick was a young man, apparently healthy, but still, three … And the anti-histamine. Suppose he had taken the whole bottleful?
    She was waiting for him on the doorstep when he ran up the Hallows drive and she hadn’t bothered to dress. Because she never made up her face and always wore her hair straight she hadn’t the bleak unkempt look of most of the women who called him out on an emergency. She wore a simple expensive dressing-gown of candy-striped cotton, pink and white with a small spotless white bow at the neck, and there were silver chain sandals on her feet. She looked alarmed and because of her fear, very young.
    ‘Oh, Max, I didn’t know what to do.’
    ‘Still asleep, is he?’
    Greenleaf went upstairs quickly, talking to her over his shoulder.
    ‘He’s so white and still and—and heavy somehow.’
    ‘All right. Don’t come up. Make some coffee. Make it very strong and black.’
    She went away to the kitchen and Greenleaf entered the bedroom. Patrick was lying on his back, his head at an odd angle. His face was still puffy and the arms which were stretched over the counterpane, faintly swollen and white, not red any more. Greenleaf knew that colour, the yellowish ivory of parchment, and that waxen texture.
    He took one of the wrists and remembered what Tamsin had said about the heavy feeling. Then, having slipped one hand under the bedclothes, he lifted Patrick’s eyelids and closed them again. He sighed deeply. Feeling Patrick’s pulse and heart had been just a farce. He had known when he came into theroom. The dead look so very dead, as if they have never been alive.
    He went out to meet Tamsin. She was coming up the stairs with the dog behind her.
    ‘Tamsin, come in here.’ He opened the door to the room where last night they had looked at the picture. One of the beds had been slept in and the covers were thrown back. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
    ‘Can’t you wake him either?’
    ‘I’m afraid …’ He was a friend and he put his arm about her shoulders. ‘You must be prepared for a shock.’ She looked up at him. He had never noticed how large her eyes were nor of what a curious shade of transparent amber. ‘I’m very much afraid Patrick is dead.’
    She neither cried nor cried out. There was no change of colour in the smooth brown skin. Resting back against the bed-head, she remained as still as if she too were dead. She seemed to be thinking. It was as if, Greenleaf thought, all her past life with Patrick was being re-lived momentarily within her brain. At last she shuddered and bowed her head.
    ‘What was it?’ He had to bend towards