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Authors: Ruth Rendell
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blue-velvet frame. The sleeves were a bit short and under the left arm was a pale green darn, but that only showed when he lifted his arm up.
“Well, well,” said Finn.
“It does suit you.”
“I’ll wear it to go out in.”
He left her noting down her new stock in the book she kept for this purpose. Finn had once seen this book. When Lena couldn’t describe a garment she drew it. He went down into his own room and collected his tool box and the hot plate in its carrier and his PVC jacket. It was just gone two. He went in the van but not all the way, leaving it parked in a turning off Gordonhouse Road at the Highgate end.
Finn had waited to do the deed until after the departure of the Frazers. They had moved out the previous Friday. Sofia lonides always spent Monday evening baby-sitting for her brother and his wife in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Finn didn’t mind being seen entering the house in Modena Road, but he would have preferred not to be seen leaving it. By then, however, it would be dark. What most pleased him was the turn for the worse that the weather had taken. From Saturday afternoon it had grown steadily colder, there had been frost this morning, and as he drove up Dartmouth Park Hill a thin snow had dashed against the wind-screen.If the weather had stayed as warm as it had been on Saturday morning he might have had to postpone his arrangements.
Anne Blake’s flat was clean and tidy and very cold. One day, Finn thought, when he had developed his theta rhythms, he might be able to generate his own bodily heat, but that day was not yet. It would be unwise to use any of Anne Blake’s heating appliances, he must just endure it. He attached a 13-amp plug to the flex which protruded from the gas pipe behind the fridge and plugged it in to the point next to the fridge point. Then he put up the steps and climbed into the loft, carrying the hot plate. Up there it was even colder. Finn joined the flex on the hot plate to the flex, some five or six yards of it, that came out of the gas pipe. Down the steps again to test if it worked. It did.
Watching the coiled element on the electric hot plate begin to glow red, Finn checked over his plan for the perfect accident. She would come in at six, turn on the heaters, including the electric fire in her bedroom, maybe have a drink of some sort, then her bath. She might bring the electric fire into the bathroom or she might not, it mattered very little either way. Finn would be lying up in the loft on the joists between the trap-door and the water tank. When he heard her in the bath he would lift up the trap-door and drop the hot plate down into the water. Electrocution would take place instantaneously. The hot plate he would then dry and replace among the glass jars and the
National Geographic
magazines. Once more broken and unusable, what more suitable place for it? When all the arrangements of flex and plug had been dismantled, nothing remained but to plug Anne Blake’s bedroom electric fire into the bathroom point, switch it on and toss it into the bath water. Accidental death, misadventure, the fire had very obviously (a complaisant coroner would say) slipped off the tiled shelf at the end of the bath.
Finn felt no compunction over what he was about todo. There was no death. He would simply be sending Anne Blake on into the next cycle of her being, and perhaps into a fleshly house of greater beauty. Not for her, this time, the human lot of growing old and feeble, but a quick passage into the void before giving her first cry as a new-born child. Strange to think that Queenie too was a child somewhere now, unless instead her unenlightened soul still wandered aimlessly out there in the dark spaces.
Clambering across the loft, he peered out through a gap between roof strut and tile to watch the fluttering snow. In the wind on the top of Parliament Hill grey trees waved their thin branches as if to ward off the cloudy blizzard. The sky was the hard shiny grey of new
“Well, well,” said Finn.
“It does suit you.”
“I’ll wear it to go out in.”
He left her noting down her new stock in the book she kept for this purpose. Finn had once seen this book. When Lena couldn’t describe a garment she drew it. He went down into his own room and collected his tool box and the hot plate in its carrier and his PVC jacket. It was just gone two. He went in the van but not all the way, leaving it parked in a turning off Gordonhouse Road at the Highgate end.
Finn had waited to do the deed until after the departure of the Frazers. They had moved out the previous Friday. Sofia lonides always spent Monday evening baby-sitting for her brother and his wife in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Finn didn’t mind being seen entering the house in Modena Road, but he would have preferred not to be seen leaving it. By then, however, it would be dark. What most pleased him was the turn for the worse that the weather had taken. From Saturday afternoon it had grown steadily colder, there had been frost this morning, and as he drove up Dartmouth Park Hill a thin snow had dashed against the wind-screen.If the weather had stayed as warm as it had been on Saturday morning he might have had to postpone his arrangements.
Anne Blake’s flat was clean and tidy and very cold. One day, Finn thought, when he had developed his theta rhythms, he might be able to generate his own bodily heat, but that day was not yet. It would be unwise to use any of Anne Blake’s heating appliances, he must just endure it. He attached a 13-amp plug to the flex which protruded from the gas pipe behind the fridge and plugged it in to the point next to the fridge point. Then he put up the steps and climbed into the loft, carrying the hot plate. Up there it was even colder. Finn joined the flex on the hot plate to the flex, some five or six yards of it, that came out of the gas pipe. Down the steps again to test if it worked. It did.
Watching the coiled element on the electric hot plate begin to glow red, Finn checked over his plan for the perfect accident. She would come in at six, turn on the heaters, including the electric fire in her bedroom, maybe have a drink of some sort, then her bath. She might bring the electric fire into the bathroom or she might not, it mattered very little either way. Finn would be lying up in the loft on the joists between the trap-door and the water tank. When he heard her in the bath he would lift up the trap-door and drop the hot plate down into the water. Electrocution would take place instantaneously. The hot plate he would then dry and replace among the glass jars and the
National Geographic
magazines. Once more broken and unusable, what more suitable place for it? When all the arrangements of flex and plug had been dismantled, nothing remained but to plug Anne Blake’s bedroom electric fire into the bathroom point, switch it on and toss it into the bath water. Accidental death, misadventure, the fire had very obviously (a complaisant coroner would say) slipped off the tiled shelf at the end of the bath.
Finn felt no compunction over what he was about todo. There was no death. He would simply be sending Anne Blake on into the next cycle of her being, and perhaps into a fleshly house of greater beauty. Not for her, this time, the human lot of growing old and feeble, but a quick passage into the void before giving her first cry as a new-born child. Strange to think that Queenie too was a child somewhere now, unless instead her unenlightened soul still wandered aimlessly out there in the dark spaces.
Clambering across the loft, he peered out through a gap between roof strut and tile to watch the fluttering snow. In the wind on the top of Parliament Hill grey trees waved their thin branches as if to ward off the cloudy blizzard. The sky was the hard shiny grey of new
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