The Secret House of Death Read Free

rude of me.’
    â€˜Not at all. I just wondered . . .’ He had dark blue eyes, a smoky marbled blue-like lapis, and now he turned them away to avoid hers. ‘You do your typing at the window, don’t you? Your writing or whatever it is?’
    â€˜I do typed copies of manuscripts, yes. But only for this one novelist.’ Of course, he wasn’t asking about this aspect of it at all. Anything to deflect him. ‘I wouldn’t consider . . .’
    â€˜I wanted to ask you,’ he interrupted, ‘if ever . . . Well, if today . . .’ His voice tailed away. ‘No, forget it.’
    â€˜I don’t look out of the window much,’ Susan lied. She was deeply embarrassed. For perhaps half a minute they confronted each other over the hedge, eyes downcast, not speaking. Susan fidgeted with the little car she was holding and then Bob North said suddenly:
    â€˜You’re lucky to have your boy. If we, my wife and I . . .’
    That doesn’t work, Susan almost cried aloud. Children don’t keep people together. Don’t you read the newspapers? ‘I must go in,’ she stammered. ‘Good night.’ She gave him a quick awkward smile. ‘Good night, Bob.’
    â€˜Good night, Susan.’
    So Doris had been right, Susan thought distastefully. There was something and Bob was beginning to guess. He was on the threshold, just where she had been eighteen months ago when Julian, who had always kept strict office hours, started phoning with excuses at five about being late home.
    â€˜Elizabeth?’ he had said when Susan took that indiscreet phone call. ‘Oh, that Elizabeth. Just a girl who keeps nagging me to take her dreary cookery features.’
    What did Louise say? ‘Oh, that man. Just a fellow who keeps nagging me to buy central heating.’
    Back to Miss Willingale. Paul hadn’t exaggerated when he had said he had tidied her desk. It was as neat as a pin, all the paper stacked and the two ballpoint pens put on the left of the typewriter. He had even emptied her ashtray.
    Carefully she put all the cars away in their boxes before sitting down. This was the twelfth manuscript she had prepared for Jane Willingale in eight years, each time transforming a huge unwieldy ugly duckling of blotted scribblings into a perfect swan, spotless, clear and neat. Swans they had been indeed. Of the twelve, four had been best sellers, the rest close runners-up. She had worked for Miss Willingale while still Julian’s secretary, after her marriage and after Paul was born. There seemed no reason to leave her in the lurch just because she was now divorced. Besides, apart from the satisfaction of doing the job well, the novels afforded her a huge incredulous amusement. Or they had done until she had embarked on this current one and found herself in the same position as the protagonist. . . .
    It was called Foetid Flesh, a ridiculous title for a start. If you spelt foetid with an O no one could pronounce it and if you left the O out no one would know what it meant. Adultery again, too. Infidelity had been the theme of Blood Feud and Bright Hair about the Bone, but in those days she hadn’t felt the need to identify.
    Tonight she was particularly sensitive and she found herself wincing as she reread the typed page. Three literal mistakes in twenty-five lines. . . . She lit a cigarette and wandered into the hall where she gazed at her own reflection in the long glass. Tactless Doris had hit the nail on the head when she said it didn’t matter how good-looking a person’s husband or wife was. It must be variety and excitement the Julians and the Louises of this world wanted.
    She was thinner now but she still had a good figure and she knew she was pretty. Brown eyes and fair hair were an unusual combination and her hair was naturally fair, still the same shade it had been when she was Paul’s