Thirteen Steps Down Read Free

street,
    French windows at the back giving onthe garden. When she was reading,
    Gwendolen reclined on a sofa upholstered in dark brown corduroy, its
    back surmounted with a carved mahogany dragon. The dragon's tail
    curved round to meet one of the sofa arms, while its head reared up as it
    snarled at the black marble fireplace. Most of the furniture was rather
    like that, carved and thickly padded and covered in velvet that was
    brown or dull green or the dark red of claret, but some was made of dark
    veined marble with gilt legs. There was a very large mirror on one wall,
    framed in gilt leaves and fruit and curlicues, which had grown dull with
    time and lack of care.
    Beyond the French windows, open now to the warm evening light, lay
    the garden. Gwendolen still saw it as it used to be, the lawn closely
    mown to the smoothness of emerald velvet, the herbaceous border a light
    with flowers, the trees prunedto make the best of their luxuriant foliage.
    Or, rather, she saw that it could be like that with a little attention,
    nothing thatcouldn't be achieved by a day's work. That the grass was
    knee high, the flowerbeds a mass of weeds, and the trees ruined by dead
    branches, escaped her notice. The printed word was more real to her
    than a comfortable interior and pleasing exterior.
    Her mind and her memories too were occasionally stronger than the
    book; then she laid it down to stare at the brownish cobweb-hung ceiling
    and the dusty prisms on the chandelier, to think and to remember.
    The man Cellini she disliked, but that was of small importance. His
    inelegant conversation had awakened sleeping things, Christie and his
    murders, Rillington Place, her fear, Dr. Reeves, and Bertha. It must be at
    least fifty-two years ago, maybe fifty-three. Rillington Place had been a
    sordid slum, the terraces of houses with front doors opening onto the
    street, an iron foundry with a tall chimney at the far end of it. Until she
    went there she had no idea such places existed. She had led a sheltered
    life, both before that day and after it. Bertha would have married--those
    sort of people always did. Probably had a string of children who by now
    would be middle-aged, the first one of them the cause of her misfortunes.
    Why did women behave like that? She had never understood. She had
    never been tempted. Not even with Dr. Reeves. Her feelings for him had
    always been chaste and honorable, as had his for her. She was sure of
    that, in spite of his subsequent behavior. Perhaps, after all, she had
    chosen the better part.
    What on earth made Cellini so interested in Christie? It wasn't a
    healthy attitude of mind. Gwendolen picked up her book again. Not in
    this one but in another of George Eliot's, Adam Bede, there was a girl
    who had behaved like Bertha and met a dreadful fate. She read for
    another half hour, lost to the world, oblivious to everything but the page
    in front of her. A footfall above her head alerted her.
    Poor as her sight was becoming, Gwendolen's hearing was superb. Not
    for a woman of her age but for anyone of any age. Her friend Olive
    Fordyce said she was sure Gwendolen could hear a bat squeak. She
    listened now. He was corming down the stairs. No doubt he thought she
    didn't know he took his shoes off in an attempt to corme and go secretly.
    She was not so easily deceived. The lowest flight creaked. Nothing he
    could do would put a stop to that, she thought triumphantly. She heard
    him padding across the hall but when he closed the front door it was
    with a slam that shook the house and caused a whitish flake to drop off
    the ceiling onto her left foot.
    She went to one of the front windows and saw him getting into his car.
    It was a small blue car and, in her opinion, he kept it absurdly clean.
    When he had gone she went out to the kitchen, opened the door on an
    ancient and never-used spindryer to take out a netting bag which had
    once held potatoes. The bag was full of keys. No labels were attached to
    them but