Queenie had been invited to a Fordyce-Akwaa family brunch.She thought it extraordinarily nice of them to ask her becauset he company would consist of Olive, her sister, her niece Hazel, and Hazel's two sons with their wives and two babies;she would be the only outsider. Gwendolen also had been invitedbut she had refused, as Olive-this was perhaps the reasonshe had been so anxious to ask her-had known she would.
Gwendolen was difficult. Everyone who came into contact with her knew that, but you had to make allowances for her age, ten years older than Queenie herself, and her single status. It was a well-known fact that being single all those years made you selfish. Queenie and Olive often discussed Gwendolen's rudeness and "contrariness" but agreed that they must put up with it and not consider withdrawing their friendship. They were also in agreement that it was unthinkable for her, in her present state, to be left alone for more than a few hours. Queenie should be the one to call at St. Blaise House in the morning while Olive would try to look in later, as she would bebusy before that with the brunch.
Nine o'clock was early, but she couldn't help that. She had things to do before she went round to Olive's. Still outstanding was the vexed question of what she was going to wear. The pink dress or the new white trouser suit she had been lucky toget in a size 18?
Gwendolen was probably still in bed. Queenie let her selfinto the house, calling, "Yoo-hoo" as she always did becauseshe didn't want to startle her friend. She looked first of all intot he drawing room. The bottle of port was still on the table andso were their two glasses with crimson dregs in the bottom of each one. In the kitchen was the customary mess. Nothing unusual in that. Queenie knew the tidiness and cleanliness achieved by herself and Olive was bound not to last. Otto's food bowl was half full. "Without quite knowing why, Queenie felt relieved Gwendolen had been strong enough to feed him before she went to bed.
There was no help for it, she was going to have to climb those stairs. Twice, probably, because Gwendolen would bebound to want a cup of tea. Solve that problem by makingit now. The old kettle, burn-encrusted on its outside and nodoubt coated in limescale within, took ages to boil. Finally Queenie was able to make the tea, a cup for Gwendolen andone for herself, liberally sugared with granulated for energy. She put both on a tray and began the climb.
Gwendolen's bed was empty and so was the room. The bed was made, not approaching Queenie's own standard with "hospital corners" but exactly the way Gwendolen would think adequate. The curtains were drawn halfway across the windowsand the place was as stuffy as usual. Queenie came out and avoice from above said, "Hi, there."
Very unlike him, she thought. Why was he being so pleasant?"Is that you, Mr. Cellini? Good morning. Do you happen to know where Miss Chawcer is?".
He came down. She thought he looked terrible, his roundface gaunt and hollow-eyed, the skin with a clammy sheen to it. His belly bulged over his jeans and the laces on his trainers were undone. "She's gone away," he said. "For convalescence, she said. Somewhere near Cambridge. She's got friends there."
As far as Queenie knew she had no friends but her and Olive. Then she remembered Gwendolen had said she was expectinga letter from Cambridge-or had it been Oxford?-the one she had practically accused Mr. Cellini of purloining. Had Gwendolen had a letter from these friends and said nothingabout it to her or Olive? It was more than possible. It would be like her. Or thses Cambridge people might have phoned last eening. Still, it was very short notice. And Gwendolen had hardly seemed fit enough…
“When did she go?”
Must have been about eight. I went downstairs to get my mail and there she was in the hall with her bag packed waiting for a cab to come."
Queenie couldn't imagine Gwendolen calling a cab, still less having an account with some taxi company, but what did she know? How would she know?
"I supposed she asked you to feed the cat?"
"Sure and I said I'd see to it."
"Do you know when she'll be back
"She never said."
"Well, there's no point in me staying, Mr. Cellini. I've abrunch party to go to." Queenie was proud of having been invited, as a widow of no particular importance, to what amounted to someone else's family gathering. "It's a joint venture of Olive and her niece Mrs. Akwas."
He stared. “Will Miss Nash be there?"
Ridiculous man! She remembered the things he had said to Nerissa the day Gwendolen came out of hospital. He obviously had it bad, was quite smitten, as her late husband used to say."Sadly for us, she won't." Queenie disliked a man showing a preference for any woman but herself. She took a certain malicious pleasure, quite unlike her, in denying Mr. Cellini the chance of sending some lovey-dovey message. "She always has a day out with her father about this time of year and they've fixed on today. It's become quite a tradition."
She went downstairs and to her surprise he followed her."Did you drive here?" he asked when they were in the hallway."
I haven't got a car. Why do you ask?"
"It doesn't matter. I just thought if you had you might take me up to the DIY place on the North Circular."
Queenie, who generally lacked Olive's acerbity, for once forgetting to exercise her charm on a men said sharply for her,"I'm sure I'm sorry to disappoint you. You’ll have to go on the bus." At the front door she turned round. "Olive and I will both be back. We'll want to get to the bottom of this mysterious trip of Gwendolen's."
Chapter 25
Buying a sufficiently large and sufficiently thick plastic bag was less easy than he had thought. There was nothing available astough as the one he had taken from the firm's warehouse-why had he been such a fool as to cut it up and throw it out?-and he had to be satisfied with a cot mattress cover, designed to be urine-proof. All the way back on the bus he was thinking of the smell of Danila's body as it began to decay. The weather wa swarmer again. On some days it had been up in the twenties Celsius. Just the same, he knew that burying Gwendolen's body in the garden would be impossible. As he was walking round the DIY supermarket he had felt shooting pains begin, little stabs like tiny knives pricking his spine. He could disable himself for life, he thought, if he attempted putting a spade to that concretelike clay.
The body he had wrapped in one of her own threadbaresheets. It lay in his little hallway. He took the mattress cover out of its packaging and saw at once it wouldn't do. It was too thin and-he shuddered-too transparent. If he used it hewould be in the same mess as he'd been in last time-worse,because eventually there would be a search for old Chawcer. All he could do was wait until tomorrow and try to get a stronger, thicker bag.
The pain in his back had returned. He shouldn't have dragged that much heavier body up all those stairs. But what choice had he? And he was going to have to drag it farther in case something happened to make it impossible for him to refuseentry to anyone who needed to come into the flat. As well as the pain he had a sore ankle where that cat had scratched him. The whole area was red and swollen and he wondered if Otto's claws were infected with nasty bacteria. But his life was more important than pain, he thought, and he lugged the bodyi nto the living room, where he dropped it in a corner and pushed the cocktail cabinet across to hide it.
Its presence there haunted him and he had to move first into the kitchen, then the bedroom. How could you relax in a room with a body, however disguised, rolled up in one corner? In the bedroom it was better, a bit better. He lay on his bed and thought, tomorrow I'll find somewhere to buy a thicker, stronger bag and then I'll put her in it and under the floorboards. After that, I'll put it out of my mind, I won't thinkabout it anymore.