Tigerlily's Orchids Read online

  ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL

  OMNIBUSES:

  COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  COLLECTED STORIES 2

  WEXFORD: AN OMNIBUS

  THE SECOND WEXFORD OMNIBUS

  THE THIRD WEXFORD OMNIBUS

  THE FOURTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS

  THE FIFTH WEXFORD OMNIBUS

  THREE CASES FOR CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD

  THE RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS

  THE SECOND RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS

  THE THIRD RUTH RENDELL OMNIBUS

  CHIEF INSPECTOR WEXFORD NOVELS:

  FROM DOON WITH DEATH

  A NEW LEASE OF DEATH

  WOLF TO THE SLAUGHTER

  THE BEST MAN TO DIE

  A GUILTY THING SURPRISED

  NO MORE DYING THEN

  MURDER BEING ONCE DONE

  SOME LIE AND SOME DIE

  SHAKE HANDS FOR EVER

  A SLEEPING LIFE

  PUT ON BY CUNNING

  THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN

  AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS

  THE VEILED ONE

  KISSING THE GUNNER’S DAUGHTER

  SIMISOLA

  ROAD RAGE

  HARM DONE

  THE BABES IN THE WOOD

  END IN TEARS

  NOT IN THE FLESH

  THE MONSTER IN THE BOX

  SHORT STORIES:

  THE FALLEN CURTAIN

  MEANS OF EVIL

  THE FEVER TREE

  THE NEW GIRL FRIEND

  THE COPPER PEACOCK

  BLOOD LINES

  PIRANHA TO SCURFY

  NOVELLAS:

  HEARTSTONES

  THE THIEF

  NON-FICTION:

  RUTH RENDELL’S SUFFOLK

  RUTH RENDELL’S ANTHOLOGY OF THE MURDEROUS MIND

  NOVELS:

  TO FEAR A PAINTED DEVIL

  VANITY DIES HARD

  THE SECRET HOUSE OF DEATH

  ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN

  THE FACE OF TRESPASS

  A DEMON IN MY VIEW

  A JUDGEMENT IN STONE

  MAKE DEATH LOVE ME

  THE LAKE OF DARKNESS

  MASTER OF THE MOOR

  THE KILLING DOLL

  THE TREE OF HANDS

  LIVE FLESH

  TALKING TO STRANGE MEN

  THE BRIDESMAID

  GOING WRONG

  THE CROCODILE BIRD

  THE KEYS TO THE STREET

  A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES

  ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME

  THE ROTTWEILER

  THIRTEEN STEPS DOWN

  THE WATER’S LOVELY

  PORTOBELLO

  Copyright © 2010 Kinsgsmarkham Enterprises Ltd

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Rendell, Ruth, 1930–

  Tigerlily’s orchids / Ruth Rendell.

  eISBN: 978-0-385-66889-7

  I. Title.

  PR6068.E63T53 2010 823.914 C2010-902538-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  To Valerie Amos

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  CHAPTER ONE

  Olwen was in Wicked Wine, buying gin. She understood from Rupert whose shop it was that these days ‘wicked’ meant smart or cool, not evil, just as ‘gay’ in some circles was starting to signify bad or nasty. She didn’t much care, though she wondered why a shop which sold beer and spirits and Coca-Cola and orange juice advertised itself as purveying only wine. Rupert said, ‘That’s the way it is,’ as if this explained everything.

  She bought three bottles of the cheap kind. Bombay Sapphire came expensive if you consumed as much of it as she did. Gin was her favourite, though she had no objection to vodka. Purely for variety’s sake, she had tried rum but rum was vile if you drank it neat and she couldn’t stomach orange juice or, God forbid, blackcurrant.

  ‘Can you manage,’ said Rupert, ‘or do you want me to do you a double bag?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Your neighbour, Stuart, is it, don’t-know-his-other-name was in here this morning stocking up on champers. Having a party? I said, and he said it was a house-warming, though he’s been here for months, and he was inviting all the other folk in Lichfield House.’

  Olwen nodded but said nothing. Outside it was snowing and not the kind of snow that becomes a raindrop when it touches the ground. This snow settled and gradually built up. Olwen, in rubber boots, trudged through it along Kenilworth Parade. The council had cleared a passage in the roadway for cars – a passage that was rapidly whitening – but done nothing for pedestrians apart from scattering the ice-coated slippery pavement with mustard-coloured sand. She passed the furniture shop, the pizza place, the post office and Mr Ali’s on the corner and turned up into Kenilworth Avenue. Most of the time the place was as dreary as only a London outer suburb can be, but the veiling of snow transformed it into a pretty Christmas card. Small conifers in the front garden of the block poked their dark green spires through the snow blanket and the melting icicles dripped water.

  Olwen staggered up the steps with her bag of bottles. The automatic doors parted to receive her. In the hallway she encountered Rose Preston-Jones with her dog McPhee. On the whole Olwen was indifferent to other people or else she disliked them, but Rose she distrusted, much as she distrusted Michael Constantine. If not herself a doctor, Rose, with her acupuncture and dabbling in herbalism, her detoxing and her aromatherapy, was the next best (or worst) thing. Such people were capable of interfering with her habit.

  ‘Is it still snowing?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  Olwen had long ago discovered that this is a response which may be made with impunity to almost any enquiry, including, ‘Are you well?’ and ‘Are you free on Saturday?’ Not that people often asked her anything. She made it plain that she was mostly inaccessible. Rose looked at the carrier bag, or Olwen thought she did, maybe she just looked down at the dog, looked up again and said she must get on with McPhee’s walk.

  The lift was waiting
, its sliding door open. Olwen had just stepped in when Michael Constantine came running through the automatic doors. He had the sort of legs which, when possessed by models, are described as so lengthy as to reach up to their necks, and was six and a half feet tall, so his stride was very long. He was the politest of the residents and asked Olwen if she was well.

  ‘Not really.’ Olwen forbore to ask him how he was and, though she knew his flat was on the first floor, pressed the button for the second. It was a peculiarity of the lift that once this floor had been signalled, the intermediate could not be, so Michael had to go up to the top with her. He remembered to be a doctor, though it was only recently that he had become one.

  ‘Keep warm,’ he said. ‘Look after yourself.’

  Olwen shrugged, her alternative response. She got out of the lift without a word just as one of the girls came out of the flat she shared with two girls of similar age. None of them had ever been seen dressed otherwise than in jeans with a T-shirt, sweater or flouncy dress on her top half. One was rather overweight, one thin and one in between. As well as jeans, this one had a red quilted coat over what seemed like several jumpers. Olwen had been told their names over and over but she had contrived to forget them. She let herself into Flat 6 and put the bag down on the kitchen counter.

  The flat was furnished for comfort, not for beauty. There were no books, no plants, no ornaments, no curtains and no clocks. A deep, soft, shabby sofa occupied one wall of the living room and faced, along with a deep, soft and comfortable armchair with a detachable footrest, the large flat-screen television set. A window blind was seldom raised or lowered from its present position of halfway up and beneath it could be seen the solid cupola-topped tower of Sir Robert Smirke’s church and the tops of trees at Kenilworth Green. And of course the snow, now falling in large feathery flakes. The bedroom was even more sparsely furnished, containing only a king-size bed and, facing it, a row of hooks on the wall.

  All but one of the kitchen cupboards were empty. Food, such as there was of it, lived in the fridge. The full cupboard was rather less full than it had been at the beginning of the week, but Olwen replenished her stock by putting her three new bottles on the shelf alongside a full bottle and one that was half empty. This one she removed and poured from it about three inches of gin into a tumbler. There was no point in waiting until she was sitting down to start on it – there was no point in Olwen’s present life of ever doing anything she didn’t want to do – so she drank about half of it, refilled the glass and took glass and bottle to the sofa. It was low down near the floor, so no need for a table. Glass and bottle joined the phone on the woodblock floor.

  Reclining, her feet up on a cushion, she reflected, as she often did, on having, at the age of sixty, attained her lifelong aim. Through two marriages, both unsatisfactory, seemingly endless full-time work, houses she had disliked, uncongenial stepchildren and dour relations, she was at last doing what she had always wanted to do but had rigidly for various reasons stringently controlled. She was drinking the unlimited amount of alcohol she had longed for. She was, she supposed, but without rancour or regret, drinking herself to death.

  The list Stuart Font had made read: Ms Olwen Curtis, Flat 6; girls – don’t know names, Flat 5; Dr and Mrs Constantine, Flat 4; Marius something, don’t know other name, Flat 3; Ms Rose Preston-Jones, Flat 2; me, Flat 1. This last entry he crossed out as it was unnecessary to invite himself to his own housewarming party. The flat he had moved into in October was still unfurnished but for three mirrors, a king-size bed in the bedroom and a three-seater sofa in the living room. The place looked a bit desolate but Stuart had noticed a furniture store in Kenilworth Parade, its prices much reduced due to the credit crunch. Remembering to take his key with him – he had twice forgotten his key and had to hunt for and eventually find the porter or caretaker or whatever he called himself – he went out into the hallway to check on names and flat numbers on residents’ pigeonholes.

  The girls at Flat 5 appeared to be called Noor Lateef, Molly Flint and Sophie Longwich, and the man on his own at Flat 3 Marius Potter. That was everyone documented. Stuart, who hadn’t yet been outdoors that day, ventured on to the front step. The snow was still falling and had settled on pavements, patches of grass, rooftops and parked cars. Stuart noticed that if he stood on the step the front doors remained open, letting in a bitter draught. He hurriedly went indoors and back into his own flat where he sat down once more, added names to his list and wondered whether he should ask the porter (Mr Scurlock), the Chinese (Vietnamese, Cambodian?) people opposite, the elderly chap next door to them, Rupert at Wicked Wine, his best friends, Jack and Martin – and Claudia. If he invited Claudia wouldn’t he also have to invite her husband Freddy, incongruous though this seemed in the circumstances?

  Stuart added the names to his list, went into the kitchen and made himself a mug of hot chocolate, a drink of which he was particularly fond. He was realising, not for the first time, that though he was twenty-five, he had serious gaps in his knowledge of social usage, a deficiency due to his having lived at home with his parents all his life. Even his three years of business studies had taken place at a university easily reached by Tube. The company where he had worked since taking that degree until he resigned on coming into his inheritance, was also accessible by the same means, being no more than a hundred yards from Liverpool Street Station. The only breaks from home life had been holidays and the occasional nights he had stayed away in various girlfriends’ flats.

  All this had meant that inviting people round, stocking up on drink, buying food, gaining some understanding of domestic organisation, remembering to carry his keys with him, arranging with people his mother called tradesmen and paying services bills, were closed books to him. He couldn’t say he was learning fast but he knew he had to. Since coming here he hadn’t done much but run around with Claudia. Making that hot chocolate without scalding himself was a small triumph. He was thinking how pleasant it would be if he could have his mother living here, but his mother changed, different, tailored as it were to his requirements: as admirable a housekeeper and cook and laundress as she was but silenced so that she spoke only in the occasional monosyllable; able to remove herself without a word or a look when Claudia came round; deaf to his music, invisible to his friends, never, ever criticising or even appearing to notice the areas of his behaviour of which she might disapprove. But if she became this person she wouldn’t be his mother.

  He was thinking of this, finishing his drink, when she phoned.

  ‘How are you, darling? Have a nice weekend?’

  Stuart said it was all right. In fact, it had been spectacularly good, since he had spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday afternoon in bed with Claudia, but he couldn’t even hint at that.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  He hated it when his mother said that. It was a new departure for her, dating from since his own departure, and invariably led to something unpleasant. ‘I’ve been thinking that don’t you think you ought to get a job? I mean, I know you said when you came into Auntie Helen’s money that you’d take a gap year but a gap year’s what people take between school and university. I wonder if you didn’t know that.’ She spoke as if she had made some earth-shaking discovery. ‘Daddy is getting very anxious,’ she said.

  ‘Has he been thinking too?’

  ‘Please don’t use that nasty sarcastic tone, Stuart. It’s your welfare we’re worried about.’

  ‘I haven’t time to get a job,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to buy some furniture and I only spent half what she left me on this place. I’ve got plenty of money.’

  His mother laughed. The noise she made was more like a series of short gasps than laughter. ‘No one has plenty of money any more, dear. Not with this economic downturn or whatever they call it, no one. Of course you would go ahead and buy yourself a flat the minute you came into your inheritance. Daddy always thought it a mistake. I don’t know how many times he’s said to me, why didn’t he wait a whi
le. With house prices falling so fast he’d soon get that place for half what he paid. It only calls for a little patience.’

  Stuart was beginning to think that there could be no circumstances in which he would want his mother here, no matter how much washing, cooking and cleaning she might do, for he could imagine no radical change taking place in her character. He held the phone a long way from his ear but when she had said ‘Are you there, Stuart?’ three times he brought it back again, said untruthfully that his front doorbell was ringing and he had to go. She had barely rung off when his mobile on the floor on the other side of the room began to play ‘Nessun dorma’. Claudia. She always used his mobile. It was more intimate than the landline, she said.

  ‘Shall I come over this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Stuart.

  ‘I thought you’d say that. You’re going to give me a key. Aren’t you? I’ve told Freddy I’ll be at my Russian class. Russian’s a very difficult language and it’ll take years to learn.’

  ‘What shall we do when you get here?’ Stuart asked, knowing this would provoke a long description in exciting detail. It did. He sat down on the sofa, put his feet up and listened, enraptured. Outside it continued to snow, coming down in big flakes like swans’ feathers.

  The Constantines had lunched late, the only customers at that hour in the Sun Yu Tsen Chinese restaurant which was on the other side of Wicked Wine in the parade and next door to the hairdresser.

  ‘I must get some pictures before the light goes,’ Katie said, producing her camera from her bag. ‘We could have a little walk. We never get any exercise.’

  She was enchanted by the snow and skipped along, picking up handfuls of it. Michael wondered if he could write something about it for his column, something about the crystals all being of a different pattern, or maybe he should disabuse readers’ minds of the fallacy that it could get too cold for snow to fall at all. But by the time his piece appeared the wretched stuff would no doubt have disappeared.

  ‘Can we make a snowman, Michael? When we get back, can we make a snowman in the front garden? They won’t mind, will they?’

  ‘Who’s to mind?’