When Terry was still, Ruth took one of the empty beer cans and tore it open as she had seen Blackie do. And moved to the sleeping Jenny.

When Ruth had let Victoria from the wardrobe, she fed the cat in the kitchen. Victoria had come out quite willingly once the music was switched off. She sniffed the body of Julie on the landing, and next Terry's body briefly, below, but the corpses did not hold her interest. When she had eaten, Ruth carried Victoria back upstairs. The cat sat on the side of the bath as Ruth washed off the ejected blood.

The bed in the bedroom was clean and they slept there, the cat on Ruth's pillow, Ruth's cheek in the cat's soft fur.

Ruth had a lie-in in the morning. About midday, she got up, fed the cat again—the last tin but one of the cat food—and made herself beefburgers, peas, and oven chips from Julie's slender stores.

The milkman had not roused her. He often could not rouse Julie and Terry.

When she had had the food, Ruth checked the house for anything useful, and took some T-shirts of Julie's and Terry's, and a small amount of paper money which she found in a drawer.

At two o'clock, Ruth, carrying her bag and Victoria on alternate shoulders, used Blackie's lighter to set a small fire in Terry's lair, utilizing some of Terry's short fiction for the purpose.

The cat glared at the fire, and when the door of the lair was shut, Ruth carried the cat down and out of the house. She put Victoria by Mrs. Macdonald's door, separated by the safe distance of the garden passage. Ruth left Victoria on the Macdonald doorstep, eating her last tin of cat food off a saucer. Before she went away, Ruth rang Mrs. Macdonald's bell.

From farther up the street Ruth witnessed Mrs. Macdonald coming out, and Victoria trotting into her hall.

Smoke was already issuing from the top of Julie and Terry's house, but Mrs. Macdonald did not seem to notice it yet. She would say later the silence had puzzled her, for by eleven on Sundays Julie normally had the music center going.

The music center blew up at three o'clock arid the top floor fell through into the downstairs room, precipitating all that was left of Blackie and Julie onto the cheap carpet, which was by then also on fire. By then, too, Mrs. Macdonald, with a purring Victoria in her arms, had called the fire brigade.

CHAPTER 10

BEYOND THE CONSERVATORY THERE WAS a terrace laid with peach and terra-cotta tiles. A statue stood on it, a draped stone woman with a stone basket on her shoulder. As summer had begun, red and wine geraniums had come from the basket.

Under the terrace six steps went down into the garden.