Thirteen Steps Down

By Ruth Rendell

This is another brilliant novel from the pen (or keyboard) of Ruth Rendell. A violent tale of fantasy lives, hatred, obsession, superstition, guilt and murder. It was so good I did not want to put it down. The only let down is that the ending is quite straightforward and not the usual Ruth Rendell ending with a twist.

St Blaise House, Notting Hill, London. When Michael “Mix” Cellini’s job brings him to London he deliberately finds a place to live near to what was once 10 Rillington Place, which is the house where long-dead serial killer John Reginald Christie lived. Christie was a doctor who not only performed abortions 50 years ago, but also killed the women he butchered and indulged in the act of necrophilia before he buried them. Among them was his own wife. Mix is obsessed with Christie and reads every book and snippet of information about him that he can get his hands on. Mix makes his living repairing and maintaining exercise equipment for his mostly female costumers with whom he also indulges in a little extracurricular recreation.

Gwendolen Chawcer is an 80-year-old spinster and Mix's landlady. She is the owner of the neglected and crumbling old Victorian house where Mix rents the attic space. Having led a rather sheltered life she rarely goes out, preferring the company of her many hundreds of books. Gwendolen hates Mix and the feeling is mutual.

Nevertheless, there are many similarities between Gwendolen's and Mix's personalities. They are truly a pretty unpleasant pair, little deserving of any sympathy. Both are natural loners, each living in their own private fantasy world, ill-mannered and neither sees anything wrong in using others for their own convenience. However, their backgrounds and upbringings were very different. Gwendolen had an over-protected and privileged upbringing, whereas Mix grew up with a loving, but domestically inept mother, and a violent step-father.

In his meticulously clean flat, so much in contrast to the rest of the dismal, eerie old house with its crumbling wallpaper, peeling paint and very out-of-date appliances, Mix divides his time between reading about Christie and inventing wild fantasies involving himself and Nerissa Nash, whose portrait takes pride of place on the living room wall.

Nerissa Nash is a supermodel who lives in the neighbourhood, and is as sweet and as she is naïve. Mix has a crush on Nerissa and so he begins to stalk her, secretly planning their 'future' together. In fact, Mix’s obsession with Nerissa pushes him over the line from a very neurotic young man to a dangerous psychopath.

Mix is superstitious and troubled by the number 13. There are thirteen stairs to climb between his landlady's part of the house and his own flat on the third floor and Nerissa's house number is also thirteen.

After following Nerissa to Shoshana’s Spa, a spa and fitness centre owned by the phoney and sadistic "psychic" Madame Shoshanna, Mix meets and starts dating the receptionist, Danila. When Danila speaks badly about Nerissa, Mix beats her to death in his flat and hides her body under the floorboards in one of the attic rooms.

Gwendolen has never been married. Her life was determined and controlled by her overbearing father, who lived to the ripe-old age of 94, thus never giving his daughter a chance to meet men. Despite her isolation and naiveté Gwendolen fell in love with the young doctor, Stephen Reeves, who cared for her father. But once her father died, she never heard from him again. However, when she reads the Daily Telegraph's announcement of the death of Stephen Reeves' wife, Eileen, fifty years later, she sets about trying to track him down.