Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

You Can’t Be Too Careful by Ruth Rendell[1]

“This is a very nice neighborhood,” Mrs. Swanson, the landlady, said, “but the crime rate in London is rising all the time and I always say you can’t be too careful...”

A new prize-caliber story from Ruth Rendell, winner of the Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery short story published in America during 1974 (“The Fallen Curtain,” EQMM, August 1974).

Della Galway went out with a man for the first (and almost the last) time on her nineteenth birthday. He parked his car, and as they were going into the restaurant she asked him if he had locked all the doors and the boot. When he turned back and said yes, he’d better do that, she asked him why he didn’t have a burglarproof locking device on the steering wheel.

Her parents had brought her up to be cautious. When she left that happy home in that safe little provincial town, she took her parents’ notions with her to London. At first she could only afford the rent of a single room. It upset her that the other tenants often came in late at night and left the front door on the latch. Although her room was at the top of the house and she had nothing worth stealing, she lay in bed sweating with fear. At work it was the same. Nobody bothered about security measures. Della was always the last to leave, and sometimes she went back two or three times to check that all the office doors and the outer door were shut.

The personnel officer suggested she see a psychiatrist.

Della was very ambitious. She had an economics degree, a business studies diploma, and had come out top at the end of her secretarial course. She knew a psychiatrist would find something wrong with her — they had to earn their money like everyone else — and long sessions of treatment would follow which wouldn’t help her towards her goal, that of becoming the company’s first woman director. They always held that sort of thing against you.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said in her brisk way. “It was the firm’s property I was worried about. If they like to risk losing their valuable equipment, that’s their lookout.”

She stopped going back to check the doors — it didn’t prey on her mind much since her own safety wasn’t involved — and three weeks later two men broke in, stole all the electric typewriters, and damaged the computer beyond repair. It proved her right, but she didn’t say so. The threat of the psychiatrist had frightened her so much that she never again aired her burglar obsession at work.

When she got a promotion and a salary rise, she decided to get a flat of her own. The landlady was a woman after her own heart. Mrs. Swanson liked Della from the first and explained to her, as to a kindred spirit, the security arrangements.

“This is a very nice neighborhood, Miss Galway, but the crime rate in London is rising all the time and I always say you can’t be too careful.”

Della said she couldn’t agree more.

“So I always keep this side gate bolted on the inside. The back door into this little yard must also be kept locked and bolted. The bathroom window looks out onto the garden, you see, so I like the garden door and the bathroom door to be locked at night too.”

“Very wise,” said Della, noting that the window in the bed-sitting room had screws fixed to its sashes which prevented its being opened more than six inches. “What did you say the rent was?”

“Twenty pounds a week.” Mrs. Swanson was a landlady first and a kindred spirit secondly, so when Della hesitated she said, “It’s a garden flat, completely self-contained, and you’ve got your own phone. I shan’t have any trouble in letting it. I’ve got someone else coming to view it at two.”

Della stopped hesitating. She moved in at the end of the week, having supplied Mrs. Swanson with references and assured her she was quiet, prudent as to locks and bolts, and not inclined to have “unauthorized” people to stay overnight. By unauthorized people Mrs. Swanson meant men. Since the episode over the car on her nineteenth birthday, Della had entered tentatively upon friendships with men, but no man had ever taken her out more than twice and none had ever got as far as to kiss her. She didn’t know why this was. She had always been polite and pleasant, insisting on paying her share, careful to carry her own coat, handbag and parcels so as to give her escort no trouble, ever watchful of his wallet and keys, offering to have the theater tickets in her own safekeeping, and anxious not to keep him out too late. That one after another man dropped her worried her very little. No spark of sexual feeling had ever troubled her, and the idea of sharing her orderly, routine-driven life with a man — untidy, feckless, casual creatures as they all, with the exception of her father, seemed to be — was a daunting one. She meant to get to the top on her own. One day perhaps, when she was about thirty-five and with a high-powered lady executive’s salary, then if some like-minded, quiet and prudent man came along... In the meantime, Mrs. Swanson had no need to worry.

Della was very happy with her flat. It was utterly quiet, a little sanctum tucked at the back of the house. She never heard a sound from her neighbors in the other parts of the house and they, of course, never heard a sound from her. She encountered them occasionally when crossing from her own front door to the front door of the house. They were mouselike people who scuttled off to their holes with no more than a nod and a “good evening.” This was as it should be. The flat, too, was entirely as it should be.

The bed-sitter looked just like a livingroom by day, for the bed was let down from a curtained recess in the wall only at night. Its window overlooked the yard, which Della never used. She never unbolted the side gate or the back door or, needless to say, attempted to undo the screws and open the window more than six inches.

Every evening, when she had washed the dishes and wiped down every surface in the immaculate well-fitted kitchen, had her bath, made her bedtime drink, and let the bed down from the wall, she went on her security rounds just as her father did at home. First she unlocked and unbolted the back door and crossed the yard to check that the side gate was securely fastened. It always was, as no one ever touched it, but Della liked to make absolutely sure, and sometimes went back several times in case her eyes had deceived her. Then she bolted and locked the back door, the garden door, and the bathroom door. All these doors opened out of a small room, about ten feet square — Mrs. Swanson called it the garden room — which in its turn could be locked off by yet another door from the kitchen. Della locked it. She rather regretted she couldn’t lock the door that led from the kitchen into the bed-sitting room but, owing to some oversight on Mrs. Swanson’s part, there was no lock on it. However, her own front door in the bed-sitter itself was locked, of course, on the Yale. Finally, before getting into bed, she bolted the front door.

Then she was safe. Though she sometimes got up once or twice more to make assurance trebly sure, she generally settled down at this point into blissful sleep, certain that even the most accomplished of burglars couldn’t break in.

There was only one drawback — the rent.

“The flat,” said Mrs. Swanson, “is really intended for two people. A married couple had it before you, and before that two ladies shared it.”

“I couldn’t share my bed,” said Della with a shudder, “or, come to that, my room.”

“If you found a nice friend to share, I wouldn’t object to putting up a single bed in the garden room. Then your friend could come and go by the side gate, provided you were prepared to promise me it would always be bolted at night.”

Della wasn’t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn’t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs. Swanson...

“Ooh, it’s lovely!” said Rosamund Vine. “It’s so quiet and clean. And you’ve got a garden! You should see the dump I’ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.”

“You don’t get mice,” said Della repressively, “unless you leave food about.”

“I won’t do that. I’ll be ever so careful. I’ll go halves with the rent and I’ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won’t disturb you if I come in late at night.”

“I hope you won’t come in late at night,” said Della. “Mrs. Swanson’s very particular about that sort of thing.”

“Don’t worry.” Rosamund sounded rather bitter. “I’ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter to twelve.”

Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs. Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn’t fallen to her, as she didn’t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs. Swanson.

Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn’t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn’t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ “followers,” noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.

The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room — necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit — it wasn’t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.

“Goodness,” Rosamund had said, “this place is like Fort Knox. All those keys and bolts! What are you so afraid of?”

“Mrs. Swanson likes to have the place locked up,” said Della, but the next night she made hot drinks for the two of them and sent Rosamund to wait for her in the bed-sitter before creeping out into the yard for a secret check-up.

When she came back Rosamund was examining her bedside table. “Why do you put everything in order like that, Della? Your book at right angles to the table and your cigarette packet at right angles to your book, and, look, your ashtray’s exactly an inch from the lamp as if you’d measured it out.”

“Because I’m a naturally tidy person.”

“I do think it’s funny your smoking. I never would have guessed you smoked till I came to live here. It doesn’t seem in character. And your glass of water. Do you want to drink water in the night?”

“Not always,” Della said patiently. “But I might want to, and I shouldn’t want to have to get up and fetch it, should I?”

Rosamund’s questions didn’t displease her. It showed that the girl wanted to learn the right way to do things. Della taught her that a room must be dusted every day, the fridge defrosted once a week, the table laid for breakfast before they went to bed, all the windows closed and the catches fastened. She drew Rosamund out as to the places she had previously lived in with a view to contrasting past squalor with present comfort, and she received a shock when Rosamund made it plain that in some of those rooms, attics, converted garages, she had lived with a man. Della made no comment but froze slightly. And Rosamund, thank goodness, seemed to understand her disapproval and didn’t go into details. But soon after that she began going out in the evenings.

Della didn’t want to know where she was going or with whom. She had plenty to occupy her own evenings, what with the work she brought home, her housework, washing and ironing, her twice-weekly letter to her mother and father, and the commercial Spanish she was teaching herself from gramophone records. It was rather a relief not to have Rosamund fluttering about. Besides, she could do her security rounds in peace. Not, of course, that she could check up on the side gate till Rosamund came in. Necessarily, it had to remain unbolted, and the back door to which Rosamund had the key, unlocked. But always by ten to twelve at the latest she’d hear the side gate open and close and hear Rosamund pause to draw the bolts. Then her feet tiptoeing across the yard, then the back door unlocked, shut, locked. After that, Della could sleep in peace.

The first problem arose when Rosamund came in one night and didn’t bolt the gate after her. Della listened carefully in the dark, but she was positive those bolts hadn’t been drawn. Even if the back door was locked, it was unthinkable to leave that side gate on nothing all night but its flimsy latch. She put on her dressing gown and went through the kitchen into the garden room. Rosamund was already in bed, her clothes flung about on the coverlet. Della picked them up and folded them. She was coming back from the yard, having fastened those bolts, when Rosamund sat up and said: “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

“Mrs. Swanson,” said Della with a light indulgent laugh, “wouldn’t be able to sleep if she knew you’d left that side gate unbolted.”

“Did I? Honestly, Della, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I can’t think of anyone but Chris. He’s the most marvelous person and I do think he’s just as mad about me as I am about him. I feel as if he’s changed my whole life.”

Della let her spend nearly all the following evening describing the marvelous Chris, how brilliant he was — though at present unable to get a job fitting his talents — how amusing, how highly educated — though so poor as to be reduced to borrowing a friend’s room while that friend was away. She listened and smiled and made appropriate remarks, but she wondered when she had last been so bored. Every time she got up to try and play one of her Spanish records, Rosamund was off again on another facet of Chris’s dazzling personality, until at last Della had to say she had a headache and would Rosamund mind leaving her on her own for a bit?

“Anyway, you’ll see him tomorrow. I’ve asked him for a meal.”

Unluckily, this happened to be the evening Della was going to supper with her aunt on the other side of London. They had evidently enjoyed themselves, judging by the mess in the kitchen, Della thought when she got home. There were few things she disliked more than wet dishes left to drain. Rosamund was asleep. Della crept out into the yard and checked that the bolts were fastened.

“I heard you wandering about ever so late,” said Rosamund in the morning. “Were you upset about anything?”

“Certainly not. I simply found it rather hard to get to sleep because it was past my normal time.”

“Aren’t you funny?” said Rosamund, and she giggled.

The next night she missed the last bus.

Della had passed a pleasant evening, studying firstly the firm’s annual report, then doing a Spanish exercise. By eleven she was in bed, reading the memoirs of a woman company chairman. Her bedside light went off at half-past and she lay in the dark waiting for the sound of the side gate.

Her clock had luminous hands, and when they passed ten to twelve she began to feel a nasty jumping sensation all over her body. She put on the light, switched it off immediately. She didn’t want Rosamund bursting in with all her silly questions and comments. But Rosamund didn’t burst in, and the hands of the clock closed together on midnight. There was no doubt about it. The last bus had gone and Rosamund hadn’t been on it.

Well, the silly girl needn’t think she was going to stand this sort of thing. She’d bolt that side gate herself and Rosamund could stay out in the street all night. Of course she might ring the front door bell, she was silly and inconsiderate enough to do that, but it couldn’t be helped. Della would far rather be awakened at one or two o’clock than lie there knowing that side gate was open for anyone to come in. She put on her dressing gown and made her way through the spotless kitchen to the garden room. Rosamund had hung a silly sort of curtain over the back door, not a curtain really but a rather dirty Indian bedspread. Della lifted it distastefully — and then she realized. She couldn’t bolt the side gate because the back door into the yard was locked and Rosamund had the key.

A practical person like herself wasn’t going to be defeated that way. She’d go out by the front door, walk around to the side entrance and — but, no, that wouldn’t work either. If she opened the gate and bolted it on the inside, she’d simply find herself bolted inside the yard. The only thing was to climb out of the window. She tried desperately to undo the window screws, but they had hardened up from years of disuse and she couldn’t shift them. Trembling now, she sat down on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. For the first time in her life she was in an insecure place by night, alone in a London flat, with nothing to separate her from hordes of rapacious burglars but a feeble back-door lock which any tyro of a thief could pick open in five minutes.

How criminally careless of Mrs. Swanson not to have provided the door between the bed-sitter and the kitchen with a lock! There was no heavy piece of furniture she could place against the door. The phone was by her bed, of course, but if she heard a sound and dialed for the police, was there a chance of their getting there before she was murdered and the place ransacked?

What Mrs. Swanson had provided was one of the most fearsome-looking breadknives Della had ever seen. She fetched it from the kitchen and put it under her pillow. Its presence made her feel slightly safer, but suppose she didn’t wake up when the man came in? Suppose...? That was ridiculous, she wouldn’t sleep at all. Exhausted, shaken, feeling physically sick, she crawled under the bedclothes and, after concentrated thought, put the light out. Perhaps, if there was no light on, he would go past her, not know she was there, make his way into the main part of the house, and if by then she hadn’t actually died of fright...

At twenty minutes past one, when she had reached the point of deciding to phone for a car to take her to an hotel, the side gate clicked and Rosamund entered the yard. Della fell back against the pillows with a relief so tremendous that she couldn’t even bother to go out and check the bolts. So what if it wasn’t bolted? The man would have to pass Rosamund first, kill her first. Della found she didn’t care at all about what might happen to Rosamund, only about her own safety.

She sneaked out at half-past six to put the knife back, and she was sullenly eating her breakfast, the whole flat immaculate, when Rosamund appeared at eight.

“I missed the last bus. I had to get a taxi.”

“You could have phoned,” said Della.

“Goodness, you sound just like my mother. It was bad enough having to get up and...” Rosamund blushed and put her hand over her mouth. “I mean, go out and get that taxi and... Well, I wasn’t all that late.”

Her little slip of the tongue hadn’t been lost on Della. But she was too tired to make any rejoinder beyond saying that Mrs. Swanson would be very annoyed if she knew, and would Rosamund give her fair warning next time she intended to be late? Rosamund said, when they met again that evening, that she couldn’t give her fair warning as she couldn’t be sure herself. Della said no more. What, anyway, would be the use of knowing what time Rosamund was coming in when she couldn’t bolt the gate?

Three mornings later her temper flared.

On two of the intervening nights Rosamund had missed the last bus. The funny thing was that she didn’t look at all tired or jaded, while Della was worn-out. For three hours on the previous night she had lain stiffly clutching the breadknife while the old house creaked about her and the side gate rattled in the wind.

“I don’t know why you bother to come home at all.”

“Won’t you mind if I don’t?”

“Not a bit. Do as you like.”

Stealthily, before Rosamund left the flat by the front door, Della slipped out and bolted the gate. Rosamund, of course (being utterly imprudent), didn’t check the gate before she locked the back door. Della fell into a heavy sleep at ten o’clock to be awakened just after two by a thudding on the side gate followed by a frenzied ringing of the front doorbell.

“You locked me out!” Rosamund sobbed. “Even my mother never did that! I was locked out in the street and I’m frozen! What have I done to you that you treat me like that?”

“You said you weren’t coming home.”

“I wasn’t going to, but we went out and Chris forgot his key. He’s had to sleep at a friend’s place. I wish I’d gone there too!”

They were evidently two of a kind. Well-suited, Della thought. Although it was nearly half-past two in the morning, this seemed the best moment to have things out. She addressed Rosamund in her precise schoolmistressy voice.

“I think we’ll have to make other arrangements, Rosamund. Your ways aren’t my ways, and we don’t really get on, do we? You can stay here till you find somewhere else, but I’d like to start looking round straightaway.”

“But what have I done? I haven’t made a noise or had my friends here. I haven’t even used your phone, not once. Honestly, Della, I’ve done my best to keep the place clean and tidy, and it’s nearly killed me!”

“I’ve explained what I mean. We’re not the same kind of people.”

“I’ll go on Saturday. I’ll go to my mother — it won’t be any worse, God knows — and then maybe Chris and I...”

“You’d better go to bed now,” Della said coldly, but she couldn’t get any sleep herself. She was wondering how she had been such a bad judge of character; and wondering too what she was going to do about the rent. Find someone else, of course. An older woman perhaps, a widow or a middle-aged spinster...

What she was determined not to do was reveal to Rosamund, at this late stage, her anxiety about the side gate. If anything remained to comfort her, it was the knowledge that Rosamund thought her strong, mature, and sensible. But not revealing it brought her an almost unbearable agony. For Rosamund seemed to think the very sight of her would be an embarrassment to Della. Each evening she was gone from the flat before Della got home, and each time she had gone out leaving the side gate unbolted and the back door locked. Della had no way of knowing whether she would come in on the last bus or get a taxi or be seen home in the small hours by Chris. She didn’t know whether Chris lived near or far away, and now she wished she had listened more closely to Rosamund’s confidences and asked a few questions of her own. Instead, she had only thought with a shudder how nasty it must be to have to sleep with a man, and had wondered if she would ever bring herself to face the prospect.

Each night she took the breadknife to bed with her, confirmed in her conviction that she wasn’t being unreasonable when one of the mouselike people whom she met in the hall told her the house next door had been broken into and its old-woman occupant knocked on the head. Rosamund came in once at one, once at half-past two, and once she didn’t come in at all. Della got great bags under her eyes and her skin looked grey. She fell asleep over her desk at work while a bright-eyed, vivacious Rosamund regaled her friends in the cloakroom about the joys of her relationship with Chris.

But now there was only one more night to go...

Rosamund had left a note to say she wouldn’t be home. She’d see Della on the following evening when she collected her cases to take them to her mother. But she’d left the side gate unbolted. Della seriously considered bolting it and then climbing back over it into the side entrance, but it was too high and smooth for her to climb and there wasn’t a ladder. Nothing for it but to begin her vigil with the cigarettes, the glass of water, the phone, and the breadknife. It ought to have been easier, this last night, just because it was the last. Instead, it was worse than any of the others. She lay in the dark, thinking of the old woman next door, of the house that was precisely the same as the one next door, and of the intruder who now knew the best and simplest way in. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but the strongest instinct of all over-rode all her feeble attempts to concentrate on tomorrow, on work, on ambition, on the freedom and peace of tomorrow when that gate would be locked, never again to be opened.

Rosamund had said she wouldn’t be in. But you couldn’t rely on a word she said. Della wasn’t, therefore, surprised (though she was overwhelmingly relieved) to hear the gate click just before two. Sighing with a kind of ecstasy — for tomorrow had come — she listened for the sound of the bolts being drawn across. The sound didn’t come. Well, that was a small thing. She’d fasten the bolts herself when Rosamund was in bed. She heard footsteps moving very softly, and then the back door was unlocked. Rosamund took a longer time than usual about unlocking it, but maybe she was tired or drunk or heaven knew what.

Silence.

Then the back door creaked and made rattling sounds as if Rosamund hadn’t bothered to relock it. Wearily, Della hoisted herself out of bed and slipped her dressing gown round her. As she did so, the kitchen light came on. The light showed round the edges of the old door in a brilliant phosphorescent rectangle. That wasn’t like Rosamund who never went into the kitchen, who fell immediately into bed without even bothering to wash her face. A long shiver ran through Della. Her body taut but trembling, she listened. Footsteps were crossing the kitchen floor and the fridge door was opened. She heard the sounds of fumbling in cupboards, a drawer was opened and silver rattled. She wanted to call out, “Rosamund, is that you?” but she had no voice. Her mouth was dry and her voice had gone. Something occurred to her that had never struck her before. It struck her with a great thrust of terror. How would she know, how had she ever known, whether it was Rosamund or another who entered the flat by the side gate and the frail back door?

Then there came a cough.

It was a slight cough, the sound of someone clearing his throat, but it was unmistakably his throat. There was a man in the kitchen.

Della forgot the phone. She remembered — though she had scarcely for a moment forgotten her — the old woman next door. Blind terror thrust her to her feet, plunged her hand under the pillow for the knife. She opened the kitchen door, and he was there — a tall man, young and strong, standing right there on the threshold with Mrs. Swanson’s silver in one hand and Mrs. Swanson’s heavy iron pan in the other. Della didn’t hesitate. She struck hard with the knife, struck again and again until the bright blood flew across the white walls and the clean ironing and the table neatly laid for breakfast.

The policeman was very nice to Rosamund Vine. He called her by her Christian name and gave her a cup of coffee. She drank the coffee, though she didn’t really want it. She had had a cup at the hospital when they told her Chris was dead.

“Tell me about last night, will you, Rosamund?”

“I’d been out with my boy friend — Chris Maitland. He’d forgotten his key and he hadn’t anywhere to sleep so I said to come back with me. He was going to leave early in the morning before she — before Della was up. We were going to be very careful about that. And we were terribly quiet. We crept in at about two.”

“You didn’t call out?”

“No, we thought she was asleep. That’s why we didn’t speak to each other, not even in whispers. But she must have heard us.” Her voice broke a little. “I went straight to bed. Chris was hungry. I said if he was as quiet as a mouse he could get himself something from the fridge, and I told him where the knives and forks and plates were. The next thing I heard this ghastly scream and I ran out and — and Chris was... There was blood everywhere...”

The policeman waited until she was calmer.

“Why do you think she attacked him with a knife?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do, Rosamund.”

“Perhaps I do.” Rosamund looked down. “She didn’t like me going out.”

“Because she was afraid of being there alone?”

“Della Galway,” said Rosamund, “wasn’t afraid of anything. Mrs. Swanson was nervous about burglars, but Della wasn’t. Everyone in the house knew about the woman next door getting coshed, and they were all nervous. Except Della. She didn’t even mention it to me, and she must have known.”

“So she didn’t think Chris was a burglar?”

“Of course she didn’t.” Rosamund started to cry. “She saw a man — my man. She couldn’t get one of her own. Every time I tried to talk about him she went all cold and standoffish. She heard us come in last night and she understood and — and it sent her over the edge. It drove her crazy. I’d heard they wanted her to see a psychiatrist at work, and now I know why.”

The policeman shivered a little in spite of his long experience. Fear of burglars he could understand, but this... “She’ll see one now,” he said, and then he sent the weeping girl home to her mother.