The Paying Guests

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he told her, ‘I shall be glad of the extra days. It’ll give us more time to gather information. We’ll keep you posted as to our progress, of course. You’ll remain at home now?’

  ‘Oh, she’s coming back with us,’ said Mrs Viney, before Lilian could respond. ‘Don’t you think that’s the best thing, Ver? We’ll take her to ours. She can go in with you and Violet, and —’

  Lilian took in what her mother was saying. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to go to the shop. I want to go back to Champion Hill.’

  ‘Back there? It’ll give you the horrors! You ain’t in a fit state. Look at you!’

  ‘I don’t care. I just —’ She glanced at Frances. ‘I just want to go home, and have all my own things around me.’

  And again the inspector agreed. Yes, it might be best if Mrs Barber stayed at her own address for now, in case he and his men ‘should need to get hold of her in a hurry’.

  Had the situation been different they could have walked up the hill in twenty minutes. As it was, Sergeant Heath led them back to the cobbled yard and the four of them piled into another taxi, Mrs Viney and Vera sitting with Lilian between them, each holding one of her hands, Frances looking on uselessly from the small seat opposite. The rain was falling as heavily as ever; it came down the gutters in a torrent. Champion Hill had one or two pedestrians on it, hurrying beneath umbrellas, but apart from that the street was quiet; Frances was glad of that, at any rate. As they pulled up before the house her mother’s pinched face swam into view at the drawing-room window, and by the time they’d got across the front garden she had opened the door for them.

  For an aimless few moments they all stood about in the hall. No, nobody could believe it. It was too horrible for words.

  ‘It just ain’t sunk in,’ said Mrs Viney. ‘Poor Lenny, as never harmed no one! I tell you this much, Mrs Wray, I hope they catch the devil that done it, and I hope to God they hang him! I hope they hang him twice over! Once for what he did to Lenny, and a second time for what he’s done to Lil!’

  ‘All right, Mum,’ said Vera. She had seen Lilian’s expression.

  ‘No, I will have my say!’

  ‘Yes, I know. But you can have it upstairs, can’t you?’

  So, puffing, exclaiming, Mrs Viney made her slow way up, with Vera following, supporting Lilian for the climb. Frances helped as far as the turn; after that, Lilian’s arm slid out of her hand like the rope of a boat tugged away on a current of water, and she could only stand and watch the three of them disappear across the landing.

  ‘Frances?’ Her mother was looking up at her with frightened eyes.

  She went back down the stairs, trying to disguise the stiffness of her movements. She said quietly, ‘Yes, the police are saying now that it might be murder.’

  ‘Murder!’

  ‘And Lilian —’ She dropped her voice further. ‘It seems she was pregnant. But in the shock of all this —’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  They went together into the drawing-room. She looked around. ‘Where’s Mrs Dawson?’

  Her mother lowered herself like an invalid on to the sofa. ‘Oh, I sent her home an hour ago. Another policeman came —’

  ‘Another policeman?’

  ‘Wanting to ask more questions. It was too dreadful, somehow, to have to answer in front of her. The men have been up and down the street, and all over the lane. One of them has been in the garden. I think he might be there still. Frances, it can’t be murder – can it?’

  Frances didn’t reply. Instead she went quickly to the French windows, to see another mackintoshed constable, dark, bulky, anonymous: they were becoming objects of horror to her. This one had a measure in his hand and was making notes, as best he could in the rain, using his arm to shield his notebook. The door in the wall stood wide open. He must have been sketching a plan of the lane and how it related to the house. Had he spotted anything? Had she and Lilian left any traces of their journey with Leonard’s body? But even if they had, wouldn’t the endless rain have washed it all away?

  She heard movement in the kitchen overhead, and thought of the stains on the sitting-room carpet, the greasy clinker in the pail.

  But her mother was waiting. ‘Frances? Come and sit down, will you? You’ve told me nothing. You’ve been gone for hours. Why were you away so long?’

  Reluctantly, she left the window. She went to the chair beside the hearth. Again she had to disguise the soreness of her legs and arms as she sat. She kept at the front of the chair with her hands held out to the flames; she felt unnaturally cold, she realised. ‘We’ve been at the police station.’

  ‘The police station?’

  ‘They drove us there from the mortuary. They wanted to go through Lilian’s statement.’

  ‘They took a statement from me. They said there’ll have to be an inquest, that we might have to give evidence at it!’

  ‘Yes, I know. What – What did you tell them?’

  ‘Well, just exactly what I told Constable Hardy.’

  ‘They didn’t go upstairs?’

  ‘No, they didn’t go upstairs. But they asked some very odd things. All about Mr and Mrs Barber, whether there were ever arguments between them, or strange callers at the house. They seemed almost to be suggesting – Oh, it’s too horrible.’ She put her fingers to her temples. ‘It was bad enough to think of poor Mr Barber falling over, hitting his head, then lying there helplessly in the dark. But the idea of someone setting on him, deliberately – Surely it can’t be murder. It can’t be. Do you believe it?’

  Frances looked away. ‘I don’t know. Yes, perhaps.’

  ‘But why? Who could have done it? And so close to the house! Just yards from our garden door! When you were in bed last night did you hear nothing?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘No cries, no —?’

  ‘The rain. I heard the rain, that’s all.’

  Self-conscious, she moved forward, to scrape up a shovelful of coal from the scuttle and tip it on to the grate. But moving back, dusting her hands, she felt her mother’s eyes still on her; and when she met her mother’s gaze she was unnerved to see in it a touch of that oddness, that wariness, that had been there the night before.

  With a jerk, she got to her feet. ‘I think I’m too on edge to sit. We’re all at our wits’ end, aren’t we? Have you eaten?’

  It took her mother a moment to answer. ‘No. No, I’ve no appetite.’

  ‘Neither have I. But we must eat. What time is it?’

  She looked at the clock, and saw with astonishment that it was nearly one. The morning had passed with the weird pacing – hectic, yet clogged with repetition and reversal – of a bad dream.

  Going over to the sofa, she offered her hand.

  ‘Come out to the kitchen with me, and keep me company. I’ll make some sort of a lunch. Come on. You oughtn’t to sit here fretting.’

  Her heart was squirming as she spoke, but her voice was strong again. Her mother looked up at her, hesitating, still with a touch of that oddness about her; then she lowered her eyes, nodded, and let herself be helped from the sofa.

  While they were in the kitchen, Vera came down in her hat and coat. Lilian, she said, had been put to bed with a hot water bottle. She had had a mouthful of bread and butter, more tea, and some Chlorodyne, and they hoped now that she would sleep; her mother was sitting in the bedroom with her. She herself was heading off to the post office to telephone to the rest of the family. No, there was nothing else they needed, though it was kind of Miss Wray to offer. She wasn’t to trouble any more. They could look after Lil now.

  She must have taken Lilian’s key with her, because as Frances was clearing away the lunch things she heard her letting herself back in. And when, a half-hour later, there was a knock at the front door, she came clattering down again to answer, beating Frances to the hall. Netta and Lloyd had arrived. They’d brought along the baby, Siddy, and the youngest sister, Min. The women went straight upstairs
without attempting to speak to the Wrays, but Lloyd came out to the kitchen to say how shocked they all were, and to ask if he could go down the garden: he wanted to take a look at the lane. Frances supposed she ought to go with him. She ought really to have gone already, to be sure that nothing was amiss. But the thought of doing it brought on a flicker of the terror she had felt at the mortuary. She got as far as the back step, then stood and watched, transfixed, as he picked his way along the wet garden path and peered from the doorway at the end of it. He came back shaking his wet head. It was just like something from on the films! The police had put ropes at the end of the lane to keep people from coming through. They had marked the place where Len’s body had fallen, and set a constable to guard it.

  He took the black oak armchair with him when he went upstairs; and after that the house became a stew of anxiety and unfamiliar voices, of impossibly creaking ceilings and frayed nerves. Frances’s mother sat by the drawing-room fire; Frances fetched her a shawl, a book, a newspaper, a parish magazine. But the papers lay in her lap, unopened. Instead she gazed bleakly into the hearth, or closed her eyes with a troubled expression – or flinched, at some extra-heavy footstep overhead. Some time after four, Mr Lamb and Margaret called. A little later, Mrs Dawson returned; she was followed by Mrs Golding, from the house next door. Had Frances seen that policemen were still in the lane? Did she know that they’d been going up and down the street, poking about in gutters and gardens? Was it true what people were beginning to say? Could Mr Barber’s death really be murder?

  Frances told them all that, so far as she knew, the police were still undecided. They were waiting for the surgeon to examine the body. ‘You didn’t hear anything, last night?’ she forced herself to ask Mrs Golding. But the woman shook her head. No, no one had heard a thing. That’s what made it all the more strange and frightening…

  By the time she had left, the endless twilight of the wet day was beginning to thicken, and Frances’s mother looked ill with tiredness and strain. Frances, exhausted herself, drew the curtains at the front window and put a match to the gas, keeping the hall light low to discourage further visitors. When, at half-past five or so, the door-knocker sounded again, she groaned. ‘I don’t think I can face any more questions. Shall I leave it?’

  Her mother had twitched at the sound. ‘I don’t know. It might be someone for the Barbers —’ She corrected herself, unhappily. ‘For Mrs Barber, I mean. Or it might be a policeman, Frances.’

  A policeman! Yes, thought Frances with a sick sensation, it very well might be. She’d remembered what Inspector Kemp had said, about wanting Lilian to remain at home, in case he should need – that sinister phrase – to get hold of her in a hurry… The knock came again, and this time she went to answer it. She fought down her fear, saying to herself, Be calm, be ready.

  But on opening the door she found not a policeman after all, but a drab middle-aged couple and a boy of about fourteen, their expressions a baffling combination of apology and anguish. As she stared at them, the husband took off his hat. She saw the gingerish cast to his hair, and the blood rushed to her cheeks.

  They were Leonard’s parents and his younger brother.

  She would almost rather have faced the inspector. With an awkward gesture she moved back to let them in. They had heard the news, they told her, just an hour ago. They’d been away from home – over in Croydon, visiting Len’s uncle and aunt. A policeman had come to them there and had brought them back in a car. They hadn’t believed him at first. They’d supposed there’d been some sort of a mix-up. Then he’d told them that Lilian had identified the body. It was true, then, what he’d said? They were out of their minds with worry. They’d come to see Lilian herself. Was she here?

  Frances led them upstairs, unable to think of a thing to say to them, and once she had handed them over to Netta and Lloyd she got away from them as quickly as she could. She re-joined her mother, and the two of them sat without speaking, uncomfortably conscious of the creaks overhead that meant that the visitors were being taken into Lilian’s bedroom; a moment later there were murmurs, rising and breaking, perhaps dissolving into tears. Soon the sounds began to feel to Frances like pressure on a bruise. She stirred the fire. She got to her feet. If only her muscles would stop hurting! She went nervously back to the French windows to peer down the garden again. The door in the wall still stood open. Upstairs, the murmurs went on and on.

  But when, forty minutes later, she heard the couple leave Lilian’s room and join the boy on the landing, it suddenly seemed indecent to let them go away so soon. She nerved herself up, and as they came down she went out and invited them to spend a minute in the drawing-room. They sat on the sofa in a stunned sort of way, the husband with his hat in his lap, the wife hanging on to her handbag, as if they were desperate not to put the house to any more trouble. The boy, Hugh, embarrassed by his own grief, smiled and smiled.

  Frances said, ‘You’ve spoken to Lilian, then.’

  Mr Barber nodded. ‘Yes. You know, do you —?’

  ‘It’s very sad.’

  ‘It’s terrible. Terrible. We could hardly believe it, could we?’ He appealed to his wife, who didn’t reply. ‘On top of the other thing – No, it’s knocked us for six. It just doesn’t make any sense to us. To have had him come safe through the War… And then, he’s been getting on so well at the Pearl. We just wish we knew what happened. They’re all up there talking about it as if it were a murder. But I said, Well, how can it be a murder? Len’s always been so popular. The police didn’t give much away, you see.’

  ‘They didn’t?’ Guiltily, Frances found herself encouraging him to say more. But he clearly knew very little – hadn’t yet heard, for example, that no robbery had taken place; it seemed to hearten him slightly when she told him that. Then he learned that she had accompanied Lilian to identify Leonard’s body, and he looked at her with a bright, sad gleam of envy.

  ‘You saw him too, did you? We wanted to see him, but the police said not to. The surgeon had only just finished his examination and they hadn’t quite made him tidy. How was he looking, when you saw him?’

  Frances thought back to that plasticine face. She said, ‘Quite peaceful. Quite – Quite calm.’

  ‘Was he? That’s good. Yes, we wanted to see him, but they said best not to, today. They said we can have him at home, though, while the funeral’s being arranged. We’ve spoken to Lilian about it, and we’re going to take him. You and your mother won’t have any of the bother of it, that way. We shan’t take him tomorrow, it being a Sunday; we’ll take him on Monday, and keep him at home. They’ve been very decent about it, the police. Yes, very decent. Of course —’

  Here the boy gave a sort of squeal, making all of them jump: the grief had burst out of him; he hid his face in his sleeve. His father patted his twitching shoulder, but his mother spoke scoldingly. ‘A great boy like you! What must the ladies be thinking?’ He lifted his head at last, and Frances was horrified to see that his smile was still in place, rigid and agonised, even as his face ran with tears.

  Once she had closed the front door on them, she returned to the sofa and sat down with a thump. ‘God, that was awful.’

  Her mother was fishing for her handkerchief, looking iller than ever. ‘I wish this day would be over, Frances. Those poor parents! To have lost their son – and in such a way!’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And to have lost their grandchild, too.’

  ‘Yes. It – It’s too cruel.’

  Her mother had the handkerchief at her mouth. Her head was bowed, her eyes were tearless but tightly closed, and Frances, recognising the posture, knew that she was thinking now not so much of Leonard but of her own lost sons and grandsons – was slipping away into some bleak interior place peopled only by ghosts, by absences.

  The thought brought with it a wave of absolute loneliness, and she longed and longed for Lilian. Could she venture upstairs, just for five or ten minutes? Just to be sure that she was all right? But the
re was fresh activity up there now. The baby was crying. Water was running. The drawing-room lights gave a dip, as a kettle was put to heat on the stove. A barrier of fuss and motion still lay between the two of them – so that it dawned on her that, of course, this was how life was to be now, not just for a few chaotic hours but for days and days. The single emergency of Leonard’s death, with which, last night, they had dealt together, had simply bred other emergencies, that were now certain to keep them apart.

  The realisation made her shake. In an effort to calm herself, and to keep up some semblance of routine, she went out to the kitchen to put together some kind of supper; after staring blankly at the larder shelves she keyed open a tin of corned beef, put a couple of eggs on to boil. She and her mother queasily forced the small meal down. And then there was nothing to do but return to their chairs beside the fire to sit out the tatters of the day.

  At nine o’clock there were footsteps on the stairs, followed by a tap at the drawing-room door. It was Netta and Lloyd, with Siddy asleep in his father’s arms. They were heading home, they told Frances. They were taking Mrs Viney and Min back to Walworth on their way. Vera was staying to look after Lilian, who couldn’t be persuaded to leave the house.

  ‘We thought it best not to cross her,’ Mrs Viney confided as she came down behind them. ‘She’s had a little sleep, and a little feed; she still looks like death, mind. But Vera’ll keep an eye on her, and we’ll see how she feels about it tomorrow. I should be easier with her near me, I do know that. And it ain’t fair on you and your mother, all this upset in the house!’

  ‘Please, please don’t think that,’ said Frances.

  ‘No, Miss Wray, you’ve done enough! We wouldn’t dream of asking any more of you. We shall get her to Walworth, don’t you fear, by hook or by crook; and until we do, me or one of her sisters’ll stop here with her.’