The Paying Guests

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I don’t know what’s the matter with anything any more. If your father could have foreseen —’

  ‘Oh,’ said Frances, in her automatic way, ‘Father foresaw nothing. That was his great talent.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother, with surprising bitterness, ‘and yours is —’ She struggled, and didn’t finish.

  Frances looked at her. ‘Mine is what?’

  But her mother turned her head and wouldn’t answer.

  Frances waited, then gave it up. She tapped her thumb against her lips. ‘The idea of the police being out there thinking all this, “keeping their eye on” Charlie. The idea of people saying these things about Lilian! It’s grotesque!’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll have to go and see her. I’ll have to warn her.’

  Her mother’s head jerked back. ‘No, Frances. Let it alone.’

  ‘Let it alone? How can I do that?’

  ‘Aren’t we involved enough? The police must know their own business.’

  ‘The police don’t know anything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Frances took a step away from the sofa. ‘I don’t mean anything. I just —’

  There was a rat-tat-tat at the front door, that made her jump as if she’d been hit. ‘Christ!’ she said, incautiously. ‘What now?’ She hesitated, her heart thumping. But it was less suspenseful, she had discovered, simply to go out and answer than to stand there dithering. If it was a newspaper man she would close the door in his face.

  It wasn’t a newspaper man, it was a trim little military figure – a messenger boy, who handed over a telegram, addressed to her.

  Her first idea was that something must have happened to Lilian. Lilian had broken down, told everything. Lilian was ill. Lilian was dead. She held the envelope without opening it, thinking, in a bleak, braced way, Is this it, then? Is this the moment when everything falls apart?

  Finally she ungummed the flap, drew out and unfolded the salmon-coloured sheet.

  SAW NEWS AGHAST

  PLEASE CONFIRM ALL WELL

  WAITING C.

  The words made no sense, until she saw the Clipstone Street stamp.

  She became aware that her mother had followed her out to the hall and was anxiously watching. ‘What is it? Who’s written? Not more bad news?’ She came and took the paper from Frances’s hand, and frowned. ‘But who’s the sender? I don’t understand. Is it your cousin, Caroline?’

  Frances opened her mouth to answer, groping for one of the old untruths. But the lie seemed such a weary one suddenly. Weary, and trifling; almost quaint. She said, instead, ‘It’s from Christina.’

  Her mother actually looked blank for a moment. Then her features tightened. ‘Her.’ She handed the telegram back. ‘Why on earth is she writing to you?’

  ‘She saw the case in the papers, she says.’

  ‘But how did she connect it with you? Have our names appeared now?’

  ‘She must have recognised the Barbers’.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘I’ve spoken about them to her.’

  Frances saw her mother absorbing that, felt the further rapid chilling of her manner.

  ‘You’ve seen each other, then.’

  ‘A few times, this year, on my trips into Town. She lives near Oxford Street with a friend… I thought you might have guessed it.’

  Her mother’s face twisted. ‘No, of course I didn’t! Why should I ever have thought of it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking, I suppose.’

  ‘It never occurred to me that you would be so untruthful. After giving me your word that you wouldn’t see her!’

  Frances was astonished. ‘I never gave you my word.’

  ‘As good as, then.’

  ‘No, not even so much as that. We never spoke about it. You never wanted to know. And it’s down to me, isn’t it, whether I see my friends or not? Oh, what does it matter, after all!’

  ‘Well, evidently it does matter, since you’ve been going about it in this sneaking sort of way.’

  ‘Because I knew you’d react like this!’

  Her mother’s tone grew even tighter. ‘I don’t wish to discuss it any further. You know my opinion of that young woman. Go ahead and see her, if you must. I don’t like your friendship with her, I don’t understand it, I don’t respect it; I never shall. But what I like and respect even less is your deceit. On top of everything that’s happened! I don’t know what to expect next! I feel I hardly know you at the moment. What else have you lied to me about?’

  There was nothing sinister to the question, Frances was almost sure. But it caught her off guard, and again she felt herself colour, in that scalding, incriminating way… And suddenly it might have been Friday night again, she might have just come down the stairs with Leonard’s body in her arms. She felt it all, more vivid than in ordinary memory or even in dream: the tearing weight of him, the bulk of his padded head against her shoulder, even the clownish pressure of his bowler hat. Her heart had begun racing like an engine with no connection to the rest of her. She went to one of her father’s chairs, leaned heavily against the back of it. And when, a moment later, she looked up, her mother was staring at her – and there it was, that fear, that suspicion, showing again in her expression.

  She returned the telegram to its envelope, doing it badly, stuffing it in. ‘Please don’t let’s quarrel,’ she said, with an effort. ‘Whatever you’re thinking about Christina, about – about anything, it isn’t like that. It isn’t worth it. Come back into the warm, will you?’ And she made to step past her mother to the drawing-room.

  But with an odd, darting movement her mother caught hold of her arm. ‘Frances.’ She had the air of someone who must speak quickly or not at all. ‘Frances, the night that Mr Barber died, I came home with Mr Lamb, and you – you didn’t seem yourself. Tell me truthfully, had something happened?’

  Frances tried to draw her arm away. ‘No.’

  Her mother kept hold of her. ‘With Mrs Barber, I mean. There hadn’t been some sort of a quarrel between her and Mr Barber?’

  ‘No. How could there have been? Leonard wasn’t even here. We never saw him.’

  ‘She hasn’t confided anything to you? Nothing about Mr Wismuth, or any other man? There’s nothing you’re keeping from the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to believe you, Frances. But all your life you’ve had these – these queer enthusiasms. If I were to think, even for an instant, that that woman had involved you —’

  ‘There’s nothing, Mother.’

  ‘Do you promise me? Do you swear it? On your honour?’

  Frances wouldn’t answer that. For a moment they pulled against each other, both of them frightened as much by the oddness and tension of their pose as by anything that had or hadn’t been admitted.

  Then Frances gave a twist to her wrist and her arm came free; and in the process her mother was tugged off balance and nearly stumbled. With Frances’s help she righted herself, but then she quickly moved away. They stood breathless, face to face on the black-and-white tiles.

  Frances said again, in a steadying way, ‘There’s nothing. All right? Look, come back to the drawing-room.’ She held out her hand.

  But her mother wouldn’t come. Her manner had changed, grown guarded. Still breathless, she answered, ‘No. I – I shan’t. My head is hurting. I think I’ll lie down for an hour or so.’

  And without meeting Frances’s gaze, but keeping a wary eye on her, almost as if she were afraid of her, she crossed the hall to her bedroom and softly closed its door.

  Suddenly weak at the knees, Frances tottered back to the stiff black chair. The thoughts, as she sat, came in a panicky rush. What ought she to do? Her mother knew. Her mother had guessed! Or at any rate, she had guessed a part of it. But how long before she worked out more? How long before the whole thing knitted itself together, like one of her wretched acrostics? And if she could see the design of it, then how
soon would Inspector Kemp and Sergeant Heath, and Patty’s niece’s boy, and Mr Samson the coroner – how soon would they – how soon —

  She couldn’t frame the words to herself. She pressed her hands to her eyes. More than anything else, she wanted to see Lilian. But how would it look to her mother if she went dashing off to Walworth? And suppose something should happen while she was away from the house? Suppose Sergeant Heath should arrive, wanting to put together another of his mysterious bundles? Suppose he should speak to her mother while her mother was like this? She simply couldn’t risk it. She felt an uneasiness – a terror – at the prospect of leaving things so unguarded.

  She could write to Lilian, of course! That thought made her twitch into life. She went upstairs to her bedroom, got out paper, pen, ink, started to put down, in a hasty, intimate way, everything that Mrs Playfair had told her. And she had actually filled three-quarters of a page before she was struck by the recklessness of what she was doing. You need to be extra careful, Lily. Don’t for God’s sake do or say anything that might give the police the impression – What was she thinking? In horror she screwed the letter up, took it over to the empty grate and held the flame of a match to it. The bare idea that she had come so close to doing something so incriminating made her begin to doubt everything she had done so far. She’d supposed herself in control of the whole affair. She didn’t have a clue! Her own mother suspected her of having some part in a murder! All the confidence of the previous day was shattered. She rolled a cigarette, doing it so ineptly that half the tobacco fell to the floor. She smoked it at the window, peering out at the garden, the door in the wall – wondering how on earth she’d ever thought any of it could work.

  But she resolved, at least, to answer Christina’s telegram. When the cigarette was finished, and as quickly as she could, she put on her outdoor things and, saying nothing to her mother, she went down the hill to the post office at Camberwell Green. OH CHRISSY SO GRIM BUT JUST COPING SEE SOON PROMISE LOVE. The girl at the counter looked at her as though she thought her slightly mad. Perhaps I have gone mad, she said to herself. Leaving the building she stood gazing towards Walworth, utterly unable to decide whether or not to press on to Mr Viney’s shop. The desire to see Lilian was like a craving, like the craving she imagined came after the taking of a drug. But she thought of the reception she’d be bound to get, the surprise and commotion of it. Would there even be anywhere for the two of them to be alone together? And what did she have to tell Lilian, in any case? It was Charlie who was most in danger. Lilian might say that they ought to warn him; but they couldn’t do that without giving themselves away. Wouldn’t she simply make Lilian more frightened, more likely to let something slip?

  And even in the twenty or so minutes that she had been away from the house she had started to worry about what might be happening there in her absence. She turned her back on Walworth and hurried up the hill, with every step growing more convinced that she would find the place swarming with policemen.

  The house was just as she had left it. Her mother was still in her room: she didn’t emerge until after seven, when Frances tapped meekly at her door to say that dinner was ready. They passed a strained evening together, Mrs Wray keeping to her chair with a blanket over her knees, and answering any remark of Frances’s with a vagueness, a doubt, a delay… Frances lay wide awake in bed that night, knowing that her mother was downstairs lying wide awake too; thinking of the tick, tick of her mother’s mind as it pieced things together.

  But nothing was said the following morning. Her mother was pale, calm, distant. Frances went out as soon as she could for the early papers, fully expecting to see some change in the reporting of the case; there was no mention anywhere, however, of the spooning couple. The police were pressing on with their manhunt and had evidently widened their search: they were said to be interviewing people as far away as Dulwich. But Charlie’s name did not appear in any of the columns, and, realising that, she began to recover some of her confidence. How strong, after all, was the case against him? It was all speculation, surely? There was no evidence to support it. And even if the police were to go so far as to arrest him – well, she thought determinedly, arresting someone wasn’t the same as charging them. He’d simply have to come clean, then, about what he’d been up to on Friday night. If he was at some brothel or drug-den, or whatever the hell he’d been doing, he’d surely sooner admit that than be charged with his best friend’s murder. As for the timings of it all – it couldn’t matter what time Leonard was killed. There was still absolutely nothing to suggest that he had been killed in the house; nothing to link his death with Lilian or with her.

  After a silent lunch, her mother announced quietly that she was going out for an hour or two. Frances looked at her, and felt herself whiten: she imagined that she had made up her mind to speak to the police. But it was some charity business, her mother said as she put on her coat; a set of minutes that had to be delivered to one of her committees. No, Frances was kind to offer, but she was happy to take them herself. She wanted to call in to church – her eyelids fluttered as she spoke – she wanted to call in to church on her way home.

  Perhaps, then, she planned to confide not in the police but in the vicar. Frances watched her go with a feeling of doom. Suppose Mr Garnish were to talk? She had to think it through, be ready.

  But she had the house to herself: that was an unexpected gift. This was the first time since Leonard’s death that she had been alone in it. She had to make the most of the next two hours. She ought to look for signs, for evidence.

  She felt better as soon as she’d started. Upstairs in the sitting-room, the blood-stains were as visible as ever, but the carpet, she saw now, had other marks on it, streaks of dirt and spots of ink, something that might have been a splash of tea: there was no reason for the eye to travel to one stain over another. It was the same with the ashtray. The scorch on the base meant nothing. And though she could hide it away, get it out of the house – wouldn’t that simply draw attention to it? It was less incriminating to leave it right where it was… The hearth was brimming over with a new mess, from Sunday’s fires – that was good – but the ash-pail was still there, with those scraps of gingham and lumps of clinker in it, the latter looking like the sort of greasy black nuggets one might find at the bottom of a roasting-dish. But those, at least, she could take care of. She carefully carried the pail downstairs, put on an apron and galoshes, then picked her way down the muddy garden to the ash-heap. She didn’t rush the job. She took her time as she stirred the clinker into the slurry, not caring if a neighbour should chance to look out and see her – for, after all, emptying ash-pails was the sort of chore she did every day. Even when she spotted an unburned scrap of yellow fabric in the grey her nerve remained strong. She fetched a spade, made a cut in the earth at the side of a rosemary bush, pushed the yellow fragment into it, and sealed up the ground.

  Next she got a dustpan and brush, and then a bucket of soapy water, and went over the treads of the stairs, the floor of the hall, the passage, the kitchen – the route that she and Lilian had taken with Leonard’s body. Again she worked slowly and methodically, doing far more than she needed to, moving the pieces of hall furniture out of their places, even hauling the oak coat-stand away from the wall in order to get behind and beneath it. Near the threshold of the kitchen she found a single rusty splash that she thought had probably come from Lilian rather than from Leonard, and in the shadowiest corner of the passage she discovered the neat half of a black button that might, just possibly, have got tugged from one of Leonard’s cuffs as she had dragged him down the stairs. But the splash was easily wiped away, and the button she carried out to the kitchen stove along with the rest of the contents of the dustpan. She hesitated about throwing it in, though. If the police should ever take it into their heads to go through the ashes… In the end, remembering how she had buried the scrap of material, she pushed the button into the earth of the potted aspidistra that, for as long as she could remember
, had sat on the largest of the hall tables beside the brass dinner-gong. The police would never look there, surely?

  And she had just moved away from it, was just, almost complacently, picking the earth from beneath her fingernail, when she heard the clang of the garden gate, followed by unhurried footsteps across the front garden. The footsteps made their way, grittily, into the porch. There was a charged little silence, and then the knocker was lifted and dropped.

  Don’t answer it! she told herself. She held her breath, and did nothing.

  The knock came again. She couldn’t leave it. It might be news of Lilian. She went across, opened the door – and found herself face to face with Inspector Kemp.

  He lifted his hat. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Wray.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector.’

  Her voice had no scrap of welcome in it. He took in her apron, her bare lower arms, the bits of furniture standing about behind her at random angles on the floor, and said, ‘Ah. I’m afraid I’m disturbing you.’

  She tried to speak with more life. ‘It doesn’t matter. But have you come to see Mrs Barber? She isn’t here. I thought you knew that.’

  ‘Yes, I do. No, it isn’t Mrs Barber I’d like to speak to.’ He paused, fractionally. ‘It’s you. Do you have a few minutes?’

  She would rather have done almost anything than let him into the house. But in silence, she moved back. He stepped gingerly on to the still-wet tiles, giving a grimace of apology for the dirt on his shoes. Pulling off her apron, tugging down her cuffs a little, she led him into the drawing-room.

  He unbuttoned his overcoat as he sat, then drew out his notebook from an inside pocket. Eyeing the book warily, she said, ‘Have you brought news? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, thumbing his way through the small pages, ‘yes and no. We’re no closer to an arrest, I’m sorry to say. But we expect to be, very soon. There’s been a development, you see, that we think significant.’