The Paying Guests

  The horror of it stayed with Frances all day. It followed her like a shadow to bed, and found its way into her dreams. In the early hours of Monday morning she awoke with a dreadful start, convinced that she’d heard the sound of someone furiously knocking at the front door. Could it be the police? Could it even be Lilian? The hallucination was so vivid that at last, quaking with apprehension, she lit her candle, tiptoed downstairs, and quietly drew the door open on its chain. She found the porch quite empty, the street beyond it dark and still, with only a few mouse-like movements here and there as the breeze got hold of fallen leaves and made them scuttle.

  Later that day, worn out by the lonely churning of her thoughts, she took a tram into Town and went to Clipstone Street. And the moment the door to the flat was opened and she saw Christina’s familiar face – the childish blue eyes, the terrible haircut – she appalled herself by bursting into tears.

  ‘Oh, Chrissy.’

  Christina came forward and took her in her arms. Frances wept against her shoulder, then fished for a handkerchief, holding the back of her hand to her running nose, embarrassed. ‘Stevie isn’t here, is she?’

  ‘No, Stevie’s at school, of course. Come in off the landing.’

  ‘I’m disturbing you.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Come in. I’ve been longing to see you.’

  She led Frances into the flat, put her to sit in the velveteen armchair. She drew the hat from her head and the gloves from her fingers; she set a kettle of water to heat on the gas-ring, then opened a drawer and produced a bottle of brandy and two tumblers. Frances’s tears had begun to subside. She was wiping her face. But when Christina put the tumbler into her hand the gesture set her off again, worse than before. She took a single unsteady sip, the glass rattling against her teeth. Then she set it down and cried into her handkerchief – cried until her head was throbbing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed at last.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Christina, ‘for God’s sake. Drink your brandy. Will you have a blanket? You’re freezing! Why are you so cold?’

  Frances tried another sip, then put the tumbler aside. ‘I don’t think I’ve been warm, not for a moment, since —’ She couldn’t finish.

  Christina fetched a tartan rug, brought out the electric fire. Sitting down in the opposite chair, she said, ‘What on earth’s been happening to you?’

  Frances shuddered. ‘The first couple of days after he died – I don’t know, now, how we all got through them. We did it inch by inch, I think, like climbing a cliff. Then it seemed to be all right. But now – I don’t know what’s going on. The police have got some idea in their heads. It’s terrifying.’

  ‘Terrifying, how?’

  ‘Have you been following the case in the papers? You know there’s this man, Leonard’s friend? Charlie Wismuth? He’s supposed to have spent the evening with Leonard before he died. But the police don’t believe him. And the worst of it is, they think that Lilian – they think that Lilian might have – Christ!’ Her lips were twitching. ‘I can’t even say it. I haven’t seen her since the funeral. And even then I couldn’t get near her. It was unbelievable. No one on Leonard’s side will talk to her. The two families were practically tearing up tombstones and hurling them at each other! At home I do nothing but worry. My mother’s as bad as the police. I just don’t know what to do. Lilian’s at Walworth. We can’t talk, we can’t see each other —’

  ‘It can’t last for ever, surely?’

  ‘I feel so utterly alone.’

  ‘But it can’t go on and on, can it?’

  ‘Something dreadful’s going to happen, I know it is.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand. You say the police suspect Lilian? But of what, exactly? And why?’

  ‘It all turns on Charlie’s statement. He isn’t telling the truth about where he was on the night Leonard died.’

  ‘They think he had something to do with the murder?’

  ‘Yes. But he didn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just – I just know he didn’t. But they’re imagining that there’s been some sort of love affair between him and Lilian. That she… put him up to it. I don’t know.’

  ‘Do they have any evidence?’

  ‘Of course they don’t.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Well, of course I’m sure! What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose. It’s just, to see you dragged into all this…’

  ‘The police are simply fastening things together. Ridiculous things. Lilian’s behaviour at her sister’s party. The fact that she and Leonard weren’t happy. The fact that his life was insured —’ But Frances didn’t want to talk about that. She shook her head. ‘It’s all nonsense. But they believe it! They’re twisting things about.’

  Christina said, after a pause, ‘I wish you had come to me sooner. I’ve been worried to death about you. I very nearly came to Camberwell.’

  Frances was rubbing her stinging eyes. ‘You might as well have done. My mother saw your telegram. The whole thing’s out in the open now.’

  ‘Oh, Frances, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It was cowardly of me to keep it from her. And anyhow, it’s the last thing on her mind. She thinks – I don’t know what she thinks. She’s taken against Lilian along with everyone else.’

  ‘And how is Lilian herself?’

  ‘Oh, dreadful. Frightened. More frightened than I am; that’s the trouble. And she’s been ill. Did you know that? No, of course you didn’t.’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m losing all sense of who knows what. It turned out —’ She hesitated. ‘It turned out she’d started a baby.’

  Christina’s mouth fell open. ‘A baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘It was lost. In all the upset. It was lost.’

  She couldn’t say any more. In any case, the kettle was whistling. Christina watched her for another moment, then hurried over to the stove.

  With the rug tucked around her, she had finally stopped shivering. But the bout of sobbing had left her feeling bruised, wrung out, swollen and dirty in the face. She twisted sideways in the armchair, kicking off her shoes, drawing up her legs. Wiping her eyes and nose again, she said, ‘God, I feel like hell. You’re quite sure Stevie isn’t going to pop up?’

  ‘I told you, Stevie’s at school. And she’s going from there to her studio. She’ll be hours yet.’

  ‘What does she make of all this?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? She’s been horrified, of course. We both have. It doesn’t seem real.’

  Frances gave her weight over to the chair, resting her cheek against the napless velveteen. ‘It didn’t feel real to me, for the first day or two. Now it’s everything else that feels unreal. What day is it, even? Monday, is it? Only just over a week, then, since it happened! It feels like a lifetime. As if I’ve had all the fear and horror of a lifetime crammed into ten days.’

  Christina brought over the tray of tea-things. Filling Frances’s cup, she said, ‘You look ill, you know. You look ill and… I don’t know. Not yourself.’

  Frances took the tea and sipped it gratefully. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be myself again. Not with the police sniffing about. Not with Inspector Kemp and his wretched nose.’

  ‘An inspector?’ said Christina. ‘Just like in the books?’

  Her tone had brightened slightly. Frances, looking across the tray at her, thought, Yes, you’re just like everyone else, excited by the loathsome glamour of it all. And yet you call yourself a pacifist. And so, for that matter, do I… She gave brief, tired answers to the questions Christina began to ask, about the events of the previous Saturday, the finding of Leonard’s body in the lane. She had gone over it all so many times, with the police and with neighbours, that it felt stale and lifeless, someone else’s story.

  But Chrissy, of course, knew more than the police and the neig
hbours did; she knew about Frances and Lilian. And that meant that Frances had to be careful. There was so much that couldn’t be said; she felt weighed down by it. Every so often, as they spoke, they hit a sort of dead wall. ‘I’m so desperately worried about Lilian,’ she kept saying, and Christina looked baffled.

  ‘But what can the police possibly do?’

  ‘It’s what they’re thinking.’

  ‘But, surely, if they’re working this hard on the case – Isn’t it only a matter of time before they track the murderer down? And then —’

  ‘They won’t track anyone down.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘They think they’ve solved the case already. They’re going to act, I know they are. Lilian knows it too. I’m worried she’ll do something rash. I know how her mind works. She’s thinking that if things have got this bad, that if people have already taken against Charlie, and against her – She’s thinking —’

  ‘Thinking what? You’re not making any sense. Drink some more of that brandy, will you?’

  Frances shook her head. ‘I daren’t. I can’t risk getting muddled. If you only knew how much planning and thinking and fretting I’ve had to do!’

  ‘But what do you mean?’ cried Christina. ‘What sort of fretting? Why has it all fallen on you?’

  Frances gazed into her face, and suddenly the urge to tell her everything – about Dr Ridley’s Pills, about the blood, about Leonard, about the horrible journey down the stairs and over the garden – the urge was overwhelming. Could she do it? Dare she do it? She’d been brooding so narrowly over the memory of that evening that she had lost all sense of perspective on it. How bad, in fact, was the thing that she and Lilian had done? It wasn’t a crime, after all. They had made it feel like a crime by being so frightened, by acting so guilty. But all it was, in reality, was a catastrophic blunder. Perhaps she could tell it to Chrissy, and Chrissy would stare, would look scandalised, would —

  But she looked at the crumpled frock and the mud-coloured cardigan that Christina was wearing; she glanced around the untidy flat, at the sham Bohemianism of it. The lies that were being told here were such harmless ones. It was all so uncorrupted, so safe… And she knew that she couldn’t tell Chrissy anything. More than that, she knew that the not-telling would make a breach between them; that it had made the breach already. She thought bleakly, This is what I saw in the garden that night. She had put herself beyond the ordinary. Or, rather, Lilian had put her there. She would never blame Lilian for it. She would never do that. But, oh, why had she picked up that ashtray? How bloody unfair it was! They’d been about to start their new life. Frances had already been cheated out of one life – this life, here with Christina. Was she really to be cheated out of another?

  She shed a few more tears – self-pitying ones, this time. ‘Forgive me, Chrissy,’ she said.

  ‘What can I do to help you?’

  She wiped her face, blew her nose. ‘I’m just so horribly tired! It makes everything so black. I feel as though I could sleep and sleep. Then at night I can’t sleep at all.’

  ‘Sleep now, then. You can have the bed.’

  ‘No, I can’t do that. I ought to be at home, keeping an eye on my mother. But —’ Her tone grew humble. ‘May I just sit here for a little while? What were you doing when I arrived? Were you typing? Won’t you carry on?’

  ‘Well, but won’t the racket disturb you?’

  ‘No, I’d like it. Really, I would.’

  So, looking doubtful, Christina returned to her desk, uncovered her typewriter, started work; and Frances curled up in the armchair and closed her eyes. The crackety-crack of the machine seemed loud at first. Then her mind began to detach itself from her surroundings and glide over the sound. She was aware as if distantly of the crampedness of the chair; her ear grew hot and painful where it was pressed against the back of it, but she seemed to lack the will or the energy to change her pose. She slept deeply for a time, awoke with a start, then slept deeply again. When she roused herself properly, she saw the furious orange bars of the electric fire, she saw the illuminated green shade of Chrissy’s desk lamp; and then she saw the clock. It was twenty past five. She oughtn’t to have stayed here so long. Anything might be happening at home.

  But as she began the painful business of uncurling herself from the chair she heard a sound over the intermittent crack of the typewriter – a raised voice, out on the street. She had heard the voice two or three times already, she realised, along with the grumble of the Clipstone Street traffic; but only now, as it broke through to the front of her mind, did she take in what it was. A newsboy was calling the evening edition of one of the London papers. What was the headline he was shouting?

  She looked over at Christina. ‘Chrissy, stop typing, will you?’

  Christina jumped. ‘You’re awake! I thought – What’s the matter?’

  ‘Don’t you hear that?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  Frances was sitting tensely. ‘There!’ The cry had come again. ‘What’s that he’s saying?’ But she knew. ‘He’s saying “Champion Hill”, isn’t he? Open the window!’

  ‘Stop it, Frances. You’re frightening me.’

  ‘Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘No, I —’

  But, yes, now Christina caught it. The boy was drawing nearer. ‘Champion Hill Murder!’ he was calling; Frances had been right. But there was another word – what was it? Was it ‘Latest’? She wasn’t sure. She listened harder. The call was repeated. ‘Champion Hill Murder!’ – that was distinct. But the word that followed – was it ‘latest’? Again, she knew in her heart that it wasn’t. She knew! She struggled to get out of the chair, but Christina had already risen and gone across to the window. Frances watched her turn the catch. And once the sash was lifted the call came clear as anything: ‘Champion Hill Murder! Arrest!’

  She and Christina stared at each other. Then Christina started into life – looking around for her purse, then giving up on that idea and tipping out a couple of coins from a china money-box on her desk. Then she hurried out of the flat, leaving the door open behind her.

  Frances remained in the chair, too frightened to get to her feet, listening to the fading slap of the soles of Christina’s slippers on the stairs. This was it, she realised. This was the moment she’d been dreading and expecting since the beginning of it all. The police had arrested Charlie, or Lilian, or the two of them together. They had been patiently gathering their misinformation and now they had swooped. She closed her eyes. Oh, let it be Charlie, let it be Charlie – But that was no good! It couldn’t be Charlie! It couldn’t be anyone! Oh, Christ, let it be no one! Let it be no one! All a mistake!

  Minute after minute seemed to go by before she heard the rapid return of slippered footsteps. She watched the open doorway, and finally Christina came racing through it with the paper in her hand and her short hair flying. She looked excited but relieved. ‘I think it’s all right,’ she said breathlessly. ‘They say a man’s been arrested, but —’

  It was Charlie, then! ‘Charles Wismuth?’

  She shook her head, still panting after her breath. ‘No, that isn’t the name.’

  Frances almost snatched the paper from her. But the words jumped about in front of her eyes; she had to hand it back. Christina began to read aloud to her, in a hasty, telegraphic way.

  ‘“Sensational developments in the Champion Hill case… A young man has today appeared before the Lambeth magistrate, charged with the murder of Leonard Arthur Barber… The apprehended man”’ – her voice rose – ‘“has been named as Spencer Ward, a motor-mechanic, of Bermondsey.”’

  Frances gaped at her. ‘What?’

  ‘“Police were led to Mr Ward after the sudden receipt of new information from an important witness in the case, Mr Charles Wismuth. Mr Ward, who has put in a plea of Not Guilty, is suspected of having committed the assault after taking exception to an intimacy between the married Mr Barber and his own fiancée
, Miss Billie Grey —”’

  Frances snatched the paper back again and read the report for herself. But it still didn’t make any sense. All she could see were the unfamiliar names: Spencer Ward, Billie Grey. What on earth did it mean? New information… taking exception… intimacy… the married Mr Barber…

  Intimacy… the married Mr Barber…

  At last, as if the words were so many things – coins, say – that had been sent spinning up into the air and now, one by one, dropped and settled, the whole thing fell into place.

  All this time, Leonard must have been having an affair of his own. He’d been seeing some girl, some girl named Billie. It was the girl’s boy-friend who’d been accused of killing him.

  Her first, astonishing feeling was something like betrayal, a spasm of outrage at the thought that Leonard could have done this thing, maintained this lie, while she knew nothing. Then she took in the implications of the boy-friend’s arrest; and she grew sick.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. No. It isn’t possible.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘It’s too dreadful, Chrissy!’

  ‘What? I thought – Well, if the police have got the killer, doesn’t it solve everything?’

  ‘No! Don’t you see?’

  But how could Christina see? How could she possibly understand the utter mess and horror of it? The police had arrested an innocent man! Frances looked into her face. Can I tell you? she thought again. Can I? Dare I?