The Paying Guests

  ‘Stop saying that!’ said Frances sharply. ‘It’s all you’ve ever said to me! Right from the start! When we went to the park – you remember? We barely knew each other. But we went to the park. And we left, and were walking up the hill – and you took the wall. You took the wall, Lilian. I thought it charming, at the time. But you’ve been taking the wall ever since. You can’t take it for ever. You can’t take it now.’

  Her tone must have carried: she was conscious of the women in the room below, grown still and attentive. Lilian, perhaps conscious of them too, remained in her crouch, but looked up, white-faced.

  But then, as Frances watched, her expression changed, smoothed itself out. She got to her feet and, without another word, she moved around the bed and, slowly, pointedly, began to make herself ready. She found a fresh handkerchief to exchange for the damp one in her sleeve. She took money from a tin in a drawer, hesitating for a moment about how much to take, finally folding the coins into the notes and tucking them all into her handbag. She stood at the dressing-table mirror and powdered her face and swollen eyelids. She dabbed rouge on to her cheeks and lips. She took up a hairbrush and carefully brushed her hair.

  Frances saw all this and didn’t believe in any of it. She kept expecting Lilian to slow, to falter, to start to cry. But Lilian did none of those things. In the same deliberate way she drew back a curtain from across an alcove and unhooked her coat from the rail beyond. She returned with it to the mirror and shrugged it on, straightening its collar. The coat had a long line of buttons to it. She began, calmly, to fasten them.

  And as Frances watched the neat upward progress of her fingers, something odd began to happen to her. First her heart started to flutter, then she felt a sort of giving way, around it: a caving in, like the slither of sand through the waist of an hour-glass. It was as if her blood, her muscles, her organs, were steadily dissolving. Lilian’s buttons were all fastened now. She returned to the alcove for her hat and, still calm, still neat, she settled it on her head. Now Frances’s face was tingling as if growing numb. The caved-in feeling had reached her legs: she had to support herself on the side of the creaking bed. She wanted to be sick. Her heart felt squeezed. She thought with astonishment, I’m ill. Christ, I’m really ill. I’m dying!

  Then she looked up, saw that Lilian was ready, saw that she had turned and was waiting to go; and she realised that she wasn’t dying, she was simply afraid. She was more afraid than she had ever been before, with a fear that was stronger than any feeling she could remember – grief, anger, passion, love, anything. For she knew that Lilian was right. The police would never believe that Leonard had been killed by accident. She knew it, because of that moment, a few minutes before, when she hadn’t believed it herself. Lilian would be tried for murder, and she would be tried along with her as – what? An accessory? An accomplice? Perhaps the inspector would do some digging, turn up her old affair with Christina. He’d make something filthy of that; something filthy of her love for Lilian.

  He’d make a motive of it. They might be hanged.

  Beyond the window, the day was darkening. On the lino floor the stars and commas were brighter than before. Downstairs, there were murmurs; something was dropped, someone was scolded, the little dog let out a yelp.

  Lilian was still waiting. Frances met her gaze, then shook her head and, with a shiver of self-loathing, turned away.

  ‘Take off your hat and coat,’ she said. ‘We’ll do as you said and – and wait. We’ll wait till Thursday, till the police court hearing. We’ll wait to see how bad it looks.’

  15

  For the first time, they parted without touching, without even attempting to embrace, after making the barest of arrangements for how they would deal with what came next. Down on the half-landing, Frances couldn’t bring herself to look into the kitchen to say goodbye to Mrs Viney and Vera; she left Lilian to say it for her, and to make up any excuse she liked to explain away her strange behaviour. She went down the second flight of stairs, and along the narrow passage, alone. The street seemed busier than ever when she opened the door on it. But the swell of terror that had engulfed her in the bedroom had sunk like a tide, and as she passed along the crowded pavement she didn’t feel much of anything. There seemed to be a sort of oil-skin layer – tiredness; hunger, perhaps – between herself and the world.

  Arriving home, she found Mrs Playfair in the drawing-room with her mother. The two of them got to their feet, looking anxious, the moment she appeared. Had she heard about the arrest? Yes, she told them dully, she had seen the evening paper; she had gone straight to Lilian’s to get the story from her.

  Her mother hesitated when she heard that. That fretfulness, that inwardness, had disappeared from her expression. Her manner now was tentative, awkward – troubled in a different sort of way. ‘How has Mrs Barber taken the news?’ she asked.

  Frances answered as dully as before. ‘I don’t think she knows what to make of it yet.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she does. It’s such a very distressing mixture. Could she tell you anything more about the man who’s been arrested?’

  ‘No, not much. He’s young, they say. Nineteen, I think.’

  ‘Nineteen! And, Mr Barber?’ Her mother hesitated again. ‘Is it really true what the newspapers claim?’

  Frances nodded. ‘The police say so. He’d been seeing the girl for months, apparently.’

  Her mother sat down. ‘Poor Mrs Barber. For this to be added to everything else. I – I feel I’ve been unfair to her. You used to say how unhappy she was in her marriage, Frances, and now I understand why. To think of Mr Barber behaving in such a way. All this time, under all our noses! Yes, I feel I’ve been very unfair to her.’

  Mrs Playfair, returning to the sofa, agreed that it was a most deplorable business. She’d always said that men were the weaker sex; this sort of thing just went to prove it. But she, too, looked awkward, and seemed not quite able to meet Frances’s eye. ‘There,’ she said at last. ‘At least the thing is settled now. It must be a great comfort to Mrs Barber that this young man has been caught. It’s a comfort to all of us, isn’t it, to know that he’s no longer on the streets.’

  Frances agreed that it was. She still felt oddly lifeless. She excused herself, left the drawing-room and climbed the stairs. What she wanted more than anything, she’d realised, was a cigarette. She went straight to her bedside drawer for her papers and tobacco. Her hand was quite untrembling as she rolled the little thing up.

  But almost on the first puff she began to cough. The cough grew steadily more violent until it was shaking her right through and had become something else, become nausea. At last she had to lean into the fireplace, retching drily over the grate, while tears and saliva streamed from her face to mingle with the ashes on the hearthstone.

  By the time Mrs Playfair left she had calmed herself down. That oil-skin layer seemed to be back in place. She cooked a dinner, and enjoyed eating it. She drew herself a bath and lay in the water watching the steam rise from her arms into the cold scullery air like fantastic smoke. When, later, she sat with her mother by the drawing-room fire, it was quite like old times. They had their cocoa, she wound the clock, plumped the cushions, locked the door, and they both went yawning to bed. The grittiness had gone from her throat; her muscles, even, had lost their ache. For the first time since Leonard’s death she slept deeply, without dreams.

  Next day, the newspapers all carried something about the arrest, about the boy, Spencer Ward – Frances was growing used to the name already, and to the girl’s name, Billie Grey. But there were no new photographs, and perhaps that helped to keep the whole thing not quite real. The Mirror had the most to report: the boy was employed at a garage at Tower Bridge; he lived with his mother, a War-widow; he was ‘leanly built, with brown hair and hazel eyes’ – it could have been a description of anyone. The girl was an assistant in a West End ‘beauty shop’, whatever the hell that was, and it was in a public house close to the shop, whilst enjoying a
drink with her sister in the summer, that she had apparently ‘first made the acquaintance of the murdered Mr Barber’.

  Seeing Leonard’s name like that made Frances begin to grow frightened again. And because she was afraid of the fear expanding, becoming the debilitating terror it had been the day before, she hurriedly put the paper aside. What did it matter, anyhow, whether she read it or not? What would it change? They had made their decision.

  That afternoon, she and her mother received a visit from Sergeant Heath. He’d come to make sure they had seen the news, and to let them know that their statements were to be read at the police court on Thursday morning. There was no necessity, he said, for them to attend the hearing themselves; not unless they wished to, and he hardly imagined that they would. Oh, Miss Wray planned to go, did she? That was entirely up to her, of course… Yes, he and Inspector Kemp were both feeling very satisfied now that they had got their man. It was a great pity that Mr Wismuth hadn’t spoken up sooner, and so spared everyone a lot of trouble and worry – but, naturally, no one was regretting that more than Mr Wismuth himself, who was now in a certain amount of trouble of his own, charged with making a false statement and wasting police time. Evidently his fiancée, Miss Nixon, had thrown him over, too! Well, that wasn’t to be wondered at, in the circumstances…

  He was cheerful, almost chatty; had quite cast off that guardedness that had made him so unnerving a figure to Frances in the past. He didn’t mention Lilian. He didn’t mention life insurance. He and the inspector, she recalled, had once spoken confidently of the killer’s being ‘a man of regular habits’, but he seemed to have forgotten that too: the boy Ward, he said, with relish, was ‘a real little villain. Oh, yes, a proper little tough.’ She knew there were things she ought to be asking, things she ought to find out; she didn’t seem to have the ingenuity for it. In any case, he stayed only ten minutes. He had people to interview over in Bermondsey, neighbours of the boy and his mother. She let him out of the house, then watched him from the drawing-room window, stepping on to his bicycle and pushing away from the kerb. And, in shame, she knew she was feeling what Lilian had felt the day before: simple relief, like a letting go of weight, a giving up of resistance, at seeing him heading so purposefully out of her life and into someone else’s.

  But she did not sleep quite so soundly that night. And by Thursday morning she was beginning to recover the sense of urgency that had gripped her at the start of it all, an itch to put herself at the very worst point of things in order to know just how bad they were. The police court was two or three miles away, close to the Elephant and Castle; she left the house in good time, determined to get there ahead of any crowd. But the papers had advertised the hearing. She could sense an excitement in the streets as she made her way through Kennington, and on turning the final corner she was taken aback to see a jostling swarm of people at the modest court-house entrance, all apparently hell-bent on getting places inside. She couldn’t imagine herself joining in with them, pushing her way through that press of bodies. But she had to be there, she had to know. If the boy were committed for trial, how would she prevent it? What might Lilian, without her, do or say?

  She was just starting to panic about it when she saw Constable Hardy on his way into the building. He recognised her from the morning he had brought the bad news, and led her away from the public doors to the witnesses’ entrance.

  He had to leave her as soon as he had got her inside, and then there was more of that uncertainty about what to do and where to go that she remembered from the inquest; this time, she felt very much alone in it. Even when she spotted Netta’s husband, Lloyd, on the far side of the small but crowded lobby – even when she saw Lilian, standing just beyond him with her mother and Vera, talking to a man who might have been a lawyer, nodding gravely and anxiously at what the man was saying – even then, she felt uncertain of her role. Vera caught her eye with a frown – as if she were thinking, in disbelief, What, here too? At any rate, though she raised her chin in greeting she didn’t beckon for Frances to join them. Lilian didn’t beckon, either. She met Frances’s gaze, still talking to the lawyer, still gravely nodding at what he was telling her; and a shadow of apprehension passed across her pale face. But then another man came, to lead her away, and the family turned and went with her. By the time Frances had made her own way into the courtroom the four of them were established in there, sitting in a pew-like bench close to the front. When again they made no invitation to her she took herself to the end of another pew, off to the side.

  The pew was faintly sticky beneath her skirt and gloves. The room was a grubbier version of the chamber in which they’d gathered for the inquest, with the same trumped-up, blustering feel to its heavy panelling, its thrones and coronets. The only difference was the square enclosure – something like a horse’s stall – set facing the magistrate’s bench: Frances’s gaze passed over it several times before she realised that, of course, it was the dock for the accused. She felt another faint stirring of panic at that – then saw how far she was from any exit. Suppose that terror should overtake her again? Suppose she should faint, or be sick?

  It was too late. The pews were filling up, with reporters, with officials – she noticed Inspector Kemp, looking more than ever as if he belonged behind the desk of a bank as he added notes with a fountain pen to a folder of type-written papers. A moment later the doors were opened to the public and in came two or three dozen people, all with the same look on their faces: the repellent triumph of shoppers bagging the best of the bargains in the January sales. A woman of fifty-five or so plonked herself down next to Frances. She blew out her cheeks, rolled her eyes, undid the top two buttons of her tartan coat and flapped the lapel back and forth. It was always a squeeze when it was a murder, wasn’t it! Had Frances come far? She herself had come all the way from Paddington. She generally came to the courts with a friend – that made it easier to keep places – but today her friend had the neuralgia, so she had come along on her own. It was worth it, though. She hadn’t wanted to miss this one; she’d been following it in the papers. Oh, her friend would be sick when she heard how well she’d got on!

  Her gaze was darting about the courtroom as she spoke; now, leech-like, it fastened on Lilian. ‘There’s the widow, of course. Doesn’t look quite so handsome as she does in her pictures, does she? No, she’s quite a disappointment. The ladies beside her – that’s the mother, I believe, and a sister. I don’t know who the gentleman is… Oh, now, who’s this?’ She had turned her head as the courtroom doors swung open to admit three newcomers.

  They were Leonard’s father and Uncle Ted, with the older brother, Douglas. They came in with a self-conscious air, and were shown to a place by a court official. ‘Here, do you mean?’ Frances heard Douglas ask, through a lull in the general hubbub; and at the sound of his voice, once again, a chill came over her: it was so very like Leonard’s.

  Automatically, she looked at Lilian. She too was watching the Barbers find their seats. This must have been the first time since the funeral that the two families had met. For a minute Frances saw them all eyeing each other across the room, Vera with a face like thunder, Mrs Viney and Lloyd with their colour high, but Lilian simply looking embarrassed and unhappy. Then the three Barber men spoke quietly together, and Leonard’s father got to his feet and made his way around the crowded pews, baring his sandy head as he went. He and Lilian murmured and nodded; finally she put out her gloved hand to him. He took it and held it, and they murmured again.

  On his way back to his seat he had to pause for a moment to let Constable Hardy lead in a new arrival. This was a sad little wisp of a woman in a limp brown coat and hat. She looked around with a bewildered air as she headed to the place pointed out to her, then lifted her face to Mr Barber in dazed apology as he went by. A change had come over him, however: his cheeks were suddenly blazing. He returned to his brother and his son, appeared to mutter something to them; they turned to study the woman, in a conspicuous sort of way. People al
l around the room were also gazing keenly at her. Frances’s neighbour in tartan was staring at her as she might have stared at a monkey in a cage. Finally, noticing Frances’s blank expression, she said, ‘But you know who that is, don’t you? That’s Mrs Ward, the mother of the boy who’s up for the murder!’

  Frances looked again at the cowed little woman; then dropped her eyes in shame.

  And then the magistrate came in, and they all had to clamber to their feet. People settled down again with the throat-clearings, the rustles and readjustments, of an expectant theatre crowd. His own manner, as he ran through the preliminaries, was unexcited – for, of course, thought Frances in wonder, this was simply the beginning of a long day of business for him. He would see case after case, crime after crime, between now and tea-time… Still, murder was murder, and even he looked interested as the usher summoned the accused. As for the crowd – the room grew stiller. There was a sudden extra hush, like a drop in temperature. A door at the side of the court was opened. Sergeant Heath brought in the boy, Spencer Ward, and escorted him to the dock.

  Frances’s immediate feeling was one of plunging disappointment. What exactly had she been expecting? The boy was slight and quite unmemorable, at least as far as appearances went. He had ordinary darkish hair, parted and flattened with ordinary pomade. He wore an ordinary ready-made blue suit, with a young man’s tie, ordinarily garish. His face was lean, with prominent cheekbones; his jaw was narrow and overcrowded – a little like Leonard’s jaw, in fact, though, unlike Leonard’s, his chin was weak, and overall he had none of Leonard’s bounce, Leonard’s gingery vitality. Instead he slouched his way across the room at Sergeant Heath’s elbow, then climbed the two or three steps to the dock with an air – she could hardly believe it – of smirking nonchalance. He seemed to be chewing gum. Did he look for his mother at all? Frances didn’t think so. Rather, recognising some friends on the public benches, he leaned over the rail of the enclosure to call a question to them, and then to query the answer with a curled upper lip, displaying a mouthful of awful teeth.