Dead to Me

  She wished she could forget Archie permanently too. There was no good side of him to reminisce about and miss; everything that came into her mind about him was nasty and frightening. She wished she knew where he was and what he was doing, at least that way she wouldn’t imagine him standing across the street here, gazing up at her bedroom window and plotting to get hold of her.

  Wilby and Ruby had driven up to Weardale Road while she was still in hospital. They had packed all Verity’s personal belongings into the car, thrown away anything that belonged to Archie, and cleaned the house from top to bottom. A locksmith came and put new locks on both the back and front doors, so Archie could not get in again. Finally, they contacted an organization who found homes for people who had been bombed out, and asked them to find a tenant for the house.

  The person they found was a Mrs Robinson. Her husband was in the army, and she had two school-age daughters. So far the rent money had come every month bang on time, which meant that Verity was able to put that aside for a little nest egg.

  Everything was in order, really, and she knew it was extremely unlikely Archie would try to muscle his way back into her life. But the thought was there in the back of her mind, like a splinter too small to get out of your finger.

  As Verity was wishing she could forget Archie for ever, he was lying on a bed in a swelteringly hot, dirty room in Limehouse, the smell of drains wafting up to him through the open window. He was drunk, but he hadn’t had enough to anaesthetize him from his surroundings, and he was trying to think how he could lay his hands on some money to move somewhere more congenial. All he had left was ten pounds and some loose change, but if he didn’t do something soon that ten pounds would be gone.

  It was fortunate for him that he hadn’t returned to Weardale Road the night he’d locked Verity in the Morrison shelter. He had intended to, but he went on a bender and it was three days before he was sober enough to remember what he’d done. He had found himself on the floor of a partly bombed house in New Cross with a couple of rough-looking men who, if he’d been sober, he would never even have spoken to.

  He was walking back to Weardale Road when he saw a picture of himself on the front of a newspaper. The headline was: ‘Wanted Embezzler Attacks and Imprisons Daughter’. He read on to find out that Verity was seriously injured in hospital. That was a shock, as he didn’t think he’d hurt her that badly. But even worse for him was the discovery that the police had joined up the dots and knew he was already a wanted man. He had a feeling that this time they would leave no stone unturned to find him.

  He couldn’t risk going back to the house, not even to pick up a change of clothes. That made him very angry, and he blamed Verity for it.

  Fortunately the picture of him in the newspaper was at least ten years old. He didn’t want to admit it, but his face was far more lined now, with bags under his eyes, and his once jet-black hair was greyer, and thin too.

  He went straight into a backstreet barber’s and had him shave off his moustache and cut his hair very short. When he looked in the mirror afterwards, he thought that even his now dear departed mother wouldn’t recognize him.

  He guessed that the police would concentrate their search for him in his old haunts. It was well documented that he had expensive tastes, so they would be looking for him in the West End drinking and gambling clubs. He thought he’d better hole up in the East End.

  That was why he’d ended up in Salmon Lane. It was vile, a filthy hovel of a house without even the most basic of amenities, but it was cheap, and people didn’t ask questions.

  It was an area teeming with people of all nationalities, there was constant noise and confusion. Being the poorest of the poor, they had plenty of problems of their own, without poking their noses into anyone else’s business. They’d lived through months of nightly bombing during the Blitz, seen whole streets razed to the ground, friends and neighbours killed. Many of their children who hadn’t been evacuated were now feral. For many, drink was the answer to the miserable conditions, and to some it was opium, as there were dozens of dens along the dockside where they could find oblivion for a few hours.

  Archie liked the escape of opium himself, but he limited his visits to a den for fear of becoming an addict. Almost every day he told himself that he ought to get right away from here, as he could feel himself getting pulled further and further into the mire, but then he’d buy a few drinks and for a while he could blot it out.

  Yet whether he used drink or opium to escape from his situation, his mind kept turning back to Verity. The way it appeared to him was that she was responsible for everything that had gone wrong in his life. He could take it right back to her birth, the child who had been foisted on him by her conniving mother. All through her childhood he felt pressured to stay with Cynthia and go through the motions of fatherhood. He should have got out then, found a new life with a woman who really loved him, instead of a leech with her offspring. But he thought getting richer was the answer, and that had led to embezzlement.

  He and Verity could have done very nicely out of the burglary business, if she’d just put some effort into it, not constantly whinging that it was wrong. Why was it wrong? She had her aunt’s house coming to her, for which she’d done nothing at all. But he had nothing to show for all his years of hard work. Nothing at all. And now Verity had turned grass and put the police on his trail.

  He would have to find her one day and punish her for that.

  When Archie woke the next morning it was already noon, his head ached, and he was aware he hadn’t eaten for two days, but what troubled him more was that his own smell was turning his stomach.

  He’d always been so fastidious: polished shoes, clean white shirt with a starched collar, and a neatly pressed suit. Another thing to blame Verity for.

  He needed money fast, and he knew the only way he could do that was to get himself cleaned up, then do what he’d done before when the chips were down: catch a train out to one of the more affluent suburbs, and find a house to burgle. The thought of it made him hate Verity even more. When she’d done it for him and he’d just stood watch, it was easy.

  Without Verity he couldn’t get the valuable proof that people had left their houses, and he couldn’t squeeze effortlessly through windows the way she had. He also had to admit she had been a little marvel at sniffing out hidden valuables. She never stayed long in a house, but always seemed to find something worthwhile.

  Archie dragged himself down to the public baths, where he bathed, shaved and put on a clean shirt and fresh underwear. He had helped himself to a quantity of men’s clothes and a leather briefcase at the last burglary he did in Hampstead and even had the audacity to pack them into a suitcase he found in the hall cupboard. He particularly liked the Harris tweed sports jacket, it fitted him perfectly and made him look like a country gentleman. The briefcase was, to his mind, the perfect accessory to make him look businesslike and trustworthy.

  By the time he came out of the baths it was nearly three in the afternoon, he had a quick meal in a cafe, then caught the underground to St John’s Wood. It was not as far out of London as he would have liked, but time was getting on.

  He always approached his burglaries in the same way. He went for houses that had lots of trees and bushes in the garden, so he wouldn’t be seen by a neighbour. And he liked working in broad daylight, as he could pretend to be a surveyor charting any damage done to houses during air raids if he was challenged.

  He would ring the bell first and, if someone came to the door, he would ask them if they had any damage to their house. Sometimes this meant he had to pretend to inspect real damage, which wasted his time, but on the plus side he could ask about their neighbours, and sometimes they told him about ones who were away.

  He was brisk and purposeful. A quick, clean entry to the house, straight to the sitting room to look for small items of silver, upstairs to the master bedroom for jewellery and hopefully cash, then straight out again, with the spoils in his briefcase.
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  At the first house he called at that afternoon, a maid answered the door and said he’d have to call back when her mistress was there, but at the second house no one was in, and they had obligingly left a side window on to the kitchen open. He was quickly through it, but when he saw a five-pound note tucked under a sugar basin on the kitchen table he knew immediately this had been left for someone, probably a cleaner or housekeeper. As the window was open, they might have just popped out to get something and could come back any minute. He snatched up the five pounds and let himself out of the side door.

  Disappointed that he’d gone to all the trouble of smartening himself up yet got so little in return, he went into the first pub he saw and bought a pint of beer. One led to a second, and by then he knew it would be folly to attempt another burglary. But he didn’t want to go back to Limehouse. The crowds, noise, putrid smells and the all-abiding sense of extreme poverty depressed him, but the little money he’d got would soon vanish in St John’s Wood. He knew too that if he had another couple of pints he wouldn’t be able to find his way home.

  As it was, he did get lost on the walk from Whitechapel to Limehouse. He stopped in two more pubs to get directions, which meant he had a pint in each.

  By the time he got to the Ropemakers Arms, which was close to Salmon Lane, he was drunk – not falling down drunk, but he’d lost his usual cautiousness. There was a woman sitting on a stool by the bar and she looked round at him, as if she knew him.

  He didn’t think she had played any part in his former life. She was far too rough, probably close to fifty, with dyed red hair that stuck out every which way, like a scarecrow. Her face looked battered, not by fists exactly, just with poverty, lack of good food and too much drinking. Likewise her clothes were very poor, a navy-blue cotton dress that was patched in places, bare legs mottled like corned beef, even her shoes looked too big for her.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, thinking perhaps she lived in the same house as him, and however rough she was it would be rude to ignore her if they were neighbours.

  ‘No, sir,’ she said in a ridiculous simpering voice. ‘But I couldn’t ’elp but stare at you cos you is the spit of my Stephen.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ he said, intending to get a drink and move away. But when he asked for a pint she insisted on paying for it, and went on to tell him her Stephen had been killed in the Blitz.

  Archie wasn’t the least bit interested in her tragic story about this man who had been killed. But he’d found in the past that when people opened up to him and told their story, it often benefitted him.

  Her name was Mildred Find, and he reckoned she was simple. She told him herself she couldn’t read or write. But even if she hadn’t divulged that, he would have realized she wasn’t the full shilling by her cackles of laughter at inappropriate moments, the loud way she greeted people, and the way she didn’t appear to notice they steered clear of her.

  Stephen wasn’t her brother or son after all. She said she was an orphan and she’d gone to work for Mr and Mrs Lyle in Whitechapel when she was just fourteen, straight from the orphanage.

  ‘They was so good to me,’ she said. ‘I was what you call a maid of all work, and I ’ad a nice room up in the attic. Their boy Stephen was only a few years older than me, and he was always kind to me. He looked just like you, same ’ight, same ’air colour, and a gentleman like you too.’

  She just kept on and on about how like Stephen he was, and how upset she was when the air-raid warden told her he’d been killed in the Blitz. ‘’E come straight round to me, cos it ’appened only a few streets away from me. The bloke knew me and that I’d worked for ’is folks, ’e thought Stephen must’ve been trying to get to me.’

  ‘Why didn’t he get Mr and Mrs Lyle?’ Archie asked.

  ‘Cos they’s dead,’ she said. ‘Mr Lyle popped off about eight years ago, and then Mrs Lyle she went four years ago. Stephen was workin’ up north then, he paid me off and shut the house up. But every time he come back ’ere ’e’d look me up, always telling me I didn’t eat enough.’

  Archie was getting more interested now, so he bought her a glass of port and lemon and asked what had happened to the house in Whitechapel now Stephen was gone.

  She just shrugged. Clearly wills – or buying and selling houses – were well above her level of understanding. ‘I dunno. But why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll show you some pictures? I’ve got all the stuff ’e had on ’im when ’e was killed.’

  He made a joke about gentlemen not going to a lady’s house late at night. Then he thanked her for her company and said goodbye. It was dark now, and as he walked down the street his mind was whirling. If Stephen Lyle really did look like him, maybe he could steal the man’s identity. He’d been calling himself John Widdicombe, but he had no papers to back that up – and no ration book, either.

  As he got to the house in Salmon Lane he saw the woman in the downstairs front room looking out of the window. She had annoyed him before with her prying. But he was aware that it was always useful to have an alibi if embarking on something which might prove to be against the law, so he bowed extravagantly to her and blew her kisses. He saw her smile so, making a big show of being staggering drunk, he went inside and made a noise going up the stairs.

  Excitement seemed to have sobered him up. Locking his door, he climbed out of the window, on to the lean-to washhouse beneath. From there it was easy to reach the narrow alley behind. He just hoped Mildred hadn’t left straight after him, because she hadn’t told him where she lived.

  Luck was with him, she was just coming, somewhat unsteadily, out of the Ropemakers Arms as he got there. She put her right hand on the wall of the pub to steady herself, and he presumed she was waiting for her eyes to get used to the dark before moving on. Archie stayed back in the shadows, watching her.

  When she finally moved, he followed her, keeping well back. There were few people on the streets now, just a few drunks lurching home. The blackout had been his friend since the start of the war, and it was again tonight; in a dark suit, and with a suntanned face, he was virtually invisible.

  She stopped to unlock a door at the side of a boarded-up corner shop, only five minutes’ walk from the pub. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked as if the shop was bomb-damaged. With just a quick look to check no one was watching, Archie came up behind her.

  ‘Hello, Mildred, thought I’d take you up on your offer, if that’s okay,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Jesus, you made me jump!’ she exclaimed, putting her hands over her mouth. ‘But come on in. A gent like you won’t like the way I live, but I can’t ’elp it.’

  She was right, Archie didn’t like the room she took him into. He smelled filth even before she lit the gas light and he saw how dirty it was. The few bits of furniture and the strange collection of household items strewn around suggested she spent her days scavenging on bomb sites. Her bed in one corner was just a mattress with a few ragged blankets. He knew he wouldn’t be staying here any longer than he had to.

  She took what seemed like for ever to find the photo of Stephen, opening boxes, pulling out envelopes and making even more mess than there had been before.

  But finally she found a shoebox, and pounced on it gleefully. ‘This is it. I put all the stuff in ’ere what the air-raid warden found on ’im, after they dug ’is body out. But I don’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘I expect I can tell you,’ he said, wondering if she’d even taken advice about registering his death.

  ‘’Ere ’e is!’ she said, pulling out a photograph.

  She was right, Stephen did look a lot like him. He had a very similar square jaw, their noses were almost identical, very straight and narrow, even their smiles were alike. Archie had been told his was more of a self-satisfied smirk, but Stephen’s was the same. It was very odd, staring into the face of someone so similar. ‘My goodness!’ he forced himself to smile at Mildred. ‘You must have got quite a start seeing me tonight.’

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nbsp; She gave one of her cackling laughs. ‘You is just like ’im, but I ain’t so daft I thought you was ’is ghost. He used to come and visit me every time he come back ’ere, and often gave me a few bob to help out.’

  ‘What line of work was he in?’ Archie asked, sitting down on a rickety stool and taking the box of papers from her.

  ‘’E used to be an insurance man, like his dad, but he gave that up after ’is ma went. Last time I saw ’im ’e said ’e were strapped for cash but ’is ship was coming in soon. Did that mean ’e was going to sign on a ship for foreign parts?’

  Archie thought it sounded very much as if Stephen Lyle and he had more in common than just looks. ‘I don’t know, Mildred,’ he said. ‘But let me look at these papers, there might be something in here to tell us what he was planning.’

  She sat down heavily on an upturned crate, wobbling because she was so drunk.

  Archie took no more than a cursory look at the contents of the box, as the light was very dim, but he saw a passport, a ration book, a set of keys and what looked like deeds for the house in Whitechapel. He wondered why the man had been carrying around so many private papers, especially deeds for a house. It could be that he’d been calling at a solicitor’s earlier, but to Archie’s mind it suggested he was up to no good.

  ‘Did you get a death certificate for him?’ he asked.

  She shrugged, her face blank. ‘The air-raid warden gave me a bit of paper and told me to go to the address on it about Stephen,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t read it. And anyways, I was so upset I went and ’ad a drink and I must’ve lost it.’

  ‘What about his funeral? Did his relatives see to that?’

  Again she looked blank. ‘’E didn’t ’ave no folk, not that I knowed about anyways. Don’t know about a funeral neither. No one told me when it was or nothing.’

  Archie felt a little shiver of excitement run down his spine. He didn’t know what the procedure was when people were killed in air raids. As he understood it, they usually took bodies to the nearest hall for them to be formally identified. But on a night when many people were killed, it had to be very difficult to match the dead to living relatives.