The Paying Guests (40 page)

She set the guard across the grate and hurried out to the boiling kettle.

Downstairs, her mother was back at the French windows. ‘I can’t take it in, Frances,’ she said. ‘I can’t be still. It doesn’t seem true.’ She took the tea from Frances’s hand, and the cup rattled on the saucer. Her face was still without colour; would she be all right, left here alone? Was there time to run and fetch Mrs Playfair and Patty? But, no, Frances remembered, Mrs Playfair wouldn’t be at home; she was leaving early this morning for a week at her sister’s in Sussex. Was there no one else? One of the neighbours? She thought of the Dawsons opposite… So, just as she was, hatless and coatless, she headed out into the rain, ran across the road and gave the family a quick, breathless account of what had happened. Yes, it was frightful. A dreadful shock. No, not at all like that other time. An accident, the policeman thought. But could Mrs Dawson come and sit with her mother for the hour or so that it would take her to accompany Mrs Barber to the mortuary and back? Could one of the maids come too, to lay the fires and make a breakfast?

Of course, of course, they said, with startled faces. They would come at once; they would follow her over. And she left them darting about, looking for coats and umbrellas.

Stepping from their garden path, she noticed a tradesman up at the turn of the road: he was standing on the pavement in a fixed, interested pose, his attention caught by something further along the crest of the hill. As she reached the kerb, she saw what it was. The ambulance had emerged from the lane. It came nosing around the corner, slow and careful, like a snuffling beast; when it passed her, it drew so close that she could almost have put out her hand and touched it. She watched its blank rump receding as it lumbered down towards Camberwell. Could Leonard really be inside it? Queasily, she pictured his smashed head, jolting about.

But she felt a little better for having spoken to the Dawsons. She had shaken off some of her falseness; she could feel herself responding to the crisis as if she had come to it innocently. Back at the house, she found her mother and Lilian together in the drawing-room, Lilian dressed, but dressed badly, in clashing colours – a navy skirt, her crimson jersey, a brown coat – as if she had pulled on the garments at random; there were swipes of powder and lipstick on her face, which only emphasised her pallor. She was shivering as if very cold, and Frances’s mother must have been trying to get her to drink her tea; the cup, still almost full, sat on the table beside the sofa, the mark of her red mouth on it. At the sound of Mrs Dawson and her maid following Frances to the house, she started; and when she saw them coming in she bowed her head. Mrs Dawson said, ‘Oh, Mrs Barber, I’m so very sorry for you. Mrs Wray, what a sad thing this is!’

The taxi arrived while Frances was upstairs fetching her coat and hat. She took Lilian’s arm in hers for the journey across the front garden, conscious of the stares of passers-by. Perhaps news of the upset had already spread; or perhaps there was simply something odd about her and Lilian’s poses, their combination of fragility and haste. The driver also looked curiously at them. How much, she wondered, had the police told him? There was no debate about the destination, at any rate. He simply helped them into the vehicle, then returned to his cabin, and with a great and ghastly creaking of its chassis the taxi started down the hill.

Neither she nor Lilian spoke. The man was separated from them by the glass, the noise of the engine, the hiss of the wheels on the road, but they were too anxious and wary to risk speech. Instead they held hands, low down, out of sight. Now and then Lilian closed her eyes, her lips moving as if in prayer.

They drove through the rain-lashed Saturday-morning streets, past the park, past the hospital, the picture-theatre, the shops, past every ordinary, friendly landmark. A short way beyond Camberwell Green they made a turn to the right, and entered a dreary warren of low terraced houses; a few minutes later they came to a halt at a small, chapel-like building at the back of what Frances realised must be the coroner’s court. She opened the taxi door, uncertain of what to do next – then saw Constable Hardy, who, by some disconcerting police magic, had got here ahead of them. He came forward to greet them, and to hurry them through the wet. They went into the building and were put to wait on a couple of hard chairs in a grim little lobby.

A ribbed glass window let in a weak light. Muffled male voices could be heard; a telephone rang and was answered, just as it might have been in an office or in the back room of a shop. Was this the mortuary itself, or simply some stop on their journey to it? Frances wasn’t sure. The place was so ordinary, so anonymous. It was even more difficult to believe that Leonard’s body was here, close by, than it had been to watch that ambulance and understand that he was inside.

But then she caught the scent of disinfectant, like a creeping, jaundiced colour in the air. She looked at Lilian and saw that she had noticed it too. She’d started to shift about on the chair. Suddenly she grabbed at Frances’s arm. ‘I don’t think I can do it, Frances.’

Frances felt for her fingers. ‘It’ll only take a moment, he said.’

‘I’m afraid, of what he’ll look like.’

‘You just have to look, then look away.’

‘I’m afraid. I can’t – Oh, God!’

Constable Hardy had returned, and wanted them to go with him.

Lilian closed her eyes, drawing a long, uneven breath. She let Frances help her to her feet, then stood with her hand on her heart, hesitating for so long that Frances felt the whole thing begin to slide away, to crumble, like salt, like sand. She spoke with quiet desperation. ‘It’s only a moment. The worst has happened. You’re through the worst. A small, small moment, that’s all it is.’

Lilian drew another steadying breath; and then she nodded. With an awkward gesture, Constable Hardy led them away from the lobby.

And only now that they were actually following him did Frances begin to take in what they were here for. A part of her still didn’t believe it. That telephone was ringing again. She was still half-imagining that they would pass from this place to another building, a more impressive, convincing one. But even if they did, would they really find Leonard there? He was at his office, surely. He was playing tennis. He was at his parents’. He was back at Champion Hill, pushing the mower across the lawn… But they turned abruptly into a passage, Constable Hardy opened a door, stepped aside for them to pass him – and suddenly she found herself in a scrubbed, electric-lighted room, in the centre of which was a queer sort of altar with a sheeted, man-shaped lump on the top. An aproned attendant stood beside it. The door was closed, and he asked if they were ready. She looked at him blankly; she had no idea what he meant. Lilian, however, must have nodded or made some sign, for, with the discreet, practised, impersonal gesture of a waiter moving forward to place a napkin on a lady’s lap, he reached to take hold of the top of the sheet. And as he began to raise it Frances’s scattered thoughts flew back together in a rush of understanding and terror.

But after all, once the sheet was lifted, her fear dissolved again. It was all so unintimate, so unmenacing, compared with the sweaty horrors of the night before. Leonard’s face, it seemed to her, might have been a bad plasticine model, one side grey, the other almost purple, with no care taken over the join. His eyes were part-way open, but his mouth was closed and tidy. The attendant had tucked a white towel around his head, and the wimple-like effect, against the piebald skin and the gingerish moustache, was too uncanny to be true. This was not a Leonard who would wake, raise his arms, grab and denounce one. This was not Leonard at all. Even Lilian must have felt that. She stood staring at his features with a trace of bewilderment, and when she said, at a prompting from Constable Hardy, ‘Yes. Yes, it’s him,’ she sounded not quite certain. She was far more upset, on turning away, to see the things that had been removed from his body: his clothes and hat, which sat together in a sodden pile on a steel tray; his unlaced shoes, misshapen from their night in the rain; and lastly the items that had come from his pockets, and which had been set, with appalling neatness, on a sheet of greaseproof paper: keys, cigarettes, handkerchiefs, a Boys’ Brigade penknife, odd coins, notes, letters, his wristwatch and wedding-ring.

By the time they had returned to the lobby she was sobbing. Frances helped her back into a chair, then sat beside her with an arm across her heaving shoulders. Constable Hardy stood by, self-conscious; he had a document, it seemed, that required her signature. She wiped her eyes and nose at last, and looked vaguely at the paper. But then there was some trouble with his pen, the ink having run out or dried up. He fiddled with the nib, blushing from his throat to the tips of his ears.

That jaundiced odour seemed stronger than ever. Frances was longing to get away from it. Through the ribbed window she could just discern the suddenly reassuring shape of their taxi-cab, sitting out there with its engine running, waiting to take them home.

Even as she gazed at the glass, however, a misshapen dark figure passed across it; a second later the door opened, letting in another mackintoshed policeman. This one was older and more senior than Constable Hardy. He seemed to know all about the case already; he came forward to shake their hands. His name was Police Sergeant Heath, he said, and he was acting for the coroner. Mrs Barber had made the identification, had she? They were grateful to her for that. And Miss Wray, he understood, was the landlady of the house? Very good. There were just a few facts that he needed to establish, in order for the investigation to proceed – if they didn’t mind?

He didn’t wait for their permission, but pulled over a chair and sat. Lilian looked at him with swollen eyes. Frances watched uneasily as he got out his notebook, groped in his pocket for a pencil, gave the lead a lick. Now, could they confirm their address for him? Could they tell him when exactly they had last seen Mr Barber alive? Could they say how Mr Barber had intended to spend the previous evening?

They were all the questions that Constable Hardy had already asked, and which had already been answered, Frances thought, back at Champion Hill. She shut her eyes in simple weariness. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t eaten. The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real. But soon, surely, it would come to a close. Soon they would all be allowed back into their ordinary lives… The sergeant’s list of questions seemed endless. He took so long to note down their responses, and did it so impassively, that he might have been some sort of machine. She began to answer automatically: No. Yes. No, she didn’t think so. No, she’d heard nothing, nothing at all… At last he read their words back to them, then had them sign their names to the statements. He added a note of his own, snapped the elastic around the book and returned it to his pocket with an air of finality. In relief, she watched him stand, and prepared her over-strained muscles for the rise from the chair.

But what he said, to her amazement, was, ‘Well, we can go into all this in a bit more detail at the Camberwell police station. If Mrs Barber could come with me?’

He held out his hand, to help Lilian to her feet. Lilian looked up at him, blinking, then looked at Frances. Frances said, ‘Just a minute. I don’t understand. Surely you’ve finished with Mrs Barber for now? This has been a dreadful shock for her. Constable Hardy gave us the impression that we could go home directly.’

‘Well,’ he said, with a glance at the younger man, ‘Mrs Barber’s under no obligation. But it would help speed the inquiry along, you see.’

There was something to his tone, Frances realised now: a hard edge, a rigidity, like a busk beneath the padding of his manner. Her weariness fled. The blood hissed in her ears. She rose from the chair, saying, ‘Is everything all right?’ and he nodded grimly.

‘Yes, everything’s in order. Except that a man has died, of course. We have to ascertain how that happened.’

‘But I thought you knew that already. Constable Hardy said that Mr Barber must have slipped and hit his head.’

‘Yes, he might very well have slipped. But we have to consider every possibility. Our surgeon has had a quick look at the deceased and – well, I’ll be honest with you, he isn’t quite satisfied with what he’s found. Nothing to be alarmed about just yet. Once he’s made a thorough examination we shall know more. In the meantime, we just have a few more questions for Mrs Barber. You yourself might go home, Miss Wray. We can have a woman sit with Mrs Barber until her family arrive.’

Lilian caught hold of Frances’s arm. ‘No, don’t leave me!’

‘No, of course I won’t,’ said Frances, frightened by the unguardedness that had reappeared in her face. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving you. I may stay with her, I suppose?’ she asked the sergeant.

‘Oh, certainly,’ he answered, his manner padded again.

So they went back out into the rain, leaving kind young Constable Hardy behind; and this time, when Frances and Lilian climbed into the taxi, Sergeant Heath produced a bicycle and prepared to follow. He was a stoutish man, made stouter by his oilskin cape. There ought to have been something comical about the sight of him, in that weather, fitting on the cycle clips. But as the taxi moved off Frances turned and looked back, to see him, apparently unbothered by the rain, stepping on to the pedal and pushing forward. She turned again a few minutes later, and again a few minutes after that, and each time there he was, doggedly keeping pace with them, his eyes hidden by the peak of his helmet; not looking comical at all.

The journey at least was a short one, and took them back in the direction of home. Frances had been to the police station before – once, she remembered, to report a cabman she had seen mistreating a horse, another time with her mother, on some charity business. This visit felt very different. They went in by a back entrance, pulling up in a cobbled yard, waiting for a minute while Sergeant Heath put his bicycle under cover, then letting him usher them into the soot-stained building through an unmarked door. After that they climbed a flight of stairs, made a turn or two, and she lost her bearings. Again the windows were of thick ribbed glass. Some had actual bars across them. The floors were stone, the walls were tiled: the surfaces threw back steps and voices in hard, institutional echoes.