‘He saw her again?’ asked Frances. ‘What did he want?’
Vera didn’t know. Just more questions like the others. Anyhow, he hadn’t stayed long. But some press men had called too, and they had been more of a nuisance. Had Miss Wray read today’s papers? They were full of the murder; it was awful. Lil had taken one look at them and burst into tears.
Frances had seen only that morning’s Times – which, she’d thought, was unsettling enough, the original inaccurate mention expanded now into an account of the opening and adjourning of the inquest and Lilian’s ‘trembling’ attendance at it. So when Vera left she went with her as far as the news-stand on the hill; she bought every paper she could afford, the Mirror, the Mail, the Sketch, the Express, the local papers too. Lilian’s image, she saw, unnerved, was on all the pictorials – she tucked the bundle under her arm, feeling squeamish about looking at them there on the street. She didn’t want her mother to see them, either. Once she was back at the house she took them straight up to her bedroom and spread them out on the floor.
She recalled the man with the camera. The pictures showed Lilian leaving the inquest, leaning on her sister’s arm, nervously lowering her head. They were grainy and unsubtle – mere approximations, really – but, all the same, they had captured something of Lilian, they had got the life and solidity of her, and it was incredible, dizzying, mad! to think of the masses of people who, just that morning, must have studied her face over their breakfast eggs and on their trains and buses; who must be gazing at it right now. The Daily Mirror carried a second picture. Perhaps it had been lent, along with that portrait of Leonard, by helpful Uncle Ted. It showed Lilian and Leonard in what might have been someone’s back garden. Leonard had an arm around Lilian’s waist, her hip was tight against his; they looked like any young couple of the clerk class, smiling into their future in Hammersmith or Forest Hill. The caption read, ‘Mr and Mrs Barber, before the tragedy’.
The tone was the same in the other papers. There was no suggestion anywhere that the marriage had been anything other than happy. There was nothing but sympathy for Lilian, the ‘pitiful young widow’, the ‘pathetic wife’. The accounts of the inquest stressed her bravery, her emotion and her looks; there were careful, approving descriptions of her costume. The murder was condemned as the work of a brute who would soon be apprehended, and the police were said to be ‘pursuing several lines of inquiry’, one of which was that theory, already reported by Charlie, that Leonard’s killer might have marked him out in the City and followed him home. Inspector Kemp was inviting members of the public to come forward if they’d noticed any suspicious behaviour on the streets of Blackfriars or Champion Hill on the fatal night.
Going from article to article, from picture to picture, Frances felt as if something that had, until now, been secure in her hand had dropped, had shattered, had burst into a thousand flying pieces. Then again – well, wasn’t it all just what she and Lilian could have hoped for? Charlie’s lie, whatever was behind it, had been enough to give the police their pointer; it didn’t matter which direction they went in now, so long as it took them away from the house. And for how long would the case attract this sort of interest? Another day or two? A week, at most? Soon, surely, it would become clear that the lines of inquiry were so many dead-ends – that Inspector Kemp, for all his confidence, had failed to deliver his man – and the newspapers would look elsewhere. Some more sensational story would be bound to come along. It’s just a question, she told herself, of doggedly sitting it out… But she looked again at those grainy front-page phantoms, more unsettled than ever to think of all the strangers’ gazes to which they had been exposed. Finally she tore the pictures free, screwed them into a ball, took them down to the kitchen, and stuffed them into the stove.
Then neighbours began to call. They had bought the papers too – or had been shown them, they claimed, by their cooks and parlourmaids – and wanted to discuss the latest developments. Mrs Dawson had heard that Mrs Barber had suffered some sort of seizure at the inquest – was that true? The elder Miss Desborough, from the house next door, understood that a second murder had now been committed, but that the police were keeping the matter quiet for some reason of their own. Mr Lamb and Margaret, on the other hand, had been told on good authority that the police were poised to make an arrest. No, there was absolutely no doubt about it. The man was local – a shop-keeper or trader. He had taken against Mr Barber because of an unpaid bill.
And next came Mrs Playfair. She had just that moment returned from Sussex, having cut short her holiday on the Wrays’ behalf.
‘I simply can’t believe it!’ she said, as Frances let her into the house.
Frances answered thinly. ‘Yes, everyone’s saying that.’
‘I opened The Times and actually yelled. You look ill, Frances.’
‘I’m worn out, that’s all. The last few days have seemed endless.’
‘Oh, why wasn’t I here! I could have done so much. But, tell me, how’s your mother?’
For answer, Frances led the way into the drawing-room. Her mother had heard Mrs Playfair’s voice; now, at the sight of her, she seemed close to tears. Mrs Playfair stepped quickly to her and took hold of her hands.
‘What an ordeal, Emily! You look worse even than Frances. I don’t wonder at it. We thought all our horrors were behind us, didn’t we?’
Frances’s mother nodded, unable to speak. But as she wiped her eyes and put away her handkerchief some of the tension went out of her.
‘It’s such a great relief to see you, Jane.’
‘You ought to have telegraphed to me at once.’
‘I’ve hardly known what I’ve been doing. Frances has taken care of most of it, but – I don’t know. It isn’t like an ordinary death or an illness at all.’
Mrs Playfair sat down and began to tug off her gloves. ‘Well, I want to hear everything that’s happened, every little last thing.’
Frances sat down too. The prospect of going through it all over again made her feel boneless with exhaustion. At the same time, she realised that here was an opportunity to tell the story of the murder as the police had begun to construct it – to fix it more firmly in her mind. So, with her mother now and then putting in some detail of her own, she gave a careful, thorough account of the events of the past few days, beginning with Constable Hardy’s arrival at the house on Saturday morning, and finishing with the inquest. Mrs Playfair looked shocked, appalled – but also, unmistakably, excited. As soon as she’d heard Frances out she narrowed her eyes.
‘Now, who’s the coroner at the moment? Is it still Edward Samson? I know him a little. He used to be friendly with George. I might pay him a call, do some digging. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I wish you would,’ said Frances’s mother. ‘If he knows anything at all that the police aren’t saying, I’d so like to hear it. It’s the senselessness of the thing that I find so horrible. The blindness, the waste. Poor, poor Mr Barber. He was such a cheerful young man, so very full of life. Can you really believe, as Inspector Kemp seems to think, that someone set out, purposely, to kill him? Someone with some sort of grudge against him?’
‘Well, no,’ Mrs Playfair answered, ‘I’m not sure I do believe it. There seems no evidence, for one thing. The attacker was clearly one of these louts one sees hanging about on the street corners! I wonder the inspector doesn’t simply round them all up and question them one by one. That’s what I would do.’
She went on like this, laying down certainty after certainty – and sounding oddly, in her confidence, like the inspector himself, so that Frances, listening to her, began to feel a return of the mild elation she had felt on Sunday while listening to him. For, the street-corner lout, the man with the grudge: whoever the culprit was meant to be, what did it matter? So long, she thought again, as no one was thinking of Lilian and her. So long as no one was imagining that they had ever made that journey down the stairs and over the garden with Leonard’s body… She remembered leaving him
in the darkness. She remembered closing the door on him. And then another thought came – came like a whisper behind the hand. He’s gone. Lilian was free now. If they could just hang on to their courage, just until everything died down…
She chased the thought away. But the touch of elation remained. She put back her head, and closed her eyes, while Mrs Playfair laid her plans.
After tea that day, however, Mrs Playfair returned; and this time she looked uncharacteristically subdued. Yes, she said, she had spoken to Mr Samson. He had been quite willing to talk in confidence about the case. She had also had two or three conversations with her parlourmaid, Patty.
‘With Patty?’ repeated Frances.
‘Patty’s sister’s girl, over at Brixton, is engaged to be married. The boy’s a constable in the police, and he’s let one or two things slip.’
Frances couldn’t believe it. ‘You sound like Mr Lamb! According to him, Leonard was killed by a disgruntled local grocer. Mother and I will be next on the list, at that rate.’
‘Frances,’ protested her mother tiredly.
‘Well,’ Mrs Playfair went on, ‘this boy’s meant to be the horse’s mouth. Patty speaks very highly of him. And the fact is, both he and Mr Samson —’ She paused, strangely awkward. ‘It caught me quite by surprise, I can tell you. But they both gave me more or less the same impression. They both hinted pretty plainly that – well, that there’s something not quite right about the case.’
Frances looked at her. ‘What do you mean, “not quite right”?’
Mrs Playfair paused again. She seemed to be carefully choosing her words. ‘Well, for one thing, Mr Barber is supposed to have spent Friday evening with his friend, Mr – What’s his name?’
‘Wismuth.’
‘Mr Wismuth, yes. They’re supposed to have gone from one public house to another, getting drunk as lords on the way. But the police have been to every public house in the City, showing photographs of the two men, and no publican or barmaid has any recollection of them. What’s more, the police surgeon, Mr Palmer, tested Mr Barber’s body for alcohol when he carried out his post-mortem. He found very little trace of it, apparently – less than the equivalent of half a glass of beer. Looks odd, don’t you think?’
It took Frances a moment to answer. ‘Well, it sounds to me as though Mr Wismuth was the drunker, that’s all.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ said Mrs Playfair. ‘But here’s the queerest part. It seems now that a man and a girl have come forward to say that they heard some sort of disturbance in the lane on Friday night, and —’
Frances felt the words as an almost physical shock. She began to blush – a horrible feeling, nothing at all like simple embarrassment, more a scalding of her cheeks, as if she’d had boiling water flung at them. Mrs Playfair, seeing her reaction and misunderstanding it, said, ‘Yes, isn’t it a ghastly thought? The girl’s in service at one of the houses further down the hill. She’d slipped out without the family’s knowledge – a naughty girl, obviously – but still, it’s enough to give one nightmares. She didn’t see anything, I believe; evidently it was too dark for that, and she was too far off – down where the Hillyards’ wall juts out. But she and the man both say they heard footsteps and sighs. The man made light of it at the time, said it must be another pair of sweethearts. Then, of course, when they heard about the murder… It took them until last night to make up their minds to talk to the police. The girl was frightened for her place; the man didn’t want to come forward on his own for fear of making himself a suspect. But the point is, you see – the point is, it was quite early in the evening when they were out in the lane – not later than half-past nine. Well, according to Mr Wismuth, he and Mr Barber were still in the City then.’
The blood was roaring through Frances’s ears. To think that when she and Lilian had gone staggering out into the darkness – that when she was going over Leonard’s body, trying to pull his clothes straight – to think that all that time, less than fifty yards away, there had been this couple, this sinister spooning couple —
‘They must be mistaken,’ she said, trying to will the heat and colour from her face. ‘Whatever they heard – probably it was another couple. I’ve seen couples in the lane myself, countless times. Or else they imagined the whole thing – or are telling stories, for the thrill of it.’
‘It’s certainly possible,’ said Mrs Playfair, with a doubtful air. ‘But the police seem to be taking them seriously all the same. They’ve kept the detail out of the papers for now. And they’re – well, they’re keeping a close eye on Mr Wismuth, I can tell you that.’
Now Frances couldn’t answer. Miss Desborough had spoken yesterday of things being kept out of the papers, and she hadn’t believed it. But if the police really were doing devious things like that, if they were plotting and watchful like that – And if they really suspected Charlie —!
Her mother had begun to fidget about in her chair. ‘Oh, but this is awful. Surely no one’s imagining that Mr Wismuth had anything to do with Mr Barber’s death? Mr Wismuth, who’s always so pleasant? The two of them were such great friends. Didn’t they go through the War together? No, I can’t believe it.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Playfair, ‘someone killed Mr Barber. And you have to allow, it does look very much as though Mr Wismuth has something to conceal.’
‘But why would he do such a thing?’
‘What did the inspector tell Frances? That the murderer might have wanted to get Mr Barber out of his way?’
‘Yes, but why?’
‘Well, I hate to play drawing-room detective, but —’ Again Mrs Playfair seemed to be carefully choosing her words. ‘Just think about it for a moment. On the one hand you have Mr Wismuth, spending a great deal of his time with Mr Barber and his wife. On the other – well, there’s the wife herself. My dear, she’s an awfully attractive woman, of a very particular sort. Haven’t you told me, more than once, that the couple didn’t get along?’
Frances felt rather than saw her mother’s horrified gaze. She couldn’t bring herself to return it. Was this what the police were thinking? Had they been thinking it all along? She began to recall moments from her interviews with Inspector Kemp, odd questions that he had asked, about Lilian, about Charlie…
She turned to Mrs Playfair. ‘Did you mention that to Mr Samson or to Patty? About Lilian and Leonard not getting along?’
Her tone made Mrs Playfair blink. ‘I – I don’t recall.’
She sat still for a second, then got to her feet. ‘Oh, this is nonsense. This is rubbish! What is it exactly that Lilian’s supposed to have done? She was here all Friday night with me.’
Mrs Playfair gazed up at her, startled. ‘No one’s accusing Mrs Barber of anything. I dare say she’s innocent of the whole affair.’
‘Oh, you dare say?’
‘Yes – yes, I do. But isn’t it possible that Mr Wismuth has been harbouring some passion —? I know that Mrs Barber is a sort of friend of yours, Frances. But, well, let’s not be unworldly. Men don’t kill each other for no reason.’
‘Don’t they? It seems to me that men do that all the time. We’ve just come out of a war in which they did nothing else! Eric and Noel and John Arthur – what were they killed for, but for nonsense, for lies! And who protested against that? Not you and my mother! And now a single man has lost his life and everyone’s leaping to these ludicrous conclusions —’
Mrs Playfair looked amazed. ‘Good heavens, Frances!’
‘This isn’t an Edgar Wallace story. If we’ve to listen to policemen’s swank, to servants’ gossip —!’
She was shaking, and couldn’t go on. Her mother said, ‘Frances, please, sit down.’ But she felt that if she sat she would only have to spring back up again. She stepped closer to the hearth, put out a steadying hand to the mantelpiece.
After an uncomfortable silence Mrs Playfair gave a bird-like twitch of her chin and shoulder.
‘Well, naturally I understand that you’re upset. This is a desperate thing
for everyone concerned. But, as you say, a man’s life has been lost; that didn’t happen by itself. I don’t see what the War has to do with it at all. – No, that isn’t true.’ Her tone had sharpened. ‘I see exactly what the War has to do with it, and so, I imagine, does your mother. The War took all our best men. It isn’t considered correct to say so, but I shall say it anyhow. The War took all our best men, and with them went everything that’s decent and lawful and —’ She leaned forward in her chair. ‘A murder, Frances! On Champion Hill! Would that have happened ten years ago?’
Again, Frances couldn’t answer. She stood with her hand at the mantelpiece still, not wanting to surrender the feel of the cool hard marble shelf. Looking into the mirror above it she met her own reflection and thought, Calm down! For God’s sake! You’re giving too much away!
Then her gaze shifted and refocused and, through the glass, she caught her mother’s eye. Her mother was watching her with a look of unhappy embarrassment, but there was something else in her face – Frances was almost certain – that oddness, that doubt, that fear —
Abruptly, she turned away from it, saying, ‘Forgive me, Mrs Playfair.’ She left the fireplace, crossed to the window, stood gazing out at the street.
But they were all rattled now. After a minute or two of subdued chat between Mrs Playfair and her mother she heard sounds of movement, and, turning back to the room, found them both on their feet. Mrs Playfair was shrugging on her coat, fastening the chain of her fox collar. But, ‘Don’t trouble,’ she said quietly, when Frances moved forward to walk her to the door. ‘I shall see myself out. Really, I’m sorry I came, if it was only to upset you.’
Once she had gone, Frances returned to the sofa. Her mother remained standing, looking down at her as if she hardly recognised her.
‘How could you talk to Mrs Playfair like that about the War?’
‘Mrs Playfair knows what I think about the War. She called me a traitor to my country once, don’t you remember?’