Jack started to text Stella that they might have another case. Stella would ask for proof. He put away his phone as the taxi pulled up beside the statue of the Leaning Woman.
Chapter Twelve
June 1976
Chrissie blundered out from a tunnel of pines and japonica bushes into sunshine. She stepped on to an asphalt path swollen and blistering in the heat and cracked where weeds had forced their way through. The weeds were dead and tangled. Her flip-flops stuck to the tacky bitumen and she tripped. One flip-flop came off and she yelped when the ground burned her foot.
A shiver went down Chrissie’s spine. She was lost. Then she felt relief. There was a house. Shattered by running away from Bella and by the heat, mechanically she counted the windows. She did it twice before she decided upon seven.
She would ask the people who lived in the house to tell her the way home. Trusting, Chrissie pattered across the grass. She grabbed a metal handrail to drag herself up steps to a veranda; the metal was scorching and she snatched her hand away.
She was outside a grand porch with two front doors. The house was bigger than Kew Villa where Mr and Mrs Watson lived. Chrissie faltered. If a person like Mrs Watson answered, she would be cross that she had left her friends and wouldn’t tell her the way home.
Her dad had told her not to be frightened of anything. Chrissie knocked on one of the doors. No one came. Undaunted, the little girl took off her flip-flops and, putting them by the door, went inside. Almost immediately she saw a woman’s face. A ghost!
‘He-hello.’ The woman stared at her as if she was blind and calming down she saw that it was a statue. If she had been with Bella and Emily they might have made a joke out of it. Even though it wasn’t funny.
Two more doors led into the house itself. One was ajar and a strange smell drifted out. Without knocking again, Chrissie crept inside.
Light spilled down from the dirt-encrusted windows high above. There was no ceiling. It wasn’t a real house, there were no doors or rooms. Above her she saw a railing protecting a ledge that ran around all the walls of the house, but there were no stairs to reach it. Chrissie felt uncertain and thought of running out, but the tiles on the floor felt wonderfully cool on the soles of her feet so she stayed.
‘Hello?’ No one replied. Chrissie ventured further in, trying not to breathe in the strange smell that made her think of gravestones and dead spiders.
The walls were completely covered in pictures with no spaces in between. Chrissie felt a pressing on her chest at the sight of them all squashed up together. She peered up at one. It was of a tree with orange petals. It was the same picture as in Mr and Mrs Watson’s drawing room. For some reason, instead of reassuring her, this made her feel faintly afraid. A house with no rooms and vast expanses of wall entirely filled with paintings. She gulped for breath.
Chrissie heard something. A cough or a sneeze: she couldn’t tell. About to call out, she remembered that she was in someone’s house without permission. Keeping close to the wall, thinking of her dad’s instruction about winning, she took little steps and came to a break in the wall. She was in the entrance to what she could see was a proper room. It had a lower ceiling and four walls and a door opposite. Taking another step she saw a cupboard. There were pictures all over the walls here too. Her mum would have a fit: it would be hard to clean properly.
A lady lay on the floor. White teeth, white eyes, white hair. Chrissie clamped a hand to her mouth to stop herself yelling at the top of her voice.
Eventually she asked, ‘Are you all right?’ The lady wore a skirt and her legs were bare. Chrissie kicked something and, jumping back, saw that it was a shoe. Black with a silver buckle.
She heard something beyond the door on the other side of the room. She flung open the cupboard, pushed in and shoved herself to the back. Instantly she saw her mistake. This was the first place that Bella would look. Her dad told her off for acting without thinking. She should have left the way she came in. She shouldn’t be in someone else’s house. It didn’t occur to Chrissie that the sound – definitely footsteps – might not be Bella.
She stuck her finger in a knot hole and managed to draw one door shut. But Bella might see her finger poking through. She jolted with shock. Through the gap between the doors the lady was looking right at her. Gobstopper eyes staring. Chrissie stared back.
She shut her eyes. Bella was coming. When Chrissie opened her eyes, it wasn’t Bella that she saw.
The Cat in the Hat was balancing an umbrella on his paw. Chrissie snatched her finger out of the knot hole. The door shifted outward and the crack widened. The Cat in the Hat swooped down and flapped open a big bag. He began to put the lady into it. Chrissie screwed up her eyes, but still she saw the cat as he leapt and bounded about, his long tail twirling in his hand, holding his umbrella as if it were a gun. Silently Chrissie chanted Run 82 to make him stop.
‘Leave by left Gloucester Road, Right Elvaston Place, Left Queen’s Gate, Right Kensington Gore...’
When she risked looking again there was no one there. The pattern made by a mix of octagonal and rectangular tiles was uninterrupted. Her head was thumping in earnest.
She clambered out of the cupboard and raced across the dimly lit gallery out on to the veranda. A bluff of heat enveloped her and the sunlight pierced her eyes. She had no idea which way she had come. Parched lawns stretched away before her.
She ran along the veranda and leapt down the steps on to the grass. Her ankles shooting with pain, she ran beside the bitumen path until, crippled by a stitch, she could run no more.
On the veranda of the red-bricked house with no rooms, a shadow fell across a pair of child’s flip-flops. The shadow, stark in the sunlight, might have been mistaken for a creature in a stovepipe hat.
Chapter Thirteen
November 2014
‘You are not owed a penny. My company has reimbursed you for everything. This is about truth and lies. It always has been.’ A pause. ‘It’s a bloody name. It means nothing.’ Pause. ‘Time is not a luxury at our disposal.’ Tina Banks rolled her eyes. ‘Twat!’ She flung down the receiver, startling Stanley, snoozing in the basket Tina had bought for him.
Stella was cleaning the electrochromic glass partition. It was now frosted but at the press of a button could clear, giving Tina a panoramic view of her staff in the sprawling office beyond. Stella had never heard Tina swear before.
It was six o’clock in the morning. As usual when Stella had arrived to clean Tina’s law offices in Brentford, she found her already at her desk and on the phone. She had beckoned Stella in when she had attempted to leave. She had begun cleaning reluctantly, because Tina, who said that she and Stella were morning people, appeared to be in an uncharacteristically angry mood.
Tina snatched up the pen and underlined something on her pad, scoring the paper.
‘I... er—’ Stella sprayed a cloud of Mr Muscle all-purpose cleaner on to her cloth and rubbed at the glass vigorously.
‘If you press any harder you’ll frost it permanently.’ Tina scowled. ‘Get down, you’ll rip my tights!’ Stanley, distressed by her fury, was pawing at her, behaviour that, against Stella’s advice, Tina usually encouraged.
Stella wondered if the Ball hadn’t gone to plan and foxtrotting hadn’t opened the doors that Tina had intended that it should. Stella mouthed to Stanley to return to his bed, realizing too late that he had stolen an anti-static cloth.
‘We’ll have to review him coming if he’s going to be naughty.’ Tina glared at the dog.
‘Yes.’ Stella lured Stanley out again with a chicken treat. She tossed it across the room for him to ‘find’ and retrieved the cloth.
‘That’s rewarding him for bad behaviour.’
‘The trainer advises that I “pick my battles”. That wasn’t worth a head-to-head.’ Stella confirmed to herself that the glass was clean.
‘Your trainer!’
Stella was baffled: Tina knew that she took Stanley to dog classes, both obed
ience and agility; she often said that ‘more people should take trouble with their animals’.
‘Either he’s being naughty or he’s not. If the law went along those lines, people would get off for some crimes and not others.’ Tina was icy.
‘Isn’t that what happens sometimes?’ Stella was furious with herself for arguing. She set about packing up the cart. Tina’s office was the last on her job sheet. Tina would usually have the coffee on and insist Stella stay for a cup. Today the percolator was empty and cold.
‘None of us is blameless. It’s not wrong if you get away with it. He will be getting up to all sorts of stuff that you don’t know about.’ Tina tilted back in her leather armchair, twiddling the pen between her two forefingers and thumbs.
‘I dare say.’ Astonished at Tina’s character change – or rather the advent of a side of Tina that Stella had supposed was reserved for bitter legal disputes – Stella wheeled the cart to the door and gestured for Stanley to follow. He set off towards her and then detoured to Tina’s desk.
‘This way, Stanley!’ Stella dispensed with the silent command. He was making for something under the desk. She swooped down and got there before him. It was a silver pendant on a chain. ‘Is this yours?’ She placed it on Tina’s desk, noticing that it wasn’t a pendant, but a heart-shaped locket.
‘No.’ Tina’s face clouded over. ‘Where was that?’
‘Under your desk.’
‘A client must have dropped it.’
‘I’ve just vacuumed – it wasn’t there then.’ Stella was puzzled.
Tina rounded on her. ‘Are you accusing me of lying? No chance that you missed a bit, I suppose?’
Stella was used to clients being peremptory, even rude. Mrs Ramsay, an elderly woman, had been erratic and demanding and Stella had taken her moods in her stride. If clients were rude to her staff she sacked the client. Clean Slate operatives must be treated with respect. But it wasn’t possible to sack Tina Banks – she was a friend; and besides, Stella could take it. The dancing had been out of character, but this was different again: Stella didn’t recognize Tina. She was being angry with her for a quality that Stella had supposed they shared. A commitment to perfection. Dumbfounded Stella agreed: ‘I must have missed it.’
‘Ignore me.’ Tina swept the locket off the desk into an open drawer and slammed it shut. Swivelling away from Stella, her back to her, she asked, ‘Found any detective cases lately?’
‘We don’t go looking. Clients come to us.’ Tina knew this. Stella clipped on Stanley’s lead. In the early morning, Tina kept her office door open and the glass clear so that she could greet her staff as they arrived. Now the glass was frosted and Tina’s door was shut.
‘Do they come to you?’
‘We’ve had a couple of things.’ Stella hoped Tina wouldn’t ask her about her mum’s missing neighbour who wasn’t missing and the cat who had been lured to the house two doors down by morsels of fresh fish and a bed in the porch.
‘If you were proactive re new business, you’d sweep up!’ If Tina intended a pun, she gave no sign. ‘I ran into that ancient hack from the Chronicle, Lucie May, at the coroner’s court last week, snouting for pickings like the carrion crow she is. She was singing your praises as a private eye.’
Lucie May never disclosed her age, and Stella and Tina had agreed that, with her immaculate make-up, short skirts and high heels, she could be anything from fifty to seventy. Stella and Lucie May had an uneasy relationship. Close to Terry, Lucie May had resented his daughter, as she had put it to Jack, ‘playing detective’. Since the One Under case, May had changed her tune, though surely not to the extent, Stella thought, of praising Stella to others.
‘She told me I’d lost weight. I said, “At least I’m not a head on a stick!”’ Tina scooted her mouse around the mat like a toy car. This was in character, Stella had seen that: impatient with intractable objects, Tina broke them. Tina joked that her capital asset costs were sky high. Stella respected equipment: she kept her carpet cleaners, duo-speed floor scrubbers, even plastic warning signs spick and span.
‘I was thinking of hiring you.’ Tina bashed the mouse down on the mat.
Stella was already cleaning Tina’s office and flat. The only hiring she could do was to increase the number and length of the sessions. ‘To be honest, it’s not necessary to—’
Music interrupted her. Stella was transported to 1973 when, aged seven, she had been given David Cassidy’s ‘Daydreamer’ by her dad on the first access weekend after his separation from her mum. He had given her a present each weekend until her mum told him that it was too late to be ‘Super-Dad’. The music was Tina’s ringtone. She cut Cassidy off mid-croon.
‘The cleaner’s here. Hold on.’ The handset clamped to her ear, Tina Banks edged around her desk and left the office. As Tina stalked through the open-plan office Stella caught the words, ‘Everything must come out...’ Then Tina was gone. Stella heard the boom of the staircase door slamming.
Tina never referred to Stella as ‘the cleaner’. Stella didn’t mind, it was what she was and clean environments were vital. Tina often said that cleaners made the world go around as much as criminal lawyers and that her mum had been a cleaner.
Stella gave the office a last scan. At the carpet where she had found the locket there were suction marks on the pile. She had vacuumed there.
She guided the cart along a gangway between baffle screens. Tina was returning.
‘You’re done for the day.’ In high heels Tina was still shorter than Stella.
Puzzled by Tina’s personality change, Stella broke a cardinal Clean Slate rule and asked, ‘You OK?’
‘I will be.’ Tina went into her office and as she turned to shut the door she added, ‘I’m a winner.’ She shut the door. Through the frosted-glass partition Stella saw a smudged shadow. Tina appeared to hesitate. Was she coming back? Stella waited. Tina returned to her desk and sat down.
In the lift, squeezed in with Stanley and the cart, Stella was bewildered by their exchange. Seldom offended or hurt, she didn’t take Tina Banks’s manner personally; she stuck to facts. Tina was adamant that she hadn’t dropped the locket. No one had come into the office while Stella was there. While able to admit a mistake, Stella knew that the locket had not been on the carpet when she had vacuumed.
Reluctantly Stella faced the most likely explanation. Although she had denied it, Tina had dropped the locket. In other words, she had lied.
Chapter Fourteen
June 1976
Chrissie shrank into the shadow of the porch to avoid the sun. Her head thumped; the heat had created a dislocation from reality so she felt as if she was floating above herself.
Bella and Emily were not at the gate. She had given them the slip after school, but didn’t put it past Bella to sneak along to the house by Kew Pond to meet her ‘mum’. Since last weekend’s picnic in Kew Gardens, Bella hadn’t spoken to her. In a snatched exchange in the girls’ toilets, Emily had imparted the unsurprising news to Chrissie that Bella had ‘broken’ with her.
‘If you say sorry, I’m sure she’ll be fine. She was hurt that you ran away. Bella’s actually quite nice,’ Emily had advised as they washed their hands at the sink.
‘I’m not sorry,’ Chrissie had pointed out.
‘You mustn’t lie,’ Emily had said solemnly. ‘That would be wrong.’
Since lying was what Chrissie did all the time, she had nothing to say. She was about to tell Emily about seeing the lady with the gobstopper eyes on the floor in a house with no rooms in Kew Gardens, but Bella had come into the toilets so Chrissie left.
Huddled in the Watsons’ porch, Chrissie considered going home. She could pretend that she had gone to the drawing class and use the time to go to Ravenscourt Park and play with her old friends under the railway arches. Except she would have no drawing to show her mum and dad. And Mr and Mrs Watson would tell her dad she hadn’t come and he would be cross. He would also be cross that she was a ‘broken friend’. B
esides, she had learned the parts of a flower off by heart and wanted to display her knowledge to Mr Watson.
Petals (easy). Sepals, ray florets, perianth, stamens...
Five days had passed since Chrissie had hidden in the cupboard in the house with no rooms. Over that time she had come to believe that what she had seen was a dream. Steeped in heat, colours bleached and sound muted, she had gone to bed with what her mum called sunstroke; her mum had said that her ‘brain was addled’. Her dad told her off for not wearing a hat. Lying in her bedroom with the curtains drawn, she had watched the cat wearing a tall red hat, his umbrella tapping on the tiles. The lady with the gobstopper eyes was talking, I’ve made chocolate cake... hundreds and thousands... Drifting in and out of nausea Chrissie had told herself that cats couldn’t carry umbrellas. Perhaps it wasn’t an umbrella...
Chrissie knocked on the Watsons’ front door. She was taken aback when Mr Watson himself answered.
‘Ah, Christina, it’s you.’ He sounded as if he wasn’t expecting her. ‘Mrs Watson has popped out to the shops. She’s baked you a chocolate cake. It’s in the drawing room. As usual.’ Maybe he was as fed up by the regular appearance of the cake as Chrissie was.
‘When will she be back?’ Chrissie peered past him into the dim hall. ‘Mrs Watson, I mean.’ Who’s ‘she’, the cat’s mother? Bella whispered in her ear.
‘She didn’t say. Eat your tea and come to the studio.’ Mr Watson was climbing the stairs.
Chrissie hovered in the doorway of the drawing room. A plate with a wedge of chocolate cake smothered with hundreds and thousands was on the table by the settee next to a glass of milk.
The House With No Rooms Page 9
