The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  Stella felt the need to justify her comment about rambling. ‘Tina was hallucinating. She was on morphine,’ she reminded him.

  ‘When my mum passed they called it the “liquid cosh”.’ His voice was strangled. ‘Bet those nurses were trigger-happy with that bloody syringe driver!’ His vehemence shocked Stella. Then she remembered that Jackie said some people have to find someone to blame for the death of a loved one. Tina had had ovarian cancer – the ‘silent killer’, Jackie had called it. By the time Tina got to her GP with symptoms, it was too late. Jackie said grief could make you angry.

  ‘The nurses were kind.’ Stella was thinking of the woman who showed her how to sponge Tina’s lips to give her moisture when she could no longer swallow. Shutting down the memory she burst out, ‘She said something about a murder!’

  ‘A murder?’ He stared at her, incredulous.

  ‘As I say, she was out of it.’

  ‘Why aren’t you a detective like your old man?’

  Relieved by his abrupt change of subject, Stella answered more frankly than she had done when asked the question in the past. ‘I wanted to be one until I was seven and my parents separated. I didn’t see my dad much after that. I decided to be a cleaner.’

  ‘Chrissie could have been on the cabs like me.’ He seemed to have regained his composure. ‘She’d have been the best. Like I say, she had the Knowledge. Not that I wanted that for her.’

  Guests were leaving the gallery. Jack wasn’t among them.

  ‘Tina had a newspaper article in her flat with a picture of you. In the Detective’s Shadow! They made out you was Miss Marple. A chip off the old block!’

  The piece had been in the Daily Mirror and was by Lucie May. It described how Stella had solved the One Under case. She had been reluctant to do the interview, but owed Lucie. It was why she was avoiding Lucie now. She didn’t want her face in the papers again. At Jack’s request, Lucie hadn’t mentioned him. Lucie, happy to sacrifice truth for a good story, had made it look as if Stella ‘cleaned up’ alone.

  ‘What did Chrissie say about a murder?’

  ‘She became ill so I left.’

  ‘It was probably her work. She met all kinds of villains, that got me wound up, I can tell you.’ He nodded at the gallery. ‘I’m not going back in, can’t face it.’ He took a step away along the path and stopped. ‘She must have meant that murder here.’

  Stella snatched at the offered straw. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I tried to get this venue changed, but Michelle said it was Chrissie’s wish. She tell you why she wanted it in here?’ he wiped a hand down his face. If he was a detective, this would be the crux of the interview. Ask the most important question casually, at the end of the interview when the culprit thinks it’s over. As if you don’t care about the answer. She often heard Terry’s voice.

  There was no strategy to Cliff Banks’s questions. He was a man grieving for his daughter.

  ‘No she didn’t.’ Stella agreed that since the murder, the Marianne North Gallery was an unfortunate choice.

  ‘The bloke that was stabbed, it was you that found him, right?’ Cliff Banks might be grieving, but it seemed that he was like everyone else, tapping her for the story. ‘A real-life murder under your nose – try solving that!’ He pulled on black leather gloves and twitched up the collar of his Crombie coat.

  ‘It’s for the police.’

  ‘What do they know?’ He drifted away into the darkness. He called back, ‘Stella love?’

  She strained to make him out. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks for today. You’re a proper Friday’s child!’

  After he had gone, Stella felt bad for not telling him about Tina’s bag of things. Cliff Banks had more right to them than she did. He might have known their significance. She could have learnt more about Tina too. Yet if Jack was right and they were clues, then she should tell no one.

  As Banks had said, Tina must have meant the murder in the Marianne North Gallery.

  ‘There you are!’ Jack was beside her. ‘We need to talk.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  November 2014

  Jack finished vacuuming with ten minutes to spare. He arched his back and looked around the silent space divided by the cupboards of dead materials. A faint glow seeped from the alcoves between the cabinets. The smell of naphthalene was stronger. It suggested that one of the files had recently been opened, releasing the noxious odour into the still air. Before he began cleaning, Jack had confirmed that he was alone. The True Host was not here. He leant on the rail and contemplated the floor below. It resembled the aisle of a church, plant chests housing bulky specimens – fruits and berries – lurked in the shadows. All around him were cupboards, their doors fastened shut on their ancient contents. The Herbarium was a house of questions awaiting answers.

  Jack was in a quandary: one of his own making and one he had set up for himself on more than one occasion. He and Stella were a team; their skills dovetailed and got results. But he also worked alone. He had entered the large house by the pond at Kew and found articles about the man buried in the Great West Road and a robbery in the 1950s. These must have significance, probably for a woman living there, since he had discovered them hidden in a dressing-table drawer. He had felt compelled to show them to Stella and had let her think Lucie May had given them to him. He had fobbed Lucie herself off with a story about researching the 1976 drought, but she hadn’t been fooled. She was judicious with her confrontations and would be holding fire.

  Not telling Stella was a betrayal. She set store by loyalty. This meant she didn’t know of the link between the house that Terry had been watching and the contents of the articles. He had not played fair.

  They had agreed to meet up at the end of the day at her house. Jack was surprised and not a little pleased that she wasn’t seeing Cashman. Although, as he had vacuumed his way around the Herbarium, he’d wondered if Cashman would be there. Was he to be part of the team?

  Now Jack was agitated. The Herbarium wasn’t working its magic. He would calm himself by examining a specimen. Gently he drew a folder out from the stack inside. He brought it to the table and switched on a lamp. Stuck to the top sheet were the dried segments of a plant. He felt a thrill of excitement. It had no name. It had yet to be identified. Technically, the plant didn’t exist.

  ‘Do you have permission to examine dead material?’

  Jack didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Watson. He felt as if caught in an airlock. His ears popped. He swallowed hard. The True Host lounged on the balcony railing, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded. He possessed the stillness of one who practises meditation. His eyes rested on Jack, drawing him in. His brown serge suit showed off a body spare and lean. He must have moved to the alcove like a snake across the parquet.

  ‘I don’t have permission.’ No point in lying: Watson knew.

  ‘I could have you sacked,’ the man observed casually as if this had no relevance to either of them.

  ‘You could.’ Jack slipped the folder back in where he had found it and fastened the cupboard. He was taller than the True Host, but that meant nothing. He must not show fear. Ultimately it didn’t matter what tactic he adopted. The True Host would know it.

  ‘Are you interested in botany?’ the man asked, a smile hovering on full sensuous lips, his eyes twinkling. The thing about True Hosts was that they were whatever you wanted them to be. Jack wanted him to be a kind fatherly figure, the man his own father had failed to be. Watson was obliging him.

  The dimly lit Herbarium was profoundly quiet. Dead materials make no sound. Jack wanted to convince himself that Watson was an ordinary, warm and generous botanist who would understand his passion for the structure of plants. Plants were the beginning of everything. But no, Watson too was dead material.

  ‘I wanted to be a botanist.’ Jack knew to offer a glimpse of his soul, enough to satisfy the True Host. Yet no matter what he did, the ending would be the same. Once he was visible, the True Host had t
he upper hand.

  ‘Running away is no escape if you don’t know which direction is “away”,’ the voice of a ghost whispered to him.

  ‘Instead you’re a cleaner.’ Watson looked genuinely interested by the contrast. ‘I will say nothing this time, but I don’t want to catch you again. These specimens are invaluable. I am their guardian. I will stop at nothing to protect them. I think we both know that this is the second time, isn’t it? Fate has brought you within the orbit of your failed ambition. Let that be enough for you.’

  ‘It is enough.’ Jack retreated along the balcony to the spiral staircase. Watson was behind him. He descended, stepping firmly on the tapering treads, the Henry in his arms like a baby. He hugged it close as if it could save him.

  At the bottom Jack saw that Watson wasn’t behind him after all.

  Jack put the Henry in the equipment cart and pushed it along a corridor lined with glass vitrines of specimen jars and display boxes. Lights flickered on and off as he progressed. His rubber-soled shoes were silent; this was intentional, but now it unnerved him: he couldn’t hear himself. Overwrought, he went the wrong way and got lost. He kept going – he would find the lift eventually – but, looking back, the corridors were a yawning maw and the vitrines vanished in the thick darkness.

  Turning into another corridor he found a door marked ‘Artists’ Room’. He plunged inside without knocking.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  August 1976

  ‘Are you sure you said here?’ Bella asked for the third time in five minutes.

  ‘Definitely. She asked if it was the place you made a daisy chain and next to the Greyhound. I didn’t remember you making one, but these are the Queen’s Beasts and that’s the Greyhound of Richmond. There’s only one.’ If Emily was irritated with Bella for not believing her, she didn’t show it.

  The two girls were sprawled on the lawn in Kew Gardens where, weeks earlier, they had picnicked with Chrissie. In that time no rain had fallen; the earth was hard and impenetrable like concrete. There were no daisies. Unremitting sunshine beat down from a bleached-blue sky.

  The Beasts, stone creatures blasted by intense heat, cast precise shadows on the path. The lake was a sheet of silver. Blinding sparks of light danced on the glass of the Palm House.

  Emily and Bella had left school in July. Bella because her father had stopped payments for the daughter whose existence he barely recognized, Emily because her father had lost his job. Chrissie, her school fees paid a year in advance, was returning to the prep school in September. On the last day Emily had exacted a promise that they would be friends for ever and suggested they meet on 12 August, Chrissie’s birthday, at two o’clock in the same place as before. It was fifteen minutes past two and no one was coming along the path beside the Beasts or approaching from the periphery of the lake. The girls – diminutive beneath the stone Greyhound – might be alone in the Botanical Gardens.

  ‘A waste of a card!’ Bella tossed a crumpled envelope on to the grass.

  ‘You bought Chrissie a card!’ Emily crowed with delight.

  ‘I made it.’ Sitting cross-legged, Bella examined indentations on her bare legs from the dried grass beneath her. ‘It’s a picture of a daisy.’ She smoothed her Laura Ashley skirt over her knees and said gruffly, ‘Like her dad supposedly does.’

  ‘That’s amazing, Bell! I didn’t think you would have, so my card’s written from both of us.’

  ‘But I wasn’t there,’ Bella objected.

  Emily squinted into the distance towards the Pagoda, a hand shading her eyes from the sun. ‘I forged your signature.’

  ‘That’s illegal!’ Bella was gleeful. ‘Emily, you’re a criminal!’

  ‘Yes.’ Emily took an envelope out of the pocket of her jeans jacket. She held it away from her as if it were a lethal weapon. ‘Thing is, I wanted Chrissie’s birthday to be perfect.’

  ‘She’s made new friends and forgotten us.’ Bella got up and began bashing at her skirt; the floral-patterned material was coated with dust from the parched lawn. ‘Birthdays are never perfect.’

  ‘My mum and dad never remember my birthday.’ Emily gave a little laugh as if this was a small matter. ‘They remember my sister’s because Mum nearly died having her. Chrissie said she would come. Anyway, I dropped a note at her house to remind her.’

  ‘She lied,’ Bella stated. ‘Did you tell her to come here?’ she asked again. She frowned at the Queen’s Beasts. The furthest-off statues were indiscernible smudges of grey in the shimmering air. ‘What house?’

  ‘Her house. The one by the pond.’

  ‘I told you. I don’t believe she lives there.’ Bella tossed her hair back. In the last weeks, she had lost the look of a little girl. In her face was a hint of the woman she would become.

  ‘You should trust her.’ Emily got up. She adjusted her denim hat on her head.

  ‘You shouldn’t trust anyone.’ Bella stalked off past the Yale of Beaufort. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Crushed by heat, in the glare of the sun, the girls tripped along the path past the Queen’s Beasts.

  *

  It hadn’t occurred to either girl to look for Chrissie Banks in the Palm House. No one in their right mind would put up with the damp heat and choking clouds of steam. Standing beneath a dripping palm, Chrissie knew that she could not join them. Her mum and dad had been chuffed that her friends had organized a party for her, but, watching through the misted glass, she might have been observing from another world.

  After Bella and Emily had left, a tiny figure, indeterminate and blurred, slipped from the glasshouse and, phantom-like, passed a discarded envelope, white against the brown of the lawn. She followed a path dappled with shadow. Ahead two figures resolved into focus. The Cat in the Hat and the lady with the gobstopper eyes. Behind them, chimneys reaching to the sky, was the house with no rooms.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  November 2014

  Bella was standing by a window, a scalpel in her hand. ‘Hey, Jack, I was just thinking of you. I must have conjured you up! Come and save me from myself!’ she cried, arms outstretched.

  Leaving the cart by the door he followed her around a partition into a snug corner workspace. Bella pulled up a chair for him while she perched on a high stool at a drawing easel. Behind her was a table laid out with the materials of her trade: prosaic items such as masking tape and a roll of kitchen paper; and more arcane tools – a set of proportional dividers and a binocular microscope and mounted needles, forceps, a petri dish and more scalpels. The last stood in a mug identical to the one he had bought in the Kew Gardens café. Through the window beyond he saw Ferry Lane and the River Thames. He got his bearings.

  ‘I was about to ask what on earth are you doing here?’ She began sharpening a pencil with short flicks of the scalpel. Shavings flew into the air to land on a heap of curling wood on the drawing board. She handled the instrument deftly and sharpened the lead to a fine point. ‘But I guess the uniform is a giveaway! You didn’t say you worked here.’ There was a touch of reproach in her tone as if she suspected Jack of refraining from telling her. This was true; at the funeral he had avoided giving away information about himself, intent on gathering it for the case. ‘Oh my God! Was it you who found the body in the gallery?’ She eyed him over the rapier-sharp pencil.

  ‘No. It was a colleague.’ Jack shifted the chair to face the door, although his view of it was blocked by the partition. ‘A friend.’ Stella hadn’t said how finding the body had affected her; she would try to tamp down her feelings. In the last weeks she had found a dead body and her friend had died. A lot of feelings to tamp down.

  ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a cleaner,’ Bella reflected.

  ‘What did you have me down as?’ Jack asked. Hands clasped between his knees, he wriggled on his seat.

  ‘An actor. No, a scientist. You give the impression of having your mind on brilliant things. Day-to-day stuff is not so much beneath you as beyond you.’ She put the tip of the
pencil to her lips. ‘Goes to show how easy it is to be bound by preconceptions. No wonder Chrissie lied about her background. At that prep school a taxi driver was on the spectrum with a mad axe murderer. In the end none of us measures up.’ She did a Lucie May laugh. Shunting the curls of wood into a cupped hand, she scattered them into a dustbin behind Jack. ‘I did my first botanical drawing for Chrissie,’ she suddenly announced.

  ‘When? I thought you didn’t get on at school,’ Jack asked.

  ‘Emily had organized for us to meet in Kew Gardens and have tea. We pooled our pocket money. By then we’d left the school. Neither of our parents could afford to keep paying the fees. Ironic when you think about it. Chrissie thought we were posh, but it was her that had the private education and ended up earning the big bucks. Me and Emily scrape our livings! And I lied about my dad too.’

  ‘You said he was a barrister. Was that a lie?’ Jack found he rather liked the idea that Bella told lies. Putting Watson the True Host from his mind, he began to enjoy himself.

  ‘Sort of. At the prep school, I didn’t tell anyone that he had never lived with my mum. I was illegitimate. I nearly told Chrissie, but I fudged it and said he had left us so we’d had to move. I had never as much as seen him. All I knew was that he wore a wig and sent people to prison.’ She gave a husky laugh. ‘He probably wasn’t impressed by having a daughter; Mum said that he had four already. I pretended that he loved me,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I still do.’

  Jack nodded. He was used to make-believe.

  Bella’s speech flowed with the ease of one used to telling the story for laughs. ‘No prizes for why I was a cow to Chrissie. I was jealous of her for having a dad who lived with her. I made her dad into the perfect dad. Except he wasn’t her dad. Although she still had a dad which is more than I...’ Her voice trailed off.

  From behind the partition, Jack heard the door open and close. Then nothing. He stiffened.