The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  Something did.

  The front door opened and a woman came out. Stella angled herself so that she could watch in the wing mirror. The woman was black and wore red-framed spectacles that matched a red woolly coat. She was in her forties, so too young to be Rosamond Watson, and was lugging a gym bag. Stella jerked the flask cup and splashed tea on the newspaper. Harry Roberts’s face was obliterated in a pool of tea. Stanley barked, straining on his car belt in search of the enemy.

  It was Donette, one of the first cleaners that Stella had employed and a friend from school. She was a senior operative at Clean Slate. She wasn’t carrying a gym bag; Stella didn’t need to be a detective to spot the Clean Slate logo on the green and blue equipment bag. Donette did specialist cleaning in industrial areas and schools. She had qualified in rock climbing and abseiling specifically to scale high walls and ceilings and to crawl along gantries and beams of commercial buildings. What was she doing on a domestic job in Kew? Stella squirmed down in her seat, but the steering wheel was in the way so she couldn’t get below the line of the dashboard. If Donette saw her, she had no good explanation for being parked in her van drinking tea and eating a pork pie on a weekday afternoon.

  Donette hurried past without noticing Stella. A few moments later, twisting around, Stella saw a Clean Slate van pull out of a space along Priory Road and drive off. She slumped in her seat. Stanley resumed his bone.

  Gathering herself, Stella reached to her phone on the dashboard and dialled the office.

  ‘Clean Slate for the freshest of fresh starts, Beverly here on the line especially for you!’ chirruped the voice at the other end of the phone.

  Stella grimaced. Beverly’s recent customer-service training course had encouraged her to express her true self so that customers were encouraged by speaking to a real person. Stella barely recognized her.

  ‘It’s Stella.’

  ‘How funny that it’s you!’ Beverly laughed gaily. ‘What service can I interest you in? We do a winter warmer package that—’

  Stella contemplated the damp newspaper with the stained photograph of Harry Roberts. ‘Bev, is Jackie back?’

  ‘No. I’m still in charge. Do you want your messages?’ Beverly was on top form, Stella had to give her that. She rarely passed on messages.

  ‘Not now, thanks.’ Stella decided to risk letting Beverly loose in the database. Suzie would have forty fits because the last time Beverly had gone into it, she had inadvertently deleted half the records. Not a disaster as Suzie kept a backup, but Beverly was banned from it after that. Suzie was still in Sydney (an Instagram of her mum in Dale’s phantom-grey Holden Cascada convertible on the Harbour Bridge in Ray-Bans and a headscarf had pinged in that morning. Had she not grown used to the daily photographs of her mum in a variety of guises, Stella wouldn’t have recognized her. ‘Revisiting my misspent youth!’ said the caption). At this moment Suzie was presumably asleep so need never know about Beverly’s trespass.

  ‘I want you to look up a client.’

  ‘But I’m not—’ Beverly was incredulous.

  Stella interrupted her with the password.

  There was a tapping sound down the phone. ‘I’m in!’ Beverly cried. ‘What’s the name?’

  Stella glanced down at her Filofax. ‘Watson, Rosamond.’ It was usually the woman in a household who hired Clean Slate.

  ‘Watson, Rosamond.’ Beverly echoed and Stella heard a laborious pecking. ‘Whoops!’

  ‘What?’ Stella stopped herself yelling.

  ‘I pressed a button and everything went blank. It’s all back now.’ Beverly was calm. ‘Here we are.’ Her breathing was laboured with concentration; Stella pictured her, tongue between her teeth, moving the mouse on the mat with exaggerated care. ‘The operative is Hannah, that new girl.’

  ‘Woman,’ Stella absently corrected her.

  ‘Ooh, I forgot: that was one of the messages. Hannah rang in sick this morning. Donette was in the office, so Jackie asked if she would take it to “to stop Stella doing it”. I wasn’t meant to say that.’

  ‘And the client?’ she reminded Beverly.

  ‘Mrs Rosamond Watson. No key. Light clean. Weekly. Downstairs only.’

  Stella looked at the house. There were five floors. Even assuming an extension, Clean Slate was only covering about 20 per cent of the property. ‘No key’ meant that there would be someone at home to admit the operative. Mrs Watson presumably. A thought occurred. ‘When was the contract signed?’

  ‘The thirteenth of August 2010.’

  The day after her birthday and just after Terry had done his stakeout. She felt the back of her head tighten as the notion presented itself that Terry had recommended Clean Slate to the owners as a means of getting inside the house. But if he had, he would have asked her to help him gain entry. And anyway, whatever her mum said, Terry wouldn’t have compromised her business for his case.

  ‘How did Mrs Watson hear about us? Look at the last box on the right-hand side of the screen.’

  Beverly hummed a snatch of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’. At last she exclaimed, ‘Ah, right-hand side, OK. Saw. Fan. In. Street,’ she haltingly read. ‘Fancy Clean Slate having fans!’

  ‘It must be a typo.’ Behind her, Stanley was washing himself, his tongue clicking and slapping. ‘It should be “van”.’ People often called them having spotted the van parked in the street. It was why she had kept her own van plain white. She didn’t want to be noticed.

  ‘Shall I correct it?’ Beverly asked.

  ‘No! …No, thanks. My mum will do it.’ Then, struck by an idea: ‘Please could you do a search on Priory Road? See if we have other clients in this – er – in that street?’

  Beverly named two addresses in the road. One was only three doors down from Kew Villa. Wendy had been the operative for all three jobs and had come off when Stella promoted her to manage the Kew Gardens account. Hannah had taken over.

  She talked Beverly through shutting down the database, thanked her and rang off.

  Stella stole a glance up at the house. At any time while she was on the phone, Mrs Watson might have looked out and seen her van. Stella felt a wave of certainty: Terry had suspected the Watsons of a crime. He was a good detective, but, as Jack often said, to successfully stalk your prey, they must be oblivious even to the possibility that they were being tailed. If they had done a crime they would be more alert than the average citizen. Someone in Kew Villa had seen Terry’s Toyota parked where her own van was now. Stella had no proof of this, but was positive that Terry watching the house and Clean Slate getting a contract to clean there days later were connected. The first the cause, the second the effect.

  She craned around in the seat. Stanley was engaged in a grooming session, nibbling at the end of a front paw, toe by toe.

  ‘Wait there,’ she commanded superfluously. Stuffing her Filofax in her rucksack, she hauled it from the footwell and got out of the van.

  Stanley looked up, a damp paw raised.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Stella reassured him, unsure if this was true.

  She opened one of the gates. It was rusty and could do with a coat of paint, but the hinges were oiled. She counted her paces to the front door – eleven – alert for every detail, however apparently irrelevant.

  She lifted the knocker, also flecked with peeling paint, and knocked twice.

  A minute went by. Ten more seconds. No key. There must be someone there. No one had left the house since Donette. Not true: there might be a back entrance.

  ... nine, ten. Another ten seconds. She was turning to go when the door opened and a man peered out. There was no sense of motion in his pose and Stella got the wild sense that he had been on the other side of the door all the time. He looked faintly familiar, but she couldn’t think why. But she met many people in the course of her work: lots of people in West London looked familiar.

  ‘Can I help you?’ He addressed her with unsmiling eyes.

  ‘I do hope so.’ Jack had once said that if you did
n’t have a plan then the best thing to do was to open your mouth and start speaking. Stella had never understood this tactic. She had always made sure that she did have a plan. Until now. She opened her mouth and words came out. ‘I’m from Clean Slate, the cleaning company. One of our operatives has completed a session here. As you know from the contract, we do ask if periodically a senior member of staff can visit to check on the quality of the work. To ensure it’s up to standard. Would you be Mr George Watson?’

  He blinked rapidly. ‘Yes, but my wife deals with the cleaning.’

  ‘Yes, Rosamond Watson,’ Stella said as if he had more than one wife. Of course he might. Was bigamy the crime Terry had suspected? Her thoughts were racing. ‘I wonder, could I speak with Mrs Watson a moment please?’

  ‘No!’ He retreated into the gloom of the hallway. ‘She’s just popped out.’

  Stella had been outside the house for nearly two hours; she must have arrived moments after Donette. She wasn’t practised at keeping watch on properties, but wouldn’t have missed anyone ‘popping out’ of Kew Villa. She was convinced Watson was lying. His wife was there, but he wouldn’t admit it.

  ‘Would it be possible, as I’m here, to do a check?’ She moved towards the hall. ‘On the cleaning.’

  She could tell that Watson was casting about for a reason to refuse, but evidently he couldn’t think of one because he said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Where shall we start?’ Stella flourished her Filofax and clicked on her biro. Ostentatiously she ran a finger down the side of a grandfather clock by the door. On her pad, she wrote ‘RW popped out’, for good measure adding: ‘No dust’.

  She did the same finger-check on the banister. A woman’s coat was slung over the newel post; she didn’t think it appropriate to touch it. But her powerful sense of smell told her that it reeked of a mix of patchouli oil and camphor. Mrs Watson – like Lucie May who also wore patchouli – must be stuck in the seventies.

  ‘Are you happy with this room?’ Reverting to her ‘day job’, Stella noted vacuum tracks on the carpet, no rucks in the rug and a whiff of polish. It was unnecessary to monitor Donette’s work: it was flawless.

  Her question seemed to confuse George Watson because he blinked again, his eyes staying shut for at least two seconds at a time. He stared about him as if he didn’t know where he was. ‘Really you need to ask my wife.’

  ‘I can come back,’ Stella offered without enthusiasm.

  ‘You’re here now.’ He led the way down a passage, touching the walls to steady himself. Stella put him in his early seventies, but frail with it. He would have been in his thirties in 1976 and presumably capable of anything.

  The sink gleamed; the taps were old, but Donette had encouraged a shine. The wooden table had been scrubbed: there were patches of damp where it was still drying. There was not a speck on the floor. Despite this, Stella detected a tired air, as if the room wasn’t much used.

  ‘How did you know my name?’ The man was leaning on the back of a chair as if it was an effort to stand up.

  ‘It’s on our database.’ As she spoke, Stella realized this wasn’t true. The only contact was Rosamond Watson. She knew his name because she had seen it in the electoral roll and on Tina’s drawing. She knew his father-in-law and brother-in-law’s names too. With a jolt Stella remembered where she had seen Mr Watson. He had been at Tina’s funeral.

  ‘My wife took out the contract; I had nothing to do with it. My name shouldn’t be on your database.’ He seemed disproportionally annoyed.

  Stella was horrified. Watson might be frail, but his mind was as sharp as a pin. Again she let her mouth do the talking, ‘Your wife probably told our operative your name. Having a rounded picture of our clients helps us do a good job.’ She held her bright smile, cringing inwardly at the ghastly customer services spiel. ‘If your wife is away – or out – you are our contact. Our records are confidential.’

  ‘My wife is always here...’ He subsided into silence.

  Vaguely aware of a bell ringing in the distance, Stella did a circuit of the kitchen, taking in empty glass jars on a shelf labelled ‘Flour’, ‘Sugar’, ‘Baking Powder’, and a tin of chocolate powder. Beside the jar for flour was a plastic pot of hundreds and thousands. If the elusive Mrs Watson planned to make a cake, she had run out of core ingredients. Perhaps this was what she had ‘popped out’ to get. Chocolate cake coated with hundreds and thousands. She wrote the words down on the pad and quickly tilted the page to avoid Watson seeing it.

  ‘If you’re happy with this—’ She turned around. Mr Watson wasn’t there.

  Quickly, although she had a legitimate excuse, Stella opened the fridge. The first thing she saw was a shepherd’s pie, a ready meal made by the same company that Dariusz Adomek sold in the mini-mart. There was a half-used carton of milk in the door. She hoped that Rosamond Watson had gone shopping because they had little to eat.

  Her eye caught something on the kitchen table. It was a slip of card. Confirming that she was still alone, Stella snatched it up. Her heart crashed in her chest. Looking at clients’ belongings was not part of the job. The card was bent and scuffed, suggesting that it had been on the floor. Donette would have found it when she was cleaning and left it out for the Watsons. Operatives did not throw away any papers found on the floor or behind furniture. Dirty tread marks and creases made the card hard to read, but she made out that it was an Air India boarding pass. Departure date: 22nd October 2014. Madras to London. Seat number A22. Economy class. The name was ‘J. H. Hailes’. Stella caught a faint odour of sweat, like tomato sauce. She raised the pass to her nose, but it didn’t come from there.

  ‘I’ll have that.’ Watson reached around her and took the card.

  ‘We found it on the floor.’ Stella felt herself redden. He had seen that she was looking at it. Her thoughts tumbled over themselves. Donette might not have put the card on the table. His wife might have left it there. Watson might know that.

  ‘It blew in from the street.’ Watson stuffed the pass into the pocket of his cardigan. The sharp tang of sweat came from him. Her face prickling with the shame of being caught red-handed with the boarding pass, Stella distantly perceived that his agitation seemed more than simply resentment at her intrusion.

  She had the eerie sensation of déjà vu. It was like Tina and the locket. But in an office anyone could have dropped the locket, although since it was in the Boots bag Tina had left her it must be connected to her. It was possible that the pass had come from outside as Watson said. Yet Stella didn’t believe him. It wasn’t unusual for Clean Slate staff to encounter erratic behaviour in clients; they were trained to take it in their stride: No judgement, keep cleaning. She said, ‘If you’re happy with the kitchen then we’ll move on so that I can leave you in peace.’ She made a mental note not to cold call ordinary clients for a spot check; annoying them could undo the good work of the operative.

  George Watson was no ordinary client. Terry had staked out his house for several days. A darker suspicion was forming. Unable to shed light on it she let Watson take her through to what he referred to as the drawing room. At the door, he paused to let her go first, less from politeness, Stella guessed, than to keep her in his sight.

  Here too Donette had done a top-level job. Privately Stella appreciated the beeswax-polished furniture and forensically clean carpet. Maintaining her charade, she confirmed the sheen on a coffee table beside a plush sofa.

  ‘It seems fine to me, but of course it’s not me that matters.’ She heard the false ring in her voice; she wasn’t used to talking to a client with no interest in Clean Slate’s work. Specifically she wasn’t used to being a detective posing as a cleaner.

  A painting hung over the mantelpiece. It was of a tree on a mountainside. The sky was turquoise with white clouds. The impression was of greens, blues and grey. All except for the tree which bloomed with vivid orange flowers. Stella wasn’t so observant that she had absorbed such detail in seconds. She had seen it before. Tina
had the painting in her flat. And it was in the Marianne North Gallery.

  ‘Lovely picture.’ Stella doubted that she was convincing him that she was sincere any more than she was herself. Although as she spoke, she admitted to herself that she did quite like it.

  ‘Marianne North was a brilliant artist.’ Watson was transformed. His agitation went and his eyes – blank and dull – became bright and alive. ‘That’s the Australian fire tree. Marianne travelled to the Antipodes; she put up with extreme discomfort to capture species now extinct. Thankfully the fire tree isn’t extinct. Marianne has left us with an invaluable record of flora in the nineteenth century. Many of her paintings depict vanished landscapes. Her gallery is a shrine—’ He appeared unstoppable.

  ‘A man was murdered there recently.’ Stella was horrified. She had smashed into Watson’s rapturous musings about the artist with talk of a dead man. Her job – as a detective or a cleaner – was to listen.

  As if hit by an electric shock, Watson returned to his previous self with a jerk. He fixed her with a lifeless stare. ‘I know nothing about that. It’s Marianne’s work that counts.’ He was by the hall door now. ‘Finished?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stella felt a thrill of fear. In a wild bid to defuse the feeling she said, ‘I think you knew Tina Banks. She was my client... she was my friend.’

  ‘Who?’ He looked at her furiously. She should have done this with Jack. She was treading on mines that she herself had planted. She was tempted to cut and run. As a cleaner she should because she had infuriated Watson enough. As a detective undercover she mustn’t squander the chance to pick up clues. Floundering, she went on, ‘Tina said you gave her drawing lessons.’ Not strictly true. Tina hadn’t told her who had taught her.