by P. D. James
The first call was answered by a gruff male voice which told him peremptorily that there was no Miss Palfrey at that address. “Drop it in at a police station,” it commanded, and promptly rang off. He knew that his first attempt hadn’t been altogether successful; even to his own ears his voice had sounded false and strained. Perhaps the listener had thought that he was a new breed of con man or was hoping for a reward. He put a cross against the name and dialled the second number.
He was almost relieved when there was no reply. He put a query against the number and dialled again.
The third call was answered by a woman, presumably a maid or an au pair, who spoke in a strong foreign accent and told him that “Madam is shopping at ’arrods.” He explained that he wanted a Miss Palfrey, not Mrs. Palfrey, only to be told again: “Madam is not at ’ome. She is at ’arrods. Please to ring later.” He put a query against this number too, although he had little doubt that it wasn’t the one he was seeking.
The next number rang for twenty seconds, and he had almost given up when the receiver was at last lifted, and he heard a harassed female voice raised to make itself heard against the shrieking of a young child. The sound was as piercingly sustained as a train’s whistle. Obviously she was holding the child in her arms. He sensed her impatience with his story, and when he was halfway through she broke in to say briefly that her daughter was only six and wasn’t yet buying books, let alone leaving them on park benches. “Nice of you to bother, though,” she added, and hung up.
He dialled the next number. The call was frustrating. It was answered by yet another female voice, but this had the high monotonous pitch and the quaver of extreme old age. It took a long time before she comprehended his message, then he had to hang on, putting in extra coins, while she held long conversations with her sister who was called Edith and who was presumably deaf since the conversation was carried on in shouts. Edith disclaimed any knowledge of the book, but her sister was reluctant to ring off, feeling, apparently, that she now had some personal responsibility in the matter.
His stock of small change was getting low. The next name was listed as Palfrey, M. S. The address was 68 Caldecote Terrace, S.W.1. Once again a woman answered. The voice sounded tentative, apprehensive even. She repeated the number carefully as if it were unfamiliar. He said his piece and almost at once he knew that this was it. He ended: “Perhaps I could have a word with Miss Palfrey?”
“She isn’t here. I mean, my daughter isn’t at home at present.”
This time there could be no doubt of it. The voice held the breathy rising cadence of fear. He felt a surge of confidence, almost of exhilaration. He said: “If you could give me her address, I could write or telephone.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that! And they’re not on the phone. But I’ll tell her about the book if I see her. Only I don’t think I shall be seeing her. What did you say it was called?”
He repeated the title.
“It sounds like Philippa. I mean, she does like books about buildings. Perhaps you could post it here and I’ll send it on. Only there’s the postage. I know she would send the money to you if you enclosed your address. But then it may not belong to her.”
There was a silence. After a few seconds he said: “Perhaps I’d better return it to Foyle’s. They may know who it belongs to. And perhaps your daughter will think to inquire there first.”
“Oh yes, yes! That would be best. If Philippa telephones or calls in I’ll tell her what you’ve done. Thank you for taking so much trouble. I think she’s probably showing her—her friend—round London. She may need the book. I’ll send her a postcard and tell her about your call.”
Relief made her sound suddenly effusive. He replaced the receiver and stood for a moment with his hand pressed down on it. The feel of the instrument, warm and sticky, conveyed an almost physical certainty. He knew now where her daughter lived. He knew that she was adopted. He knew that they were still together since the woman had used the plural tense. He knew what the girl’s name was. Philippa Palfrey. Philippa R. Palfrey. Somehow the fact of knowing the name seemed more significant than anything he had learned so far.
5
His map showed him that Caldecote Terrace lay on the fringes of Pimlico, southwest of Victoria and Eccleston Bridge, and he walked there from Victoria Underground down a side road flanking the main station. In distance it wasn’t far from his old office, but it was the other side of the river and could have been a different city. It was a cul-de-sac of converted but unspoilt late eighteenth-century terraced houses which lay off the wider and busier Caldecote Road. He walked into it resolutely but uneasily aware that this was not a street in which he could safely loiter, that the tall, immaculately curtained windows might conceal watching eyes. He felt like an interloper entering a private precinct of orderliness, culture and comfortable prosperity. He had never lived in such a street and knew no one who did; yet he indulged his preconceptions on how such people lived. They would affect to despise the smartness of Belgravia; would enthuse about the advantages of a socially mixed society, even if the mixing didn’t actually extend to sending their children to local schools; would patronize as a duty the small shopkeepers in Caldecote Road, particularly the dairy and the delicatessen; and would haul off their friends to drink at the weekend in the saloon bar of the local pub where they would be heartily affable to the barman and resolutely matey to the other customers.
He made himself walk down one side of the street and then up the other. The sense of being a trespasser was so strong that he felt he walked in an aura of guilt. But no one challenged him, no front door opened, the curtains didn’t move. The street struck him as being peculiarly different from others; then he realized that it was because no cars were parked at the kerb and there were no residents’ parking signs. So these desirable homes must have garages at the rear where once the mews had stabled horses. Momentarily the thought depressed him. It would be impossible to watch two exits to number 68, and if Mrs. Palfrey customarily drove rather than walked or took public transport, he didn’t see how he would be able to tail her. He hadn’t thought of a car. But optimism reasserted itself. Single-mindedness, he had discovered, brought with it stamina and self-assurance; it also brought luck. He was here. It was right that he should be here. He knew where the girl lived and where her family lived. Sooner or later she or they would lead him to Mary Ducton.
As he gained confidence in his right to be walking down the terrace he observed the houses more closely. The street had an impressive uniformity; the houses were identical except for variations in the patterns of the fanlights and in the wrought-iron tracery of the first-floor balconies. The front railings guarding the basements were spiked and ornamented at the ends with pineapples. The doors, flanked with columns, were thoroughly intimidating, the brass letter boxes and knockers gleamed. Many of the houses were festive with window boxes; geraniums flared in discordant pinks and reds and trails of variegated ivy curled against the stone façades.
He reached the end of the terrace and crossed the road to the even-number houses. Number 68 was at the top end of the street. It was one of the few houses without window boxes or tubs before the door, uncompromising in its elegance. The door was painted black. The basement kitchen was brightly lit. He walked slowly past, glancing down, and saw that it was occupied. A woman was sitting at the table eating her lunch. There was a tray in front of her with a plate of scrambled eggs, and she was glancing as she ate at the flickering image of a black and white television set. So the Palfreys had a maid. He wasn’t surprised to see her. He would have expected that girl in the train to have come from a home where they kept a maid, to have lived in just such a house as this, that golden girl who had walked past him down the swaying carriage of the train with the arrogant sexuality which spoke to him, to all the old, the poor, the unattractive: “Look at me, but don’t touch. I’m not for you.”
He returned to Caldecote Road, his mind still occupied with the problem of keeping a watch on the Palf
reys’ house. The road was in marked contrast to the terrace, a disorderly muddle of shops, cafés, pubs and the occasional office, typical of an inner London commercial street from which any glory had long since departed. It was a bus route, and small disconsolate groups of shoppers, laden with their baskets and trolleys, waited at the stops on either side of the road, while the number of cars and lorries adding to the congestion suggested that this was a popular route to the Lambeth and Vauxhall bridges. Here, if not in Caldecote Terrace, he could loiter in safety.
Then he noticed the two hotels. They were on the opposite side of the road, facing down the terrace, two large stuccoed Victorian houses which had survived change, war, decay and demolition and now stood alone, shabby, the stucco peeling, but still grandiosely intact between a car salesroom and the vulgarly ostentatious fascia of a supermarket. From any of the front upper windows he would be able to sit in comfort and watch and wait. Here he would have time to think and plan his strategy, freed from the fear of discovery, the tedium and exhaustion of perpetually loitering in the street.
The names might have been chosen to emphasize that neither hotel had any connection with the business next door. The left-hand one was called Hotel Casablanca, its neighbour the Windermere Hotel. The first, less reassuringly named, looked the cleaner and more prosperous and would, he judged, give a slightly better view down Caldecote Terrace. The outer door was open and he stepped into a porch with a framed Underground map on the left wall and a mirror advertising ale on the right. He pushed through an inner door, patterned with overblown facsimiles of credit cards, and was met by the concentrated smell of food, cigarettes and furniture polish. There was no one on duty and the hall was empty except for a young woman seated at a small telephone switchboard behind the reception desk. A brown smooth-haired bitch was sleeping at her feet, its slack pimpled belly flopped over the chequered tiles, its paws gently curving. It took no interest in Scase’s arrival except to peer at him briefly through a slitted eye before closing it again and nudging its head closer to the girl’s chair. A white guide-dog harness was slung on a hook on the side of the switchboard. She turned as soon as she heard the swing of the inner door, and her sightless eyes, blinking rapidly, seemed to search the air above his head. In one socket the eyeball, retracted and upward-turned, was only half-visible under the lid. The other eye was covered with a milky film. She was slight with a gentle eager face, her straight light brown hair drawn back and fastened behind her ears by two circular blue slides. He wondered irrelevantly why she had chosen blue, how such a decision could be made, what it must mean to be deprived of the petty vanities of choice. He said: “I’m looking for a room. Do you know if there are any vacancies?”
She smiled, but in the absence of any kindling light or warmth from the dead eyes the undirected smile seemed fatuous, meaningless. She said: “Mr. Mario will be here in a moment, if you will ring the bell, please.”
He had seen the push-button bell on the counter, but hadn’t liked to press it since she might have thought that he was impatient for a service which she was powerless to give. It gave out a strident ring. A minute later a short swarthy man in a white jacket appeared through the door to the basement stairs. Scase said: “I wondered if you’d got a vacant room, one at the front. I don’t like being at the back. I’ve retired and I’m selling my house in the suburbs and looking for a flat in this area.”
This explanation was received with total uninterest. Presumably, if he had explained that he was an IRA terrorist looking for a safe hideout there might have been some response. Mario ducked under the counter hatch and flipped open a grease-stained register. After a brief pretence at consulting it, he said in a voice which was almost entirely Cockney: “There’s a top front single. Ten pounds a night, bed and breakfast, payment in advance. Dinner extra. We don’t do lunches.”
“I’ll have to go home for my things.”
He had read somewhere that hotels were suspicious of guests who arrived without luggage. He said: “Could I take it from tomorrow?”
“It’ll be gone by then. This is the busy season, see? You’re lucky to get a vacancy.”
“Could I see it, please?”
The request was obviously regarded by Mario as eccentric, but he took a key from the board and pressed the lift button. They were slowly carried up together in cranking, claustrophobic proximity to the top floor. He unlocked the door, then left abruptly, saying, “See you downstairs at the desk, then.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Scase went over to the window. He saw with relief that the room was ideal for his purpose. The view from a lower floor would have been constantly obstructed by buses and lorries; here at this meanly proportioned window under the eaves he was high enough to look down unimpeded over the traffic into Caldecote Terrace. Mario had taken the key away with him but there was a bolt on the door. He shot it, then took the binoculars from his rucksack. The door of number 68 trembled, opaque as if seen through a heat haze. He steadied his hands, adjusted the focus and the image leaped at him, gleaming, sharp edged and so close that he felt that he could stretch out his hands and stroke the glistening paintwork. The binoculars ranged over the façade of the house from window to window, each secretive behind the white veil of its drawn curtains. On the balcony there was a twist of paper, blown up, perhaps, from the street. He wondered how long it would lie there before someone found it and swept it away, that single flaw on the house’s perfection.
He put away the binoculars and explored the room. He supposed that he ought not to linger too long; it might seem suspicious. Then he told himself that Mario was unlikely to worry. What, after all, was there to steal or damage in this bleak, impersonal, comfortless cell? He didn’t wonder that Mario had left him so promptly, avoiding explanation and excuses.
The floor was covered with a scrappy fawn carpet on which all the previous occupants seemed to have deposited their mark; a spatter of tea or coffee by the bed, more sinister-looking stains under the washbasin. In one corner a larger area of dampness mirrored a similar stain on the ceiling where the roof must have leaked. The bed had a plain wooden headboard, presumably so that the occupant shouldn’t be tempted to strangle himself with his tie from the bedrail. A large wardrobe stood unsteadily against one wall, its door swinging ajar. An oversized dressing table in veneered walnut with a spotted mirror occupied the darkest corner. There were some compensations. The bed, when he sat on it, was comfortable enough; a glance showed that the sheets, although crumpled, were clean. He turned on the hot tap and after some minutes of gurgling and erratic flow the water spurted hot. These were small bonuses. He was glad of them but they weren’t important. He would have slept as well on a hard bed and been happy to wash in cold water. The room had all that he asked, the view from the window.
And then he noticed the bedside locker. It was a sturdy oblong box in polished oak with one shelf and a cupboard underneath and with a wooden roller at one side for a towel. He recognized it. He had seen one before. It was an old hospital locker, probably part of a job lot, sold off by some hospital management committee when the wards were upgraded. What could more appropriately find a place in this room for human rejects, furnished with rejects? When he opened the cupboard the smell of disinfectant rose up strongly, working like a catalyst on memory. His mother, dying at last and knowing that she was dying, twisting her head restlessly on the pillow, the dyed hair, that last vanity, grey at the roots, the sinews of her wasted neck stretched like cords, her fingers sharp as claws scraping the coverlet. He heard again her querulous voice: “I’ve had no bloody luck in my life, by God I haven’t. No bloody luck at all.”
He had tried to make some gesture of comfort by straightening the pillow, but, impatiently, she had pushed his hand aside. He had known that he was part of the bad luck, that even on her deathbed nothing he did or said could please her. What, he wondered, would she think if she could see him here now, could know why he was here. He could almost hear her scorn.
“Murder!
You? You wouldn’t have the guts. Don’t make me laugh.”
He left the room, closing the door carefully and quietly behind him as if her wasted body, uncomforted, lay there on the bed. He wished that the hotel had provided a different type of bedside locker. But otherwise the room would do very well indeed.
6
Philippa had always thought that if one were forced to share a flat it would be easier with a stranger than with a friend. And this stranger was so orderly, so quiet, so undemanding, was accommodating without being subservient, was capable about the flat without being obsessional. It was extraordinary how easily they established their shared routine. Philippa awoke now to sounds and smells that quickly became so familiar that it was difficult to believe that they were new. Her day began with the soft rustle of her mother’s dressing gown, with a cup of tea silently placed on her bedside table. Maurice had occasionally brought up her morning tea at Caldecote Terrace. But that was in another country and, besides, that wench was dead. She prepared their breakfast of cereal and boiled egg while her mother cleaned the flat, and then they sat together over their coffee, map spread, planning each day’s excursions. It was like showing London to a foreign visitor, but one from a different culture, even a different dimension of time, an intelligent, interested tourist whose eyes surveyed the sights presented for her edification with pleasure, sometimes with delight, but who seemed to be looking beyond them, attempting to reconcile each new experience with an alien, half-remembered world. She was a tourist who was wary of the natives; anxious not to draw attention to herself by any solecism of taste; sometimes confused about the currency, mixing the tenpenny and fifty-pence piece; momentarily disconcerted by space and distance. Watching her, Philippa thought: she’s like a woman who suffers simultaneously from claustrophobia and agoraphobia. And she was a visitor whose native country must be thinly populated since she was so frightened of crowds. London was packed with tourists, and although they set out early and avoided the most popular tourists’ resorts, it was impossible to avoid the crush of bodies at bus stops and tube-station platforms, in shops and subways. Either they lived as hermits, or they contributed to and endured the hot, chattering, polluting pressure of humanity, breathed air which, on the warmer airless days, seemed to have been exhaled from a million lungs.
