The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime

by Rebecca Griffiths

  She washed and brushed her teeth. Stared at her face in the mirror lit with an electric bulb. Then, opening the wardrobe on the array of outfits Heloise had bought her, she opted for a wool dress in a rich beetroot colour that matched the flecks in her new winter coat. Different to the clothes she had worn when first here. She smiled an appreciative smile.

  As she pulled the dress on over her head, she thought of Queenie and wondered if she felt better today. Her strangeness lately had been playing on her mind. Perhaps she was ill and was afraid to tell her. There wasn’t the time to think much about it: the door opened, and Charles was back.

  ‘You look wonderful.’ Puffing from his climb up the stairs.

  ‘Your mother bought it for me. She’s so kind.’

  ‘It’s because she adores you.’ The declaration seemed to trouble him.

  ‘Was the landlady all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ His expression brightened. ‘But we’re too late for breakfast.’

  * * *

  Joy and Charles walked along Castle Row looking for the footpath their landlady had told them to take. Passing well-to-do villas that hung back from the cliff edge, they eventually found the sign beneath its hood of ivy. The path spiralled upwards between a high outcrop where the last of the wood sage and greater celandine still clung to crevices in the slabs of chalky cliff.

  ‘This is steeper than I thought.’ Charles, panting, prodding the way ahead with his cane while Joy looked down at the rock-strewn shore and envisaged calamitous shipwrecks and pirates.

  ‘It’s hot.’ She tugged the neck of her dress and blew down inside. ‘I hadn’t expected it to be, it’s nearly November.’

  The track continued to climb, providing ever more spectacular views of the coastline. Charles talked of the Victorian fossil hunters who came to comb this rugged landscape as Joy stared out at the oaks and sycamores on the headland. Dwarfed by the wind, they were the only shelter for the castle, which in turn gripped the cliffs above the seashore. When they reached an elevated grassy knoll, they looked down on the bay hundreds of feet below, to where the low tide had exposed the beach with its bladderwrack and rockpools and families huddled in the dunes with picnics, making the most of this unseasonably warm autumn day.

  ‘Want to stop for a minute?’ Charles clasped her hand in his. ‘Catch our breath?’ His suggestion came just as a shaft of sunlight speared the dolphin-smooth skin of the sea and turned it silver.

  ‘If you like,’ Joy agreed.

  To their left, a battered kissing gate with a sign saying ‘To the beach’. They leant over it and gasped, thrilled by its terrifying steepness. Charles removed his coat and spread it over the grass for them to sit on. Careful to stay well back from the eroding cliff edge. He opened his shirt and took off his blazer and tie and she kicked off her shoes. Let her hair down. He put his hand into the pocket of his coat and, deliberately mysterious, conjured up bars of chocolate like a magician.

  ‘Wherever did you get them?’ She laughed in amazement.

  ‘I’ve got my sources.’ He winked: enigmatic, teasing. ‘I’ve a sweet tooth; I like nice things.’ It sounded like an apology. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been preoccupied recently.’ Another apology, given with a flash of his blue eyes.

  ‘I understand.’ She broke off a chunk of chocolate and fed it to him. ‘Work’s been tough for you. There’s lots to sort out.’

  ‘Yes. Work.’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘That’s it. Just work.’

  They lay together. Her head on his chest as he smoked a cigarette, she listened to his breathing keeping rhythm with the suck and sigh of the tide. Charles closed his eyes and slept through the rippling call of a curlew. Joy dozed a little too. But aware of the dwindling time and their need to return to London, she couldn’t relax enough to hand herself over to sleep the way he did. She counted down the hours, trying to hold on to time even though it was as impossible to stop as sand falling through her fingers.

  33

  The tunic, when he slipped it on over his shoulders, felt good. He felt good. The black thoughts that usually crowded his mind receded a little. The silver buttons were cold under his fingers as he did them up, methodically, one by one, his body tingling with anticipation about the night ahead and how the girl would look when he watched her moving around in her bedsit, when she took off her clothes.

  You would have thought the wearing of a uniform would have thrust him back to the horrors of the First War and his experiences of the firing line thirty years before. On the contrary, a uniform of any kind gave him a persona, a camouflage to disguise the depravity of his true self. It set him up in his own and his neighbours’ eyes. Dressing up, even though his duties with the force had long since ceased, not only allowed him to go on leading the shadow life that he loved, it encouraged him to do so. Dark alleyways and squalid cafés were his rightful province, and who knew what favours he could obtain from prostitutes and petty criminals anxious to keep clear of the law?

  Before he took the Circle Line and travelled the eight stops to Gloucester Road to see if anything was worth viewing there, he’d have a stride around this locality now his tea had gone down, see what was up. Bouncing along the passageway in his polished policeman’s boots, he put on his peaked cap that some might say looked too big for him and grinned at himself in the mirror. Reluctant to spoil his mood, he couldn’t bear the pained look on his wife’s moon-face whenever he said he was going out. But she could nag all she wanted; his jaunts to Gloucester Road were about the only pleasure he had these days. It wasn’t as if he had work to get up for in the morning: he’d been back to Dr Odess complaining of nervous diarrhoea and he’d issued yet another sick note.

  ‘See you later, Ethel, love.’ And before a reply could reach him, he had slammed out the front door.

  As he strode down Rillington Place, his neighbours waved and bid him good evening. He barely responded; bestowing one of his don’t-try-sucking-up-to-me smiles as he systematically set about checking the tax discs and the state of tyres on the few vehicles that were parked against the kerb. Confident in the assumed authority his uniform gave him, he homed in on a cluster of children up ahead. Too raucous, he decided before he’d even heard them, and he summoned them over. He had no time for youngsters – as far as he was concerned, they were all up to no good and needed bringing into line.

  ‘What d’ya want?’ A boy of around eight, immediately on the defensive. ‘We ain’t doing nuffin’.’

  ‘How’d you know? I haven’t asked you yet.’ Plumped up by his perceived cleverness, he stood facing them, his legs placed slightly apart.

  ‘We’re not, all right?’ The children that had gathered around him began to disperse.

  ‘Er, not so fast. You get back here.’

  ‘What d’ya say? Speak up, grandad, we can’t ’ear ya?’ The gang leader cupped a hand to his ear.

  ‘I said get back here.’

  ‘Can’t make us.’

  ‘I think you’ll find I can, laddie.’

  ‘We don’t have to do nuffin’ you say, you’re a nobody.’ The boy, jogging on the spot, impatient to return to his game. ‘It’s what me dad says. You’re only a joking copper.’

  The taunt, thrown like a ball, hit him full in the stomach.

  ‘You get back here. D’you hear me?’

  ‘Sorry, mister. Like I said, you’ll ’ave to speak up. Can’t ’ear ya.’ And he ran off to join his friends.

  * * *

  Skulking down the street under the cover of darkness, he made a grim silhouette in his black serge uniform. He looked as if he might be on his way to Albert’s, but he wasn’t. Tonight, he had other plans. He squinted through the vapour that was thick enough to draw his name in. Someone was out there; he could hear their footfalls. Their creeping emergence gave him a flutter of excitement deep in his stomach. Closer and closer, until the dark stain took on the shape of a young woman and child. He watched them with interest as they advanced towards him along the pavement. Saw how progress wa
s slow, with the boy wanting to be carried one minute, walk the next. The mother set her child down and crouched to pull up his socks, arrange his curls under his cap while he played with the bow on her pillbox hat. A lone gull floated overhead. He listened to the heavy flap of wings, ghostly as it rode the equally heavy air. How still everything was. Softer than breath. The fog had draped itself over the city like a damp, grey blanket.

  The woman shivered with unease. Yes – his silent thoughts in answer to hers – we could be the only people in the world.

  They eventually passed one another. Her on her clicking heels, hand in hand with the boy; him with his right hand tucked inside the pocket of his tunic, his face hidden beneath his peaked cap. Slightly built, even dressed as a policeman, he knew he didn’t look much, but whatever he communicated, it had her bundling her child in her arms, out of harm’s way.

  Then the child dropped his tin giraffe and it clattered to the ground. He ducked to pick it up and, returning the toy, he let his pale blue gaze scuttle over the boy’s mother, rummaging beneath her clothes.

  ‘Good night to you, lass,’ he said, and strode away in his policeman’s boots.

  He had other fish to fry tonight. At least he hoped so. Hoped the girl was home after whatever jaunt she’d been on with that upper-class dandy and his flash motor, and that he wouldn’t come to regret letting that pretty young mother go.

  34

  Queenie was in no hurry to rise and face the day and dozed for another hour. Only when an arrow of afternoon sunshine burst and faded on the opposite wall did she sit up, pulling the eiderdown over her as if someone had unexpectedly entered the room. And in a way they had, although no one who could tell tales. It was the black cat with yellow eyes. He jumped on the bed and prowled along the mattress, startling her. There was something spooky about him.

  ‘Do you want to say hello?’

  Dizzy ignored her. But unbeknown to Queenie, he had been sussing her out from the floor all night. She tapped the bedcovers to beckon him, but he didn’t budge until she made an involuntary noise, and he fled from the room as if he’d been shot.

  ‘Scatty Catty,’ she renamed him, listening to the thump, thump of his bounce as he descended the stairs.

  Tuesday had come around again. The Mockin’ Bird was shut. If she was going to visit that Mr Christie in Ladbroke Grove, it had to be today. She had tried and failed to use the Higginson syringe again and needed to do something; she would be showing soon. She had turned the scenario around in her mind through the small hours, her hands spread over the slight swell of what was growing inside her – it didn’t matter she was frightened, she had to face up to it, she had to get it done. It was her punishment for what she had done to Joy.

  It was the eighth of November. Her mother’s birthday. That had to mean something. She reached across for the photograph of her she kept by the bed. The edges were blurry, echoing her receding memories. Someone had left it in direct sunlight and the right-hand side of her mother’s body had been lost forever. Queenie pressed it to her chest, wanting her mother to look inside and read her thoughts. For her to steer her through her torment and show her what to do.

  She got up and looked out on the garden that was dying in readiness for winter. A gibbous moon hung between the clouds. Queenie was someone who believed that seeing a moon in broad daylight was unlucky and dragged her gaze from its mesmeric pull to follow the snarl of pipes that ran over the exterior walls, the cracks and the mould that had invaded the light-starved parts of the house. Perhaps its spores had blighted her, and this was why she struggled to muster the enthusiasm to do anything; even performing at the Mockin’ Bird, something she used to live for, was proving difficult.

  The view swam before her. Her tears were for Joy, for herself… for her mother’s best friend who couldn’t afford to have another baby and had visited a backstreet abortionist, only to die four days later of septicaemia. This was the grim reality. It was risky. Everyone knew it was risky. But what choice did she have? Her mind groped limply for the alternatives and found none. When something was outlawed, this was what happened – it didn’t make it go away; it drove it underground and put women in danger.

  * * *

  Queenie stood in her slip and stockings and looked at herself in the mirror. Her reflection was flyblown and tainted. She let the flat of her palm travel over the slight rise of her tummy and gulped back more tears. Curiosity had got the better of her, and she’d visited Merton library yesterday. Found a book with diagrams to see what a three-month-old foetus looked like. She had to stop making such elaborate plans for it and thinking of its heart beating in time with hers. Of dreaming it would be a girl. A girl who would grow up to be a fully formed, living image of her mother. With the same dark hair, the same expressions, the same laugh. She had to stop torturing herself. She couldn’t keep it. Even if Charles wasn’t the father and she hadn’t betrayed Joy, it was impossible.

  She buttoned herself inside a plain dress with a modest collar and hem. Applied a smear of lipstick and tied her hair under a triangle of scarf. Downstairs, she put the wireless on for the company and set the kettle to boil. Propped her elbow on the edge of the stove and pulled on her first cigarette of the day. When she’d made tea, she carried it out into what remained of the afternoon and opened the latch of her father’s hen house. A blur of feathers, russet and gold, as they flew for the open air. She reached inside. Dipped her hands into the warm hollows they had left behind in the shredded newspaper. But there were no eggs.

  With her back to the house, Queenie studied the hand-painted design on her cup. A birthday gift from Terrence. Something new for her kitchen, something that wouldn’t keep reminding her of her father. She traced the straggle of bramble studded with blackberries and rosehips with a finger and was transported back to Goldchurch. Sniffing the imagined smell of hay, she saw the men of the village with pitchforks turning the rows of cut grass, and her grandmother striding from the farmhouse, out into the fields, flask and sandwiches in a basket looped over her arm. The men, laughing, eating their fill. Their laughter, carrying up to the yard, clear as birdsong. Queenie made a sound she was glad no one else could hear. She hadn’t known it at the time, but those years with Joy were the most precious of her life. So keen was she to return to London, she had squandered them, in the same way she had squandered her friendship with Joy. And thinking about her complacency made her deeply ashamed.

  Back inside, she couldn’t sit. There had been enough inactivity, she needed to do something. With her insides heaving with butterflies, she placed her cup in the sink and put on her plain winter coat. No fur, no frills, no fuss. Not for this. She didn’t want Mr Christie to look at her the way men usually looked at her. This was just something to be got through. And as if needing further impetus – to prove she had a future beyond the terror of the immediate one – she took out her passport and airline tickets from the sideboard. She looked strange in her photograph. Lost and sad, like her mother used to look when she thought no one was watching. She stepped over the cat, who was circling her ankles, and put the passport and tickets away. Checked her handbag for Terrence’s note, even though she had memorised the directions and street names he’d given her. She saw her identity card. Took it out to look at the stamp with last year’s date on it. How different things had been then. It was a good job you couldn’t see into the future, or you probably wouldn’t want to go there. She tucked the identity card away and opened her purse, looked at her rainy-day money. The five ten-shilling notes she had been saving for America, rolled up in a side pocket. Whoever this John Christie was, he would want paying; he wouldn’t be doing it for free. She looked around the downstairs rooms as if to say goodbye to the fading rosebud wallpaper. The ceiling with its damp stain where the rain had come in before the tiles had been fixed.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she told the ghosts she shared her home with. ‘In an hour or two it will all be over.’ And she pushed out into the street that was washed a strange yellow in the
dying day, the dread of what was to come making her heart beat faster.

  35

  Early closing at the bank and Terrence was sitting in his work suit on the lower level of the double-decker bus, London’s darkening streets skimming by on the other side of the smeary windows. With the Mockin’ shut and no band to play with, he always felt a little lost on Tuesday nights. He was meeting Malcolm at Albert’s later, but it was going to be a long wait. He supposed he could go to Camden Town; his mother was always pleased to see him. But it seemed sad, a grown man depending on his mother for company, for the supper she would be obliged to feed him. He closed his Penguin paperback and put it away in his pocket. He couldn’t clear his mind enough to read. The words were jumping around, he wasn’t taking anything in. After a tedious stint at the bank, receiving deposits and loan payments and dealing directly with customers, he wasn’t in the mood.

  He got off the bus two stops before he needed to. Ever careful, he checked behind him, ensuring he wasn’t being followed. Hungry – he hadn’t eaten much today – and spying a chalkboard sign advertising ‘Good Grub’, he scooted into a public house. There he drank two double whiskies in quick succession and ate a steak and kidney pie with fried potatoes. He left the pub, his stomach full, without ever learning its name. Turned his back on the three men in flat caps who sat up at the bar. Copies of their newspapers open next to their pints. Circling the fillies and talking the odds for tomorrow’s races.