The Corpse Wore Red

by Pat Herbert

  “Oh, that one,” sighed May. “It’s always that one she chucks out first. Threw it into my lap this afternoon. Trying to tell me something, I suppose.”

  “The title’s fitting, anyway,” said Danny, grinning. “But, May, you don’t really believe it’s Alice, do you? I know you’ve been upset by all this, but you must get a grip on reality.”

  “I know it seems ridiculous, but she’s here in this room, even now. I can see her out of the corner of my eye. She’s wearing red.”

  Danny swung around. There was no one else in the room, in red or any other colour. Just himself and May.

  “I really think you should see the doc, May. Go tomorrow,” he said with determination, as he watched her replace the ornaments on the mantelpiece.

  “I’m all right, Danny. Don’t keep on.”

  He could see there was no reasoning with her. He didn’t know what to do. He was scared she was having some sort of breakdown.

  “Let’s sit down and talk it through,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her to the chair that didn’t have a spring sticking out of the bottom of it. He knelt beside her. “Now, are you really saying that Alice is haunting you?”

  “Haven’t I been saying that for ages?” she said with impatience. “Don’t look at me like that. Alice was a cow when she was alive, and she’s an even worse one now she’s dead.”

  “I thought you and she were good friends. You seem so upset about her death.”

  “I couldn’t stand her. And I don’t think that this Howard man is the only one with a reason to kill her. Her baby was just as likely to have been Paul’s. He had just as much reason to kill her. She made both their lives a misery.”

  “Even so, she didn’t deserve to die like she did, did she?”

  May shrugged. She seemed quite open-minded on the subject. Then she smiled at him. She raised her voice and turned towards the glimpse of bright red she could still see in the corner of the room. “No, of course not.”

  As she looked, the red started to fade to pink, before disappearing completely. She’d lay her head off about Alice’s virtues, she thought, if it would just get her off her back for a minute.

  8th February 1958: Lewisham

  Lucy had been upset by Celia’s visit, and by the patronising way she had spoken to her. The woman had told her she needed to get out more. Flipping cheek, Lucy had thought. Why didn’t she mind her own business?

  The idea of hospital voluntary work didn’t appeal to her in the slightest, and yet, once she had calmed down enough to think dispassionately about what Celia had said, she began to think that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. She had some medical knowledge, for a start, having worked for Robbie for nearly a decade. Not that you needed any to be a hospital visitor, apparently. She decided to consult him on the subject.

  Robbie thought Lucy was going off her rocker when she told him she was thinking of volunteering to become a hospital visitor, until he understood the idea had come from Celia, which put a whole new complexion on the matter. Celia was such a sensible woman and so kind of her to take an interest in his housekeeper.

  “Good idea,” he said. “There are so many patients in hospital who never have any visitors at all either because they have no friends or family, or because they live too far away. It’s bad enough being in hospital in the first place, without being on your own day and night.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Lucy. She didn’t want Celia to take all the credit for being such a ‘generous, kind human being’. “Do you know how I go about it?”

  Robbie scratched his head. “Not sure,” he said, “but I’ll find out for you.”

  ***

  It was a few days later that Lucy paid her first hospital visit. Robbie had helped her fill in the appropriate forms and she had been contacted on the telephone by Lewisham Hospital within a day of posting them. It wasn’t the most convenient place to get to, but she didn’t mind. It would be an adventure. Getting there by bus would be an adventure in itself.

  Although she hated to admit it, Celia was right, she didn’t get out enough. All she did these days was go to the shops, visit Nancy and occasionally the dentist or, on a really good day, the hairdresser. Where, she wondered, was she likely to meet new people? Men, especially. Anbolin’s ‘man in white’ that she was supposedly destined to meet, where was she ever likely to meet him, if he existed in the first place, of course?

  As she sat on the bus on her way to the hospital, she pondered this question and almost laughed. Where she was heading was a hospital. She was going to meet patients, probably some of them at death’s door. The ones she was going to visit would be those too unpopular to have any friends of their own to visit. Not ideal husband material, she had to admit. Still, she thought suddenly, a dishy doctor might come her way and, she realised in a flash, they generally wore white coats! Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Maybe it was a doctor she was destined to meet. Anbolin had been very specific about the white clothes, and where else did men wear white? A hospital was the obvious place. Her dentist wore white, off-white actually, but he wasn’t any too clean at the best of times and he had halitosis. Also he was married, so she knew she could cross Mr Monroe off her list.

  She got off the bus opposite the hospital, and found she had butterflies in her stomach. It was the thought of meeting a handsome doctor who was going to sweep her off her feet that excited her, but she pulled herself together. Back in the real world, she knew the chances of that happening were practically non-existent. She had checked her appearance carefully before leaving, and knew she was looking her best, but even so, she wasn’t kidding herself. The first flush of youth was well behind her, and her looks weren’t what they once were. Dr Kildare wasn’t likely to come her way today or any other day. She remembered the films of her youth, with Lew Ayres as the dashing doctor, and sighed. No, it wouldn’t be Lew Ayres who would meet her today with a welcoming smile.

  And in that she was quite right. It was a hatchet-faced matron. Granted she was dressed in white, but luckily she was the wrong gender.

  “I’ve come to visit any patients that need some company,” she explained to the matron, who was starched up to her finely arched eyebrows, with a tall, lean figure, stiff as a poker to match.

  “I see,” said the woman, “you’d better come along to my office.”

  Once inside her room, Lucy explained that she had been called by the hospital the day before, and gave her full name.

  “Ah, yes, Mrs – er Miss Carter. I have your form here,” said the matron, unbending a little. “We can do with a lot more like you. It’s very kind of you.”

  “I’ve got some spare time, so I thought I’d try to do something useful,” said Lucy with an appealing self-deprecation not lost on the matron.

  “Good.” The matron’s face broke into a smile. It transformed her. Lucy felt relaxed for the first time since entering the hospital. “I’m going to take you along to our Mr House,” she said. “He’s been in a coma for some time, but we are convinced that all he needs is someone to talk him out of it.”

  “Really? It’s that simple?” Lucy was intrigued.

  “It can be.”

  She followed the taller woman’s strides down corridor after corridor, trying, but failing, to keep pace with her. She was soon out of breath.

  “And I suppose he has no one to visit him to do that?”

  The matron stopped to allow Lucy to catch up with her. “Not anyone that wants to do that,” she said enigmatically. “He only has one visitor now, since his sister died. His nephew comes in once a week, but never stays more than five minutes. Certainly not long enough to talk to the poor blighter. Between you and me and the gatepost, I think he wants his uncle to die so he can get his hands on his money.”

  Lucy’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh dear! How awful. The poor man.”

  “Yes, he is a poor man. But Dr Carmichael is sure his case is not a hopeless one. If there was someone who would sit with h
im and talk to him for a while, I’m sure we would see some positive results.” She continued to walk on and Lucy skipped to keep up.

  They arrived at last at a side ward, and she got her first glimpse of Stanley House wired up to a beeping machine, his face as white as, if not whiter, than his pillow. It was a nice face, belonging to a man not much older than herself. She liked the look of him at once.

  “Now,” said the matron, businesslike, “you sit there, and I’ll get you a cup of tea.”

  “Thanks,” said Lucy, not looking at her, but studying the man’s face carefully. “It’s such a shame. What happened to him?”

  The matron explained a little bit, then went off in quest of Lucy’s tea. Left alone in the room with an unconscious man and a beeping machine for company, Lucy felt ready to panic. She was completely out of her depth. How was she to start a conversation with someone who couldn’t see or hear her? It was like talking to yourself and that, as most people said, was the first sign of madness. She cleared her throat. As she did so, she thought she saw the man’s eyelids move. But it must have been a trick of light. The matron returned with the tea and another smile for her. Lucy already liked her immensely. “Can you stay with me until I get used to it?” she asked, taking the tea gratefully. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m sorry, but I must get on, dear,” said the matron. “Just talk about the weather or something. General chit-chat. A human voice is all that’s needed. You could sing to him, if you like.”

  It was Lucy’s turn to smile. “I think my singing would finish him off,” she said, laughing.

  ***

  She had run out of things to say about the weather. There was only so much mileage in icy roads, slippery pavements, snow, sleet and zero temperatures. She searched her mind for another topic, but all she could come up with was the wireless programme she had listened to the night before. Something about bats. It had been interesting at the time, she recalled, but she couldn’t remember much about it now. So that was a non-starter.

  She watched the man’s face closely. Was it her imagination, or did she see his eyelids move again? Then again, she couldn’t be sure she had seen them move the first time.

  Suddenly there was no doubt. Stanley House opened his eyes to see his dear departed wife sitting beside him. So he had crossed over to the other side at last. He had been trying hard for ever so long to reach her, and now at last there she was.

  “Hello, Nettie darling, better late than never,” he said to Lucy.

  13th February 1958: Stockwell

  Danny Blowers turned the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’ and stared out of the shop window at the dark morning. He yawned. He didn’t like doing the morning shift so much, as it meant he had to spend more time at home in the evenings with May. She was still as depressed as ever and insisting that Alice Troy was haunting her. Despite his repeated pleas that she see a doctor, she was refusing to do so.

  He stepped out onto the pavement and shivered. Would this winter never end, he wondered. These dark mornings were getting him down. And even when the light finally pierced the dimness, it was only to remain greyly over everything until night descended again all too soon just after four o’clock in the afternoon. He’d read somewhere that people in places like Sweden were more likely to commit suicide than anywhere else, and he could understand why. They lived in perpetual night-time for half of the year.

  He took up a knife and started to cut the string that was wrapped around the morning newspapers. He piled them up neatly in their relevant racks and placed some strategically along the counter. Every one of them had the same headline: ‘Howard Drake to Hang Tomorrow: Hopes of a Reprieve Fade’.

  Danny sniffed. He had it coming to him, but he couldn’t help the nagging feeling at the back of his mind that something wasn’t quite right. He thought about May’s strange behaviour over the last weeks and months, and couldn’t account for it. For someone who didn’t seem to have been that fond of Alice, she was much too upset about her tragic death.

  The sound of the doorbell jangling brought him back to the present. It was that old man with his mangy dog. He was always the first customer of the day. He bought and paid for his Daily Mirror and ounce of tobacco without speaking. There was no need. Danny knew exactly what he wanted, it never varied. Then, uncharacteristically, the man spoke.

  “Sad business, this,” he said, indicating the headline in his newspaper.

  “Sad?” said Danny. “For Alice Troy, it’s tragic. But not sad for this Drake bloke. The rope’s too good for him.”

  “How so? You in favour of capital punishment, then? Shhh, Pickles,” he said, turning to his whining dog who was straining at his leash. “I’ll take you to the park in a minute.”

  “I suppose I am,” said Danny. “Don’t envy the hangman, though. Killing people for a living is a bit macabre, isn’t it?”

  “That’s an understatement,” said the man, folding the newspaper under his arm. “And I should know. I did the job for the best part of forty years. Until my breakdown.”

  Danny was shocked. He studied him carefully, realising he had never really looked at him properly before. He was just ‘Mirror and Ounce of Golden Virginia Man’ to him. “You were a hangman, then? An actual hangman?” There was awe in his tone.

  “Yes, lad, I was,” he said, tapping his dog’s nose with the end of his leash to keep him quiet. “And if I had my time over again, I would do anything else for a living, cleaning lavatories, anything, rather than be a legalised killer.”

  “Well, someone’s got to do it, I suppose,” said Danny.

  “Have they?” he said, as he and Pickles left the shop.

  ***

  When the early morning rush had died down, Danny, as was his custom, went into the back of the shop to make himself a cup of tea. His boss was generous with the tea and biscuits, he would say that for him. As the kettle boiled, his thoughts went back to May. Why did she feel compelled to trash the place every time? Why did she insist it wasn’t her, but Alice? He didn’t believe in ghosts, though his favourite reading contained elements of the supernatural. But it wasn’t real life, that’s why he liked those sorts of books, they took him out of himself. The thought that their little flat was actually haunted by a murdered girl appalled him. But he didn’t believe it, not for one moment.

  He read the article about Howard Drake while he drank his tea. It said he was still professing his innocence, even at this late stage. Well, he supposed he would, wouldn’t he? He continued to read about his poor wife who had given birth to a baby boy at the end of December, a boy doomed to live in the world without a father to protect him. That was sad, of course. One day, he supposed, he would have to know the ugly truth, and what would that do to the poor mite, wondered Danny.

  He heard the doorbell jangle and, folding up the paper, he returned with it to the counter. He put it underneath a less creased-up copy. Someone would buy it at lunchtime.

  “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” he said to the waiting customer.

  13th February 1958: Wandsworth

  While Danny was serving his latest customer, Robbie was helping Anbolin into his car to take her to the station. She was still hobbling a bit, and leaning on a stick, but she was more or less recovered. It was time to go home at last. And this time she had made it down the vicarage path without mishap, even though the path was still wet and slippery. Bernard stood at the vicarage gate, shivering in the cold, ready to wave her off.

  Robbie settled her carefully into the back of the car, wrapping the tartan blanket he always kept in the boot around her legs to keep her warm.

  “Now, dear, are you comfortable?” he asked solicitously. She smiled and said she was, hugging a bagful of Nancy Harper’s homemade scones, cakes and muffins close to her chest. If she had to go home, and she realised she had to this time, at least she would have Nancy’s excellent cooking to remind her of the fun she had at St Stephen’s vicarage. She would probably have eaten them all by the same time tomo
rrow, but at least she could look forward to her next visit in the not too distant future.

  Robbie switched on the ignition and the car sputtered into life. As he was about to pull away, Nancy appeared at the window and indicated for Anbolin to wind it down.

  “’Ere, ducks, take this with you,” she ordered, shoving what looked like another hamper of food at her. Anbolin grabbed it with glee. Maybe she could make this last two days, if she was careful. Then she heard a tiny mewing sound from inside the basket. Opening the lid, she saw a scraggy kitten staring up at her, all eyes and ears, both features looking much too large for the creature’s small head. “Oh, how sweet!” she cried. “Where on Earth did he come from?”

  Nancy sniffed. “Been ’anging about the kitchen door for the past week, ’e ’as,” she said. “I been feeding ’im as ’e don’t appear to belong to anybody. And as you said your cat ’ad died, like, I thought you might like to give ’im an ’ome. We’ve already got the other cat, so I can’t ’ave no more of the blighters about the place. I never told the vic, otherwise ’e’d ’ave wanted to keep it,” she said, whispering confidentially through the window.

  Anbolin was in tears. “Thank you, Nancy dear, thank you,” she cried. “I’ll take good care of him.”

  The car pulled away, and Bernard and Nancy waved her off. They returned to the relative warmth of the vicarage, and noticed how quiet it was now that Anbolin had finally gone.