1951 - But a Short Time to Live

by James Hadley Chase

  "That's right, isn't it?" she said, leaning forward to peer at him. Her spirit ladened breath fanned his cheek. "It's got to be all right! I read somewhere they don't touch you if you're in the family way. You've got to do it, Harry. If you won't, I'll get someone who will."

  He caught hold of her shoulders, dragged her to her feet and shook her.

  "Stop talking nonsense!" he said angrily. "You don't know what you're saying."

  She pushed him away with surprising strength.

  "Oh yes, I do," she said, swaying unsteadily. "It's you who don't know what you're talking about. We're going to have a baby. At once! It's the only way out." Suddenly she began to cry and stumbled against him, clinging to him. "I'm so frightened," she moaned. "I don't know what I'm going to do. You must give me a baby, Harry. They don't hang a woman who's carrying a child."

  Harry felt a cold prickle run up his spine. Had she gone mad? He caught hold of her arms, pushed her away and stared at her. The cold, bleak terror in her eyes turned him sick.

  "What have you done?"

  "He's in there. I — I don't know what made me do it He caught me packing. He said we'd never get away. I went into the kitchen and he followed me, sneering at me. There was a knife on the table. I caught hold of it . . ." She broke off, shuddering.

  "What are you saying?" Harry said, his heart hammering against his side. "You're drunk. You're lying! . . ."

  "You've got to give me a baby," she moaned, wringing her hands. "I don't want to die! Oh, Harry . . . Harry . . . what are we going to do?"

  He went quickly into the kitchen, paused in the doorway and then took a slow step back.

  Ben Whelan lay on the floor, his knees drawn up and his hands clenched. His dead empty eyes seemed to be watching a big bluebottle that walked stiff-legged across the ceiling.

  chapter twenty-eight

  Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Kent lived at 43 Fairfield Road in two rooms on the top floor of a shabby boarding house in the poorer district of Hastings.

  Fairfield Road lay at the back of the Old Town, a narrow, twisting hill of a road of cobblestones and small, dirty grey houses. No. 43 was owned by Mrs. Jennifer Bates who had let lodgings for twenty years and prided herself there were no tricks of the trade she didn't know. Before he was knocked down and killed by one of the new Corporation trolley cars, her husband had made a fair living from a Punch and Judy show. He had been a jolly, red-faced man who had irritated his wife beyond endurance by refusing to quarrel with her. In spite of her continual bickering he left her five hundred pounds with which she bought 43 Fairfield Road.

  To look at, Mrs. Bates was not very prepossessing. She was short and fat and bulged in unexpected places. Her face reminded you of a stale crumpet, for it was round and dough-like, and pitted with small— pox scars. She had small inquisitive eyes, and a tight thin mouth. Her hair appeared to be about to come down, but somehow managed to stay up, although there were times when long, grey strands did escape and bob up and down behind her as she walked. She had five lodgers. The Kents and three thin-faced, elderly men, who worked on the railway. These three had been friends for a long time. Any day of the week you could see them from the London trains as they repaired the track or leaned on their shovels to talk to each other in slow, heavy voices. They rose at five o'clock and went to bed at nine. Mrs. Bates seldom saw or heard them for they were gentle, kindly men who believed in making as little noise about the house as possible.

  They had been lodging with Mrs. Bates for over ten years, and she had at last come to the conclusion that they were to be trusted as far as anyone could be trusted, and were just the kind of lodgers any landlady would be glad to have.

  But she wasn't anything like so satisfied with the Kents. It was the girl who worried her. The young chap seemed harmless enough, but the girl was another kettle of fish. She was a hard piece if ever there was one! Harder even than Mrs. Bates, who prided herself on her hardness. Anyway, this girl always got the better of Mrs. Bates in any verbal exchange, and there had been quite a few.

  Young Kent, usually pale and worried looking, was quick to pour oil on troubled waters. He seemed afraid of offending Mrs. Bates, and his fear did much to mollify her for she liked people to be afraid of her.

  The trouble began when she discovered the girl was going to have a baby.

  "Not in my house!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at the girl's thickening waist. "No children! Never "ad any, and I ain't starting now. You'll 'ave to 'op it when it comes, so make up your mind to it."

  The girl had given a sneering little laugh.

  "Yap about the chicken when it's hatched," she said, and slammed the door in Mrs. Bates's outraged face.

  Well, that was a nice way to talk!

  And then one day when the Kents were out, Mrs. Bates had gone into their rooms to satisfy herself they were keeping them clean, and had found three empty gin bottles under the sofa.

  That started more trouble.

  "No drinking in my house!" she stormed, shaking one of the empty bottles in their faces on their return. "Any more of this, and you'll have to go!"

  "And what else don't you like? What else can't we do in this lousy hole?" the girl demanded, her face like granite. "Go and drown yourself, you fat old bitch!"

  And that had taken all Kent's tact to smooth over, but he had done it, explaining in his quiet, anxious voice that his wife wasn't well and the coming baby worried her, and if Mrs. Bates would overlook the incident he would see it didn't happen again.

  If it wasn't that he paid regularly and the lack of petrol was ruining the tripper trade, Mrs. Bates wouldn't have had them in her house after such language, but she didn't want to lose the forty-five shillings they paid for the rooms, so she allowed herself to be mollified.

  Kent had a job at Mason's, the photographic equipment shop on the seafront. He did the developing and printing, spending hours in the dark room, coming home about seven, looking white and tired. Mrs. Bates had no idea how much he earned, but it couldn't have been much for he was very shabby and his shoes needed repairing and he looked half starved. The girl was better dressed. In fact, when she first came to No. 43 she had a fur coat that looked like mink. But that disappeared after a while, and Mrs. Bates suspected it had been pawned. But now the girl's figure was thickening she had to have a couple of new dresses, and they looked cheap enough, Mrs. Bates thought with a contemptuous sniff.

  They were an odd couple. Neither of them had any friends. Although they had been in Hastings for over six months they always kept to themselves. No one ever called on them, and when they went out together they invariably went up the hill to the castle and never down to the town.

  Kent had told Mrs. Bates they used to live in West Ham, London. He always wanted to live by the sea, he said, and when he saw Mason's advertisement he had jumped at the chance of working in Hastings. One of these days, he told her, they hoped to have a home of their own, and when he said that there came into his eyes such a look of wistful longing that Mrs. Bates was almost sorry for him.

  If it hadn't been for the girl, Mrs. Bates would have been pleased to have had Kent stay with her. He was no trouble, but the girl was a slut: that was the only word for her. Sometimes Mrs. Bates would hear her slanging Kent, but as soon as she started raising her voice, he somehow persuaded her to quieten down, so, although Mrs. Bates hurried to the foot of the stairs to listen, she never heard what the quarrel was about.

  They would have to go before the baby was born. Mrs. Bates told Kent he had better keep his eyes open for a place where squawling brats were tolerated. It'd be a job, she said, with relish. So he had better look sharp or they'd be homeless.

  Kent said there was still three months before the baby was born, but he would begin looking immediately.

  "Three months?" Mrs. Bates said and laughed. "Don't you believe it. I can tell by the look of her. It's coming before then. You mark my words. Them that drinks gin always 'as 'em quick. I know. Inside eight weeks: That's my guess and I '
aven't been wrong yet."

  Mrs. Bates always remembered the afternoon the Kents arrived. She had been taking a bit of a rest in the kitchen with a cup of tea and the newspaper. She had been reading about the Park Lane murder: a real sensation if ever there was one.

  A man wanted by the police had been found stabbed to death in the kitchen of a Park Lane luxury flat, belonging to a couple named Ricks. The woman, Clair Ricks, had been on the stage doing a pickpocket act and making as much as a hundred and fifty a week. The man, Harry Ricks, had a portrait studio in Grafton Street. Both of them had disappeared, and the police were anxious to find them, believing they could give them information that would lead to an arrest.

  So far no trace of them had been found. Detective-Inspector Claud Parkins was in charge of the case. He said the murdered man, Ben Whelan, was believed to have been connected with a gang of pickpockets working in the West End, and he thought the motive of the murder had been blackmail.

  Mrs. Bates was speculating about the murder when the front door bell rang, making her start, and when she climbed the steep stairs from the basement and opened the front door she found this couple standing on the step.

  With her mind still full of the murder, she showed them the two rooms. The moment she set eyes on the girl she knew she was a bad lot. A blonde, hard-faced bit, she thought, no better than she should be.

  Wearing a fur coat and coming to a working-class district! And the way she had looked at the two rooms as if they weren't good enough for her. But the young fellow took her fancy. He was quiet and polite, and was willing to pay two weeks' rent in advance, and she let them have the rooms.

  It was a funny thing, but the girl didn't move out of the house for four or five weeks. Kent explained she wasn't well, but to be cooped up in two rooms for five weeks seemed to Mrs. Bates to be going beyond a joke. However, it was her business. If she liked to hide herself away as if she was scared of showing her face in the street, that was her look-out. Mrs. Bates didn't care so long as she got her money. The young fellow went out every day to business, but once he returned, he stayed indoors even though the summer was hot and fine.

  After four or five weeks, and about the time when the newspapers had lost interest in the Park Lane murder, the girl began to go out.

  The missing couple hadn't been found. Another murder had been committed, and Mrs. Bates forgot all about the Park Lane murder and gave her attention to this new one: a girl had been found hacked to pieces in a West End hotel. That was far more intriguing than a stabbing in a kitchen, and the police knew who had done it too, and were after him, so there was a chase to add to the excitement.

  Alone in their rooms, the Rents read of the new murder and exchanged glances. It meant the searchlight of publicity would shift away from Clair and Harry Ricks, and that seemed to give them comfort

  chapter twenty-nine

  Even after six months, Harry didn't feel entirely safe. He had got over the sickening clutch of fear every time he saw a policeman. He had ceased to stiffen every time he heard a footfall on the stairs. But the hunted feeling persisted. He couldn't open a newspaper without a feeling of dread. It was still a nightmare to walk down Robertson Street, the main shopping thoroughfare, and if anyone came up to him suddenly his heart contracted and he had to control an impulse to run.

  It was amazing how they had escaped detection for so long. Probably it was because everything had been prepared for flight, and they were able to disappear and assume new identities before Whelan's body had been found. He had not been discovered for eight days after they had left the flat.

  Clair had been panic stricken. If she had been left alone she would have given herself away. There were times when Harry despaired of her ever getting back to normal. She was ready to run at the slightest thing: a step on the landing, a shout in the street, a sudden braking of a car. But now she was getting back her nerve, and realising that perhaps, after all, she need not have insisted on having a child. Her reaction to the inevitable inconvenience of pregnancy was of trapped fury. At times she would turn on Harry, blaming him for everything, venting her misery and anger on him, cursing the day she ever met him.

  Harry was patient with her. His love for her had wilted, but his loyalty was as strong as ever. He couldn't forget, in spite of her mistakes, what she had done had been more for his sake than hers. He remembered how she had given herself up to the police when Parkins had accused him of stealing the cigarette case. He remembered her past generosity. It was his turn now to provide for her, and how badly he was doing it! Under the circumstances he was lucky to have a job at all. At least it provided him for the first month with an adequate hiding place. The only danger had been the journey to and from the shop.

  Once he was there he remained in the dark room where no one saw him. But the money wasn't much. He earned six pounds a week. Forty-five shillings of that went on rent. There was food to buy. In their panic to escape from the Park Lane flat they had only taken a suitcase of clothes apiece, fearing to call a taxi to remove the heavier cases, and they were now running short of clothes.

  They had thirty pounds left still from the sale of Clair's jewellery, but that was slowly dwindling as Clair insisted on having a bottle of gin a week, and Harry suspected that she was going to the pub at the corner of the road when he was at work. He had warned her that once their capital had gone, they would not be able to afford gin, and she turned on him fiercely.

  "I've got to have something. Do you think I can stay in this blasted room day after day without something to take my mind off it? Oh, don't look so shocked. As long as the money lasts I'll drink as much as I like!"

  And besides gin she smoked incessantly, whereas Harry had given up cigarettes.

  At first he had been pathetically tender and even enthusiastic about the coming child, but Clair soon disillusioned him.

  "Look at me!" she raved. "Do you think I want it? If I had thought we'd have got away with it, I wouldn't have been such a mad fool to have had it. Look what the little beast is doing to my figure! Oh, shut up gaping at me! If it hadn't been for you this would never have happened!"

  And yet, sometimes, she was different, and held him in her arms, crying, her face against his, assuring him she loved him, that she would do anything for him.

  "Don't pay any attention to me, darling," she said. "I'm so miserable and frightened. Oh, Harry, what is going to become of us? Suppose the child is born, and then they find us? It won't stop them hanging me then! In a way I wish they'd find us now, then they couldn't kill me. Don't you see, the longer they take to find us the worse it is for me." She pulled away from him and ran distracted fingers through her hair. "I shall go mad! I'm so frightened of having the child. I hate pain! I'm such a stinking coward. Sometimes I think I'll kill myself. It would be the way out."

  She was continually talking of suicide now, and it worried Harry half out of his mind. She was so reckless, and at times, demented, that he feared she might try to kill herself. He did his best to comfort her, but after these bouts of tenderness and self-pity she would become once more hard and cynical, grumbling about the lack of money, complaining about the two rooms and the food, and smoking incessantly.

  It was a nightmare time for Harry. He felt sure that if Clair didn't have to pass so much of her time alone, she wouldn't be in this frame of mind. She wasn't used to being on her own, and became morbidly depressed by sitting in the shabby little room with its view of the roofs of the Old Town, having nothing to do but to think of the past and the fun she had had and to brood over the coming birth.

  He encouraged her to go out. At first, fearful of being recognised, she refused, but as the weeks went by and the newspapers ceased to feature the murder she finally screwed up her courage to make infrequent trips to the shops, but they never went about the town together.

  "It wouldn't be safe," Harry argued. "They're still looking for us, and some bright policeman might spot us if we were together."

  So when they did go out in the even
ing they went up to the Castle where there were no policemen and sat on the hill and looked down at the ruins of the harbour and the sea front, stretching to St Leonards, and at the crowds moving along the promenade.

  Then one day Harry mislaid his fountain pen, and in the search for it, he absent-mindedly opened one of Clair's drawers. What he saw there turned him cold.

  He went into the sitting-room where Clair was manicuring her finger nails.

  "Where did you get this?" he demanded, and held up a leather handbag. "I found it in your drawer. It's new. How did you get it?"

  Clair flushed and jumped to her feet.

  "How dare you go to my drawer!"

  He looked at her. She tried to meet his horrified eyes, then turned away and went over to the window.

  "Did you steal it?" he said, his voice husky.

  "What if I did? I've got to have some decent things. If you can't get them for me . . ."

  He jerked her round roughly.

  "You stupid fool!" his voice was shaking. "Can't you see that's what they're waiting for? They know your tricks. It's just the thing that'd give them a clue. They're clever. If the shop you stole it from reports this to the police they'll wonder if it is you. Don't you see that?"

  "Am I going to live like this all my life?" she cried, her face white with fear. "My other bag's worn out. Do you think they'll guess it was me?"

  "But, Clair, what is the matter with you?" Harry said hopelessly. "Have you no sense of right and wrong? What if your bag is worn out? You can't just go out and steal another. Apart from the danger of being caught, can't you see what a rotten thing it is to do?"

  "But I am rotten," she said defiantly. "I don't make any bones about that. Am I never to have any fun again or any nice things?"

  "Give me time," he said, desperately. "Let's get your confinement over first. I'm watching out for something better. I'll get something, Clair. I'll get something that'll make more money. But you've got to promise never to steal again."