Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

  Gordon’s room was now taken by a ferret-faced waiter and his wife, a veteran nagger with a rear like a hippopotamus: a kindly couple who cracked after one week under the strain of brass instruments and left, a little regretfully for they had enjoyed the company. The room was once more emptied and filled by strangers. Most of us were a little self-conscious at having new people trespassing in our well-worn grooves and studied the new occupants of Gordon’s room with a somewhat reserved, but friendly speculation.

  The new couple, although we only saw them briefly from time to time, in no way resembled anyone else in the house. Mr Higgins, a swarthy well-built little man of great dignity, treated his wife with old world courtliness, putting to shame the habits of almost every male in the house, leaving a wide opening for immediate womanly comparisons. Except for myself, heady with the champagne qualities of a new love, who had no reason for reproaches, and a doubtful Mrs Budden, her first ecstasies dulled a little by familiarity and the overstrain of a troublesome child, everyone was at the moment sitting on the fence.

  Mrs Higgins appeared to accept the ardent attentions of her husband as if they were her rightful due; diluted blue eyes gazed at him fondly from a face lost in doughy roundness. The head of shining mustard-coloured ringlets, the comfortable body, a martyr to pastel blues, spreading without restraint, gaudy paste jewellery sparkling against the sloping shelf of a full bosom, her over-indulgence in make-up, all somehow matched his flourishing cavalier airs, as he escorted her up and down stairs and in and out of the dark Vauxhall parked resplendent in our drive, giving the place a tone of opulence that it had never received from Gordon’s heap.

  Nelson, Edward and the children, settling together like flies, surveyed the strangers’ arrival with unending curiosity. The careful sorting of their belongings from a brand-new car, the delicate handling of certain items, stern rejection as offers of help were politely but firmly refused, were received with disappointment as Mrs Higgins, playing nervously with a shining ringlet, guarded her belongings. She was jealously protective of a tall, upright basket on which was a giveaway label ‘Jamaica to Southampton’, and which, in consequence, became the cause of much speculation among the onlookers. Nelson was certain it harboured contraband – opium was slowly rotting the villain in this week’s comic – for an adult audience, I felt and the word was constantly on his lips as he discussed the potentialities. It was an American comic, and where he got it from nobody knew. Jane, reading it out of curiosity, said it had produced a night of excessively bad dreams and the seller of such literature ought to be prosecuted.

  Edward was equally convinced that the basket held contraband, but of another sort, and I thought that if this inquisitive gathering of the clans didn’t put the new people off, nothing would. But if we thought to thaw the occupants of Room 5 into chatty revelations, we were mistaken, for they minded their own business and closed their door firmly to intruders.

  Then Edward started the investigation of one of his ideas which eventually involved everyone in the house and all because he said he heard sounds as if someone was being tortured. Catching him for the fourth time standing in the hall and obviously eavesdropping with intent, I couldn’t help but reprove his actions. He carried me away swiftly to the seclusion of his room, with the offended face of a man heavily misjudged.

  ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but I have reason to suspect these new people,’ he confided to me. ‘Strange sounds. Their reticence to being sociable. It is just not natural when coming to this house. And that basket – you observed it no doubt – to my mind it gives a sinister tone!’

  ‘It looked like crockery to me,’ I said, spoiling Edward’s dramatic effects with a few plain words.

  ‘Why didn’t they want me to touch it, then?’ he asked. ‘When I offered with all the geniality in the world to carry it to safety single-handed.’ He poured two glasses of a solid-looking greenish liquid from a crystal decanter with a shaking hand; I wondered if I should refuse it, but as it hadn’t come from beneath the kitchen sink I felt it would be worth the risk.

  I looked around. The painting of my blond giant was no more, removed to oblivion, and a new study of Olwen, decently draped in a white coverage, her arms raised as if in prayer, had replaced it. I was glad, for that was past history!

  ‘Nelson and I, for once, have agreed on something,’ he went on. ‘There are occasions when he seems to have a natural insight into things, and his help then comes in very useful. Not that I have any brief for our fat boy’s mind – but …’ he paused.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, examining the green liquid I was about to swallow with a suspicious change of mind. Edward’s recital sounded to me like the beginnings of a typical ‘thought’, exaggerated beyond the bounds of sanity, that he was so good at manufacturing.

  ‘I’ve knocked several times since,’ Edward reverted to the new people, ‘on some pretext or other. I once cunningly suggested that I was the milkman, and had the door practically slammed in my face,’ he ended in consternation.

  I looked up at the harrowed speaker – he really meant it. I burst out laughing. ‘Really, you are outrageous. Let them be secretive if they want to, what’s wrong with that? It’s a change in this house,’ I added ruefully, thinking of the irritatingly knowing looks I had to endure from various quarters and the constant speculation on things to come that was part of everyday life.

  ‘I shall certainly keep watch in spite of your derision, and will inform the law at the slightest evidence of foul play.’ Edward was offended.

  ‘Please,’ I begged, ‘whatever you do, don’t call the police. We’ll be getting a dreadful name if this sort of thing goes on; we have just had them involved over the monkeys, not to mention the party and who knows what other complaints they have received that we know nothing about yet?’

  ‘That’s what the police get paid for – to protect the public.’ He had obviously been indulging in comparisons with Nelson, who would never accept the fact that the house down the road was not entitled to a police raid every week in order to satisfy his curiosity.

  ‘Yes, but we don’t know yet if we do need protecting.’

  ‘Wait and see; if you’d heard the sound I’ve heard you would think differently,’ Edward prophesied. ‘And if I hadn’t actually seen that Mrs Budden’s baby is safe, not that I want to see it, the little monster, I would have said that the sounds were the father strangling it.’ And he left me to finish my drink alone with the sordid picture of Mr Budden strangling his offspring in my house, as he took up another position in the hall.

  It was surprising how, once the suspicions of Edward and Nelson had started to circulate, the idea took root and gathered momentum. By evening Edward’s surveillance activities had spread and affected the whole house, while behind their locked door the guilty pair sat on unaware of the upheaval they were causing.

  I was eventually dragged out from behind my own locked door to Edward’s room, to preside as the head of the house at a general meeting of my lodgers, feeling a spiritual affinity with the Prime Minister at the hasty reassembling of Parliament in a crisis.

  In Edward’s and Olwen’s room imaginations had soared, as the supposed contents of the basket became wilder and wilder. Edward swore, after minute inspection of the stairs, that he had detected traces of something that certainly wasn’t rust! Nelson, not to be outdone, announced pathetically that the dripping of fresh blood from the basket had sent him reeling to his room for a smoke, being forced to borrow a cigarette from the only generous member of the household as his own machine for making illicit cigarettes, cadged off Grandma Durrell, had broken down. Mrs Williams paled at the thought.

  ‘That was a picture I should have liked to have seen – you swooning at anything!’ I remarked with sarcasm.

  There was a nervous titter all round.

  The children, rather frightened at Nelson’s declaration, likened the situation to a trunk murder and questioned Jane closely on exactly how a body could be carved up without detectio
n. This set Mr Budden fearing for his wife’s firstborn; silencing the weeping, terrified creature bluntly, he scanned the local paper, produced from his hip pocket, for fresh accommodation while Blanche and Judy, enjoying the situation to the full as they always did, and trained in the art of handling delicate interments, had to be forcibly stopped from leaping out to the front garden and severing the tyres of the Higgins’ car with Edward’s palette knife to foil any plans the culprits might have for a quick getaway.

  Paula and Barry, quarrelling over Barry’s lack of winter employment, gladly joined the discussion, pleased to forget their quarrel in someone else’s predicament that might, after all, be rather an adventure. Roger, brought down protesting by an amused Andy, said that the house was going from bad to worse, and that since the night of the party his thoughts had been consistently in Malaya and now, with this interruption, the special Malayan dish he was trying out would be reduced to a ball of solid rice. Jane said she’d never rest in her bed till the cold-blooded murderers were brought to justice and really these days one just didn’t know what would enter the house next.

  Edward, having stirred up a hive of suspicion and counter-suspicion, now sat a little apart, a little superior, as though his manifestations were now materializing on a higher plane, while everybody turned to me, their landlady, for the final solution. I stood uncertainly before public opinion which was directed against my indecisive attitude to sit back and do nothing.

  ‘A true Conservative,’ stated Mr Budden categorically, hoping to rile me, as no new accommodation had come to light from the pages before him. ‘And when she does make a move, it will no doubt be the wrong one – true to Conservative form.’

  Roger, reflecting, agreed. The bickering went on.

  Edward turned from his meditations at last, silencing his audience. He spoke directly to me: ‘Nelson has seen blood. You must act now,’ he declared, in the manner of a surgeon diagnosing the right disease and deciding on a cure.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nelson proudly, remarkably wholesome for one who had seen so much blood, glad of the newfound fellowship with Edward. Nelson’s mother burst into fresh whimpering: ‘It might ’ave been ’im. It might ’ave been my Nelson chopped up and stuffed into the basket.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs Williams,’ I said kindly. ‘Why should anyone want to harm Nelson?’

  ‘Yes, why indeed?’ came a chorus of immediate comment, and the reasons why!

  Edward raised his hand to quell the mob to another silence. ‘You are the landlady,’ Edward declared with a small apologetic smile. ‘We, the tenants, demand you do something.’

  ‘Before we are murdered brutally in our beds,’ Jane added.

  ‘You must go,’ Edward ordered bossily. ‘Make a small imaginary enquiry, firmly getting your foot in the door, then take a good swift look round,’ he suggested thoughtfully, ‘then …’

  ‘I like that,’ I interrupted indignantly. ‘I’ve got to do all the dirty work and probably get slaughtered and end up in the basket with whatever is already in it!’ I was gloomily distraught at the unpleasant job ahead of me.

  ‘I don’t think it’ll come to that,’ Edward consoled, ‘but obviously, as you are the landlady, you are in the best position to enter their room. I’ve already tried and failed, as you know. I’ve done my bit.’

  ‘Whenever there is anything unpleasant to do, I’ve got to do it because I’m the bloody landlady,’ I retorted exasperated. ‘If it’s something nice nobody asks me – I get trampled in the rush. And what’s more I don’t like at all the idea of prying into other people’s lives.’

  Olwen agreed with me. ‘Leave it,’ she said, ‘and see what happens.’

  ‘In fact,’ I continued wrathfully, ‘I don’t think I can do it – it’s against my principles, anyway,’ I ended stubbornly, backing for the door and escape. At that moment a long drawn-out yelp chilled every face in the room.

  ‘My God,’ Edward exploded, ‘if you don’t return we’ll work out an immediate rescue.’ He thought my move was one of resigned investigation.

  In that moment of acute stillness that followed Edward’s remark we heard a loud knocking at the front door, which somehow seemed ominous in the circumstances. Nelson made a quick stampede to investigate and returned excitedly. ‘A cop car!’ he announced hoarsely. ‘At our gate!’ And everyone turned from Nelson to me.

  Feeling dismayed, forced into a situation of no return and yet filled with the violent urge to laugh, I made my way unhappily out to investigate, trying to compose myself in the short distance across the hall, with the unpleasant sensation of a dozen pairs of eyes boring into my back. The shadow of a tall body blotted the mottled glass at the door.

  ‘Do you wish to see someone?’ I asked, opening the door with some misgivings.

  ‘Just making some enquiries,’ the blue-uniformed man replied, holding a notebook, not unlike Nelson’s, in his hand. ‘Have you some people here by the name of Higgins, newly arrived from Jamaica? Docked at Southampton, I believe.’

  ‘You see!’ Edward’s voice came through to me in a storm of gasps from across the hall. ‘There is something going on – I was convinced of it! Convinced!’ he said with relish.

  I hesitated uneasily, wondering if I should disclose our suspicions and feeling a sudden sympathetic fear for the culprits as I examined the cold face before me. ‘It’s nothing unpleasant, I hope, like – er – murder?’ I blurted out inquisitively, unable to stop myself, forced on by the tense compelling breathing of the lodgers down my neck.

  ‘Just a little matter.’ He was non-committal, then he must have noticed my tenseness for his coldness suddenly turned to kindness. ‘Don’t be alarmed, it’s not murder,’ and a smile transformed his face.

  Relieved, but still grudging the situation, I ran up the stairs two at a time to summon the Higginses below to face the law. The crowd had vanished tactfully and noiselessly, but I knew they would be listening. Reaching the Higgins’ door I paused to listen: what were the guilty pair doing? I heard the low gentle murmur of Mr Higgins’ question and the sound of his wife’s answer.

  ‘A policeman to see you,’ I called out, knocking carelessly and loudly, adopting a nonchalant air. There was a complete and guilty silence; my heart sank. So Edward’s assumptions had been right. I repeated the performance even more gaily and breathlessly awaited the answer. It came in the door opening a few inches to show the white and scared face of Mr Higgins. ‘The police for you,’ I repeated. ‘It’s all right,’ I added, ‘nothing serious, just a small matter – not a corpse or anything drastic.’ I laughed nervously, desperately sorry now for the shocked little man, almost wishing I had warned him to escape. Mrs Higgins, looking like a badly-made Christmas decoration, shaking visibly, fell from behind the door and burst sobbing into my arms. Astonished, I staggered under the sudden weight.

  ‘There, there,’ I said through a mouthful of golden curls, wondering what the woman could possibly have done. Mr Higgins, patting his wife’s shoulder with manly courage descended the stairs to face whatever was coming. Fresh tears welled up and slowly rolled down the rouged cheeks of the curvy bundle in my arms.

  ‘We thought nobody would find out,’ she explained the mystery between gulping sobs. ‘We smuggled our Tinker through customs to save the quarantine.’

  I knew by the infinite stillness that my lodgers were digesting the latest news. Then came the usual trickle of comment. ‘Well, I never,’ Edward said, ‘you can’t behave in a perfectly normal way to protect a pet without police interrogation. I shall despatch a note to the Chief of Police – who is he?’

  ‘Gestapo state, that’s what England’s coming to, what we need are a few Communist riots.’

  ‘I agree, bloody riots,’ Nelson was quickly ready to draw blood. Mrs Williams was already showering sympathetic tears.

  ‘Just because they are in uniform, doesn’t give them the right to interfere with the working man’s pleasure; someone ought to tell them so.’ Mrs Budden
was in a strangely dictatorial mood, a Boadicea, her shield a nauseating pink child, held in an attitude of leadership.

  ‘Me old woman’s right; they are always interfering, I find, and what are the Conservatives going to do about it I’d like to know?’ Mr Budden was bitter. His slight clashes with the local police force over minor offences had never been very successful.

  ‘Why don’t they investigate those coffins, instead of hounding innocent souls. Nelson’s got enough criminal data on that place to sink a battleship.’ Nelson beamed at Edward’s extraordinary suggestion.

  ‘Well said, me ol’ bearded mate.’ The chief instigators of every riot were bonded firmly together.

  ‘Poor little innocent pup – carrying on as though it’s a rabies-infected monstrosity.’

  ‘Scandalous I call it …’

  The women drew together in fluttering sympathy, nevertheless examining the male form in the door in a way that only women can.

  ‘The law is the law,’ Barry sanely suggested, whilst trying to block the new attraction from Paula’s view. He was quietly crushed by further insults, as British red tape and the police force rapidly fell from favour.

  ‘Turncoats,’ I muttered, leading Mrs Higgins to a chair.

  ‘I never really wanted to see them go to prison. It’s just the idea that was somehow exciting.’ Edward sounded a little sad, as he explained his actions – to an accusing audience.

  Nelson, unaffected, lied as usual. ‘I knew their crime was innocent all the time, but I just didn’t want to spoil yer fun,’ he remarked casually and waited acclaim. There was none – we knew him too well.

  The dog, the least affected of all, a scampering ball of white fur and yappings, had to go.

  There was now nothing to keep the Higgins from going back to their rightful home in the north of England and waiting patiently for the six months’ quarantine to pass with only a severe reprimand as a sour reminder and leaving me yet again with a vacant room. But I did not worry. I knew it would soon be filled.