London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  ‘Want to make a charge?’ the Sergeant demanded, leaning forward across the desk.

  Connie shook her head.

  ‘No use,’ she said. ‘I may have spent it at my milliners.’

  ‘Anyone you can phone up?’ he asked.

  Connie thought for a moment.

  ‘Only the Lord Mayor,’ she answered. ‘And he’s probably in bed.’ ‘Then we’ll have to keep you here, Mum,’ he told her.

  ‘Who are you calling Mum?’ Connie demanded.

  But he ignored her. He raised his hand and beckoned to one of the waiting policemen.

  ‘Down below,’ he said. ‘Look slippy.’

  Connie avoided the constable’s arm and went off in a kind of mincing tripping walk that was meant to convey light‐heartedness. But on the way one of the green‐painted doors down the bleak corridor opened, and Mr Vercetti appeared. He had been taken into one of the private rooms for questioning. Connie greeted him eagerly.

  ‘Oh sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve come out without any small change and they won’t let me go. I don’t want to spend the night in a cell with my rheumatism.’

  But Mr Vercetti was too much agitated to take any notice of her.

  ‘Getta out of my way,’ he said to Connie and turning to the Inspector he resumed the conversation where it had been left off. ‘I admitta nothing,’ he declared loudly. ‘You is notta so clever as you think you is. Ina morning you will find out. I will grilla you. You will be ruina…’

  And with that Mr Vercetti, his own surety in £50, went out into the night, and Connie went down into the cells. She spent her time demanding rugs, a hot‐water‐bottle, a light over her bed, privacy, an aspirin, something to drink, and a Bible. She said that she wanted the Bible to kill the miscellaneous vermin with which, so she threatened to tell the magistrate in the morning, the cell was swarming.

  But her real anxiety was for Duke. It was because of him that she cried.

  2

  In the half light of the basement – a more extravagant woman would have lit the gas by now – Mrs Vizzard was seated at the mahogany dining‐room table, going over her budget. There was everything set out there in the smallest and minutest detail. ‘Fish, fourpence; stamp, penny‐halfpenny; milk, threepence; tea, sevenpence; soap powder, twopence‐halfpenny; pair of quarter‐rubbers, ninepence; beetroot, threepence.’ Her eyes fixed themselves in a frightened stare as she gazed at the figures. It was terrifying, positively terrifying, the way things mounted up. Money seemed to be slipping, slipping from her all the time.

  With a sick feeling of alarm, she remembered the lease. Eighteen years. It wasn’t long, was it? And after that…? She shuddered at the thought of it, and returned to the column of household expenses in front of her. The beetroot, for instance. That had been simply a piece of idle indulgence. She could perfectly well have done without beetroot.

  The bell of the spring bracket outside the door suddenly began pealing, and Mrs Vizzard started. For some reason it alarmed her. She caught her breath and sat there for a moment without moving. By the time she had recovered herself and got up the stairs, the rusted wires were already scraping once more on their pulleys and the bell was beginning to ring again. Mrs Vizzard quickened her pace.

  But she was taking no chances. Before she laid a finger on the door knob she made sure that the safety‐latch was in place and she put down the lid of the letter box as an additional precaution so that nothing could be thrust at her from outside. Then, having flattened out the corner of the door‐mat that always jammed when the door was opened, she turned the handle.

  It was not yet quite dark. And in any case the street lamp was only just opposite. It threw a pool of milky light over the doorstep. Standing there in the cold was a man. And rather an unusual looking man. He wore a broad black hat like a priest’s or an actor’s, and a heavy overcoat that was too large for him. It hung straight down almost to his ankles. On the step on either side of him were two battered, dumpy suitcases. Mrs Vizzard sized him up at a glance and judged him to be trying to sell something. She made ready to close the door again.

  But the man on the doorstep was speaking.

  ‘You have a room to let?’ he asked vaguely, in a faint hollow sounding kind of voice. ‘A furnished room, I believe.’

  Mrs Vizzard kept the door half open. She was undecided. Horribly undecided. What she had been looking forward to was a young single business gentleman: it was, in fact, what she had specified in her advertisement. The man on the doorstep might have been single. But he certainly didn’t look businesslike. There was an indefinable suggestion of moth balls and the rag‐bag about him. But, at least, his voice sounded educated and refined. It was even possible that he might be a gentleman.

  ‘You saw my advertisement?’ she asked non‐committally.

  The broad black hat stirred in silhouette.

  ‘The advertisement? Yes… yes, of course. The advertisement.’

  The voice under the hat was hesitant and unassured. It was almost as if, having actually come to the house in search of lodgings, he had at that moment been thinking of something else.

  Mrs Vizzard pursed up her lips. She had to admit that she didn’t like the look of the man. But she couldn’t keep him waiting on the doorstep indefinitely. And that back basement room, unlet and unearning, was a constant reproach to her.

  ‘Would you like to see the room?’ she asked.

  The black hat nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ the man said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  When the safety chain was undone, he followed her into the hall and put his bags down against the small bamboo table that supported the fern. The bags collapsed inwards upon themselves as soon as he let go of them as though there were practically nothing in them.

  ‘It’s downstairs,’ said Mrs Vizzard grimly. ‘If you wait here I’ll go and put a light on.’

  It was not only thoughtfulness that made her do this. She wanted to keep a safe distance between herself and the stranger until she knew a bit more about him. It wouldn’t have been the first time that defenceless elderly ladies had been slugged on their own back‐stairs.

  When she had lit the gas she called out to him to come down. She had half hoped that he might be disinterested when he found that the room was downstairs. But the man gave no hint of minding. He followed her as though he had been going down basement stairs all his life.

  The room even with the gas lit was scarcely cheerful. The bamboo table in the hall upstairs was only a small side shoot of the original bamboo forest that sprouted in the basement. Everything down here was of mottled, banana‐coloured bamboo. There was another occasional table, with a red‐fringed cloth spread cornerwise, obscuring most of the little criss‐cross pieces, but under the cloth the tell‐tale ridges of the wood showed unmistakably. There was a bamboo wardrobe, ingeniously strengthened with angle brackets, also of bamboo. There was a bamboo washstand. There was a wicker‐and‐bamboo easy chair that sagged suggestively as though very fat men had been sitting in it for years. And there was a bamboo‐and‐shell overmantel.

  The bed was the one entirely bamboo‐less object in the room. It was of iron and brass, set high with its casters in separate glass bowls, either to save the oil cloth or because with so much bamboo about, Mrs Vizzard had unconsciously grown to fear the depredations of white ants.

  But the stranger scarcely seemed to notice the furnishings.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, in the same hollow voice that she had noticed on the doorstep. ‘Thank you very much.’

  Down here between four walls it sounded more hollow than ever. It was like reverberation in a vault.

  ‘You mean you like the room?’ Mrs Vizzard asked.

  She was frankly incredulous. In all her years of experience in letting she had never known anyone like the room before.

  ‘Thank you,’ the stranger said again.

  But this was too easy. It revived all her suspicions.

  ‘You know the rent?’ she asked.
/>   ‘The rent. Ah yes, the rent.’

  Again it was as though the man was mysteriously thinking of something else, as though he wasn’t paying proper attention to what was going on. He passed a limp hand that carried a long frayed cuff with it across his forehead and seemed to recover himself a little. ‘Ten shillings a week, I think the advertisement said,’ he added.

  ‘Without service.’

  ‘Without service?’

  ‘And in advance,’ Mrs Vizzard reminded him.

  There had been nothing in the advertisement about payment in advance. But the stranger didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘In advance,’ he replied. ‘Yes, yes, of course. In advance.’

  ‘With references,’ Mrs Vizzard added meaningly.

  The stranger was silent for a moment. The limp hand and the frayed cuff straggled across the forehead again.

  ‘Would rather an old one do?’ he asked apologetically. ‘You see I’ve been moving about rather a lot lately.’

  ‘When do you intend to come?’ Mrs Vizzard asked.

  ‘Intend to come?’ The stranger gave a little laugh that sounded more hollow than his voice. ‘Oh, I’ve come,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be going away again.’

  He unbuttoned his coat and drew out an envelope containing two one‐pound notes. He handed one of them to her.

  ‘For a fortnight,’ he said again. ‘A fortnight in advance.’

  Mrs Vizzard hesitated. While the stranger had been standing there, Mrs Vizzard had been inspecting him. It wasn’t merely that his coat was long. It was the ghost of a coat that had once been magnificent. A complicated brocaded arrangement of frogs ran down the front of it, and the collar was of astrakhan. The buttons had once been covered in the same material as the coat itself. But these had worn threadbare by now, leaving only a pattern of small wooden discs.

  But now that his hat was off, it was his face that fascinated her. It was a swarthy, dusky face, almost like an Indian’s. Under the eyes were two half‐moons that were faintly bluish. But the eyes themselves were dark and brilliant.

  ‘Like a mesmerist’s eyes,’ Mrs Vizzard told herself. ‘The sort of eyes that could hypnotise you and make you do things you didn’t want to.’

  Across the stranger’s forehead a lock of lank black hair fell forward. Mrs Vizzard shivered slightly. She was aware that the man was smiling at her.

  Slowly she stretched out her hand for the note and her fingers closed on it. It crackled authentically and she felt temporarily reassured.

  ‘Are… are you connected with the stage?’ she asked.

  ‘The stage?’ The stranger shook his head. ‘No, I am quite unconnected with the stage,’ he assured her.

  ‘And will you be out all day?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, the dark eyes still smiling at her. ‘I shall be in. In all day.’

  Mrs Vizzard began backing towards the door. She wanted to shut it. Shut it between him and her, and decide what to do. Call the police seemed the sensible thing. Get rid of him before he could make trouble. But on what evidence? The police wouldn’t arrest a man for answering an advertisement. Or offering to pay his rent in advance. So she tried to keep her head, and be businesslike. With her hand on the door‐knob – somehow the very feel of the thing gave her confidence – she raised her eyes to him again.

  ‘The name,’ she said. ‘I didn’t catch it.’

  ‘I didn’t give it to you,’ he answered. ‘It’s Squales. S‐Q‐U‐A‐L‐E‐S. Henry Squales. And now if you’ll permit me I’ll get my bags and unpack.’

  Back in her own living‐room, under the portrait of the departed Mr Vizzard, Mrs Vizzard shut the door and locked it. She felt safer that way. But not much safer. The newcomer was too near to her in the back room for her to feel altogether safe. ‘Suppose he tries to hypnotise me through the brickwork?’ she asked herself. ‘Or taps on the wall at night when everyone else is asleep. Or bores holes in the skirting and spies on me…’

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. It was followed by footsteps, quick athletic ones mounting the stairs two steps at a time. She recognised them at once. They were Percy’s. He was bolting upstairs to his old mum in just the way a good son should. Then she heard another door, an upstairs one, bang and she knew that he was home. She’d always liked the lad and now she was positively glad of him. It was comforting to have anyone so strong and vigorous about the place.

  She glanced towards the wall that separated her from the back room. Behind the wall she could hear the man moving about shifting things. The old feeling of timidity returned to her, and she shuddered.

  ‘I hope I’ve done the right thing,’ she told herself. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to find we’d got a murderer here. A murderer here in Number 10.’

  3

  And what about Connie? How’s she been getting on?

  Lumme, she didn’t half have a time of it at Vine Street. It wasn’t no bed of roses being shut up in that cell worrying about Duke all night. And she didn’t exactly look at her best when she came before the beak in the morning. By the time she got the mug of Police Station tea at breakfast she wasn’t much more than yesterday’s buttonhole.

  But she wasn’t going to have a lot of flatties putting anything over her. Not likely. That was why she kept on insisting on her rights just to show them that she was a human being and not some kind of a horse. First of all she told ’em she wanted a chair. And, when they asked her why, she said mysteriously that it was because of her condition. Then she wanted to report the night wardress for sticking her nose up against the grille of the cell door and making faces at her every time she’d just been dropping off to sleep.

  Nothing came of that complaint. But it was funny while it lasted. And it established her. She spoke in a carrying sort of voice, and everyone who was waiting to go up into the Court room could hear her. She was the life and soul of the party downstairs.

  ‘Just you ask the Sergeant to step along this way,’ she began again after a pause. ‘Tell him I was at College with his sister. And if he’s out having a quick one, send the Inspector. The good‐looking one. Tell him it’s a matter of life and death. But don’t say who for. And if he doesn’t come, say I’ll report him to the magistrate. If you think that was tea you gave me just now someone’s been robbing you. There’s a lot going on around here that needs showing up. I’ll give you five minutes by my gold wrist‐watch and if nobody’s been to see me by then…’

  But the constable outside didn’t even let her finish. He just opened the cell door and waited there.

  ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘We’re ready for you.’

  ‘About time, too,’ Connie answered, and joined the little queue that was going upstairs.

  They went through the narrow oak door that led into the court and it was then that Connie had her first big disappointment. She’d rather been looking forward to being a member of a big happy family, all peers and stockbrokers and pretty ladies, with Mr Vercetti himself, the dirty Eyetie, as centre of the picture. She hadn’t half been wanting to see him get it in the neck from someone without being able to answer back. But apparently that part of the circus was already over, leaving Rex v. Victoria Regina Coke to come on separately. It was flattering, but not so friendly.

  Just to keep her spirits up she had a good look round the Court while they were getting things ready. It would have been nice to see even one friendly face in all that crowd. But she couldn’t find one. She’d never seen a more awful‐looking lot of dials in all her life. The policemen all looked hot and beefy, as policemen always do without their helmets on, and the other people in the body of the court might have been borrowed from a mortuary.

  Her second big disappointment was the magistrate. He wasn’t the regular one and that made things more chilly and impersonal. There had been a time – during Connie’s gay period – when the magistrate had been like an old friend to her. Rather a spiteful and vindictive one at times, but still friend. Whereas this cheesy
little man on the bench might have been an elderly dentist. He didn’t look as if he could be a friend even to himself.

  ‘I wonder if anyone at No. 10 has noticed that poor old Connie didn’t get back last night?’ she was thinking again. ‘I wonder if Duke’s had his water changed…’

  Then the usher called her name and she went into the box.

  The magistrate and his clerk had a whispered conversation and then the clerk, very rapidly, began intoning.

  ‘…charged with obstructing the police in the performance of their duties in that she did switch off the…’

  ‘Oh I never,’ Connie exclaimed.

  The magistrate took one glance in Connie’s direction and told her to keep quiet. Her turn would come in a minute, he said. From his voice he seemed a quiet, unemotional sort of man.

  ‘…when the police entered, with the intention of impeding them in their lawful duties.’

  The magistrate looked at his finger nails for a moment and then turned to her again.

  ‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty, m’lud,’ Connie answered. ‘It’s a lie.’

  ‘Call the Inspector.’

  The big young man like a moon‐calf was called. He took the oath with an expertness that left Connie aghast.

  ‘Give your evidence,’ the magistrate ordered him.

  ‘At 11.30 in accordance with my instructions,’ he said almost as though he had spent the earlier part of the morning in learning the part, ‘I visited the Moonrakers’ Club and secured entry. Alcoholic liquors were being served and in an inner room card games were in progress…’

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ve heard all that,’ the magistrate interrupted him. ‘We’ve heard all that.’

  But the moon‐calf did not seem in the least put out by the interruption. Still in the same over‐rehearsed monotone he continued.

  ‘At 12.5 as ordered I rose from my table and opened the window so that my police whistle could be heard outside. The prisoner then appeared from a side passage marked “Cloaks” and operated the electric light switch connected with the mains. In the darkness a number of those present attempted to escape.’