London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  Mr Josser didn’t notice at once that there was anything wrong. He was quietly and innocently engrossed in one of his old copies of The Homefinder propped up against the loaf of bread.

  ‘Was there anything?’ he asked.

  Mrs Josser shook her head.

  ‘It’s about time we heard from Ted,’ Mr Josser went on, without looking up.

  He had only been aware of the head‐shake, not actually seen it. After thirty years of marriage you don’t always have to look across at your partner to know what is happening.

  Mrs Josser sat there without speaking. The half rasher of bacon on her plate was getting cold. But she was too much upset to eat. Nobody – least of all, Ted – had ever said anything about his not coming back. And she wasn’t prepared for it. No, that was wrong. She was prepared. Had been, right from the start. But hadn’t been able to face it. And more than that. By not facing it she had made it seem as though it couldn’t happen. Now all that would never be the same again. By putting it down in black and white Ted had made it practically certain.

  And why was Ted so concerned about someone looking after Cynthia? Did he know something, or did he mean that he just didn’t trust her to look after Baby properly? And if he was really thinking of getting killed why couldn’t he spare even one thought for his own mother? It was just Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia all the time. The very idea of Cynthia in her house, right under her feet all the time – and no Ted – made her want to cry. It was horrible.

  ‘Why what’s the matter, Mother? Anything wrong?’

  Mr Josser had looked up from his Homefinder and was staring hard at Mrs Josser. The corners of her mouth were drawn down and her eyes were moist.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she told him.

  But that was absurd and Mr Josser got up and went over to her. He put his arm round her. To his surprise, her arm went round him as well. He knew at once that there must be something pretty badly wrong.

  Without a word, she recovered Ted’s letter and gave it to him. It was folded up into a small creased oblong, just as she had pushed it into her pocket out of sight.

  Mr Josser sat down again and read the single page through slowly and carefully.

  ‘Isn’t that just like Ted?’ he said at last. ‘Always thinking of others.’

  ‘But nothing’s going to happen to him, is it?’ Mrs Josser demanded.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Mr Josser told her. ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘Then what was the point of writing and upsetting us all?’

  Mr Josser considered for a moment.

  ‘Oh just that he was feeling a bit cut off, I suppose. It hits a lot of fellows that way.’

  ‘Do you think it means that he’s going up into the lines – patrols or something?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Mr Josser answered. ‘They’re too busy up in Norway to start anything in France for the moment. It’s quiet enough over there.’ He paused. ‘Do you remember what poor old Henry said one night when he was here? “Keep your eyes on Scandinavia” were his words. He wasn’t far wrong, was he?’

  2

  But it is always the things nearer home that count. And No. 10 Dulcimer Street next morning wasn’t thinking about the fate of Copenhagen and Oslo, or even about H.M.S. Hunter sunk, and H.M.S. Hardy beached in Narvik fjord. Or, at least, not very much. It was thinking about Mrs Boon. And that was because she had disappeared.

  Simply and mysteriously disappeared.

  It was Connie who had first discovered what had happened. She had been lying awake for some time – her ear cocked curiously for even the least movement. And suddenly she became interested because she realised that there just wasn’t anything.

  Then and there she decided that as soon as she was up she would start investigating. And, when she did so, there was no Mrs Boon. The front room was tidy, beautifully tidy, but it had about it an elusive deserted look quite different from the look of a room that at any moment will be occupied again. And there was something else about it that Connie noticed. One or two little things – a pair of small brass candlesticks, a photograph of Percy as a baby, an electroplated perpetual calendar – were missing. So was Percy’s big brass ashtray that Mrs Boon had given him because of all the burns that kept appearing everywhere.

  She gave a little whistle and peeped into the bedroom. It was all just as she expected. There was the same beautiful tidiness and the bed had not even been slept in. Also the dressing table was bare, quite bare. The brushes and combs and the wooden box of hair‐pins and clips and odds and ends had all gone. That was a sure sign. The sort of thing that would strike a woman at once.

  ‘Gone with the wind,’ said Connie, admiringly. ‘She’s flitted.’

  Naturally she went straight downstairs and told Mrs Josser, because Mrs Josser and Mrs Boon had always been such friends. And secretly she was rather pleased when Mrs Josser refused to believe her and insisted on going up to see for herself. If Mrs Josser wanted to make a fool of herself in front of an audience of one, it wasn’t for Connie to stop her.

  It all worked out just as Connie knew it would. Mrs Josser looked first in the living‐room and then in the bedroom as though she expected to find Mrs Boon sitting there all the time. Finding no one she took a deep breath and drew her lips in sharply.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ she said. ‘Not a bit, I don’t.’ ‘Perhaps if we’d been nicer to her she’d have stayed…’ Connie began.

  But Mrs Josser ignored the suggestion.

  ‘She’s got too much on her mind,’ she said. ‘She didn’t ought to be going about London by herself.’

  Connie put her finger up to her eye and wiped something furtively away.

  ‘Poor dear thing,’ she said. ‘Just fancy ending up like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ Mrs Josser demanded.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing in particular,’ Connie admitted. ‘Only my imagination. I just thought of Westminster Bridge and the river and…’

  ‘Well, don’t think about it,’ Mrs Josser told her tartly. ‘She may only have gone out for a… a walk, or something.’

  Connie raised her eyebrows.

  ‘In her condition? All night?’ she asked.

  Mrs Josser did not reply immediately. She had just noticed that the small suit‐case that Mrs Boon usually kept on top of the wardrobe was missing, too. People don’t go out on midnight walks carrying suit‐cases if they have any reasonable intention of returning in the morning.

  ‘Mrs Vizzard’ll have to be told,’ she said.

  ‘And the police,’ Connie added. ‘It’s a crime not to report a disappearance. It’s an accessory after the fact.’

  ‘Mrs Vizzard first,’ Mrs Josser insisted.

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Connie. ‘She won’t like it. But I suppose she’s got to bear it. After all, it’s her house.’

  On the way downstairs, they told Mr Josser. He was washing up the breakfast things when they broke in on him. He put down the cup that he was drying, and listened. At first, he was inclined to pooh‐pooh the whole idea. Then, finding that they were serious, he was shocked. Shocked and incredulous. He wanted to go up and look for himself. But Mrs Josser stopped him. If Mrs Boon could be found simply by looking they wouldn’t be on their way down to Mrs Vizzard, she said. The logic was unanswerable, and Mr Josser gave up. He followed them.

  That was how it was that they all went down to the basement together. The visit was an entire surprise to Mrs Vizzard. She was not prepared for visitors and the room was in disorder. Spread out on the table was a collection of Mr Squales’ old silk cravats that she had been mending and ironing. A bottle of grease remover stood on the table beside them.

  She listened in silence to what Mrs Josser had to tell her. And then the injustice of it, the mean sordid injustice of it, ignited something within her. She remembered the rent, the nine weeks’ rent that was owing to her – remembered that, and how desperately she needed every penny now – and her temper flared.

  ‘I might h
ave known it,’ she said suddenly. ‘Like mother, like son.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Mrs Josser asked coldly.

  ‘Meaning that I was a fool not to put her out when I wanted to.’ Mrs Josser paused.

  ‘It isn’t Christian to talk about her like that,’ she said.

  Connie shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re all worrying about,’ she said. ‘The furniture’s still here.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Josser. ‘It’s all there. She may be coming back.’

  ‘Not so long as I’m here, she doesn’t,’ Mrs Vizzard answered. ‘She’s done enough to lower the tone of No. 10 already.’

  Mrs Josser got up abruptly.

  ‘You’ve got no right to speak of her that way,’ she said. ‘She’s one of the nicest women who ever breathed.’

  This was too much for Mrs Vizzard. Already her nerves were on edge because of Mr Squales’ absences. And she was worried, desperately worried, by the amount of money she’d been spending. Only last night she had calculated that, including train fares, this precious fiancé of hers had, since the engagement, cost her nearly twenty pounds. And now to have Mrs Boon, her runaway lodger, the mother of a convicted murderer, called nice to her own face.

  ‘If that’s your idea of niceness, it’s not mine,’ she said. ‘They’re rotten through and through, the Boons; both of them. Nine weeks at ten‐and‐six – that’s what your nice friend owes me.’

  And then, having said it, she regretted it. Even in her present state of agitation she recognised that it sounded something less than ladylike. She sat down abruptly, gripping the arms of the chair.

  ‘Don’t… don’t tell me any more,’ she said feebly. ‘I’m in no fit state to hear it.’

  As soon as her visitors had gone, Mrs Vizzard slumped forward on to the table, her head buried in her hands, simply lying there sprawled among Mr Squales’ cravats.

  Why had she said it? she asked herself. Why, in front of Connie, of all people? If only Mr Squales, and not just his cravats, had been there to comfort her. Mr Squales, however, was in the country again. A professional engagement with a fee attached, he had told her.

  But how, Mrs Vizzard wondered desperately, could any professional engagement last three whole days?

  Chapter LXXII

  1

  On the following day, Mrs Vizzard was still as much upset, as much shaken and bewildered, by the abrupt and unexplained departure of Mrs Boon.

  Her own outburst still sounded disgracefully in her ears and she knew that because of it she was shunned by her own household. To be shunned by the Jossers was one thing: it hurt. To be shunned by Connie was quite another: it humiliated. Mrs Vizzard saw herself as someone who is vile, heartless and mercenary. A leper. Worse, even. A landlady. And still there was no sign of Mr Squales. Just when she most needed his support the very foundations had removed themselves.

  Her only visitor was Mr Puddy. She recognised his foot‐fall immediately. It was slow, deliberate and elephantine. There was something consciously majestic about it as though with Mr Puddy the act of walking were a carefully worked out and ingeniously executed operation. There was nothing in the least light‐hearted or tripping about it. But to‐day Mrs Vizzard thanked God for that muffled, ponderous tread. It was reassuring to know that she still had one friend – no, perhaps ‘friend’ was too strong a word: one neutral – in No. 10.

  His visit, as usual, was strictly a business one. He was simply coming down to pay his rent. There was an invariableness about his behaviour that made him the ideal tenant. On this occasion, however, even after Mrs Vizzard had entered the eight and six in the cash‐column, filled in the date, added her initials and handed the book back to him with a business smile, Mr Puddy seemed inclined to linger.

  ‘I hear Mrs Bood’s god,’ he said slowly. ‘Stebbed oud on us.’

  Mrs Vizzard nodded. She still couldn’t trust herself to say anything about it.

  Mr Puddy stood there thinking.

  ‘I doad wonder,’ he said at last. ‘Berhaps it’s juzzazwell.’

  Mrs Vizzard sat there at the table fiddling with the lid of the ink‐well. ‘Berhabs it god too budge for her,’ he suggested. ‘Couldn’t stand the straid.’

  ‘There’s no strain now,’ Mrs Vizzard answered tartly. ‘All that’s over.’ But Mr Puddy only shook his head.

  ‘Not for a buther,’ he explained. ‘Not when id’s her own sud.’ He paused. ‘Bore drouble,’ he said. ‘We’ll have the bolice in agaid before we’re through.’

  ‘They’re looking for her now,’ Mrs Vizzard told him.

  ‘Bay they find her,’ Mr Puddy replied devoutly. ‘Rather theb than be.’ He restored the rent book to his inside breast pocket and got ready to go.

  ‘All the same,’ he added, ‘I still think it’s juzzazwell. Gave me the greeps, she did. Good bording.’

  ‘Just as well.’ The words cheered Mrs Vizzard and comforted her. There was something so essentially calm and masculine about them. They reassured her. So she hadn’t been alone in her feelings after all. It was – not to mince words – distinctly unpleasant to have the mother of a murderer living in the same house with you. And she remembered what it had cost her.

  ‘Not a stick of furniture leaves this house until I’ve got what’s owing to me,’ she told herself. ‘Not a stick. I don’t want to profit out of misfortune. But I do demand justice.’

  It was the sound of the postman that interrupted her thoughts. And her response to the double knock was extraordinary. She bounded. ‘There may be… there will… there must be something from Him,’ she told herself.

  And the sight of the japanned metal post‐box behind the front door convinced her. The square glass spy‐hole showed the box to be nearly full. It seemed that after Mr Squales’ entire silence during the past three days he had suddenly written her not merely one love‐letter but a whole batch of them.

  That absurd weakness of the knees that made her despise herself came over her again. Her hands trembled as she hastily scooped up the jumble of envelopes.

  She saw her mistake immediately, however. Though the handwriting was all the same, it was not Mr Squales’. She knew at a glance that he would never have tolerated the cheap note‐paper and the watery blue‐black ink. His taste was for vellum‐wove and violet. Moreover, it was a shaky, feminine hand at which she was looking – quite different from the broad strokes of the oblique nib that Mr Squales always used. And the top letter in the pile wasn’t even addressed to her. It was for Mrs Josser. She looked below. The second letter was for Connie. It was the third one that was for her. They were all written in the same shaky, straggling hand.

  There was nothing from Mr Squales.

  When she got back downstairs to her room, she studied the envelope before opening it. But the postmark was blurred: it told her nothing. It might… could it be?… was it from… ? Her hands were trembling as she ripped the flap open and began to read.

  ‘Dear Mrs Vizzard,’ – the letter ran uncertainly across the page, the last words in the line crushing themselves helplessly against the margin, ‘After you been so good to me in all my trouble I know that I shouldn’t have done anything to upset you. I do hope that you weren’t worried, if you noticed that I’d gone. About the rent, I’ve asked the Jossers if they will make arrangements to sell the furniture and pay me the balance after you’ve deducted what’s owing. I hope that will be agreeable and I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long but with Percy away and all those expenses things have been very difficult. Please don’t think badly of Percy. I’m sure he never meant to do it. I’m going down to the country, to be near him: I’m sure he will feel better if he knows that he isn’t too far away from someone who loves him. When is the wedding? I’m sure that you and Mr Squales will be very happy. As I shan’t be able to send you a wedding present would you please choose any little thing you fancy before the Jossers arrange about the sale. Yours gratefully,

  Clarice Boon.’ />
  Mrs Vizzard sat there holding the letter. There was no address; no clue of where it might have come from. But Mrs Vizzard was not reading any longer. She was staring over the letter into the empty grate beyond. Suddenly she put her head down on her two hands and started crying again. And having started she could not stop.

  She cried on and on, not caring who heard her.

  She was still sobbing, helplessly and uncontrollably sobbing with Mrs Boon’s letter clutched crumpled in her hand, when a voice spoke to her. It was a rich vibrating voice.

  ‘Not my kitten in tears?’ it asked. ‘Did she think that her Rico was never coming back to her?’

  And there behind her stood Mr Squales, his arms outstretched. That wonderful smile of his was all ready and the sunburn and tan of three days in the country on his cheeks.

  2

  As things turned out, it was really Connie and not the Jossers who was in charge of the sale. Expressing the view that second‐hand dealers were merely so many spiders lying in wait for fat innocent flies she urged that the whole affair should be placed on a competitive basis. In consequence, large numbers of shabby little men in bowler‐hats with a pencil tucked away behind their ears, came clambering up and down the staircase of No. 10, casting glazed expert eyes over everything and prodding at the upholstered pieces with blunt stained thumbs.

  The generosity of Mrs Boon, her open invitation to Mrs Vizzard that she should choose a little something, had not been without difficulties. She had made the same offer to Connie. And to Mrs Josser. But she had not thought of mentioning it. In the result, an atmosphere of vigilance and suspicion prevailed from the moment when little things first began to disappear from the Boons’ two rooms.

  There was no key to the flat and, naturally, they all three took it in turns to glance inside to see how everything was getting on. Mrs Josser was the first to spot that there was something wrong when she noticed that a tall blue vase, with a painted damask rose on it, was missing. Inevitably, she suspected Connie. And inevitably, Connie suspected Mrs Josser. It was a tribute to the character of Mrs Vizzard that neither of them even for a single moment suspected her of having taken it. It did, however, occur to Connie – and to Mrs Josser – that Mr Squales, going out for an evening stroll in his loose grey overcoat, might have been concealing a vase somewhere about his person. It was a handsome vase and, even though the other one of the pair was missing, it was probably worth five shillings if you chose your shop carefully.