Death Lives Next Door

by Gwendoline Butler

  “In six years I shall be a Doctor of Philosophy, the acknowledged master of my little corner of research, cock of my own dunghill.”

  “In six years you will be forty-odd. You may be dead.”

  “You may be right,” he admitted dolefully. But he had to go on.

  “I have an idea about the figure behind a small group of Early English epic fragments. I think you can pick out some individual points about the writer. A sort of little Homer, well perhaps I exaggerate there, but still he was a real person. Anyway I want to reconstruct this lost man.”

  “A sort of Anglo-Saxon quest for Corvo?”

  “Oh, that wonderful book!” Ezra was just the sort of person to be caught in the spell of Corvo: he liked lost souls. “But I can never make up my mind whether it is fact or fiction.”

  “Never much interested in Corvo, I must say. He must have been a dreary little chap.”

  “I told you you were a prig. But, of course, what makes it so fascinating is what it reveals of the author.”

  While they were talking they had both been watching the man who stood there, oblivious to everything except the one house. His very concentration made Ezra feel uneasy.

  “Could he be a detective?”

  “Why should a detective watch Marion?”

  “That’s something we shall have to ask Marion,” said Ezra, a trifle grimly.

  “He’s not a detective,” said Rachel. “I’ll swear to that. I’ve spoken to him and you haven’t. He’s not sharp enough.” She had convinced herself anyway. “Besides, Marion’s good. There can’t be anything in her life that needs detecting.”

  Ezra was thinking.

  He was remembering what he knew about Marion, what he had heard and what she had told him. With the interest in anthropology had gone a wide interest in people, everything had been grist to her mill. She had no more been able to avoid gathering up the curious, the strange and the lost people than now she could help gathering up the lame dogs she had known.

  “Has it struck you that Marion must have known some pretty wicked sort of people in her time? Crowley and Beasley and Rosa Farmer and so on. Not a little bunch of honeys really.”

  Rachel frowned. “Silly rather than wicked,” she said loftily.

  Ezra sighed. “That’s exactly you all over. Silliness doesn’t rule out wickedness. Rather the reverse. Someone silly and wicked could be very dangerous.”

  “Do you think this man is dangerous?” Rachel was surprised.

  Ezra nodded. He was convinced there was danger for Marion, and what was more he felt sure Marion knew it, too, in her heart.

  They threaded their way through the crowds of undergraduates on bicycles and approached the School of Anthropology, which was housed in a large sunny building.

  “I have to leave a note,” explained Rachel, although she had no need to offer any explanations to her companion, who would have trotted along happily beside her to the moon if she had happened to suggest it. “And I’ve a book to pick up in the library. Do wait for me.”

  Ezra tucked his feet under a chair and sat down to wait. He was thoroughly happy in this atmosphere of leisurely learning. He realised anew how unsuited he was to leave it.

  A few students drifted in and out, exchanging a word with the porter in his little cubby-hole as they did so. He was a round fat agreeable man and an old friend of Ezra’s, who had waited here many times for Rachel. He came out now to talk to Ezra.

  The porter and his wife knew both Marion and Ezra well.

  (“I suppose she feels sort of maternal to him,” the wife had suggested.

  “Oh no,” said the porter.

  “Not … anything else?” queried his wife doubtfully. She didn’t want to think badly of Marion.

  “Oh no, mother, you’ve got it all wrong. People like them have interests in common. That’s how they put it. Things in common. Age doesn’t count. It’s their minds.”

  “Well I can’t help thinking it’s all a bit—” She hesitated: “Comic”)

  “I’d be glad to have a word with you, sir.”

  “Do,” said Ezra, looking up in surprise.

  “I live in Little Clarendon Street, sir, as you know, just around the way from Chancellor Hyde Street, I’m often up and down the road, I usually go that way to the Parks to exercise my little dog. You’ve seen us perhaps, sir?”

  Briefly Ezra let his mind rest on the dog; the ‘little dog’ was a great loutish retriever with teeth like a tiger’s fangs and a temper notorious among even the ill-tempered dogs of North Oxford.

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “And you being a particular friend of Dr. Manning’s, sir, I thought I’d mention it.”

  “Mention what?” There was something coming.

  “She’s a decent sort. She was very kind to me and the wife when we lost the kiddie.”

  Ezra remembered that the porter’s little daughter had died of a rare form of diphtheria.

  “And we’re not the only ones, she’s always had a helping hand for people like us. And I mean a real helping hand. Have you ever noticed Dr. Manning’s hands, sir? They’re hands that work. Oh, I know you work, sir, what I mean is that Dr. Marion works with her hands. That’s the side of her people like us see. And fat gratitude she gets for it sometimes. Like that cousin or sister of hers she helped. What does she get but the woman coming here making scenes? She came here once, I wasn’t here. I was out helping Monty get Rommel.” He grinned. “But I remember my wife telling me all about it. A shocking performance it was.”

  “I had noticed her hands,” agreed Ezra.

  “She’s sharp though. You can’t pull the old soldier on her.”

  He frowned. “Real cross with myself I was. I ought to have done better.” He looked shyly at Ezra. “You know my little hobby, sir.” Ezra did. The porter had tried very hard to get into the Police Force, and not succeeding on account of his shortness, had turned himself into an amateur policeman. He had read countless books on criminology, kept a card index of famous criminals, with pictures, in the hope that he might one day meet one (he never had yet), and kept an alert eye open for any signs of trouble in his own neighbourhood. If anyone could be relied upon to notice detail, he could.

  He and Ezra swopped detective stories. Have you read Ransome’s latest? Pretty good you know. What about the new Punshon? No Daly for a long time. Is she dead? And the new Innes? Not up to standard.

  But now the porter was preoccupied with Dr. Manning herself.

  “There’s been a shut-up look to the house lately. Doors always closed. Windows up. Not like Dr. Manning. She’s nearly always kept them wide open. Like a country woman in that. My wife was a country girl and she always says we don’t shut doors so much in the country; me and Dr. Manning we were both brought up on farms. Did you know Dr. Manning had grown up on a farm?” Ezra nodded. He knew about Marion’s youth and how she had hated it. Cutting herself off from it had been the first of her big steps forward, the first of her revolutions in transforming herself.

  “I didn’t like the look of it. Made me think perhaps Dr. Manning was getting nervous of something. I kept a look-out.”

  “Well?”

  “There’s been a man hanging about. There were his hands, too, sir. I noticed them. They’re wiry hands.”

  Ezra nodded.

  “Then last night. I was passing Dr. Manning’s house last night on my way home from the Parks and I saw this man right up inside the garden. He was trying the door, sir, and as I came running up he shook a window. He saw me, I’m afraid, and nipped round the side and off.” He paused. “I didn’t like the look of it, sir. I’m afraid he may get in. Yes, I’m afraid he may get in.”

  “He’s there now,” admitted Ezra. “I’ve just seen him. And I’m just as worried as you.”

  “Do you think Dr. Manning’s noticed?”

  “I wish I knew.” He realised that it was important to know if Marion had noticed or not. “I’ll talk to her.” But it was not going to be so easy f
or him to talk to Marion; the figure of Rachel stood between them. “But I promise you I’ll look after Dr. Manning.”

  Rachel came hurrying through the glass doors from the library. Ezra got up to help her with the books.

  The porter watched them go away. He remained worried.

  “Perhaps I ought to have told him. And yet it was only an impression. Still I did get the impression: that he was whispering to someone inside the house.”

  The man walked down St. John Street, through the crowded Cornmarket, and down St. Ebbes to Pratt’s Place where he entered a house which was one of a grubby grey stone terrace. He had a key and let himself into a dark and smelly hall. There was an upright yellow oak hallstand just behind the front door on which lay a few letters and a bottle of milk. He turned the letters over, but there were none for him. He picked up the milk and listened for a few minutes to the noises of the house. He could hear a baby crying and the shriek and scream of his landlady’s voice, he could hear someone banging away as if chopping wood, not that anyone ever chopped wood in that house, but banging was a necessary part of life there. After listening for a moment, he went upstairs.

  His own room was tidy, dusted and neat. His landlady, oddly enough, had her standards. In her own way she liked her lodger and regarded him as an improvement on the last man, an itinerant seller of leather bags and shoe laces, who had left a few weeks ago, without paying his rent but taking with him her youngest daughter. It was not yet clear which of them would ultimately be the loser on this transaction. To please her present tenant she put an occasional duster round the room and usually made the bed; she had plenty of time in which to work, as he was out a good deal. He had not told her what he worked at, and, tactfully, she had not asked.

  The man sat down at a small table by the window and arranged various things on the table before him. He had a yellow packet of photographs, a newspaper cutting, and a carefully tied-up bundle of documents. He opened the packet of photographs and carefully set out a line of photographs almost as if starting a game of Patience. Four cards in a line and one below. They were pictures of women.

  He looked at them in silence, then stuffed them back into the packet, which was already greasy and much thumbed, as were the pictures themselves. He put all the things on the table back into the inside pocket of his blue raincoat.

  There was a pause while he sat on the bed and drank the bottle of milk to the bottom. Then he got up, opened the drawers of the old chest of drawers and took out a few layers of shirts and underclothings. He packed this into a small suitcase. He looked into the wardrobe, but it was empty. He was wearing his one suit.

  He looked round the room, but it was now quite bare of any sign of his presence except for a book by his bed, and this he did not notice.

  He went downstairs and knocked on his landlady’s door. She opened it at once. She was not pleased to see the suitcase or to hear that her visitor was leaving. She was a large lazy woman of about forty; the only swift thing about her was her temper, as each of her three successive husbands had found in turn. She emerged with a cigarette in her lips and her expensive and bad-tempered Siamese cat clinging to her shoulders. They were both slightly cross-eyed.

  “Well, you’d better come in and talk it over,” she said, holding the door open. “I can’t say I’m pleased about this, as you led me to believe you’d be a permanent. I’ve let slip several good offers, one very nice undergrad” (this was a complete lie, no undergraduate would step into her house) “and one from a very well-to-do lady as would have done for herself. You’ve let me down. Well, come on in.”

  Although the house was dreary enough, the landlady had created a certain comfort in her own room. Everything was placed just where it could contribute most to its owner’s comfort. The round table, perpetually covered in a white and blue check tablecloth was so placed that it caught both the warmth from the fire and a good view from the window. On the table were a newspaper, a radio, and a box of cigarettes. By the fire was a teapot and another cat.

  “I’ve kept the cats out of your way, as you said you hated them. I thought you liked it here,” she said in a hurt voice.

  “I’m afraid I have to leave, though,” repeated her visitor, his mouth setting in firmer lines than his usual mild expression had led her to expect. She saw this, and abandoned her hopes of getting a month’s rent from him. “It’s unfair, though,” she said, with a genuine sense of grievance. “You’ll have to pay up for this week,” and she held out a hand.

  As he got out the money to pay her, his envelope of photographs fell to the floor. One picture slid out.

  “Why, you’ve got a picture of Dr. Manning,” she said in surprise.

  “You know her?” Her lodger sounded not too pleased.

  “Not half! Used to work there. As a lady help, you know. Just to oblige. But I didn’t stick it. Couldn’t do with her. Always following me about to see if I worked properly. Looked as frail as a feather, she did, but her energy! Had me beat. All her friends used to say, ‘Oh Marion, I don’t know how you do all you do, with your health, and your headaches. You ought to rest more, dear.’ Tough as an old boot she is really. See me out.”

  “She’s very ill,” said the man.

  “Is she?”

  “Very ill.”

  “D’you mean she’s dying?” asked the landlady huskily; in a way she had liked Marion. Anyway she wanted to think of her as in the land of the living. Alive to be grumbled about, not dead to be pitied.

  “Yes,” said the man slowly. “She will have to die. There’s no hope for her.”

  “How terrible,” said the woman; she looked down at the picture and exclaimed: “Why, you’ve got marks all over the picture. It’s all drawn over.”

  When he had gone she looked after him in disquiet. The effect of the drawing on the photograph had not been pleasant. She was a great newspaper reader and could remember the Heath case and the Rillington Place murders.

  “Could be one of these women murderers,” she said with a shiver. “I’m better without him.”

  She turned back, safely, to the comforts of her room, to her teapot, her cats and her cosy fire.

  Chapter Three

  Footsteps are always heard in Chancellor Hyde Street. They are usually the footsteps of people hurrying through; housewives on their way to the Cornmarket, young mothers pushing back from the baby clinic to get lunch on the table. In the evening, the feet are slower; a guest from the St. John’s Senior Common Room, coming comfortably homewards, or a late employee from the Clarendon Press in Walton Street wandering home dreaming of the work just done.

  Now there were feet that were going very slowly. There was a heaviness to their tread, almost a hesitation, they showed their fatigue. All the same they were feet that knew where they were going, hesitating yes, but always continuing in the same path.

  The man had counted however without the inexplicable in life, the unforeseeable chance which sweeps the traveller off his own path and on to another. The moment which could not be predicted had arrived.

  He was observed by a neat quiet old gentleman polishing his brass and whistling as he did so. Major Nickols was working on his front door in the house next to Marion’s when he heard the feet and at once looked up. He was interested in nearly everything that went on in Chancellor Hyde Street. He had been away on holiday and was just catching up on his household duties and on local events. He knew his neighbour Marion, had raised his hat to her often, and liked her, although he deplored her views on the weeding of her garden. He had even met Joyo, but had retired from her somewhat bashfully.

  The Major was a retired Indian Army Officer, a sedate figure, who never mentioned his thirty years in India and hardly thought about them. “There are two sorts of Englishman in India,” he used to say, “those on whom India has a profound effect, whose imaginations are completely captured by it and who never get over this feeling, and the others who remain indifferent. I was one of the second sort. I might as well have been in Basing
stoke. No imagination I suppose.” What he did miss, of course, were the hordes of servants. But even there, he composed himself with the reflection, it had taken three men to clean a pair of shoes and then not as well as he could do it himself. He ran his house quietly and efficiently all on his own, donning a butcher’s blue apron to do his chores and singing quietly to himself as he did so. He had only one song, the song that had taken his fancy as a young subaltern years ago, the calling song from “Rose Marie”. He sang it very badly but with feeling. To make ends meet he let one room in his house to a suitable undergraduate. A young man who took a room with the Major was lucky, because not only was he well fed (breakfast only) and beautifully looked after, but he emerged from the experience with a profound respect for the iron routine of the British Indian Army. On arriving there he might have been casual about time, a late sleeper, careless about his appearance. He never was when he left. As might be expected, the Major had had considerable success in the Schools, most of his lodgers took firsts or good seconds and he had created one Conservative M.P. and one shy young Fellow of All Souls, who still returned to the Major for moral support when life, as it often did, became too much for them.

  Major Nickols looked and saw a man in early middle age pulled over by a heavy bag and walking very slowly down towards the last house at the corner of Little Clarendon Street and Chancellor Hyde Street. This house was a large and shabby lodging-house.

  “Wouldn’t have given that fellow any responsibility,” thought the Major, rapidly summing up the face. “Still, not quite the sort to live next door if that’s what he thinks he’s going to do.” The Major had a low opinion of next door, where there were great late-night parties, drunkenness and noise. But it was quiet enough now.

  He got on with his polishing and watched the man.

  The journey from the house in St. Ebbes had been a slow one and the man was painfully tired. He was breathing rapidly and a thick red flush had crept up his neck and over his cheeks.