Deep Sleep

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘It’s Helen West. I’ll say hallo properly in a minute, but listen. Chloroform, Doc. Tell me about chloroform. Everything you know.’

  After a few hours, the day had turned foul. A grey, wet wind hinted at sleet, cut through clothes, lifted umbrellas, attacked faces. Inside offices, noses streamed; pub windows were thick with steam and the bare bent trees dripped dirty London rain. Even these ugly winter trees were in short supply on Bailey’s route between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green through the concrete and redbrick jungle where the remnants of old squares, invisible to traffic, formed the only saving graces of the area in summer. In early December, there were no green compensations. Out of interest, he cut through Herringbone Parade, the address stuck in his mind from Helen’s talk, less free on the subject than she might have been. He parked behind, leaving the car to be covered in dust, looked over hoardings in to the pit of a building site beyond. Further on was an elegant terrace, a pre-war remnant housing a mosque and a hundred families; the earth between was red. Bailey shivered. The London of his boyhood had been punctuated by wartime: nothing so different now even after two generations: he often wondered what lay beneath. Something had happened in the Carlton enquiry which had stimulated Helen’s eclectic interest, but since he had warned her against interference, she had been silent on the subject. They were often thus, reserve descending on them like summer rain. Only a two-day silence, not one she would maintain, since Helen, unlike himself, was quite unable to hold still, always told him in the end. Perhaps she always tried to teach him by example a greater openness, or perhaps she was aware of the feeling of drabness and boredom which was now almost a fear in him. He did not like the idea of that. Turning the car into the lights of the Parade, all blazing in the premature dark of the afternoon, he realised that Helen paying silence for silence was actually quite justified. She had said nothing of new developments, which hurt a little, but on the other hand he had not mentioned his knowledge of the Parade and his knowledge of Mr and Mrs Duncan Perry. He would tell her, though: she would help. Had to do something to deal with Duncan, but not now. He could advise the wife, console the husband, but for this and all purposes, he felt quite unfit. Bailey felt fit for nothing.

  Herringbone Parade was not a place anyone would choose to live and die in, he decided; more the sort of place in which a person fetched up, beached by fortune and left to make the best of it. But for all its older inhabitants, who had indeed been hostages to fortune, shipped here from older buildings, people who remembered his parents’ war, it was a brave place for all that, lights blazing, a few Christmas decorations showing in misted windows, people huddling from one doorway to the next. Passing the Pharmacy, he saw two customers bundling out of the door, conversation frozen by the cold. Bailey laughed at himself. In other days, he would have come here for the market. Now he had come for the idle curiosity he professed to despise. To examine the geography for other purposes still quite unrelated to Helen’s legal conundrums. He slowed down past the shop, blocked for a moment by a van offloading from a stall, then turned the car easily left into the service road. He manoeuvred past bags of rubbish and watched with distaste as his headlights caught a mongrel dog jumping away from a rubbish bag, dragging a chicken carcass. Winter cold brought out the predatory instincts even in a pet, but chicken bones were bad for a dog, Bailey remembered, too brittle for the throat: the silly brute might choke. He was slightly ashamed of his indifference. The animal slunk away, ready to watch him leave before returning for the best of human detritus. Dog eat dog. Let them.

  As Bailey cruised the back of the street, Helen emerged from behind a shelf in Carlton’s Caring Chemist. While her eyes had examined a dusty display of suntan creams in the shop window, her mind beset with the domestic detail of why they were there, she had sensed, in that flash of recognition reserved only for the acutely familiar, Bailey’s car and Bailey’s brief presence. Separated by a few feet and two sheets of glass, so far and yet so near to the sixth sense which made her duck as if to read the full particulars of factor sixteen creme, suitable for babies. Something akin to shame, but definitely unshameful, made her blush. She regretted this necessary secrecy, this subterfuge to hide a nature which was curious but cautious and still afraid of criticism. She suffered as well from that guilty fear which afflicts any reasonably conscientious person who has lied in order to leave work indecently early.

  ‘Can I help? Gawd, what a mess.’ There was, as she rose, a large, red-skirted behind, level with her face, with shapely legs gradually disappearing from view in a dim impression of red and black striped tights, an adventurous ensemble which owed more to experiment than taste, all dignified by a statuesque shape, large black belt on a small waist and the sensation of a very nubile body striving to get out. Half bent, Helen stood level with the kind of bosom she had craved at eighteen, and still admired; looked up at a face of intelligent, preoccupied friendliness. Big eyes, blue mascara, wide mouth, all the features of an artless Brigitte Bardot with none of the sophistication.

  ‘No, I was just …’

  ‘That’s fine, then. Take your time. I hate people rushing me in shops, don’t you? We got everything here. Watch out for the toothpaste stand won’t you? Only it ladders your stockings.’ The behind, as if drawn on its own momentum, moved out of sight with brisk undulation as Helen straightened. She felt small and inept.

  There was nothing peculiar in what she was doing, Helen told herself, with the bag of files uncomfortable against one shoulder. She was simply looking because it was imperative to look, and she rarely disobeyed imperatives. Helen West knew what she was, and, as usual, never rebelled at the limitations. Her role was to act as a conduit: the shifter of knowledge, rarely vouchsafed the firsthand view, but at least allowed the second before the crown court stars got up and did their bit. Rather like being the dresser in a theatre as opposed to the lead player. Or an offstage producer, the peruser of post-mortem photographs rather than the pathologist or the sonorous barrister. A researcher, a broker of evidence, a gofor, a back-room person. No accolades anywhere, for what she did, and she never minded how limited was the view she was allowed, provided she could do what she did, well. What she could not stand was no view at all or any opinion either. She was damned if she would be denied a squint at the locus in quo. In any standard murder case, she would at least see the face of the body on the slab; be able to express a brief and unbusinesslike pity; or see a video of the house where the corpse was found, put colours into the scene, note the furnishings, the wear or tear which gave an impertinent clue to the pressures of that life and death, the very clothing a feature of the story. Part of her task would be, in photographic terms, to weed out the most obscene photographs from those showed to a jury, but here with dead Mrs Carlton carried away in a white wagon like any other routine death, without the benefit of a single flash bulb, Helen had nothing. No clue to follow except the smells, no perspective to what she had read in soulless, typewritten sheets. It was not prurience which dragged her here, but the need to feel the framework and the literal desire to be informed.

  She had been patrolling the shelves, smelling the smell and blinking in the neon light, breathing deep and doing as she would always do at relative leisure in a shop, which was browsing. No one could deny that a pharmacy was bound to contain some item of necessity. Shampoo, corn plasters, Tampax, instant diets, new lipsticks, a lifetime supply of toilet rolls, dusters. Ye gods, dusters. It was a shop where you had to scan each shelf, from the very top to the depths. Stooped again, transfixed by the daffodil yellow of six artificial chamois cloths, her own slender rump in a full khaki skirt, and from above her own dark head, another voice, saying the same thing.

  ‘Can I help? Was there anything in particular you wanted? We do like to help.’

  Helen hated being hounded in shops; she resented the voice. They were identical heights when they stood, Helen West and the caring chemist, accidentally so close together as she rose, and Helen stepped back sharply. Her heel encountered a pac
ket of cotton wool, an unpleasant yielding under her foot.

  ‘Was there anything in particular?’ he queried. She gazed at him, mesmerised, her face forming an apologetic smile while her eyes and ears were full of the scent of him. Lavender water, some subtle smell of baby powder mingling with other scents clinging to a white coat pressed to perfection. Helen thought of a spruce waiter when she looked at this man, so small, so neat, so deferential. His well-manicured hands were crossed below his waist: he stood as if a half bow were natural: his shoes were polished, his collar points faultless, his tie held with a pin. Not a hair on his head was out of line with the furrows of his comb. A sallow skin, and the palest eyes she had ever seen. Bleached blue as if the colour had drained from them, ostensibly smiling, but lifeless. A man well versed in pretence, powerfully vulnerable.

  ‘Oh! These things.’ She placed a small collection of wares into the hands which rose like a begging bowl to receive them.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Helen sensed a mutual frisson of dislike and the knowledge of being hustled to the counter.

  ‘Not from round here, are you?’ he was enquiring conversationally as his little fingers tapped the till.

  ‘No,’ she answered shortly. Somehow she had no desire to reveal any more, looked round hopefully for the red legs of the girl.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ he intoned, handing over the white polythene bag, the pale eyes unmoving, and suddenly, Helen was weak with conviction. I’m right! The internal voice was shouting so loud she felt he must hear. I’m right, I know I’m right. There would be nothing natural about a death in this man’s house. He would never lose a wife by accident: he would never allow such loss of control. And the smell of him. So clean, a sniff of sanitised threat.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘See you,’ he answered.

  Not if I see you first. Helen trod the route back from the door, aware of him turning away towards the high voice of the girl speaking from the room behind the counter. A sweet sound of normality so ill suited to the strange artificiality of her well-groomed employer, Helen found the cheerfulness unnerving. I should not have come here, she told herself, while knowing she should. What was worse was the knowledge that she could never confess her reactions.

  ‘Don’t forget you said I could go early today, Pip. Sure that’s all right?’

  ‘Oh, sure, sure.’

  She hesitated. ‘Pip, what did the police want with you yesterday? You were gone for hours. Was it about Margaret?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, as it happens. Look, there’s something I want to tell you. Do you mind?’

  Kim did not know what she was supposed to say to that since she did not know what it was, but chats with the indiscreet Margaret did not make her relish the prospect of marital secrets now. She had been dreading this moment, but knew it was inevitable. All through the busy surgery hours that morning, she had been aware of Pip watching her, as if testing her sympathy in advance, his distraction so complete he could not even count pills into the pill-counting machine or handle the prescriptions in order. They were sitting in the dispensary now, Pip’s back room beyond hidden by boxes as it often was by day, each with the cups of tea which were the punctuation marks in every single day. All sorts of tea; camomile tea, ordinary tea, peppermint tea; he insisted on experimenting. The shop outside was quiet. Rain stopped play, and apparently, pain.

  ‘I’m afraid they discovered Margaret’s little secret. The police, I mean. I hoped they wouldn’t you see, but they did. Thank God you saw me leave the night before she must have died, you know. Otherwise I’d be in the frame. They’d think I gave it to her.’

  ‘Gave her what? Sorry, Pip, love, I’m not following.’

  He shifted on his stool, appeared to gulp at his tea when she mentioned the word love, shot her a look so full of sadness she could feel herself melt. Kim’s harder edges dissolved when Pip looked so soulful, like a puppy with enormous eyes. He was so kind, no wonder Margaret had loved him. He was actually not bad looking either, although Kim was young enough to consider him a little old.

  ‘Chloroform. I’m only telling you because you may well find out anyhow and I don’t want to hide it from you, although I certainly don’t want the rest of the street knowing. Listen, when I met Margaret, she was a junkie. Yes, I know it’s a surprise and it never showed, but didn’t you ever wonder how she got so thin? She’d been weaned off, then weaned on to tranquillisers and you know what they’re like. So, from the hard stuff to the Valium she’d done them all and she was starting in on the alcohol. Then I once made the mistake of explaining to her … she was always asking questions, you remember, always wanting to get involved … anyway, I told her how a person could get a high from sniffing ether, or even chloroform. I didn’t have any ether, no need for me to stock it you know, but I do make my own chloroform water. For keeping morphine, if I have to stock it, which isn’t often and never for long, of course. I showed her for fun …’

  ‘For fun?’ Kim echoed. Bloody hell, she thought, strange notion of fun. Wouldn’t have thought she had it in her, never can tell. She could feel her jaw dropping, slightly.

  ‘Yes, for fun. It can’t do you any harm, and it kept her distracted from anything else she might have wanted to take. I put some on a clean duster, just a little. You hold it above your face, never on your face, breathe deeply, and hey presto, you feel fine. Happy. She liked it so much I hid it, said if she ever wanted to use it, she could only use it with me there.’

  ‘What kind of duster?’ Kim asked stupidly, for lack of anything else to say to prevent the shock showing on her face. She remembered Margaret Carlton’s unnatural thinness, her silliness and her ebullience, but there had never been a hint of unpredictability. Margaret had always been the same, laughing, irritating, perhaps a little hyperactive. A great person for silly detail. Pip looked surprised at the irrelevancy.

  ‘One of the dusters we sell. The yellow ones. We had dozens. Always the same sort. I told them that, too.’ He looked more cautious, pathetically worried about her response, turning back to his tea to hide his face, trying to speak casually. ‘Did Margaret never mention any of this to you? She did talk to you, liked you so much …’

  Kim was ever more embarrassed, and muttered, ‘She never told me she’d been an addict. I didn’t know. But she did tell me she thought you needed … don’t know what she meant, none of my business, but something. To improve your love lives.’

  His loud and nervous laugh rang through the small room, so shrill she jumped.

  ‘Our what? We didn’t have a love life, she couldn’t bear it, really could not bear it. I did hope, when she got better, but …’

  ‘Couldn’t you have locked the chloroform away?’

  ‘Oh yes. But better the devil you know and it isn’t addictive. Listen, Kim, I knew what my duty was with Maggie. I had to look after her as best I could. And it wasn’t good enough. I go away, just once, God alone knows, I rarely get the chance, and when I come back, she’s dead. And now they tell me she died of poison. She had twelve milligrammes of chloroform in her blood. Oh God, oh God, you can’t imagine what it’s been like …’

  He rested his head in his fists on the counter used for bottling prescriptions, his shoulders heaving. Kim had seen him cry like this when he came back from the mortuary, the helpless sobbing of a young child, reminding her of Tombo in his furies of grief. And all this time, he had laughed and carried on as normal, bearing these dreadful burdens, poor, poor, Philip. Kim was easily moved by another person’s tears, especially male tears, a weapon Duncan had never used, although with her they would have been the bluntest and most effective of all. Begging sickened her: tears worked.

  Amid a genuine pity, came secret relief. She had had an absurd suspicion that violent, obsessive Duncan had somehow been involved in the untimely death of Margaret. Kim had never thought through how this could have been: maybe he scared her to death with his nocturnal lurking; maybe he crawled into the wrong flat and took the wr
ong underwear. No, no; he wouldn’t do that; he would notice the size. But all the same, the dark thought had grown, and now she knew for certain he was innocent of something at least. There was also relief in the knowledge that there was nothing perverted about Pip, as his wife had once vaguely suggested. Among all those accounts of diarrhoea, dentistry, minor operations and such, what malicious ideas Margaret had sown, each conversation promising more than the last: the merest hint of something strange about her husband beginning to emerge. Kim felt a surge of dislike for the dead wife, moved to Pip’s side and put her arms round his bent back, resting her head against his shoulders. ‘There, there, oh, please don’t be upset. I understand, honestly I do, oh, poor Pip, I wish I could have helped …’

  He flinched at her touch, like a child shrinking away from the adult who patted or tickled, but then he held her hand briefly, fished in the pocket of his white overall for a handkerchief. Kim wondered how it was he both liked and hated to be touched.

  ‘You did help. You always help. And it was awful for you, being there when they found her. I’m sorry, what a baby to cry like this, not very manly, is it?’

  She hugged him again, harder, then let go abruptly. Standing on the far side of the shop counter, watching intently, was Daniel, his face split in that half smile which could just as easily have indicated contempt as curiosity. Kim realised in a split second why Daniel raised her hackles. He saw so much and was far from a fool. She patted Pip on the head, making him jump, flinch and turn. She watched, puzzled, then spoke without embarrassment, but still stiffly.