The Lodger

by Mary Jane Staples

  The schoolgirl was flushed, and Bobby had his cap pulled down to hide most of his face. People looked. Trary and Bobby were both oblivious.

  ‘Well, Trary – ’

  Trary gave a tight, muffled little scream, ‘Oh, you rotten ’ooligan, you’re grinnin’!’

  ‘Not much,’ said Bobby, shifting his cap to the back of his head. ‘The fact is – ’

  ‘I am not speakin’ to you, and I’m not listening, either.’

  ‘Your boater’s nearly fallin’ off, Trary. The fact is, nothing’s goin’ to – ’

  ‘You’ve been grinnin’ all the time, I know you,’ declared Trary, ‘you’re the most aggravatin’ grinnin’ boy I ever met.’

  ‘Still, nothing’s goin’ to stop me comin’ to see you, Trary.’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Well, a man’s got to stand up to fate’s blows an’ wallops. Herne Hill’s a wallop, but I’ll get over it somehow. A man’s got to when his future wife counts as ’is life’s work, yer know. He can’t let himself be put off, or he wouldn’t be worth a light.’

  ‘Oh, you daft thing,’ said Trary in a spasm of delight, ‘walkin’ me home from school don’t make me your future wife.’

  ‘Was that something I mentioned before?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Yes, it was, you barmy boy. Bobby, are we goin’ roller-skatin’ again on Saturday, and can you definitely come with us on Sunday?’

  ‘I can say I’d be honoured in both cases,’ said Bobby. ‘And I’ll walk with Lily on Sunday, then you won’t get looked at.’

  ‘You’re grinnin’ again,’ said Trary.

  ‘Mrs Pankhurst has passionate convictions, yes, but I think Christabel’s our real problem,’ said Emma. It was Friday evening, and she had a visitor, a suffragette friend, Amy Wagstaff. ‘Christabel sees herself as a modern Boadicea.’

  ‘No, Mrs Pankhurst has to be our Boadicea,’ said Amy.

  ‘She won’t be, not if Christabel gets to the chariot first,’ said Emma. ‘Then she’ll mow down every man in sight.’

  ‘Might do ’em good,’ said Amy.

  ‘Well, I suppose men generally aren’t as nice as we are,’ said Emma.

  ‘No, they’re jolly well not,’ said Amy, clerk to a solicitor, ‘they’re far too aggressive. And there’s a very nasty specimen lurking about in Southwark, isn’t there?’

  ‘I’m afraid there is,’ said Emma, ‘but my friends at Scotland Yard are preparing a noose for him, the monster.’

  ‘You’ve friends at Scotland Yard? Policemen? Those wretched harassers of the suffragettes?’ Amy looked a little disappointed in Emma.

  ‘I do have an acquaintance, he’s not quite – ’ Emma was interrupted by a knock on her door. Another one? She thought immediately of Sergeant Chamberlain. A little smile arrived at a further thought, that of introducing him to Amy, given to dressing down policemen whenever she had the chance. ‘Excuse me.’ She got up and crossed the room. Opening the door she found not Sergeant Chamberlain, but the new meter man from the gas company, in a brown suit and Homburg.

  ‘Evening, Mrs Carter, is it convenient to put your meter right? I’ve brought tools.’ He had a tool bag in his hand. The street was in the first stage of darkness. ‘Oh, sorry, you’ve got company,’ he said, as he saw Amy.

  ‘Never mind, you’re here now,’ said Emma.

  ‘No, I’ll come back some other time,’ said Herbert Stephens, ‘I don’t want to disturb you. I know it’s a bit late, but I thought – ’

  ‘It’s all right, my friend won’t mind. Just go through.’ Emma stepped aside and he came in.

  ‘Evening,’ he said to Amy, ‘nice night outside.’

  ‘Cosy in here,’ said Amy, and his mild blue eyes twinkled. He went through the room and to the meter outside the kitchen. Emma closed the dividing door and resumed her conversation with Amy.

  ‘We really need more signatures,’ she said, ‘fifteen simply aren’t enough.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll get more than two dozen,’ said Amy, ‘Mrs Pankhurst commands overwhelming loyalty. Oh, and I’ve heard, by the way, that Christabel is going to propose a motion calling for your eviction from the WSPU.’

  ‘Oh, bother,’ said Emma. ‘Well, I shall fight it. How are things with you and Donald?’

  ‘Going backwards,’ said Amy. ‘What a swine. He won’t budge till I’ve given up votes for women, and I won’t talk to him until he swears eternal support. Suffragettes shouldn’t fall in love, it mucks everything up.’

  The dividing door opened following a knock, and the meter man appeared, a triumphant smile on his face.

  ‘Found the trouble, Mrs Carter. A little spring’s got to be changed. I can get one from the store. But I’ve left the old one in for the time being, it’ll last out. You can still put your pennies in. I’ll get a fitter to bring a new spring, or again I don’t mind popping in myself if I’m passing. I’ll see what’s quickest. Sorry I disturbed your evening. Goodnight.’

  Emma opened the front door for him, ‘Thanks, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘No bother, Mrs Carter.’ He glanced at Amy. ‘I don’t like mentioning it, but your friend shouldn’t leave it too late if she’s got some walking to do. Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘It’s all right, she’s staying the night,’ said Emma.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Stephens, and went on his way, whistling. In Browning Street, a man passed him. ‘Nice night,’ said Stephens cheerfully.

  ‘Seen worse,’ grunted the man, going on.

  Charleston Street was quiet, the younger children in bed. Harry passed through the street on an overtime beat, from nine o’clock until midnight. Extra policing during these hours was taking place in Walworth.

  A man slipped into the shadows of a doorway. He put his ear to the door and listened. He put his hand on the latchcord. If he could open the door silently, close it silently, and slip into the parlour, he could bide his time.

  In the kitchen, Maggie said, ‘Is the front door bolted, Trary?’

  ‘I’ll see,’ said Trary.

  ‘Harry – Mr Bradshaw – said we ought to keep it bolted at night.’

  ‘Oh, did Harry say that, Mum?’ said Trary with overdone innocence.

  ‘Go on with you,’ said Maggie, ‘an’ don’t be familiar about your elders.’

  Trary smiled and went along the passage to the front door. By the light of the gas lamp she thought she saw the latchcord move.

  ‘Who’s there, is that you, Mrs Phillips?’ Their nosy neighbour was apt to pop in, whatever the hour, and cadge a bit of sugar or tea.

  The latchcord was still. Trary opened the door. There was no-one there. She went to the gate and looked up and down the street. She saw no-one. Satisfied that her imagination had played tricks, she went back in and bolted the door.

  She had no idea that her little intervention had saved her mother from being strangled in her bed.

  A thirty-year-old woman of Wooler Street, not far from East Street, was not so lucky. She left a Walworth Road pub just before ten-thirty, when a little too much stout had made her quarrelsome enough to thump her husband and to stalk out, her hat askew on her tumbled mass of yellow hair. Her husband, bruised, and with everyone roaring with laughter, had a mind to let her do the walk home alone. But several minutes later, someone said, ‘ ’Ere, yer best get after ’er, Sid, she’s a fine-lookin’ gel, even if she did land yer a fourp’ny one.’ He thought about it, finished his beer and went after her.

  He made his way along the Walworth Road, went up through East Street, turned right into Portland Street, passed Trafalgar Street and reached the corner of Wooler Street, where he and his wife lived. He peered. Way down the street, at a spot opposite a lamp-post, a woman lay face down and inert. A man was down on one knee beside her, his hands at the back of her neck. Sid Hoskins stood paralysed for a moment. Then, shouting his lungs out, he pounded down Wooler Street. The man was up in a flash, haring away towards the maze of streets that crowded the neighbourho
od. Sid Hoskins might have gone after him had it not been for the fact that when he reached the prone woman he found himself, as he had fearfully suspected he might, staring down at his wife, strangled to death outside their own house. Her hat was off, a strand of her yellow hair missing, and a stocking that had been gruesomely tight around her neck was partly loosened. A slipknot had made a noose of it, a noose the murderer had had to leave.

  ‘Mrs Carter?’

  Emma, at her counter, looked up. The floor-walker was addressing her.

  ‘Yes, Mr Springer?’

  ‘You can leave the counter for a moment. The gentleman over there would like a word with you.’

  Emma glanced. She saw Nicholas, hat in hand. She went across to him.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said soberly.

  ‘It’s not too good,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I saw the Stop Press in my morning paper, and a customer showed me the early edition of the Evening News. I’m dreadfully down about it, dreadfully sorry. And you must be utterly sick.’

  ‘We had extra uniformed men on the beat, but you can’t station them in every street, or even every other street.’ Nicholas was brooding. ‘It’s hell at the Yard, and it’s hell in the home of the husband. He’s blaming himself for not going after her as soon as she left the pub.’

  ‘Then I’m terribly sorry for him, he has to live with that.’

  ‘He can’t even give us a decent description, except that the size of the man tallies with the first description. About tonight – ’

  ‘I understand,’ said Emma, ‘the Alhambra’s off.’

  ‘This is going to be a twenty-four-hour day for me,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nicholas, I’m sorry too.’ It was the first time she had used his Christian name. ‘But I’m far sorrier for that poor woman and her husband than for missing the music hall. Please don’t worry about that, it’s trivial under the circumstances.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t stop. Must go. Take care.’

  She saw that his collar had a crumpled look, and that his face was a little drained. He had probably been up all night. He and Inspector Greaves, and the whole of Scotland Yard, had the entire country on their backs now.

  ‘Yes, I’ll take care,’ she said.

  He left in an abstracted way, and Emma realized then just how much she had been looking forward to seeing Marie Lloyd, the queen of the music halls and the darling of the cockneys.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sunday afternoon was fine, if a little breezy. Fluffy white clouds sailed in from the east, and the winds of heaven blew them westwards, leaving huge patches of blue.

  Harry led the way out of Herne Hill station. He had had a long week of duty. In six days, from Monday to Saturday, he had put in nearly sixty hours. Yesterday, Saturday, his stint had been ten hours. The latest murder had again meant the uniformed branch doing all it could to help the CID. The people of Walworth were rattled and complaining, and the local police as edgy as Scotland Yard. Friday’s murder had been committed only a third of a mile from the Rodney Road police station.

  Disastrous.

  But today, Sunday, Harry was off duty. He walked between Daisy and Meg along Railton Road. Bobby followed with Lily. Behind them came Maggie and Trary, Maggie in her new silk dress and a new toque hat. She felt proud of her girls in their new frocks and new boaters. Bobby was right about Trary, she thought. Her eldest daughter did seem to be getting prettier all the time. She was watching Bobby, who had charge of Lily. Lily had beamed when he said he was going to walk with her. She was chattering nineteen to the dozen now. Maggie saw the little smile on Trary’s face, and knew she was thinking that Lily’s tongue had the beating of Bobby’s at the moment.

  ‘That boy, Mum,’ said Trary out of the blue, ‘he gave me the ’orrors when he walked me home on Thursday.’

  ‘That’s ’is latest, is it, givin’ you the ’orrors on top of everything else?’ said Maggie, eyeing houses with approval.

  ‘There’s no tellin’ what that boy’s capable of, Mum. When I told him we were thinkin’ of moving, he said it was all over with us.’

  ‘What was all over?’ asked Maggie, trying, as usual, not to smile.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ said Trary.

  ‘What did he say was all over with you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Trary casually, ‘I hardly ever know what he’s talkin’ about.’

  ‘What give you the ’orrors, then?’

  ‘I can’t remember now,’ said Trary, trying to get out of the pit she had impulsively dug for herself. Not even to her mother would she admit that Bobby was her one and only. ‘Still, he made up for it, takin’ me roller-skatin’ again yesterday. Oh, it really is fun. Anyway, Herne Hill’s not all that far from Walworth, is it? We’ve got here easy on the train from the Elephant an’ Castle.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Maggie.

  ‘What?’ asked Trary.

  ‘You’re a bit young to be in love at thirteen, pet.’

  ‘I’m fourteen, Mum. Well, nearly.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still a bit young to – ’

  ‘Look, there are front gardens,’ said Trary.

  ‘Still, I suppose it’s a nice feelin’, even at fourteen, said Maggie, ‘and you won’t find a nicer boy. And he’s got ’is head screwed on the right way.’

  ‘Some head,’ said Trary. ‘Look, his cap’s nearly fallin’ off, it’s always nearly fallin’ off. I’ve spoken to him, but you know what he is, he just goes on talkin’. Now if his tongue fell off, I could deal with ’im a lot better.’

  ‘You’re so funny, pet,’ said Maggie, ‘you’re a pair, you are, you an’ Bobby.’

  Harry, still leading the way with Daisy and Meg, stopped on the corner of a street. Sunday afternoon in Herne Hill seemed even quieter than in Walworth. There was just the little metallic sound of a hand-mower being used in someone’s back garden. Harry turned, ‘Here we are, Maggie,’ he said.

  They all congregated on the corner, and Harry consulted a local paper he’d brought with him.

  ‘Crikey, it’s called Regent Road,’ said Lily, ‘ain’t that posh, Bobby?’

  ‘Well, nice,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Yes, nice, not posh,’ said Meg, ‘we can’t live nowhere posh, we’d ’ave to ’ave servants.’

  ‘Number ten,’ said Harry, and they all walked to number ten. It was empty, its front garden a little overgrown. Maggie regarded the house, and thought its central door made it look quite grand. It was two storeys, not three, like most in the road. But the advertisement had said four bedrooms. Its blank windows shone in the sunlight. It looked much larger than their little house in Charleston Street. There was a bathroom too. Imagine that. They wouldn’t have to go to the public baths any more, or use a scullery bath. Of course, they’d only come to look at it from the outside, to see if they liked its appearance.

  Harry was making no comment. He knew it was up to Maggie and her girls. It was their choice, yes or no, not his.

  But Maggie said, ‘What d’you think, Harry?’

  He didn’t hesitate then, he said, ‘Looks a good family house, Maggie, and two storeys would mean less work than any of these three-storeyed ones.’

  ‘And what do you think, Bobby?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Wilson, I’m glad you asked, I thought you wouldn’t – ’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Trary joyfully.

  ‘I can’t say I’ve got much experience about the best kind of ’ouses to buy,’ said Bobby, ‘so I can’t say – ’

  ‘Not much,’ said Trary.

  ‘Yes, I can’t say anything, Mrs Wilson, except I’d like a house just like this when we’re married.’

  ‘When who’s married?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Me and me future wife,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Can you believe that boy, Mr Bradshaw?’ said Trary. ‘Can you believe what comes out of his mouth sometimes?’

  ‘Trary’s gone all pink,’ said Daisy.

  ‘She
keeps doin’ that,’ said Lily.

  ‘I suppose all future wives are a little shy,’ said Harry.

  ‘Mr Bradshaw, don’t say things like that,’ begged Trary, ‘it’ll only encourage him, he’s daft enough, as it is. Mum, I like the house, don’t you? I mean, I like the look of it, it looks as if it’s got two parlours and lovely windows. And there’s trees about. It’s nice, Meg, don’t you think it’s nice?’

  ‘Oh, crikey, fancy us livin’ ’ere,’ said Meg breathlessly.

  ‘It’s my opinion you’ve got a winner here, Mrs Wilson,’ said Bobby, ‘as long as it’s all right inside.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do without your opinion, Bobby,’ smiled Maggie.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Bobby. Trary rolled her eyes.

  ‘Look, the side gate’s open,’ said Harry, ‘let’s see what the back garden’s like.’

  ‘I likes ’Arry,’ said Daisy, taking hold of his hand.

  ‘Will you stop callin’ ’im that, you pickle?’ said Maggie.

  They all walked up the side path to the back garden. Everyone gazed at a long rectangular lawn of long uncut grass, a velvet green to their eyes. There were flower beds down each side, perennials sprouting amid burgeoning weeds.

  ‘Mum, it’s a real garden,’ said Meg, ‘it’s got flowers and everything.’

  ‘You could play cricket,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Could you come an’ play wiv us?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Could you play wiv us too?’ asked Daisy of Harry.

  ‘They can come to Sunday tea,’ said Maggie, eyeing the back of the house. Everything looked just right. ‘What d’you think now, Harry?’ The price of the house, according to the advertisement, was two hundred and ninety-five pounds. And the furniture could be offered for.

  ‘I think you’d like to be shown round,’ said Harry. ‘You could come up during the week and get the agents to let you in.’