'Other things?'
'I got interested in a woman called Annette Verhaeren.'
Had he startled her? With that light on her face she could hide nothing. He was sure he had, and then she looked at him so candidly he was not sure at all.
'Annette…?'
'Verhaeren. Just a whore. She got herself beaten to death by her pimp. He used an iron bar on her and then dumped the body in a back-court midden among the rubbish.'
'The rest of the rubbish.'
He did not understand.
'That's what you make it sound like – as if you were saying, "among the rest of the rubbish".'
He nodded slowly. 'Does that bother you?'
'Oh, Murray,' she might have been irritated, but then she was laughing, a glittering sound. 'You never say "fuck". Malcolm says it all the time – well, except at Mum Wilson's, of course. I sometimes can't believe you two are brothers.'
'That happens,' Murray said. 'You could have two sisters who were very different from one another.' He could not stop watching her mouth, which was full with just the smallest hint of the pressure of her teeth behind the upper lip. He looked at her lips which had shaped the word 'fuck' and spoken it to him. 'That was something else I found out about Annette Verhaeren. She had two children.'
'Sisters.'
'Half-sisters. I think they each had a different father.'
'Well, then,' Irene said, 'you wouldn't expect them to be very like one another.'
'That's what I'm hoping.'
He expected her to ask why, but instead she said, 'What happened to them – after their mother was killed?'
'I'm still finding that out.'
'Maybe they're dead.'
'No, I don't think so.' He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. 'The younger one was called Urszula – but the people who adopted her changed her name. She'll be a woman now.'
'How did you find out about her?'
'That's my job,' he said. 'I traced the priest who worked in Moirhill then.'
'And he told you where they went when they were adopted.'
Murray shook his head. 'He wouldn't do that.'
'Why not?'
'He feels they should be left alone. If they've forgotten, he wouldn't want them to be reminded.'
'Well, that's why they were adopted in the first place, wasn't it?' she exclaimed. She sounded again simply impatient. 'Their mother dying in that horrible way – you wouldn't want them reminded of it – why would you want to?'
It was darker now, but since she in her turn had leaned forward he had the sense of them as bound closer in the circle of light. If he had wanted to, he could have stretched out and touched the soft pad of her lips. 'I don't think she's forgotten,' he said, quietly as if working it out for himself, in the husky intimate whisper a man uses to the woman by his side before sleeping. 'I think she came back with her sister, and they've been looking for the man who killed their mother.' The outside bell rang and rang again. With a startled movement, furtively small as if between conspirators, he motioned her to ignore it. 'Unless you know how, though, it's not easy to trace someone in a city. That's the job I do – even without Father Hurtle's help, I could find the place they were sent to be adopted. But for them, that kind of thing would be hard. I'm sure they haven't found the man – but, by this time, he'll know that they're looking.'
The bell rang again and her eyes widened staring at him, and then she had stood up, out of the light, and was walking to the door.
When she came back, she put on the overhead light and all the shadows retreated to the corners. Blinking, it took him a moment to recognise the woman she had brought into the room.
'There doesn't seem to be anybody else to care,' Mrs Beddawes said.
She was in her middle forties and her figure was good, but there was something that made it seem as if she would have been happy under other circumstances to let it go a little. Inside her there was a comfortable woman, a mothering woman, constrained. When he had interviewed her, he had been surprised by her lack of bitterness. It was true she and her husband were separated, but she still had an interest in the business which she had helped him to build up; and now, just as much as the partner Foley, was left looking at an emptied bank account and a list of creditors.
She said, staring in front of the desk, 'I know where he is. She's left him.'
'Mrs Foley you mean?'
'She didn't stay with him. I never expected her to. And now he's on his own.'
Belatedly, he got to his feet. 'I'm not involved any more. Your lawyer's taken me off the case.'
'There doesn't seem to be anybody else to care,' she said again. She looked at Irene as if in search of support. 'He's there on his own.'
'How did you find him?' Murray asked.
'He phoned me.' And looked again at the other woman as if for understanding of the obvious, what else would he do? 'From a hotel – in Oliver Street. I know where it is, I can take you there. They took a room and stayed there under a different name.' She put a hand to her cheek in distress. 'I can't remember. He told me, but – The room number is 12a. Room 12a. They were pretending to be husband and wife, only now she's left. He wanted me to come.'
Automatically, Murray had noted on the scratch pad the name of the street and the number of the room. Round the two he added a box of broken lines. 'Are you afraid of him?'
'No.'
'What is it then? Do you want me to make him tell what he's done with the money?'
'It isn't anything like that.'
As she struggled to find words to explain, she turned again to share what she felt with the other woman. Murray was struck by a curious blank intentness with which Irene was watching; it didn't seem as if she was conscious of the appeal which was being made to her, but he could not tell what she was thinking. Like a stone in a stream rubbed and fretted smooth, the human face had learned from the enmity of its kind to hide what it felt.
'He may kill himself,' Mrs Beddowes said. 'I don't want to go by myself into an hotel room and find him dead.'
'You don't give me any choice,' Murray said, looking not at her but Irene.
'I'll pay you.' She sounded timid, as if the relief was so great she could not believe he was not about to change his mind.
'We have that other piece of business still to finish,' he said to Irene.
To his astonishment, she came forward and put her arm through Mrs Beddowes'.
'That's all right. I'll come too. Perhaps I can help.'
There was a grass strip alongside the pavement and he crossed that to get to the access road for the terrace. The first house showed a brass plate incised with the name of four different businesses, next door was a doctor's, and then came two hotels side by side. The second was the one she had pointed out to him.
At first, he thought the front door was locked. The upper panel of tinted glass gave no view of what lay inside. As he looked for some kind of bell, he tried the handle again, twisting it the wrong way this time. The door opened on to an unexpectedly spacious hall. At the entry there was a letter board, empty except for a bill filed under M-N. No one was in the hall or behind the reception desk. There was a lot of dark varnished wood and he caught a lingering smell of cat. In the registration ledger open on the desk, he found that the last entry was for room 12a; it had been taken the day before by a James Belford. That was close enough; giving a false name, for most people it was going to be Smith or one that resembled the sound of their own.
He climbed the stairs quietly and fast. The place was so deserted there was the uneasy sense of violating a private house. There was nothing public about the feel of the dark hall or the stairway. He went up as alertly as a burglar.
On the upper floor, he was faced by a door labelled Residents Lounge and glimpsed drawn curtains and chairs like islands in the dim light. To his right there was a short flight of steps and what looked like a dining room. He turned the other way along the corridor and almost at the end of it found 12a.
; At his knock, a voice called, 'Myra?'
Murray knocked again, waited, called back, 'Mr Beddowes? I'm here from your wife.'
His voice echoed in the corridor; he looked both ways, but no one appeared. All the doors stayed shut. He rapped with his knuckles and listened. Room 12a gave nothing away. He had a sudden idea the man he had been paid to find was standing just the other side of the closed door, holding his breath he was so afraid of being heard.
'Mr Beddowes?' He put his mouth close against the panel. It was as if he was whispering into the man's ear. 'Your wife is outside. She came, just like you asked her. But she wants you to see me first.'
'Why?'
'I don't know why she doesn't want to talk to you first, Mr Beddowes. You're the one who must know that.'
There was a long pause, so long he was getting ready to try again, when the man inside asked, 'Who are you? I don't know your voice.'
'My name is Murray Wilson. I'm an enquiry agent. Your wife came to me.'
'I don't believe you. Jimmy sent you. Is he out there with you?'
Murray tried to remember what the partner Foley's first name was.
'Are you there? What are you doing?' The voice rose in fright.
'I don't have anything to do with Jimmy whoever-he-is. Your wife came to see me. You phoned her because you needed help.' He kept it flowing with the insistent reasonableness you would use on a child. 'That's how I knew you were here. How else would I know? You do need help, don't you?'
The silence from behind the door ached. Barely loud enough, so that he had to strain to hear, the voice said, 'Jimmy's threatened to hurt me.'
Quickly, Murray worked out that the room must face out to the front. 'Forget Jimmy. Believe your own eyes. Go and look out of the window. You know your wife's car? It's parked across the street.'
It was back then to waiting. Even if he saw his wife standing by the car, Beddowes might still decide it was all a trap. Her concern for him, the adulterer and thief, was a woman's miracle.
With a tinny rattle, the lock released and, under nothing more than the impetus of its own weight, the door eased back. Murray stepped inside and pushed it shut again with a hand behind him.
A pale man in pyjamas slumped on the near side of the bed. His head was bowed and he peered up without raising it, giving him the look of a turtle trying to retract into its shell. Thick black hair covered his forearms and showed between the unbuttoned jacket.
'Go and tell her to come up.'
'I can ask her. But you'll have to answer some questions first.' 'I want to see Myra.'
'What about Mrs Foley? Where is she?'
'In hell.' The hair on Murray's neck bristled. 'In hell, for all I care.'
'She didn't come here with you yesterday?'
'She was never with me. I have to speak to Myra. I don't want to be on my own.'
The tone of self-pity set Murray's teeth on edge. 'Before you came here – where were you staying? In another hotel? Is Mrs Foley still there?'
'I don't know where she is.' He pulled the halves of the pyjama jacket together and held them shut. 'When I woke up, she'd gone.'
'With the money?'
'Money?'
He looked bemused.
'The money that belongs to Jimmy Foley. Jimmy has the funny idea he needs it to pay the creditors – otherwise he goes bankrupt.'
'Myra didn't talk to you about money,' Beddowes said with an absolute conviction. 'You're working for Jimmy.' He didn't move, but the cords on his neck came out again and this time it looked as if he might get his head to disappear.
'All right,' Murray said. 'Let's talk about your wife's share of the money. Did it go with Mrs Foley when she went?'
Beddowes slid along the edge of the bed and fished up his jacket from a tangle of trousers, shirt and soiled underpants. He held out his wallet. At the invitation, Murray moved away from his position by the door and took it from him with no more than the caution he kept as a habit from so many confrontations. There was a ten-pound note and a five folded in half and in another compartment four singles.
'She left me my credit cards,' Beddowes said. 'So I won't starve.'
Murray flicked the wallet so that it fell on the bed. At the movement, Beddowes ducking as if expecting a blow.
'There are a few people I'd feel sorry for before I got round to you.'
Behind him, there came a light insistent tapping. A woman's voice called from the corridor.
'It's Myra,' Beddowes said. His face sweetened with relief; the cavalry had come over the hill. Looking at him, Murray shook his head in disbelief.
'I saw him at the window,' Mrs Beddowes said. 'Let me talk to him.'
He closed the door on the happy couple and walked slowly back along the corridor. As he went, he thought about what he would say to Irene, but when he crossed the street her car, which was parked behind Mrs Beddowes', was empty. He could not understand it; almost at a run he went to the corner and then walked back, looking into the shops as he passed.
The hall of the hotel was still deserted. He circled impatiently until he found a public phone tucked in the darkest corner under the stair.
'Mr Bittern's still at dinner. We have guests.' It was a querulous female version of the lawyer's voice; there was even the familiar bleat on the vowels– 'gu-ests'. 'He doesn't take business calls in the evening.'
Persuaded to come to the phone, Bittern sounded unwelcoming.
'I have something Foley might be interested in hearing.'
'You're off that enquiry. I made that perfectly clear.'
'I think he might want me back on it again.'
'I would regard that as irregular, highly irregular.’ The successive 'eh's' lengthened like a sheep giving warning.
'I know where to find Beddowes.'
'…Oh, yes?'
'My information is that Mrs Foley has left him and taken the money with her.'
'That would be unfortunate.'
'I can find out from Beddowes where they were a couple of days ago. That should give me a chance of finding her.'
'Why should Mr Beddowes co-operate?'
'What else can he do? I'll tell him if we get the money back the business can still be saved for all of them. He's afraid of Foley – but then he doesn't know how often the husband takes it out on his wife instead of the other man. I can persuade him.'
Bittern was non-committal, but climbing the stair he felt as if he might be back in business. He decided to give Mrs Beddowcs more time with her husband and pushed open the door of the Residents Lounge from which he could keep an eye on the landing. It was dark inside and he felt on the wall for a light switch. He touched only the rippled surface of a heavy paper, but instantly a standard lamp beside one of the chairs came on.
'Didn't you hear me call?' Irene asked. 'I watched you going down the stairs.'
'Why are you sitting in the dark?'
The question came out too emphatically. There was something about the suddenness of her appearance which he felt as uncanny. More startled than he wanted her to see, he took a deep breath and tried to slow the beating of his heart.
'I was thinking,' she said. She was curled with her legs under her into a corner of the big chair, and he noticed how its leather had dried and begun to split. 'Malcolm's told me you'd killed a man once.'
He shook his head.
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'In America.'
He sat opposite her. An ashtray was balanced on the arm and he put it on the floor beside the chair. The mash of stubs in it surprised him; it was hard to imagine a Resident venturing in here where the chairs kept their distance in the underwater light. Perhaps it had been Beddowes, tired of lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, who had sat here smoking last night. Whatever happens, I did him a favour, Murray thought; but it was like a verdict on someone he did not expect to see again.
'You know I think Frances Fernie is your sister,' he said.
'And do you agree with your friend Peerse? Do you think she was the on
e who killed John Merchant?' She spoke quietly, sounding almost indifferent as if the problem was his and he had asked for help. 'Does that make her Jill? What does it make me?'
'You're not like her.' She was his sister-in-law, who sat with them on Sundays at Mother's table. 'Your lives are different.'
'She was a prostitute in London, did you know that? After the woman died –'
'The woman?'
'The one she stayed with.'
'The woman who adopted you both?'
'Yes. After that, she met this man and lived with him in London. It was all right at first, but then he asked her to oblige his friends. She told me that's how he described it. And she did – if she'd obliged them any more they'd have had to invent another opening... That's what she said to me.'
He got up and came close to her, standing over her. She stared up, waiting, but he could find nothing to say. What he felt was irrational – that she felt she could say anything to him, as if he was without sexuality. I'm a man! But his rage was too confused and humiliating.
'That was the life she was leading,' Irene said. He watched the movement of her lips. 'But I was a secretary. I don't mean in the typing pool. I was a private secretary to one of the directors. I had started with nothing but I got qualifications. I taught myself how to talk and to dress. Nobody did anything for me.'
'But you knew about Frances.'
'Oh. Oh, no.' She sounded eager to make him understand. 'One day in my lunch hour, I saw this girl and recognised her. It was just by accident.'
On a station platform, in a restaurant, people could meet by chance. It was possible to believe her; and that, given the smallest change of circumstance, she and her sister might not have met again.
'I married Malcolm and he brought me here. She came after us. I wasn't to know she was looking for this man who killed her mother.'
'Your mother too.'
'The detective,' she said. 'Oh, you're the one who knows.'
Elsewhere, like a signal from the hotel's hidden life, a door banged shut. Startled, he glanced towards the landing, but no one appeared. Beddowes presumably was still being comforted by the wife who had been given some reason to separate from him even before he stole from her. The look on his face when he had heard her voice, It's Myra. Myra.
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