He sat down glumly to eat.
Chapter 7. Discord
But he jumped up with excitement when the doorbell rang, and within a few minutes, he was back, all bubbly with enthusiasm.
“Guess what? That was the milkman, Henrietta,” he said, searching to make eye contact. But the wife never looked up from her breakfast.
“That’s good, Alfie,” she answered dully.
“He has news about the murder,” he said a little less enthusiastically. One look at her, and he already knew what she was going to say.
“I hope we won’t be talking about murders at the table. You know I don’t like hearing about such things so early in the morning.”
“I know, dear. I apologize.”
Well, there wasn’t much he could discuss with her, was there? Already, when he came home with the daily newspaper—whenever he could afford to buy one—he read the news to himself, keeping a poker face when something interesting came up like mysteries and cases that needed to be solved so that Henrietta wouldn’t criticize him or laugh at him contemptuously.
But this? This was exciting. This was murder on his own turf, in his own neighborhood. He wanted to talk about it. He wanted to dissect it and analyze it. He looked at her bitterly. Where was the woman he had married?
Suddenly, Alfred needed some air. He got up from the table and looked at his wife. He was going to tell her that he needed to go for a walk. But she never looked up from her food. She continued staring at it blankly and he noticed that she hadn’t eaten any of it. He was going to make a comment. But he knew it would be pointless. Nothing he did or said would change his wife’s attitude to life. So, instead, he shrugged and left the room.
Chapter 8. Front Page
Alfred was pleased to see that the snow had finally stopped falling. It never ceased to amaze him—after stepping out of his quiet home—how noisy and turbulent the bustling street in front of his house really was.
Snow or no snow, the wind was blowing down the street like crazy, making Alfred shiver, and he pulled up the zipper of his winter jacket as far as it would go. People, and cars, and buses, and taxis, crowded Ember Street at an hour when everyone was rushing to work.
Walking carefully on the icy pavement scattered with salt, his eyes searched for the young man who sold the Morning and Evening Gazette. In his pocket, he felt a few quarters jangle, and his spirit lifted when he finally spotted the burgundy Newsboy Cap the young man usually wore, across the street, at the entrance of the park.
Alfred loved to read, but Henrietta disapproved of his taste in literature—which tended toward adventure books and murder mysteries—so, bringing home the type of books that he enjoyed was usually a sketchy proposition. The paper, though, was so reputable, that there was nothing much that she could say. Every respectable man read the paper.
He felt guilty, though. He thirsted for some cultural nourishment, but he was about to spend a valuable dollar on the newspaper that he knew he shouldn’t. A dollar bought a loaf of bread, or a carton of milk, or a handful of fruits or vegetables. But his mind needed to be fed. He needed to read something interesting, something that he hadn’t already read a dozen times before.
He signaled to the paperboy who—upon seeing Alfred wave—sprinted across the busy street, zigzagging among the speeding cars and the honking taxis, running the risk of getting run over.
“It’s my last one, sir,” he said, out of breath. “Look.” And he extended his arm and Alfred snatched up the paper hungrily.
“Any news about the murder?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Front page. Check it out.”
Transaction complete, he waved a cheerful bye to the young man and he turned back toward the house, all feelings of guilt at the forbidden purchase, forgotten.
The plan was to tiptoe upstairs to one of the empty rooms that he called his “home office” and sit down in quiet joy to read the paper cover to cover. He could already savor the pleasure and the anticipation. But as soon as he was about to turn the handle on the front door, it opened by itself, and there he saw, to his dismay, the angry face of his wife, dripping with disapproval.
“May I ask what you were doing out there, Alfie?” she asked with her hands on her hips. “You must come in right away. You'll catch your death in this weather. Don’t I have enough work on my hands as it is already? Will I also have to nurse you as well as do everything else around here all by myself?”
“I went out to get the paper, my dear. That’s all,” he said sullenly. “That’s all.”
Chapter 9. Thoughts About Murder
Henrietta stared angrily at her husband. She hated seeing him so cheerfully sitting in the expensive leather armchair while all she had in front of the fire to sit on was that uncomfortable hard-backed chair. She had nothing else to do, but she had no plans to sit close to him and watch him have fun. She remembered last night’s cries of murder and flexed her hands. At what point of despair did a human being feel pushed far enough to commit murder?
She shook her head. She might at times hate her husband, but murder was such an extreme solution. She would never. Ever. But what if she could get away with it? Scott free?
She watched him read for a while, frowning, leaning against the kitchen door frame with her arms crossed in front of her. Then she thought about how nice it would be if someone answered her ads for renting out one or two of the empty rooms upstairs and have some extra money. She would spend it all on herself, to punish him. After all, it was her idea. It would have to be her money. The resentment built up inside her like poison. She was tired of being the one making the sacrifices when he cavalierly threw away a whole dollar on a useless newspaper.
She would teach him a lesson. He would see.
At that, she smiled to herself and picked up her needlepoint. Then, still smiling, she sat next to her husband on her uncomfortable hard-backed chair and planned for the future. He would see.
Chapter 10. Charlie Fox
After a while, Henrietta couldn’t take it any longer. Alfred hadn’t said a word all night, and—in all fairness—she had found nothing to say either. She had to face it. Her existence had become pointless. She was depressed half of the time, and uninterested in life the other. It didn’t even seem like life was worth living.
Exhausted from not having had anything much to do all day, she mumbled a disinterested good night to her husband and painstakingly climbed the stairs to the bedroom. She washed, and brushed, and got ready for bed. She went to the dresser to take her wedding ring off, and on a lark, carefully opened her jewelry chest. She inhaled violently. Another piece was missing. How dare he! They had agreed a long time ago that she would never have to pawn or sell her jewelry, those precious pieces that she had inherited from her mother and her grandmother. And after the last time, he had sworn that he would never do it again. How she hated him for that.
She was surrounded by snakes. Even that young fellow that often came around, that Charlie Fox, had stolen from them. She was quite sure that it was him. Because it was always after his visits that she had noticed little things missing here and there: her husband’s old-fashioned gold watch, a twisted gold tiepin, a couple of small silver pieces from the living room. Oh, the rat, he probably thought that she and Alfred were too old to notice. She had wanted to unmask him, but her husband was fond of him and hadn’t noticed the thefts. As much as she hated Alfred sometimes, she was sorry for the old fool who allowed himself to be bamboozled like that. Let peace be, she would think and then say nothing.
But her husband stealing her things to pawn them, so that he could buy his precious papers or a beer at the corner bar with that Oscar, that was too much.
She marched down the stairs furiously, determined to give him a piece of her mind. She thought about the years of mortification. What point was there in having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting woman all her life, if it had only led to this utter, degrading poverty and wretchedness?
Her slippers clop-clopped do
wn the stairs, the anger building up inside her. And as she was about to turn into the room in which her husband sat gloating over his newspaper, there suddenly came to the front door, the sound of an ominous and deeply disturbing double knock.
Chapter 11. The Stranger At The Door
Henrietta froze in her tracks as if she had developed roots. She stared at the front door and listened, hoping that she had heard wrong, her heart thumping like a wild thing in her chest. Who could be knocking at this time of the night? And in this weather?
The curtains covered the windows in the living room, protecting them from the outside world—a cocoon of safety in the middle of the universe—but her head turned instinctively to the right, where she saw through the hallway windows the menacing darkness pierced occasionally by violent gusts of snow. She knew that the wind was howling in turmoil even if she could barely hear it. She knew that it was whistling through the trees and bushes in the park, and her heart went out to the poor homeless people who called it home.
But her anger toward her husband was forgotten in the confusion of that knock followed by such deep silence.
Just when she was about to decide that she had made a mistake and that there had been no such thing as a knock, it came again. A loud, disturbing, aggressive double knock.
Her eyes flew to where her husband sat. He had put the newspaper down, looking as disconcerted as she felt.
There could be nothing good in that knock, and they couldn’t pretend any longer that it hadn’t happened. Henrietta’s mind raced. It could be a homeless person or a beggar, or someone lost. But why would they have singled out her home? It was true that the strangest people came at the most bizarre hours—if the front light was kept on—and came moaning their troubles or threatening for money.
But what if it was a friend or a relative? She shook her head. Definitely not. A friend or a neighbor in trouble would have called first. Celia, Alfred’s daughter, would have called first. She shook her head again. A friend or a relative would have never shown up unannounced. That was not polite.
So, a stranger, then.
She wished that Alfred hadn’t turned on the front light when she went upstairs. He usually didn’t, and she wasn’t quite sure why he had mentioned to her after that awkward good night that he felt the need to turn that outside light on, tonight of all nights.
She shuffled toward the hallway and approached the living room. She wished Alfred had jumped up protectively and had gone to open the door himself. But he hadn’t budged. He sat there, bug-eyed and startled, and he stared at her, his precious newspaper still in his lap.
The thought that her Alfred could be a coward suddenly dawned on her, and quickly the idea was added to the list of gripes that she harbored against him. What was he hoping for? That she would open the door herself, even though it wasn’t safe for her to do so, even though he was so much closer to the door, even though it should have been his duty to protect her?
“Didn't you hear a knock?” he asked petulantly.
Without answering him, she approached the front door cautiously, and shaking with foreboding, she put her hand on the handle and slowly opened the front door.
The cold assaulted her first and surprised her. Snowflakes whirled and whistled about and flew into the warm room at her feet. She stepped back and looked up at the stranger, standing on the top of the front steps which led up to the door. A tall, slender, middle-aged man dressed in a heavy winter coat and an old-fashioned fur hat. He smiled at her uncertainly and she smiled back.
“Good evening. It’s been said that you have rooms to let. Is it true?” He continued smiling as he asked, and there was something sharp and unpleasant in his unsure, hesitant voice.
“Yes, sir,” she answered bravely, swallowing hard. She stole a quick glance at her husband behind her, still sitting glued to his leather armchair, being his useless self. She obviously wasn’t going to get any help from him, so she looked back at the stranger and nodded. She had put ads in the newspaper, and she had even put up flyers in the market and the pharmacy, but nobody had ever replied to them. So, it was a Godsend, and for a second, all her troubles vanished from her soul, and she gave the stranger a happy smile.
Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger walked past her, and so into the living room.
Chapter 12. A New Lodger?
The stranger held on to his narrow brown leather bag as he stepped into #9 Ember Street. The inside was markedly different from what he had expected—an unkempt, probably not too clean, home—as this was the most impoverished and run-down part of the town. He had stepped over drunks and circled around the homeless to get here. He had seen the roads full of potholes, streetlamps crooked, sagging electrical cables overhead.
Not that appearance mattered, not this time. The only thing that he really cared about was that he had finally found the house. After all these years, when he was about to give up. But he knew to keep all this to himself. It wouldn’t be a very good idea to let this nice woman know. It was best if she didn’t suspect.
Still, the cleanliness and the good quality of the furniture surprised him pleasantly. He looked around, admiring the cleanliness. He admired cleanliness tremendously, and he decided that it would be quite acceptable to live here while he took care of business.
“I’m looking for some quiet rooms,” he told her, trying not to sound too eager. The lady of the house must not see his impatience. She must not be scared away. “But they must be quiet,” he insisted.
He took a likeness to the lady of the house immediately—so prim and proper—although he couldn’t say the same for the husband. He felt an aversion toward the man right away and knew off the bat that no friendship would develop between them. Not that he minded. He just had to make sure to only deal with her, and everything would work out fine.
Then his sallow face brightened, making an effort to appear friendly. “This is a very nice place,” he said, and he watched the woman smile. He almost chuckled out loud, so excited he was at having found a way into the household, but that wouldn’t have been good, so he just smiled faintly, discreetly. And the woman smiled back.
“Please come in,” she told him, and she stepped back. “You’ll find my rooms quiet. I can promise you that. And just now I have four to rent. The house is empty, save for my husband and myself, sir.”
“That sounds very convenient,” he said. “Four rooms? Well, I’m interested in taking only two rooms, but, still, I should like to see all four of them before I make my choice.”
Chapter 13. Rooms To Rent
Henrietta suddenly realized that she was wearing her pajamas and robe. Her hands went up to her chest and she closed the robe tighter around her body. If the stranger found that too awkward, he didn’t say, but a quick blush spread on her face. She thought about her threadbare robe and her scuffed slippers that had been washed too many times, but the embarrassment was soon forgotten in the excitement of finally having a lodger.
How long she had waited for someone to take those rooms, and how many times she had debated within herself into the night whether it would be safe to do so, or not. But there was nothing to fear. This was a well-dressed man, polite and courteous, who spoke to her with respect and good manners.
How fortunate, how very fortunate it was that her Alfie had turned the outside lights on, shining on the “Rooms to Rent” sign that she had hammered up under them just a few days earlier. But for that circumstance, this gentleman would have passed them by.
“Will you please follow me?” she asked him, turning towards the staircase, quite forgetting in her agitation that the front door was still open. The stranger laughed gently and turned back toward the front door and rather quickly walked toward it to close it shut.
“Oh, thank you, sir,” she exclaimed, feeling like a fool, realizing that she needed to calm down. “I’m sorry you should have had to take the trouble.”
For a moment their eyes met. She stared into the cold gray eyes of the
stranger and almost got lost in them.
“It's not safe to leave a front door open in a neighborhood like this one, not this late at night,” he said, rather sharply. “I hope you’re not in the habit of doing that. It would be too easy for anyone to slip in.”
His words upset Henrietta. Or rather it was the tone in which he said them. The stranger had still spoken courteously, but there had evidently been criticism in them.
“I assure you, sir, I have never left my front door open before,” she answered quickly, blushing again. “You don’t have to worry about that.” And then, she turned and led the way up the steep, narrow staircase.
Chapter 14. The Stranger Follows
At the top of the first flight of stairs, Henrietta turned toward her lodger. “This is where our bedrooms are. Celia, my husband’s daughter sleeps here occasionally. Her bedroom is on this floor as well.”
She quickly walked to the wall and turned the light on. The lovely Victorian chandelier above their heads came on and illumined the sitting-room from where closed doors led to the bedrooms that the family used.
The carpet covering the whole upstairs was a deep blue with an oriental pattern in burgundy and gold, that had been well cared for. Old-fashioned sofas and armchairs with a handful of tossed pillows conveyed a pleasant, well-lived atmosphere. On the fireplace and the random antique side tables, family pictures smiled at them. It was always Henrietta’s sorrow that no pictures of a child of hers would ever be on them. She swallowed hard and pushed away from the eternal disappointment that came upon her at such unexpected times.
The Stranger in the Attic Page 2
