“Mrs. Bainbridge?” he said in amazement. “Is it truly you?”
Dickie Trower was a slight, slender man. He had sandy hair that he normally combed back and slicked down with Morgan’s, emphasizing the beginnings of his widow’s peak, but it was currently pomade-free and unruly. He was wearing clean but shabby brown prison garb, and had some two days’ stubble sprouting from his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept for the same amount of time. A whiff of carbolic soap floated through the mesh, and she forced herself not to crinkle her nose at it.
“Hello, Mister Trower,” she said gently. “How are you holding up?”
“How am I—you know why they put me here, don’t you?”
“They said that you killed a woman. Miss La Salle.”
“I didn’t!” he cried, his face contorting in pain. “I never even met her. I got the letter from your office saying the date was off.”
“We never sent it,” said Gwen.
“Then how—?” he asked, and he began pacing furiously back and forth. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know,” said Gwen. “What can I do to help? Have you a solicitor yet?”
“Mum and Dad are searching for one,” he said. “But they’re expensive. And there’s no bail. I’ve gone from a no-name accountant to Public Enemy Number One. Me!”
“I’m so sorry,” said Gwen.
“Why did you come, Mrs. Bainbridge?” he asked abruptly. “You’re the first person to come see me here. My friends—they aren’t as good friends as I would have hoped.”
“We just—” she began, then corrected herself. “I felt that I was somehow responsible for getting you into this situation. We set up the encounter, and someone must have taken advantage of it to kill that poor girl and throw the blame on you.”
“You really think that I’m innocent,” he said in wonder.
“I know that you are,” she said.
“How? How could you possibly be certain?” he asked, almost laughing in disbelief. “You don’t really know me, or what I’m capable of doing.”
“I have very good instincts about people,” she said, smiling for the first time. “I am almost never wrong.”
“I need you on the jury,” he said. “I need twelve of you.”
“Good women and true,” she said. “Please, what else can I do? I would like to help in some fashion.”
“Look, there is one thing—no, it’s too much to ask.”
“Ask,” she said.
“It’s Herbert. I’m worried about him.”
“Herbert?”
He looked embarrassed.
“Herbert is my goldfish,” he said. “I had just finished feeding him when the police burst through my door. It’s been two days. I was wondering if you could visit him. You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Dowd, she’s the landlady.”
“Why did you name him Herbert?”
“He—well, when I got him, he looked like a Herbert, so Herbert he was.”
“I will visit Herbert immediately,” promised Gwen. “How will Mrs. Dowd know that I have your permission?”
“I’ll write you a note,” he said.
There was a banging on the door behind him.
“Time’s up!” shouted the guard on that side.
“That was never fifteen minutes!” protested Gwen.
Trower shook his head vehemently.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Bainbridge.”
“Good-bye, Mister Trower,” she said. “I will come visit you again.”
He turned to leave, then turned back.
“Tell me, Mrs. Bainbridge,” he said hesitantly, then he stopped.
“Yes?” she encouraged him.
“The girl. Miss La Salle. Was she pretty?”
“Very pretty, Mister Trower,” she said softly. “I think you would have liked her.”
“I can’t help thinking about it,” he said, shaking his head in sorrow. “What if she had been the one for me? What if she had been my one real chance for happiness? And now she’s gone forever, and I’m here.”
“You won’t be here for long,” she said.
“You can’t possibly know that,” he said. “Good-bye, Mrs. Bainbridge.”
He turned and walked through the door.
The door on her side opened behind her, and the guard beckoned to her. She walked out and collected her handbag. As she did, another guard came in, holding a folded scrap of paper.
“He wanted you to have this,” he said. “Bending the rules, but he seems a decent chap, considering what he’s done.”
She took it from him and read it quickly. It was a note to his landlady, along with his address. She folded it again and placed it inside her handbag, then pulled out her bus map.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, unfolding it. “Which tram does one take to get to Croydon from here?”
CHAPTER 5
The Bar-Let echoed extra loudly without Gwen in the office. The silence when Iris had completed the letter was even more deafening.
She sorted the morning mail into two small stacks—one for clients’ responses, one for bills and business. She picked up her letter opener, then on a whim put it down and pulled out a folding knife from her handbag. She flicked it open with practiced ease and began slicing open the envelopes.
When she had finished, she balanced the knife point-down on the tip of her finger and eyed a spot just above the light switch by the doorway. She wondered if she could hit it from where she sat. She gripped the knife by the handle and drew back her arm.
Then she remembered the security deposit, and gently folded the blade back into the handle and put the knife back in her handbag.
A dart-board, she thought. We could put it behind the door, out of sight of the clientele—
Footsteps from below, ascending the steps, then stopping.
Come up, come up! she prayed. Give me something to do!
They resumed, then stopped again, and this time she heard a man panting for breath.
Well, it won’t be someone in shape, she thought. Certainly not the return of the dustman. What was his name again? The man with no—Manners! That was it, Alfred Manners. She was disappointed at his failure to apply for their services. He was a nice-looking chappie under all of it. She was sure that she could find him—
The footsteps made it up to the landing just below, then paused again.
You’re almost there, thought Iris encouragingly. One more flight to happiness!
The steps resumed and reached her hallway. Iris stood between the two desks, her hand folded primly in front of her, prepared to greet whomever Fate was about to provide.
Fate lurched through the door in the form of a corpulent man in his early forties, his hand dabbing at his face with a handkerchief that had been in use far too long without laundering.
“Hello,” he gasped, still panting. “Need a moment.”
“Please, sit,” she said, indicating the chair. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“God, yes,” he said, plopping onto the chair which held bravely under the onslaught.
She filled a glass from a pitcher on the windowsill and brought it to him. He took it and gulped half of it down gratefully.
“How do you do?” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Iris Sparks. Welcome to the Right Sort Marriage Bureau.”
“Carter,” he said, switching his glass to his left hand and shaking hers with his right. “Phillip Carter.”
The hand was still profusely sweaty. She kept her expression as bland as possible while he continued to shake hers, then extricated herself and sat behind her desk.
“I don’t have an appointment, sorry,” he said.
“We can squeeze you in,” said Iris, taking her handkerchief and wiping her hand discreetly under the desk. “Let’s get you settled, then we’ll go over the preliminaries.”
“I think I’ve recovered,” he said. “Lord, I was not meant for climbing.”
“Th
en we’ll eliminate all of our mountaineering enthusiasts from consideration immediately,” said Iris.
“Have you any of those?” he asked with interest.
“Two that I can think of offhand,” she said.
“My, my,” he said. “Maybe I should consider them. Opposites attracting, and all of that. I could be their mountain.”
“We are a little more specific in our matchmaking process than that,” said Iris.
“How does it work?”
“We conduct an extensive interview—”
“We? Who’s we?” he interjected. “There’s only you.”
He was looking at her closely. A small alarm went off in her head.
“My partner stepped out for a few minutes,” she said, smiling. “She should be returning in a moment.”
She slid her bag closer to her chair with one foot, calculating how quickly she could retrieve her knife, flick it open, and throw. Less time than it would take for him to cross the space between them?
Easy, Sparks, she admonished herself. Don’t make assumptions without evidence.
But what if the man who killed Tillie La Salle wanted to come for her next? said the part of her brain that maintained the alarm.
“Now,” she said, starting her routine while keeping a wary eye on the potential client/potential murderer, “we are a marriage bureau, one of two licensed to arrange meetings—”
“They have licenses for that?”
“Every commercial establishment must be licensed,” she said. “If I may continue—”
“What sort of training do you have to have?” he asked. “I mean, are there courses of study? Professional certifications and that sort of thing?”
“When there are, I expect that we will be the ones teaching the courses and certifying the students,” said Iris, picking up her pad and pencil. “Time for me to ask the questions. We conduct a thorough screening of our clientele, as you are about to discover. Shall we proceed?”
“Well—”
“Good,” she chirped. “First, your name.”
“I gave you that already.”
“You must forgive me,” said Iris. “I am a creature of habit. Downright obsessive in my routines. Name?”
“Phillip Carter.”
“Is that with one l or two?”
“Two,” he said, hesitating for a moment and gulping down some more water.
She looked at the hand holding the glass.
Right, she thought.
“Phillip, two l’s, Carter,” she repeated, jotting it down. “Occupation?”
“File clerk.”
“With what firm?”
“Bourne and Dudley, on Montague Street.”
She sighed and placed the pad and pencil on her desk.
“Mister Carter,” she said, folding her hands and looking at him sternly. “You have given me three lies on the first three questions I have asked. However will we be able to complete this interview, much less place you with an eligible woman, with this behaviour?”
“What do you mean, lies?” he asked indignantly.
“Your name, your occupation, and place of employment,” she said, ticking them off on the fingers of her left hand. “Every single one of them a lie. Not to mention the ultimate deception of coming in here under false pretenses.”
“Which would be—?”
“You’re already married,” said Iris.
“Says who?” he demanded.
“Says the mark on the knuckle of your ring finger,” she said. “You scraped it when you removed your wedding band.”
“I’m divorced,” he said. “It wasn’t easy to get it off.”
“It will be very easy for your wife when she finds out that you’re here,” said Iris. “That scrape is fresh. And it seems to me that I know your face, but a thinner version of it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “Maybe I know a younger, prettier version of yours as well.”
“Impossible,” declared Iris. “I get prettier every day.”
“But not younger.”
“I’m working on that one,” she said. “Who are you? Wait a tick—”
A memory of a scrum of faces under cheap fedoras, garishly lit by flashbulbs going off like ack-ack guns, rude questions shouted by several at once, pads out—
“You’re a reporter,” she said, her heart sinking.
He bared his teeth and pulled a pad and pencil of his own from inside his jacket pocket.
“Well done, girlie,” he said. “Gareth Pontefract’s the name. The real name.”
“You’re with the Daily Mirror,” she said. “I remember you. Not fondly.”
“Yeah, I remember you, too,” he said. “Hilarious to see you running a marriage bureau. You ruined more than your share.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Come to talk about Tillie and Dickie, London’s Tragic Sweethearts,” he said. “How you set her up for her last date on Earth. I’d say his as well, but maybe he’ll have a few dances in the yard once he’s out of solitary.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“How did you select him? Do you keep the stabbers separate from the stranglers? Do you rank the girls based on whether they can fight back or not? I hear he’s a wee lad. He must have needed the advantage.”
“Get out.”
“Not until you answer my questions.”
“You are now in my business office without my permission,” she said. “Sounds like trespassing to me.”
He stood and positioned his bulk between the two desks, blocking her exit.
“What’re you gonna do about it, girlie?” he leered. “Be nice to me, and I’ll make you look good in the story. Shock and horror, innocently used by depraved murderer, all that guff. I can make you or break you.”
She looked him steadily in the eye and contemplated her options: shoes on or off? Off, she decided, silently easing her feet out of them.
She rose, then sat on the corner of her desk, crossing her legs. He looked at them.
“Now, Mister Pontefract,” she said demurely. “We don’t want to be threatening helpless, solitary women, do we? I’m sure that’s not how your mother raised you.”
“I don’t leave until I get my story,” he said. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“There are several things I can do,” she said. “Let’s try this one.”
She swung her legs over the front of the desk, planted her hands on either side, and propelled herself off the desk onto the floor behind him. As he turned, she caught his right wrist with her right hand, placed her left palm firmly above his elbow, then pulled back and twisted the arm.
He gave a shout of anguish, his pencil clattering to the floor. She continued to apply the pressure, and he dropped to his knees to ease the pain.
“This is your writing arm,” she observed. “I suppose that it would be difficult for you to do your job if it was broken.”
She released his elbow and quickly grabbed his fingers and bent them back.
“Do you type your stories yourself?” she asked. “Or do you get a nice little girlie to do that for you? One who needs the job so badly that she won’t complain if you subject her to your gross affections once in a while?”
“You’re a lunatic!” he shouted, than cried out as she bent the fingers back some more.
“I really don’t respond well to criticism,” she sighed. “It’s a fault, I know, and I fully intend to work on it. But until then, Mister Pontefract, I must ask you to leave. Take your pencil and pad, by all means. Mind the door! Here we are at the steps. You should find going down them a good deal easier than coming up. Or I could simply throw you down the stairwell. Your choice—which shall it be?”
“You’re gonna love my story,” he growled.
“I vaguely recall that your prose style lacked a certain elegance,” she said. “But perhaps you’ve improved. Shall I send you my comments tomorrow?”
She released him. He adjusted his jack
et, then stormed down the stairs.
She listened until she heard the front door open and close, then sat on the top steps and stared out the window opposite.
“Damn,” she said. “Damn, damn, damn.”
* * *
Trams were her new favourite thing, decided Gwen from the top deck of the 42 as it trundled her further southwards to Croydon. This time of day, there were fewer passengers and stops to interrupt her reveries, so Ronald Colman was making considerable progress in his advances. His perfect, pencil-thin mustache grazed her neck as his lips pressed against the nape. It tickled a little. She tried to get her own Ronnie to grow one once, but he insisted on waxing it, which looked and felt ridiculous, so she made him shave it off.
You’re a bully, he said teasingly as she stood in the bathroom doorway, watching him lather his upper lip.
Tears again.
Idiot, she thought, dabbing at them. When will this stop?
They reached the Combe Road Terminus, and a helpful bobby pointed her towards the street where a goldfish awaited her mission of mercy.
Croydon had been hit harder in the Blitz than most neighbourhoods. They had the airport and the factories, and a fair number of errant bombs and rockets had plunked down in the commercial and residential sections. Entire blocks had been reduced to rubble and broken beams; the rowhouses dotted with burnt-out wreckages amidst the intact, like a prize-fighter with missing teeth.
Dickie Trower’s street, on the other hand, was untouched, as if God had decided to keep one example of a British commuter neighbourhood absolutely pristine. Victory Gardens grew in front of the semi-detached houses, tomatoes ripening on the vines, marrows lurking menacingly under their leaves like swollen, green sharks. Every fifth house, a white waste bin stood where food scraps could be saved for feeding pigs. A pair of twin girls, too young for school, chased a rabbit around a wire-enclosed pen while another rabbit watched nervously from the top of a wooden ramp leading to a small hutch. Gwen stopped and watched them for a moment, wondering what it was like to raise girls. Just as noisy as boys, if these were any to go by.
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