The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Forty-eight. The same as my age,’ Stella snapped.

  Jackie handed Stella the Daily Mirror. Triple Police Killer Freed.

  Jackie stirred a spoonful of sugar into Stella’s tea. ‘Drink.’

  They sipped in silence. Outside the rush hour had got into swing. A double-decker bus inched past; the bright interior sent light along the back wall of the office passing over the staff rota and blue and green box files.

  ‘Since when did life not mean life?’ Stella echoed Beverly’s words. She watched undissolved sugar granules spin around on the surface of her tea.

  ‘It’s inhumane to keep a person in prison indefinitely,’ Jack declared.

  ‘Not now, Jack.’ Jackie shook her head, but Stella gave no impression she had heard. She drank the sweetened tea.

  The office door flew wide and crashed against a filing cabinet. A man stood on the threshold, brandishing a weapon. With the swiftness of bodyguards, Jack and Jackie stepped in front of Stella. Stanley let off a volley of shrill barking.

  ‘I’ll call the police!’ Stella jumped up. Harry Roberts.

  ‘It is the police!’ Beverly stepped around the man, calm and poised.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Jackie slumped back in her chair. Jack stood down. Stanley got into his bed by the photocopier where he kept up a low grumble.

  The ‘weapon’ was a rolled-up copy of the Sun newspaper. Fury at Cop-killer’s Release. It was Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Cashman.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ He circled the office, waving the paper.

  ‘Yes.’ Stella returned to Suzie’s chair.

  ‘How mad is it to have to say that it’s good Terry isn’t here!’ Cashman exclaimed.

  Jack noticed that Cashman had on the same suit as the previous night at Kew Gardens station. It was crumpled and his chin was shadowed with stubble.

  The office phone was ringing. Beverly answered, ‘Clean Slate fora fresh start, Beverly speaking, how can I help?’ She spoke in a cheery sing-song voice and, frowning with the effort of using her newly acquired customer-service skills, she swept up a pad, Clean Slate branded pen hovering.

  ‘Thank you for informing us.’ Beverly was starchy, her face a mask. She slammed down the receiver and leapt up, punching the air. ‘Yes!’ she roared.

  ‘What?’ Stella and Jackie said together.

  ‘That was the Facilities Manager.’ Beverly recovered her poise. ‘He asked me to pass on a message for Stella Darnell and Jackie Makepeace.’

  ‘That’s us, Bev.’ Jackie was patient.

  ‘He said to say that Clean Slate has won the cleaning contract for Kew Gardens!’

  Chapter Six

  June 1976

  Chrissie had no interest in art or plants. She didn’t want to go to Mr Watson’s house after school. Her dad’s friend was going to teach her how to do ‘botanical illustration’, whatever that was. She wanted to get out of it, but whenever her dad told her and her sister, Michelle, to do something that was that.

  ‘Be nice to them; they haven’t got kids of their own. You’re doing them a big favour. You never know where it could lead,’ he had instructed her.

  Chrissie felt vaguely sorry for the Watsons not having any children, although, since she didn’t know any particularly nice ones, she didn’t want them herself. And she tried not to think about ‘where it might lead’. Did her dad mean she might have to live with Mr and Mrs Watson?

  She arrived punctually at 4.30 p.m. A tall thin lady answered the door. She said she was called Mrs Watson. She was in her late thirties, but to Chrissie seemed very old indeed because her hair was in a tight bun and she had a strict look on her face. She showed Chrissie into a ‘drawing room’ and told her to sit on a settee that had been left in the middle of the floor. She instructed her to eat a slice of cake and gave her a glass of milk. Chrissie hated milk.

  Mrs Watson laughed when Chrissie assumed – given the name – that she was doing her drawing in this room, and said, ‘I have to pop out. George – Mr Watson – is up in his studio. When you’ve finished your tea, take your plate and cup through to the kitchen. Wash your hands. Don’t dawdle and go straight up to him.’

  Mrs Watson had gone before Chrissie could tell her that she never dawdled, not like her sister Michelle who was always late. When she had gone Chrissie got off the settee and, clutching the plate to catch crumbs, wandered around the room munching the cake.

  Lace curtains shrouded three tall windows, including French doors. A side window overlooked Kew Pond. Light from this window cast a sickly subterranean glow over an austere oak tallboy and sideboard on which were arranged silver salvers and bowls. Glass-fronted bookcases entombed leather-bound volumes that, no longer consulted or pored over, were dried and cracked effigies.

  The general sense was of gloom. The room offered no respite from the engulfing heat outside; the inert air was warm and Chrissie prickled with perspiration. She rubbed her aching forehead with the flapping cuff of her school uniform shirt. Lacklustre light was absorbed by the sombre Victorian furnishings: faded tapestry and heavy brocade. Perhaps because it provided the only colour, the girl gravitated to a print of a painting that hung above the marble fireplace.

  It was of a tree with orange flowers. That a tree should have flowers was a new idea to her. Munching her cake – it was dry and she had trouble swallowing it – she peered at branches blossoming with bright petals.

  A clock ticked somewhere. It whirred and struck the quarter to.

  The child couldn’t know that little in the house had altered over a hundred years. Mrs Watson’s family had lived in Kew Villa since Joseph Hooker was Director of the Botanic Gardens on the other side of Kew Green. Perhaps she sensed the weight of ancestors because, although she knew that she was alone, she felt she was being watched.

  Cowed by the sepulchral hush, Chrissie retreated to the settee and washed down the rest of the cake with gulps of warm milk. The tea had been billed as a treat by her mum, who was as doubtful as Chrissie that drawing lessons would give her the social advantage that her dad claimed they would. ‘She’d be better off learning the piano,’ she had hazarded with even less conviction. ‘Where are we going to get a piano from?’ her dad had demanded crossly and then said to Chrissie: ‘George moves in high circles. So could you.’ Chrissie didn’t point out that a circle led round to where you started from, which could make you dizzy.

  In a straight line, Chrissie gingerly made her way along a corridor and down some stone steps. The kitchen was three times the size of the one in her parents’ flat, with a table big enough for ten people. Beyond the sink, which, being short for her age, she could hardly reach, she glimpsed a garden. Wilting ivy fringed the window, the leaves dried and shrivelled.

  Chrissie reached up to the tap and, although she hadn’t been asked to, sluiced the plate and the mug under a torrent of water. She carried on after the crockery was clean because the water, although tepid, was still refreshing. She didn’t feel guilty at wasting water during a drought.

  She slotted the plate and glass into a rack by the sink, every action methodical, because it was a quality that she possessed and because she was staving off meeting the mysterious Mr Watson.

  Treading lightly, she returned to the hall where a thin light filtered through glazed panels in the front door. On her right was the drawing room which was not for drawing. On her left was another door. It was open. Inquisitive, Chrissie went in. She saw a table and high-backed chairs; in the half-light they looked like people sitting upright and well behaved.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Chrissie whisked around. Mrs Watson was at the bottom of the staircase. She had a strange smile that showed all her teeth and her eyes were like gobstoppers.

  ‘I got lost,’ Chrissie said, quick as a flash.

  ‘I see.’ She came towards her. ‘Please go up.’

  The little girl scurried up the staircase. There was a thump. She stopped on the landing and peered through the spindles down
into the hall. Mrs Watson had shut the front door. She had gone. With only mild relief, Chrissie continued up the next flight of stairs.

  A person was coming towards her. Chrissie grabbed the banister. Then she saw that it was a mirror and the person was her reflection.

  Made braver by the knowledge that Mrs Watson had left and unwilling to reach the studio, on the second landing Chrissie crept into a room on her right.

  She was in a bedroom. The bed stretched away and the air smelled of something nice that raised her spirits. Beside the window, shaded by curtains of damask, was a walnut dressing table. It reminded her of the dashboard of her dad’s taxi. Three drawers were ranged either side of the knee space with an oval mirror webbed with silver. Catching herself in the speckled glass, Chrissie shivered. Even to herself, she looked like a ghost.

  The silver locket was the first thing she saw when she opened the top drawer. She lifted it out, awed by its cold weightiness. It was heart-shaped with a silver lid. She prised it open and found a compartment covered with glass. A picture was inset, necessarily heart-shaped, of two people. She supposed it was Mr and Mrs Watson when they were young. They were kissing. Yuk! She shut the lid, shutting them in. Then she saw marks on the casing. Not marks, letters. A ‘G’ and an ‘R’ were engraved in the silver. The ‘G’ must stand for ‘George’ which was what her dad called Mr Watson. She didn’t know Mrs Watson’s first name. She was so stern that it seemed impossible that she had one.

  Hearing a noise, she whizzed to the door and flattened herself behind it. If Mr Watson looked in, he wouldn’t see her. If he came right in he would see her straight away. She held her breath. He didn’t come in. After a while she risked going outside. There was no one on the landing.

  She ran nimbly up the staircase and tapped on a door marked ‘Studio’. A voice called, ‘Come.’

  In contrast to the bedroom, the room blazed with light. Hot sun lit up motes of dust.

  ‘Today we’re drawing a daisy. Family Compositae.’ With abrupt sweeps of his scalpel, Mr Watson was sharpening a pencil to a fine point. Without looking at her, he gave it to Chrissie. He indicated a chair the other side of the window for her to sit on. Laid out on a table was a sketch pad and a rubber and something nasty that was brown and shrivelled.

  His voice dropped down deep. ‘Unlike some dead material this specimen has a name. It exists. Now it’s your job to bring it to life,’ he instructed her.

  Looking about for a daisy, Chrissie realized he meant the shrivelled brown thing. How could she bring it to life? She wasn’t convinced that it had ever been a daisy.

  ‘Use this magnifying glass to examine the structure of the specimen. Think of a skeleton without flesh. Before you touch the paper with your pencil, I want you to consider carefully what you see.’ Although he had given her the pencil, he didn’t seem to be talking to her. He looked across the room and waved his hands as if trying to get someone’s attention.

  Chrissie could see nothing worth drawing. It wasn’t a proper daisy. Her instinct was to draw the kind of daisy she knew. She would put the yellow sun in the middle and then white petals around it. Then she would say that she had to go. She stuffed her hands into her pockets so that she wouldn’t be tempted to start drawing before she had looked at the brown thing properly. She felt something cold and hard. The locket. She had forgotten to return it to the drawer. As from far away, Mr Watson’s voice droned on, but in her horror she couldn’t concentrate.

  ‘Examine the shape and number of the ray florets... tiny teeth... tubes with lobes... Look for hairs and bristles on the stems... Count everything. You are not an artist, you are a recorder of reality. You are in service to the plant. I want the truth.’ Mr Watson put down his scalpel and looked properly at Chrissie. She sat bolt upright on her chair and stared back.

  ‘Can you give me the truth?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ Chrissie lied.

  Chapter Seven

  October 2014

  ‘It’s all I need on top of everything else.’

  Stella and Cashman were in a café near the office. Stella had never been there before, although, passing by, had decided that the irritating name – The Waiting Room – hardly instilled confidence in a fast service. But it was the closest place and she had no intention of being out for long. It was designed on the theme of a station waiting room anywhere between the thirties and the fifties: shelves were stacked with leather suitcases, travelling trunks and carpet bags. The walls were lined with old timetables and posters advertising destinations on the London Underground: Golders Green and Wood Lane (for dog racing at White City) and, she saw with a flush of pride, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, showing a stylized version of the Palm House. She doubted that the butcher’s block on which stood wine crates filled with condiments and cutlery was free of germs.

  The seating was wooden chairs and benches from railway carriages arranged to imply a buffet car. The suspension on Stella’s seat was weak and had sagged as she sank into it, making the table inconveniently high.

  Cashman had insisted on buying the drinks, which came in white china mugs with the British Rail logo. Stella was mildly surprised to find that she liked the tea. In their ‘compartment’ was a timetable for the London Victoria to Brighton line, including arrival and departure times for the Brighton Belle. It was dated 1966, the year of her birth. Along with the Kew Gardens poster, the timetable could be one of Jack’s signs. It reminded her that he had refused to come for coffee. She wished he was here.

  Cashman propped his newspaper between a giant plastic tomato and a glass sugar dispenser. The dispassionate features of Harry Roberts in his arrest photo gazed out at them. A face that, like the Queen’s, Stella had known all her life. Aged seven, set to write a story by her teacher that started with ‘One summer’s day...’ she had penned a factual account of the shooting of the officers in the summer sunshine of 1966. ‘My daddy did a search on his hands and knees in the grass and there were sniffer dogs.’ Her teacher, a crabby woman ‘suffering with her legs’ and on the verge of retirement, had discounted the piece because it wasn’t made up.

  On the way to the café, she had found herself scanning passers-by for Harry Roberts, nervous that he might be looking for her. Stupid, because for a start he wouldn’t look the same now and secondly he had no reason to come looking for her. Terry hadn’t caught him. Jack had said that he would be a harmless old man now.

  ‘You have to question why you’re in this job. Roberts is out and those guys are dead. How does that work? After Karen this caps it off!’ Cashman stared moodily down at his coffee.

  ‘After Karen?’ Stella clattered her spoon against her cup, furious with herself. Aside from her staff manual’s rule to avoid talking about a client’s personal life, she believed that a couple’s business was theirs alone. If Cashman ever talked about his wife, she stalled him, but what with the Kew Gardens contract and Harry Roberts, he had caught her off guard.

  ‘Karen’s kicked me out.’ He took a slug of coffee and glared at Roberts.

  ‘Kicked you out?’ Stella had met Cashman’s wife Karen a few times, at Terry’s retirement party, at his funeral and when cleaning Cashman’s office at the police station, and found her sensible and calm. Not the sort to kick anyone anywhere.

  ‘As good as. The marriage hasn’t been working since the kids left home and I got the transfer to Richmond. We’ve nothing in common. It’s an “amicable split”.’ He was still talking to Harry Roberts. ‘She says it’s run out of steam.’

  Stella had hoped that they would deal with Roberts and she could get back to the office. This was a conversation for which she wasn’t equipped. Jack would be better at it, but he and Cashman wound each other up.

  ‘We were running on empty.’ Cashman added a stream of sugar from the dispenser to what was left of his coffee and the paper flopped forward, giving Roberts a warped expression. Unable to bear it, Stella laid the paper flat. She eyed Roberts and he stared back at her.

  Cashm
an huffed: ‘She’s sitting pretty in the house.’

  It occurred to Stella that twice when she arrived to clean Cashman’s office at Richmond police station she had found him feet up on a chair, jacket off, as if he’d just woken up. She wondered now if he had spent the night there.

  ‘You know the one, after twenty years we’ve drifted apart.’

  Stella didn’t know ‘the one’. Her relationships didn’t start off with much steam and the thought of one lasting twenty years was like contemplating outer space. Twenty weeks was her average.

  She opened the newspaper and, in a double spread, found a more recent picture of Roberts. The caption was dated 2009, the year when he had last been seen in public. Handcuffed to a prison officer, his blue prison-issue shirt tucked unfashionably into jeans with no belt, he did indeed look like an old man. Older than Terry when he died. Harry Roberts – like Myra Hindley – had stayed in her mind at the age he was when he was sentenced. Below the snap were black-and-white photographs of the three murdered police officers. Unlike them, Roberts was alive, he had grown old and he was free. Like Beverly had said, ‘Life should mean life.’ She shut the paper and covered Roberts’s face with the tomato-sauce container.

  ‘Till death us do part, we said when we got hitched.’ Cashman was stirring his coffee. It seemed he had forgotten about Roberts. ‘Karen says I only talk about work. I told her at the get-go: the force is family. You know that from Terry. Karen used to be proud of me, but she says I never talk. Is that true, Stell?’ He rounded on her. ‘Do I talk?’

  Stella was startled. Clearly he was talking now and she didn’t rate talking as a positive. Her mum had taught her to believe that ‘actions speak louder than words’. When she found him in his office at Richmond station, she had wished Cashman would talk less so she could finish cleaning on schedule. The last time he had delayed her by seven and a half minutes.

  ‘What outcome do you want?’ This was Jack’s question to clients who insisted on talking about their problems. They didn’t welcome solutions, he said, they wanted to be listened to. Jack cleaned while he listened and they talked. Listening was Stella’s only option because Cashman was still talking.