The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime

by Rebecca Griffiths

‘What makes you say that? What did he say?’

  ‘Have you got cloth ears all of a sudden? I told you, he didn’t say anything.’ Terrence gawped at her. ‘Honestly, Queenie, darling, what’s got into you today? You’re a bag of nerves.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’ He passed his cigarette back to her. ‘Have another go on that. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she answered too quickly.

  ‘I know you.’ He gave her one of his steady looks. ‘Come on, spill.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘Do you good to get it off your chest.’

  ‘God, Terry, leave me alone.’ She returned his fag.

  ‘You weren’t being particularly nice to Joy earlier. A little catty about her choice of jewellery, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I do mind, as a matter of fact.’ The pink posy trembling at her waist.

  ‘Ooo, something’s rattled your cage. Go on, tell me, what’s up?’ He jostled her elbow.

  ‘Drop it, Terry.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ He raised the flat of his hand: flagged his surrender. ‘But I’m here if you want to talk.’

  She left him to finish his cigarette and stepped beside Norma. Stared down at the gleaming white line of her scalp where her black hair fell open like the pages of a book. The woman looked tranquil, happy, even though her hands were still shaking.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No.’ Norma narrowed her eyes at Queenie. They were as dark and sour as apple seeds.

  ‘You must be. I am.’

  ‘I’m not cold.’ Her new stepmother turned her head away.

  ‘So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?’ Queenie sighed.

  She should leave right now, but she wouldn’t. Norma’s behaviour made her change her mind. She would stay – stay to the bitter end, just to spite her.

  24

  Leaving Albert’s unsatisfied with the prostitute he’d paid for – his inability to perform, yet again – had left him feeling frustrated. It also made him dangerous. He’d been using prostitutes since before he was married and it had marked the beginning of a lifelong addiction. Unlike other women, they didn’t have to be won over and they didn’t involve his emotions. He was able to make a straight bargain and pay an agreed price for what they had to offer. Yet even prostitutes failed to give him satisfaction, for they were no lesser than other women and could sometimes sniff out his failings and inadequacies. And across the body of every prostitute he lay with was the shadow of his overprotective mother and his four dominant sisters, the shadow of his tyrannical father. He had hoped that through the use of these types of women he might eventually find peace, but what he found, on the twisted road he’d started on, grew like a canker inside him.

  He was in no hurry to return to Rillington Place and the screaming rows between Timothy and Beryl Evans in the flat upstairs, or his wife’s nagging, wanting to know where he’d been. Life in that matchbox house where everyone lived on top of one another wasn’t a happy one and it felt good to be out walking the streets. Although, he reminded himself, things weren’t so bad. How could he mind someone as attractive as Beryl needing to pass his front room and kitchen several times a day to use the wash house and lavatory in the yard? In the past, his sex life had been conducted largely in the shadows with women of the shadows, and now there was this young, pretty girl who’d just turned twenty living under the same roof. Not that his desire could be gratified with her husband in the house. But, he smiled, there had been some development in that department. Ethel had passed on the news that Beryl was panic-stricken at finding herself pregnant again, the fact they couldn’t cope with another mouth to feed and that she was looking for someone to abort the pregnancy.

  He let go a jerky little laugh to think of the part in the proceedings he might play, having broached the subject with Beryl the other morning over a nice cup of tea when Timothy was out at work. Talking of his knowledge of medicine, sickness and disease, the gullible girl had readily believed he might cure her. Here was a priceless, heaven-sent opportunity of achieving what he’d desired for so long: to see Beryl Evans naked, of touching her parts with his fingers, and doing so moreover with her willing consent. Dear me, he thought, quivering with excitement, as darker, murderous thoughts flooded in.

  It was with thoughts of murder that he looked up at the way ahead and saw her. The other thing he desired. The little fey one he’d been making it his business to keep tabs on, travelling to Gloucester Road to watch her in her basement lodgings. And now, by some amazing coincidence, there she was again, striding out of Mayfair towards Piccadilly and wearing a diamante clasp in her hair.

  ‘Rather late to be out on your own, little girl.’ He moistened his lips as he ogled her. ‘’Specially on these streets. You don’t belong here, lass. Not in the way that painted friend of yours does.’

  The girl’s hair fell forward into her eyes and she stopped to tidy it off her face. Ah, her beautiful face, that lustrous auburn hair… so dazzling, she put him in mind of Jeanne Crain in the musical State Fair he’d so enjoyed when he had worked as a projectionist at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill. This young woman, in his opinion, had the kind of understated glamour rarely seen in ordinary life; he had certainly never come across another to match her on his travels. He would say that perhaps this one was even more tempting than Beryl.

  By gum, she walked quickly and – almost jogging along in his canvas shoes – he went over the plan that had been taking shape in his mind as he joined her in the queue at the bus stop. The plan he needed to map out carefully if he were to do to her what he had done to the two women buried in his back garden… what he intended to do to Beryl Evans when the time was right.

  But there were a couple of major stumbling blocks to him getting this one back to Rillington Place, alone and undisturbed. One was the presence of Ethel, who was always waiting for him; the other was that this girl would be certain to resist any sexual advances. But, he reminded himself, cheering a little, the first problem might have solved itself with Ethel’s announcement that she was again going up to Sheffield for a holiday with her brother. The second problem was more difficult; he was going to have to come up with some ingenious way if he was to have a chance with this one. But he was clever and confident that something would show itself.

  And until it did?

  Well, he would keep up the surveillance and bide his time. He sniggered to himself as he followed her aboard the bus.

  25

  Blackness. Queenie woke with a jolt to it. The sound of her breathing bounced back to her while her hand, negotiating the objects littering the bedside table, switched on the lamp. She looked at her alarm clock. Twenty past three. What was the matter with her? Slick with sweat, she pressed her fingers to her forehead, then into the pool of moisture that had collected between her breasts; her nightdress and bedsheets were sodden. Feeling crummy since her father’s wedding, she had been worse again before bed and, fearful of being sick, she had lain down and willed the sensation away. Now, clearing a path through the layering of nightmarish sequences that had been turning on a loop since her head had hit the pillow, the nausea was back and briny water gathered in her mouth. She needed to spit it out, but where? She barely had the strength to sit up, never mind push herself downstairs and outside to the privy.

  She stretched for the glass of water by the bed. Spat out the saltiness, only for more to collect in its place. It tasted of the sea and she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. ‘Got to get up… Got to get up,’ she chanted, the words ebbing and flowing as she pushed her legs out from beneath the covers. Staggering like a drunkard, she groped along the landing and down the stairs in the dark. The kitchen sink would have to do. Thank God my father isn’t here, her only thought when she held back her hair and purged herself. The violence of heaving was nearly enough to finish her off. What the hell had she eaten? The idea of eating made her retch again
and the stinging after-effects were enough to make her cry out. Tears filled her eyes. Even now, with all she’d experienced since losing her mother, it was her mother she wanted. Her soothing hand on her back. Her calm voice telling her, ‘There, there, sweetheart… there, there.’

  Stupid fool, she scolded the blur of her reflection in the mirror next to the sink. Pull yourself together – there’s no one to help you through this, you’re on your own. And forcing herself to look away from the ashen-faced woman staring back at her, she dipped her sweaty forehead at the sink to vomit again. Swilled it away down the plughole and rinsed her mouth. Mint. She wet her toothbrush and dabbed it into the tin of Eucryl toothpowder and brushed her teeth. Then dragged herself upstairs again and slid between what were now damp, icy sheets. Calm. She dropped back on her pillows and closed her eyes to the sickly dawn light that was sliding into the room.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, dreaming she was back at Bugbrooke Farm and astride a Suffolk Punch. Her legs scarcely long enough to wrap around its girth and forcing her to trust the rolling rhythm of its generous bone. Joy was riding beside her. Laughing and screaming to go faster. Gripping the manes of horses free from the drag of the plough, they skimmed the foaming shallows, magical as mythical beasts. Sleeping soundly now, Queenie was making little puffing noises. She was inhaling the creeping rhizomes of the cordgrass fringing Goldchurch beach. Then the laughter stopped and the sun went in. Rain began to fall. Dropping like needles, spiking her legs. She couldn’t keep up: Joy was galloping ahead, leaving her alone.

  When she opened her eyes, night had become day. Cold beneath the bedcovers, she sat up to receive it. The realisation came like a slap in the face. She knew why her body felt alien and her moods were all over the place. Why she had been sick. And it was enough to have her charging downstairs to embrace the kitchen sink again.

  * * *

  ‘Happy birthday, Queenie.’ Terrence knocked on the dressing-room door and breezed inside. ‘Dearie me, darling,’ he said when he saw her. ‘Joy told me you were looking peaky – are you going to be able to sing tonight?’

  ‘I wish everyone would stop fussing, I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘I’ve been sick, that’s all. I feel better now.’

  ‘She said you told her it was something you ate?’

  Joy had given Queenie a hardcover volume of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury edged in gold for her birthday. She opened the cover and reread the words Joy had written in pencil: ‘With love.’

  ‘What else can it be?’ She gulped back sudden tears.

  Finished fastening her stockings, she put on her slingbacks. Plonked down at the dressing table and stared at her face in the mirror.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come in. We can manage a night without you. We’ll be managing without you all the time soon.’ He moved to stand beside her, pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. Cool, she closed her eyes to it. ‘Poor darling. Is there anything I can get for you? Do you want a cigarette? I always find smoking helps settle my stomach.’

  ‘God, no.’ She flapped him away. ‘I can’t stand the smell; they make me want to gag. Can’t stand the smell of this, either.’ She pushed her bottle of Californian Poppy away too.

  He eyed her quizzically.

  ‘What?’ Her mouth was full of pins as she tried to gather her hair into a style that improved her.

  ‘Are you sure it was something you ate? It’s just I remember a sister of mine, when she, erm… when she was first married. If you’re in trouble, you can tell me.’

  Queenie blinked away the image she had of Joy and refused to dwell on the dreadful thing she had done. All she needed was a good night’s sleep; things would feel better then. She hadn’t slept properly for days and it was showing. People were commenting, asking if she was all right. Stupid question.

  ‘Is it cold in here, or is it me?’ She reached for her coat.

  ‘It’s you.’ Terrence handed it to her, then sat on the chaise longue. He put his chin in his hands and gave her a look she didn’t want to see. ‘Queenie?’ he began, and she steeled herself for what was to come. ‘You’re not ill, are you? Do you need to see a doctor?’

  Silence closed its lid over them. The only sound was their shallow breathing and the ticking of the wall clock.

  ‘I’m frightened, Terry.’ Queenie was the one who severed it. ‘I’m really frightened… I’ve done something terrible.’ She broke down into floods of tears.

  ‘Queenie, darling.’ Terrence leapt to his feet to comfort her. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s… it’s—’ She hiccupped through her sobs, unable to catch her breath.

  ‘I knew it, I knew something was wrong.’ He hesitated then, bounding away like a hare, checked the corridor outside the dressing room was empty. Happy it was, he came back in and closed the door. ‘Tell me, Queenie.’ Beside her again, he lifted her hand, soothed it between his own.

  ‘It’s my birthday. I’m twenty-three.’ She sniffed.

  ‘Well, yes? I hadn’t forgotten the date. Don’t worry if you’re not feeling up to it, we can celebrate another time. But, come on, there must be more to it than that. I’ve never seen you upset like this before.’

  ‘All right, keeping on at me.’ She snatched back her hand and turned from him. ‘I’m up the bloody duff, that’s what’s wrong with me.’

  Terrence’s hand swung by his side. She wanted to ask him to bring it back. ‘Okay.’ He breathed through the tiny word.

  ‘No, Terry, it really isn’t okay.’ She wiped the mascara that had run down her cheeks. ‘It’s not okay at all.’ Her voice wobbling with emotion as fresh tears threatened.

  ‘Explains why you’ve been so strange recently… what all that was about at your father’s wedding.’ He talked to himself, then stared her right in the eye. ‘I should have guessed. How far gone are you?’

  ‘Four or five weeks.’

  ‘And you’re sure? You’re sure you’re pregnant?’

  A grim nod.

  ‘Can I ask whose it is?’

  ‘Charles.’ She dropped his name between them like a hand grenade that was too hot to hold.

  Terrence almost laughed. ‘You are joking? I know you like taking risks, but that’s madness. Christ, Queenie, what are you going to do? Are you sure it’s his?’

  Queenie gawped at him. ‘What d’you mean, am I sure? ’Course I’m flamin’ sure.’

  ‘But with all your men friends, how would you know?’

  ‘Men friends?’ Angry at him. ‘Yes, friends, Terrence. I don’t sleep with them. What d’you take me for? Good God, I’m not like you.’

  ‘Like me?’ His turn to be offended.

  ‘Yes, it’s different for you. You men can do what you want. You don’t have to worry about the—’ She broke off, hunted for the right word. ‘Consequences.’

  ‘I can’t do what I want. What I want is illegal, in case you hadn’t heard.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she conceded, eager to return to the point she was making. ‘So long as you don’t get caught.’

  ‘You make it sound like it means nothing to me. I resent that a bit.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Terry, I didn’t mean… I mean, I know how fearful you are, how careful you need to be. But I’m just trying to say, I know it might look like I put myself about – it’s my fault, it’s the impression I give – but it couldn’t be further from the truth.’

  ‘So why the hell did you go with Charles?’

  ‘Shh, for God’s sake, keep your voice down,’ she hissed.

  ‘All right, but why Charles?’ he hissed back. ‘Why him, of all people?’

  ‘Because I’m stupid.’

  ‘This is going to break Joy’s heart.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Queenie started to cry again. ‘It’s why she can’t find out. Why she must never find out… oh, Terry, I don’t know what to do. How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘Do you want to keep
the baby?’

  ‘How can I? I want to go to America. God, this is an almighty mess.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you could do that with Charles. How could you, Queenie?’ Terrence looked as upset as she was. Wringing his hands and pacing the dressing-room floor.

  ‘I feel rotten about it.’ Queenie’s mood swung from insulted to feeling sorry for herself. ‘But honestly, Terry, I don’t sleep around.’

  ‘So why sleep with him? Your best friend’s man.’

  ‘I don’t know. It just happened. You’ve seen what he’s like, all flirty with me.’

  ‘That’s just his way, Queenie. He’s a friendly guy. You’ve read too much into him and look where it’s got you.’

  ‘Don’t you go blaming me. This is your fault.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Terrence glared at her. ‘How the hell d’you work that out?’

  ‘If you’d been there, that night at the Blue Note like you said.’ Queenie screwed her mascara-muddied eyes tight. ‘Then we wouldn’t have been alone. Nothing would have happened.’

  ‘So that’s when you did it?’

  She nodded, pointing a guilty finger at the chaise longue.

  ‘On there?’ His jaw fell open and he took a step backwards. Pressed his weight against the door. ‘You brought him back here?’

  ‘I’m desperate, Terry.’ Tears welling again. ‘I’m frightened. What if Joy finds out? I’ve got to get rid of it, it’s the only way out of this. But how? You’ve got to help me, Terry. Please.’

  ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking. What you’re asking is illegal, you do know that?’

  ‘Yes, it’s why I need your help. You know people that could help me, don’t you?’ She sensed him waver. ‘Even if it wasn’t Charles’s, can you seriously see me handing myself over to nappies and safety pins? I’ve got plans.’ She was sobbing again.

  ‘Shh, Queenie, let me think… I’ve got to think.’ Terrence, a finger pressed to his mouth. ‘All right,’ he said firmly, throwing her a reckless look. ‘Leave it with me. I’m not making any promises but there might… there might…’ His voice tapered off. ‘Just leave it with me.’