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

by Rebecca Griffiths

  She failed to see Queenie rise from the table to follow her. Or Heloise, viper-quick from her chair, clamp a hand on Queenie’s wrist and squeeze it tight like a punishment.

  ‘I know what you’ve done,’ Heloise hissed, pulling her close. ‘I could smell that cheap scent of yours on him when he came home.’

  The world stopped turning. Queenie froze. She couldn’t think past Heloise’s icy stare and the pain where she pressed her fingers into the bones of her wrist.

  ‘Joy must never find out. Never. Do you hear me?’ Heloise shook her. ‘If she does, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

  The words shimmered. So double-edged they cut Queenie wherever they touched.

  * * *

  Joy emerged. Wedding dress, veil, tiara, shoes, all in place. She stood where a slant of daylight partitioned the room and waited for Queenie to stop rubbing her wrist and look at her. When she did, the expression in her brown eyes gave nothing away. They maintained a steady detachment. Joy watched her light up one of her white cigarettes and take a leisurely drag. Joy didn’t think she had ever seen Queenie rush. Not for anything or anyone. Every gesture was deliberate and, enriched by her beauty, meant you had no choice but to look at her. Queenie crossed the room in silence, smoking her cigarette. Reached out to stroke the bodice of freshwater pearls, the sheen of the skirt.

  ‘Oh, my,’ she gasped. ‘You look…’ She scrunched up her face, then swallowed.

  ‘You hate it, don’t you?’

  Queenie emitted a small, stale laugh. ‘You look sensational.’ The words, delivered cautiously, sounded as if she hadn’t wanted to believe them.

  Queenie wandered over to a vase of red roses. ‘It fits you perfectly… the cut of the silk.’ She was reading the card that accompanied the flowers. ‘From Charles, eh?’ Her mouth set in a hard, thin line. ‘He either really loves you or he’s guilty of something.’

  Joy stared at Queenie while she finished her cigarette and screwed it out in an ashtray. What was wrong with her? She’d been in a foul mood for weeks.

  ‘I’d better get out of this.’ Joy bent her arm up behind her to unfasten the dress.

  ‘Want a hand?’ Queenie pulled off a rose petal, dropped it on the carpet. ‘You don’t want to damage it.’

  Heloise’s dog wandered into the bedroom, gave a couple of yaps then sat between them.

  ‘What have you done to your wrist? It looks awfully red.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Queenie covered it with her other hand and backed away.

  ‘What were you talking about with Heloise?’

  ‘When?’ Queenie prodded the dog with her foot, and when it failed to move, she prodded it harder.

  ‘Before you came upstairs.’ Joy rescued the dog, carried him to the landing, out of harm’s way.

  ‘Oh, something and nothing. I can’t remember.’

  * * *

  When their order for French onion soup had been given to the waiter, Queenie and Joy sat at a table among trees that had been planted in the pavement. They peeled off their leather gloves and unpinned their hats.

  ‘They’re not the gloves I bought you. Where’d you get them from? Oh, don’t tell me – Heloise.’ An irritated sigh. ‘Don’t you like mine any more? They cost me a fortune, you know.’

  ‘I do. I love them.’ Joy placed her hat beside Queenie’s on the table. Watched its three white feathers flutter flightless in the breeze. She felt dreadful about losing those beautiful plum-coloured gloves but was afraid to tell Queenie the truth. ‘I didn’t wear them today because they don’t match my outfit.’

  ‘Since when do you care? Is that another thing Heloise has trained you in – matching accessories?’

  ‘What a glorious day.’ Joy looked up at the canvas awning shifting above them and ignored the subtext. ‘Sitting here reminds me of Montmartre. It was kind of Heloise to buy us lunch.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let her dictate to you.’ Queenie seemed unable to delight in the world and it was so unlike her.

  ‘She means well and she’s an awfully kind heart.’

  ‘I say you want to watch it.’ Queenie lifted the lighted end of her cigarette, drew squiggles in the air. ‘You even sound like her. And she’s dressing you now, I see. Buying them new, or are they her cast-offs?’

  ‘If I didn’t know better, Queenie Osbourne, I’d say you were jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’ A final pull on the cigarette before stubbing it out.

  ‘It must have been a shock when Charles and I got together. Seeing how much better my life is. How happy I am.’ The waiter had arrived at their table. ‘Oh, merci. That smells delicious.’ Joy breathed through the steam curling up from the bowl and poked the island of Gruyère-covered crouton.

  Queenie was laughing at her, not unkindly. ‘There was me, worried you might have turned into Heloise Gilchrist. But you’re just the same.’

  ‘I’m glad it reassures you.’ Joy tore off a hunk of bread.

  ‘I know I’ve asked before,’ Queenie, spooning up her soup, ‘but why d’you wear that brooch all the time?’

  Joy’s fingertips travelled the cool cluster of enamel apples fastened to her lapel. ‘Because Charles gave it to me.’

  ‘I’d have credited him with more taste.’ Queenie dabbed at her scarlet mouth with the napkin: now who was copying Heloise?

  ‘Charles has bought me other things.’

  ‘Wear them then. They’ve got to be better than that.’

  ‘I do.’

  Joy lifted her left hand and flashed the diamond on the fourth finger. Sat back to enjoy the change that washed over Queenie’s face. Happy to let the beauty of her engagement ring do the talking. And it did. Cutting between them as sudden and deadening as the blade of an axe.

  They finished their soup in silence, and when they had, Joy signed the bill that would go on Heloise’s account and put a bright new shilling on the saucer. Then they secured their hats and pulled on their gloves and headed into the Saturday crowd.

  29

  He had been following these two young friends all day. Not that he had any particular plan, just an idea it would be nice to keep an eye on them. It wasn’t as if he had anything to rush home to Notting Hill for. No one was expecting him. His wife had gone to Sheffield and would be away for a good while yet.

  He was careful, he kept his distance, even though the friends were too busy with themselves to notice him. Why would they? Middle-aged and unprepossessing in his trilby and soft-soled shoes, he blended into the background. It was how he could creep about unseen and ogle women in the way he was ogling these two now. Women excited and stimulated him, and he would have loved nothing better than to assert himself with them, to gain their love and admiration. But his fear of rejection and humiliation always prevented him from trying. It was why he hated women who tempted him and whom he knew he couldn’t satisfy. Not that he went about publicising the fact; this side of his life, along with his need to use prostitutes, was his best-kept secret.

  Trailing behind the young women, he wondered where they were going and if they could be lost. They looked as if they were lost, turning this way and that, uncertain whether to go left or right. Lost was good: it meant they were vulnerable and might need his help. He moved as close as he dared to the pretty pair: the bold brunette and her auburn-haired friend he’d been privy to such intimacies with. Spying on her in her basement room, seeing her in a state of undress. But looking at her now, he admired her with fresh eyes – quite the little lady in her expensive-looking outfit, heels and hat. Her glorious hair beautifully coiffured. It seemed the days of the imitation panama, baggy coat and ungainly footwear were well and truly behind her. And he thought again how she would make an interesting addition to his already considerable collection of pubic hair that didn’t yet contain such a vibrant shade of auburn.

  Don’t be too eager, he warned himself. Be patient. The more despairing they were, the easier it would be. It was always better when they approached him; it never worke
d the other way around, not if he wanted them to trust him, which he did. He licked his lips with interest, and although physically disturbed by the sight of them and what he knew of their female magic, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining the things he would do to them if he could get them home, inside his kitchen and seated in his rope chair.

  He strolled along behind them, plucking things from their conversation – not that they were having much of a conversation. They didn’t seem to be getting on particularly well and walked along in the kind of glowering silence that followed a stinking row. He recognised the moody aftermath that was communicated in their faces. A resentfulness not unlike his wife and him after they’d been tearing strips off one another. The idea these two had fallen out pleased him, and he hoped things would deteriorate to such an extent they would eventually separate off from one another. If they did, he might have a chance of getting his hands on one of them.

  ‘Joy,’ he murmured when he overheard the brunette using the little fey one’s name. ‘So that’s what she’s called, is it? Mm.’ He caressed the stocking in his pocket. ‘She could bring me some joy, I’m sure.’

  He took her name and rolled it over his tongue. It tasted sweet. As sweet as she looked. There was something about her, the way she moved, that reminded him of Ruth.

  His first.

  ‘And look where she ended up.’ A mordant chuckle.

  Ruth Fuerst. Why he’d picked her he didn’t know. Young and pretty, she had certainly done him no harm. Because, he answered himself, a lifetime of repressed masculine aggression had, at that time, come to its climacteric. He had been simmering towards explosion point for years. He was simmering now. He unpicked what he had retained of her. That poor, friendless foreigner. Not unlike this little one: he gazed at the auburn-haired beauty who was trotting along the pavement beside her painted friend. She was foreign; he could tell her accent wasn’t from these shores. It was an accent not unlike Ruth’s. Austrian, then? Or German? Possibly French? He could surmise all he liked, but he couldn’t be sure; the only thing he was sure about was that this girl wasn’t a prostitute. Not like Ruth. Which was a shame because they were always easier to manipulate. Their desperation made them grateful, less choosy, and a whole lot easier to get inside his home. In the same way, he could have his pick of this lot, his thoughts as he perused the sudden gaggle of street girls that had surrounded them. Ruth, lucky for him, had come from the same shadowy world where girls were always disappearing. Leaving one place one day, then popping up somewhere else. Especially during the war, when there were flying bombs and so many people were being blasted into anonymity.

  ‘Aye,’ he mumbled, as close as he dared to Joy and the dark-haired one. ‘Things are certainly hotting up. What with the lovely Beryl in the flat above and now this little Joy to make plans for… he hadn’t been this fired since he’d had Ruth, then Muriel, comatose in his special chair. Gazing down on their stiff, dead forms, it had given him such a strange and peaceful thrill. I can’t wait to do it again. It’s been far too long.

  30

  Queenie and Joy wandered along in sulky silence. On and on they tramped. The heels Joy was unaccustomed to wearing had given her blisters, but both were reluctant to admit they were lost. With the holiday atmosphere of the Strand long behind them, they had wandered into Soho. The atmosphere had changed and the city took on a dingy, seedy feel. Gone were the smart boutiques and coffee shops, traded in for a series of condemned streets and boarded-up outlets. Passing a succession of shady alcoves flanked by flaking paint and broken windows, they clutched their bags to their fronts as if shielding themselves from whatever depravity they imagined going on within.

  They stopped when they reached a crossroads. On their left, a cluster of West Indian men stood around smoking in snazzy suits and striped ties. To their right, a pack of girls with dirty faces and flimsy dresses. Queenie said she thought they needed to take a right and, with no idea where she was, Joy could only follow. The girls dispersed. Some to kick through the gutters, others to lean against the dripping brickwork or the sporadic parked car. Each sharing the same hollow, hungry look. A look Joy had seen before. Years ago, separated from her schoolmates on a trip to Paris, she had accidentally wandered into Place Pigalle. Prostitutes. Joy knew what they were and was a little frightened of them. Emaciated, threatening, these girls were probably around her age but looked older. Victims of Britain’s class-ridden society. The down-and-outs, the dispossessed, driven to the streets to sell the only thing they had. Joy avoided their gaze and strode past with a sense of purpose. Conscious of her tailored coat, her leather shoes, her shiny, sunny appearance. How fortunate was she, that this grim reality – the only choice for these poor souls – would, since meeting Charles and Heloise, never be her reality? To never need concern herself with money again, the days of scraping together enough to pay the rent and feed herself long behind her.

  ‘Gis a shilling, love.’ Up close, the broken mouth of a girl. It shook Joy out of her contemplations and she looked into the pleading eyes under the curtain of greasy hair. ‘You look like ya can spare a few bob. What d’ya say, ladies?’ A scrawny arm shot out. Mottled in purple bruises, it gathered the rest of her crew closer.

  Joy sensed the menacing press of them and was reaching for her purse when Queenie seized her and tugged her away to a chorus of, ‘Stuck-up bitches… think you’re better than us, do ya?’

  The sun went in and the way ahead darkened. They quickened their pace and took, what neither would admit, another wrong turn. This time into a dark, cobbled lane that reeked of stale urine. They clamped their gloved hands to their noses until they emerged at the opposite end.

  ‘Look!’ Queenie squealed and pointed to a suited man in a homburg striding ahead. ‘It’s Terry. Hey! Wait!’ she called to him, but he didn’t turn around. ‘Let’s follow him.’ Eager-eyed. ‘See where he’s going.’

  Queenie seized hold of Joy again and steered her purposefully across the street, down towards a section of pavement where they found a secret, narrow-bricked alleyway falling between two high buildings. But no Terrence; he had disappeared. Why would he need to sneak around here? Joy didn’t like it and said so, but Queenie, determined to find him, clicked ahead on her heels.

  It was Joy who saw the man in the brown trilby. She recognised him from the times she had seen him walking his dog in Hyde Park. Secreted in the shadows, had he been following them? The possibility alarmed her and she ran to catch Queenie up.

  ‘Where? I can’t see anyone.’ Queenie, snappish, hardly bothering to look.

  ‘Over there.’ Joy spun on her heels and jabbed a frantic finger into the gloomy spaces that dropped between the buildings. ‘He was, I’m telling you.’ She tried not to shriek. ‘He’s following us… he’s following me. I’ve seen him before.’

  Whoever this man was – a wisp of air, as soft as breath, a fleeting, floating shadow – he had undoubtedly rattled Joy.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Who would bother to follow you? Come on, Joy, get a move on. I want to see where Terry’s going.’

  ‘Leave it. Whatever he’s up to, it’s none of our business.’

  ‘Get you, little Miss Prude. Just because you don’t want to know about the world he moves in, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Joy, firm, was still casting around for the stranger she believed was stalking them, but to her mounting unease, she’d lost sight of him. ‘We shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous. Please, Queenie, I want to go… I want to go home.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘I just want to get out of here.’ Joy, frustrated at Queenie not taking her seriously. ‘Terry must’ve heard you calling. He just didn’t want to see us. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘You’re an odd one.’ Queenie eyed her with curiosity, then fished out a white paper bag from her coat pocket. ‘Here, fancy one of these? You used to love them when we were nippers.’

  ‘Pear drops.’
Joy took a sweet, its sugary shell rasping against the roof of her mouth. Something about the flavour and the rush of memories it brought with it made her burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.’ Queenie put an arm about her middle and squeezed. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘You.’ She sobbed. ‘You’ve been horrible with me today. You’ve been horrible for weeks.’

  ‘What? No, I haven’t.’ A softer Queenie tutted her concern.

  ‘I’d love to know what I’ve done to annoy you.’ Joy brushed away her tears and watched Queenie scrabble around in her bag. ‘What’s that?’ She thrust a finger at a length of orange rubber tubing she wasn’t supposed to have seen.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’ The bag was snapped shut and Queenie passed her a handkerchief.

  31

  Queenie sat in the tin bath she had filled with water heated kettle by kettle. No hot running water here. She dropped her thoughts of the Bayswater bathroom and looked out through the kitchen window at a day that was as dark as the dusk. A flock of unknown birds flew over the sky. Autumn had well and truly blown in; the clocks would be going back soon. It was all downhill from here.

  She stared at her tummy. At the slight mound that parted the bathwater like an island. It felt disconnected from her. Since first realising she was pregnant, she’d been feeling rather like a castaway, something the tide spat out. Ghostly, the translucency of her skin frightened her. Its blue-veined intersection, mapping across her body. She traced it, searching, but could find no clear route out of the mess she’d got herself into. Because there wasn’t one. She had betrayed her childhood friend – how could that ever be put right?

  She positioned her flannel at the nape of her neck and made a pillow. Eased her head back against the rim of the bath. Loops of vapour coiled over the near-scalding water. Scribbles in the steam. She breathed through them, trying to decipher what the scribbles meant as the coal fire crackled beyond the concertina of clothes horses, draped in wet washing and screening her off. Not that there was anything to screen herself off from. Her father had been gone for weeks. Often, alone in the dark after lights out, Queenie heard him coughing and needed to remind herself he wasn’t there. He was miles away with his new wife, enjoying his new life on a smallholding in a Norfolk village she would probably never go to. She missed him, she missed his lavender smell, and thinking about the lack of him made her feel lonelier. Lying chin-deep in hot water, she counted up all she had lost… all she would go on to lose if Joy found out what she and Charles had done. Her world had capsized and she was irrefutably changed.