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

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘Dear me, Reg, what in heaven’s name are you doing out here? Digging garden? Not like you to be bothering.’

  ‘Oh, you’re home, are you? I weren’t expecting you till tomorrow.’ Working in shirtsleeves, his cuffs turned back to the elbow, he straightened his spine and dragged the back of an arm over his sweaty forehead. ‘I’m just giving things a tidying.’

  ‘Don’t you go overdoing things, making your back bad – you know how you suffer with it.’ His wife stooped to pet the white terrier that had trotted over to see her.

  ‘Give over with your mitherin’, woman.’ He pressed a foot to the spade, forced his weight against it and sliced into the earth. ‘Go and put kettle on. Do something useful. I’m about ready for a nice cup of tea. Go on.’ Sensing her dither. ‘And take Judy with you, blasted dog’s been under my feet all day.’

  ‘I can’t have you coming in house dressed like that, Reg.’ A worried frown. ‘You’ll have to get cleaned up first, you’re filthy. What possessed you to wear your best trousers to do a job like that? You are silly.’

  He flung her a look, pleased to see her flinch in fear. ‘Have a nice Christmas in Sheffield, did you?’

  ‘Aye, I did. Nicer than if I’d stayed here, as you don’t celebrate it.’

  ‘And how’s that no-good brother of yours?’

  ‘Oh, you know, same as always.’ She shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘So,’ her voice small, ‘what’ve you been up to while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Up to – what d’you mean, up to? I don’t get up to anything.’ He moistened his lips and resumed his digging, determined to finish the job by sundown.

  ‘I think you know what I mean, Reginald.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do.’ He scowled, a little out of breath. ‘I think you’re going to have to spell it out for me, Ethel.’

  ‘Well, for a start, I don’t think this is yours, is it?’ She flapped a brightly patterned silk scarf at him. ‘And it certainly don’t belong to me. I found it stuffed down back of rope chair in kitchen.’ She heaved down a lungful of air, but not before he’d noticed the quiver in her throat. ‘So, come on, Reg, are you going to tell me what’s been going on?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, all right. Not that you’re going to want to hear it.’ He stopped what he was doing and leant on the spade. Gave her one of his horrid smiles. ‘One of them young women that you arranged to call round turned up. Oh, aye.’ Eyes glinting. ‘Dead pretty, she were… beautiful hair. And what choice did I have? Poor little mite, I could hardly go turning her away, now could I? Not when she’d come here desperate for help.’

  ‘I never arranged for no one to call round. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘No? Perhaps she were waiting until you went away on your holidays.’ A cruel laugh. ‘All over me, she were, making a right nuisance of herself. Begging and pleading with me to do it to her, little hussy.’ He kicked the dog that was taking an unhealthy interest in something buried beneath his feet. ‘Get out of it, Judy. Go on, bugger off.’ He waited for the dog to slope away before returning his attention to his wife. ‘I did tell her, I said, “I’m not like that, young lady,” and I were rather annoyed with her, truth be told. But no matter how many times I told her I weren’t interested, she wouldn’t have it. Kept insisting she stayed, even though I said it weren’t proper, what with the lady of the house not being home.’

  ‘I don’t understand, what are you saying, Reg?’ His wife, nervous, bunched the scarf into a ball and pushed it against her face as if to sniff the remnants of the other woman’s perfume.

  ‘What I’m saying is, a man has needs, Ethel. You of all people should know that. I’m saying, I fought her off for as long as I could, but…’ A shrug. ‘You and me, well, what we do don’t satisfy neither of us, not when you won’t even try. And, well…’ Another shrug. ‘What with girl being so pretty, I suppose she just wore me down. I had no choice but give in to her in end.’

  ‘End?’ His wife hugged herself, the scarf still balled in her fist. ‘Oh, dear God, Reg.’ She gasped, her eyes pulled wide. ‘What have you done?’ The question darkened and condensed to a cloud above their heads and she raised her eyes to it as if expecting it to burst and cause havoc. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘You? You dare to question me, woman?’ He threw the spade down and strode towards her: threatening, frightening. He could throttle her here, this minute. ‘You’ve no right to go questioning me about anything, Ethel Christie.’

  58

  Joy descended the six stone steps that, barricaded from Gloucester Road by a set of black railings, led down to her basement room. The pigeon was there, cooing its greeting from the dark.

  ‘Hello, little friend.’ Cheered by the sight of it tucked under the eaves and sheltering from the weather, she reached through the rain to stroke its feathery breast. ‘Are you hungry? I’ll bring you something in a while.’

  The meagre gaslight from the night-time street barely penetrated her doorway and she struggled to find her latchkey in the caverns of her bag. She dropped the key and got down on her hands and knees to grope the ground. Sensing something shift on the pavement above her, she flung her head to scan what could be seen of the street. Nothing. No one was there. Only the merest hiss of tyres on wet asphalt. Yes, that must have been what it was. She shivered under the creeping unease that crawled over her skin and, finding the key, she scrabbled to her feet. She had not forgotten about that sinister man in the trilby and their strange encounter in Brompton Cemetery before Christmas. It was frightening to think she might not have escaped him had that couple not turned up at that moment to lay flowers on a nearby grave. But she needn't worry about him – it wasn’t as if he knew where she lived.

  She shook out her umbrella and unlocked her door. Stepping inside, she flicked on a lamp and flooded the space in a yellow glare. Her coat was wet and she hung it on the peg by the door; there was little point trying to dry it out, she would be putting it on again in a few hours. The building was silent. The rain going on in the street was little more than a muffled whisper against the exterior walls. A glance in the mirror told her what she had already guessed. Damp hair plastered to her forehead, the skin around her eyes bruised and thin-looking; she looked worn out. The girl she had been before meeting Charles had disappeared; she was unrecognisable to herself. This wasn’t what she’d asked for. To have him, then lose him. To be shown the top of the mountain only to be pushed to the bottom again was beyond cruel. She had been happy before him, muddling along in the foothills. The role of attention’s sweet centre was Queenie’s; Joy had never consciously sought the part.

  A sudden and loud rapping on her window.

  ‘I’ve got your post,’ her landlord mouthed on the other side of the glass. He must have slipped out of the house and down the steps without her hearing him. She opened the door onto the amplified dripping sounds.

  ‘Expensive paper.’

  ‘From a friend.’ She took the envelope, saw the violet ink had smudged in the rain.

  ‘A friend, eh?’ Then he was gone, his laughter trailing behind him.

  Her room was cold but Joy didn’t have the energy to light the fire. She placed the unopened envelope on the side, swapped her jacket for her chunky blue pullover and put on her slippers. The slippers, along with a pair of navy leather gloves, were the only things from Heloise she hadn’t given away. She tied her damp hair back off her face and saw that her landlord had delivered the bookcase he’d been promising for months, and although pleased, she wished he wouldn’t come in here without her permission. She spent a minute arranging her paperbacks on the shelves: de Maupassant, Zola, Flaubert, Dumas… long dead, but with no Charles, she had been forced to seek solace beneath their covers again. Thinking she was hungry, she opened a can of vegetable soup and put it to heat in a pan. A slice of wholemeal would be nice, but checking the breadbin, she found it was empty. Crackers then. She opened the tin. Only a few broken ones lurking at the bottom. They would have to
do; they were all she had.

  Needing the warmth, she leant as close as she dared to the gas flame on the hob and stared at the envelope. It was the first letter Charles had sent to her lodgings. His others, and there had been many, for whatever reason, had arrived at work. And at work, she had Amy. Sensible, kind Amy. Telling her not to read them, to rip them up; that nothing he could say would change what he and Queenie had done. She put the letter in the bin, determined not to give in to her feelings. When her soup started to simmer, she poured it into a bowl and pushed the unidentifiable vegetables around with her spoon. Why cook it if it was so unappetising? It wasn’t the soup’s fault – everything looked unappetising these days. Evident from the way she was shrinking inside her clothes. An image of her and Charles found her. A crisp, bright morning when they had woken to the crash of waves and seabirds singing in a room that overlooked Smuggler’s Cove. It was so sharp it could have been yesterday and yet it was already a lifetime ago, she thought sadly. Things weren’t supposed to have turned out this way. If things had gone as planned, she and Charles would have been married by now. She would have given up her job and left this dump and begun a new adventure with him. Joy listened to Charles’s voice swim up from the depths of her chest, dragging the wreckage of her life without him. It tugged like the tide, tearing her heart like seaweed caught on a fishing hook. To stop herself crying, she concentrated on the broken crackers in the bottom of the tin. Whether or not to eat one. When she did, she regretted it. It was stale and soft like her. Because Joy wasn’t getting much sleep either: sleep brought dreams of dappled sunlit days and picnics with Charles reaching out to her, and she could hardly bear to watch them. Or wake from them. For in those first few seconds, flanked by sleeping and waking, all was still rosy until the painful reality crept up over her and covered her like a shroud.

  She remembered the pigeon and took the tin with its miserable remains out into the January rain. Stood with her back to the door and crumbled the crackers, let the bird peck them from her palm.

  ‘Do you think I should read his letter?’ she asked the bird and it cooed its reply.

  Back inside, she fished the letter from the bin. Wiped off a spray of tea leaves, a blob of soup. Without Amy to stop her, Joy’s resolve had crumbled away. Her mouth moved over the words penned in his confident hand.

  My dearest Joy. I have tried and tried to talk to you, to tell you how sorry I am. I am at a loss to know what to say to make things right between us again, and because you refuse to see me, I’m not sure I can. I write to tell you that I am set to leave for South Africa in four days. It won’t be the adventure we promised ourselves and I do not know how I will bear it without you, dear Joy, but it is all in train and impossible for me to back out of now. Please hear me when I tell you there is no way to express my regret and I am sorry I have hurt you. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me for that one moment of madness, it will be more than I can ever forgive myself for. I send you my fondest, deepest love. Your Charles.

  Four days. He was set to leave for South Africa in four days. But when was the letter dated? She checked the top right-hand corner. Might there still be time? She needed to telephone the house in Bayswater. She had to talk to him before it was too late.

  Grabbing her bag and umbrella, she charged out of her room, up the stone steps and into the rainy street, splashing through the filthy puddles in her pretty satin slippers. Inside the phone box, her teeth chattering against the cold, she lifted the handset.

  ‘Number, please?’

  She gave it to the telephone exchange operator.

  ‘Just putting you through, caller.’

  Joy waited for a voice to answer at the other end before shoving coins down its throat.

  59

  It had been raining since breakfast. Not drizzling or spitting, but streaming over the city in heavy, grey, slanting slices.

  ‘God alive,’ Terrence complained as he did battle with his umbrella along the pavement.

  It was a relief to finally reach his mother’s gate and, conscious of the twitching net curtains of neighbours, he ambled down the garden path to stand in the porch. A space he needed to share with dried-out paint tins, solidified brushes and cracked boots. The things no one had bothered to clear out after his father had died. Sounds of rainwater spilling along the guttering as he slid his latchkey into the lock and stepped onto the welcome mat. Terrence had known this door all his life. A door with a rusted knocker hanging by a single screw that bled each time it rained. He closed his umbrella and took off his coat and hat, was about to peg them on the hooks in the hall.

  What?

  His insides went cold.

  He gawped at the things that were hanging beside his father’s old fishing jacket. Things that shouldn’t be there.

  What the hell?

  A brown trilby and a wet raincoat with what looked like a woman’s stocking hanging out of a pocket. With it, a fleeting image of the prostitute, Marie, and the vivid bruises on her neck. He glanced at the Madonna and Child on the wall and held his breath to the faint chinking of teaspoons on china that were coming from the living room. Then voices that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. One was his mother’s; the other, little more than a pathetic whisper.

  ‘… did you say Halifax, Mr Christie?’

  ‘That’s right. Boothtown District. Chester Road.’

  ‘By golly, I know Chester Road. My gran lived along there. We lived in Boothtown too, oh, I forget the name of the street, my memory, you know.’ Terrence imagined his mother flapping a hand at her head in that way she did when she couldn’t recall something. ‘But I do remember the moors above, and the railway below. Smart houses. Oh, yes, very nice along Chester Road, not like our street… Hey, I bet your mother used to shop in Arkwrights.’ A giggle. ‘If she did, I’m sure I’d have known her. Do you remember All Souls Cemetery? We used to go playing in there.’

  ‘A right dreary place, if you don’t mind me saying, Mrs Banks.’ Christie’s smarmy ways made Terrence’s skin crawl. ‘Although, as a boy, I used to sing in church choir. I had quite a fine voice, as it happens.’

  ‘Well, I never.’ His mother sighed. ‘It’s a small world. When did you move to London?’

  ‘January ’twenty-four.’

  ‘A little later than us. Me and my Ernest came here in nineteen twenty.’

  ‘Were that about time your Terry were born?’

  At the sound of his name, Terrence’s mouth went dry.

  ‘Aye, getting on for three years after. Then I had our Colin, my youngest, eighteen months later.’

  ‘Does he live in London too?’

  ‘No, Colin, like all five of my girls, is in Yorkshire. They never settled in London. I’m the same, I’d go back in a heartbeat… or maybe Dorset, I do love Dorset…’ More tinkling of spoons.

  ‘So, Terry’s got five sisters, has he? I’ve got sisters… four of them. They were always bossing me about, smothered me, they did. When I were a boy, I had to share a room with them, sometimes a bed. Only got any peace when they were sleeping. I liked it best when they were sleeping.’

  ‘Families, Mr Christie. Families. Do you and Mrs Christie have children?’

  ‘No. It’s one of my biggest regrets.’

  The soft, doleful voice with its Yorkshire burr was enough to freeze the blood in Terrence’s veins. He needed to see what was going on, to check his mother was safe, and inched down the hall to look around the living-room door. Careful to remain out of sight. The first thing he saw was the back of Christie’s bald head, the puny shoulders. John Christie, the weaselly little worm, was sitting in his father’s leather armchair.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Terry. Your trousers are all wet. Where have you been?’ His mother had seen him. ‘It’s a good job I’ve had Mr Christie here to keep me company. We’ve been having a lovely chat… It turns out he’s from Halifax, can you believe it? He grew up near where me and your dad—’

  ‘Never mind about all tha
t, how did he get in?’ Terrence glared at the dull, priggish figure in his father’s old chair. His gaze travelling down to the plimsolls and the trail of muddy marks Christie had left behind on the carpet. ‘Who let him in? You shouldn’t be letting strangers in.’

  ‘But Mr Christie isn’t a stranger, Terry. The two of you are friends, isn’t that right, Mr Christie?’ Flushed and excited, his mother was obviously enjoying herself.

  ‘That’s right.’ Christie nodded: his face pinched, his domed head gleaming like a corpse candle beneath the ceiling bulb. ‘We’ve been having a little cup of tea together.’

  Terrence gawped at his mother – had she finally lost her marbles? She usually had such a good instinct for people. Couldn’t she tell what kind of man this was? He oozed badness like that dreadful smell he carted around with him. Couldn’t she smell that either?

  ‘But you never answer the door. I don’t understand.’

  ‘I went out the front looking for Tiddles and nice Mr Christie here helped me find him.’

  Christie was making that odd sucking movement with his mouth again; he really was the most nauseating man. Just at this moment, the cat jumped into his lap.

  ‘Look at that.’ A clap of the hands. ‘Mr Tiddles likes you.’

  ‘I’m very good with animals. My Ethel says I’ve a real way with them. I’m the same with children.’ Christie’s voice died to almost nothing. ‘I’ve a cat and a dog of my own.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Christie, I didn’t catch that?’

  ‘I were saying, I’ve a cat and dog of my own… but do call me Reg. All my friends call me Reg.’

  Mr Tiddles had changed his mind about Christie and jumped out of his lap onto the wide leather arm of the chair, where he proceeded to clean himself. Licking a paw, then wiping the paw around the back of his ear, once, then again. Leisurely, all the while eyeing this baleful houseguest.