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

by Rebecca Griffiths

  No one spoke.

  Terrence knew it was Christie. Who else would ring at this hour? He listened to him pushing his pure, clean hatred down the line to him. And when he could no longer stand it, he replaced the handset and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, the wiry carpet fibres prickling his bare legs. His skin was washed grey in the cold gaslight seeping into the hallway and he stared at an imaginary horizon, feeling the most despairing and hopeless he had ever felt in his life. Then, because there seemed to be no way out of the situation he found himself in, Terrence dropped forward onto his knees, his head in his hands, and wept.

  65

  Queenie lay in bed and watched moonlight flicker through the trees. It was always Joy who had liked to sleep with the curtains open on Bugbrooke Farm. Queenie doubted she had noticed the moon before going there, but since returning to London, she had made a point of following its phases. Her hands swam out across the slippery sheen of the eiderdown. Silvery-grey like the surface of the sea, the whorls in the stitching rippled across its surface. If she concentrated, she could smell the salty breeze rushing in off the waves, its fingers playful, finding her hair and lifting it high off her forehead. Her thoughts drifted to Joy and what she might be doing. Imagined her asleep in her little bed all those streets away. Queenie hoped her dreams were less disturbed than hers but doubted they were.

  * * *

  When she woke, she found the moon had swapped places with the sun. Dizzy was the first to rise and jumped down from the bed. Like her, the cat kept odd hours, and like her also, he ate little and infrequently. The two of them had a surprising amount in common, which was good, as Dizzy was about the only company Queenie had these days. She had seen next to nothing of Terrence since the New Year, and when she did, he was weirdly distracted and distant. Cagey when she tried to push him to open up and tell her what was wrong. She supposed it was because he couldn’t find it in him to forgive her for what she’d done to Joy. It had to be – it was how she felt about herself.

  She got up and put on her mother’s old dressing gown, knotted the cord around her ever-expanding middle. Downstairs, she arranged the kindling on yesterday’s ashes and lit the fire. Blew on it until she saw a spark and waited until the orange ribbon of flame multiplied and became a fire. The temperatures had dipped to below zero since the storms London had been living under had finally blown out to sea. She set the kettle on the stove and tidied the table. Found the half-completed application form for the Friern Mental Hospital she planned to finish and post today. Dizzy jumped up beside her, rubbed his furry black jowls against her hand.

  ‘Aren’t you the stylish one, in your black harem pants.’ She stroked him from tip to tail. His deep rumbling purr filling the void. She was grateful to have his heartbeat living alongside hers in the house. ‘You’re the only one I’ve got to talk to, d’you know that?’

  And whose fault was that? She caught a slice of her reflection in the mirror. It was all she deserved after destroying Joy’s life. Friendless and lonely, she didn’t even have the club any more. Forced to take a break from the Mockin’ Bird and put her singing career on hold until the problem had been resolved – Dulcie Fricker’s words, not hers. The table was littered with the failed letters she had begun writing to Joy but couldn’t finish. She picked up a sheet she’d scrunched into a ball. Flattened it with her fist. Another attempt that had come to nothing, because there just weren’t the words to put this right. She had repeatedly turned up at the museum, in the hope of catching Joy at lunchtimes or on her way home. But it was only ever Amy she saw. Amy, who had, on more than one occasion, threatened to have her removed from the premises. She was doing it to protect Joy, and although Queenie had never got on with the girl, she had to admit Amy was a far better friend to Joy than she ever was.

  J O Y.

  The three letters that made up her best friend’s name were scattered now. Dispersed like pollen from forgotten flowers. Desperate to make amends but with no idea how, Queenie looked for them on billboards, in posters on the sides of buses and shop windows. In her evening newspaper. Gathering the letters together was harder than it seemed, but if she could pull them back from wherever they had been, she could make what she and Joy used to be whole again, couldn’t she?

  The kettle came to the boil and Queenie made a pot of tea. Sat down with it at the table without making anything to eat. She looked out through the window, saw the morning was fine, but fine was the last thing she felt. Her mood wasn’t helped by the distressing story she’d been following in the papers and on the wireless. The trial of Timothy Evans. Not that she had time to dwell on it. A knock at the door and Quilp, the postman, was calling to her through the letterbox.

  ‘Cooee… where are you?’ The voice was slippery, groping along the hall as if meaning to molest her. ‘I’ve a package for you, my dear.’

  Queenie left her chair and padded along the hall in her dressing gown and slippers. She opened the front door just enough for him to pass her what wouldn’t fit through the letterbox.

  ‘Thank you.’ Deliberately curt, she snapped the door shut, narrowly missing Quilp’s investigative fingers. She had never liked the man; she didn’t trust the way he looked at her. And in her current condition without her father to act as a safeguard, she felt acutely vulnerable.

  The large brown envelope was heavy. Queenie frowned and carried it through to the kitchen. Scanned the hard-edged capitals of her name and address, not recognising the handwriting. She sat down and untied the string. Ripped open the flap and tipped the contents onto the table. It was as if to look at the vestiges of someone’s life. There were picture postcards of an expanse of sea with a sandy shoreline. There were letters written in violet ink, beginning with, My dearest love… and ending, Your loving sweetheart. One was decorated with tiny red hearts that cascaded like waterfalls down the margins. There were tickets for bus journeys, cinema showings and theatre seats with the middles punched out of them. Fliers for a book fair and an art exhibition. A paper napkin with a line drawing of a bay and cliffs. A beer mat with a toucan balancing a glass of Guinness on its bill. A single wildflower pressed between the covers of a poetry book. Three pearl buttons. A length of green ribbon and a folded white cotton handkerchief with the monogram C P G embroidered along its edge.

  Something else from the pile caught her eye. A brooch. These were Joy’s things; Joy had sent them to her. But why? Queenie’s fingers explored the little apple shapes, her nail finding a tiny shard of chipped enamel and the bent pin that didn’t fit into the clasp any more. ‘Smuggler’s Cove’ stamped into the metal on the back. This was where Charles used to take Joy. Smuggler’s Cove was their special place.

  ‘I was so mean to you about this, Joy. I had no right.’ A memory of the day they had eaten onion soup under the October sky rushed at her. ‘You didn’t ask for any of this to happen… I’m so sorry.’

  She put down the brooch and picked up the quartered sheet of notepaper, held her breath while she read:

  My dear Queenie,

  * * *

  You little know how you have crushed me in breaking faith with me, but with it all, I do not wish you anything but your happiness. Be happy, Queenie, have the baby and let something good come from the ruins of my life. Please accept the enclosed. I won’t be needing them where I am going. When I think of your beauty and grace, I feel what a fool I have been to dream that Charles could ever love me.

  * * *

  C’est la vie.

  * * *

  Don’t think badly of me, think only of the good times we once had.

  * * *

  Joy

  66

  Without looking up at Britannia bearing the torch of liberty, Queenie walked under the Victory Arch and into Waterloo Station. People huddled in behind her. It was bitterly cold and they, like her, were desperate to get into the warm. Not that the station offered warmth, with its grand Victorian glass-and-steel roof and old-soot smell, but at least it was out of the wind. It had bee
n dark when she’d left the house, but now, over her back, the city was emerging into the blue shine of a winter morning.

  She edged forward, into the crowd of hats and belted raincoats, the children and dogs, old men wheeling bicycles. She was going on a journey with no idea how it would end. The straps of her portmanteau, heavy at the end of her arm, carved into her hand as she aimed for the enquiries desk to ask when the next train to Dorset was. Neat, but perhaps not quite so slim, in her navy hat and the coat she’d altered to accommodate her changing shape.

  She slipped her ticket to Swanage into her coat pocket and peered up at a sign to find the platform she needed. With time to kill, she bought a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes from a tobacconist and, thinking she was hungry, a warm penny bun in a paper bag from a young girl wheeling a portable stall. When she moved to stand in line behind the railings – there to bar travellers from the platform until the train had arrived – she put her bun away in her handbag and sifted its contents with her scarlet nails. Joy’s note was in there, and thinking about her words brought another twinge of anxiety. The idea Joy had gone to Dorset was only a hunch and she hoped this wasn’t some wild goose chase. The journey sounded torturous. The train to Swanage took over three hours and then a bus to Smuggler’s Cove, with no idea where she was going to spend the night. Having called around to Joy’s lodgings on the Gloucester Road to be told by her landlord, in his usual obstructive manner, that he had no idea where she was, Queenie needed to check the museum. For once she didn’t need to do battle with that Amy girl, and although she managed to establish Joy wasn’t at work, no one could confirm where she actually was.

  Queenie withdrew her hand from her bag and looked at it. It was a well-maintained, pretty hand that suited the well-maintained, pretty woman she was. It bore a gold ring with a cluster of diamonds. A present from an admirer she couldn’t remember the face of. It gave her a tiny flash of victory, but then her heart overtook her head and the victory faded to a miserable feeling. The diamonds were a decent size and she wondered if they had been dug out of the faraway depths of South Africa. Somewhere Charles Gilchrist had gone if his mother was to be believed; because Queenie had gone to Bayswater yesterday too.

  ‘Is Joy here?’

  Heloise had come to the door clutching the hem of a black silk kimono around her as if her stomach hurt. She looked a mess and Queenie wondered if she had been ill.

  ‘Please?’ Queenie tried again. ‘Is Joy here?’

  Neither had moved.

  ‘Then I want to speak to Charles.’

  Without a word, Heloise had stepped out of her house and shoved Queenie sideways. Padded down the path in her slippers to open the garden gate.

  ‘You’ve a nerve coming here,’ Heloise had snarled. ‘How dare you, after what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed the lives of two people that I love.’ The woman had pushed her fist against her mouth as if frightened of losing control. ‘Joy was the best thing to happen to Charles, they had their whole lives ahead of them. She was precious and kind, she was… she was…’ Heloise had gulped down her anger. ‘Too good for a trollop like you. I don’t know why, but Joy refuses to see me. I’ve tried and tried but I can’t get near her. And as well as this, I’ve had to send my darling boy to Cape Town to get him out of your clutches. Charles was talking about doing the honourable thing and marrying you… over my dead body. This awful mess… You caused this, you greedy, selfish…’ When she had run out of insults, she’d seized Queenie by the wrist and shaken her in the same way she had that morning all those weeks ago. ‘Oh, you’re not worth bothering with.’ Then she’d thrown her aside. ‘All I can hope is that you’ll get your comeuppance one day. Now, clear off. Go on. Get off my property. And if you ever dare,’ Heloise had wagged an irate finger, ‘to come here again, I’ll be calling the police.’

  Queenie wasn’t sure if it was reliving this painful episode that made her double over in sudden agony. But out of nowhere, it was as if she was being punched in the stomach. Hard, swift, violent movements that left her gasping for air. Three, then four. Then a hot, feverish sensation rippled up through her and her legs gave way. She collapsed to the ground, felt a cold wind sweep over her body.

  The world went quiet for what seemed to be the longest time. Then a swell of commotion she wasn’t part of as people circled her in their leather shoes. When the pain ebbed a little, she looked past them at the activity going on in the station beyond, thought how weird everything looked sideways up.

  ‘Quick, get help. This woman needs help.’ A shout, close to her head.

  ‘Oh, dear, look… she’s bleeding.’ Someone else – Queenie didn’t know who – reached down to scoop up her arm, snatching at her coat, pulling her upright.

  ‘No. Don’t move her. Don’t touch her.’ A man’s voice attached to a pair of black boots advanced, authoritatively.

  Dropped again, her face struck the floor and she was strangely aware of a small circle of cold where her cheek pressed against it. She focused on this circle while her eyes followed a crack on the station floor.

  This is it. She screwed her eyes against a fresh surge of pain she could hardly breathe past. This is where I’m going to die.

  * * *

  ‘At last.’ Queenie sighed as the bright light of the ward was finally dimmed. Thirty-seven minutes past midnight. Her eyes, adapting to the unhealthy hue of the night-time corridor, made out the hands of the clock on the opposite wall. She had been admitted to hospital early that morning and nobody knew she was here. Careful not to knock the IV tube in her arm, she sank into the pillows to the accompanying crackle of starched sheets against her hospital gown. She had been thinking about her mother since the ambulance had brought her here. Thinking how swiftly her death had come at the end. It had appeared to be as easy as the closing and fastening down of a window and had left Queenie curious as to why no one had got around to closing it before, rather than letting the cold draught of her illness blow through their lives for as long as it had.

  Bored with the ceiling, she twisted her head to follow a shaft of light that sliced free of the nurses’ restroom, through the ironmongery clutter beneath the beds and over the floor of the ward. She could smell the toast the nurses must have brought up from the canteen to eat. It reminded her of the kinds of breakfasts she would treat herself to when home from a night performing at the Mockin’ Bird. Ravenous and still on a high, eating standing up at the kitchen window watching dawn push over the sky.

  She yawned. Her eyes watering from the effort. She was exhausted but couldn’t sleep; her mind wouldn’t let her go for long enough. She wondered if reading the paper might help her and reached to turn on her bedside light. Grateful the painful stomach cramps had finally eased, she wriggled upright and, careful of her drip, arranged the pillows at the small of her back.

  ‘How are you feeling, Queenie, dear?’ A nurse appeared, the stiff material of her uniform brushing her arm.

  ‘Much better, thank you. The painkillers have helped.’

  ‘You be sure to rest.’ The nurse set about testing Queenie’s blood pressure. ‘Oh, isn’t that an awful business?’ She nodded at the newspaper. At the anguished photographed face of Timothy Evans, who hogged the front pages yet again. ‘They’re saying he strangled his little baby girl with his tie. Can you believe that? The man’s a monster. No punishment would be enough for the likes of him.’

  ‘I can’t believe he would do that to his wife and child.’ Queenie shuddered; the story had a horrible grip on her imagination.

  ‘My dear, you have no idea of the terrible things men do.’ A matronly look.

  ‘But you didn’t hear the way he spoke about his baby girl, such fondness.’

  ‘You met him!’ the nurse exclaimed.

  ‘I did, yes.’ Queenie recalled the dreadful night in the Elgin. The Welshman with the limp who made her laugh. ‘He was harmless, naïve. Too naïve to do what he’s being accused of. So, no, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it was him. What
do you make of that Mr Christie?’

  ‘Christie? Was he one of the witnesses?’

  Queenie nodded. ‘One of the principal witnesses.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t have called on him if he wasn’t a nice, upstanding fellow. He’s a retired policeman, or something, isn’t he?’

  ‘One with a criminal record, other reports are saying. Surely that has to mean something?’ Queenie shuddered again.

  ‘Oh, dear, are you all right? You’re not in pain again?’

  ‘No, I’m much better.’ Queenie wasn’t able to share the things that troubled her. Whatever this nurse said, she didn’t like the look of John Christie in the photographs that had been in the paper and would be forever thankful she had not knocked on his door that night.

  ‘It’s a sorry business, all right. But justice must run its course.’ The nurse punctuated her opinion with a sigh.

  ‘Except they’re going to hang the wrong man.’ A voice – disconsolate, instructive – sliced between them.

  ‘Terry! I can’t believe you’re here, it’s so good to see you.’ Queenie burst into grateful tears.

  ‘Oh, now, young man, I’m sorry, but it really is far too late for our patients to be receiving visitors,’ the nurse intervened, looking flustered. ‘We do have rules, you know. Does Matron know you’re here? I can’t think she does, she’s terribly strict about visiting times.’

  Terrence smiled his charming smile. ‘Please don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘I’ve cleared it with Matron. She was happy to bend the rules just this once.’

  ‘Was she? I am surprised.’