by Roy Lewis
Myra Woods’ home was a particular favourite for the coffee-morning sessions that lasted from ten till three, since it afforded an across-the-garden glimpse of the prince himself as he prowled through the summer mornings, all brown skin and black hair and white, sharp-cut slacks. They would have loved to have him over for coffee but imagine what Joe would say!
‘Bloody gigolo.’
But that’s what Joe said about anyone he didn’t like. Well, almost anyone. He didn’t say it about the brothers from Bermondsey. He might have thought it, he might have whispered it to himself inside his head but he never said it because Joe was a careful man who ran his branch of the bank with pride and skill and never took chances with a customer. Not that the Bermondsey brothers were customers; Joe doubted whether they would ever entrust their money to a bank. It would be against their professional ethics. That would have been a good joke for Joe to make, but Myra knew he’d never make it. Joe was careful even about jokes: funny remarks had a habit of rebounding and another person’s discomfort could so easily become your own.
Joe was a very careful man.
He did pass the time of day with the two actors and so did Myra on occasions because there was something steady about them in spite of the fact that they were homosexuals. They used Joe’s bank, for instance, and they had seven standing orders, two of some magnitude. Of course, one could hardly invite them around in the evening for a drink, and on the occasion when Karen Steiner had said the women ought to invite at least one of the actors to their coffee-morning round Myra hadn’t laughed because she didn’t approve of dirty jokes. But when she’d related it to Joe that night he’d laughed. He was like that, Joe; he had a crude streak. But then, didn’t all men have crude streaks?
So the coffee-morning cups rattled, and the tongues clacked and the men laughed their deep laughs over evening cocktails and suggestive jokes, and the actors and the prince and the brothers from Bermondsey continued to provide topics for amused conversation, and it was all so peaceful and remote from reality in the cocooned existence they lived behind their four walls, until the real world outside suddenly came home to them, to Myra and Joe Woods. In the first instance it came home to them through the fact that they had known Rosemary Harland personally, and she had been a friend of Sally’s. This was a cause for wonder and excited chatter and false sincerity in their tones as they telephoned their condolences to Mr and Mrs Harland, for they couldn’t keep the thrill out of their voices. But in the second instance the intrusion of the outside world into their tidy, well-ordered home was not in the least exciting for Joe and Myra, and in no way thrilling in the pleasurable connotations that these words had assumed for them. It was merely distressing, for no other house in Edgerton Lane had received an official visit from the police and one didn’t like to have a police car with an infernal flashing blue light parked outside one’s drive. Moreover, there was the gaunt, skeletal police inspector who seemed to have no regard for Joe’s status or Myra’s feelings.
It hadn’t started too badly, nevertheless; it just so happened that Joe was home that afternoon so when the doorbell rang and Myra prinked her hair briefly in front of the hall mirror before opening the door she wasn’t unduly worried. Her stomach lifted under her corset when she caught sight of the car and she experienced one of those unpleasant burning feelings around her heart, the kind that lobster usually visited upon her, when she observed the grim expression upon the face of the gentleman in plain clothes accompanying the blue-uniformed man, but Joe was home after all, and she was sure it was something he could take care of.
‘Joseph?’ she called in a weak, fluffy voice with one hand firmly controlling her midriff and her head and shoulders drawn back to lift the line of her matronly bosom. ‘Joseph, there’s some gentlemen . . .’
She wasn’t to know that they weren’t gentlemen then, of course. Joe came out of the sitting-room, buttoning up the jacket which he had taken off as he sneaked forty winks in front of the television and the golf programme from Royal and Ancient.
‘Who is it, dear?’ he asked.
‘The police, Joseph,’ Myra replied in her weak, cultured voice. ‘They’d like to come in to talk to us.’
Joe summed up the situation in a flash; Myra could see that, from the way he jerked his arm as he did whenever a client came to the branch, and he exposed a fraction of his white cuff; he gestured backwards towards the sitting-room.
‘Then come in here, where we’ll be comfortable.’
As always, Joe was right, of course; after all, it would hardly do for the neighbours to see them gossiping on the doorstep with the police. Uncivilized. Treat the whole thing with the panache expected of a bank manager and his family. After all, they were all professionals. Joe was right as usual.
But, she thought, as she watched her husband wave the two policemen to the easy chairs in the sitting-room, she wished he would take a little more care over his personal appearance. Not his suits — though amply proportioned, they were well cut and expensive — but his fingernails and his teeth and his nose. She’d told him, years ago, to stop biting his nails when he was angry and clean his teeth in the morning. And stop attacking his nose. He had just bitten his nails in anger at her and refused to clean his teeth. And he had squeezed at his nose until little white dirt-worms wriggled out of the enlarged pores and he had rubbed them off with a thumbnail and stared at them in fascinated contemplation, lying white and soft on his nail. She hadn’t bothered to discuss it with him for years. Now he smiled and she saw the yellowing dentures, and he stuck one hand in his jacket pocket with thumb protruding so she could see the rough cuticle and the jagged, black-edged nail and she could remember all those dead, white, soft little worms emerging from his reddened flesh. She sighed, took a seat and the two policemen sat down also, the young one in the uniform waiting until the tall, gaunt one was seated before he took a chair.
‘Well, gentlemen, how can we help you?’ The gaunt man in plain clothes was looking at Joe as he stood with his back to the fireplace. There was no fire there; Myra lit it only after October the thirty-first.
‘We’d like to talk to your daughter, Sally.’
‘Ah. I see. It’s about the Harland affair. Well, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time . . . er . . .’
‘Detective-Inspector Crow.’
‘Yes. The fact is, Sally is hardly likely to be able to help you. She’s been away for the weekend, you know, for a rest, because the news about Rosemary was a tremendous shock to her . . . to us too, of course, though I can’t imagine that it would be anyone in their circle who would want to, or even could possibly—’
‘I’d like to see your daughter.’
Myra saw Joe’s back stiffen and she was proud of him.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think she should be disturbed. I took the afternoon off today to fetch her from the station, and she’s still not recovered, in spite of her weekend away. She’s up in her room now, lying down, and I’m sure there’s nothing she can say that will be of any assistance.’
‘I’d be grateful, nevertheless, if we could speak with her.’
Joe wouldn’t like such a virtual contradiction. He’d soon cut this policeman down to size. She wondered whether the man knew that Joe was manager of the branch bank.
‘Who’s your superior officer, my man?’
‘I’m in charge of this case, Mr Woods, I’m conducting a murder enquiry and your daughter may be able to give me information which will assist me. I would like to speak to her here, but if you prefer, I can ask to see her down at the station.’ His voice was deceptively quiet as he added, ‘And if you stop me seeing her I can ask you to come to the station.’
Joe gasped. ‘What on earth—’
‘You’d be obstructing me in the line of my duty.’
When Sally was five Myra had bought her two goldfish. She suddenly realised that there were occasions when Joe looked remarkably like the larger of those fish, and this was one of those occasions. He was glancing towards h
er and his mouth opened and shut ineffectively several times before the words eventually emerged. ‘Get her, Myra!’
Myra was hurt. It wasn’t her fault, after all.
She sniffed her disapproval of the way they were conducting themselves, deprecated the atmosphere with a delicate arching of her eyebrow and rose, left the room, climbed the stairs, tapped delicately at her daughter’s bedroom door and called softly, ‘Sally? Could you come downstairs for a few minutes? There’s some . . . gentlemen to see you.’ There was a short silence and she added, ‘About Rosemary,’ and a few moments later the door opened and Sally appeared.
She hadn’t been looking well for weeks but Myra had put that down to a surfeit of dieting and the general way youngsters seemed to carry on these days. Sally hadn’t told them, for instance, where she’d gone this weekend. She could have gone off with a man, perhaps, but Myra didn’t think so. After all, Sally was a little unfortunate in that she would never possess the firm bustline and slim waist that had been Myra’s when she was in her twenties; but that was Joe’s fault, for he was inclined towards corpulence and this was why Sally’s figure tended to be somewhat, well, thick and straight. One had to be honest with oneself, even about one’s own daughter. Of course, Sally had rather nice eyes, if one liked eyes, and a smooth complexion, if one overlooked that silly little mole on her chin, and Myra had heard other women say that Sally had a very nice smile but that was just said to flatter Myra really. Myra preferred the truth about these things; she knew Sally’s smile couldn’t match her own.
But it was nice of her friends to try in their wrongly phrased way to please her.
She preceded Sally down the stairs. She wasn’t displeased that Sally was wearing slacks for she personally did not approve of the short dresses Sally wore. Just because she had legs that had been commented upon favourably, that was no reason to wear these horrid mini-dresses and skirts. Myra sniffed. It was all so low.
She glided into the room and waved a negligent hand in the direction of the young constable and Inspector Crow, both rising to their feet.
‘Please remain seated, gentlemen. Here is my daughter.’
Joe rocked on his heels, his hands locked behind his back, and he lowered his head to peer at Sally.
‘These policemen would like to ask a few questions, Sally, but I’ve already explained you’ve nothing to tell them. The quicker it’s over, the better, so just say to them that—’
Crow remained standing and now Myra saw the long face interposed between herself and Joe. The movement also had the effect of cutting father off from daughter and Myra saw Joe hop sideways to maintain sight of Sally. Crow was addressing the girl.
‘I’d like to have a few words with you about Rosemary Harland.’
‘She was my friend.’ Sally’s voice was flat, but then, Myra had always felt that Sally’s voice lacked the musical quality of her own. When she was young, people had said—
‘I understand she visited you here on occasions.’
‘On occasions, yes.’
‘But she’s not been here recently, has she, Sally?’ Joe strutted forward, his hands still locked behind his back, like a fat little captain on his quarterdeck. ‘It must be at least three weeks since you’ve seen her.’
Crow glanced over his shoulder at Joe but Sally replied in a quiet voice that served to emphasize the stillness of her bearing.
‘How would you know? It’s either bridge, newspapers or snoring in front of the television for you! You wouldn’t have noticed if she was here!’
‘Sally!’ An ecstatic thrill of displeasure surged through Myra’s ample bosom and she turned to look at her daughter. ‘How can you speak to your father like that?’ She was amazed, and perturbed too, to see that Sally was smiling contemptuously.
‘You mean that truth and words with meaning shouldn’t be used in this house? I know they haven’t been, for years!’
‘Sally!’ Joe’s voice carried a fierce warning and he tried to shuffle his way past the detective-inspector but Crow moved almost as though by accident, barring the way.
‘Is there a room where I can speak to your daughter in private?’
‘I insist that I be present when you speak with her!’
‘Mr Woods, I can ensure privacy at the station.’
Joe was puffing as though he were out of breath and Myra revised her impression; he wasn’t a goldfish at all but a bullfrog suffering from glandular fever. She said not a word as Sally shrugged and turned away.
‘Come on through to the dining-room. You can ask me your questions there.’
She was nineteen. And she was ignoring Joe and she was ignoring Myra and these two policemen were walking after her into the dining-room and Joe was puffing away in front of the fireplace and Myra sat down.
‘How can they . . .’ Joe expostulated. ‘What’s got into that girl . . .?’
‘How did she behave coming home in the car?’
‘Well, I don’t know, we didn’t have much to say, really, I was listening to the golf on the radio and I suppose she just sat there staring out of the window. I did ask her how she was when she got in and she said all right and I just switched on the radio.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, I didn’t know she was going to behave like this, when these policemen came, did I?’
Myra sneaked a glance towards the window; there was a movement of white at the window across the garden. The Italian prince was returning the compliments paid him by the coffee-morning clique.
‘Shall I make a cup of tea, dear?’
Joe shrugged helplessly. Myra went out and made a cup of tea. He was still standing, red-faced, in front of the fireplace, when she returned with the tray and the bone china tea service. Five cups; she poured out two cups of tea, one for herself, and one for Joe.
‘I hope they won’t mind if we don’t wait. Do you think they’d like a cucumber sandwich?’
Joe shrugged again, equally helplessly.
Myra sipped at her tea and hoped they’d come out of the dining-room soon while the tea was still hot. They did. To her dismay the inspector smiled, refused the tea offered and made off with the young constable in train. When the door closed behind them she could hear Joe shouting at Sally in the sitting-room.
‘What did they say to you? What did they want? You had nothing to tell them, of course, because you hadn’t seen Rosemary Harland for some time, had you, she’d not been here anyway and if you ask me there must have been something funny going on for her to get herself killed like that! I mean, respectable girls don’t get killed like that, do they? You had nothing to say to them did you?’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘What did you say?’
Myra swept into the room on a great bow wave of excited pleasure.
‘Don’t speak to your father like that!’
‘I’m surprised he heard me.’
‘Sally!’
‘He never does. He just hears himself, all the time, no one else. And you, you hear only what you want to. Only when it’s flattery, isn’t it, Mother? The rest is silence.’
Myra sat down, deliciously weak at the knees.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Sally—’ warned Joe in a menacing growl.
Sally began to walk towards the hallway and the stairs. ‘Sally,’ Joe called, ‘you stay here, do you hear me? We’ve got to have words, you and I!’
‘As one door closes,’ Sally said in a dreamy voice, ‘so another shuts.’
‘Eh? What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing. But it is about as important a statement as most of yours.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Joe’s voice had risen and his neck was corded in anger; Myra scrambled out of her chair in a manner quite undignified, with a quick peek out of the window.
‘Joe—’ she began tremulously, but Sally’s voice cut across hers. Its inflection was icy. ‘Mother! People who live in glass houses . . . shouldn’t.’
�
��Shouldn’t what?’
Sally just stared at her contemptuously.
Myra had never seen contempt in someone’s eyes before, not a naked contempt like that. It quivered right down to her lower stomach, gave her a strange feeling that she hadn’t experienced for years, and never with Joe, but just once when the bank clerk had come across to the house for Joe’s briefcase and had looked at her as she’d handed it to him and had said—
Sally had turned away again. Joe barked at her, a harsh sound that roughened his voice to a rasp-like quality.
‘I’ve told you! Stay here, until we’ve had this out! What’s got into you, girl?’
Sally stood by the door. Her hands were hanging limply at her sides. She was taller than Myra, as tall as Joe, but in her pale blue sweater she looked rather dumpy. Her face was stiff and lacking in expression as she stared at Joe and Myra but her voice was powered with a bitter anger that Myra had never heard before.
‘I’ll tell you what’s got into me. Rosemary’s dead, and she was my friend and she was just a bit older than me and you don’t give a damn, either of you. Tomorrow you’ll have forgotten she even existed, and right now if I was to walk out of the house the only emotion you’d feel is embarrassment about what the neighbours would think. You’re non-people, you know that? You don’t live, I doubt if you even exist other than within yourselves. Well, I’m opting out, I’m getting out and leaving you to it. Rosemary’s dead and I’m nineteen; I’m going to live the way I want to live, as far away from. this disinfected atmosphere as I can get. And what the neighbours think, that’s your problem. It’s the only problem I’ll leave you, I know that.’
‘Sally! This nonsense — there was a young man at the station — it’s got something to do with that young man who left you there, hasn’t it!’
Sally’s lip was curling as Myra sat shivering with inexplicable excitement.
‘If you like,’ she sneered. ‘After all, as they say, a bird on the sand is worth two who are bushed.’