A tall grey woman in a black-and-white uniform under a thin cardigan came into the room and stood over him with tiny fists clenched against her chest. She looked at him fondly and Tennyson was ready to be asked if he had done his homework and to get his skates off the kitchen floor. He glanced at the menu and ordered cod and chips.
“Do you want that with bread and butter and a cup to tea? You get cod-and-chips-and-bread-and-butter-and-a-cup-of-tea, 85 pence.”
“Lovely,” Tennyson said. “I’ll have that.” He had been long enough in London to learn to say “lovely.”
The food came and the crisp brown slabs of breaded fish were quite simply the most delicious he had ever tasted. He soaked on the vinegar and salt, took a bite from a triangle of buttered bread, slurped a swallow of strong tea, and began really to enjoy himself.
It was a perfect example of the rewards that can come from obeying an impulse. The idea of taking this day-trip to Brighton had only occurred to him at breakfast. The sky was clear, Capital Radio said no rain all day, and his writing schedule was up to date, so he was free to walk to Wimbledon Station, take a train to Clapham Junction, and transfer there to the Brighton express. One hour later he was at the seaside—in June, before the main press of tourists.
Tennyson could hardly stop congratulating himself. His main venture during the afternoon had been a walk along the cliffs to the village of Rottingdean, three miles away. Here he drank lager in a couple of pubs, wandered the tidy streets, and spent an hour in and around a church that dated back to the Saxons.
Then he bussed back to Brighton and roamed the Palace Pier, dropping pennies into the sweeper machines, hoping to cause a penny avalanche over one of the ledges, eating licorice allsorts from a bag in his pocket, lying in a deck chair with his face to the sun.
He even entered the little toy house of Eva Montenegro, the famous Romany clairvoyant, and paid £3 to have his fortune told. She sat opposite him, grainy-faced and clear-eyed, warning him not to put his hands where she had just spilled her tea. Then she nattered on with a stream of consciousness that could have been about him, reading his reactions he supposed, shaping her talk according to the way his shrugs or eyebrows guided her.
One thing she said surprised and pleased him. “You do some writing—you are a clerk?”
“Not a clerk. I do write.”
“Ah. You will write a good story. A big story will be a big success.”
Tennyson wandered on the seafront afterwards with eyes half closed, his mind floating on her prediction. The dramatic society in Wimbledon had agreed to perform his play in the fall. It was only an amateur group, to be sure, and there would be no money in it. But he didn’t require money. What he craved was success and here was the gypsy telling him he would have it.
Empty plates were taken away, the woman brought him a dish of apple pie with hot custard, and the delightful supper went on.
Then everything crashed as Tennyson looked up through the doorway into the vestibule and saw Meredith Morgan. He wanted to hide beneath the table. Of all people—the one member of the Hartfield Dramatic Society who really put him off—and here she was, not ten feet away. Fortunately, she had not seen him yet.
And what was this? She set a large suitcase at her feet and, raising her voice, she called straight ahead into the body of the house, “Hello? Anybody is at home, yes?”
Tennyson stopped tasting what he was eating. The accent was pure German, strong and true. Could it be Meredith Morgan’s continental double? No, it was herself—it had to be. He had seen her only last week at a cast reading.
An invisible landlord made terms for a single room and Tennyson could hear Meredith hissing her stagey German as she signed the book. Then she reappeared beyond the dining-room doorway to claim her suitcase and Tennyson turned his head hard away. When he looked again, she was gone and he heard footsteps on a stairway.
There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that this was the Morgan girl and here she was in Brighton pretending to be a German tourist. Tennyson was intrigued now that the immediate danger of having to spend time with her was past. Not that there was much chance of her trapping and boring him; she was surely less anxious to meet him than he was to meet her.
But what was she up to? Tennyson finished his pie, scraping the last of the yellow custard from the dish, and considered the possibilities. The most preposterous occurred to him first. She was some sort of a spy. But that made no sense at all. If she did some work for M15 or whoever, she might end up in Berlin playing the part of a German. But in Brighton?
Perhaps it was a romantic involvement. She had a boy friend who, for some reason, thought she was from Germany and she was here for a liaison, carrying on the charade. But Meredith with a boyfriend, secret of otherwise, was hard to swallow. She was the least-liked individual in the Hartfield, by both men and women, and she took no pains to make herself more appealing.
Then Tennyson thought of a far-fetched notion that might explain her behavior. Somewhere down the road the Society was going to do a play in which there was a female part demanding a German accent. Meredith wanted the role so she had come here to live for a few days as a German, getting dialect practice all day long. Possible but, on second thought, doubtful. She could do this in London—no need to come to Brighton.
Tennyson paid for his supper and went outside. He had gone a dozen paces down the cobbled lane when the impulse hit him and he returned, entering a pub opposite the rooming house, ordering a pint at the bar, and taking it to a table near the front window. He sat down and began watching the painted doorway. It had become very important for him to learn why Meredith Morgan was in Brighton, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich.
As he drank his beer, Tennyson remembered his early days in England, over a year ago. He had settled in Wimbledon simply because the name of the place meant something to him from years of following tennis. And it had lots of Underground and British Rail trains to and from London. Since his aim in life was to become a successful playwright, now that he was financially independent for a few years thanks to a state lottery win, it made sense for Tennyson to become involved with a theatrical group. The West End was beyond him at present, so it had to be an amateur society.
That was how he came to seek out the Hartfield. They were a friendly group and apparently happy to accept a good-looking, 28-year-old American, although his accent certainly did not blend with theirs onstage. Now, after playing small parts in three productions, Tennyson had made the breakthrough he was seeking; they were going to do his play, Call It Love, as their September production. It was a romantic comedy, set in Wimbledon, with a tennis background.
As a group, the Hartfield could only be called jovial. They kidded Tennyson about some of his pronunciations, praised his forceful acting style, and waved to him on the street. He was on a cheek-kissing basis with most of the girls. But not with Meredith Morgan. At first, he took the conversational initiative with her and attributed her monosyllabic replies to shyness but after a while he tired of it and stopped speaking to her—let her make the effort.
Onstage, at the close of one play, he found himself placed next to her in the curtain-call lineup. Automatically, as they bowed, he took the hand of the person on either side of him. Meredith’s hand, cold and claw-like, tore itself free and he did not touch her again.
There was movement in the doorway across the street. Meredith emerged dressed in shades of blue—a tight T-shirt, short skirt, and plastic boots. This was nothing like what she wore back in Wimbledon and Tennyson felt a quickening of his heartbeat as he finished his beer and left the pub.
She turned left at the main road and wandered down the hill towards the seafront. It was becoming dark and strings of lights sparkled along the broad walk. Beyond, the English Channel, flat on this calm night, was fading to black. Tennyson was not surprised to see pedestrians, men and women, turning to look at the attractive girl in blue as they passed her.
This new style of hers puzzled Tennyson as much
as anything, because at rehearsals Meredith was a mouse. His impression of her there, whenever he bothered to look, was of furtive brown eyes, unwashed short brown hair, hungry cheeks, and sloping posture, usually with an inch or two of unstitched hem at the bottom of her skirts.
Now she swaggered ahead of him, swinging a red plastic handbag, trailing her fingertips on building fronts—arrogant, provocative. Tennyson worked to control his breathing as he followed her into a pub called The Cutlass. He used his head and came in right after her, reasoning that given time she would be seated and possibly watching the door.
He was able to watch her order a gin and tonic and carry it to a table in an alcove. Tennyson brought his beer with him and sat on the other side of the upholstered parapet where he could see and hear the girl without being seen, unless she turned fully around.
The action was not long in starting. Meredith finished her drink quickly and set down the empty glass. A middle-aged man, heavy-set and grey-headed, took his own glass and reached for hers. “Same again, love?” he said. His accent was from somewhere up north.
“Thank you, you are very kind. It is gin and tonic.”
He returned with the refills and hers looked like a double. “Cheers, love,” he said, and after they drank he went on, “Well then, how do you like our country?”
“I am only here one day but it is very good. The people are so friendly.”
“Famous for it,” the man said. “And where’s home?”
“I come from Hamburg. That is in Germany.”
“I know where Hamburg is.”
“Ah, you have been there?”
“Yes, but not to stay. I flew over in a Lancaster, long before you were born. All I saw was a lot of fires burning.” He was well away on the beer and the effect of it could be heard in his voice.
Meredith paused, looking at her hands. Then she said, “It was, as you say, before I was born. But I find it hard to believe that our people could be enemies.”
“My dear,” the man said, “you are not going to find anybody to be your enemy.”
She laughed at that and their foreheads almost touched as they leaned close together. Tennyson listened to a lot more of the same and then, when the two of them left the pub, he was relieved. The situation was obvious enough; the Morgan girl was one of these shy people who like to get away and play games under the protection of an assumed identity. So be it, and more power to her. Anyway, Tennyson had to hurry to get a late train back to London.
Next day, he worked all morning at his romantic comedy. Now that the group had agreed to perform the play, Tennyson was scared to death; it was simply not good enough. At half past one, he went out to his local for a pint and some food, picking up a newspaper on the way. He took a Ploughman to his favorite corner table and began enjoying the tangy cheddar cheese, pickled onion, and crusty bread and butter washed down with cool lager.
Then he saw the photograph on page three and the food went sour in his mouth. It looked a lot like the man who was buying drinks for Meredith Morgan last night. But it was the caption under the photograph that shook Tennyson—
BRIGHTON VISITOR STABBED TO DEATH
He read the story and learned the Leeds businessman had been found a few yards from the entrance to a culvert under one of the piers, dead of multiple stab wounds. Robbery was not a motive—he still had his money.
Tennyson stopped reading and stopped eating. He had to make a decision. The obvious thing to do was to go to the police. But there were unanswered questions that impeded him. First, what if the girl was not Meredith? He was ninety-eight percent sure, but that left a devilish two percent.
Worse still, what if it was her, and the man had been bushwhacked after he left her? By setting the police on her, Tennyson would be causing the girl all kinds of trouble for nothing.
For nothing? She might be able to tell the police something that would help them find the killer. That was worth a little inconvenience. Tennyson tossed that problem back and forth in his mind till three o’clock closing, by which time he was three pints further along on the day’s high, but no closer to a solution on Morgan.
So he decided to visit the girl and give her a chance to explain. In German or otherwise. He left the pub and wandered on down past Ely’s display windows, past the station, and on along the Broadway to the entrance to Meredith’s flat. Months ago, after a rehearsal, they had dropped her here from a crowded jolly car and Meredith Morgan, typically, had ducked out with a glum goodnight.
Later that evening, over brandy at his flat, Tennyson had gotten Tony Bastable, the director, to open up about Meredith. Tony was an accountant in real life, a theatrical man only in his spare time. He was one of a type who abound in England, actors with enough talent to be only a shade or two below the Oliviers and Richardsons but who can not make it in a professional system that is grossly overcrowded. So they teach school or balance books and, making it look very easy, put on in church halls productions of a quality to stun visitors from across the Atlantic.
That night he had sat with his thin legs crossed at the ankles, his pink face wreathed in a beatific smile, sipping his brandy and talking of wartime years in India where he and a group of Air Force friends performed Shakespeare for a rajah. Then, prompted by Tennyson, he talked about Meredith Morgan.
She had been a rich girl once. She actually attended Roedean, which explained the plummy accent when she deigned to speak. Then, when she was around eighteen years old, her father managed to pull the set down around her ears.
What Mr. Morgan did was to embezzle money from his stockbroking firm in the city. The reason he stole was to meet gambling debts incurred in a casino in Grosvenor Square. One thing they frown upon in the City of London is embezzling. Not done. So Meredith’s father locked himself in an air-tight room wherein he opened the gas valves without igniting a flame. Worse, he persuaded Meredith’s mother to join him in this one-way ramble to eternity.
It was then that their daughter’s nickname of “Merry” became permanently inappropriate. She stopped attending the prestigious private school, stopped smiling, stopped going out of the house, even stopped eating for quite a while.
It was tough going for a couple of years and, in the end, all Meredith Morgan could afford to offer the world was the cold, quiet robot so thoughtfully tolerated by the Hartfield Dramatic Society.
“Why does she go on with the acting then?” Tennyson asked.
“I suppose because she was a member before the fall,” Tony said. “And today, it’s her one avenue to the world.”
Now, standing on the Broadway outside her door with the big red busses grumbling by and people queuing at the fruit stall in the lane, Tennyson wondered whether to ring Meredith’s bell. Go ahead, he told himself. She’s at work, she won’t answer.
He stepped into the entrance and pressed the button. There was a click from above and the door fell ajar. Tennyson shrugged away a chilly, instinctive warning and went inside. A crumbling flight of steps led upward into a thick smell of animals and soup and rising damp. He trudged upwards, hearing a door creak open above him.
Meredith met him on the landing dressed in threadbare slacks and a sweater coated with cat hairs. A pair of ripe quilted slippers bloomed on her bare feet. “Oh, hello. Have I missed a rehearsal?”
“No. I was just walking by. There’s something I have to ask you about—to settle my mind.”
She drew the door almost shut behind her and stood small, the way she did onstage, with those thin arms hanging lifeless behind her back. She was not going to ask him in.
“Can we go inside?” Tennyson asked. “Just for a minute, I can’t stay.”
She led him in then. Tennyson was not able to look but he received an impression of twisted bedclothes, newspapers and magazines on the floor, used cotton swabs on a dresser, a mottled grey washbasin, and a pot full of something brown on top of a cooker. From the midst of all this, a heavy-eyed cat watched him with contempt.
Meredith said distan
tly, “I’m not well today. I couldn’t go to work.”
Not knowing where to begin, Tennyson said, “Where do you work?”
“The Education Authority, typing and filing. It’s worth it being a civil servant; they can’t sack you.” Her tone of voice, the surroundings, cried out with self-pity.
Now, beyond her in a corner beside the bed, Tennyson saw the suitcase. Its shape and color, even the type of handle, identified it positively as the one he had seen in the Brighton vestibule. This made up his mind.
“Ach zo,” he said thickly, “did ve haf a gut time by der zee?”
He saw no change in her but he felt a new current in the room, a slightly higher vibration. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“Meredith,” he said, “I saw you check into that rooming house in Brighton. I heard you using a German accent, quite a good one. And I saw you pick up that man in the pub.”
“What has any of that got to do with you?” It was her first speech with any fiber in it.
“Just that I saw his picture in the paper today. Somebody murdered him, Meredith. And since I know about it, and you haven’t denied you were with him, I’m going to have to decide what to do with what I know.”
She walked past him into the kitchen area and Tennyson had a terrible feeling she was going to offer him a cup of something. Even the thought of the utensils in this place... But she turned and said, “You’ll go to the police.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to make trouble for you. But that was very suspicious behavior.”
“I know.” She backed against the counter and turned her face in profile, and he wondered how this sad wraith had converted herself into yesterday’s provocative tourist. “You know how shy I am, I can’t help it. The only way I can let go is to become somebody else. That’s what you saw in Brighton.”
Songs in the Key of Death Page 11