by Laura Wilson
‘Do you think that was Perlmann’s doing?’
‘Well, I can’t think of anyone else.’
‘Do you think he could have been responsible for Hampton’s death? If Conroy and the others had decided to go to the rent tribunal, and they’d told people about it, then everyone would be getting their rent lowered and Perlmann’s income would take a hell of a knock.’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something – with Hampton out of the way, there’ll be a lot more of that business with the dog. You mark my words: for all our talk of liberty and tolerance, we’re going to see something very ugly here, very soon. We’ve spent years spreading ourselves all over the world without so much as a by-your leave, but when a few thousand harmless Negroes come to our shores, we throw up our hands in horror. That’s why they’re here, Inspector, and don’t you forget it. They’re here because we are – or in some cases, were – there; because of the history of this island. Oh, well …’ Russell sighed. ‘Still, I’ve lived too bloody long already, so I doubt I’ll be around to see it.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Both Royce and MacDonald were out at work. Stratton made a mental note to come back and speak to them about the men with the dog, then went back upstairs to ask Conroy if he’d received a similar visit. The Trinidadian, visibly agitated by his persistence, became almost hysterical in his denials, and Stratton, concluding that Russell had been right about the nature of the visit, went down to the basement.
*
Mrs Tyndall was, Stratton guessed, around forty, although her tired face and general air of defeat made her seem much older. Jean Tyndall, who appeared in the doorway at her mother’s shoulder, looked older than her years too. She had a full, ripe figure and was heavily made up with a thick coating of salmon-coloured lipstick and a sticky-looking mound of lacquered curls. This must be, Stratton thought, in imitation of Connie Francis. Not that he’d have known who Connie Francis was but for a conversation with his daughter Monica back in April. Monica, a make-up artist at Ashwood Film Studios, knew all the latest styles and had explained about the Connie Francis thing when he’d complained that her new hairdo looked like a rain-sodden haystack.
The other four Tyndall children were shovelling down sausages and mash to the tinny accompaniment of a pop song from a transistor radio placed in the centre of the table. The basement flat, obviously the largest in the house, had its own kitchen as well as three other rooms. The place smelt of frying and – even in this hot weather – of damp. Stratton noted the dusty bloom of mushroom-coloured spores on the wallpaper between the battered Welsh dresser and the tin bath hanging from its nail. The shared lavatory bowl, which Stratton had glimpsed on the way in through a battered wooden door, was a foetid and seatless horror crouched in the dank space beneath the front steps, an ominous puddle spreading from the base of its cracked pedestal.
The Tyndalls, mother and daughter, confirmed their whereabouts at the time of Hampton’s death. Fifteen-year-old Tom volunteered that he’d been at the boys’ club in the church hall on Lancaster Road. ‘And Mr Tyndall?’ asked Stratton. ‘Is he here?’
‘Pub.’ Mrs Tyndall’s tone was resigned. ‘Walmer Castle, that’s where you’ll find him.’
‘And the evening that Mr Hampton was killed?’
‘Same place.’ Again, Stratton noted the quiet weariness of a once painful emotion which had, over time, been rubbed smooth. ‘Lost his job eighteen months back and hasn’t been able to get another. The darkies take them all.’
‘That’s not fair, Mum.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Mrs Tyndall rounded on her daughter, who was leaning against the sink, arms folded. ‘I don’t know how you can stick up for them.’ Turning back to Stratton, she said, ‘If they’re not taking jobs, they’re poncing off white women. That,’ she told Jean, ‘is how you’ll end up if you don’t watch out.’
Jean, who was lighting a cigarette, looked unperturbed. ‘Don’t be silly, Mum,’ she said, in a sort of long-suffering sing-song which suggested a well-rehearsed argument. ‘I’ve told you—’
‘And I’ve told you often enough, and so’s your dad. She’ll end up on the game,’ Mrs Tyndall told Stratton. ‘On the game with a pack of half-caste brats.’
*
My Dad says it’s the coloureds, thought Stratton, remembering Shirley Maples’s statement as he went across the road to find her.
Stratton had noticed, as he’d climbed the stairs at number 19, that the air grew warmer with every flight, but number 24 seemed to be even worse. When he turned the corner to the penultimate flight, the heat that enveloped him was almost suffocating. Mr Maples, who answered his knock, looked about fifty, small, deathly pale and bald – a sweating peeled egg with thick glasses. When Stratton explained the reason for his visit and Mr Maples moved back to let him in, Stratton saw that he dragged a club foot behind him – the reason, he supposed, for asking Shirley to take the rent to Hampton.
The lino in the Maples’s sitting room was covered in stacks of flat balsa-wood cut-outs in the shapes of penguins in profile, and beside what was clearly Mr Maples’s designated armchair was a palette smeared with white paint and a selection of brushes in a jam jar. ‘Careful where you step,’ said the little man. ‘I was just about to make a start. I paint them, you see. It was Mr Hampton got me on to it, in fact – he had a mate with a stall in the market. This chap’s got someone who cuts out the shapes, then I paint them, then he collects them and gets them mounted on wheels with a stick to pull them along. Very popular, they are. I used to be a caretaker,’ he added, ‘but it got too much for me with my leg, and Mr Hampton knew we was hard up … Shirley’s in her room.’ He gestured towards a door from behind which the sound of ‘All I have to do is dream’ could be heard. ‘Plays that soppy record all the time … She’s a good girl, though,’ he added quickly. ‘Not like some of them round here.’
Shirley Maples, skinny, nervous and unpainted, with slightly protruding teeth, looked altogether more Stratton’s idea of a seventeen-year-old than had Jean Tyndall across the road. She perched on the edge of an armchair, chewing her cuticles and nodding while he took her through her statement. ‘That’s what happened, yes.’
‘And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone as you went upstairs at number 19?’
Shirley didn’t meet his eye, but stared instead at a pile of soon-to-be penguins.
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘I …’ Shirley continued to gaze at the wooden shapes as though mesmerised.
‘You must tell me, Shirley. It could be very important.’
‘There was a man, but …’ The girl shook her head. ‘Will I get into trouble?’
Mr Maples shuffled forward and put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ he asked, giving her a little squeeze, and, to Stratton, ‘She won’t be in trouble for this, will she?’
‘No, but I do need to know who she saw. I also need to know why it wasn’t in her original statement.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Shirley, in a small voice. ‘After I saw Mr Hampton all … like he was, I was that upset I couldn’t think straight and I just forgot. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose.’
She blinked at Stratton, who, spotting the first sign of tears, said quickly, ‘I’m sure you didn’t. You’d just had a horrible shock.’
‘When I remembered afterwards, I thought it probably didn’t matter – I mean, if it was just one of those who live in the house …’
‘One of those …?’
‘Darkies.’
‘A man?’
Shirley nodded.
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘No. I don’t know his name or nothing.’
‘But you know he lives at number 19?’
‘Not exactly. I think I’ve seen him going in there but I’m not sure.’
‘Hard to tell one from another,’ said Mr Maples.
My dad says it’s the coloureds, thought Stratton. Mr Maples had claimed not to know anythin
g about it, but all the same … ‘You are telling me the truth about this, are you, Shirley?’
‘Yes!’ The indignant squeal was, Stratton was sure, genuine.
‘So, what did this man look like?’
‘Quite tall. I didn’t get much of a look at him. He was coming down the stairs as I was about to go up.’
‘You didn’t see or hear him leave the building?’
‘No, but the front door was open when I got there, so I thought somebody must want it like that, and I left it.’
‘What was the man’s complexion like?’
‘Not dark dark, more sort of browny … Like in that picture.’ Shirley got up and went to stand in front of an insipid watercolour of leaves and grasses hanging on the wall beside the window. Stratton spotted the title ‘Autumn Hues’ beside an indecipherable signature. ‘Here,’ said the girl, pointing at a leaf which Stratton thought was best described as a coppery burnt umber: Conroy’s colouring.
‘Can you remember what he was wearing, Shirley?’
The girl screwed up her face in concentration. ‘Something quite dark. Not a suit or a jacket, something more … soft. Maybe a jumper. I didn’t really notice. Are you sure I won’t be in any trouble? I promise it was a mistake, me not telling you.’
‘Nobody told you not to tell us, did they?’
‘Told me not to?’ Shirley looked puzzled. ‘No. Anyway,’ she added, with a visible recovery of confidence, ‘if someone had, you know, scared me or something, I wouldn’t be telling you now, would I?’
‘That’s true. Now, unless there’s—’
‘Yoo-hoo!’ The door swung open and a small, ruddy-faced woman appeared, swollen feet in carpet slippers and clad in an overall, a black cat weaving itself around her thick ankles. She was brandishing a string shopping bag full of oranges and talking nineteen to the dozen. ‘Mr Hoyt gave me these for Mrs Banks – ever so nice of him – I’ll take them up to the hospital tomorr— Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know …’
‘My wife,’ explained Maples. ‘Elsie, this is Inspector Stratton. He’s come to ask Shirley a few more questions about when she found poor Mr Hampton.’
‘’Orrible thing to happen, ’orrible.’ Elsie Maples lowered herself into the armchair that her daughter had just vacated. Settling herself with the cat on her lap, she carried on talking as Shirley and Mr Maples lifted up one leg each and set her heels on the seat of a hard chair positioned opposite. ‘Have to do this, you see – it’s the weather, makes my legs blow up something chronic so I can’t wear nothing but slippers. Stop it, Nigger!’ She put her arm underneath the cat’s body and lifted it on to her chest. ‘He will dig his claws in. Mr Hampton was a lovely man, always so kind to everyone – he’d have given you the shirt off his back, I swear it. Did Norman tell you he found him this work, painting the toys?’
She paused just long enough to draw breath but not long enough for Stratton to get out more than ‘I—’ before launching into another machine-gun burst of speech.
‘He got on with everyone round here, Mr Hampton. Mind you, we get on with them too, don’t we, Norm? See these?’ She indicated the string bag of oranges which was now reposing on her lap. ‘My boss – mornings, I work at a greengrocer down the road – he give ’em to me for our neighbour. Black as my shoe but ever such a nice woman, do anything for you. She’s just had a lovely baby boy – four days ago, it was, so she’s still up at the hospital – and I thought I’d take them to her tomorrow. It’s her first and I took her to the hospital myself when it started because they don’t know, do they? Only been here a month or so and they probably just go and have them in the fields back home …’
This time, Stratton managed ‘I th—’ before she started up again.
‘We thought these –’ here, she patted the oranges – ‘would remind her of home. We’ve got a couple of coloured boys live downstairs too – when they moved in about six months ago I said to Shirley, You stay away from them, because you never know … Well, we all saw what happened at number 19, didn’t we? Not that my Shirley’s anything like that Tyndall girl, thank the Lord – we brought her up right – but all the same …’
Both Shirley and Mr Maples, who had subsided into chairs one on either side of Elsie, remained deadpan. They’d probably realised long ago, thought Stratton, that trying to shut the woman up was futile. He wondered how on earth Norman had got her to keep quiet for long enough to propose, never mind anything else. Perhaps he’d got a secret supply of chloroform.
‘… the thing is,’ Elsie’s voice had dropped to a sibilant whisper, ‘a lot of them don’t have their wives over here. That’s the trouble. There are brothels everywhere round here, quite disgusting. The fact is,’ she nodded significantly, ‘men need women to keep them in order.’ She gave a sidelong glance at Norman, presumably to check that he wasn’t about to sneak off to an orgy.
*
After several minutes of this, Shirley piped up that she was late getting back to work so, having ascertained that she had nothing to add to what she’d already said, Stratton let her go, and then – after eliciting the information that the Maples family had had no difficulties with Perlmann, left himself. Walking down the road, he could almost feel his back bending under the weight of the stares – not only from the groups clustered on the front steps, but from people looking out of windows too, including a row of slatternly-looking white girls who were sitting on one of the larger window sills, dangling their legs in the sunshine. The sudden hush that had fallen when he’d emerged left him in no doubt that the bush telegraph was working overtime with news of his visit.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stratton rounded the corner into Ledbury Road and paused to glance at his watch. Half past two. Time for a word with Mr Perlmann. Perlmann’s office, he knew from the information he’d been given, was only a short distance away, in Westbourne Grove.
It was still uncomfortably hot. Being on duty, Stratton couldn’t take his jacket off, but compromised by loosening his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt. Looking down the various streets as he walked, he could see that some of the houses were in worse condition even than those in Colville Terrace. He saw doors with planks of wood nailed across them and corrugated iron over the windows, and all manner of rubbish, including tyres and discarded furniture, strewn across the pavements. The few cars he spotted looked as though they’d been either stolen or abandoned. He could hear children playing – the repetitive slash of a skipping rope and the thump of a ball being bounced against the wall, and ahead of him a rent collector, or perhaps a tally man, was knocking on one peeling front door after another.
Through a broken wooden fence he glimpsed a bomb-site full of rubble with nettles poking through the carcases of two burnt-out vehicles, and beyond, the back of a laundry. The double doors were wide open, revealing a dozen ironing boards set up inside, the flexes of the big metal irons hanging down from the ceiling so that they resembled so many miniature dodgem cars. The female operatives, red-faced and bare-legged, were clustered outside on their break, fanning themselves with their hands and blowing down the necks of their overalls.
Rounding a corner, past a brick wall daubed in both chalk and paint with – again – the letters KBW, he spotted a junk shop. The window was full of dusty trinkets with sun-bleached price tags displayed against a background of curling, faded tissue paper, and a ‘closed’ sign hanging in the door. He paused for a moment, to look – quite why, he wasn’t sure – and a pretty silver bracelet caught his eye. Victorian, he thought, or maybe Edwardian. His wife Jenny, he supposed, would have thought it old-fashioned. Had she not been dead for – oh, Christ – fourteen years now, her tastes might have changed, of course. Time seemed to pass more quickly these days, as if his life, beyond his control, was accelerating away from her with a momentum of its own. It was always a shock to him to realise just how long ago it was that she’d been killed, and he still hadn’t entirely got used to the feeling that he was, somehow, leaving her behind – still sligh
tly guilty, as if it were something he could prevent.
He looked again at the bracelet, wishing he had someone to buy it for. Could he, perhaps, send it to Diana as a welcome-to-California present? She’d have arrived by now – they’d had dinner together over three weeks ago, just before she sailed. He imagined her on the deck of a great liner, leaning on the rail, elegant in a nautical costume, with her blonde hair curled up under a sporty white cap. Except that she wouldn’t be alone, would she? Lester Manning, her husband of three months, would be leaning on the rail beside her. Their elbows would be touching and his hand, perhaps, on her arm, as the pair of them watched the coast of England recede into the distance …
Stratton turned away from the display, catching sight of his reflection in the dusty window – dishevelled and pouchy-eyed, his broken nose wonkier than ever – as he did so. Yes – he quickly straightened his back – he was still as tall and broad-shouldered as ever, but there was no denying he’d got thicker round the middle, and under his hat his hair, although still as plentiful as ever, was greying at an alarming rate. It was something of a miracle, he thought, that Diana had ever looked his way in the first place. Sending her the bracelet was a ridiculous idea. Not that he posed any sort of threat from 8,000-odd miles away, but that type of gift turning up in the post was – whether or not Diana had told Manning about them being lovers – bound to lead to difficult questions.
Lester Manning was a director Diana had met a couple of years before at Ashwood Studios, where she’d been designing sets for one of his films. How soon after their first encounter the relationship had blossomed into romance, Stratton didn’t know. When Diana had told him about it the previous summer she’d been halting and apologetic. Stratton had listened quietly and refrained from asking questions about when or where or how. He hadn’t been surprised. In fact, for a couple of days he’d felt unable to put a name to the emotion he was feeling. Resignation, certainly – he’d been unconsciously schooling himself for the moment ever since they’d first started seeing each other. He’d counted himself lucky – more than lucky – while whatever it was had lasted. Eighteen months earlier, in the low-beamed cottage bedroom in Suffolk where she’d come to visit him during the course of a murder investigation, she’d told him, ‘We both know I’m never going to be Mrs Stratton and that we’re living on borrowed time.’ He’d been shocked to hear it put so baldly, reacting churlishly, but he’d known, at the same time, that she was right.