London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  When he went to say good‐bye to Mrs Josser, he found her sulking.

  ‘I’m the one that’s going to have all the trouble when you’re in bed again,’ was what she said to him. ‘You don’t ever think of me when you go out on these jaunts of yours.’

  And when Mr Josser tried to reason with her, she abandoned logic altogether.

  ‘They found somebody else to collect their rents for them before you came along, didn’t they?’ she demanded. ‘Well, why can’t they find somebody else now?’

  Because she was in that sort of mood, Mr Josser didn’t stop to argue. He just left her and started on his rounds. And, apart from the weather, it was one of the most successful mornings that he could remember. The first six numbers were all in and had the money ready waiting for him. Merely collecting it and putting his initials into the rent book seemed the sort of work that a child could do. But it would have been rather a wet child. For the rain was coming down hard again by now. It was as though someone had given the sponge a final extra squeeze. Altogether, Mr Josser was pretty damp, all over, despite his umbrella and his goloshes.

  And there was one little incident that made him wetter still. No. 23, Birkbeck Street refused to pay up because the back kitchener wasn’t working properly and the Society hadn’t sent anyone to look at it. Mr Josser by now had become familiar with this excuse. He disputed. He cajoled. He threatened. And all to no avail. No. 23 simply wasn’t paying. And when he went on elsewhere in search of easier rents, he realised how very wet his trouser legs had become. All the time he had been standing on the doorstep, the rain had been driving full at him.

  At eleven‐thirty, he went into a Lyons’ for a cup of coffee. The whole place was full of moist, steaming people all gulping something hot. While he was drinking his coffee, he tried to dry his trouser legs up against a gas radiator. But he might as well have given it up. There was a lot of water soaked up into the blue serge and all that happened was that a little of the moisture on the outside turned to vapour. Soon his legs were enveloped in a kind of tepid Turkish bath up to his knees.

  Even then he might have been all right if he hadn’t left his umbrella on the tram. He had carried that umbrella about for years – for nearly twenty years in fact. He had carried it through summers so dry that people with gardens were being told not to water their lawns. He had carried it when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He’d carried it out to lunch and back again. He had had it re‐covered twice because the seams had been worn out with simply lugging it about with him. He had even had the handle refixed. And now, on the day of the deluge itself, he was without it. In consequence, he had the lost, hopeless feeling of a sentry who has inadvertently mislaid his rifle.

  All the same, there were the remaining addresses to be visited. And he didn’t feel like giving in. So he simply turned up his coat collar and, with his goloshes oozing, he went padding round the streets. It was the top flats of the tenements that tried him most. He was a pretty breathless angel of debt by the time he arrived at those top landings, and asked huskily for the rent book.

  Seventeen is a lot of addresses. It was after six by the time he had visited the last of them and collected the final driblet. The rain had stopped by then. But it had got colder. Much colder. Absurdly cold for June, in fact. And in the cold his wetness seemed to get wetter. Even his chest, that precious delicate part of him that Mrs Josser insisted he should guard like a talisman, was wet. And because he was wet and cold, he was shivering. His teeth chattered as he turned into the Brixton Road. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he now had over twelve pounds on him he’d have gone into a public house for a nip of whisky. As it was, however, he kept on. Cold or not, he wasn’t going to risk being robbed of a fortune.

  The only indulgence that he allowed himself was a bag of peppermints. He went into a small confectioner’s and bought twopennyworth. They were certainly warming. But not warming enough. Going home in the bus he breathed peppermint all over the other passengers – and went on shivering.

  In the night Mrs Josser, magnificently justified in her predictions, had to rub him with embrocation. And in the morning he was running a temperature.

  2

  Percy had been on the pumps for nearly two hours – they were the old fashioned sort where you really did have to pump, not just press a button like the new ones – when the two men came into the garage. He’d noticed them even before they began to mount the ramp up from the pavement. And he didn’t like the look of them. There was something about them that was wrong. They looked like police officers. Like detectives. Like Them.

  Percy took another glance, and his stomach sank still lower. They were both dressed in fawn raincoats and flannels and they had very ordinary cloth caps pulled down low over their foreheads. Well, what of it? Half London, or at least half South London, dressed that way, didn’t it? Nothing to worry about in that. But it was their size that gave them away. They were six‐footers both of them. And they strolled rather than walked. It was as if they wanted to take as long as they could to get over to him.

  Percy knew this was the moment, before they even spoke. The palms of his hands had gone messy and he rubbed them off against the trousers of his boiler‐suit.

  ‘Can you spare a minute?’ the front one asked, giving a little backward jerk of the head as he said it, as though he expected Percy to come over to him.

  ‘You want summing?’ he asked without moving.

  He’d got his back to the door of the little glass box with the till inside and he wasn’t shifting unless he had to. After all he didn’t know that they were police.

  ‘Just want to make a few enquiries,’ the man went on. ‘If you get any customers you can serve them. We aren’t in any hurry.’

  This was It, all right. This was what the Evening News had been talking about. But he wasn’t going to show that he knew it.

  ‘What sort of enquiries?’ he asked. ‘Want to buy a car?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘Just routine enquiries,’ he said. ‘We’re checking up on things.’

  Percy sucked in his lips.

  ‘Are you Petrol?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Police.’

  ‘Got your cards?’

  The two men in the fawn raincoats produced their wallets. They carried their cards like season tickets.

  Percy examined them both, not actually taking hold of them because his hands were shaking.

  ‘O.K.,’ he said.

  ‘You been here long?’ the first one asked.

  The other stood by, not saying anything. He might have been dumb for all the use he was.

  ‘About three years,’ Percy told him.

  ‘Know most of the people round here?’

  ‘Some of ’em.’

  ‘Ever go over to the Fun Fair?’

  Percy felt his heart give an up‐and‐down beat as the man said it. It was as though one of the valves had seized up for a moment.

  ‘Which one?’ he asked.

  ‘Funland,’ the man answered. ‘The nearest one.’

  ‘Oh Funland.’ Percy was thinking fast. Very fast. ‘Yes, I’ve been over to Funland.’ He paused. ‘Not lately,’ he added.

  The man in the raincoat seemed interested.

  ‘Stopped going there?’ he asked.

  Percy was cautious again. He wished he had left out that last bit.

  ‘Never went much,’ he said.

  ‘Know any of the people there?’

  ‘Only by sight.’

  ‘D’you know her?’

  Even though he was a six‐footer, the man in the fawn raincoat was nimble. He brought his hand round from behind his back and Percy found that he was looking at a picture of the Blonde. It was an old photograph that he knew. It used to stand on the little table beside her bed. In the photograph she was wearing a bathing costume. The valve in Percy’s heart seized up again.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No savvy,’ he said.

  ‘Then you can’t help
us,’ the man said, putting the picture away again.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Percy answered.

  His mouth was so dry again, that it didn’t sound like his voice as he spoke. He had to keep on running the tip of his tongue across his lips. Even after the man had put the photograph away again he could still see it. The eyes kept looking up at him and he remembered her as he had last seen her. It brought it all back again. But he was trying harder than ever now to show that he didn’t care, that he hadn’t anything to worry about.

  ‘What did you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Who killed her,’ the man in the fawn raincoat replied. He’d taken out a cigarette case and was offering it to Percy. But Percy shook his head.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said.

  He was afraid of fingerprints if he touched the cigarette case.

  And he was getting confused too. He’d just been shown the picture of a murdered girl and he hadn’t even seemed surprised. That might look a bit fishy.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Cashier from Funland,’ the man answered. ‘Name of Watson.’

  ‘And she’s been murdered?’

  ‘Don’t you read your papers?’

  It was the second man who had spoken now. He’d come sidling up and was almost on top of Percy when he said it.

  Percy was thinking again.

  ‘Yes, I did see it,’ he said at last. ‘I remember now.’

  ‘It was all there,’ the second man went on. ‘Picture as well.’

  ‘I wasn’t specially interested,’ Percy told him.

  ‘Perhaps she came after you’d stopped going,’ the first man suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Percy answered. ‘She came just after I stopped.’

  ‘How do you know she came, if you’d stopped going?’

  This was the second man again. He’d got a lower voice than the first man. It was a soft, quiet sort of voice.

  ‘Musta done,’ Percy said quickly. ‘Or I’da known her.’

  ‘Perhaps you saw her and don’t remember,’ the first man put in. ‘We don’t expect everybody to remember everyone they’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I maya seen her,’ Percy answered. ‘I just can’t remember.’

  ‘You didn’t write her any letters?’ the first man asked.

  Percy’s heart bumped upwards again. No. He was quite sure he’d never written to her. Thank God, he hadn’t.

  ‘I never wrote her nothing,’ he began.

  ‘How could he?’ asked the second man. ‘He didn’t even know her, did he?’

  ‘So you didn’t miss her when she’d gone?’

  Percy shook his head and didn’t say anything.

  ‘You used to go over regular once, didn’t you?’ the second man asked.

  ‘Pretty regular.’

  ‘Why d’you give it up?’

  ‘Too busy.’

  ‘Been over there since she’s gone?’

  ‘No.’

  He blurted that out at once. Better to tell the truth whenever there was a chance of it.

  But the second man – he might have been the superior from the soft way he spoke – didn’t attach any importance to his answer.

  ‘How’s he to know if he’s never seen her?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t even know when it happened.’

  The first man stood corrected.

  ‘Thanks, chum,’ he said. ‘Just ordinary routine, you understand.

  Percy squared his shoulders and tried to stroll slowly down the ramp beside them.

  ‘Let me know if I can do anything more to help you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the first man answered.

  Percy ran his tongue across his lips again. They were so dry now they were cracking.

  ‘Hope you get him,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the second man replied. ‘We will.’

  Chapter XX

  1

  Dulcimer Street was at its most peaceful on these summer afternoons. The plane trees in the vicarage garden at the corner gave a pleasant flicker of green against the dirty stucco and the grey brickwork, and the everlasting pigeons were making big sweeping patterns in the sky. Some of the peacefulness of the scene, it must be admitted, lay in the absence of children. Dulcimer Street was just a cut above such things. It was left to side turnings like Dove Street, Water Street and Swan Walk to provide playgrounds for the next generation.

  Most of this generation was missing, too. There was only one pedestrian coming down Dulcimer Street. He was a young man. A young man in flannel trousers which were too short for him, and a cheap sports coat. Every time he turned his head – and he kept on turning it because he was looking for a number – the sports coat went into a deep ruck between the shoulder blades. The thing, in fact, was too tight for him. It was only by wearing it unbuttoned that he was able to get into it at all.

  When he got to No. 10, he paused for a moment and inspected it. It wasn’t noticeably different from No. 8 or No. 12 on either side of it. But the young man evidently wanted to know all about it. He might have been learning it by heart. When he had surveyed it from top to bottom for the second time, he went up the steps and rang the bell. It was the Jossers’ bell that he rang.

  And it was Mrs Josser who opened the door to him. She stood there in the protection of the hall peering out into the bright sunlight with the cautious, suspicious expression that comes natural when nearly every ring at the bell means that it is someone who wants to sell something. But the young man wasn’t a seller: he hadn’t got a non‐electric vacuum cleaner or a fancy line in tin openers with him. On the contrary, he was a buyer. He had come after the room, Doris’ room. That was why Mrs Josser stared at him even harder. It was one thing inserting an advertisement in a local paper and quite another meeting the person with whom you might actually have to share your bathroom. The most that she would concede him at the moment was that he looked all right.

  And then a strange misgiving came into her mind. As she showed him the room, it struck her for the first time that it was rather a shabby little room. She was ashamed of it. When Doris had been in there it had been a family affair. The fact that the curtains had once been a bedspread hadn’t seemed to matter. But now it was a stranger who was seeing them. And somehow they looked more like an old bedspread than ever.

  But the young man wasn’t particular. He was thoroughly easy and accommodating. He simply needed somewhere quiet to sleep. He was on the night shift at Battersea Power Station, and he wanted to be able to get a bit of rest by day. After about half‐past seven every evening his room would be empty, he said, and they wouldn’t see him again until breakfast time.

  He didn’t even need very much in the way of service. Provided he could get his bed made for him that was all he wanted. He understood perfectly well that he couldn’t expect Mrs Josser to provide him with a hot dinner at 8.30 in the morning, and he explained that he did most of his eating out anyhow. All that he wanted was to move in. His present landlady was going away and he couldn’t stay there any longer. He gave her name and the Power Station as references. The latter would have been enough by itself. It was like having London Bridge or the Marble Arch as a guarantor.

  And he was ready to pay the rent that Mrs Josser was asking. He’d have paid in advance if she’d pressed him. Five minutes after he’d arrived, he’d agreed to take the room, bedspread curtains and all, and move in next Monday – assuming that the Power Station didn’t know anything to his discredit. Altogether, he seemed the ideal tenant. His name was Todds.

  After she had shown him out, Mrs Josser went back upstairs, her lips pursued tightly together. There was victory in that face. Victory, and the promise of further victory. She’d had Mr Josser in bed for more than a week now and for about eight hours a day she’d been telling him that he’d have to give up all thought of going on with his rent collecting. The lodger was a brand new argument. Mr Electrician Todds’ weekly contribution would just about square things.

  2

  Mr Squales
was sitting up in bed reading a letter. He was wearing his long flowered silk dressing‐gown – the one with the stains of previous breakfasts all down the big flaring lapels.

  The letter was from Mrs Jan Byl. And it did Mr Squales good just to feel the expensive, deckle‐edged notepaper between his fingers. The sound which it made as he smoothened it out flat was almost like the authentic crackle of a Bank of England fiver. Absent‐mindedly, scarcely aware of what he was doing, Mr Squales went on reproducing the sound. Crrck – crrck, it went.

  Not that Mrs Jan Byl was an engaging letter writer – Mr Squales had to admit as much. There was a brusque, overbearing manner about her as though she were taking up the references of a new chauffeur. But, in the circumstances, he was prepared to overlook it. After all, she was very rich, and very rich women were often a little brusque and overbearing in their manner. It was practically an occupational disease with them. The simple fact – and it was enough – was that she had written.

  Smoothing out the crisp paper, Mr Squales re‐read what was there. ‘Dear Mr Squales,’ it ran, ‘I could see you at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon at this address to discuss a séance which I am thinking of holding. My regular medium, Chakvar Ali, is indisposed and I urgently wish to get into touch with my deceased husband. Mr Ali has been most successful at previous séances for which I have engaged him and I have no wish to make any permanent alterations in my arrangements. However, I am perfectly prepared to give your talents an open test and anything you can do to enable me to correspond with Mr Jan Byl will not be forgotten. I shall probably wish to hold the séance on next Saturday or Sunday evening at about nine o’clock. If you are not able to attend here at four o’clock next Thursday please telephone to my secretary and I will endeavour to suggest another time. In replying, please mention the fee for yourself and assistant, if any, which you have been accustomed to receive. Yours truly, Emma Jan Byl.’