by Jim Eldridge
Grudgingly, she admitted, ‘Yes, you could be right. These people don’t exactly publicize themselves. And they’re not that big. Mainly, they’re just a bunch of angry right-wing aristos. They claim to be pro-British patriots, but the reality is they’re opposed to almost everything. They especially hate Jews and communists.’
‘So you’re working for the Communist Party …’
‘A volunteer,’ she corrected him.
‘A volunteer,’ he conceded. ‘But to these people it’s the same thing. You’re a communist.’
‘I’m a social reformer,’ she corrected him again.
Stark sighed wearily. ‘So many labels. The point I’m making is that people like Lady Ambleton would have a grudge against you.’
‘More than a grudge. The woman hates me. I have seen it in her eyes on the few occasions we’ve been in the same room.’ She frowned angrily. ‘As I said, Johnny loathed my involvement with the Communist Party. It struck me that he only took up with that rabid fascist because he knew it would annoy me.’
‘And did it?’
‘Yes. He was too good for her.’
‘Would she hate you enough to send an anonymous letter blaming you for your ex-husband’s murder?’
Amelia let this sink in, then she said, ‘You think she wrote it?’
‘Yes,’ said Stark. ‘There’s the timing of the letter. It was received at Scotland Yard at about eight o’clock, before news about the murders had got into the newspapers. At first I thought that suggested that whoever wrote it may have actually been involved in the murders.’
‘But now?’
‘After he telephoned you this morning, Redford phoned Lady Ambleton to let her know what had happened. Your ex-husband had given specific instructions to him on whom to contact if anything happened to him. Remember, the anonymous letter didn’t say anything about the other man who was murdered. Just about your ex-husband.’
He produced the piece of paper he’d taken from Lady Ambleton’s telephone table.
‘This is her handwriting. It looks the same to me, but I’m going to get that confirmed.’
‘The bitch!’ said Amelia.
‘I’m still not sure why …’ began Stark.
‘I am,’ said Amelia. ‘Theresa Ambleton was jealous of me. Johnny was still … fond of me. I told you, he kept dropping hints through mutual friends that he wanted me to go back to him.’
‘Hints that you ignored.’
‘Our marriage may have suited him, but it didn’t suit me.’ She looked at Stark. ‘I seem to have a problem with the men in my life. First, I had to untangle myself from Johnny. And now I have to untangle myself from you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ protested Stark.
‘Yes, I do,’ insisted Amelia sadly. ‘And we both know it.’
TWELVE
Stark called out, ‘I’m home!’ as he let himself in. Despite the emotional turmoil of the day, he felt pleased that for once he’d arrived home early enough to be able to spend time with Stephen. He was heading for the kitchen when there was a bang on the front door. He opened it and saw his next-door neighbour, Mrs Pierce, looking worried.
‘I saw you come in, Mr Stark,’ she said. ‘Just to tell you, not to worry, I’ve got Stephen with me.’
‘Worry?’ repeated Stark.
Suddenly, he saw a car pull up at the kerb and his mother, Sarah, got out with Dr Lomax.
‘What’s happened?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, well …’ began Mrs Pierce, but she was cut off by Sarah Stark.
‘It’s your dad,’ she said. ‘He’s upstairs, Doctor!’
Dr Lomax nodded and hurried into the house, clutching his large leather medical bag.
‘I’ll get back to Stephen,’ said Mrs Pierce. ‘Call me if you need me.’
Stark followed his mother into the house, stunned. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked again.
‘Your dad’s been coughing up blood. It’s more than just the usual.’
‘So he called Doctor Lomax after all.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want me to. But I knew he was really bad this time.’
‘Why didn’t you use the telephone?’
‘I don’t like that thing. Anyway, I didn’t have Doctor Lomax’s phone number. It was just as easy for me to run up the road and fetch him.’
‘He’s six streets away!’
‘Will you stop going on about it! Your dad’s badly sick!’
Stark subsided. ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
It wasn’t his mother’s fault. She was of a generation that didn’t understand the new technologies. Like many, she was scared of them. And she was scared because of what was happening to her husband. So she’d acted the best way she knew: run for the doctor.
Henry must be really ill. He always adamantly refused to go to a doctor, preferring to treat any ailment with a patent medicine from the chemist, or let Sarah care for him.
‘Doctors are a waste of money,’ he insisted. ‘All they do is charge you to tell you what you already know is wrong with you.’
It was no use trying to tell him, as Stark had often done, that modern doctors weren’t like the quacks of Queen Victoria’s time, when Henry Stark had been a young man.
‘It’s all right for you,’ Henry had snapped at Stark during one of their arguments. ‘You’ve got that medical insurance with the police. Us ordinary people have to pay!’
Stark stood with his mother at the bottom of the stairs, listening.
‘I ought to go up,’ she said. ‘In case your dad can’t speak.’
Stark put his hand on her arm. ‘Let’s wait and see if Doctor Lomax needs help,’ he said.
They heard the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing, then Dr Lomax appeared down the stairs. He looked grave. ‘He’s got complications.’
‘What sort of complications?’ asked Stark.
‘In addition to bronchitis, he’s also got pleurisy and pneumonia.’
‘Oh God!’ Sarah Stark fell back against the banisters. ‘He’s going to die!’
‘He has a chance, but he needs to go to hospital. Have you got a telephone?’
‘In the passage,’ said Stark, and he pointed Lomax towards it, then went to his mother and supported her into the kitchen, where he sat her on a chair. He’d never seen her in such shock.
‘It doesn’t mean he’s going to die, Mum,’ he said.
‘Pneumonia,’ said Sarah. ‘That’s the one that kills ’em.’
Yes, it did, Stark admitted silently to himself. Some even called it ‘the old man’s friend’, because it usually ended the suffering of the elderly and frail. But Henry wasn’t frail, Stark thought angrily. He was a stubborn, angry old bastard!
Sarah was doing her best not to cry, her face screwed up and her hands clenched tightly together. She’s staying strong for him, Stark realized.
Dr Lomax returned. ‘They’re sending an ambulance. He’ll be taken to University College Hospital.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Sarah, gritting her teeth in an effort to hold herself together. ‘How much do I owe you?’
Lomax waved her away. ‘We’ll sort that out later,’ he said.
‘You know us, Doctor. Henry likes to pay as we go.’
‘For this one, no charge,’ said Lomax. He headed for the door. ‘I’ll check with UCH later and see what news there is.’
As the door closed behind him, Sarah turned to Stark. ‘Stay here in case your dad calls. I’m going next door to tell Mrs Pierce what’s happening and ask if she can look after Stephen till I get back from the hospital.’
‘I’ll go with Dad,’ said Stark.
Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m going with him,’ she told him firmly. ‘He’ll be frightened in the ambulance without me.’
‘Frightened?’ queried Stark. ‘Dad?’
‘You don’t know him like I do,’ said Sarah. ‘He’s got his fears. Hospitals and ambulances is one. I’m going with him.’
/> ‘So am I,’ said Stark.
She looked as if she was going to argue, but then nodded. ‘All right. Just in case there’s papers to fill in.’
She left the house, and Stark hurried up the stairs to his father. As he opened the bedroom door the smell assailed him: the overpowering odour of sickness mingled with sweat. Henry lay in the bed, propped up by a small mountain of pillows to try to stop him choking from the fluid in his lungs. The pillows and the sheet were stained red with blood, and Stark realized how much discomfort his father must have been in as he thrashed about, the pain from the harsh cough taxing his body. Henry’s eyes were closed, but they flickered open as he heard Stark come in. His lips fluttered as he tried to talk, but no sound came out, just a rasping wheeze.
‘Don’t try to talk,’ said Stark.
‘I … don’t want to … go to … hospital,’ his father forced out, his face showing that every syllable was a painful struggle.
‘You’ll die if you stay here,’ Stark told him.
‘I’ll die if …’ Henry never completed the sentence. He was racked by a paroxysm of coughing that jerked his body violently around in the bed, and Stark saw more blood splutter out from his mouth and dribble down.
Stark took his handkerchief from his pocket and moved forward, wiping the blood from his father’s chin. ‘Rest,’ he said.
A sound between a groan and a wheeze came from his father, and then there came a wet rattling sound from deep down in his lungs.
He’s drowning, realized Stark. He’d seen it during his time in the trenches, heard that same sound, the lungs and the pleural sac outside the lungs filled with fluid, wet pus and blood clots. Stark took hold of his father beneath his armpits and tried to haul him higher up in the bed, trying to help keep the fluid down to the bottom of his lungs. It’s what he’d seen the nurses do in the hospital he’d been in. Not that it saved them, but it bought time.
‘Don’t die, Dad,’ he urged him. ‘You’ve been a fighter and a miserable sod all your life. Keep being one now.’
THIRTEEN
Stark and his mother sat side by side on the hard wooden bench in the hospital waiting area. They’d been here for almost two hours, ever since the ambulance had pulled up and white-coated orderlies had unloaded Henry and, with a nurse in attendance, had taken the trolley bearing him to the lift and into the inner workings of the hospital. Stark and Sarah had been told to wait and the doctor would be with them. It was now nine o’clock and there had been no sign of a doctor. No, that was not true: there had been many sightings of doctors, and nurses, and sisters and matrons, but none apparently looking for them.
Stark rose and went to the reception desk and asked the nurse on duty, who greeted him as coldly and stiffly as her starched blue-and-white uniform, if there was news on Henry Stark.
‘I’m his son, Detective Chief Inspector Stark,’ he said, and he produced his warrant card for her. Sometimes it helped. In this case, she didn’t even look at it.
‘The doctor will report to you as soon as there’s something to tell you,’ she said.
Stark returned to sit next to his mother. ‘She doesn’t know anything,’ he reported sourly.
‘They’re very busy,’ said Sarah.
Stark was surprised at how calm she seemed. Her husband of – what was it? – forty years was possibly dying, yet she sat waiting patiently, as if she was waiting for a bus. But then, he reflected, his mother had always been the quietly strong one. Because Henry had the loud voice and the temper, people tended to think of him as the dominant one in the marriage. And yes, Henry did get his own way most of the time by scowling and growling and dark looks. But on things that really mattered, Stark remembered, especially where Stephen was concerned, his mother usually got her way.
But why hadn’t she got her way with Henry’s bad health? Yes, she had got an ambulance for him this time, but how many times before had she tried to get him to see the doctor, and he’d flatly refused?
‘It’s because of the money,’ vented Stark in frustration.
‘What is?’ asked Sarah.
‘Not seeing a doctor before!’ said Stark, angry. ‘Everything’s about the money with him!’
Sarah shook her head. ‘He says it’s about the money and doctor’s bills, but it isn’t. When he was growing up, people who went into hospital didn’t come out. It was a place people went to die. As happened with his mum and dad. And now he’s old like them, he’s scared that’s what going to happen to him.’
‘He wouldn’t be here if he’d seen Doctor Lomax before!’
‘I’m not sure if Doctor Lomax could have stopped this happening. Your dad’s always had bronchitis in the winter. What with the damp and the fog lately …’ She stopped and looked around the waiting area, and the other people sitting, like them, on benches, or standing, waiting.
‘I should have come home this morning before I went to work,’ said Stark, angry at himself. ‘I meant to. I would have seen what was happening and done something about it.’
‘He wasn’t as bad first thing,’ said Sarah. ‘He went down about lunchtime. He couldn’t eat anything – that’s when I knew he was bad. And then he started to get worse. Sweating. Coughing.’
‘I should have come home last night,’ said Stark. ‘I might have been able to persuade him to let me call Doctor Lomax.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ said Sarah glumly. ‘Your dad’s too stubborn.’ She looked enquiringly at Stark. ‘So how’s it going between you two?’
He nodded, but sighed. ‘Up and down,’ he said.
‘Do you love her?’
‘I do, Mum. If you met Amelia, I’m sure you’d like her.’ He added sourly. ‘Dad wouldn’t, of course. All he can see is the class thing. She’s upper-class and out of our league.’ He snorted.
He heard a chuckle, and looked at her, surprised to see a smile on her face. ‘When it comes to class, your dad’s got a short memory.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When he and I first met, his parents didn’t approve of me. They thought I was low because of my family. Too low class for your dad.’
‘Why?’
‘We lived in Somers Town. Back then it was a real hole. The police would never come in there. Too scared. And my brothers were tearaways.’
‘I know you said they were bare-knuckle boxers.’
Sarah laughed. ‘They were, and a bit more. They were more fighters than boxers. Illegal. And that wasn’t the only illegal thing they got up to. Nothing really serious, not hurting people, but there was thieving. They were wild. It comes from not having a dad to handle them.’
‘But I met your dad,’ said Stark. ‘All right, I was young, but I remember him. He was a bit unsteady on his legs, but I remember you told me he wasn’t well.’
‘He’d been “unwell” all his life. Ever since he started drinking when he was a kid. He spent most of his time in the pub or in the street. So the boys grew up on their own. They were too much for my mum. Anyway, what I’m getting to is that my family had a bad reputation, and when your grandfather – your dad’s dad, that is – heard that your dad wanted to marry me, he threw a fit. “No one from that family’s coming into this one!” he shouted. I know, cos I was outside waiting for your dad to hear how he reacted, and I heard him. I reckon the whole street heard him.’
‘So what happened? What made him change his mind?’
‘He didn’t. Not until he heard I was expecting you. Henry told him he was old enough to know his own business, and he was getting married to me with or without his dad’s blessing. So your grandad said if that was the case, he didn’t have a son no more.
‘So me and your dad got married and set up in rooms near King’s Cross station. And your grandad was as true as his word: he never came near us. But your gran did. She used to make secret visits to make sure we was all right. And then, when we found out I was expecting, we told her. And she went and told your grandad, which was pretty brave of her, because your grandad was a har
d man and she knew he’d give her a hard time when he found out she was coming to see us behind his back.’
Stark remembered his grandfather, Jeremiah Stark. A huge intimidating figure, a blacksmith who smelt of soot and ashes and burning metal. Stark remembered, as a child, watching Jeremiah at his anvil, hammering at a red-hot piece of metal, sparks flying through the clouds of black curling smoke that filled the wooden barn of a forge.
‘And did he?’ asked Stark.
‘As it turned out, he didn’t. She told me later he just went quiet and left without a word. Next thing, he turns up at our rooms and asks how we are. Not a word about not having seen us or even mentioned us for a whole year.’
Stark nodded. ‘Grandad could be stubborn.’
‘And your dad’s the same. And so are you. I’ve never known a family with such men as you three: stubborn and pig-headed. And I think Stephen’s going to be the same.’
‘It’s not a bad thing,’ said Stark awkwardly.
‘It is when it means you don’t talk to one another,’ retorted his mother. ‘So, are you going to marry her?’
‘I would if I could.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘She doesn’t want to marry me.’
‘Why?’
‘She says she wants to be sure before she gets married again. Her first marriage was a disaster. She says we haven’t known each other long enough yet.’
‘She makes sense,’ said Mrs Stark.
‘Maybe, but even if she agreed, where would we live? I don’t want to take Stephen away from here and you and dad, but I can’t see us living in her house.’
‘Get another house, one close to us, and we can share Stephen.’
Stark hesitated, thinking it over. It was a possibility, one he hadn’t thought of before. But how would Stephen take to it? Or Amelia?
Suddenly, he was aware of a doctor walking towards them across the marbled floor.
‘Mrs Stark?’
They both stood up, and now Stark saw the anxiety etched on his mother’s face.
‘I’m Doctor Meek. We’ve stabilized your husband, Mrs Stark. We’ve drained the fluid from the inside and outside of his lungs.’