‘She may not have noticed how old I am. I daresay she thought chocolate was still a treat. I haven’t eaten it for ages, of course: with my figure, I dare not. And I think you’re wrong about Miss Hilton. I think she does see something strange about Mrs Richier, but it’s not what we see.’ She struggled to express what she meant. ‘She sees a picture, but not our picture.’
‘And just what did you see? To get back to that.’ Amabel was unconsciously imitating her father who in those same words had reminded her that morning of a promise to be better at getting up.
‘It was hot last night,’ said Charlotte.
‘So?’
‘So, I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Yes.’ Amabel nodded. She knew this meant that her friend had stayed awake for say thirty minutes. Both of them slept instantaneously and deeply.
‘I can see the house from my bedroom. Just. So I sat up in bed and looked. After all, we haven’t done much watching lately, have we?’
‘She was getting suspicious. It was better to lay off for a bit.’ They both knew this was only an excuse. Their interests were liable to periods of relative quiet and decline. It wasn’t to be expected that with all they had on hand they could keep going hard at everything.
‘She had the light on and I could see her moving about behind the curtains,’ went on Charlotte.
‘Oh come on.’ Amabel was getting impatient.
‘I thought I could smell burning. I got out of bed and went to the window. After all it might have been dangerous. But it wasn’t our house, it was coming from across the garden.’
‘You ought to have gone and looked,’ said Amabel, interested now. ‘ I wish I’d been awake. I can see the house too, you know.’
‘I did go and look. I crept into that little bit of garden below her window. I went through the hedge.’
Amabel was impressed. ‘Undressed?’ she said.
‘I put a coat on. I peeped. I could see all right. Only a fraction of the room like through a key-hole but I could see. She was burning something.’
‘Papers?’
‘Papers too, I think. I wouldn’t have smelt that. No. It was clothes.’
‘Her own old clothes?’
‘No.’
‘A man’s clothes?’ said Amabel. A dead man had been found, so the report went; they suspected Mrs Richier of something, although they weren’t sure what. Perhaps she was connected with the dead person. Perhaps she was burning his clothes.
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Baby clothes,’ said Charlotte, in a whisper.
On the clinical white table of examination the dead person had found an effective means of communication at last. Limbs and body limply disposed were making a statement and being understood. It had taken a postmortem to bring it out.
The body had been clothed in trousers and jersey. An attempt at burning had also been made. Because of this and also because of the peculiar dampness of the cellar in which the body had been found, decomposition was very far advanced. From a first superficial inspection it had been assumed to be the body of a man.
Now the pathologist changed the verdict. ‘A woman. Sex female.’
He had something also to add.
‘A woman. And she was pregnant.’
While the girls were talking Nell was working quietly in her flat attending to her prisoner. He seemed particularly dazed and apathetic this evening. Apparently his exercise had not been good for him.
‘You won’t do yourself any good attempting too much while I’m out,’ Nell observed to him. ‘ I’m the doctor, you know. I’m in charge of your case.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk to me like that.’
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with the way I talk to you. None of my other patients complain to me. I’m very kind.’
‘It’s what you don’t say. It’s your manner. You’re laughing at me.’
Nell gave a little ironic hoot which might indeed be called a distant cousin to a laugh.
‘I think you’re experimenting with me,’ he cried.
‘Well, not with your legs, at all events. They’re getting better, aren’t they?’ said Nell, who had been gently feeling the muscles.
‘With my mind, my mind,’ he said.
‘Your legs, your legs,’ said Nell echoing him lightly. She was flexing his left leg from the knee. ‘You feel that more, don’t you?’
‘Like pins and needles,’ he admitted.
‘Yes, as I thought,’ said Nell, placing his legs in position and replacing the rug which covered them. ‘Life is slowly returning. I’m giving you confidence, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t know what you’re giving me,’ he said with a groan. ‘Or whether you’re giving or taking.’
‘Oh, I shall take when the time comes,’ said Nell. She tucked him up and arranged the cushion behind his head. ‘Now stop driving yourself into a panic.’
‘Don’t go.’ He clutched her hand and held it to him. ‘There’s something about you that I like even while you frighten me.’
‘That’s not uncommon, not nearly so uncommon as you probably think.’
‘There you go, talking like God again. As if you and I lived in different worlds. And yet I feel so close to you sometimes. So terribly close.’
‘Oh, we must be closer still,’ said Nell in a cheerful voice. ‘ If I am to do any good.’
She took her hand away. ‘You have made a mess here today.’ She was moving round the room, picking up a newspaper here, moving a vase there, adjusting the fold of a curtain. ‘Been having a party?’
‘Looks tidy enough to me.’
‘I don’t think you’re very observant. I know exactly where I left things. I can tell what has been moved.’
‘I believe you check on purpose.’
‘Well, of course I like to have some idea what you do when I am out…’
‘I do draw a few breaths you don’t count,’ he said angrily.
‘Now don’t be childish. I’ve told you before, antagonism is no use. Now I’m going to get your supper.’
As she went to the kitchen she thought he looked as if he would like to eat her rather than the supper. She prepared soup and an omelette and placed a bowl of fruit on the tray. It was a fairly frugal meal compared with some she’d been giving him. Perhaps she’d been feeding him up too much.
She carried the tray in; she was tired, the day had taken a lot out of her. She wondered what sort of supper Detective Abel was enjoying.
She placed the tray on her guest’s knees. ‘ Now eat up,’ she said, her manner somewhere between that of a nanny and a jailer.
‘No.’
‘Come on. A little light supper.’ She kept her own voice cool but the day had strained her, too, and she felt that too much bad temper tonight and she might throw the supper at him. However, he got in first.
With an angry movement of his wrist he jerked the whole tray off his lap and on to the ground. Soup, omelette, bread and butter spilled on the floor.
‘Now look at the mess you’ve made,’ said Nell in a level voice. She dared not let her own temper go.
‘Clear it up,’ he commanded.
Nell ignored this. Once let him think he could start giving orders and there would be no holding him. She knew well enough the thin knife-edge on which she was balanced.
‘I shall have my own supper,’ she said, ‘ I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until I’ve finished before I get you anything else.’
She sat in the kitchen silently for half an hour, waiting for the clock to tick round, before she heated some more soup and took it in to him. She placed it on the table near him while she silently cleared up the now congealing mess of grease on the floor.
‘Well, now you have punished us both,’ she said gravely, offering him his second supper, ‘perhaps you will eat.’
Looking at him she saw that his hands were trembling and possibly he had been crying.
‘I’m not myself,’ he muttered.
‘Aren’t you?’ asked Nell in a polite voice.
‘I wouldn’t be like this if you weren’t drugging me.’
‘You might be,’ said Nell. ‘I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you.’
She settled the tray on his knees. His antagonism and anger dissipated quite rapidly as, she had noticed with interest, they often did. Perhaps he was learning to control them. Trying to be clever. She must watch out for this.
He picked up the spoon and began to eat. The soup was good. Nell was a skilful cook. She sat watching him with a slight smile. As so often with them, relations took on a strange normality. Conversation began.
‘I’ve read all the books you left me. I need something else. Not crime stories, please, I don’t like them. They give me nightmares.’
‘You must tell me about your dreams some time.’
‘That’s one of your loaded remarks. My dreams are my own business. Get me some non-fiction books. I’m fed up with fiction. I want to know what the world’s about.’
‘That’s an interesting reaction. After all, you do need to know, I can see that. Yes, I’ll get you some biographies. You might find yourself remembering your own life. By getting this desire to read non-fiction you are subconsciously expressing a desire to remember your life. You must be recovering.’
He looked at her hopefully. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh yes, certainly. One must think that.’ She took the tray away, and turned on the radio so that a little light background music filtered into the room. She had noticed before that music relaxed him. ‘Tell me, what particularly worries you about the crime stories?’
‘Everything,’ he said vehemently. ‘Cruel. Full of pain.’
‘What sort of crime alarms you most?’
‘Shapeless crimes,’ he said thickly. ‘Where one thing goes into another and there’s no stopping it. People who don’t really know what they’re doing.’
‘Who don’t want to know perhaps,’ suggested Nell softly. ‘But who have to find out in the end.’
There was a silence between them for a moment.
‘And what sort of people connected with crime distress you most?’ asked Nell.
‘Men, women and children,’ he said. ‘Men, women and children. As simple as that.’
‘I wonder what you really mean by that?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Perhaps I will one day,’ said Nell, half aloud, half to herself.
Except for the faint flow of music it was very quiet in their sitting-room. The street outside was always quiet and usually empty. Mrs Richier downstairs was very unobtrusive. She had few visitors. There was a tall tree outside, partly blocking the view and shadowing the room. But even this tree was gaunt and ugly and empty of birds, although Nell thought she had seen a grey squirrel scuttling up and down it.
The house seemed withdrawn from the world.
All the same, only the exceptionally insensitive could have thought of it as an empty house. All around were the smells and indefinable essences of living. They floated up and they floated down. Black Douglas could hardly fail to be aware of the existence of Mrs Richier on the ground floor and Nell suspected that Mrs Richier, for her part, was beginning to make a few dark speculations about him upstairs.
Someone who stayed at home as much as Mrs Richier did would certainly want to know as much as possible about the house she lived in.
‘Who lives downstairs?’ Black asked suddenly.
‘Old Mrs Richier.’
‘Another woman,’ he said in disgust.
Nell laughed.
Black leaned back in his chair. He looked disappointed. Nell reflected that he had a very expressive face. Had they been on different terms she would have admired it. But there was not much room for any subsidiary emotions between them.
‘Want to try and get in touch with her?’ she said. Even as the words were uttered, another thought, keener, sharper, took its place.
‘You have been trying to get in touch with her,’ she said, giving him a hard unfriendly look.
Ridiculous as it was, the thing that struck her most painfully was the disloyalty of it.
Black did not answer her. Indeed he hardly seemed to have noticed she was speaking. Instead he said, ‘I love you, Nell. How strange. But now I’ve said it aloud I know it’s true.’
It was the second time a man had said this to Nell today, and she was completely silenced.
Chapter Six
It was obvious from the start that Detective Abel and Jordan Neville were going to be two people who did not like each other (their attitudes to Nell were highly relevant here) and when they met again by chance on the street corner their behaviour did not belie it.
Abel at first had no strong feelings about Jordan Neville one way or the other, only remembering him as one of the staff at the Institute whom he had met that morning, but he very soon felt the impact of the sour look which Jordan was giving him.
As a professional it was not his business to mind whether he was liked or disliked, but deep down inside him he felt a pique that this nice-looking quite decent young man should find him so instantaneously objectionable.
They were both waiting for the same bus. Some sort of a gesture had to be made.
‘Good evening,’ said Abel.
‘Oh yes, we met this morning, didn’t we?’ said Jordan, as if he had only just remembered, instead of bearing it like a grudge.
‘I’m sorry if I’m crowding you.’
‘Oh, there’s never any room on this bus.’ He gave Abel an unfriendly look.
The bus lurched forward round the corner and Abel realised he was in fact travelling in the wrong direction. He tried hastily to push his way off the bus. It was difficult to get past Jordan.
‘I’m going to marry Dr Hilton,’ said Jordan suddenly.
‘Oh, are you?’ Abel was surprised. Nell hadn’t given him the impression of being a girl willing to marry anyone. ‘Are you?’ he repeated, more doubtfully.
‘She doesn’t know yet.’
‘I see.’ It didn’t sound like the best way to begin a happy marriage. Jordan’s anger didn’t seem to be settling down either. If anything it was burning more brightly.
‘I’m travelling in the wrong direction. I really ought to get off this bus.’ Abel resumed his attempt to make for the door.
‘It’s not going in the right direction for me either.’
‘It’s not? Why did you get on it then?’
‘I only got on it because I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Then let’s get off this bus and talk in comfort.’
Comfort is not easy to come by in the part of the town through which they were travelling, but they found a bar and a quiet seat.
‘I don’t want you to worry her,’ said Jordan. ‘I’m asking you to leave her alone.’
‘Look, I’m not in charge of this investigation,’ said Abel. ‘I’m only one of a number of people working on it.’
‘You’re the one we’ve met.’
‘You might meet others.’
‘You seemed important to us.’
‘I’m not particularly. I don’t call the tune.’
They looked at each other, each with his little private bag of incredulity and suspicion on his back. Abel couldn’t believe anyone as educated as Jordan Neville could be so ingenuous. Jordan was thinking to himself that all policemen were liars.
‘I don’t want Nell worried,’ repeated Jordan obstinately.
‘You know she came to see us about her sister?’ said Abel. ‘ Not me personally, of course.’
‘Louise?’
‘A Mrs Louise Lang. Miss Hilton wanted us to try and find her sister. She hadn’t heard from her for some time.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘She went to the Head Office of the Highworth Insurance Company too. Her sister carried some insurance with them; she thought they might be able to help. They passed the word on unofficially to us. They didn’t know what to make of her.’
‘You don’t have to know what to make of her,’ said Jordan; he resented this criticism of Nell.
‘Still, she’s not easy, is she? Got quite a reputation in the neighbourhood. Respected. I know about that, of course.’
‘Nell’s good,’ said Jordan. ‘Ask anyone who’s worked with her. Ask any of her patients.’
‘Good but not easy. There’s plenty of people you can say that about. But don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticising Dr Hilton. I’m just saying what I know about her.’
He knew that she was a woman concerned about her sister; he knew that she had called on the police, where the impression she had made was ambiguous. But the police were professionals on criminals and victims, and Nell Hilton was what? There was a penumbra around her that seemed to darken as you studied it.
‘She loves Louise,’ said Jordan. ‘We all do. I do myself. There’s something about Louise. She can be very stupid though. Obstinate too. She’s not clever like Nell. I wish Nell had told me she was worried.’
‘We didn’t think there was anything really wrong,’ said Abel. ‘Dr Hilton seemed to be worrying over nothing.’ He sounded sombre and thoughtful. ‘So we thought. You knew Mrs Lang, too?’
‘Before she married.’ He smiled. ‘If you knew Nell you knew her sister, they were very close.’ And then he looked uneasy. ‘But Nell alone is not the same as Nell with her sister. I mean that in the very deepest way. I speak professionally.’
He had unconsciously dropped his mask of hostility towards Abel. It was only a mask adopted to hide his fears. Now he was glad to have a chance to talk to someone and empty his mind.
‘No one lives alone. If we talk as if they do, as if a person really exists by himself, then we are only pretending. What makes us what we are is our relationship with other people. Everyone pays lip-service to this without really believing what they say. But it’s true. And people can change incredibly as they go from other person to other person.’ ‘We see a lot of that in our business,’ said Abel with feeling.
‘What happens in a group of people affects all its members, even if it’s unconscious and perhaps not even observed. It’s a process.’ Abel nodded.
‘And Nell-alone is not the same as Nell-with-Louise.’
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