by Pat Herbert
She paused her knitting and tutted pointedly as her husband continued to suck on his pipe. “Either fill it up and light it or put it away, Ernest,” she said crossly.
“Sorry, dear,” he said, dutifully putting it down.
He turned the page of his book. The clock chimed eight o’clock. At least two more hours before it was time to go to bed, she thought. It was no life for someone like herself. Maybe the gallows would have been preferable, after all. A short life, but a gay one, wasn’t that how it went?
Her thoughts returned to Herbert Lomax. She wondered if he still lived in Bockhampton Road. Why hadn’t she asked him? She suddenly realised she wanted to see the house again, whether Herbert was still in it or not. That would be an adventure, at least. She would take a trip to Wandsworth, she decided. If the weather continued fine, it would be a pleasant outing.
However, living in Primrose Hill meant a complicated journey which would have been much easier if her husband drove her there. But she couldn’t ask him to do that. What would he think? Would he start to put two and two together? No, she thought. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it wasn’t worth taking the risk.
She would hire a cab to take her all the way there. Money was no object these days and, she would say one thing for Ernest, he wasn’t as mean with his money as Herbert had been. They enjoyed most of life’s little luxuries and always had enough money to take holidays when they liked, as well as eating out when the fancy took them. Ernest had also acquired a car, a Model T Ford. They were the first in the neighbourhood to own a motor vehicle. She could bet Herbert didn’t have one.
The day she decided to make the journey back to her past and 57 Bockhampton Road had turned out fine, with the merest hint of a breeze. The clouds scudded across the sky, as she stepped down from the cab outside her destination. It didn’t take more than a single glance to realise that Herbert no longer lived there. It was obvious that no one lived there. The house stood out from the rest of the terrace by its very neglect and dilapidation. She suddenly felt scared. Could she face going in there alone? She still had the key but, of course, the locks could have been changed.
She paid off the cab driver and gingerly opened the gate. He called to her. “I don’t think anyone’s lived there for years, madam. Are you sure you’ve got the right address?”
“Quite sure, thank you,” she replied and began walking up the overgrown path to the front door. She looked around her as she walked, wondering if any of the neighbours she knew then could still be around. Elsie Proudfoot had been in her forties, so would be in her mid-sixties now. Could she still be living next door? she suddenly wondered. If so, the nosey old so-and-so would be bound to be looking out of her window and would surely recognise her.
Her heart leapt into her mouth when she saw the lace curtain twitch in Elsie Proudfoot’s front room window. She sighed with relief when the head that poked out didn’t belong to that good woman, but to a much younger person. A man, in fact.
“’Ello?” he called to her. “Did you make a mistake? There’s no one living at number 57. Not for years and years. There was a triple murder there, you know,” he said. “And a suicide,” he added with relish.
Edith gave him an old-fashioned look. Was he trying to scare her off? “I see this neighbourhood hasn’t changed much in that time. There’s always someone watching you.”
The young man was taken aback. “I’m sorry, I’m sure. I was only trying to be ’elpful.”
Edith cleared her throat and addressed him again. “I see. Well, I have just come from the estate agents. They have given me a key to have a look round. I might buy it.”
“You’ll be very silly if you do,” said the man. “My old mum, God rest ’er soul, told me that the murders put people off from buying the place. She thought she’d never live to see the day when it was occupied again. And she was right.”
So Mrs Proudfoot was dead. That was a relief, thought Edith. “Was your mother living here when the murders took place?” Although she knew full well, it would be interesting to hear another version of what had happened from a neutral outsider.
“Yeah. She used to keep an eye on the family that lived there then. She liked them very much. It was a doctor and ’is wife and their two girls, plus a parlour maid. A looker, by all accounts. Mum consulted the doc about me and my brothers often – we were always getting ill as children, you see. Not enough vitamins, apparently.”
“Do you know what happened to the doctor after that? Did he move right away?”
“I don’t know. I was only small when ’e left. I remember Mum was sad that ’e was going but that ’e ’ad no choice ’cos the parlour maid ’ad killed ’erself in there.”
“Killed herself? Do you know why?”
“God, no. It was a long time ago. Although Mum did say there was some scandal about a baby, and that the doctor could ’ave been the father.” The young man was obviously enjoying himself relating all the lurid details to her. A chip off the block, she thought with an inward smile.
“Well, I mustn’t keep you, young man. I’ll just take a quick look around and get the key back to the estate agent. After what you’ve told me I doubt I shall be buying it.”
“I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, good luck, Mrs…?”
“Hayward,” she said quickly. “And you are?”
“Bob Proudfoot, at your service,” he grinned cheekily.
She remembered little Bobby, the youngest of the Proudfoot brood. He was usually on the front doorstep whenever she went out in the summer, playing marbles or some such game. She remembered he often seemed bored without anyone else to play with, his brothers all being a good deal older. Bobby had obviously been an afterthought. She had felt sorry for him then, but he seemed happy enough now.
She continued on up the path and came to the front door with its peeling paint and letter ‘5’ hanging upside down by one nail. She thrust the key in the lock and tried turning it. Nothing happened. It was as she feared; the lock had been changed. However, she gave it another go and this time she could feel it give a little. It was just rust, she realised. After a couple more turns the door creaked slowly open. It smelt strongly of damp inside, mixed with other even more unpleasant odours.
Oh well, she thought. Here goes. She put her handkerchief over her mouth and nose and proceeded slowly down the hall. The first door on the right had been the parlour, she remembered. She opened the door which gave with an even louder creak than the front door and entered. There was mould on the walls in great patches and she saw that the front window had several cracks in it. She noticed a spider had made its home there. Well, good luck to him, she thought. That’s the only living creature that could live here, that’s for sure.
She turned towards the fireplace and gasped. It had always been an adornment to the room, but now it looked wrong. The whole surround looked as if it had just been polished, and the andirons positively gleamed at her. The ornate panels with their trumpeting angels could have been installed yesterday, their colour was so vivid. The whole structure seemed to be beckoning to her.
Filled with wonder, she moved towards it.
PART TWO
St Stephen’s Vicarage
Wandsworth SW
March 1953
Dear Mr and Mrs Maltravers,
I hope you will forgive my writing to you, a perfect stranger, but I wanted to introduce myself to you. Now that little Henry has settled in with you, I would very much like to be allowed news of him from time to time, as one who helped him through the first few hours and days after the tragedy. If I may even be permitted to visit you in Cambridge when everything has settled down, I would very much appreciate that too.
I have no doubt that you will care for Henry far better than I could, being his maternal grandparents. I am only sorry there was a little unpleasantness between you and Mr and Mrs Freeman as to who would get to keep the child. I do hope the rift will soon be healed and that little Henry will be able to see them often.
At a time like this, as I’m sure you will understand, it is important that he has the support of everyone in his family now that he is an orphan.
I have known Henry almost from the day he was born. I christened him here at St Stephen’s, and his parents were staunch churchgoers, never missing a Sunday service, and often attending on Wednesday evenings too. Henry had just joined the Sunday School and had quite endeared himself to Mrs Wagstaff who teaches the Bible to the little ones. She sends her warm wishes to you, and I enclose a small gift from her to Henry. It is a New Testament, which I hope will give him comfort in these dark days.
Please do let me know how he progresses and if there is any small service I can render to him or you in the meanwhile.
Yours sincerely,
Bernard Paltoquet (Rev.)
17
John and Carol Freeman had just the one child, Henry. He was a good little boy, always happy to play on his own when his mother was busy. He never bothered her to come and play with him, quite content to keep himself amused with his colouring books, toy soldiers and jigsaw puzzles.
Then, one day, Carol heard him talking to himself in his bedroom. She smiled. He was an imaginative child and had probably invented a little brother or sister to play with. She knocked gently on his bedroom door and peeped in. Henry was sitting on the bed with his arms around two invisible companions.
“Hello, Mummy. This is Georgie, and this is Jemima. They’re my bestest friends in all the world. They live here with us.”
“Hello, Georgie. Hello, Jemima,” Carol said, playing along. “What are you all doing?”
“We’re playing ‘I Spy’,” replied Henry, “and I’m winning.”
“Good for you,” laughed his mother. “Now it’s time for tea, dear. Have you washed your hands?”
“Not yet, Mummy. Can Georgie and Jemima have tea with us?”
“Of course.” Carol was quite happy to feed them as it wouldn’t cost her a penny.
“They need to ask the pretty lady first,” said Henry.
Carol was a bit surprised by this. Most children invented imaginary companions but didn’t often invent adults to go with them. Her son was a very unusual child, she thought with pride. Such intelligence in one so young.
While Henry ran to the bathroom to wash his hands, Carol went back downstairs and set out the tea plates, careful to add two extra. She also set two more chairs at the table, and then waited for Henry to come down the stairs. When he didn’t appear after five minutes, she went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to him.
“Come on, Henry. Your tea’s getting cold!”
Henry’s face peered over the landing banister, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Whatever’s the matter, sweetheart?” Carol ran up to him and hugged him tightly.
“She – she....,” he stuttered between sobs.
“What, darling?”
“The-the lady – she won’t let them come to tea with me!”
Carol was concerned by her son’s apparent despair. How could he get himself so worked up about his imaginary friends? But, to him, they probably seemed real. “Please, Henry. What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t like us,” sobbed the little boy.
“Oh, darling, don’t be so silly.” She didn’t know what else to say. If the lady he was talking about had been real, she would have had a few things to say to her.
Henry stamped his little foot. “I’m not being silly! The pretty lady said she didn’t want the girls to have tea with us because she didn’t like you!”
Carol was taken aback at this. What kind of a fertile imagination had Henry got? “Doesn’t like me? Did she say why not?”
“No.”
That, then, seemed to be that. “Never mind what the pretty lady says, darling. She is being very unkind. Let’s have tea without them. We don’t need them.”
“But they’re my friends! Mummy, why doesn’t she like you? I like you. Daddy likes you….”
“I should hope so,” laughed Carol. “Now, dry your eyes and come and have your tea.”
As she said this, she felt the air around her turn suddenly very cold and had the eeriest sensation she was being watched. She turned around swiftly, but there was no one there. She hugged him tighter, as she felt the eyes upon her again.
The house had been very dilapidated when they had first moved in, and she remembered all the dark corners that had long since been banished by paint and wallpaper. The eyes had seemed to be hidden in those dark corners then, but now they were here again, boring into her. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.
“I don’t want to live here anymore with that horrid lady!” he cried.
“Don’t be silly, Henry. It’s only you, me and Daddy live here. No one else.”
“What about the girls? And the horrid lady?”
“There’s no one else here, darling. We live on our own.”
“But the girls always play with me,” Henry protested. “They say that this is their home. They’ve lived here for ever so long – long before we came.”
Carol was scared now. The cold atmosphere, the feeling of being watched and her distressed son all added up to something she couldn’t explain, not to herself, and certainly not to her son.
“I’m going to call Daddy,” she said suddenly. She rushed to the telephone in the hall and dialled her husband’s office number. As she heard it ring, she wondered what she was going to say to him. That her son was upset by imaginary companions? That she felt that someone was watching her? He would think she was mad. He had a very important job as a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport, and he wouldn’t thank her for disturbing him with such trivia. She slammed the phone down before he could answer. Damn him! she cursed, rather unfairly.
Henry was sobbing quietly beside her, but the atmosphere had lightened considerably now. She no longer felt cold or that she was being watched. She hugged him again and wiped his eyes with her hanky. Thank goodness, she thought.
“There, there, darling. Let’s not think anymore about the nasty lady. Let’s just have tea by ourselves, shall we?”
Henry nodded and sniffed. “We don’t need them, do we, Mummy?”
Carol smiled. “No, we certainly don’t. Come on, there’s jelly and ice cream for a special treat. And, tomorrow, I’ll let you in to a little secret. Daddy is taking us to the zoo!”
That cheered him up considerably. “Can Georgie and Jemima come too?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” she said. Over my dead body, she thought.
Later that evening, after Henry was tucked up in bed, Carol told her husband what had happened. As she predicted, he dismissed the whole incident as a storm in a teacup. She knew it wasn’t, but there was no one more pragmatic than John, and any suggestion of a ghost in the rafters would have set him off laughing. But it wasn’t a laughing matter, it really wasn’t.
They sat comfortably beside the ornate fireplace, a cosy fire burning brightly in the grate. Suddenly, she felt the room grow very cold, and she looked up to see Henry standing in the doorway, his teddy bear clutched to his chest. He was sobbing his heart out. John, it seemed, had felt nothing and still sat there reading his evening paper. It was as if a mist was surrounding him. He wasn’t in the same time zone anymore.
Then, as Carol got up to go to her little son, the poker came down on her head. She fell into the grate and cracked her skull on the fender. She died instantly.
John was standing up now, seemingly aware for the first time that something was wrong. Where was Carol? He didn’t even have time to find her body before he felt a crack on the side of his head. Bleeding profusely from the temple, he started to crawl towards his son.
18
The notorious double murder in 57 Bockhampton Road had shocked the nation. The police had drawn a blank, the only witness being the five-year-old son of the victims. They hadn’t known how to approach the child, and the scant information they could glean from him a
dded up to precisely nothing. It wasn’t to be wondered at. How could so young a child even understand what had happened to his parents, let alone provide the clue to their killer?
The mystery of the deaths had deepened when the murder weapon disappeared. It had been brought to the station, bagged and labelled, but the next time they went to examine it, it was gone. The bag and the label remained, but no blood-stained poker was to be found.
All little Henry Freeman could tell them was that a ‘pretty lady’ had hit his parents with a poker. The bit about the poker had been true, except it was no longer in police possession to corroborate his story. Someone had managed to remove it without anyone knowing. Maybe it was the ‘pretty lady’ herself. But how a person answering this description could have got past the police security to steal the murder weapon was a mystery.
The usual painstaking enquiries had got the police no further forward. Not one of the Freemans’ neighbours, friends and family could shed any light on a motive for killing them. According to everyone, they had been a perfectly nice, ordinary couple. John’s drinking pals, as well as his colleagues at the Ministry of Transport, all said what a nice chap he was, a happy extrovert who was always the first to get a round in. Carol’s friends said exactly the same about her, except she generally left the round getting-in to her husband.
However, there was one inconsistency that told against John Freeman. It wasn’t a reason for killing him, or at least the police couldn’t think of one, but apparently, he had told a close friend he had often felt strangely moody and irritable when he got home at night. He was always fine until he got through the front door of 57 Bockhampton Road, and then fine again when he left it the next morning. It didn’t mean anything, of course. If he had murdered his wife, then there would be a motive, a reason of some sort. But he had been killed himself, and he would hardly have done that in a fit of pique. At least not with the fireside poker.