Footsteps in the Park

by Marie Joseph

  ‘You know Stanley by sight, don’t you?’ Dorothy made the introduction casually, walking before them into the room on the right and leaving Stanley shaking hands with a totally demoralized Beryl who was trying to wipe off the calamine lotion and take out the one remaining curler at the same time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, meaning it even as he realized how stupid it sounded.

  ‘And I’m sorry about . . .’ Beryl said, blushing so red that her eyes seemed to sparkle with unshed tears.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Stanley said inadequately.

  They walked into a large room papered with a design as glumly oppressive as that in the hall. In spite of his misery Stanley looked around him with curiosity, and his mind registered the fact that never in his life had he seen so ugly a room. The cosy little living-room at home with its black fireplace and the firelight flickering on the cream distempered walls seemed almost luxurious by comparison. Here the paper-frieze, following the lines of the picture-rail, was a design of bright yellow hanging blossoms, and the doors and window-frames were painted in an only slightly subdued shade of the same colour. The vast tiled fireplace had a ziggurat motif which was faithfully reflected in the carpet, and the chairs and sofa were upholstered in cold, unyielding leather.

  ‘Sit down then,’ Beryl told him, and smiled for the first time.

  She sat down opposite to him and fixed an unwinking gaze on him.

  ‘Have you been to the pictures?’ Her hand flew to her mouth, like a naughty child caught out saying something she shouldn’t. ‘Oh, golly, I’m sorry. Of course you won’t have been to the pictures, not with . . . with everything. Oh, gosh.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Stanley said again.

  Dorothy stood between them, her hands in her blazer pocket. ‘Beryl? Can we trust you?’

  Stanley winced. ‘Look, I don’t really think . . .’

  ‘Can we, Beryl?’

  The round brown eyes almost popped out with the vehemence of Beryl’s nod.

  ‘Cut my throat and hope to die.’

  ‘We want more than that.’ Dorothy walked purposefully over to a glass-fronted bookcase and opening the door with a small key already in the lock, took out a large, leather-bound Bible. ‘Right, now come over here, Beryl.’

  Stanley wished himself anywhere but where he was. He wished he had stayed at home. He wished he was dead. . . .

  Dorothy opened the Bible with a flourish, and put it down on a chromium and glass-topped table. ‘Place your hand there then.’

  And obeying at once, striped pyjama legs flapping beneath the boy’s-style dressing-gown, Beryl walked over to her cousin and laid a podgy hand on the open page.

  ‘I swear to keep my mouth shut about what I am about to hear. For the time being,’ Dorothy prompted.

  ‘I swear to keep my mouth shut. For the time being,’ Beryl repeated in tones of awe.

  ‘Right.’ Dorothy slammed the Bible shut and returned it to its place in the bookcase. ‘Now listen. We’ve found out. . .’ She glanced briefly in Stanley’s direction and sighed. ‘At least, we think we’ve found out that Gerald Tomlin is being unfaithful to Margaret.’ She refused to look at Stanley. ‘We think he may even have got a girl into trouble, and we want you to help us to prove it.’

  ‘But they’re getting married . . .’ Beryl sat down with an ungainly thump on the nearest brown leather chair. ‘Oh, how awful! I can’t believe it. They’re madly in love. Passionately,’ she added, blushing again in deference to Stanley’s presence.

  ‘Maybe. That’s as maybe,’ Dorothy said, ‘and we think there may be evidence, proof, rather, in his bedroom.’ She turned her back on Stanley. ‘So I’m going up there to have a look round, and you’re going to stay down here with Stanley, and on my way up I’m going to bolt the door, so that should anyone come back, they won’t be able to get in, and I’ll have time to get back downstairs.’

  Beryl looked as if she might be going to burst into tears. ‘And what will I say then if they do come back? What will I tell my mother when she asks why the door was bolted? That’s what I want to know.’

  Dorothy glanced at Stanley for sympathy, and found none.

  ‘You’ll think of something. Anyway, if they do come back they’ll be more concerned about you having a boy in the house than about the door being bolted. And you can blame that on me.’

  Beryl took a large handkerchief from her pocket and screwed it up into a ball. ‘It’s all right for you, Dorothy Bolton. I’ll be the one who gets into trouble, not you. My mother will kill me if she finds out. She made me promise not to open the door to anyone.’

  ‘Gerald excepted of course.’ Dorothy was already on her way to the door. ‘Oh, the irony of it.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Stanley stood up, not knowing, as Mrs Crawley would have said, whether he was bloody coming or bloody going.

  ‘No, you stay here with Beryl, then if I get found out you won’t be involved. I won’t be long.’

  And Dorothy disappeared; they heard her running light-footed up the stairs.

  Stanley and Beryl stared at each other, transfixed.

  ‘My mother would kill me,’ Beryl said. ‘I’m not brave like Dorothy. She – my mother I mean – she stopped me playing with Dorothy when we were little girls because she was always getting me into trouble.’ She started to fringe the end of her dressing-gown cord. ‘She thinks it’s awful, Auntie Phyllis – that’s Dorothy’s mother – allowing Dorothy to go out with you.’ She was far too upset to weigh her words. ‘And if she knew that you’d both been in here whilst they were out, she’d blame me.’ She bit her lip. ‘And as for her going up to Gerald’s room. Oh, it’s awful. I’ve looked in the doorway many a time, but I’ve never been in. My conscience wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘She’s thinking about her sister’s happiness,’ Stanley said with some desperation, feeling loyalty of some kind was called for.

  Footsteps walked up and down on the other side of the high ceiling, and for a moment it seemed that the big glass light fitting shivered. Stanley shivered with it. Since Dorothy had left the room her cousin’s raisin brown eyes had never left his face.

  ‘She stares at Gerald,’ he remembered Dorothy saying, and for a moment felt a twinge of sympathy.

  ‘Dorothy’s got this bee in her bonnet,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go up and fetch her down. You’re right, Beryl, it’s not fair to you.’

  ‘No!’ Her voice rang with the beginnings of hysteria. ‘Oh, it’s awful! If anyone was to come back, and you were upstairs with Dorothy, they’d think you were . . .’ She closed her eyes in horror. ‘They’d think you were . . . well, upstairs and everything, both of you, and me downstairs.’ Her voice tailed off as she blushed scarlet, overcome with an embarrassment she would live through for days just remembering. ‘My mother’s very strict with me. She doesn’t allow me to go out with boys. Oh gosh!’ She plucked at the dressing-gown cord with frantic fingers. Now what had she gone and said? This boy’s sister, sixteen like herself, had been allowed to go out with boys, had actually done it. Oh, gosh, how awful! It wasn’t his fault. He was nice, far too nice for her bossy cousin rooting around in Gerald’s room upstairs. She stared at him straight in the eye.

  ‘What’s your favourite subject at school, Stanley?’ she asked with a kindly but stunned kind of desperation.

  Dorothy found what she was looking for within minutes of entering Gerald’s room. On top of the walnut tall-boy was a round leather stud-box, and inside was an assortment of studs and cuff-links. She took it over to the bed and turned it upside down on the quilted satin bedspread. The backstuds she pushed aside and concentrated on sorting out the cuff-links. Eight pairs in all, including the pair she had seen Gerald wearing the night of the Police Ball, the second bigger pair he had bought secretly at Adamson’s the jewellers.

  With one link spare. The slightly smaller type she had seen Margaret buy as an engagement present weeks before. Her heart-beat quickened as she tossed it from one h
and to the other. So she was right. He had come in that terrible night with one link missing, and in his agitation had not know where he had lost it, had even dared to hope that he had dropped it in his room as he tore frantically at his clothes before getting into bed and burying his face in the pillow to shut out the sound of Ruby’s dying gasps. Her imagination soared. Then, with the cuff-link in her hand, she got up from the bed and began to pace the room. Backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, taking in the contents of the room with the surface of her mind.

  The blue silk dressing-gown hanging in disciplined folds from a hook behind the door, the tortoise-shell brushes laid out side by side on the dressing-table with its three mirrors reflecting her worried face in triplicate. The row of books on the shelf behind the bed. Auntie Ethel’s hideous taste in furnishings, the olive-green of the bedspread at shiny shouting variance with the electric-blue curtains hanging at the tall windows. And the all pervading smell of Gerald’s lavender-scented brilliantine. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  Then suddenly the sound of a car, the revving of an engine pulled her up sharp. Gerald was coming back! Frantically, as she shuffled the studs and cuff-links back into the leather box, she tried to remember if the red sports car had been in the garage as she came up the drive with Stanley. Had she seen it, or had she been too preoccupied with trying to make Beryl answer the door that she hadn’t noticed? Pulling the door behind her she flew down the stairs, and went into the sitting-room where two pairs of startled eyebrows raised themselves in urgent enquiry.

  ‘I thought I heard Gerald’s car,’ she said, but Beryl shook her head. ‘It’s in the garage. He left it there and walked to your house with Margaret. I watched them from the landing window.’

  Dorothy collapsed rather than sat down in the nearest chair. ‘My God, but it was spooky up there. I thought I’d have heart failure when I heard that car.’ Her laugh had more than a touch of hysteria in it. ‘I was out of that room quicker than a drink of water.’

  Stanley stood up. ‘Well, I hope you’re satisfied. What you hoped to find I don’t know, but I’m going home. Right now, Dorothy.’ He turned to Beryl. ‘You’ve been a sport.’ Doubling his hand into a fist he touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Now you’ll know me the next time you see me.’

  ‘I won’t tell,’ Beryl said, her face as solemn and her eyes as round as a night owl’s.

  ‘She won’t, you know,’ Dorothy said in the hall, bending down and unbolting the front door.

  ‘She’s a good kid,’ Stanley said. ‘Come on, I’ll see you home.’

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘I’ll just go back and have another word with Beryl.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘No, there’s no need, honestly. It’s only a hop skip and jump.’ His face in the darkness was tense-looking and sad, and she laid her cheek briefly against the sleeve of the shabby jacket.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, please, Stanley. I won’t do anything stupid, honestly. And Beryl won’t say anything. I know her, she’ll think it’s all too romantic for words.’

  ‘What? About Gerald being what you said he was?’

  ‘No, about meeting you, I mean.’

  ‘And Gerald?’

  She turned her face into his shoulder so that her voice came muffled, ‘Oh, forget that for now. I was so scared up there in his room I don’t want to think about it . . . you’d best go now. And Stanley?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I’ll be thinking about you on Monday. I’ll be at school, but I’ll be thinking about you every single minute.’

  Suddenly she wanted to put her arms round him and cry and cry, and the feeling was as overwhelming as the fear that had caught her by the throat in the upstairs room not five minutes before. ‘Go now. And God bless.’

  She didn’t ever remember saying that before. It was what the vicar always said when they took their leave of him in the church porch every Sunday morning. It was what her father used to say when he tucked her up in bed when she was a child and she would have no one but him to bid her good night. And it was what Grandpa Bolton had always said. ‘God bless, lovey. God bless.’

  Then Stanley walked away from her, and she watched him go as she always seemed to be watching him go. Head bent, with the long, loping careless stride, wrists protruding from the awful jacket. Sighing, she went back into the sitting-room.

  Beryl was standing in front of a large bean-shaped mirror, busy with the curlers again.

  ‘You might have rung up and said you were bringing Stanley round,’ she grumbled, licking her thumb and forefinger and sliding a piece of hair between them. ‘How do you think I felt with him seeing me in my dressing-gown and with my hair all pinned up?’ Her eyes were suddenly sly. ‘You’d been snogging, hadn’t you? I can see a love-bite on your neck. He’s nice, and I felt ever so sorry for him. He didn’t like you going up to Gerald’s room one little bit. He didn’t say anything, but I knew. And anyway, what does it matter if Gerald has been unfaithful to your Margaret? Men always have a past, and it will be awful if you go and spoil the wedding now. And if some silly girl has got herself into trouble then it’s her fault. It’s always the girl who eggs the boy on; a boy gets worked up quicker than a girl. And anyway, it’s only that sort of girl who gets worked up anyway.’

  Dorothy closed her eyes. ‘You’ve sworn on the Holy Bible not to tell, remember?’

  ‘I know, and I’ll be damned to eternal hell-fire if I tell. I know. That’s two secrets I’m keeping now. I wish I had one of my jolly own to keep.’ She rubbed her stomach. ‘I think I’ll go and have a biscuit.’

  ‘And I’m going.’ Dorothy hesitated. ‘Do you like Gerald, Beryl? As a person I mean?’

  Beryl was already en route for the biscuit barrel. ‘I’ve never really thought about it. He’s a bit of a dark horse, I suppose.’

  ‘How is he a dark horse?’

  Beryl pulled at her bottom lip. ‘Well, like I told you, before he fell in love with your Margaret, he used to go off in his car and just say he was going out. That was a bit rude, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Unless he had something to hide?’

  Dorothy followed her cousin into the kitchen, and shook her head when the biscuit barrel was held out to her.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing.’ Beryl spoke through a mouthful of Marie biscuit. ‘We had a policeman round just before tea.’

  Dorothy held her breath. ‘Go on.’

  Beryl took another biscuit. ‘Well, you know they’re asking all the men in the whole town where they were on the night Stanley’s sister was killed.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m hungry. Well, when they went to the mill Gerald was out, so they came here. They were coming here, anyway, to ask my father. He was at the Masons.’

  ‘And Gerald?’ The clock was ticking so loudly that Dorothy glanced towards it. ‘And Gerald?’

  ‘Well, he said that he’d gone for one of his drives in his car. You know, I told you, he was always going for drives.’

  ‘Yes. Yes?’

  ‘I’ll just have one more biscuit. Well, he said he had been for a drive that night, but he hadn’t. He went out, but he didn’t take his car. He walked.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I watched him from the landing window. He left the car in the garage that night.’

  Dorothy sat down on a kitchen chair.

  ‘And you told the police that?’

  Beryl sniffed. ‘As if I would. He only forgot, didn’t he? As if everybody will remember exactly what they were doing that night, and anyway, I would have to have said I was watching, wouldn’t I? And Gerald would have known I watch him, wouldn’t he? And he would have got cross, and I don’t like him being cross, do I?’

  She reluctantly placed the lid on the biscuit barrel. ‘Anyway, what does it matter whether he went out in the car or walked? He had nothing to do with that horrible murder, had he?’

  ‘Of course he hadn’t.’ Dorothy sp
oke quickly. ‘So he’s been cross with you before, has he, Beryl?’

  But even as she opened her mouth to answer, there was the sound of a key grating in the lock, and for the second time that night Dorothy froze.

  ‘He’s back. I’m going. Out the back way. Better he doesn’t know I’ve been here. All right?’

  ‘It’s all right, he’s going straight upstairs, he often does that. He doesn’t have any supper.’ Beryl’s voice was hoarse with biscuit crumbs.

  But putting her finger to her lips, Dorothy turned the key in the back door and slipped outside, leaving Beryl with her own finger to her lips in rather mystified understanding.

  ‘See you at church tomorrow.’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  Then she was outside in the narrow passage-way between the house and the garage, outside in the road, running, with her heart pounding and her thoughts so chaotic that her mind was a formless blank.

  And it wasn’t until she was walking up her own drive that Dorothy put her hand in her blazer pocket and felt the cuff-link, hard and round . . . and the knowledge that she had, in her headlong flight from Gerald’s room forgotten to replace it, filled her with terror.

  If she was right. If there was anything in what she suspected, then her safe little world was safe no longer.

  From now on Gerald Tomlin would know that someone knew. And knowing would turn him from a merely frightened man to a man of desperation.

  Fourteen

  BEFORE DOROTHY HAD closed the door behind her, even before she had gone swiftly upstairs, knowing she could not, at that moment, face Margaret, she had decided what to do with the cuff-link, weighing now as heavy as lead in her blazer pocket.

  She would have to take a chance on Gerald discovering its loss that night, and the next morning, in church, she would pass it over to Beryl, saying she had slipped it in her pocket, accidentally, when she thought she’d heard Gerald’s car outside, reminding the luckless Beryl of her sworn promise and the threat of hell-fire if she went back on it.