The Sleeping Partner

by Winston Graham

  The food stuck in my chest. I got up and went out, garaged the car, registered at the same hotel. Then I walked down Piccadilly.

  When I got into Grosvenor Court Mews there was a chauffeur waiting by a car near one of the other flats, and two girls talking under a lamp who eyed me. There was also a light in No. 9.

  I waited about twenty minutes and then began to feel conspicuous, so strolled off towards Curzon Street and walked along it as far as Park Lane. I wasn’t far now from the tiny flat we’d first rented; every step in this part reminded me of Lynn. The sky was an odd colour; there were pink reflections from the ground upon the heavy under-tow of the clouds and a giant rift in them stretched half-way to the City.

  I looked at my watch. It was ten to twelve. I turned back.

  Just short of the mews I stopped to light a cigarette and heard Big Ben through, then I felt the key again and walked on.

  The car had gone, the girls had gone. There was only a dog there sniffing at an empty can; he raised his head at my footsteps and watched me until I was past. I got as far as the garage end where I had watched last night and looked across at the windows of No. 9. They were in darkness. Miss Lord had retired to rest. But now there was a light in the windows of No. 9a.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I DROPPED my cigarette and pressed it into the stones of the yard. I took the key out of my pocket and looked at it. I waited a minute, taking breaths. Then I went in.

  There was a small light burning at the first turn of the stairs, right opposite Miss Lord’s door. I went past that, stopping once when a stair creaked. Then I came opposite the door of No. 9a. No light was to be seen under it.

  I wiped the sweat off my hands and very very slowly put the key against the jagged opening in the Yale lock. Sometimes almost at the first touch you can tell whether they fit or not. This key slid in like a sword into its sheath. I turned my fingers and the tumblers turned. I pressed on the door and it opened with a very slight creak.

  Now you could see why no light showed. This was a tiny vestibule, five by five; a door led off to the right, probably into a bathroom, the door straight ahead into the living-room. A light showed under this. There was a handle, but above it was another Yale lock.

  Usually a second such door would be left permanently with its catch back. At least it was worth trying. I took two steps and listened. There was no sound from inside. I put my fingers slowly round the knob and turned. When it had gone far enough I put the fingers of my other hand against the door and pressed. It gave and began to open. As the first split of light showed down the length of the door, the light went out.

  I let go the handle slowly and leaned against the door. It swung wide, opening into a vacuum of darkness. Then I didn’t make any further move. My ears, are pretty keen, and I thought I should pick up some sound of movement or breathing. It didn’t come.

  You could make out the oblong of one of the windows. The white blind was drawn, but there was just enough light from the street lamp at the end of the mews to mark the rectangle. By it you could see the shoulder of a chair, the glass of a picture on the wall, the sloping edge of a lampshade, a more anonymous bulk in the middle of the room.

  I reached my hand slowly into the room and felt up and down the wall, found the smooth metal of a switch, went to press it down. But it was already down. Farther along the wall, but there was nothing else. I clicked the switch up. Nothing.

  Now it was a question of nerves. The longer we waited the less his advantage would be. But I should have phoned the police instead of this. I knew that now.

  Somewhere, I think in the flat below, a clock chimed the quarter-hour. A car accelerated away, its exhaust higher than the dying rumble of the traffic. Quiet fell again. Then there was a baby crying, perhaps it was in the house opposite, it went on and on and then suddenly checked and was still. Mother had come. I could hear my own heart beating; it didn’t seem fast but it was emphatic. I wondered how long I would have to wait.

  A sound over to the right in the darkest part of the room, as if someone had disturbed something by the smallest move. I stepped back towards the first door, groped for the switch, put on the light in the vestibule, then lurched sharply into the living-room, veering left, seeking the shadows there.

  Light flooded into the room through the gaping door. Settee, bookcase, television set, piano – something hit me across the head, a new light flashed; I fell across a chair clutching at a coat as it went past me; he shook free; as I rolled to the floor I clutched an ankle; he kicked himself clear, stumbling against the door – darkness fell on me and I lay on the floor holding my head as the outer door opened and slammed.

  I got to my knees, forced myself up, stumbled across to the window, scratched the blind away; the mews was empty. I waited. Perhaps he had gone or there was another way out. A great lump on the back of my head; the room wasn’t steady yet. But I had to keep watching in case.

  I swore and blasphemed – taken in by the oldest trick – a bit of paper or something thrown across the room to give the impression he was on the opposite side. I’d walked practically into him, yet not a recognisable glimpse.

  A movement at the end of the mews by the telephone-box was almost out of my range of vision: I let the blind fall and ran down the stairs. When I got out there was no one to be seen.

  The blow hadn’t broken the skin but my head was thumping. I stumbled back up the stairs and into the flat. By the light of the vestibule I saw the bulb of the standard lamp on the settee and put it back in its socket. Then I went back to the door and switched on.

  A settee in figured brocade before a built-in electric fire, and an easy-chair to match drawn up beside the sham-walnut television set. On a bleached-wood half-moon table by the wall was a typewriter, and next to it was a desk with a mirror over. I went to it and dragged open the drawers.

  Again that scent of Lynn’s, so cloying, so familiar. Notepaper – it was queer how scent always clung to paper – a cheque book, a rent receipt. I lifted off the cover of the typewriter but there was nothing in the machine. A newspaper on a chair, two weeks old, a pair of her shoes. Another door half-open led into a tiny bedroom with a window looking out on the roof of another flat.

  Lynn’s things here: nightdress in a case on the bed, dressing-gown behind the door, in a corner the suitcase she had taken when she left – her initials in blue on the side. It was half-full of things neatly packed, a hairbrush, face lotion, handkerchiefs, stockings and the rest. There was only one letter in the bottom, and it was from Messrs Sterne, Webber and Webber, saying that the petition was now drawn up and inviting her to attend at their offices when the affidavit could be sworn before a neighbouring solicitor. Dated July 14, two days before she had left me.

  In the drawers of the room were a few things of hers, all clean, nothing soiled. The wardrobe held two of her frocks, a light summer coat. A small wicker laundry basket was empty. At least it looked empty until I saw a bit of paper at the bottom caught in a cleft of broken cane, and eased it out. It was about half an inch by a quarter and was a recognisable piece of a cigar band. I put it away carefully in my wallet and turned to the waste-paper basket. Nothing in there.

  Back through the living-room to the other door leading off the vestibule. A bathroom. Her toothbrush, some nail varnish, her soap, made with the same scent, as I knew. And then I saw something that really startled me. On the glass shelf beside the toothbrush was my toothpaste.

  I remembered now I’d missed it on the morning after she left me and had had to use hers. The natural inference was that in packing her case to leave she had taken my toothpaste in mistake for her own. But as it happened the natural inference would be entirely wrong—

  Someone knocked on the outer door. It was a sharp rap, and for a second or so my thoughts were stuck like sheep in a gate. I took a step to the door and then stopped. The nature of the knock was wrong. I went to the windows and lifted the blind an inch away. In the mews below was a Wolseley police car. Beside it a
flat-capped policeman stood and stared up at my window.

  I let the blind fall. The knock came again. Well, I could answer it, couldn’t I?

  I went into the bedroom. The window looked out over a flat roof, a drop of perhaps six feet. Where did the roof lead? If back to the mews, then madness to try it. But the thing ran in the opposite direction.

  I heard a scraping at the outer door as if someone were trying keys. I slid the window up and climbed out on the sill. It was an easy drop and I landed on my toes, almost without a thud. I ran to the edge of the flat roof and found there was no way out here. I either had to go back or on and across the next roof, which sloped V-shaped to a central guttering. As I pulled myself up to it a police whistle sounded.

  Perhaps it’s natural to have that effect on a law-abiding citizen when he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the law. I slithered along the valley between the roofs, and at the end came up against the blank brick wall of a house.

  I glanced back and saw a policeman silhouetted as he got out of the window. I began to climb the sloping roof, clawing at the tiles with one hand and at the wall of the house with the other. I reached the apex of the roof, let myself slide down the other side and came up with a jerk that broke a piece of the guttering. Below there was some sort of a small courtyard. I let go and landed on hands and knees. The man was following.

  The courtyard was entirely enclosed, but there was a house with french windows at the end, and one of the french windows was ajar. I ran towards it, slid through, pulled the window behind me, fumbling through curtains into a long dark room with a number of shining tables that refracted the light from a half-open door beyond. It looked like an expensive restaurant or the dining-room of a club.

  I felt my way down it towards the open door and a mutter of voices. A card-room; two tables were being used. Eight men playing bridge, the room heavy with cigar smoke. I looked round the room I was in. This was the only door.

  One of my hands was scraped, so I dug it in my pocket and walked slowly into the card-room and towards the door at the other end.

  I’ve never known a longer walk in my life. The ‘dummies’ of both tables turned and stared; one of the men playing a hand lifted his head and looked at me with a sort of hypnotised interest.

  After about half an hour I reached the other door, turned the handle, thought it was locked, and then found it opened inwards instead of outwards. I went through. No one had spoken.

  There were stairs. I went down the stairs. At the bottom was a large tiled hall with a porter’s box, but the porter had gone off duty. The first doors to the street were easy. The second lot were locked and it took me a minute to find out how the lock worked.

  Outside the street was empty, and about fifty yards away was a taxi-rank. I went up to the taxi there and gave him the name of my hotel. No one had come out of the club by the time the taxi turned off into Berkeley Square.

  When I got to bed I slept heavily for a time and then woke absolutely certain that I was lying in the coal cellar and that opposite me in the dark Lynn sat with the dust over her decaying face. I reached for the light and couldn’t find it, and that proved I was in the cellar. I started up, climbing out of bed, and heard that terrible dead rattle of the coals. I knocked over the bedside lamp, the shade fell to the floor, and presently I found the switch and pressed it so that the bright light came on with the lamp lying on its side. My dazzled eyes couldn’t see into the far corner of the room and I got to the floor clutching the lamp and staring. It took two or three minutes to become sure that in the corner there was only a round white cushion on the arm of a chair.

  Then I got back sweating and lay exhausted against the wooden head of the bed.

  As I lay there I remembered I’d not switched off the light in the cellar when I hauled the dog out. The light must still be silently burning there, and would stay on all through the night and all through tomorrow unless I went back and saw to it. It wasn’t right to leave her in the light. She should be in the dark. There was a decency about the darkness that all humanity needed when it came to its last humiliation. So she had come to it too young, and was the more horrible because of it.

  There grew in me a need to get up at once and take my car out and drive down to Hockbridge so that I could alter all that. It took all my common sense to stay where I was, to be reasonable and logical about it, knowing that she would not know and could not care.

  But I didn’t go to sleep again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  RAY FRENCH had a corduroy jacket thrown carelessly across his shoulders, over a silk monogrammed shirt knotted at the throat with a spotted maroon scarf. He raised his eyebrows in an amused sort of way and looked blandly welcoming.

  ‘Come in, old boy. You’re an early visitor. We’re just finishing breakfast.’

  I said: ‘Sorry, but I wanted to catch you before you went out.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He looked at me pretty oddly for a second, then led the way up the stairs and into a tiny dining-room, from which through double doors you could see into his music-room, a big gaudily-curtained place with a black Steinway piano.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t been to his flat before. Like him it was rather a mixture of the orthodox and the flamboyant. There was a second breakfast-cup on the table and a lipstick-stained cigarette-end in its saucer.

  He waved a finger towards a chair. ‘The coffee won’t he nauseating yet. And the cigarettes are on the side-table.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ve finished. About that postcard you had from Lynn. Do you still have it?’

  He frowned with one eyebrow at the cigarette he was lighting. When the thing was going and he had flipped the lighter out with his thumb he said: ‘Pressed in lavender. Has it some special significance?’

  ‘It could have.’

  ‘Well, I must say it escapes me, it was only about records.’

  He went into the larger room and then disappeared through another door. A large black Persian cat came in by the same door and stretched itself and rubbed a lazy head against the leg of the piano. Then it came slowly into the dining-room and sat on its tail and looked at me with amber eyes. They were like Ray’s. On the wall above the cat was a lithograph of Hyde Park in 1820, and beside that a Florentine mirror, in which I was suddenly startled to see black hair move.

  I jerked round in my seat and found that Margot du Caine, Ray’s fiancée, had come into the room. I got up.

  ‘Good morning! I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Good morning.’ She smiled self-consciously, her rather blind-looking eyes going past me in search of Ray.

  ‘We met at Glyndebourne,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if you remember—’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ But she didn’t.

  Second viewing confirmed the first; she looked inexperienced, rather inelegant, trying to hide her unsureness. But she wasn’t unattractive in a rather negative way.

  ‘I came for my cigarettes. Oh, yes, here they are.’ She picked them up from the chair facing the empty cup. ‘Thanks, no,’ as I offered my case. ‘I won’t smoke now.’

  We stood about for a few seconds. She put her hands down and straightened her skirt over the hips.

  ‘My name is Granville.’ I said. ‘Mike Granville.’

  She went on looking steadily at nothing, but her fingers had stiffened. Just then Ray came back with the card. He raised his cigarette-end to Margot. ‘ ’Lo, darling. You two know each other, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, taking the card. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Margot got here just before you, so we decided to work up the breakfast-table atmosphere. Got to get into training for next week.’

  The postcard was typewritten, the message very much what he had said over the telephone, including the last phrase, ‘Am staying a few days with Hazel at the above address.’ The signature was in ink and was the single word ‘Lynn.’ The postmark was N.W.8.

  ‘Does she often send you typewritten letters?’

  ‘
She hasn’t often written to me. But, no, I don’t remember another typewritten. Why?’

  I glanced at the girl and hesitated. Ray’s laugh bubbled over. ‘I haven’t any secrets from Margot.’

  ‘All the same, I think if you don’t mind …’

  Margot turned her stare on Ray. ‘Do you want me to go, darling? You know nothing you can say—’

  ‘Nothing I can say. But evidently Mike wants to say and doesn’t like.’

  ‘In that case I’ll go.’ She bent suddenly and picked up the cat. Her mass of dark glossy hair made the cat’s coat look lifeless. We watched her move through into the big room, and Ray shut the double doors.

  ‘When is the wedding?’ I said.

  ‘Sunday at crack of three. We’re spending Sunday night in London and catching the Otrantes at Southampton on Monday afternoon. What’s the matter Mike? You look as if you’re carrying more than your pay-load.’

  ‘Lynn and I have separated for good.’

  He whistled. ‘You as much as said that over the phone, but I hoped …’

  ‘Ray,’ I said, ‘ you knew Lynn had a flat of her own in Grosvenor Court Mews, didn’t you?’

  He looked at me and then sat sideways in a chair, put a leg over one of the arms and hitched his jacket round him. ‘Whispers, I must confess, have reached my ears.’

  ‘You’ve been there, of course?’

  He examined one of his finger-nails. ‘Well, well, how you cover ground.’

  ‘Have you been often?’

  He took out a nail file and rubbed off a corner that was worrying him. ‘What is this, old boy? Any Questions? It’s a trifle early in the morning.’

  ‘It’s late in the day for learning the things I am learning.’

  ‘What am I supposed to say?’