The Paying Guests(118)
They drove through the rain-lashed Saturday-morning streets, past the park, past the hospital, the picture-theatre, the shops, past every ordinary, friendly landmark. A short way beyond Camberwell Green they made a turn to the right, and entered a dreary warren of low terraced houses; a few minutes later they came to a halt at a small, chapel-like building at the back of what Frances realised must be the coroner’s court. She opened the taxi door, uncertain of what to do next – then saw Constable Hardy, who, by some disconcerting police magic, had got here ahead of them. He came forward to greet them, and to hurry them through the wet. They went into the building and were put to wait on a couple of hard chairs in a grim little lobby.
A ribbed glass window let in a weak light. Muffled male voices could be heard; a telephone rang and was answered, just as it might have been in an office or in the back room of a shop. Was this the mortuary itself, or simply some stop on their journey to it? Frances wasn’t sure. The place was so ordinary, so anonymous. It was even more difficult to believe that Leonard’s body was here, close by, than it had been to watch that ambulance and understand that he was inside.
But then she caught the scent of disinfectant, like a creeping, jaundiced colour in the air. She looked at Lilian and saw that she had noticed it too. She’d started to shift about on the chair. Suddenly she grabbed at Frances’s arm. ‘I don’t think I can do it, Frances.’
Frances felt for her fingers. ‘It’ll only take a moment, he said.’
‘I’m afraid, of what he’ll look like.’
‘You just have to look, then look away.’
‘I’m afraid. I can’t – Oh, God!’
Constable Hardy had returned, and wanted them to go with him.
Lilian closed her eyes, drawing a long, uneven breath. She let Frances help her to her feet, then stood with her hand on her heart, hesitating for so long that Frances felt the whole thing begin to slide away, to crumble, like salt, like sand. She spoke with quiet desperation. ‘It’s only a moment. The worst has happened. You’re through the worst. A small, small moment, that’s all it is.’
Lilian drew another steadying breath; and then she nodded. With an awkward gesture, Constable Hardy led them away from the lobby.
And only now that they were actually following him did Frances begin to take in what they were here for. A part of her still didn’t believe it. That telephone was ringing again. She was still half-imagining that they would pass from this place to another building, a more impressive, convincing one. But even if they did, would they really find Leonard there? He was at his office, surely. He was playing tennis. He was at his parents’. He was back at Champion Hill, pushing the mower across the lawn… But they turned abruptly into a passage, Constable Hardy opened a door, stepped aside for them to pass him – and suddenly she found herself in a scrubbed, electric-lighted room, in the centre of which was a queer sort of altar with a sheeted, man-shaped lump on the top. An aproned attendant stood beside it. The door was closed, and he asked if they were ready. She looked at him blankly; she had no idea what he meant. Lilian, however, must have nodded or made some sign, for, with the discreet, practised, impersonal gesture of a waiter moving forward to place a napkin on a lady’s lap, he reached to take hold of the top of the sheet. And as he began to raise it Frances’s scattered thoughts flew back together in a rush of understanding and terror.
But after all, once the sheet was lifted, her fear dissolved again. It was all so unintimate, so unmenacing, compared with the sweaty horrors of the night before. Leonard’s face, it seemed to her, might have been a bad plasticine model, one side grey, the other almost purple, with no care taken over the join. His eyes were part-way open, but his mouth was closed and tidy. The attendant had tucked a white towel around his head, and the wimple-like effect, against the piebald skin and the gingerish moustache, was too uncanny to be true. This was not a Leonard who would wake, raise his arms, grab and denounce one. This was not Leonard at all. Even Lilian must have felt that. She stood staring at his features with a trace of bewilderment, and when she said, at a prompting from Constable Hardy, ‘Yes. Yes, it’s him,’ she sounded not quite certain. She was far more upset, on turning away, to see the things that had been removed from his body: his clothes and hat, which sat together in a sodden pile on a steel tray; his unlaced shoes, misshapen from their night in the rain; and lastly the items that had come from his pockets, and which had been set, with appalling neatness, on a sheet of greaseproof paper: keys, cigarettes, handkerchiefs, a Boys’ Brigade penknife, odd coins, notes, letters, his wristwatch and wedding-ring.
By the time they had returned to the lobby she was sobbing. Frances helped her back into a chair, then sat beside her with an arm across her heaving shoulders. Constable Hardy stood by, self-conscious; he had a document, it seemed, that required her signature. She wiped her eyes and nose at last, and looked vaguely at the paper. But then there was some trouble with his pen, the ink having run out or dried up. He fiddled with the nib, blushing from his throat to the tips of his ears.
That jaundiced odour seemed stronger than ever. Frances was longing to get away from it. Through the ribbed window she could just discern the suddenly reassuring shape of their taxi-cab, sitting out there with its engine running, waiting to take them home.
Even as she gazed at the glass, however, a misshapen dark figure passed across it; a second later the door opened, letting in another mackintoshed policeman. This one was older and more senior than Constable Hardy. He seemed to know all about the case already; he came forward to shake their hands. His name was Police Sergeant Heath, he said, and he was acting for the coroner. Mrs Barber had made the identification, had she? They were grateful to her for that. And Miss Wray, he understood, was the landlady of the house? Very good. There were just a few facts that he needed to establish, in order for the investigation to proceed – if they didn’t mind?