The Paying Guests(119)

He didn’t wait for their permission, but pulled over a chair and sat. Lilian looked at him with swollen eyes. Frances watched uneasily as he got out his notebook, groped in his pocket for a pencil, gave the lead a lick. Now, could they confirm their address for him? Could they tell him when exactly they had last seen Mr Barber alive? Could they say how Mr Barber had intended to spend the previous evening?

They were all the questions that Constable Hardy had already asked, and which had already been answered, Frances thought, back at Champion Hill. She shut her eyes in simple weariness. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t eaten. The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real. But soon, surely, it would come to a close. Soon they would all be allowed back into their ordinary lives… The sergeant’s list of questions seemed endless. He took so long to note down their responses, and did it so impassively, that he might have been some sort of machine. She began to answer automatically: No. Yes. No, she didn’t think so. No, she’d heard nothing, nothing at all… At last he read their words back to them, then had them sign their names to the statements. He added a note of his own, snapped the elastic around the book and returned it to his pocket with an air of finality. In relief, she watched him stand, and prepared her over-strained muscles for the rise from the chair.

But what he said, to her amazement, was, ‘Well, we can go into all this in a bit more detail at the Camberwell police station. If Mrs Barber could come with me?’

He held out his hand, to help Lilian to her feet. Lilian looked up at him, blinking, then looked at Frances. Frances said, ‘Just a minute. I don’t understand. Surely you’ve finished with Mrs Barber for now? This has been a dreadful shock for her. Constable Hardy gave us the impression that we could go home directly.’

‘Well,’ he said, with a glance at the younger man, ‘Mrs Barber’s under no obligation. But it would help speed the inquiry along, you see.’

There was something to his tone, Frances realised now: a hard edge, a rigidity, like a busk beneath the padding of his manner. Her weariness fled. The blood hissed in her ears. She rose from the chair, saying, ‘Is everything all right?’ and he nodded grimly.

‘Yes, everything’s in order. Except that a man has died, of course. We have to ascertain how that happened.’

‘But I thought you knew that already. Constable Hardy said that Mr Barber must have slipped and hit his head.’

‘Yes, he might very well have slipped. But we have to consider every possibility. Our surgeon has had a quick look at the deceased and – well, I’ll be honest with you, he isn’t quite satisfied with what he’s found. Nothing to be alarmed about just yet. Once he’s made a thorough examination we shall know more. In the meantime, we just have a few more questions for Mrs Barber. You yourself might go home, Miss Wray. We can have a woman sit with Mrs Barber until her family arrive.’

Lilian caught hold of Frances’s arm. ‘No, don’t leave me!’

‘No, of course I won’t,’ said Frances, frightened by the unguardedness that had reappeared in her face. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving you. I may stay with her, I suppose?’ she asked the sergeant.

‘Oh, certainly,’ he answered, his manner padded again.

So they went back out into the rain, leaving kind young Constable Hardy behind; and this time, when Frances and Lilian climbed into the taxi, Sergeant Heath produced a bicycle and prepared to follow. He was a stoutish man, made stouter by his oilskin cape. There ought to have been something comical about the sight of him, in that weather, fitting on the cycle clips. But as the taxi moved off Frances turned and looked back, to see him, apparently unbothered by the rain, stepping on to the pedal and pushing forward. She turned again a few minutes later, and again a few minutes after that, and each time there he was, doggedly keeping pace with them, his eyes hidden by the peak of his helmet; not looking comical at all.

The journey at least was a short one, and took them back in the direction of home. Frances had been to the police station before – once, she remembered, to report a cabman she had seen mistreating a horse, another time with her mother, on some charity business. This visit felt very different. They went in by a back entrance, pulling up in a cobbled yard, waiting for a minute while Sergeant Heath put his bicycle under cover, then letting him usher them into the soot-stained building through an unmarked door. After that they climbed a flight of stairs, made a turn or two, and she lost her bearings. Again the windows were of thick ribbed glass. Some had actual bars across them. The floors were stone, the walls were tiled: the surfaces threw back steps and voices in hard, institutional echoes.

But the room they were shown into – the matron’s room – was unexpectedly comfortable. A fire was burning in the grate, and the floor had a square of carpet on it. The matron herself brought them a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits.

‘Poor thing,’ she said, of Lilian, as she put her to sit beside the fire. And then, to Frances, less familiarly, having heard her speak and caught her accent: ‘You’re looking after her, are you, madam? That’s kind of you.’ She poured them cups of sugary tea and left them alone.

Again, however, they were too frightened to risk speech. Footsteps went smartly past the door, and after that the corridor was still. But might someone be out there, listening? Could there be grilles in the wall, secret tubes and devices? Frances’s heart was pounding; it had been pounding ever since Sergeant Heath had held out his hand at the mortuary.