The Paying Guests(125)
She must have taken Lilian’s key with her, because as Frances was clearing away the lunch things she heard her letting herself back in. And when, a half-hour later, there was a knock at the front door, she came clattering down again to answer, beating Frances to the hall. Netta and Lloyd had arrived. They’d brought along the baby, Siddy, and the youngest sister, Min. The women went straight upstairs without attempting to speak to the Wrays, but Lloyd came out to the kitchen to say how shocked they all were, and to ask if he could go down the garden: he wanted to take a look at the lane. Frances supposed she ought to go with him. She ought really to have gone already, to be sure that nothing was amiss. But the thought of doing it brought on a flicker of the terror she had felt at the mortuary. She got as far as the back step, then stood and watched, transfixed, as he picked his way along the wet garden path and peered from the doorway at the end of it. He came back shaking his wet head. It was just like something from on the films! The police had put ropes at the end of the lane to keep people from coming through. They had marked the place where Len’s body had fallen, and set a constable to guard it.
He took the black oak armchair with him when he went upstairs; and after that the house became a stew of anxiety and unfamiliar voices, of impossibly creaking ceilings and frayed nerves. Frances’s mother sat by the drawing-room fire; Frances fetched her a shawl, a book, a newspaper, a parish magazine. But the papers lay in her lap, unopened. Instead she gazed bleakly into the hearth, or closed her eyes with a troubled expression – or flinched, at some extra-heavy footstep overhead. Some time after four, Mr Lamb and Margaret called. A little later, Mrs Dawson returned; she was followed by Mrs Golding, from the house next door. Had Frances seen that policemen were still in the lane? Did she know that they’d been going up and down the street, poking about in gutters and gardens? Was it true what people were beginning to say? Could Mr Barber’s death really be murder?
Frances told them all that, so far as she knew, the police were still undecided. They were waiting for the surgeon to examine the body. ‘You didn’t hear anything, last night?’ she forced herself to ask Mrs Golding. But the woman shook her head. No, no one had heard a thing. That’s what made it all the more strange and frightening…
By the time she had left, the endless twilight of the wet day was beginning to thicken, and Frances’s mother looked ill with tiredness and strain. Frances, exhausted herself, drew the curtains at the front window and put a match to the gas, keeping the hall light low to discourage further visitors. When, at half-past five or so, the door-knocker sounded again, she groaned. ‘I don’t think I can face any more questions. Shall I leave it?’
Her mother had twitched at the sound. ‘I don’t know. It might be someone for the Barbers —’ She corrected herself, unhappily. ‘For Mrs Barber, I mean. Or it might be a policeman, Frances.’
A policeman! Yes, thought Frances with a sick sensation, it very well might be. She’d remembered what Inspector Kemp had said, about wanting Lilian to remain at home, in case he should need – that sinister phrase – to get hold of her in a hurry… The knock came again, and this time she went to answer it. She fought down her fear, saying to herself, Be calm, be ready.
But on opening the door she found not a policeman after all, but a drab middle-aged couple and a boy of about fourteen, their expressions a baffling combination of apology and anguish. As she stared at them, the husband took off his hat. She saw the gingerish cast to his hair, and the blood rushed to her cheeks.
They were Leonard’s parents and his younger brother.
She would almost rather have faced the inspector. With an awkward gesture she moved back to let them in. They had heard the news, they told her, just an hour ago. They’d been away from home – over in Croydon, visiting Len’s uncle and aunt. A policeman had come to them there and had brought them back in a car. They hadn’t believed him at first. They’d supposed there’d been some sort of a mix-up. Then he’d told them that Lilian had identified the body. It was true, then, what he’d said? They were out of their minds with worry. They’d come to see Lilian herself. Was she here?
Frances led them upstairs, unable to think of a thing to say to them, and once she had handed them over to Netta and Lloyd she got away from them as quickly as she could. She re-joined her mother, and the two of them sat without speaking, uncomfortably conscious of the creaks overhead that meant that the visitors were being taken into Lilian’s bedroom; a moment later there were murmurs, rising and breaking, perhaps dissolving into tears. Soon the sounds began to feel to Frances like pressure on a bruise. She stirred the fire. She got to her feet. If only her muscles would stop hurting! She went nervously back to the French windows to peer down the garden again. The door in the wall still stood open. Upstairs, the murmurs went on and on.
But when, forty minutes later, she heard the couple leave Lilian’s room and join the boy on the landing, it suddenly seemed indecent to let them go away so soon. She nerved herself up, and as they came down she went out and invited them to spend a minute in the drawing-room. They sat on the sofa in a stunned sort of way, the husband with his hat in his lap, the wife hanging on to her handbag, as if they were desperate not to put the house to any more trouble. The boy, Hugh, embarrassed by his own grief, smiled and smiled.
Frances said, ‘You’ve spoken to Lilian, then.’
Mr Barber nodded. ‘Yes. You know, do you —?’