The Paying Guests(130)

The inspector looked across at her. ‘Our medical examiner, Mr Palmer, has confirmed it.’

‘Yes, but how?’

‘Well, there are certain details. The nature of the injury, and so on… I don’t wish to distress Mrs Barber by saying too much.’

But they had to hear, thought Frances. They had to know what the police had discovered. And, again, Lilian must have been thinking the same thing. She said, ‘You might as well tell me. I’ll have to hear it some time, won’t I?’

So now he looked over at the little girl, in a meaningful sort of way. Vera said smoothly, ‘Vi, take Siddy next door and show him Auntie Lily’s perfume bottles, there’s a good girl.’

Violet pulled a face. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘You take him right now, or there’ll be trouble! The sergeant’s got his eye on you, look.’

With a glance at Sergeant Heath, half doubtful, half fearful, Violet slid from the pouffe, took Siddy from Netta’s arms, and carried him gracelessly from the room.

‘Well,’ began the inspector, when the door had banged shut behind her, ‘it’s a matter of the different effect of different sorts of blows to the human head. A man taking a tumble, you see, and striking his head: that produces one quite distinct sort of wound. But a man being hit – let’s say, by a hammer – well, that produces quite another. Mr Palmer was alerted right away by the appearance of the fracture, and by the direction in which the blood had run into Mr Barber’s clothes. Once he’d made a full examination he found, from the bruising on Mr Barber’s brain, that – Well, it put the matter quite beyond question.’

He kept his gaze on Lilian as he spoke. She had lowered her eyes, but her breast had begun to rise and fall. She wants to look at me, thought Frances, able to feel the tug of her fear, and growing fearful in response. She pleaded with her, silently, Don’t! Don’t! The look would give everything away!

But now Mrs Viney leaned forward. Fixing the inspector with a lashless eye, a touch of challenge in the creak of her stays, she said, ‘How it was done is one thing. Can you say who done it?’

After a second, he sat back. ‘We can’t, just yet. But we’re confident that the killer will be found. You’ll have seen our men, going up and down the street. We’re putting things together, one piece at a time. There’s not much evidence, unfortunately, from the actual scene of the crime. One or two interesting details on Mr Barber’s overcoat, but aside from them, and a fingerprint —’

‘A fingerprint?’ echoed Frances.

He said, ‘A print was discovered in among the blood on Mr Barber’s shirt-front. It’s more or less useless, I’m sorry to say. It was too long in the rain. It might have come from Mr Barber himself, or might have got there in some sort of a struggle. His clothes were pulled about, you see, and his hat was off before the blow came, suggesting to us that he grappled with his attacker before he died.’

Frances had been right about the clothes, then. But the fingerprint – that was almost as bad as the stuff about the brain. It must have got on to Leonard’s shirt as she was tidying him in the dark. She felt suddenly conscious of her hands, had to fight down the urge to clench them, hide them away. Had she made any other blunders? What the hell were those ‘interesting details’ on Leonard’s coat?

Again she felt the pull of Lilian’s fear, and this time her own fear seemed to extend across the room to meet it. Risking a look at the sofa, she saw her with her head bowed and a hand in front of her face, her lips parted; Inspector Kemp had begun to talk about the interviews that he and Sergeant Heath had conducted the day before. They had spoken to several people at Pearl Assurance, he said, who had confirmed that Leonard had left work on Friday at the usual time. And they’d talked at length with Mr Wismuth – ‘who, naturally, was of particular interest to us, as being able to help us put together a sense of Mr Barber’s movements just before his death.’

At the mention of Charlie’s name, Lilian briefly closed her eyes. Frances knew that she was readying herself for what would come next. Chafing at her forehead with her fingertips, she looked up at the inspector and said in a thin, brave voice, ‘What did Charlie tell you?’

He fished in a pocket. ‘Oh, he was very useful to us – gave us a good sense of the various timings of the night. He last saw your husband – Let me see.’ He brought out a notebook, located a page; and Frances, too, prepared herself for the revelation. ‘Yes, he last saw Mr Barber at just after ten. They’d been drinking in the City together, going from one public house to another. He can’t recall which one they ended up in – that’s a pity, of course; we’re sending officers to all the likely ones, to ask for witnesses – but he remembers very clearly saying good night to Mr Barber at the Blackfriars tram-stop just after closing-time. Now, assuming that Mr Barber had no trouble in catching his tram, and taking into account the length of the journey from Blackfriars to Camberwell, we calculate that he arrived back here at around a quarter to eleven. That would have been when you yourself, Mrs Barber, were already asleep in bed. That’s what you told us yesterday?’

Lilian’s head was still bowed, her hand was still in front of her face; she’d been staring at him through her fingers. Now she lowered the hand. ‘Yes.’