The Paying Guests(138)
Mrs Playfair sat down and began to tug off her gloves. ‘Well, I want to hear everything that’s happened, every little last thing.’
Frances sat down too. The prospect of going through it all over again made her feel boneless with exhaustion. At the same time, she realised that here was an opportunity to tell the story of the murder as the police had begun to construct it – to fix it more firmly in her mind. So, with her mother now and then putting in some detail of her own, she gave a careful, thorough account of the events of the past few days, beginning with Constable Hardy’s arrival at the house on Saturday morning, and finishing with the inquest. Mrs Playfair looked shocked, appalled – but also, unmistakably, excited. As soon as she’d heard Frances out she narrowed her eyes.
‘Now, who’s the coroner at the moment? Is it still Edward Samson? I know him a little. He used to be friendly with George. I might pay him a call, do some digging. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I wish you would,’ said Frances’s mother. ‘If he knows anything at all that the police aren’t saying, I’d so like to hear it. It’s the senselessness of the thing that I find so horrible. The blindness, the waste. Poor, poor Mr Barber. He was such a cheerful young man, so very full of life. Can you really believe, as Inspector Kemp seems to think, that someone set out, purposely, to kill him? Someone with some sort of grudge against him?’
‘Well, no,’ Mrs Playfair answered, ‘I’m not sure I do believe it. There seems no evidence, for one thing. The attacker was clearly one of these louts one sees hanging about on the street corners! I wonder the inspector doesn’t simply round them all up and question them one by one. That’s what I would do.’
She went on like this, laying down certainty after certainty – and sounding oddly, in her confidence, like the inspector himself, so that Frances, listening to her, began to feel a return of the mild elation she had felt on Sunday while listening to him. For, the street-corner lout, the man with the grudge: whoever the culprit was meant to be, what did it matter? So long, she thought again, as no one was thinking of Lilian and her. So long as no one was imagining that they had ever made that journey down the stairs and over the garden with Leonard’s body… She remembered leaving him in the darkness. She remembered closing the door on him. And then another thought came – came like a whisper behind the hand. He’s gone. Lilian was free now. If they could just hang on to their courage, just until everything died down…
She chased the thought away. But the touch of elation remained. She put back her head, and closed her eyes, while Mrs Playfair laid her plans.
After tea that day, however, Mrs Playfair returned; and this time she looked uncharacteristically subdued. Yes, she said, she had spoken to Mr Samson. He had been quite willing to talk in confidence about the case. She had also had two or three conversations with her parlourmaid, Patty.
‘With Patty?’ repeated Frances.
‘Patty’s sister’s girl, over at Brixton, is engaged to be married. The boy’s a constable in the police, and he’s let one or two things slip.’
Frances couldn’t believe it. ‘You sound like Mr Lamb! According to him, Leonard was killed by a disgruntled local grocer. Mother and I will be next on the list, at that rate.’
‘Frances,’ protested her mother tiredly.
‘Well,’ Mrs Playfair went on, ‘this boy’s meant to be the horse’s mouth. Patty speaks very highly of him. And the fact is, both he and Mr Samson —’ She paused, strangely awkward. ‘It caught me quite by surprise, I can tell you. But they both gave me more or less the same impression. They both hinted pretty plainly that – well, that there’s something not quite right about the case.’
Frances looked at her. ‘What do you mean, “not quite right”?’
Mrs Playfair paused again. She seemed to be carefully choosing her words. ‘Well, for one thing, Mr Barber is supposed to have spent Friday evening with his friend, Mr – What’s his name?’
‘Wismuth.’
‘Mr Wismuth, yes. They’re supposed to have gone from one public house to another, getting drunk as lords on the way. But the police have been to every public house in the City, showing photographs of the two men, and no publican or barmaid has any recollection of them. What’s more, the police surgeon, Mr Palmer, tested Mr Barber’s body for alcohol when he carried out his post-mortem. He found very little trace of it, apparently – less than the equivalent of half a glass of beer. Looks odd, don’t you think?’
It took Frances a moment to answer. ‘Well, it sounds to me as though Mr Wismuth was the drunker, that’s all.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ said Mrs Playfair. ‘But here’s the queerest part. It seems now that a man and a girl have come forward to say that they heard some sort of disturbance in the lane on Friday night, and —’
Frances felt the words as an almost physical shock. She began to blush – a horrible feeling, nothing at all like simple embarrassment, more a scalding of her cheeks, as if she’d had boiling water flung at them. Mrs Playfair, seeing her reaction and misunderstanding it, said, ‘Yes, isn’t it a ghastly thought? The girl’s in service at one of the houses further down the hill. She’d slipped out without the family’s knowledge – a naughty girl, obviously – but still, it’s enough to give one nightmares. She didn’t see anything, I believe; evidently it was too dark for that, and she was too far off – down where the Hillyards’ wall juts out. But she and the man both say they heard footsteps and sighs. The man made light of it at the time, said it must be another pair of sweethearts. Then, of course, when they heard about the murder… It took them until last night to make up their minds to talk to the police. The girl was frightened for her place; the man didn’t want to come forward on his own for fear of making himself a suspect. But the point is, you see – the point is, it was quite early in the evening when they were out in the lane – not later than half-past nine. Well, according to Mr Wismuth, he and Mr Barber were still in the City then.’