The Paying Guests(151)
‘Oh, Frances, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It was cowardly of me to keep it from her. And anyhow, it’s the last thing on her mind. She thinks – I don’t know what she thinks. She’s taken against Lilian along with everyone else.’
‘And how is Lilian herself?’
‘Oh, dreadful. Frightened. More frightened than I am; that’s the trouble. And she’s been ill. Did you know that? No, of course you didn’t.’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m losing all sense of who knows what. It turned out —’ She hesitated. ‘It turned out she’d started a baby.’
Christina’s mouth fell open. ‘A baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘But —’
‘It was lost. In all the upset. It was lost.’
She couldn’t say any more. In any case, the kettle was whistling. Christina watched her for another moment, then hurried over to the stove.
With the rug tucked around her, she had finally stopped shivering. But the bout of sobbing had left her feeling bruised, wrung out, swollen and dirty in the face. She twisted sideways in the armchair, kicking off her shoes, drawing up her legs. Wiping her eyes and nose again, she said, ‘God, I feel like hell. You’re quite sure Stevie isn’t going to pop up?’
‘I told you, Stevie’s at school. And she’s going from there to her studio. She’ll be hours yet.’
‘What does she make of all this?’
‘Well, what do you think? She’s been horrified, of course. We both have. It doesn’t seem real.’
Frances gave her weight over to the chair, resting her cheek against the napless velveteen. ‘It didn’t feel real to me, for the first day or two. Now it’s everything else that feels unreal. What day is it, even? Monday, is it? Only just over a week, then, since it happened! It feels like a lifetime. As if I’ve had all the fear and horror of a lifetime crammed into ten days.’
Christina brought over the tray of tea-things. Filling Frances’s cup, she said, ‘You look ill, you know. You look ill and… I don’t know. Not yourself.’
Frances took the tea and sipped it gratefully. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be myself again. Not with the police sniffing about. Not with Inspector Kemp and his wretched nose.’
‘An inspector?’ said Christina. ‘Just like in the books?’
Her tone had brightened slightly. Frances, looking across the tray at her, thought, Yes, you’re just like everyone else, excited by the loathsome glamour of it all. And yet you call yourself a pacifist. And so, for that matter, do I… She gave brief, tired answers to the questions Christina began to ask, about the events of the previous Saturday, the finding of Leonard’s body in the lane. She had gone over it all so many times, with the police and with neighbours, that it felt stale and lifeless, someone else’s story.
But Chrissy, of course, knew more than the police and the neighbours did; she knew about Frances and Lilian. And that meant that Frances had to be careful. There was so much that couldn’t be said; she felt weighed down by it. Every so often, as they spoke, they hit a sort of dead wall. ‘I’m so desperately worried about Lilian,’ she kept saying, and Christina looked baffled.
‘But what can the police possibly do?’
‘It’s what they’re thinking.’
‘But, surely, if they’re working this hard on the case – Isn’t it only a matter of time before they track the murderer down? And then —’
‘They won’t track anyone down.’
‘Why do you say that? Why shouldn’t they?’
‘They think they’ve solved the case already. They’re going to act, I know they are. Lilian knows it too. I’m worried she’ll do something rash. I know how her mind works. She’s thinking that if things have got this bad, that if people have already taken against Charlie, and against her – She’s thinking —’
‘Thinking what? You’re not making any sense. Drink some more of that brandy, will you?’
Frances shook her head. ‘I daren’t. I can’t risk getting muddled. If you only knew how much planning and thinking and fretting I’ve had to do!’
‘But what do you mean?’ cried Christina. ‘What sort of fretting? Why has it all fallen on you?’
Frances gazed into her face, and suddenly the urge to tell her everything – about Dr Ridley’s Pills, about the blood, about Leonard, about the horrible journey down the stairs and over the garden – the urge was overwhelming. Could she do it? Dare she do it? She’d been brooding so narrowly over the memory of that evening that she had lost all sense of perspective on it. How bad, in fact, was the thing that she and Lilian had done? It wasn’t a crime, after all. They had made it feel like a crime by being so frightened, by acting so guilty. But all it was, in reality, was a catastrophic blunder. Perhaps she could tell it to Chrissy, and Chrissy would stare, would look scandalised, would —
But she looked at the crumpled frock and the mud-coloured cardigan that Christina was wearing; she glanced around the untidy flat, at the sham Bohemianism of it. The lies that were being told here were such harmless ones. It was all so uncorrupted, so safe… And she knew that she couldn’t tell Chrissy anything. More than that, she knew that the not-telling would make a breach between them; that it had made the breach already. She thought bleakly, This is what I saw in the garden that night. She had put herself beyond the ordinary. Or, rather, Lilian had put her there. She would never blame Lilian for it. She would never do that. But, oh, why had she picked up that ashtray? How bloody unfair it was! They’d been about to start their new life. Frances had already been cheated out of one life – this life, here with Christina. Was she really to be cheated out of another?