The Paying Guests(158)
Next day, the newspapers all carried something about the arrest, about the boy, Spencer Ward – Frances was growing used to the name already, and to the girl’s name, Billie Grey. But there were no new photographs, and perhaps that helped to keep the whole thing not quite real. The Mirror had the most to report: the boy was employed at a garage at Tower Bridge; he lived with his mother, a War-widow; he was ‘leanly built, with brown hair and hazel eyes’ – it could have been a description of anyone. The girl was an assistant in a West End ‘beauty shop’, whatever the hell that was, and it was in a public house close to the shop, whilst enjoying a drink with her sister in the summer, that she had apparently ‘first made the acquaintance of the murdered Mr Barber’.
Seeing Leonard’s name like that made Frances begin to grow frightened again. And because she was afraid of the fear expanding, becoming the debilitating terror it had been the day before, she hurriedly put the paper aside. What did it matter, anyhow, whether she read it or not? What would it change? They had made their decision.
That afternoon, she and her mother received a visit from Sergeant Heath. He’d come to make sure they had seen the news, and to let them know that their statements were to be read at the police court on Thursday morning. There was no necessity, he said, for them to attend the hearing themselves; not unless they wished to, and he hardly imagined that they would. Oh, Miss Wray planned to go, did she? That was entirely up to her, of course… Yes, he and Inspector Kemp were both feeling very satisfied now that they had got their man. It was a great pity that Mr Wismuth hadn’t spoken up sooner, and so spared everyone a lot of trouble and worry – but, naturally, no one was regretting that more than Mr Wismuth himself, who was now in a certain amount of trouble of his own, charged with making a false statement and wasting police time. Evidently his fiancée, Miss Nixon, had thrown him over, too! Well, that wasn’t to be wondered at, in the circumstances…
He was cheerful, almost chatty; had quite cast off that guardedness that had made him so unnerving a figure to Frances in the past. He didn’t mention Lilian. He didn’t mention life insurance. He and the inspector, she recalled, had once spoken confidently of the killer’s being ‘a man of regular habits’, but he seemed to have forgotten that too: the boy Ward, he said, with relish, was ‘a real little villain. Oh, yes, a proper little tough.’ She knew there were things she ought to be asking, things she ought to find out; she didn’t seem to have the ingenuity for it. In any case, he stayed only ten minutes. He had people to interview over in Bermondsey, neighbours of the boy and his mother. She let him out of the house, then watched him from the drawing-room window, stepping on to his bicycle and pushing away from the kerb. And, in shame, she knew she was feeling what Lilian had felt the day before: simple relief, like a letting go of weight, a giving up of resistance, at seeing him heading so purposefully out of her life and into someone else’s.
But she did not sleep quite so soundly that night. And by Thursday morning she was beginning to recover the sense of urgency that had gripped her at the start of it all, an itch to put herself at the very worst point of things in order to know just how bad they were. The police court was two or three miles away, close to the Elephant and Castle; she left the house in good time, determined to get there ahead of any crowd. But the papers had advertised the hearing. She could sense an excitement in the streets as she made her way through Kennington, and on turning the final corner she was taken aback to see a jostling swarm of people at the modest court-house entrance, all apparently hell-bent on getting places inside. She couldn’t imagine herself joining in with them, pushing her way through that press of bodies. But she had to be there, she had to know. If the boy were committed for trial, how would she prevent it? What might Lilian, without her, do or say?
She was just starting to panic about it when she saw Constable Hardy on his way into the building. He recognised her from the morning he had brought the bad news, and led her away from the public doors to the witnesses’ entrance.
He had to leave her as soon as he had got her inside, and then there was more of that uncertainty about what to do and where to go that she remembered from the inquest; this time, she felt very much alone in it. Even when she spotted Netta’s husband, Lloyd, on the far side of the small but crowded lobby – even when she saw Lilian, standing just beyond him with her mother and Vera, talking to a man who might have been a lawyer, nodding gravely and anxiously at what the man was saying – even then, she felt uncertain of her role. Vera caught her eye with a frown – as if she were thinking, in disbelief, What, here too? At any rate, though she raised her chin in greeting she didn’t beckon for Frances to join them. Lilian didn’t beckon, either. She met Frances’s gaze, still talking to the lawyer, still gravely nodding at what he was telling her; and a shadow of apprehension passed across her pale face. But then another man came, to lead her away, and the family turned and went with her. By the time Frances had made her own way into the courtroom the four of them were established in there, sitting in a pew-like bench close to the front. When again they made no invitation to her she took herself to the end of another pew, off to the side.
The pew was faintly sticky beneath her skirt and gloves. The room was a grubbier version of the chamber in which they’d gathered for the inquest, with the same trumped-up, blustering feel to its heavy panelling, its thrones and coronets. The only difference was the square enclosure – something like a horse’s stall – set facing the magistrate’s bench: Frances’s gaze passed over it several times before she realised that, of course, it was the dock for the accused. She felt another faint stirring of panic at that – then saw how far she was from any exit. Suppose that terror should overtake her again? Suppose she should faint, or be sick?