A City of Strangers (24 page)

“Mrs. Eastlake? Sorry to bother you. It's Algy Cartwright.”

“Oh, Algy. No bother.”

The voice sounded quite normal now, just like any other housewife. As if she had never withdrawn from the world.

“You'll probably think this is a bit odd, but I've been thinking things over—in connection with this murder, like.”

“I'm sure we all have. I would like to see the thing over and done with, for Adrian's sake.”

But you've enjoyed it, too, Algy thought.

“Yes, well, I was remembering what you told me on the phone that first time when you rang—about what you saw when the little girl came on in advance of the family. Can you remember? Could you go over it again?”

She could. When she finished Algy said:

“Look, could we try an experiment? I'm going to go next door to The Hollies. I'll stand in the porch and ring on the doorbell. Then I'll go downstairs to the basement. Will you stand at your window, as you did that day, and tell me what you see?”

Five minutes later, having rung on the doorbell of The Hollies and gone down the steps to the basement flat, which was in darkness, Algy was back in his house and on the phone again.

“Now Mrs. Eastlake, Rosamund, what did you see? Did you see me all the time I was on the doorstep of The Hollies?”

“Yes, I could see your legs the whole time. Then you disappeared when you went down to the flat.”

“Just like the little girl.”

“Yes. But why should that be so significant?”

“Probably it's not. But I was talking to Daphne Bridewell yesterday, and apparently according to that young teacher she's got in her basement flat that Phelan girl is hugging some secret to herself at the moment. And I've been watching a lot recently—”

“Oh, so have I, Algy!”

“—and I've seen that Mrs. Hobbs from the basement flat . . . Well, I won't go into what I saw. . . . I wonder, Mrs. Eastlake, if I were to get on to the police—I know it's a lot to ask—would you be willing to talk to them?”

There was no more than a second's hesitation.

“Of course, Algy. I'm all
right
now. I'm coming round.”

When he had talked to Mike Oddie at the police headquarters, Algy Cartwright on an impulse got on to Lynn Packard at Foodwise in town and told him what he had done.

“You bloody fool!” Lynn brayed. “That brings it back to us!”

“Not really. If I'm right it would bring it back to Mrs. Hobbs.”

“Well, maybe,” conceded Lynn. “I suppose that's true.”

But he didn't have the grace to apologize for swearing at him.

Mike Oddie had taken Algy's phone call soon after his return from the house in Park View Heights. He had a minor cut and a spectacular scratch across his cheek, and he was far from happy. At first he had been unimpressed by Algy, who had been nervous and long in coming to the point. Just another busybody neighbor, he had said to himself. But he had struck gold as well as dross with busybody neighbors in the past, and he had listened on. By the
end he was half-convinced that the man just might have a point. At the very least, it was something that was worth checking.

Five minutes on the police computer left him cursing himself for his slackness. He collected Sergeant Stokes from the canteen and together they drove to the houses in Wynton Lane.

When Rosamund Eastlake opened the door of Willow Bank he was immediately struck by her fragile charm. Her dress was too large and faintly musty, but she moved beautifully and her face had the remains of what could only be described as loveliness. Rosamund was the kind of older person for whom the word “policeman” suggests security, comfort in distress. She took to Mike Oddie at once, and instinctively made him feel protective.

“Do come in, Inspector. Is it Inspector? Oh dear, what have you done to your face?”

“Superintendent.” Oddie grinned. “The curse of the Phelans, I'm afraid.”

“That dreadful family. It's about time we heard the last of them. I have the kettle on for tea.”

She led them through to a sitting room that was clean and airy, yet somehow had an underused air, as if any human habitation it had had in the last few years had sat lightly on it. While Mrs. Eastlake went back into the kitchen to busy herself with the tea, Oddie wandered around the room looking at the books in the glass-fronted case, and at the records by the rather elderly record player. Housman, Swinburne, Mahler, Richard Strauss. Romanticism in decay, swoonings toward death. . . . On the other hand, there was Wisden, and the ghosted autobiographies of cricketers.

He bustled to help Mrs. Eastlake as she came in with the tray, and as they settled themselves down he gestured to Sergeant Stokes to take a seat slightly back. Mrs. Eastlake, he could see, was shy, or at any rate nervous: best if she could concentrate on him and forget there was a second man in the room.

“I hope everything is all right,” she said, faintly distracted, and gazing at the tray. “It's so long since I've had visitors.”

“You've been ill?” Mike's voice was warm and concerned. She responded to it at once.

“Yes. And for so long. . . . Though I sometimes think, now I'm coming out of it, that I've been not so much ill as weak.”

“You . . . had a nasty experience, people say.”

Mike Oddie had done his homework on the people in Wynton Lane, though he had not found out anything concrete enough to justify interviewing all of them.

“Yes. Best not to talk about that. But I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't—”

“Imagine it?”

“Oh, no, no. I didn't imagine it. But whether I didn't . . . seize on it in some way.”

“As an excuse to—what? To give up the world?”

“Something like that. Give up the struggle.” She poured the tea and handed it round, then proffered the plate of biscuits. She did not drink the tea herself, but seemed to warm her hands at the side of her cup. “My husband, Desmond, died very young, you see. He was never completely well after the war. We had been very happy—so happy—and quite suddenly, it seemed—because he had hidden things from me, his state of health, what the doctors said—quite suddenly he faded and died. And I was on my own with Adrian.”

“Was it a financial struggle?”

“Not really. We've always had just sufficient coming in—Desmond saw to that. But I'd never been the one to take the lead, take decisions. That had been for Desmond to do, and I'd been quite happy to have it like that. I suppose I'm naturally the type who likes to be led. Or perhaps it's a sort of laziness. Then suddenly, on top of the grief, there was this great burden: responsibilities, decisions.”

“How old was your boy?”

“Seven. Just seven. And I had to be father as well as mother to him. Of course, I'd always
loved
Adrian, but somehow—I suppose this sounds dreadful—my life had always centered around Desmond. Then suddenly the center was gone and I had to devote myself entirely to Adrian: give the lead, take decisions, make him look up to me, have confidence in me, as he had had in Desmond. It seemed so
wrong:
What the boy needed was a father.”

“I'm sure you did it very well.”

“Perhaps. Well enough. He's a dear boy, and very loving. But when he was grown up and had got this job with the Social Security office, which a friend of Desmond's got for him, because poor Adrian didn't have many qualifications—it's been a grief to me that he never had his father's brains, or his looks—when he was settled at last I remember feeling a great wave of relief, and tiredness. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so. You'd done your job.”

She smiled gratefully. She liked confident men who understood her and sympathized with her.

“That's it! That was it entirely. I felt: Now I can relax, now I can shrug off the burden.”

“And then you had your . . . nasty experience.”

“Yes.” She looked down again, into her tea cup, which was still nearly full. “Yes, it was when Adrian was about twenty-two.”

“What was it, Mrs. Eastlake?”

“It's not relevant, nothing to do with anything.”

“I don't suppose it is, but it just may be.”

She shook her head, her face puckered up.

“I've never told anyone. I don't think I can.”

“Was it so horrible?”

“Yes. . . . No. . . . Well, I was frightened . . . disgusted. But it was also . . . almost ridiculous. I was so ignorant, so naive. . . . I didn't know anything about things like that.”

“You will feel better if you tell me, Mrs. Eastlake. I assure you I know a lot about people who have had horrific experiences, and they really do feel better for telling someone, getting it off their chests.”

She looked up at him glancingly—a shy, timid look that seemed to say “Do you promise?” with the trustingness of a child. Then she looked back into her cup, and there was a long pause before she spoke again.

“It had been a lovely summer's day, I remember, and we had been out in the garden—sitting under the cherry tree, eating strawberries and cream. A perfect day, as perfect as any I'd had since Desmond died. I remember I was wearing my favorite summer dress, very light and gauzy, and I felt so perfectly relaxed. I didn't notice, not consciously, that Daphne wasn't so relaxed . . . was very tense and twitchy. She had been so good to me and Adrian after Desmond died. Not that Adrian went to her school, of course—he was educated privately—but she was so good about helping him with his schoolwork, getting him to make a decision about what he wanted to do. Of course, I'm speaking about a time some years after her husband left her. I never really knew him, only to wave and say ‘Good Morning' to, but I had the impression that she was rather glad when he left her.”

She came to a stop. Mike Oddie sat quite still—a sturdy, encouraging presence, not breaking the silence with a question. Eventually in a smaller voice she went on.

“A little cloud came over the sun, and there was a slight chill in the air. We thought it was time to go in, and we took the cups and the strawberry bowls into the kitchen. I remember standing at the sink, piling up the crockery. . . . I remember, like a snapshot, the garden—how lush it was, very green, and the roses—the King's Ransom that Desmond had planted. When suddenly I felt arms round me, fondling me, fondling my . . . breasts, and Daphne telling me she loved me, adored me, and I saw her face in the little mirror by the kitchen window, and it was . . .
avid.
I was so frightened, nauseated, I said ‘Please! Please stop!' and tried to get away, and she clung to me and pleaded with me, and . . . It went on and on, like a nightmare, something I wanted to wake from and couldn't, and I tried to shake her off, as if she were an animal, and she clung on, and suddenly the front doorbell rang, and I screamed and she ran away sobbing out of the back door.”

She came to a halt.

“What did you do?” Oddie asked quietly.

“I remember sinking to the floor, retching. I was frightened and disgusted and—and I just didn't understand. I remember crawling over to lock the back door, crawling through into here. That's how Adrian found me when he got home from work—crying, hysterical, my dress torn, really in a frightful state. . . . He put me to bed. I couldn't explain. I—can you understand this?—I knew nothing about things like that. The thought of . . . unnatural love like that simply never entered my head. I suppose I was an innocent. Desmond had shielded me. Those were different times. It was not the sort of thing we would think of ever mentioning between ourselves. Can you understand that?”

She looked up at him, beautiful, vulnerable, appealing. Mike Oddie murmured, “Of course.”

“So you see I couldn't explain. I think he came to believe. . . . Anyway, he was so sweet and kind, and did everything for me, nursed me, mothered me, in a way. And I came to—to like it, rely on it.”

“You sort of relaxed into it, after years of taking decisions?”

“Yes, that's it exactly. Like relaxing into a big, comfy chair.” She smiled her thanks for his understanding. “And Adrian seemed so to love doing things for me. Nothing was ever too much trouble. He never complained, never seemed to want any other kind of life. Looking back, maybe I should blame myself, but I do think that in his way he has been happy.”

She shot him that same look, and he nodded.

“There,” he said, “now you've told someone. Does it feel better?”

“Not now. I think perhaps it will. I feel stronger, in a way. As if I had faced up to it a little.” She looked at him with a tiny trace of the coquette in her eyes. “Why did I tell you that? It wasn't even what you came to ask about.”

“Policemen get used to hearing things,” said Oddie, smiling back. “We don't always bully it out of people, as some try to make out. I suppose we develop listening techniques. Yes—what I wanted to talk about was the day the Phelans came to view The Hollies. I gather from Mr. Cartwright that one of them came on in advance?”