Death Trap (8 page)

‘This was the kitchen, with the scullery and offices behind,' she waved towards what Kate assumed was the garden door. ‘My son Miles says it's necessary. There's such a shortage of housing, you know.'

‘I know,' said Kate with feeling. ‘But you mean this is your house? You own it? You're our landlady?'

‘Well, technically I suppose I am. But my son looks after all the business side of things for me. I have nothing to do with it. Of course, this wasn't our house before the war,' Mrs Beauchamp said vaguely. ‘We were in Eton Square then, when we weren't in the country.'

‘Eton Square?' Kate asked. The address meant nothing to her. But Mrs Beauchamp did not seem to hear her.

‘I was presented at court in – what was it? – 1906. All the gels were then.'

And Kate realised that she did not mean the war which was on everyone's mind when she was a child, though she could barely remember it, even though Liverpool was still picking itself up from the ruins while she was at school. Mrs Beauchamp must mean the war before that, the war her grandfather from Dublin had come over to fight for the British even while his own country was on the point of revolution.

‘It was Queen Alexandra then, of course. Such parties we had,' Mrs Beauchamp said. ‘Such beautiful young men. So many dead.' She closed her eyes and Kate thought again that she had fallen asleep and was about to get up and creep out, slightly bemused by the old lady's reminiscences, but Mrs Beauchamp roused herself again and grasped her arm.

‘It was the war, of course, that began the slide. Both my brothers were killed in 1915, and the heir to the estate was a distant cousin we hardly knew.'

‘Why not you?' Kate asked, puzzled.

‘The estate was entailed. It went to the male heir, however distant. I was the only daughter and I got nothing at all.'

‘That doesn't sound very fair,' Kate said. The only things that had ever been inherited in her family were her Irish grandmother's knick-knacks which had gradually been smashed by her boisterous family.

‘Things were not very fair for women in my day,' Mrs Beauchamp said drily. ‘I was born long before women even got the vote. My father was furious when that happened. I married, of course, and had my son, but it was never the same again. Everyone lost money in the crash. Life was more difficult. My husband and I sold Eton Square and bought this house in 1936, the year of the abdication, you know? Such a lovely man, the Prince of Wales. This was quite a good neighbourhood then, not the same as Eton Square, of course, but respectable. But it became a struggle to keep it going after my husband died. My son looks after the money now. He's very good. And when I need a little extra I sell one or two of my treasures. She waved vaguely at the silver and ceramics which covered every flat surface, visibly gathering dust. ‘Mrs Chamberlain gives me a very fair price.'

Mrs Beauchamp might think her son was being good to her, though looking round the sparsely furnished flat and the miserable electric fire Kate rather doubted that, but he was proving to be far from good to his upstairs tenants, she thought. Why, she wondered, had he put his mother in this damp, gloomy basement? And why was he bullying some of his tenants out of the house entirely?

‘Shall I make you a cup of tea before I go?' Kate asked. There was no way, she thought, she could even begin to sort out the problems of this old woman stranded on the fringe of the modern world apart from offering to help with her practical problems. But she and her friends would be gone from Notting Hill soon and then Mrs Cecily Beauchamp would have to fend for herself again.

‘No thank you, my dear,' Mrs Beauchamp said. ‘You're a good gel, in spite of your strange accent. I'll give you a call if I need you again.'

Kate found Tess poring over the
Evening Standard
when she let herself into the flat.

‘Nothing much here we can afford,' she said. ‘One possible one in Shepherd's Bush, one double bedroom, one single. Would you mind sharing? I'll give them a call, but it's probably gone by now. This is yesterday's paper.'

‘Where's Shepherd's Bush?' Kate asked.

‘A bit further out. They've just built a big new television place down there. It might be quite fun. We might bump into Fancy Smith, or some of the bands. And it could be good for Marie. She might get some parts at the BBC. You never know.'

‘See if it's still free,' Kate said. ‘Why not. I really don't think we want to be here much longer. Though I did find out who owns the house. It's the old dear in the basement, though her son looks after the property. Her name's Beauchamp. It's very odd. She looks as if she hasn't got two pennies to rub together, but she must have.'

But before Tess could get up to make the long trek downstairs to the phone they were both startled by a knock on their front door.

‘Do you think those scallies have got around to us so soon?' Kate whispered. ‘Can you hear a dog?'

Tess shook her head but Kate could see she had gone very pale.

‘I didn't ask Mrs Beauchamp about them,' Kate whispered. ‘I should have done. She says her son looks after the house. I wonder if she even knows what's going on.'

The banging on the door was repeated more loudly.

‘We'll have to answer,' Tess said. ‘If anyone wants to know, pretend you're Marie. There's only supposed to be two of us here.'

They went to the tiny lobby and cautiously opened the main door to the flat to find two well-dressed middle-aged men on the landing, wearing overcoats which Kate knew from her brother Tom's contacts with the rag trade were very expensive indeed.

‘Good morning,' the younger of the two, clean-shaven and faintly polished and shiny looking around the cheeks, said in a tone which clearly did not expect any sort of negative answer. ‘We're sorry to bother you but I am showing this gentleman around the house and we would be glad if we could have a quick viewing of your flat. We won't disturb you for long.'

‘Are you Mr Beauchamp?' Tess asked, her voice full of suspicion. The man looked taken aback by the question.

‘No, no, I'm not but I am here on his behalf. My name is Carey and I'm representing Mr Beauchamp. He's abroad at the moment. It is possible that the house is going to be sold and this gentleman  . . .' He hesitated for a moment. ‘This gentleman is a prospective buyer. If we could trouble you briefly  . . .?'

He did not exactly push his way in, Kate thought, but in taking a couple of steps forward, followed by his smaller, darker and rather older companion, he made it very clear that he was not to be denied. The men looked quickly round the three rooms which made up the flat, without making any comment, turned the taps on in the kitchen and prodded a patch of damp on one of the walls and then returned to the front door, still without a word.

‘What will happen to the flats if the house is sold?' Tess asked.

‘Oh, you don't need to worry about that yet,' the younger man said. ‘That's a long way off. But your landlord did ask me to mention that the rent will be going up from the beginning of next month. The collector comes round next Friday, I think, doesn't he? He'll let you know then what you will have to pay in future. Good day to you.'

But Kate did not feel like letting him get away with that. ‘Just a minute, please,' she said. ‘While you're here perhaps we can ask you whether you are responsible for Geoff and Elsie Wilson being bullied into moving out when they didn't really want to. Was it you who sent the men round with the Alsatian the other day?'

Carey looked at Kate angrily for a moment while his companion remained completely expressionless.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Carey said flatly at last. ‘And that's not a suggestion Mr Beauchamp would be very happy to hear either. I should be very careful who you repeat it to, young lady. Very careful indeed.' He held the door open for the older man, who had not said a word, and followed him out with a smile for the women which was no doubt intended to take some of the sting from his threat but which reminded Kate of the loan sharks who had infested her childhood after her father disappeared and her mother struggled to make ends meet. It was, she thought, getting more and more urgent that the three of them find somewhere else to live.

DS Harry Barnard stood outside Fulham Broadway tube station scanning the crowds for a familiar face amongst the football supporters with blue scarves and disgruntled expressions. He had been coming to Chelsea FC on and off on a Saturday afternoon with DS Eddie Lamb for ten years or more, ever since they had moved into CID together as rookies at Paddington Green, both of them trying to stay cheerful through the west London club's ups and, more often, downs. Barnard was always on the point of packing it in and trying one of the north London clubs closer to where he lived instead, but he never quite managed to pull himself away from the team their rivals still dismissively called the ‘pensioners'. Lamb, on the other hand, was the true Chelsea supporter through good times and bad and he had persuaded Barnard to persevere again this season, with the club just back from a year in the second division and the prolific goal scorer Jimmy Greaves now a bitterly regretted memory. The new manager, Lamb assured Harry Barnard with the true devotee's gleam in his eye, would make all the difference. They were back up, they would stay up and start winning trophies again.

In the end, Lamb came bustling out of the tube station, towards the end of the stream of supporters, duffel coat and scarf flying, cap pulled down half concealing an anxious look on his puffy face. ‘Sorry, mate,' he said as the two of them joined the rest of the stragglers, hurrying towards the turnstiles. ‘Got called into the nick. Some tom got herself strangled last night and it's causing a bit of aggro on the street. We had to show a bit of muscle.'

‘Wouldn't have thought you'd bother too much. It's the risk they run, isn't it?'

‘Not if it's a white girl and a black bloke. It still raises the temperature round there,' Lamb said. ‘And that's not good for business. It drives the punters away and that affects everybody's cut, know what I mean?'

‘And that's what it is? A black bloke? How do you know that exactly?' Barnard asked. He did not want Lamb to know what Kate O'Donnell had told him, and especially not that she had taken photographs around Portobello Road that morning. He knew that the Notting Hill nick would not regard that as acceptable on their patch, especially if a major crime had been committed.

‘Looks like she was just a beginner, part-timer maybe, didn't know the risks in an area like this. I'm surprised she'd go with a coon – some will, some won't – but we've a witness who saw her with one sometime after midnight. We've rounded up a few suspects this morning, and that should keep the lid on the aggro for a bit. The local lads know they'll get a lot of bird if they kick off again. They'll get sent down for a long stretch, just like the last time, so they'll take our word for it that it's sorted. For now anyway. But it's on the edge. There've been a couple of attacks on white toms recently and now this.'

‘You think you've got a black Jack the Ripper in Notting Hill, then?' Barnard asked, half joking.

‘Nah, but what I do think is that someone might be trying to stir the white lads up deliberately. If people get the idea white girls are being targeted, that could mean trouble. There's still a lot of resentment there, simmering away under the surface. Stands to reason, doesn't it? Who invited all these blacks in anyway? Certainly wasn't anyone round here.'

‘I thought it was the government looking for tube drivers and nurses,' Barnard said mildly. ‘It was Poles and Czechs before that. And the Irish. And the Jews. There's always been people coming into London. One of my aunties married a Pole. My dad didn't like it but in the end he was buying him pints in the pub, teaching him the foulest language he could think of, getting on like a house on fire.'

‘You get everything and anything in the East End these days,' Lamb said. ‘And the bloody Irish. Remember them round Paddington?'

They had worked their way onto a terrace where a relatively thin crowd surged and swayed against the metal barriers.

‘Remember how it used to be packed here when Greavesy was playing?' Lamb grumbled. ‘I can't see them getting anywhere if they keep on flogging off the best players. And to bloody Italy, would you believe? We'll have Italians here next thing. My dad fought those beggars at Monte Casino. What did your dad do in the war?'

‘We were lucky,' Barnard said. ‘He worked on the docks, and that's where he stayed. Though with the bombing we never knew if he'd get home in one piece. I wasn't around much anyway. I was evacuated to a farm in the country first off. With the Robertson brothers, would you believe. I must have told you that before. They lived just down the street from us. And then I went to grammar school in Norfolk. Funny old time, the war. I think most kids had a great time. No one paid much attention to us so we got away with all sorts of stuff. Georgie Robertson especially. He was a real little bugger. The farmer we were billeted with used to thrash him with a leather belt but it made no difference.'

‘Odd that you caught up with Georgie Robertson again,' Lamb said. ‘I heard a whisper that Ray's snooping around our patch, trying to muscle in on the protection.'

‘He's always looking to expand,' Barnard said. ‘If you gave him a pinstripe suit and a bowler hat he'd make a fortune in the City instead of on the streets.'

‘Well, I don't reckon King Devine will go along with anyone trying to move onto his patch,' Lamb said.

‘King Devine?' Barnard played dumb.

‘You must have heard of him,' Lamb said. ‘Runs a couple of clubs up round Westbourne Grove. All these arty types seem to think it's a laugh to mix with the blacks, dance to the jungle music, smoke the ganja or whatever they call it. And Devine's into a lot more besides – girls, protection, you name it. Not much goes on in our manor without he has a dirty finger in it. Quite a nice little income for the nick, though, if you know what I mean.'