Authors: Laura Wilson
Stratton's War (6 page)
He got through the rest of the day in a sort of self-protective trance and walked home to Conway Street after the cinema closed. The hall floor and stairwell were covered in newspaper and the house permeated by steam from his landlady’s washing and the odour of her stew - added to, subtracted from, boiled and rehashed throughout the week - which smelled, according to Mabel, like a permanent fart. Joe’s involuntary smile at the memory of this description made him wince as he tiptoed down the passage, not wanting to alert Mrs Cope, who lived on the ground floor. She was, on the whole, a kind woman, but he’d endured several hours of her barely concealed appetite for what she termed ‘the tragedy’ at the weekend, and couldn’t stand any more of it. He placed his foot carefully on the bottom step to make sure it wouldn’t creak, thinking how he just wanted the day to be over.
It wasn’t. When he reached the top of the stairs, Joe saw that the door to his flat was slightly ajar. He stood on the landing wondering if he’d accidentally forgotten to lock up before he left for work, and then, hearing a noise from within, was about to retreat when the door was flung wide open by a large man. In a blink, Joe took in the thuggish frame that bulged inside the blue serge suit, the five o’clock shadow under the threatening, tilted hat, the badly sutured scar that bisected one cheek, and the meaty whiff of body odour. He spun round and made for the stairs, but the man reached forward, grabbed his arm, and held on to it. All Joe’s attention was riveted on the face - cavernous nostrils choked with black hairs, cracked lips and stale breath - that was an inch away from his own.
‘Well, well, well,’ said the man, his voice loud with jovial menace. ‘Home at last. Don’t be shy, come on in.’ As he gestured towards the door, Joe saw that there was another man, smaller, younger - a boy gangster - behind him. ‘We want to talk to you. You see, Mister Vincent,’ - the big man prodded him in the chest with a nicotine stained finger - ‘you’ve got something we want.’
SEVEN
Stratton stood at one of the urinals in the station’s toilet, gazing at the white tiles in front of him and worrying about Mabel Morgan’s missing teeth. The inquest would be held in a few hours’ time. Ballard would give evidence, and assuming the verdict was suicide, which it undoubtedly would be, that would be the end of it. Jenny had remembered Mabel: ‘She was one of Mum’s favourites. Ever so beautiful - great big eyes, a bit like Greta Garbo. What a way to end up, though.’ It didn’t amount to anything, that was the problem - just speculation - and it wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to do already: a passer by who’d tried to intervene in a robbery at a jeweller’s was lying critically ill in hospital, and a fight between two gangs had resulted in a fatal stabbing, with all eight participants claiming they had no idea who did it because they were looking the other way at the time. In any case, it was well nigh impossible to think clearly with Arliss, who was spectacularly flatulent, parping away in the cubicle beside him.
Stratton finished, buttoned himself up, and was washing his hands when Arliss emerged looking pleased with himself, a clear victor in the battle with his bowels. Stratton nodded at him, and Arliss, smoothing the front of his tunic, ambled over to join him at the basin. ‘That young chap,’ he said, without preamble, ‘the pansy who lived with the Morgan woman, got picked up on Monday night. Or Tuesday morning, I should say. Down in Soho, it was.’
‘Oh? What for?’
‘Not for anything, Sir. Right mess, he was. Weaving about all over the place. Someone did a real job on him.’
Stratton stood back from the basin to wipe his hands on the towel, and Arliss, who had, apparently, no intention of using it himself, carried on, ‘Got himself beaten up for being a nancy, I’d say.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
Arliss shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t tell me, would he? His sort never do. Lovely black eye,’ he continued with a relish that made Stratton feel uncomfortable. ‘And they’d clobbered his face something terrible, sir.’ He chuckled. ‘Not such a pretty boy now.’
‘Was he pretty before?’ asked Stratton, guilelessly.
Arliss flushed. ‘You know what I mean, sir. For those that way inclined.’
‘You said they’d clobbered him. Was there more than one?’
‘Don’t know, sir. He wouldn’t tell us.’
I bet you didn’t try too hard to find out, either, thought Stratton. ‘Do you think it was something to do with Miss Morgan?’ he asked.
Arliss looked surprised. ‘Why should it be, sir? It’s him being like that, isn’t it?’ He shrugged. ‘What do they expect?’
Stratton spent a long, sticky day in the interview room, talking to various gang members who had mysteriously forgotten who they were with the previous night and who swore on their own lives, their mothers’ and their kiddies’ that they had seen nothing, honest to God, straight up, and by six o’clock he was more than ready to pack it in and get off home.
He found Ballard in the General Office, talking to one of the clerks. ‘How did it go?’
‘Suicide, sir.’
‘As we thought.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you see the man she lived with?’
‘Yes, sir. Joseph Vincent. Been in the wars a bit since I last saw him, though.’
‘Got beaten up, Arliss says.’
‘I suppose it’s to be expected, sir.’
Stratton sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is.’ Having secured Vincent’s address from Ballard, he left the station and walked towards Fitzrovia.
Vincent’s landlady, Mrs Cope, answered the front door with such speed that Stratton wondered if she’d been waiting in a pre-sprinting position like the Olympic runners he’d seen on the newsreels. When he introduced himself and explained that he was looking for Mr Vincent, she ushered him into her parlour. ‘Gone away, sir. Staying with his sister. I expect you’ve come about Miss Morgan. Terrible business, if you don’t mind my saying, sir. Quite an upset. Shook me entirely rigid.’
Sensing that she could have gone on in this vein for quite a while, and not wanting to linger, Stratton interrupted. ‘Did you speak to him?’
Mrs Cope shook her head regretfully. ‘Haven’t seen him since Sunday. Left me a note - just for a few days, he said. He was ever so upset. Mind you, I could have said a few things - told me she was his aunt and it turned out she was nothing of the kind. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, sir, especially since she used to be in the pictures, but I believe in clean living.’ The last two words were given extra weight by a series of emphatic nods that made her chins wobble. ‘I’ve said it before, but I’ll not have that sort of thing under this roof.’
Stratton didn’t set her straight - she’d probably have the poor bastard out on the street in an instant if she knew the truth - but said, soothingly, that he quite understood, and did she have the sister’s address?
‘You won’t catch him there now, sir. He’ll be at work. The Tivoli cinema. Is something wrong, sir? Only I heard that the inquest - I wasn’t there myself, of course, but one of my neighbours told me—’
‘Just a routine visit, that’s all,’ Stratton cut her off with a reassuring smile. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘Well, as I say, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but—’
As she clearly did want to speak ill of the dead, and was about to get into her stride, Stratton interrupted again. ‘As you say, Mrs Cope. Now, if you’ll just let me have the address, I’ve taken up quite enough of your time.’
Reluctantly, she dug out a piece of paper, which he copied into his notebook. At the door, after a bit more business about it being wicked and a shame, and in her house as well, Stratton escaped.
At the end of the street, he looked at his watch and decided to postpone the matter. He didn’t want to set tongues wagging by calling on Vincent at work - his enquiry was, after all, unofficial. He stopped outside the Tivoli on his way home, and established that it was closed on Sundays. This Sunday, he remembered, it would be Doris’s turn to make dinner (the sisters took the Sunday midday meal in strict rotation). He wouldn’t be required to peel spuds, his sole domestic task aside from polishing shoes, and one he secretly rather enjoyed. That meant he’d be able to see Vincent in the morning at his sister’s. He opened his notebook and flipped through the pages - Beryl, her name was, in Clerkenwell Road. Jenny wouldn’t be too happy about it, but at least she’d be pleased this evening when he turned up in time for supper. Then he could spend a couple of hours at the allotment, as he often did on summer evenings, planting celery and Brussels sprouts, and mulling things over in his mind. It wasn’t just his itchy feeling about Mabel Morgan, there was the sheer hopelessness of finding a witness for the gang fight, too. It was a fair bet that none of the club owners, bar staff, prostitutes or residents who might have seen something would volunteer any information - at least, not if they knew what was good for them. Stratton didn’t blame them. He’d seen what could be done with a razor. Rumour had it there was one bloke who’d been held down while two men from a rival gang played noughts and crosses on his buttocks. Seventy-five stitches, he’d heard, but at least it wasn’t visible - unlike your face. Stratton winced. Then there was his bloody nephew, Johnny, as if he didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the invasion, and Jenny getting all het up about the kids . . .
Still, the first broad beans should be about ready. Perhaps he’d be able to take some back for Jenny. She’d like that.
EIGHT
Diana, seated at her dressing table, smoked a cigarette and contemplated her pots and brushes. The Tite Street flat, procured by Lally and just a walk away from Dolphin Square, was proving very satisfactory: bedroom, small kitchen, and a shared bathroom on the landing with a heater that gave off a rather ominous smell, but could usually be relied upon for hot water. It was cosy, and, with the help of a maid, fairly easy to maintain despite her lack of practice. So much nicer, she thought with satisfaction, than the cavernous, ecclesiastical gloom of Evie’s vast manor house (re-built in 1859 in a style Diana privately thought of as Widow’s Gothic).
Diana spat in her eye-black, dabbed it with the miniature brush provided, and applied it to her lashes. Evie actually seemed proud of the fact that the wretched place was uncomfortable; it was as if each draughty corridor, rotting tapestry and clanging pipe was a personal triumph. And then there was Guy’s old room, a time-capsule of his adolescence, or maybe not. Her husband, Diana reflected, had never really managed to surmount that particular phase of life. The contents of his bedroom - coloured prints of battleships tacked to the panelled walls, stamp albums, toy soldiers, collections of birds’ eggs and far too many tinted photographs of his mother - reflected him now, mentally stalled at the age of fifteen. Diana patted her face with powder and wondered if the army would succeed in ‘making a man’ of him. Judging by his infrequent letters (she’d bet her last penny that Evie received three for every one addressed to her), it wasn’t likely; the war, for him, seemed to be merely a continuation of the Eton Corps. Of course, they weren’t allowed to say much about what was actually happening, but all the same . . .
She was about to pick up her lipstick when a sudden memory of the incompetence - there was no other word for it - of their wedding night made her turn from the mirror in shame. She’d schooled herself never to think of it; even sitting here, alone, the humiliation was unbearable. It had been so unexpected. After all, Guy was eight years older than she, and his veneer of worldliness had led her to believe that he must know all about that sort of thing, that he would take the lead and . . . well, initiate her. She’d been so much in love with him, wanting to give herself - how revoltingly, coyly romantic it all seemed now! She’d lain there, waiting for it to happen, and . . .
Leaning forward, she massaged her temples hard, trying to squeeze the image out of her mind. The real problem, she thought, is that I’ve never understood about love. There hadn’t been much of it in her childhood: her father’s affections had been lavished on dogs and horses, but not people, and her mother, undemonstrative and distant, had never petted or praised. When her parents died, Diana felt that she’d never really known them at all. In childhood, she’d hankered after the sort of love one read about in books, the big, warm family, full of laughter and games and good counsel. Later, she’d yearned for the love she’d seen on the screen, the longing, the passion and the final kiss that made you good, made you whole, made you belong. When handsome, dashing, worldly Guy came along, she’d thought her feelings were real; it was only later that she realised, with horror, that he could have been almost anyone. Desperately clutching at what she lacked, she’d manufactured the emotions by a process not unlike self-hypnosis, and fitted them to him. And Guy had needed a wife, hadn’t he? Evie, she’d later learned, had been urging him to marry, and Diana, the young, pliable orphan, was, in her eyes, perfect.
Not any more. Diana grimaced at herself in the mirror, then stuck out her tongue, but still the image of that first, terrible night refused to be jollied away, and anyway, it was a half-hearted effort. With her mother dead, a married aunt had taken it upon herself to give a vague sort of pep talk about male urges and wifely duties. She’d said it was bound to hurt a bit at first, but one soon got used to it and might actually come to find it not unpleasant and, if one was lucky enough to have a considerate husband, rather comforting. It would have been a lot more useful, thought Diana bitterly, if she’d simply told me how to - and here she deliberately framed the forbidden word with her lips as if launching it across the room. Then at least she would have known what was supposed to happen. When it eventually had happened, on the last night of their honeymoon, after a week of avoiding each other’s eyes and not mentioning it, she’d lain on her back, willing herself to relax but afraid to move in case it put Guy off. Watching his face, or what she could see of it in the dark, she’d decided that his grimace and the noises he made were less to do with passion and more with the sheer effort of getting the thing done.
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