Princes Gate (9 page)

He tossed a stone into the river and rubbed his hands. Come on, he said to himself. Let’s get on with it.

Joan Harris’ lodgings were in a terraced house in a dingy road just off King Street. Merlin parked his car on the kerb and banged the knocker which, much smoothed from use, appeared to have originally taken the form of a cat’s head. Eventually the door slowly opened to the accompaniment of a ferocious bout of coughing.

The woman was large. She wore a shabby dress on which he could see several stains, some of which were yellow and seemed of recent origin. Her large breasts, seemingly unsupported in any way, sagged towards her knees. A frizzy grey down covered most of the lower half of her face, while her obviously dyed hair was tagged up in curlers. Piercing the beard on the lower half of her face was a red gash of a mouth, from which an almost spent cigarette sagged and which eventually exchanged coughs for words. “Cat got your tongue?” the apparition growled. “Come on, state your business, I haven’t got all day and I’m in the middle of my tea.”

“Detective Chief Inspector Merlin, madam. I’m here to investigate the death of your lodger, Joan Harris.”

“Oh, dead is she? When her brother and the copper came she was only missing. You found her quickly then. Will her brother be paying me the arrears of rent?” The landlady took one final puff of her cigarette, looking at it with more emotion than she apparently felt for Joan Harris, and threw the stub onto the pavement.

“I am sure something will be worked out Mrs – er – Bowen, isn’t it?”

“Yeh. So what now? I’d better get on and clear her stuff out.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that for the moment.”

“Why not? Got to get someone else into the room. Can’t hang around. Perhaps you think I’m made of money?” Mrs Bowen attempted to fold her arms under her imposing bosom but, failing in that endeavour, she raised her right arm and leant against the doorpost. Merlin stepped back as her breasts rose and swung in his direction.

“May I come in?”

Mrs Bowen’s expression softened slightly as she appraised her visitor. “Oh, alright then. I’m always a sucker for a handsome face. Suppose you want to poke around her room?”

“Thank you.”

Stepping into the hallway he had a view of the main living room to his left and was surprised to see a very tidy interior. Mrs Bowen appeared to compensate for her personal slovenliness with a keen attention to her housekeeping.

“Mind if I finish my egg and chips? You can have a cuppa if you want.” Mrs Bowen shuffled towards the kitchen at the end of the hall corridor.

“No thanks. Where is Miss Harris’ room?”

“It’s the door facing the stairs on the first floor. Don’t make a mess, please.”

The room was large, larger in fact than his own in Chelsea. He idly thought he could do with a bit of extra space. Then again, Hammersmith was a bit further out than he liked, he didn’t quite fancy the change in landladies, and he wasn’t so keen on a room recently inhabited by a dead girl.

A single bed lay against the wall to his right. On the far side of the bed, next to the room’s one window, stood a large wardrobe. On the near side, next to a washbasin, was a chest of drawers. The walls of the room were covered with a yellow lacquered wallpaper on which a small cast of Victorian figures posed in various hunting tableaux. Clashing somewhat with this decor, a faded pink armchair sat in front of the bed and to the side of an ornate Victorian fireplace.

He put on his gloves. A range of ladies toiletries covered the washbasin and two shelves above it. It seemed to him that there was quite an amount for a young girl of limited means. Alice had never been a great one for make-up, perfumes or nail varnish. A dab of lipstick and a splash of eau-de-cologne had been all she wanted. He carefully went through the clothing in the chest, trying not to feel like a pervert when he rummaged through the underwear. He found nothing of interest. Moving to the other side of the bed, he opened the wardrobe and found a colourful selection of dresses and skirts. His eye was caught in particular by a long silvery evening dress.

A wave of sorrow passed over him, superseded swiftly by a surge of anger. A young life full of possibilities snuffed out meaninglessly. He sat down and took out his notebook. “Clothing, etc. seems to me of high quality – too high quality for secretary up from country – ditto perfumes, etc.” He went over to the fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a black and white photograph of a working-class family. Merlin recognised Joan’s brother in the picture, which also featured a sour-faced woman, a similarly miserable man, three young children of indeterminate sex, and a pretty teenage girl. He picked up the photograph and scanned Joan’s blurred features. She had indeed been a looker. The eyes were large and doe-like. Her flowing fair hair fell prettily on her shoulders and her full lips were parted in a winsome smile. Despite being dressed as shabbily as the rest of her family, she seemed a cut above.

Merlin slipped the photograph into his inside pocket. Further along the mantelpiece were a group of china puppies and kittens, a small clock and a neat pile of books. At the top was an Everyman edition of
Pride and Prejudice
. Beneath was a battered copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
and beneath that a bright new edition of
Huckleberry Finn
.

He riffled through the pages of the Austen and then the Dickens. Nothing unusual revealed itself.
Huckleberry Finn ’s
glossy wrapper portrayed a very blue Mississippi on a sunny day, with a river steamer making its happy way between the river banks. When he opened this book he noticed a spidery inscription on the flyleaf.

“To J. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Good luck with everything. Your friend J.”

He looked at the back of the book to see if there were any other written inscriptions but found none. He flipped through the pages as before. A small object fell to the floor, and he knelt to pick it up.

It was a blue matchbox. On the cover was a silhouette in white of a curvy female figure holding out a cigarette in a cigarette holder and a name – ‘The Blue Angel’.

Merlin knew most of the nightclubs in London from the time, a couple of years before, when he’d had several major gangland cases. Investigating these had involved much trawling around clubland – smart dining clubs, cabarets, spielers, clip-joints, seedy drinking clubs and clubs which were brothels in all but name. Despite ‘The Blue Angel’ sounding familiar, he could not recall it.

When he went back down the stairs, Mrs Bowen was hovering in the hallway. She had taken her curlers out and appeared to have made some effort to improve her appearance, although the yellow stains remained. “Finished?”

“Yes, thanks. Could I have a few words with you about Miss Harris?”

“Alright, but I’m sure I’ve got little to tell you. Come in here.” Mrs Bowen opened the door of her living room. He followed her and sat down on a comfortable settee in the middle of the room.

The landlady relit the new cigarette dangling in her mouth and sat down opposite him.

“What sort of a girl was Joan?”

“I don’t really know. Kept herself to herself. She was polite – I’ll give her that.”

“Did she have any friends to visit?”

“One of her girlfriends from work came around a few times. Don’t know her name. Pretty thing with red hair.”

“Any men?”

“None. Rule of the house. No male callers. I won’t have any funny business.” Mrs Bowen primly pursed her lips.

So your other lodgers are female?”

“Yes they are. I’ve got two other lady lodgers.”

“Who are they?”

“Don’t think they’d welcome me talking about them. Very private people.”

“I would be grateful for their names.”

Mrs Bowen took a long draw on her cigarette. “Miss Simpson and Miss Foster. They’re friends. Old ladies. Been here about four months – since just after the war started.”

“Are they here now?”

“They went away. Visiting friends in the country. Wiltshire or Gloucestershire I think. Back today or tomorrow I believe.”

“Could you let them know that I or one of my officers will need to speak to them when they return?” He wrote down the names in his notebook. “Did Miss Harris ever stay out at night?”

The landlady pursed her lips again. “I have rules in my own house, but I can’t have rules outside, can I? I lock and bolt the door at 10.30 at night. If any of my lodgers are later than that they have to make other arrangements.”

“Did she miss ‘lock-up’ many times?”

“Didn’t keep count. A few times certainly. She was away for a few weekends as well. Visiting her family, I think.”

“She had some nice clothes in her room.”

Mrs Bowen’s heavily lipsticked mouth opened into something between a leer and a smile. “Pretty stuff she had. Saw her in her shiny evening dress more than once.”

“Did you ever see anyone pick her up?”

“Told you, Inspector. No male callers.”

“I just wondered whether she ever had someone waiting outside. A car perhaps?”

“Not that I noticed. And I don’t make it my business to spy on my lodgers. Did see her get into a taxi once though. Thought that was a bit flash for a girl like her.” Mrs Bowen vigorously stubbed her cigarette out in a silver ashtray on the table in front of her. She leaned back in her chair and attempted unsuccessfully to cross her legs, displaying a considerable expanse of white flesh in the process. Merlin decided he’d got enough information for the moment.

“Time to get back to the Yard, I think. Thanks for your help.”

Mrs Bowen rose to her feet. She smiled and fluttered her eyelids. “Are you sure I can’t offer you something? Something a little stronger than tea. Sherry perhaps?”

Merlin smiled regretfully and hurried out into the street.

She sat hunched up over a corner table weeping. From the beginning of the war pubs had seemed to be standing room only every night but this evening was an exception. A couple of AFS officers propped up the bar. In the opposite corner of the lounge, three old ladies sat silently together, slowly sipping their port-and-lemons. A couple of tables away two well-dressed older men, breaking their journeys home from the office, exchanged quiet words under their bowler hats. Johnny Morgan returned with the drinks. “Come on, Kathleen. Get this down your neck. It’ll make you feel better.”

She removed a small handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose on it as delicately as she could. The tears stopped momentarily. “It’s so awful. Who could have done such a thing?”

“Some madman, I suppose.” Morgan’s nose disappeared into his pint glass.

“Who would have wanted to kill someone so kind and lovely?”

After fidgeting with her handkerchief for a moment, the tears began again.

All eyes were on her. Morgan put his arm around her shoulders. “Close friend died you know. Girl’s a bit upset – as you’d expect.” The ladies in the far corner nodded sympathetically. The two office workers raised their hats and mumbled a few indistinguishable words, while the AFS officers turned away, uninterested.

“Drink your drink. It’ll make you feel better.”

She reached for her gin and sipped it carefully. Her tears stopped. Morgan reached into his jacket for a packet of cigarettes and waved it in front of her. “Yes please, Johnny.”

Morgan lit up the two cigarettes in a flamboyant style he’d seen in a recent Bette Davies picture and passed one over. “Did you see that policeman then, sweetheart?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did he ask you?”

“Oh, this and that. He asked me what Joan was like, who her friends were, did we go out together and so on.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That she was a lovely, friendly girl who was good at her job. That she and I used to go out together sometimes, to the pictures and so on. He asked whether she had any boyfriends.”

Morgan blew a smoke ring which slowly disintegrated above them. “And what did you say to that?”

“I said none that I knew.” She took another sip of her drink and then looked up sheepishly at Morgan. “Do you know if she had a boyfriend?”

“Me? No. Why should I?”

“Just wondering. I know that she occasionally went out on the town in the West End with someone or other but she was always very secretive about it. Perhaps she mentioned something to you. You know, like on the Thursday before she disappeared.”

Morgan clenched his teeth. “I didn’t go for lunch with her that day.”

“But Mr Priestley said…”

“He’s a blind old fart. You didn’t tell the police anything like that?”

“No. But you did see her outside the office from time to time didn’t you? I saw you together in the park once.”

“A lot of us see each other outside the office from time to time. Nothing in that is there? Anyway, she wanted to ask my advice once or twice.”

“Advice about what?”

“Nothing important. She didn’t like her lodgings and she asked me if I could help her find a new place.”

“Funny, she didn’t mention that to me. And I know some lodgings going quite cheap round the corner.”

He drained his glass and got to his feet. “Fancy another drink?”

“I don’t think so.”