The China Governess (2 page)

‘He wants the top brass, does he.' Luke was good tempered but fierce. ‘Here it is then. Both of it. We'll go and give him a toot.'

His amused, contemptuous mood persisted as they entered the aluminium-lined passenger elevator which carried them up to the top floor. The convenience and neatness impressed him but the termite-hill architecture made him uneasy.

‘It's all very quiet. What's everybody doing behind the fancy
drapery?' he muttered, the attempt to muffle his remarkably resonant voice failing disastrously.

‘The trouble is on the other side of the building, sir. Top floor. All the doors are on that service side.' Munday sounded defensive. ‘It's not quite like a street. A lot can happen without the neighbours knowing.'

Luke opened his mouth to say something acid but at that moment they arrived and he stepped out of the silver box to be confronted by a prospect of his beloved city which he had never seen before.

He stood transfixed before the unaccustomed view of London at night time, a vast panorama which reminded him not so much of the aerial photographs of today but rather of some wood engravings far off and magical, in a printshop in his childhood. They dated from the previous century and were coarsely printed on tinted paper, with tinsel outlining the design. They had been intended as backcloths for toy theatres and were wildly ambitious. The Fall of Rome was included, several battlefields, and even Hell itself complete with steaming lakes and cauldrons of coloured fire. Now to Luke's amazed delight he saw the same glorious jumble of grandeur and mystery spread out below him. He saw the chains and whorls of the street lamps, the ragged silver sash of the river and all the spires and domes and chimney-pots, outlined with a sorcerer's red fire, smudging against the misty sky. It made his heart move in his side.

Munday touched his sleeve. ‘This way, Mr. Luke.'

He turned his head abruptly and caught sight of a small crowd at the far end of the balcony. Here again the lighting was dramatic and worthy of the view.

The two open doorways were bright oblongs in the dusk and the shafts from them created a barrier between the crowd and a uniformed man on guard.

As they came forward a square figure in a tight suit advanced to meet them. He stepped delicately like a boxer and everything about him proclaimed that he was Sergeant Stockwell, the inevitable ‘good man in charge'. Luke gave him a long experienced stare and moved close to Munday so that he could hear the murmured
report. It was made with the mixture of smugness and efficiency he expected but there was an undercurrent of outrage which made him raise his eyebrows.

‘The Councillor, that's Mr. Cornish, has taken the old boy who owns the wrecked apartment in to the neighbours next door to talk to him,' Stockwell said. ‘His name is Len Lucey. He's a fitter and a good old craftsman with nothing known against him. Before the war he lived on the edge of this estate with his first wife who kept a tobacco and confectionery business – very small. She was killed in the big Blitz. He then married a woman from North London and he had to live over there, travelling across the city to work every day, until he was granted this new first-class flat. His second wife has made a little palace of it by all accounts and that's some of the trouble. She had a sort of fit when she came in and saw the damage. There's a neighbour with her but I've sent for an ambulance. I shouldn't be surprised if she never comes right out of it. I don't blame her,' he added gravely. ‘The state of the room shook
me
. I thought at first it was one of the local delinquent mobs but now I'm not so sure. There seems to be almost too much work in it for them, if you see what I mean.'

‘It's the farther doorway, I take it?' Luke inquired. ‘And the Councillor and the old boy are in the nearest one, is that right?'

‘Yessir. The first flat belongs to a much younger couple called Headley. He's a master baker and works at the meat pie factory in Munster Street. He and his wife are nothing to do with this business and they've got the wind up. They're not being unfriendly but they don't want a dose of the same medicine. They've already approached me on the quiet to get everybody out if I can.'

‘But they don't want to offend the old squire, eh?' Luke was chuckling with his own brand of savagery. ‘Well, well. Let's hope for everybody's sake the poor old lady hasn't taken things too hard or we'll all be in the Sunday newspapers and that won't help anybody get a title, will it?'

Munday started to speak but thought better of it. Stepping forward, he led the way past the saluting constable to the first of the open doorways. There he hesitated a moment, took off his hat politely and walked in, Luke behind him.

The tiny white-painted vestibule which was merely a nest of doors, was as neat a pack as an orange. Any addition, even a rolled umbrella would have been an embarrassment. The two large men were, physically speaking, an insufferable intrusion; they were both aware of it as they stood one behind the other peering into the small sitting-room in which there were already four people, two different kinds of wallpaper, a television set with the picture going and the sound turned off, a magnificent indiarubber plant, a very expensive, very well kept lounge-dining-room suite of contemporary furniture of the ‘bundle and peg' variety, three large framed flowerprints and a fierce wrought-iron candelabra. So much high-powered professional ‘design' had gone into the apartment that there was no place for anything else and the present drama was suffocating.

For once in his life Luke was taken completely out of his stride. The owners of the flat, large pale young people whose acute discomfort was the dominant thing about them, huddled in a corner, she in an arm-chair and he behind it, occupying at least a quarter of the floor space. The dazed Len Lucey, old and shaking, his very thin neck sticking out pathetically from an extremely white collar, sat at the dining-room table on a spidery chair while before him was a person who had made much larger rooms seem small, a living flame of a man, as passionate and fanatical as Luke himself.

At the moment he was trudging up and down the ‘contemporary' rug, his grey hair bristling, his gaunt shoulders hunched and his long bony hands working together as he clasped them behind his back. A more unlikely aspirant for Luke's hypothetical knighthood it would have been difficult to imagine. The superintendent perceived his mistake and began to revise his ideas.

‘Councillor Cornish?' he inquired. ‘I am Superintendent Luke from the Central Office, Scotland Yard. This is a shock, I'm afraid.'

He was aware of acute eyes, shadowed but intelligent, meeting his own questioningly.

‘It's a damn bad thing,' said a pleasant, matter-of-fact voice with a touch of pure steel in it. ‘You're going to get to the bottom of it very quickly, Superintendent.'

‘I hope so, sir.' Luke was brisk and hearty.

‘I know so.' The voice was still pleasant but still completely inflexible. ‘You're going to uncover everything about it and then you're going to stop it once and for all before a great project is jeopardized. This estate is called a Phoenix. It's not a municipal venture, it's a social rebirth, a statement of a sincere belief that decent conditions make a decent community, and I'm not having failure.'

Assistant Commissioners are said to use this sort of tone sometimes to senior superintendents, but since there is never anybody else present to overhear it, the theory is not proved. Luke regarded the man before him thoughtfully and cocked an eye at Munday, who was looking at the Councillor with an expression of gloomy contemplation.

‘Oo-er!' Luke did not say the word aloud but his lips moved and Munday received the message. For the first time in their entire acquaintance Luke scored a bull's-eye and had the satisfaction of seeing the primness punctured by a sudden ill-suppressed grin.

The Councillor stopped trudging up and down. ‘Your sergeant has got a statement from Mr. Lucey,' he said. ‘I'm prepared to vouch for the greater part of it myself. I did not spend this particular evening with him, but I can prove that I had his entire life story checked before he was offered an apartment in this new block and I can answer personally for the unlikelihood of him, or his wife, having an enemy. This is a perfectly ordinary innocent citizen, Superintendent, and in any civilized city his home ought to be inviolate. My God, man! Have you been next door yet?'

‘No, sir.' Luke was wooden. ‘I'd like to visit the flat in the presence of the householder. That's important, sir. If you don't mind.' It was another voice with metal in it and the gaunt, shabby man with the bristling hair looked at him with fleeting curiosity.

‘If it's a necessary precaution,' he was beginning.

‘No, sir. Just a regulation.' The steel was still there with plenty of butter on top. ‘Shall we go? Perhaps Mr. Lucey would lead the way.' Luke flattened himself against the eggshell-tinted wall and the old man was just able to edge past. His frailty was very apparent and as he went by the two detectives caught something of the bewilderment which engulfed him.

He was so small that they towered over him and as they crossed the second threshold and came into his home it was they, the two senior policemen, who caught the full impact of that first unforgettable scene.

A room which had been a comfortable middle-aged home full of comfortable middle-aged treasures, valuable mainly because of their usefulness and their associations, had been taken apart with a thoroughness that was almost tidy in its devastation. Yet at that first glance the one central picture alone occupied their attention, A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away, while in front of her, laid out in a way which struck a deep unpleasant chill to the stomachs of the two experienced men, were the entrails of a pleasant old French clock which lay on its back beside them. They were all there; wheels, springs, hands and the pendulum, each torn and twisted out of shape but all arranged neatly in a pattern of deliberate destruction. The old lady herself was not looking at them. Her face was livid and beaded with sweat, her eyes were closed and her mouth had fallen open. Only her weight was holding her in position. Behind her another, much smaller woman, wearing an apron and bedroom slippers but clutching a handbag, peered up at them piteously through gaily decorated plastic spectacles.

‘She's gorn,' she said. ‘I felt her go. Just now. Just as you came in. The doctor will be too late – won't he?' She seemed to see the little man in front of them for the first time and a bleak expression spread over her face. ‘Oh, you pore chap,' she said. ‘Don't look, dear, don't look. It was a seizure you see, she never came round.'

‘That's right, Dad, come along out.' Luke's glance rested on the livid face which was changing unmistakably before his eyes. The neighbour was right. She was dead. He had no need to touch her. He slid his arm round the old man and swung him gently out into the vestibule. There, with the wide view of the city framed in the open doorway, they stood for a moment like a pair of pigeons huddling on a window ledge.

‘You and she came in together and saw the damage, did you?' he inquired gently, still holding the old man to him as if he were afraid he might fall. ‘Anyone else with you?'

‘Only Reg Sloan. He lodges with us, see?' The old voice was thin and hollow. The significance of the scene had not yet registered upon him. He was still worrying about small things. ‘We was allowed to let the room seeing it was empty; we got permission. I told the sergeant. Mr. Cornish knows. Reg got the permit from him. He went to see him – went to see him, I say, called at his house.'

It was like a voice on the wind, something sighing through the rushes. Luke was unnerved by it. ‘Take it steady, chum. Get a breath of air,' he said. ‘How long has this chap Reg lived here with you?'

‘How long? I don't know. Two or three months. Before Christmas he came.'

‘I see. Recently. He hasn't been here years?'

‘Oh no. He's temporary. He's walking the works and they asked me if I could oblige by putting him up for a few weeks. We got permission, me and Edie did. He got it for us.'

‘What do you mean by “walking the works”?' It was Munday. He was half out of the sitting-room door, his hands on the lintels as he leaned forward to speak.

‘Well, he was learning the ropes. He came from another firm, you see. It was a business arrangement. He wasn't going to stay.'

‘I see.' Luke sounded dubious. ‘Where is he now, anyway?'

‘I don't know,' The old man looked about him suddenly. ‘He went for the police. He went to telephone. We all came in together. We'd been out to have one. Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub. Tonight we all came in together and Edie saw the clock all broken on the table and she's upset because it was her father's. It came from her home. Reg began to swear and went into his room – that's the little one through the kitchen – and he came out almost at once. He said “Stay here, Len. I'll go and ring the police, mate. Gawd, I'm sorry” he said. “I wouldn't have that happen for worlds” he
said and he went. Don't you know where he is? Edie likes him. He'll be the only one to pacify her when she realizes her clock's broke.'

‘Yes.' Luke glance sharply at Munday. ‘What about the neighbour?' he inquired. ‘Could she take him along and make him a cup of tea?'

‘Yes.' The woman in the decorated spectacles came round the detective like an escaping cat slipping out. ‘Yes. I'll see to him. It's the shock, you see. You come along, Mr. Lucey. You'll have a lot to do tonight. A lot of people to see and that. You come and have a sit down and get ready for it.' She put her hand under his arm and eased him away from Luke. ‘Make way for us do, there's good people.' Her voice, shrill and consciously preoccupied, floated in above the murmur of the little crowd. ‘We want a cup of tea we do. If you want to help there's a woman needed in there. That isn't a thing that ought to wait.'