This Body of Death (17 page)

So to wipe it all away, Bella became industrious. She could have gone to a session of hot yoga, but she reckoned industry was the better ticket. It would get her mind away from the mental picture of poor dead Jemima on that cold steel trolley at the same time as it would prepare Jemima’s room for another lodger now the cops had carted away all her belongings. And Bella wanted another lodger, soon, although she had to admit that she hadn’t had very much luck with the female variety. Still, she wanted a woman. She liked the sense of balance another woman gave to the household, though women were far more complicated than men and even as she considered this, she wondered if perhaps another male would keep things simpler and prevent the males already in place from
preening
so. Preening and strutting, that’s what they did. They did it unconsciously, like roosters, like peacocks, like virtually every male from every species on earth. The calculated dance of notice-me was something Bella generally found rather amusing, but she realised that she had to consider whether it might be easier on everyone concerned if she removed from their household the necessity for it.

Upon her return from viewing Jemima’s body, she’d put up her R
OOM TO
L
ET
sign in the dining room window, and she’d made her phone call to
Loot
to run the advertisement. Then she’d gone up to Jemima’s room and she’d begun a thorough clean. With the boxes and boxes and
boxes
of her belongings already removed from the house, this was a job that didn’t take long. Hoovering, dusting, changing sheets, an application of furniture polish, a beautifully washed window—Bella prided herself particularly on the state of her windows—scented drawer liners removed from the chest and new ones placed there, curtains taken down for cleaning, every piece of furniture moved away from the wall to give the hoover access …No one, Bella thought, cleaned a room the way she did.

She moved on to the bathroom. Generally, she left their bathrooms to her lodgers, but if she was going to have a new lodger soon, it stood to reason that Jemima’s drawers and shelves were going to have to be emptied of anything left behind by the police. They’d not removed every item from the bathroom since not everything within had belonged to Jemima, so Bella concentrated on straightening the room as she cleaned it, which was why she found—not in Jemima’s drawer but in the top drawer marked for the
other
lodger—a curious item that certainly did not belong there.

It was the result of a pregnancy test. Bella knew
that
the second she clapped her eyes on it. What she didn’t know was whether the result was positive or negative, being of an age at which she would, of course, never have used such a test herself. Her own children—long gone to Detroit and to Buenos Aires—had announced their conception in the old-fashioned manner of wracking her body with morning sickness almost from the instant of sperm-meets-egg, which itself had been achieved in the old-fashioned manner, thank you very much, Mr. McHaggis. So Bella, retrieving the incriminating plastic tab from the drawer, wasn’t sure about what the indicator meant. Blue line. Was that negative? Positive? She would have to find out. She would also have to find out what it was doing in the drawer of her other lodger because surely
he
hadn’t brought it home from a celebratory dinner—or, what was more likely, a confrontational cup of coffee—with the mother-to-be. If a woman he’d been bonking had fallen pregnant and had presented him with the evidence, why would he keep it? A souvenir? Certainly, the coming infant was going to be souvenir enough. No, it stood to reason that the pregnancy test was Jemima’s. And if it hadn’t been in Jemima’s belongings or with Jemima’s rubbish, there was a reason. There seemed several possibilities, but the one that Bella didn’t want to consider was the one telling her that once again, two of her lodgers had pulled the wool over her eyes about what was going on between them.

Bloody hell damn, Bella thought. She had rules. They were
everywhere
. They were signed and sealed and delivered in the contract she made each lodger read and affix his or her name to the bottom of. Were young people so randy that they couldn’t stop themselves from jumping in and out of each other’s knickers at the first opportunity despite her
very clear rules
about fraternizing with other members of the household? It appeared they were. It appeared they could not. Someone, she decided, was going to be talked to.

Bella was going through the mental preparation for such a conversation when the bell went on the front door down below. She gathered up her cleaning supplies, removed her Marigolds, and huffed down the stairs. The bell rang again, and she shouted, “Coming,” and she opened it to see a girl on her porch, rucksack at her feet, hopeful expression on her face. She didn’t look English to Bella, and when she spoke, her voice gave her away as someone from what had once probably been Czechoslovakia but was now any one of a number of countries with many syllables, even more consonants, and few vowels, because Bella could not keep track of them and no longer tried.

“You have room?” the girl said hopefully, gesturing in the direction of the dining room window where the room-to-let sign was displayed. “I see your notice there … ?”

Bella was about to tell her yes, she had a room to let, and how are you at obeying rules, missy? But her attention shifted to movement on the pavement as someone dodged behind what shrubbery managed to grow in her front garden among the plethora of recycling bins. It was a woman moving out of sight, a woman in a tailored wool suit, despite the heat, with a brightly patterned scarf—her sodding trademark, that was, Bella thought—folded into a band and holding back masses of dyed orange hair.

“You!” Bella shouted at her. “I’m ringing the cops, I am! You’ve been bloody told to stay away from this house and this is the limit!”

W
HETHER THE ACTIVITY
was going to eat up time or not—and Barbara Havers knew which alternative was actually the case—there was no way she was going to face the sister of Simon St. James in her current getup and with her face attempting to divest itself of its smear of makeup through the means of excessive perspiration. So instead of heading from Chelsea directly to Bethnal Green, she drove home to Chalk Farm first. She scrubbed her face, breathed a sigh of relief, and decided to compromise with the weeest bit of blusher. She then went for a change of apparel—hallelujah to drawstring trousers and T-shirts—and having thus resumed her normal state of dishabille, she was ready to face Sidney St. James.

Her conversation with Sidney was not effected immediately, however. Upon leaving her tiny bungalow, Barbara heard her name called out by Hadiyyah, crying from above, “Hullo, oh hullo, Barbara!” as if she hadn’t seen her in an eon or so. The little girl went on enthusiastically with, “Mrs. Silver is teaching me how to polish silver today,” and Barbara followed the sound of the voice to see Hadiyyah hanging out of a window on the second floor of the Big House. “We’re using baking powder, Barbara,” she announced and then she turned as someone within the flat said something to which the little girl corrected herself with, “Oh! Baking
soda
, Barbara. ’Course Mrs. Silver doesn’t ackshully
have
any silver, so we’re using her cutlery, but it makes the cutlery
shine
so. Isn’t that brilliant? Barbara, why’ve you not got on your new skirt?”

“End of day, kiddo,” Barbara said. “It’s mufti time.”

“And are you—” Hadiyyah’s attention was caught by something beyond Barbara’s line of vision because she interrupted herself with, “Dad! Dad! Hullo! Hullo! Sh’ll I come home now?” She sounded even more enthusiastic about this prospect than she had about seeing Barbara, which gave Barbara an idea of how much the little girl was actually enjoying learning yet another of Mrs. Silver’s “housewifely skills,” as she called them. So far in the summer they’d done starching, ironing, dusting, hoovering, removing scale from toilet bowls, and learning the myriad uses of white vinegar, all of which Hadiyyah had obediently mastered and then dutifully reported to Barbara and demonstrated either for her or for her father. But the bloom had faded from the rose of acquiring domestic skills—how could it be otherwise, Barbara thought—and while Hadiyyah was far too polite to complain to the elderly woman, who could blame her for embracing the thought of escape with a joy that daily increased?

Barbara heard Taymullah Azhar’s response, muted, from the direction of the street. Hadiyyah’s hand fluttered in farewell to Barbara, she disappeared within the flat, and Barbara herself continued down the path that followed the side of the house, emerging from beneath an arbour fragrant with star jasmine to see Hadiyyah’s father coming through the front gate, several carrier bags dangling from one hand and his worn leather briefcase in the other.

“Polishing silver,” Barbara said to him by way of greeting. “I’d no idea baking soda worked a trick on tarnish. You?”

Azhar chuckled. “There appears to be no end to the domestic knowledge of that good woman. Had I had it in mind that Hadiyyah should spend her life in housekeeping, I could not have found her a better instructor. She’s quite mastered scones, by the way. Have I mentioned that?” He gestured with the hand that held the carrier bags. “Will you join us for dinner, Barbara? It’s chicken
jalfrezi
with
pilau
rice. And as I recall”—with a smile that showed the sort of white teeth that made Barbara swear she
would
see the dentist in the near future—“those are among your favourites.”

Barbara told her neighbour she was sorely tempted, but duty called. “Just on my way out,” she said. Both of them turned as the front door of the old house opened and Hadiyyah clattered down the steps. She was followed closely by Mrs. Silver, tall and angular, ensconced in an apron. Sheila Silver, Barbara had learned from Hadiyyah, possessed an entire wardrobe of aprons. They were not only seasonal, they were celebratory as well. She had Christmas aprons, Easter aprons, Halloween aprons, New Year’s aprons, birthday aprons, and aprons commemorating everything from Guy Fawkes Night to the ill-fated marriage of Charles and Diana. Each of these was complemented by a matching turban. Barbara reckoned the turbans had been fashioned from tea towels by their wearer, and she had little doubt that when the list of housewifely duties had been mastered by Hadiyyah, turban making would be among them.

As Hadiyyah flung herself in the direction of her father, Barbara waved a farewell. Her last sight of them was of Hadiyyah—arms round Azhar’s slender waist—and Mrs. Silver in gangly pursuit of her, as if the girl’s escape had been preemptive and more information about baking soda needed to be imparted.

In her car, Barbara gave a thought to the time of day and concluded that only a bout of creative rat running would get her to Bethnal Green before nightfall. She skirted as much of the City as she could, ultimately coming on Bethnal Green from Old Street. This was an area that had altered much over the years, as young professionals unable to afford the prices of central London’s housing moved in an ever-widening circle to embrace parts of town long considered undesirable. Bethnal Green was hence a combination of the old and the new, where sari shops mingled with computer sales centres, and ethnic enterprises like Henna Weddings stood next door to estate agents flogging properties to growing families.

Sidney lived in Quilter Street, a terrace of plain-fronted houses constructed of London brick. A mere two storeys tall, they comprised the south side of a triangle at the centre of which was a common area called Jesus Green. Unlike so many small parks in town, this one was neither locked nor barred. It was fenced in wrought iron, which was typical of London’s squares, but the fence was only waist high and its gate stood open to admit anyone who wanted access to its wide lawn and to the pools of shade offered by the leafy trees that towered over it. Children were playing noisily on the green near to where Barbara parked her old Mini. In one corner a family was having a picnic, and in another a guitarist was entertaining a young adoring female. It was a very good place to escape the heat.

Sidney answered the door to Barbara’s knock, and Barbara tried not to feel what she indeed was in the presence of St. James’s younger sister: a frightening contrast. Sidney was quite tall, she was slender, and she was naturally in possession of the sort of cheekbones that women happily went under the knife to acquire. She had the same coal-coloured hair as her brother and the same blue-today-and-grey-tomorrow eyes. She was wearing capris, which emphasised legs that went from here to China, and a cropped tank top that showed off her arms, disgustingly tan like the rest of her. Large hoop earrings dangled from her ears, and she was removing them as she said, “Barbara. I expect the traffic was a nightmare, wasn’t it?” and admitted her into the house.

This was small. All the windows were open, but that was doing little to mitigate the heat inside. Sidney appeared to be one of those loathsome women who did not perspire, but Barbara was not among their number, and she could feel the sweat popping out on her face the moment the front door closed behind her. Sidney said sympathetically, “Terrible, isn’t it? We complain and complain about the rain, and then we get this. There should be some middle ground, but there never is. I’m just this way, if you don’t mind.”

Just this way
turned out to be a staircase. This rose towards the back of the little house, where a door stood open to a small garden from which the sound of vicious pounding was emanating. Sidney went to the door, saying over her shoulder to Barbara, “That’s just Matt.” And into the garden, “Matt, darling, come and meet Barbara Havers.”

Barbara looked past her to see a man—burly, shirtless, and sweating—who was standing with sledgehammer in hand, apparently in the process of beating a sheet of plywood into submission. There seemed to be no reason for this unless, Barbara thought, he was going for a rather inefficient means of creating mulch for the single, sun-parched herbaceous border. At Sidney’s call, he didn’t stop what he was doing. Rather, he glanced over his shoulder and nodded curtly. He was wearing dark glasses, and his ears were pierced. His head was shaved to the skull, and like the rest of him it shone with sweat.