Designs on Life (5 page)

“Really I’m just having my breakfast,” Mrs. Lambie said. “I don’t get up very early. I’ve nothing to get up for. But you’ll join me in a cup of coffee, won’t you?”

Holding her dressing-gown closely about her, as if it might reveal nakedness if she let it go, she went away to the kitchen to fetch another cup.

Sitting down, Helen looked with interest at a row of photographs on the mantelpiece. All but one were of young men, one in the uniform of a subaltern in the First World War, two or three in the plus fours of the nineteen-twenties, a few more who looked as if they belonged to ten years later, and one who was in the timeless wig and gown of an advocate. The one exception to this parade of youth was the photograph in the place of honour in the centre of the mantelpiece. It was of a man of at least seventy, with a plump, mild face, a bald head and vague, troubled eyes, as if, even at his age, he had not got over finding life a bewildering puzzle.

Mrs. Lambie, returning from the kitchen, saw Helen looking at this photograph.

“Ah, you’re looking at my picture of my dear husband,” she said. “He was a wonderful man, so good and kind and generous. We’d only been married three years when he had a stroke and died, but I’d been his housekeeper for years before that, and understood him perfectly. The rest …” She gave a little laugh. “Well, we all have our memories, haven’t we? And they keep me company. They were all very dear to me at different times. It may surprise you now, but I was often told when I was young that I was very beautiful. Now, how do you like your coffee? Cream? Sugar?”

Helen said that she would like it black, without sugar.

“Ah, you’re worrying about your figure,” Mrs. Lambie said with a smile. “I never had to do that.”

She handed Helen her cup. Like all Mrs. Lambie’s cooking, the coffee was excellent.

She went on, “ ‘But beauty passes; beauty vanishes; However rare, rare it be …’ I kept my looks till I was well into my sixties, you know, and even then I had distinction. So that’s why I can tell you so much about the dangers of jealousy, my dear. Women were always jealous of me. It used to make me very unhappy, and truly it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it if men pursued me. It was just something about the way I was made and not my fault at all. Why, one man even died for me.”

Suddenly Helen could not drink any more of her coffee. She put the cup down abruptly. Looking at the photograph of the advocate, she asked, “On the gallows?”

The old woman stared at her blankly. “What did you say?”

“Didn’t he die on the gallows? Wasn’t he convicted of murdering his wife? Didn’t he throw her down those stairs out there, and weren’t you the maid who caused all the trouble? Fifty or sixty years ago. And didn’t you come back here when the flat was for sale because you couldn’t keep away from it? It was the scene of your greatest triumph, the most wonderful memory of all.”

Mrs. Lambie let her mouth fall open. She also let her dressing-gown fall open, and Helen saw that under it she was wearing a transparent black nightdress, frilly with lace, a private fantasy of youth and beauty.

“Are you mad, woman?” Mrs. Lambie demanded, her voice trembling a little. “What have I ever done to you since you got here but try to help you? Why do you hate me?”

“You’ve done all you could to turn my husband and me against one another,” Helen said. She stood up, grasping her sticks. “You keep giving us advice, but all it comes to is dropping horrible thoughts into our minds.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry —I shouldn’t have said that. Perhaps you don’t mean to do it. I’d better go.”

Mrs. Lambie was on her feet, facing her. “Yes, yes, go. I know your type. You’re a wicked, jealous woman, that’s what you are. You’re jealous of me, even at my age. You’re jealous of my past and all that I’ve had. You’ve never known what it is to be adored, worshipped. You’re a plain, ordinary woman who isn’t even sure she can keep her husband’s love.”

“But you were the maid for whom the handsome young advocate was hanged, weren’t you?” Helen said. Suddenly she felt absolutely certain of it. “Isn’t that true?”

“Go!” the old woman shrieked at her. “Go!”

Helen turned and limped as quickly as she could to the door.

When Colin came home that evening, she told him what had happened. By now she felt quite detached from the scene in the flat next door. It was almost as if it had never occurred.

“I’m sorry,” she ended. “I don’t know what got into me, but at the time it seemed quite obvious to me that she must have been the maid in the story of the murder. I’m not sure what made me so certain of it—something to do with your pointing out that that bell there isn’t really old, and then the photograph of the lawyer. But of course I’ve no evidence. Only the way she took it makes me feel I may have hit on the truth.”

Colin had brought home fish and chips again for their supper. He carried the packages out to the kitchen and put them in the oven to keep warm, then returned to the sitting-room with an unusually grim look on his face. He poured out sherry for them both,

“Tomorrow I’m going house-hunting,” he said. “I don’t know, perhaps this place
is
haunted. Anyway, I’ve got to get you out of it, because I think you’re going mad. If we stay on, I don’t know what’ll happen.”

“I’m not mad,” she said. “Don’t you see, it’s because of her part in the story that she’s so obsessed with it and can’t let it rest.”

“Did you say that to her?”

“More or less.”

“For God’s sake, don’t say it to anyone else,” he said. “It’s slanderous in the extreme.”

“I never see anyone else,” she said.

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s the trouble. Anyway, it’s obvious I’ve got to get you out of here. I don’t know what’ll happen next if you stay. I’ll go looking for another flat tomorrow, and try to find one on the ground floor, so that you can get out for a little when you want to.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m quite all right here.”

“You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “You’re making the situation intolerable.”

“But suppose I’m right.”

He gave his head an impatient shake. “No, something’s got to be done. We can’t go on like this, or I’ll go crazy myself. Perhaps we ought to talk to that doctor. Anyway, I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”

He went out to the kitchen to fetch them their fish and chips.

In the morning he repeated that he was going out to hunt for another flat, and when Helen tried to dissuade him, his face took on a set, obstinate look, which meant, she knew, that there was no chance that he would listen to her. And after all, she realised, it might be that he was doing what would be best for them both. Even if she was totally wrong about Mrs. Lambie, there was not much chance that the old woman would forgive her for what she had said, and living next door to her, with no one else at the top of the long stairs, would become more and more impossible. But when Colin left the flat, saying that he was going straight to a house-agent, Helen followed him out on to the landing.

“Please leave things as they are,” she pleaded. “I’m not sure that I could face another move.”

“You might have thought of that sooner,” he said. “But don’t worry. I’ll pack our things and get you down the stairs.”

“But, Colin—”

“No, we’ve got to go.” His voice began to rise.

“But haven’t we signed a lease or something?”

“Oh, we’ll lose some money, but what’s that compared with peace of mind? I’ll try to find something that’ll suit you better.”

Her voice rose to match his. “Ask Naomi to choose it for you then. She may know better than you what a woman wants.”

He had been about to start down the stairs, but he checked himself, turning to stare at her with a startled look of understanding.

“So you think she’s here,” he said. “That’s been the trouble all along, hasn’t it? You think I deliberately got you cooped up here so that there’d be no danger of your finding out that we were meeting.”

“Haven’t you been meeting?” she asked. “At least since she wrote to you.”

“You should have read that letter when I offered to show it to you,” he said, “but you were too bloody proud. You tried to pretend you didn’t care. Well, what it told me was that Naomi’s come home to get married and it said good-bye—quite finally. You need never be afraid of her again. And if you don’t believe me, the letter’s in the wastepaper-basket in our bedroom. Get it and read it for yourself. And get it into your head that if you can’t trust me, we can’t go on. I may be a hopeless, useless character, but try to realise that I love you, you damned woman, that I always have! There’s never been anyone else.”

He turned back to the stairs and went running down them.

Helen stumbled towards them.

“Colin—wait!” she called out. “Please wait! Don’t go like that!”

But she only heard his running footsteps on the stone stairs, then the slam of the outer door as he reached the bottom.

Then she felt a pair of hands in the middle of her back and a violent thrust. Her scream as she fell echoed in the empty stairwell, where there was no one to hear her.

It was Fiona MacNab, arriving just afterwards to clean the flat, who found the body. She went out, screaming for the police, who arrived in a panda car after only a few minutes. She told them that she had passed Mr. Benson in the street, that he had been almost running, had been muttering to himself and had seemed to be in a state of extreme excitement.

Mrs. Lambie, when they questioned her before the ambulance arrived, said that she had heard the Bensons quarrelling violently on the landing that morning, that they often quarrelled and that it was very tragic, because they were such an attractive young couple. There had been some trouble about another woman, she believed. Colin was picked up later in the National Library, where he had gone after two or three unsuccessful visits to house-agents. Later Mrs. Lambie went into the flat next door and wandered round it, wondering what she ought to do with the belongings that the Bensons had left in their flat. There were only a few clothes and a few books. If no one appeared to claim them, she decided, she would send them to the Salvation Army.

She felt an agreeable sense of peace. During her long life as maid, as housekeeper, and finally as wife, she had committed several murders, the first of them, of course, having been of that irritating, ailing woman who had kept on ringing the bell for attention, and whose good-looking young husband had been Mrs. Lambie’s first love. A pity that they had hanged him, he had really been very attractive. But how could she have helped it? And no one had ever come near to guessing her secret but that wretched girl with her broken leg, who had had too much time on her hands and become fanciful, and so had come too close to the truth for comfort. A pity about her husband too, a nice-mannered young man who understood that even a very old woman enjoys a friendly chat once in a while. But at least they wouldn’t hang him. It would only be life-imprisonment.

Letting herself out of her flat, she returned to her own. As she did so, it seemed to her that very faintly she heard a bell ringing. She had often heard it throughout her life, and she knew quite well that it was simply in her own head. But the odd thing was that it still frightened her. One day soon, she felt, it might turn into an imperative summons that she would have to answer, and what would happen then?

It was six o’clock when Margaret Haddow started to cook the supper. She put potatoes into a basin, ran water over them and started to peel them.

Aged twenty-four, small, inconspicuously pleasant to look at, she had a vitality that made her attractive, and slightly less simplicity than, at a first meeting, might have been supposed. She was wearing grey slacks and a scarlet sweater and had a cigarette at the corner of her mouth.

Peeling the potatoes, she hummed quietly. The tune she hummed was unrecognisable and it is unlikely that she even knew that she was humming. Probably nothing was in her mind at that moment but the thought of the shepherd’s pie that she was just starting to make. Perhaps she was thinking that the kitchen felt cold after the well-warmed sitting-room.

But that particular moment, when her potato-peeler was ripping down the side of the second potato and her humming was sounding tunelessly in the small kitchen, was the last moment that evening when thoughts that grew out of her normal life had any room in Margaret’s mind.

It was at that moment, just outside the kitchen window, beginning with a few heavy splashes, then turning all at once into a torrent, that something that sounded like the lash of a rainstorm was suddenly released against the glass. But the torrent was all against one window and on to one window-sill. Big drops, bright where they caught the light from the kitchen, spangled the dark square of the window-pane.

Startled, Margaret paused and looked round. As she did so, something ice-cold fell on the nape of her neck. It slid down between her shoulder blades, inside her red sweater. With a gasp and a shudder she jumped aside. As another drop fell she looked up. Through a crack in the ceiling that she had never noticed was there, water was oozing, gathering into another large, dirt-discoloured drop, quivering, preparing to fall.

Seeing where it splashed on the floor, Margaret took a bucket from one of the cupboards and put it on the spot. Another drop and another, each gathering a little more quickly than the last, fell into the bucket. Standing back, watching them fall, Margaret raised a hand to thrust it in bewilderment through her hair. As the hand came level with her face, she felt a freezing drop fall on the back of it.

The second crack oozed water faster than the first. But by the time that she had found a basin to place under it, the first was running freely. Outside the window it was still pouring down. Every instant the force of the stream inside increased. The bucket would not take long to fill.

Suddenly she spun on her heel, pulled open the kitchen door and went running out into the hall.

As she groped for the light-switch, she realised that the whole house was full of the sound of water.

She turned on the light. In this house the flats were not self-contained. All the tenants used the passage in which she was standing. This was the ground floor. The front door was straight before her. From one corner of the ceiling water was spouting, making an increasing puddle on the green linoleum.