Designs on Life (8 page)

“It’s Mr. Boyle, the top floor tenant,” she replied.

Philip Boyle stared at the sergeant. “What’s happened?” he demanded.

“Burst pipe,” the sergeant said. “Come along in, Mr. Boyle. The superintendent will be glad to see you.”

Philip Boyle looked past the man at Margaret.

“What’s happened?” he repeated sharply.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly and said nothing.

With a look of irritation on his face, Philip Boyle strode forward, and the sergeant, coming immediately after him, called up to Mr. Cust that the man from the top floor had just come in. Leaving Mr. Shew to a fourth cup of tea, Margaret followed them upstairs.

Someone had placed candles on the staircase and landings. In their soft light the devastation of the house had lost its menace, but the amount of destruction showed clearly.

Mr. Cust came to meet Philip Boyle. He greeted him, “A grim homecoming for you this evening, Mr. Boyle.”

“What
is
all this about?” Boyle’s voice was naturally harsh. “What’s happened? Does one have to have police in to deal with a burst pipe?”

The plumber sidled past them.
“I’m
here to deal with the burst pipe,” he said. “Joseph Loveday, Plumber and Practical Builder. There’s a hole in the main pipe up there big enough to stick your three fingers through.”

He went on downstairs.

Mr. Cust stood aside so that Philip Boyle could see into the cupboard.

“This is why we’re here, Mr. Boyle.”

In Margaret’s head at that moment there woke echoes of the laughter with which Paul Wragge had greeted the dead man. It was her impulse to plunge downstairs immediately. But suddenly she realised that Paul Wragge himself was standing beside her. He was a tall man whose wide shoulders should have been squarer than they were, whose fine-drawn features should never have been ravaged by the fiend-ridden imagination that possessed him.

As if she had some responsibility concerning him, Margaret stayed where she was.

But there was no laughter in Philip Boyle’s reaction to what he saw. He simply clutched the banisters and looked as if he wanted to be sick.

“Have you ever seen this man before?” the superintendent asked.

Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Boyle wiped it over his mouth. He glanced down at the dead man once more and then away again.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you know him?”

“I—I met him for a few moments once. I don’t know his name.”

“Where did you see him?”

Philip Boyle turned slightly so that his back was towards the landing below where Paul Wragge and Margaret were standing.

“In Mr. Wragge’s flat.”

Margaret glanced quickly at Paul Wragge. He made no movement.

Mr. Cust said, “Oh, in Mr. Wragge’s flat? How long ago?” “I forget.”

“Please try to remember.”

“I can’t. I just remember his face. Perhaps it was six months ago.”

“And now, Mr. Boyle,” Mr. Cust said, bunching up his face in his fingers, “would you mind telling me where you were this afternoon between half past five and six?”

“Was—was that when it happened?”

“Where were you?”

“In my office, of course.”

“Was anyone with you?”

“My secretary, and George Lumley, my partner.”

“They’ll corroborate that?”

“Of course.”

“Would you please tell me where I can get in touch with them?”

Philip Boyle was just starting to give the name of his secretary when, from downstairs, the voice of the borough councillor rose up to them out of the darkness.

“Mr. Boyle,” Mr. Shew called, “I paid four pounds and seventy-nine pence for that whisky you had delivered this evening. You won’t forget it, will you? I paid four pounds and seventy-nine pence. It’s here on the shelf by the front door.”

Philip Boyle was continuing, “Her name’s Adela Burton and—”

But that was the moment when the thought that had been dodging on the outskirts of Margaret’s mind suddenly surrendered itself to the grip of her understanding.

“Don’t believe him!” she cried. “It isn’t true! He was here this afternoon. He was in his flat.”

She came running up the stairs.

He went on, “Miss Adela Burton, Seven Milbury Road—”

“It isn’t true!” Margaret cried again. “If she corroborates it, she’s in it too. He was here this afternoon.”

The superintendent took his hand away from his face, allowing his nose, cheeks and chin to settle back into their proper places.

“What’s this, Mrs. Haddow?” he asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“The bread,” she said, “the loaf of bread in his flat. It’s there in a paper wrapper that hasn’t been opened, on his kitchen table. But the baker’s van always calls in the afternoon and Mr. Shew takes the bread in for him and puts it on the shelf by the front door. But it isn’t there now, it’s in his flat on the kitchen table. He came in and picked it up and took it upstairs with him. It couldn’t have been done by the woman who cleans up for him. She hasn’t been here today. The place is full of dirty dishes. It
must
have been him!”

Philip Boyle’s face had turned a congested crimson. “That’s yesterday’s bread,” he said.

“Ask Mr. Shew,” Margaret retorted. “Didn’t he take a loaf in for you this afternoon and put it on the shelf, and is it there now?”

Philip Boyle swung his arm, aiming his fist at her face. But it never came near her. Mr. Cust caught it and forced it down to his side.

Releasing it, the superintendent said, “Your coat’s damp too, Mr. Boyle, and it hasn’t rained
outside
this evening.”

Two days later Superintendent Cust explained to the Haddows and to Ferdinand Shew the parts of the situation that they did not understand.

“Boyle met him in Wragge’s flat all right,” he told them, “but met him again later and got to know him pretty well. He’s a man called Winters. He lent Boyle money for his business. I don’t believe Boyle meant to kill him when he brought him to his flat that afternoon, but Winters was demanding his money back and Boyle lost his head and lashed out. He lashed out with a stool, a heavy wooden thing he’s got up there in his sitting-room. And then the water started coming through the ceiling, and Boyle realised he couldn’t do anything about it, as the main tap was in Mr. Shew’s basement, and he realised that if it went on it would soon bring somebody up. So he stowed the body in the cupboard and did a bolt. The water was spouting just outside the cupboard already, that’s how his coat got wet. He must have got out of the house only just before Mrs. Haddow started looking into things. He went back to his office and fixed up with his partner and secretary to fake that alibi for him. The partner would have been as much affected as Boyle if they’d had to produce the money, and it seems the secretary’s the partner’s mistress. Together with the fact that Winters once paid attention to Wragge’s wife, which Wragge was afraid to admit, he thought he’d got things all nice and safe. But he forgot that he’d picked up the loaf of bread. It was just one of those little automatic actions that so often give people away. It’s those, as often as not, that tell you all you need to know about them.”

“Well, I trust,” Mr. Shew said, “and so, I’m sure, does Mrs. Haddow, that such a thing never happens again. D’you know, we haven’t had a drop of water in the house for two days? Of course, we couldn’t turn it on again until the pipe was mended, and that night it froze again and it’s been frozen ever since. I don’t know when we shall be able to lead a normal life. And my poor Miss Pattison’s no better. Of course”—and he tittered—“it’s really very amusing in some ways. Here am I, Chairman of the Baths and Cemeteries Committee, and I can’t get a bath!”

“Perhaps you could get a coffin,” Mr. Cust suggested, bunching all his features together and laughing through his fingers.

“Mrs. Nettle,” the child said. “Mrs. Nettle—it’s cold enough for snow, isn’t it?”

The elderly woman, sitting in the armchair near the fire, went on with the swift darning of the grey sock stretched over her hand.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” she agreed.

“I
think it’s going to snow,” the child said. “It is, isn’t it, Mrs. Nettle?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” the woman said.

“When it snows, I’m going to make a snowman,” the child said.

Snipping off an end of grey wool, the woman reached for another strand with which to re-thread her needle.

“You need a lot of snow for that,” she said.

“Then I hope it snows and snows. I hope it snows all day and all night and all tomorrow and all the day after.”

“Nasty messy stuff,” the woman said. “Messy and cold and wet.”

“But children like snow, don’t they?” Turning from the window, the child came to lean on the arm of the old woman’s chair. “Mrs. Nettle—they do, don’t they, Mrs. Nettle?”

The corners of the woman’s mouth twitched and she lowered her hands and her darning into her lap.

“That’s right, love, they do. I should’ve remembered. All the same, don’t you go bringing a lot of slush into the house on your boots, or I’ll get after you, I can promise you.”

With a deep sigh and her eyes fixed intently on the woman’s, as if to extract a different promise, the child said, “I
hope
it starts soon.”

“Well, if it doesn’t, it’ll come some other time, that’s something you can be sure of. You’ve never seen snow, have you, living in Egypt?”

“No.”

“And you’re six years old.”

“That isn’t very old,” the child said defensively. “There are lots of things I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen the Tower of London.”

“There are lots of things I’ve never seen, and won’t either,” the woman said.

“Have you ever seen an elephant?”

The conversation continued beside the bright fire, while outside the afternoon sky darkened unnaturally early, looking as if it had grown so heavy that it might sink down to rest on the tops of the trees, and the trees bent and tossed their branches wildly, as if they were protesting at the threatened load, and the wind made strange wailing noises in the chimney.

A little before five o’clock the child’s mother came home. She came running up the garden path, clutching her fur coat round her with one hand and holding on her little felt hat with the other. Her eyes and her cheeks were bright and her voice was high and gay. She too seemed to be almost bursting with excitement and desire at the thought of the snow. Yet on coming into the room, she said at once, “How cold and miserable it looks! Whyever haven’t you drawn the curtains?”

“She wouldn’t have it,” Mrs. Nettle said, rising from the chair by the fire and beginning to roll up her mending. “She was afraid she’d miss the snow. It hasn’t started yet, has it, Mrs. Ellis?”

The child was looking with some anxiety at the bright-cheeked young woman who was tugging the warm velvet curtains across the window.

“Mummy,” she said “it
has
started, hasn’t it, Mummy? On your coat! That’s snow, isn’t it? It is, isn’t it?” Her voice was rising with each word.

“Yes, darling, it’s just started.” Her mother looked down at the small sequins of brightness that spangled the front of her coat. “It’s nothing yet, but I shouldn’t wonder if it’s deep by tomorrow morning.”

“How deep?”

“Oh, ever so deep.”

“Enough to make a snowman?”

Mrs. Nettle had put her darning away in a cretonne bag. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Ellis,” she said, “I think I’ll be getting straight home. I’d sooner get home before the road gets slippery. I washed up the lunch things and I put all the tea things on the trolley. You’ve only to boil the kettle.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Nettle, thank you so much.” The young woman beat at her coat with her hands, so that the little drops of melting snow fell on the carpet. “It was so good of you to stay on. I hope Meg hasn’t been too much trouble.”

“No, I wasn’t any trouble at all,” the child said.

The women smiled at one another and Mrs. Ellis went on, “It’s so nice to get out sometimes on one’s own. I’m really grateful.”

“Well, I’ll be glad to do it any time, if I can manage it,” Mrs. Nettle said. “Did you see a nice picture?”

“Picture?” the young woman said vaguely. She was watching the child, who had gone to the window and, dragging aside one curtain, was pressing her face to the glass.

“Mummy,” Meg cried, “it isn’t snowing! I can’t see anything. I don’t believe it’s snowing, Mummy.”

“That’s because of the wind blowing so hard,” her mother said. “You’d see it on the other side of the house.” She opened her bag to pay Mrs. Nettle what she owed her for sitting-in with the child. “Yes, it was a good film,” she added, “really quite good. I enjoyed it.”

“Mummy, I can see Mr. Ferguson’s house from here,” Meg said, rubbing at the mist that her own breath formed on the glass. “He’s just turned out all his lights. D’you think he’s going for a walk in the snow? D’you think perhaps he’s coming over to see us?”

“I’m quite sure he isn’t,” her mother answered.

Something in her tone, some emphasis or roughness, made Mrs. Nettle lift her eyebrows for an instant. But she lowered them quickly, as if she did not really want to see what she might if she looked longer. Taking the three half-crowns with a murmur of thanks, she said, “Well, I’ll see you in the morning, unless I can’t get here. I don’t care for slippery roads. Good night, Mrs. Ellis.” Going to the door, she called to the child, “Good night, love.”

But Meg was too absorbed in what she could see through the window, if she let the curtain fall behind her head, shutting out the light of the room, to answer.

In the distance, across the common, where she had picked the first blackberries that she had ever eaten, during the first weeks that she had spent in England, she could see the lights in Mrs. Nettle’s son-in-law’s cottage. Beside it, less brightly lit, was the cottage lived in by the Irish family, and next door to that, the cottage of Mr. Brookes, who sometimes came to help with the garden. But over to the right, where Mr. Ferguson’s house stood, and where a few minutes before lights had been shining from half the windows in the house, there was only darkness. After all, Meg thought, he must have gone out to look at the snow.