Eight Murders In the Suburbs (19 page)

“So you see,” added Jill, “I do feel we ought to do something.”

During the next day he elaborated the argument about its being a gross impertinence to interfere with Raffen. The day after that, he stopped fooling himself and took a taxi to the dentist in Chelsea and aked for Mr. Raffen. He was imprisoned in the waiting room for an hour. And then the feather-headed receptionist took him in to Raffen's chief, and he had to explain.

“But Raffen left me about two years ago. I've no idea where he is now.” The dentist was curt, but relented. “His professional conduct has never been questioned. You can find him through the Register.”

The Register yielded an address, in the poorer part of Hampstead, which he found with great difficulty. Eventually he turned into a short alley in which was an external iron staircase at the back of a stables of early eighteenth-century design. He knocked with his fist on an ill-fitting modern door, which was opened by a blowsy woman in a kimono. He had half expected something of the kind.

“I am a friend of Mr. Raffen's.”

“He's out now, dearie!” Grenwood did not believe her. “Couldn't you write, so's he'd be at home when you came?”

“You are quite sure he is out?”

The woman looked more thoroughly at Grenwood and summed him up with sufficient accuracy.

“Tell you what, sir. You come back in half an hour and I'll have him all tidied up for you. Make it a good half hour, mind.”

He made it three quarters of an hour. When he returned it was Raffen who admitted him, Raffen in a decent lounge suit, himself looking very little the worse.

“Hullo, Rhode! I was expecting you. Come in, old man. Lottie-the-slut has effaced herself. This place used to be occupied by Wellington's head groom. Not so bad, is it?”

It was indeed not so bad. It was tastefully decorated: some of the furniture he recognised: everything was clean.

“Thought I'd look you up. Jill is wondering why you never come to see us.”

“And now you can tell her! If you do it tactfully, you can even tell her about Lottie-the-slut. I think her name's Lottie. They come and go. And you'd be surprised that most of them are jolly good charwomen.”

“Chuck it, Gerald!” pleaded Grenwood. “What's been happening?”

“A natural process. I have found a milieu that suits me. But you're thinking of the police court, I suppose. I like noisy pubs and I like drinking a lot—as often as my health will stand it.”

“Isn't it bad for business?”

“Hardly—for my business! I only do locum work, and a spot of technical reviewing—which is all I want. As I've no future I prefer to be comfortable.”

“Why the hell have you no future?” demanded Grenwood.

“Because I wouldn't know what to do with it—because my history would repeat itself.” Grenwood looked blank, so Raffen explained: “A few years ago—try not to laugh, old man!—I fell in love. Careless of me, but—she shared my slant on so many things. Each of us could light up the dark corners for the other. You can fill in the colour for yourself … Soul-mates in a universe of two—with the rest of humanity just background figures.”

He meant Jill, of course. Grenwood was at a loss. He ought to confess that he knew. But Raffen had already said enough to make it difficult. And there was no means of stopping him.

“I thought that my scar and the rest of it wouldn't count. And so did she—or she would never have made it possible for me to touch her. When I did touch her, her nervous system revolted. That was a shock for her as well as for me. It broke us up.” Raffen paused and added: “She married one of the background figures—a worthy, beefy fellow—and I borrowed the nearest Lottie.”

Grenwood went to the window and stared down at the empty alley. Did Raffen suspect him of knowing that the girl was Jill? There could be no certainty.

“Isn't it rather knock-kneed, Gerald, to let everything rot because of a romantic disappointment?”

“I don't think of it in romantic terms. To me the girl is a symbol—a notice board. Keep Off The Grass. There is no place for me among my own kind—and I no longer want one.”

Grenwood was stumped. A long silence was broken by a raspy chuckle from Raffen.

“I can do nothing to help you, Rhode!” The perpetual sneer gave emphasis to the words. “And for God's sake stop trying to help me!”

On his way home, Grenwood churned it over.
He
can do nothing to help
me
! Nothing to
help
me!

His report to Jill escaped positive misrepresentation, but contained no reference to Raffen's romantic disappointment.

“We have done all we can,” pronounced Jill. “We shall have to try and forget that he ever existed.”

To Grenwood that meant no more than leaving him out of the conversation. Raffen, he supposed, must be dipping into his capital. Dipping, not necessarily squandering. For a year or so, Grenwood did nothing about it, hoping that circumstances would again alter the perspective and give him another respite. He began to lose weight. During 1927, he tried a series of tortuous little enterprises to help Raffen by stealth, all doomed to futility. There was an elaborate mechanism by which a hard-up dentist was induced to employ Raffen at a salary, paid by Grenwood. It lasted a fortnight. Frequently he would sneak out to Hampstead to watch the end of the alley. Twice during 1928 he saw Raffen coming home but lacked the courage to accost him. Now and again, catching sight of his reflection in a shop window, he would pretend that he could see a scar on his own left cheek and his lip lifted in a perpetual sneer at himself.

“Darling, I'm afraid you'll have to own up that you're worrying about Gerald.”

“I know. I'm a fool.”

“A very dear fool! And a very brave man who is frightened of a shadow on the wall which he has made himself.”

“There's no shadow on any wall!” he cried. “What's behind all this, Jill?”

“Rhode, you've been—ill—for a long time. You mutter in your sleep—”

“What about?” He had to repeat it before she nerved herself to answer:

“That fire at Charchester.”

“What do I say about it? About—the fire?” She could feel the words being dragged out of him.

“Nothing coherent.”

“Then what has Gerald been saying to you?”

“Oh, Rhode! As if I would see Gerald without telling you!” She went on: “I've read the official report. It told me only what I knew already. I know that no one can tell me anything about that fire except you, and you can only tell me of—a shadow on the wall. Why don't you tell me, Rhode? It would vanish if we looked at it together.”

Grenwood relaxed. The defensive irritability disappeared.

“My dear girl, it's nothing as elaborate as all that!” He laughed, almost naturally. “Perhaps I am a bit of a sentimentalist. But—one's past is always a part of one's present, if you see what I mean. We were close friends as boys. And I suppose I am haunted by what happened to him—especially as he seems to be making a mess of his life.”

Two years later, Raffen's name was again in the papers, for the same offence, but at a different court. There was no joke by the magistrate and the fine was only forty shillings. The punch came in the last line.

‘Defendant asked for time in which to pay the fine: when this was refused he was removed in custody to serve the alternative sentence of fourteen days.'

So Raffen was penniless!

“I've got him now!” he said to himself, hoping that Jill had not read the news report. But Jill had.

“If he's difficult about taking money, you might be able to use the fact that he could probably have got a hundred or so more for the house, if he had put it up for auction.”

By midday, Grenwood had paid the fine and was waiting for Raffen to be released. In due course, Raffen appeared in the hall, unescorted. He was unshaved and looked dusty. It was a very cold day, but he wore neither overcoat nor gloves. The perpetual sneer was lifted in a wide grin.

“Congratulations, old man!” said Raffen.

“Come and have a spot of lunch,” said Grenwood.

“Splendid!” They left the prison together. “Easy on! You've forgotten I can't walk as fast as you can.”

Over lunch, in a restaurant near the prison, Raffen told a number of waspish anecdotes about himself in prison. Grenwood, who was learning caution, contributed reminiscences of the Army. As the meal finished Raffen lapsed into silence.

“Now we've stopped chattering, we can talk,” said Grenwood.

“‘Little Tommy Tucker must sing for his supper';” chirped Raffen. “We'll adjourn to my place. And we certainly can't talk dry. My cellar, unfortunately, is empty. Let's see, I owe you two quid for the fine, ten bob for the costs. On Friday I shall receive a cheque for a fiver for some reviews. If you can oblige me with the other two quid ten, I'll endorse the cheque and post it to you.”

Grenwood paid for the taxi, but Raffen directed it. It stopped outside a wine merchant's, where Raffen bought two bottles of whisky, which Grenwood carried for some five hundred yards to the stable flat.

The first thing Grenwood noticed was that the flat was now very dirty—the stream of Lotties had dried up. Most of Raffen's furniture had been replaced with second-hand gimgrackery. They sat in upright chairs at a ramshackle table. Raffen opened one of the bottles. The glasses had to be washed before they could be used.

“Cheers!” exclaimed Raffen. Their eyes met. Each became aware that, after years of repression, the moment of open hostility had arrived. “Rhode, you're crumpling up, old man! Why don't you take to drink, too? We've got the same complaint. Both afraid of what we might see in the looking glass.”

Grenwood did not intend to be diverted.

“When you offered me your house at valuation—”

“I remember! It was old brandy then. You like it and I liked it. And you liked telling me about Jill. That was a very graceful fade-out, Rhode—until you spoilt it.”

“If I had known it was to be a fade-out, I wouldn't have accepted your offer of the house. There's reason to believe that you could have got another five hundred for it at auction. In the circumstances, whether you feel insulted or not, I must insist on repaying the five hundred.”

Raffen laughed, drained his glass and filled up again. Grenwood dropped an envelope on the table.

“In that envelope is a crossed cheque for five hundred pounds, and twenty pounds in currency for your immediate needs. You can repay the twenty, if you like, when you've cleared the cheque.”

“Jill put you up to that!” As Grenwood made no answer, Raffen added: “You're trying to buy. I have nothing to sell you. Drink up, old man.”

“No, thanks. I'm going.”

Grenwood stood up. He picked up his hat, set it down while he put on his gloves, then picked it up again, and put it on.

“Don't forget your luggage.” Raffen pointed to the envelope lying on the table. “If you leave it there, I shall post it to Jill.”

“You're broke, Gerald. You'll starve. They'll take you to a Poor Law institution where no one will understand your sarcasm. Why won't you take the money?”

“Because, though a down-and-out, I'm not a crook. Figure this out for yourself, Rhode. When one man says to another, ‘I forgive you'—”

“Forgive me for what?” cried Grenwood.

“—the words mean only, ‘I will not seek vengeance.' They can't mean anything else at all. I knew it—when I was fifteen.”

“Forgive me for what?”
Grenwood's voice was dry and shrill.

“I accuse you of nothing. It's you who've plunged yourself into an automatic, self-starting hell. Good lord, man! You've got the woman who would have been mine if the fire hadn't turned me into a gargoyle. And because I get drunk about it, you offer me money to mumble some maudlin abracadabra to free you from the curse. You will never be free.”

Grenwood put one gloved hand on the back of the chair, to steady himself. His hat was awry and his voice was quavery.

“You're quite right—except that it isn't any mystical nonsense,” he faltered. “Listen, Gerald, if you can! I have a sort of nervous tic—a cloud in my brain—about that fire. You can clear it up. I'm grovelling to you for the truth, as I've grovelled for your friendship—”

“Rats, laddie! If you'd had a cloud in your brain you'd have paid that five hundred quid to a psychiatrist to shift it. I was wrong about the looking glass. You aren't afraid of what you might reveal to yourself. You're afraid of what I might reveal to others.”

“You must be drunk already, if you can believe that. The report protects me—”

“Jill will believe anything I tell her about that fire.”

“Leave Jill's name out of it!”

“We can't!” asserted Raffen. “You forgot that fire during the war. But you began to remember it again when you held my girl in your arms. Wait till I find my hat—I'll come with you. And you and I and Jill will soon shift that cloud from your brain for you.”

“I won't take you to Jill. You're not sober.”

“Let's see—yes, I have enough for the taxi to Rubington. Drunk or sober—with you, or without you—the result will be the same. She'll have a nervous revulsion against you, this time. Reaction in my favour … I never thought of that. What a joke! Jill! The last of the Lotties!”

Grenwood took in the words, but he could see only the perpetual sneer, which his hysteria magnified beyond bearing. He snatched up the unopened whisky bottle as a mallet with which to destroy the perpetual sneer. He went on wielding the mallet until the bottle broke and the whisky splashed over the blood-soaked hair.

He let the neck of the broken bottle fall from his gloved hand. Then he left the flat, shutting the ill-fitting outer door behind him. He had to walk for some five minutes before he found a taxi, near the wine merchant's. He also noticed that the wine merchant's clock registered five minutes past three.