The Lodger (12 page)

Maggie smiled. ‘It's good of you, Mr Bates, but I don't 'ave any broken chair legs today.'

‘Are you goin' out?' enquired Mr Bates. Maggie had her well-worn velvet toque hat on.

‘Yes, I'm takin' me Monday laundry to the bagwash, I've run out of anything to light the copper with.'

‘I'll take it,' said Mr Bates, ‘I was goin' out meself, in any case. I'd count it a pleasure, yer know. You don't want to carry a heavy bag like that when I can perform.'

‘But don't you have to go on business to the City?' asked Maggie.

‘Not today,' said Mr Bates. ‘You place that bag in me arms, Mrs Wilson, and I'll give it a quick walk to the old bagwash. Believe me, even if I ain't had the privilege of bein' a husband yet, I know a woman's work is never done. I'll lay odds you've got a houseful of work to get on with, so you let me – ' He was interrupted by a sharp rat-a-tat on the front door. Maggie winced.

‘Oh, that's Mr Monks,' she exclaimed in a rush. Mr Monks always announced his arrival with a peremptory rat-a-tat.

‘Who's Mr Monks?' asked Mr Bates, noting her worried expression.

Maggie hesitated, then said, ‘A moneylender. I went an' borrowed three pounds from 'im several weeks ago, only I've not been able to . . . oh, it's me own 'eadache, I don't want to bother you with it.'

‘The gent's one of those, is he?' said Mr Bates. ‘Says you owe 'im a lot more than you borrowed, does he? Mrs Wilson, you leave him to me.' The rat-a-tat was repeated on an even sharper note.

‘Mr Bates, I can pay him a bit off now.'

‘I know, but a bit won't do much good with a bloke like him, I've met 'is kind before. Don't you worry, Mrs Wilson, I'll see to the geezer.'

Mr Bates answered the door. A plump, heavy-jowled man in a dark suit and black bowler hat showed himself. He gave Mr Bates an enquiring look. Mr Bates responded with a steely smile.

‘Your name Monks?' he asked.

‘What's it to you? Where's Mrs Wilson?'

‘Nursin' a headache.'

‘Well,' said Mr Monks, showing a row of irregular and disbelieving teeth, ‘you tell 'er to bring 'erself and 'er headache to the door.'

‘Don't give me orders, Monks, just state yer business,' said Mr Bates.

‘My business ain't your business, it's hers, it don't concern a third party.' Mr Monks, a heavy man, was used to dealing with people who tried to stick their noses in.

‘I'm not a third party,' said Mr Bates, ‘I'm a referee.'

‘Don't waste my time,' said Mr Monks, ‘I'm not in the mood.'

‘That's your 'ard luck. Say what you want from Mrs Wilson or bugger off.'

‘You keep this up, whoever you are,' said Mr Monks, ‘and I'll get awkward.'

‘Don't try it on me,' said Mr Bates, taller and with harder muscle than the plump moneylender. ‘You loaned Mrs Wilson a few quid, right?'

‘Legal transaction, signed an' sealed, and 'ow much 'as she paid off? I'll tell yer, not a bleedin' farthing.'

‘I'm cryin' me eyes out for yer,' said Mr Bates. ‘So how much does she owe yer now?'

‘None of yer business,' said Mr Monks, then discovered he didn't like the ferocious gleam in his opponent's eye. ‘Well, all right, I ain't got time to stand 'ere all day. I'll tell yer, even if it is breakin' confidence with a client.' He took a well-thumbed notebook from his pocket and leafed through it. ‘'Ere it is. Fifteen quid and seven-six.'

That amount was a fortune to many people in Walworth.

‘You bugger,' said Mr Bates, ‘you loaned her three quid a few weeks ago, an' she now owes yer over fifteen?'

‘It's arrived at correct on account of she ain't made any repayments. And listen, that loan was lent gen'rously, considering it was on unsecured credit.'

‘Don't come it with me, ratface,' said Mr Bates, ‘you're not gettin' fifteen quid-plus out of Mrs Wilson, or how would you like me to break your neck?'

‘The law's on my side,' said Mr Monks, ‘it's a legal transaction I've got goin' with Mrs Wilson.'

‘Six quid,' said Mr Bates.

‘Eh?'

‘It's more than you'd get if she had to sell what she's got left in this house. I'll lay you sniffed around when you made the loan. Well, it's all sold, except some beds an' chairs. It might pay for some cat's meat, nothing else. Well?'

‘Six quid?' The heavy jowls doubled in umbrage. ‘That ain't even – '

‘It's all you're goin' to get. I trust,' said Mr Bates with sarcasm, ‘that a hundred per cent profit in several weeks ain't goin' to ruin you.'

Mr Monks looked very disagreeable about it.

‘Mrs Wilson's got 'erself a fancy cove, has she?' he said nastily.

‘See that?' Mr Bates presented a hard, balled fist for inspection. ‘That's been around, like I have, cully, and it's done a mite of injury. Like a mite yourself, would you?'

‘No more than you'd like a dose of Dartmoor for inflictin' grievous bodily 'arm,' said Mr Monks.

‘Talk sense.' The cheerful new lodger was having an aggressive mood. ‘You need a witness, and there ain't goin' to be one. So use yer common.'

‘All right, wait a minute, wait a minute,' said Mr Monks. ‘Make it seven-ten and I'll call it square.'

‘I said six. That's the limit, you greedy sod. Sign a discharge.'

Mr Monks gave in. He was still onto a good thing, and he knew it.

Maggie, who had heard most of the doorstep conversation, stared at Mr Bates when he returned to the kitchen and placed a piece of paper on the table.

‘That shows you're settled up with Shylock,' he said.

‘You gave 'im six pounds,' she breathed.

‘Well, I'm fortunately in funds, Mrs Wilson. My kind of engineering pays a bit 'andsome sometimes.'

‘But now I owe you instead of Mr Monks.'

‘Well, there's no hurry to pay me back,' said Mr Bates, good-humoured again. ‘You've been up against all that hard luck, but hard luck don't last for ever. You can pay me a bit now and again when you're in funds yerself.'

‘Lord, I don't know what to say,' said Maggie. There was enormous relief at having Mr Monks off her back, but embarrassment at being beholden to a man she'd only met yesterday. ‘I'm that uncomf'table about it.'

‘Think nothing of it, Mrs Wilson,' said Mr Bates, his breezy smile arriving. ‘If I can't do a good turn to a woman that's givin' me good lodgings and ‘ospitality, then I'm not much of a friend. You look at it like that, Mrs Wilson, that I'm a friend. Right, now give me that bag of laundry and I'll see to it.'

He took the bag, leaving Maggie with the feeling that she'd been gently steamrollered. He whistled on his way to the laundry.

CHAPTER NINE

At Rodney Road police station, Nicholas's first port of call that morning, he was waiting for Inspector Greaves, having notified him by telephone that the identity of the murdered woman was known. Her landlady had turned up at the station to volunteer the information. When Inspector Greaves arrived, a story unfolded.

Mrs Barker, the landlady, had spent from Friday to Sunday night at her sister's home in Leigh-on-Sea. When she got back to her own home in the New Kent Road and found her lodger not there, she simply assumed she'd gone out for the evening. This morning, however, finding her still missing and her bed not slept in, she put two and two together by thinking about that description in the newspaper. She had a terrible moment of realization. The poor young woman's name was Mabel Shipman, her age twenty-six. Unmarried. She didn't have a job, but she always payed her rent prompt. She behaved nice and went out most evenings. Up West mostly, she always said, where she could always get a few hours work behind a bar, especially theatre bars. She often didn't get home till midnight. No, she didn't have any gentlemen callers, ever. She dressed nice and respectable, and didn't paint her face. What she was doing in Steedman Street on Friday night, Mrs Barker couldn't say, as it wasn't on her way home from up West, was it?

As for friends, the landlady had only ever met one, Linda Jennings, who often visited Miss Shipman on Sundays. She lived in Heygate Street, off Walworth Road. You could hear the two of them laughing and joking a lot. Miss Jennings dressed respectable too.

What about Miss Shipman's family? No, the landlady didn't know any of Miss Shipman's family. Miss Shipman only ever said her parents were dead, and that was why she was on her own. Didn't she have a steady young man? Mrs Barker said not that she knew of. There just didn't seem any gentlemen in her life.

Having repeated herself at length, Mrs Barker was asked by Inspector Greaves if she would go with a detective-sergeant and formally identify the body. Mrs Barker said she wasn't very keen on looking at dead people, specially ones dead by murder, but if it was her duty, well, she'd go. That left Inspector Greaves to point out to Nicholas that Miss Shipman's close friend, Linda Jennings, hadn't come forward, although the Saturday and Sunday newspapers had all carried descriptions of the victim, and her clothing. Perhaps Miss Jennings, like the landlady, had been away for the weekend. Perhaps.

‘And perhaps Miss Shipman didn't go up West on Friday night,' said Nicholas. ‘Perhaps she never went up as often as Mrs Barker thought.'

‘Prostitute?' said the Inspector.

‘Possible. No job, but out late most nights and paid the rent promptly.'

The Inspector pondered. A burly man, born in Bermondsey, he had come up from the ranks and was a policeman of experience and method.

‘Not on the streets, no,' he said, ‘or she'd have been known to the uniformed branch, and probably had convictions.'

‘Could she have made appointments, sir?' asked Nicholas.

‘Could have. Some do.'

‘She didn't use her lodgings, that's obvious,' said Nicholas. ‘Assuming she met men in respectable surroundings in the West End, we could also assume she arranged to visit them at convenient addresses. There'd have been no problems with bachelors living alone, and any well-off married men might have had the use of town flats.'

‘What you're pointin' at, my son, is a needle in a 'aystack,' said the Inspector testily.

‘Yes, looks like it,' agreed Nicholas, ‘but what else have we got at the moment?'

‘Guesses.'

‘But we might not be wrong in suspecting the man might be someone's lodger, one who could have admitted Miss Shipman without his landlady twigging. In any event, the number one suspect has got to be the man she was with on Friday night.'

The Inspector's bushy brows drew together. ‘Hold up,' he said, ‘that's not a fact. She might just as easy been jumped on by a stranger.'

‘I'm offering it as a reasonable conclusion,' said Nicholas.

‘Up in the air, sergeant, up in the air. But let's see. You're saying that after she spent the evening with him, the bugger was so 'ighly appreciative that he followed her and strangled her? Then pinched her handbag?'

‘Sounds fairly reasonable to me, inspector,' said Nicholas.

‘I'm not against it.' Inspector Greaves pondered again. ‘Listen, my lad, if that theory's got something to it, then there's a notebook that wants findin'.'

‘That's right on the button,' said Nicholas, ‘a notebook containing the names and addresses of certain men.'

‘Penny's dropped, has it? It could mean she was on the game definite. Get busy, I've got to see the Assistant Commissioner myself.'

Nicholas took Chapman with him. They gave Mrs Barker time to get home from the morgue before knocking on her door. She let them in and allowed them to make a thorough search of the murdered woman's room, the woman she had identified at the morgue. They turned the room inside-out, although Nicholas didn't think she would have kept the notebook hidden. She was far more likely to have carried it in her handbag. All the same, he and Chapman searched every possible place, including coat and jacket pockets. Her clothes, he noticed, were of very good quality. The exercise was fruitless. There was no notebook, nor letters of any kind. Perhaps there wasn't a notebook, perhaps everything was in her head, or perhaps he and the Inspector had reached the wrong conclusions. If they hadn't, he felt her handbag was the natural repository. And it led to another reasonable conclusion.

‘Frank,' he said, ‘if we're right, if she was with a client on Friday evening, a peculiar type of man, he'd have had all the time he wanted to think about how much of a sick thrill it would be to strangle her and cut off a lock of her hair as a souvenir.'

‘Ruddy sick,' said Chapman.

‘And suppose he knew, or found out, that she had a notebook containing names and addresses, his among them?'

‘NBG,' said Chapman. ‘He'd've had it off her before she left.'

‘Wake up, muttonhead,' said Nicholas. ‘A lodger, or a married man, with ideas of murdering her, would have let her leave, then get after her. Right, he catches her up, whips a cord around her neck from behind, strangles her in quick time, cuts off a lock of her hair in a sick frenzy and makes off with that plus her handbag. He wastes no time seaching for the notebook, he does the obvious, he pinches her handbag. How's that?'

‘Sounds all right,' said Chapman.

‘Don't fall over yourself, will you?'

‘What you after, then? Certificate?'

‘With your amount of chat, you're wasted in the force,' said Nicholas. ‘Get yourself into a debating society. But not yet. First, let's take ourselves to Heygate Street and find out if Miss Shipman's friend, Linda Jennings, is at home.'

She was. A lively young woman in her mid-twenties, and attractively plump, Linda Jennings at this particular moment in her life was a grieving human being, her natural bubbliness very subdued. She'd only realized this morning that it was her best friend who'd been murdered, she said.