1951 - But a Short Time to Live (25 page)

Mrs. Bates was speculating about the murder when the front door bell rang, making her start, and when she climbed the steep stairs from the basement and opened the front door she found this couple standing on the step.

With her mind still full of the murder, she showed them the two rooms. The moment she set eyes on the girl she knew she was a bad lot. A blonde, hard-faced bit, she thought, no better than she should be.

Wearing a fur coat and coming to a working-class district! And the way she had looked at the two rooms as if they weren't good enough for her. But the young fellow took her fancy. He was quiet and polite, and was willing to pay two weeks' rent in advance, and she let them have the rooms.

It was a funny thing, but the girl didn't move out of the house for four or five weeks. Kent explained she wasn't well, but to be cooped up in two rooms for five weeks seemed to Mrs. Bates to be going beyond a joke. However, it was her business. If she liked to hide herself away as if she was scared of showing her face in the street, that was her look-out. Mrs. Bates didn't care so long as she got her money. The young fellow went out every day to business, but once he returned, he stayed indoors even though the summer was hot and fine.

After four or five weeks, and about the time when the newspapers had lost interest in the Park Lane murder, the girl began to go out.

The missing couple hadn't been found. Another murder had been committed, and Mrs. Bates forgot all about the Park Lane murder and gave her attention to this new one: a girl had been found hacked to pieces in a West End hotel. That was far more intriguing than a stabbing in a kitchen, and the police knew who had done it too, and were after him, so there was a chase to add to the excitement.

Alone in their rooms, the Rents read of the new murder and exchanged glances. It meant the searchlight of publicity would shift away from Clair and Harry Ricks, and that seemed to give them comfort

chapter twenty-nine

E
ven after six months, Harry didn't feel entirely safe. He had got over the sickening clutch of fear every time he saw a policeman. He had ceased to stiffen every time he heard a footfall on the stairs. But the hunted feeling persisted. He couldn't open a newspaper without a feeling of dread. It was still a nightmare to walk down Robertson Street, the main shopping thoroughfare, and if anyone came up to him suddenly his heart contracted and he had to control an impulse to run.

It was amazing how they had escaped detection for so long. Probably it was because everything had been prepared for flight, and they were able to disappear and assume new identities before Whelan's body had been found. He had not been discovered for eight days after they had left the flat.

Clair had been panic stricken. If she had been left alone she would have given herself away. There were times when Harry despaired of her ever getting back to normal. She was ready to run at the slightest thing: a step on the landing, a shout in the street, a sudden braking of a car. But now she was getting back her nerve, and realising that perhaps, after all, she need not have insisted on having a child. Her reaction to the inevitable inconvenience of pregnancy was of trapped fury. At times she would turn on Harry, blaming him for everything, venting her misery and anger on him, cursing the day she ever met him.

Harry was patient with her. His love for her had wilted, but his loyalty was as strong as ever. He couldn't forget, in spite of her mistakes, what she had done had been more for his sake than hers. He remembered how she had given herself up to the police when Parkins had accused him of stealing the cigarette case. He remembered her past generosity. It was his turn now to provide for her, and how badly he was doing it! Under the circumstances he was lucky to have a job at all. At least it provided him for the first month with an adequate hiding place. The only danger had been the journey to and from the shop.

Once he was there he remained in the dark room where no one saw him. But the money wasn't much. He earned six pounds a week. Forty-five shillings of that went on rent. There was food to buy. In their panic to escape from the Park Lane flat they had only taken a suitcase of clothes apiece, fearing to call a taxi to remove the heavier cases, and they were now running short of clothes.

They had thirty pounds left still from the sale of Clair's jewellery, but that was slowly dwindling as Clair insisted on having a bottle of gin a week, and Harry suspected that she was going to the pub at the corner of the road when he was at work. He had warned her that once their capital had gone, they would not be able to afford gin, and she turned on him fiercely.

"I've got to have something. Do you think I can stay in this blasted room day after day without something to take my mind off it? Oh, don't look so shocked. As long as the money lasts I'll drink as much as I like!"

And besides gin she smoked incessantly, whereas Harry had given up cigarettes.

At first he had been pathetically tender and even enthusiastic about the coming child, but Clair soon disillusioned him.

"Look at me!" she raved. "Do you think I want it? If I had thought we'd have got away with it, I wouldn't have been such a mad fool to have had it. Look what the little beast is doing to my figure! Oh, shut up gaping at me! If it hadn't been for you this would never have happened!"

And yet, sometimes, she was different, and held him in her arms, crying, her face against his, assuring him she loved him, that she would do anything for him.

"Don't pay any attention to me, darling," she said. "I'm so miserable and frightened. Oh, Harry, what is going to become of us? Suppose the child is born, and then they find us? It won't stop them hanging me then! In a way I wish they'd find us now, then they couldn't kill me. Don't you see, the longer they take to find us the worse it is for me." She pulled away from him and ran distracted fingers through her hair. "I shall go mad! I'm so frightened of having the child. I hate pain! I'm such a stinking coward. Sometimes I think I'll kill myself. It would be the way out."

She was continually talking of suicide now, and it worried Harry half out of his mind. She was so reckless, and at times, demented, that he feared she might try to kill herself. He did his best to comfort her, but after these bouts of tenderness and self-pity she would become once more hard and cynical, grumbling about the lack of money, complaining about the two rooms and the food, and smoking incessantly.

It was a nightmare time for Harry. He felt sure that if Clair didn't have to pass so much of her time alone, she wouldn't be in this frame of mind. She wasn't used to being on her own, and became morbidly depressed by sitting in the shabby little room with its view of the roofs of the Old Town, having nothing to do but to think of the past and the fun she had had and to brood over the coming birth.

He encouraged her to go out. At first, fearful of being recognised, she refused, but as the weeks went by and the newspapers ceased to feature the murder she finally screwed up her courage to make infrequent trips to the shops, but they never went about the town together.

"It wouldn't be safe," Harry argued. "They're still looking for us, and some bright policeman might spot us if we were together."

So when they did go out in the evening they went up to the Castle where there were no policemen and sat on the hill and looked down at the ruins of the harbour and the sea front, stretching to St Leonards, and at the crowds moving along the promenade.

Then one day Harry mislaid his fountain pen, and in the search for it, he absent-mindedly opened one of Clair's drawers. What he saw there turned him cold.

He went into the sitting-room where Clair was manicuring her finger nails.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded, and held up a leather handbag. "I found it in your drawer. It's new. How did you get it?"

Clair flushed and jumped to her feet.

"How dare you go to my drawer!"

He looked at her. She tried to meet his horrified eyes, then turned away and went over to the window.

"Did you steal it?" he said, his voice husky.

"What if I did? I've got to have some decent things. If you can't get them for me . . ."

He jerked her round roughly.

"You stupid fool!" his voice was shaking. "Can't you see that's what they're waiting for? They know your tricks. It's just the thing that'd give them a clue. They're clever. If the shop you stole it from reports this to the police they'll wonder if it is you. Don't you see that?"

"Am I going to live like this all my life?" she cried, her face white with fear. "My other bag's worn out. Do you think they'll guess it was me?"

"But, Clair, what is the matter with you?" Harry said hopelessly. "Have you no sense of right and wrong? What if your bag is worn out? You can't just go out and steal another. Apart from the danger of being caught, can't you see what a rotten thing it is to do?"

"But I am rotten," she said defiantly. "I don't make any bones about that. Am I never to have any fun again or any nice things?"

"Give me time," he said, desperately. "Let's get your confinement over first. I'm watching out for something better. I'll get something, Clair. I'll get something that'll make more money. But you've got to promise never to steal again."

She promised sullenly, but insisted on keeping the bag.

"It's not as if I can take it back," she said. "I don't see why I shouldn't use it now I have it."

Harry's immediate task now was to find lodgings for the coming baby. Evening after evening he tramped the back streets, calling on every house which displayed a ‘Board Residence' sign without success. No one wanted a squawling baby. Some of the landladies he saw were sympathetic. They said they would like to help him, but it wasn't practicable.

"Visitors don't like the noise of babies," they explained as if he didn't know.

"Why must you go out and leave me?" Clair asked irritably when he returned, hot and tired from one of these fruitless searches. "It's bad enough to be on my own all day, but then for you to go out . . ."

Patiently he explained what he had been doing.

"Why bother?" she said angrily. "You don't think I'm going to keep the brat, do you? I'm not as crazy as that. As soon as I come out of hospital I'm going to dump it on a doorstep."

Harry was horrified.

"You can't do a thing like that! It's our child, Clair. You couldn't do it! I won't let you!"

"Oh, don't give me that mother-love tripe," she said. "Do you think I'm going to feed it? I hate babies! I won't touch it! I'll throw it into the sea!"

Harry had read somewhere that women went a little queer when they were pregnant, and although Clair's attitude hurt him, he didn't take it seriously. But he did feel the responsibility for the baby's comfort and welfare would largely fall on him, and he redoubled his efforts to find a home for it.

There was a chap at the shop he was friendly with. His name was Leonard Wilkins; one of those simple, not very brainy fellows, with a moon-round face, sandy hair and a ready smile. He wore a Christian Crusader badge in his coat lapel, and was always trying to persuade Harry to become a Crusader himself.

"You don't have to go to church or anything like that," he explained to Harry one afternoon when he came into the dark room with the morning's collection of films to be developed. "It's a club really. We try to help each other. It's a bit like being a Mason, only it doesn't cost anything. We're having a meeting tonight if you'd care to come."

Harry thanked him.

"I'm afraid I haven't the time," he said, as he stripped the red wrapping from the films. "I'm trying to find accommodation. You see, my wife is having a baby, and it isn't easy to find a place that takes babies. I suppose you don't know of anything?"

Wilkins reacted to this the way a ferret reacts to the sight of a rabbit.

"I'll ask the Crusaders," he said. "That's just the kind of thing we do. We'd be awfully glad if you and your wife would come along." His face lit up as he added, "They give you tea and cakes."

But Harry couldn't imagine Clair at a Christian Crusader's meeting, and he tactfully made excuses.

"She's not very well. I don't like leaving her. If you can do anything for us I'd be grateful. We want two rooms, and I don't want to pay more than forty-five shillings. If you hear of anything . . ."

"We'll find you something," Wilkins said confidently, and to Harry's surprise they did. A couple of days later, Wilkins gave him three addresses. "Mrs. Hamilton's the best. I'd go along and see her. She has four children of her own. You know where Castle Street is, don't you?"

The previous day had been wet and cold, and no films had been brought in to be developed, so Harry asked the manager if he could have the afternoon off.

"I'm trying to find rooms," he explained. "I've heard of something and don't want to miss it."

"That's all right. You get off," the manager said. He liked Harry. He liked the way Harry always finished his work before going home. He liked his willingness and his efficiency.

Mrs. Hamilton's house in Castle Street conformed to the general pattern of back street seaside houses, but it looked clean and neat from the outside. Mrs. Hamilton answered Harry's knock on the door.

She was accompanied by four small children, who stared up at Harry with intent, curious eyes, and wrestled and punched each other as soon as their curiosity was satisfied. Mrs. Hamilton was a tall, bony woman with lank hair, a distracted expression and large tired eyes. As soon as you saw her you felt she would put up with anything, and when Harry told her he was looking for rooms and his wife was about to have a baby she just nodded dumbly and asked him in.

As soon as the front door had closed behind him, the four children started into a bedlam of sound, and this continued all the time Harry was in the house. They seemed to be endowed with an inspired talent for making a sustained and continuous uproar. One of them hammered a tin tray. Another ran up and down the stairs rattling the banister with a stick. The remaining two punched each other and screamed. It was only by raising his voice to a shout that Harry could make himself heard.