The Hours Before Dawn (15 page)

‘Mummy, you’re
reading
it,’ accused Margery, with gentle reproach, after watching her mother studying the page closely for the best part of five minutes. ‘I told you it was a secret. Tony said we weren’t to let anyone see it except him.’

‘But you
showed
it to me, darling,’ pointed out Louise,
though not with much hope that such reasoning would carry any weight with her audience. ‘And,’ she added, feeling that it was about time that the ethics of the whole business should be given an innings: ‘It was very naughty of you both – and Tony too – to pry about in Miss Brandon’s room like this. This must be her private diary, and you’ve no business to touch it. Or to go in her room at all, for that matter, without being invited. That room is her home, don’t you see. How would you like it if people just walked into our home without knocking or anything?’

‘We
didn
’t
walk in,’ objected Harriet; and Margery amended: ‘We
can
’t
walk in, because she always locks the door now. But she keeps the Spy Book behind the broken ceiling, you see, inside the cupboard. We can get to it under the roof from the hole in the other attic. Tony showed us. It’s where we used to keep the Regulations and the Password of the Explorers’ Club. That’s how we found it, you see, because we were looking for the Regulations again, because I said we’d done them in red ink, and Harriet said we hadn’t, and so I wanted to just
show
her. I
knew
we must have done them in red ink, you see, because—’

Louise remembered the Explorers’ Club very well. It had enjoyed its week and a half of glory about six months ago,
during
which period Tony Hooper, two other exceedingly dirty urchins, and a rather bigger and considerably less dirty little girl with straw-coloured plaits, had appeared regularly after school to consume immense quantities of bread-and-jam and
rock-buns
. The party then repaired to the attics, where they bumped suitcases about, argued and dropped things until Mrs Philips sent in a message about her head, and Louise had to put a stop to it all. Louise had known, vaguely, about the holes in the plaster of the attic cupboards; but she had not realised the uses to which they could be put – or, indeed, that either of them
were big enough to crawl through at all. Nor had they been, it now appeared, until the resourceful Tony had greatly enlarged the one in the lumber room with his pocket knife; though it was Harriet who thought of shifting a slate above their heads so that there should be a crack of light sufficient to read by.

For a moment Louise thought wistfully of those modern
children
who are said to do nothing but watch television in their spare time. Then she turned her attention back to her duty as a parent:

‘You’re not to do it any more, do you understand?’ she said severely. ‘It’s very dishonest to read people’s private diaries—’

‘But we weren’t reading it; we were only copying it,’ protested Margery; and, in view of the utter lack of intelligence of Margery’s transcription, Louise could not but feel that the distinction was valid.

‘Well – anyway – you’re to stop it,’ she concluded, perhaps a shade weakly as she contemplated the guilty eagerness with which she herself would be studying those exercise books as soon as the children weren’t there. ‘You’d better give me the books, and—’

But this raised a storm of protest. The exercise books were
theirs;
they had spent
fourpence
on them. Besides, it was a
secret,
and the books must be kept in a special, ever-so-secret place, Tony had said so.

Louise had to give in for the moment, for the fat in the chip pan was beginning to smoke. In any case, she felt sure that the ever-so-secret place would in practice turn out to be the kitchen floor, among most of their other belongings.

T
he kitchen floor it was. Louise found the two exercise books after lunch, as she swept up the crumbs, the bits of chalk and the remains of Bimbo the Boxer. There seemed to be a certain lack of finesse about Harriet’s and Margery’s methods of guarding their deadly secret, and Louise could not but be touched by Tony’s apparent faith in his two colleagues. She shook the crumbs off the books and carried them guiltily upstairs to her bedroom – though whether the guilt was due to her intention of extracting the secrets from another woman’s diary, or to the fact that she ought at this moment be washing the bathroom floor, she could not tell. A housewife’s sense of moral values is often blurred by this sort of thing.

In Louise’s case, it was blurred even more by the fact that she could make almost no sense at all of Margery’s careful
transcription
– failure to achieve dishonesty often seems the next best thing to honesty itself. Although the writing itself was careful and neat, the meaning of what she was copying had clearly been far beyond Margery’s comprehension. She had copied one word after another as best she could, parrotwise, and only here and there did a phrase stand out which had been within her grasp, and had therefore been copied legibly. ‘M’s
cheek against mine’ was one of them; and ‘M and I’
recurred three or four times, the bold, straightforward capitals standing out unequivocally amid the surrounding gibberish.

‘M and I.’ ‘M and I.’ Louise felt illogically and immediately certain of two mutually contradictory ideas. First, that it was impossible that the ‘M’ of the diary should refer to Mark – that he couldn’t – wouldn’t – deceive her in such a way. Second, that it couldn’t refer to anyone else, and that right from the beginning she had known and expected just this. And who could blame him? He had been getting little enough from his wife these past months – none knew that better than Louise.

‘And yet he knows I
really
love him,’ she thought wildly. ‘He must know it. It’s like the happiness – it’s just put away in a drawer for the time being until I have time – energy – to take it out—’

But can love live in a drawer? And for how long? And if it can – if it is tough – resistant – can take anything – still, how can anyone but the owner of the drawer know that it is still there? How can you expect the neighbours to know that you possess a mink coat if you never wear it?

Louise felt her heart beating in heavy panic. Was it already too late to open that drawer …?

Trembling, she pushed the book away from her, and in doing so knocked Harriet’s book on to the floor, in company with two cotton reels and an unemptied ash-tray. The book had fallen open at the second page, and even before she stooped to pick it up, Louise could read the three words which straggled across the middle of the page in black, uneven capitals:

For a moment the shock deprived her of all sense. Like a puppet on a string, she jerked round to stare at the double bed,
half expecting to see her husband’s body, stiff and white, stretched out on it. Her next impulse was to rush down to the telephone, to ring the office, to find out if Mark was well, to tell him to be careful, terribly careful….

Then her intelligence began to work again, telling her over and over again that of course Mark was all right; it couldn’t conceivably refer to him; that Vera Brandon must have dozens of friends of whom Louise knew nothing; for all she knew, the whole lot of them might have names beginning with M. Maurice. Mervyn. Mickey. Monty. Oh, heaps of them. Martin. Manfred. Marmaduke…. The need to think of names
beginning
with M was taking on the quality of an obsession. It was becoming irrational….

Irrational? Well, of course, the whole thing was irrational. Her intelligence had told her at least twenty times that she was being a fool to worry about any of it. Yet still those black,
ill-formed
capitals stared up at her in purposeful silence. ‘M Is Dead.’ The message was for her. She knew it. An instinct, older and more compelling than any intelligence, warned her that she would neglect that message at her peril. Though the words had been copied by Harriet’s unskilled hand, they were not Harriet’s words. They were someone else’s words, born of such savage intensity of feeling that they had grown like plants, with a life, a power of their own. They were Words of Power, belonging by rights in a darker, younger world than this….

Another second, and Louise was herself again; civilised, rational and inquisitive. Oh, terribly inquisitive. All guilt, all hesitation gone, she studied Harriet’s exercise book as if it held the key to all earthly happiness and security.

In a way, this book was more satisfactory than Margery’s, for instead of copying blindly and senselessly as Margery had done, Harriet must have skimmed through the original for words and
phrases that she could understand. She had written them all down in block capitals in a disjointed list, which had an oddly apocryphal effect:

Louise wondered that Harriet had tackled ‘Triplicate’ so successfully; and then she remembered the ball game that Mrs Philips had been complaining about only last Saturday:

At the word ‘Triplicate’ the player had to twirl round while the ball was still in the air, and then catch it, and this, with shrieks of joyful frustration, the children had consistently failed to do; it was this, combined with the thud – thud – thud of the ball against her side wall that had roused Mrs Philips.

Louise turned a page.

‘RE DORSANDY’

What a peculiar name – if it was a name? Or a place? Not much use trying to guess – Harriet had probably misspelt it anyway. Louise read on, and was surprised to find herself confronted with two carefully printed though badly spaced addresses:

61 Elsworthy Crescent. 10 Mortlake Buildings. Neither address conveyed anything to Louise, but they seemed perfectly
plausible
. Might not one or the other of them be the address she had been seeking – the address of someone who might be able to throw some light on the past life of this Miss Brandon? That previous landlady, perhaps, from whom Mrs Morgan said Louise ought to have obtained a reference?

Louise was suddenly reluctant to do anything about it at all. It was one thing to lament the fact that she knew nothing of Miss Brandon’s past; it was quite another to be confronted suddenly with a perfectly simple means of finding out something.

It was as if the page had spoken aloud, repeating the message peremptorily; demanding the answer. Snatching up the exercise book Louise ran downstairs to the telephone.

No, the operator explained, she was sorry, there was no telephone at No. 10 Mortlake Buildings. There was one at 61 Elsworthy Crescent, but what was the name, please? To Louise’s tentative suggestion of ‘Dorsandy’ she replied with a
momentarily
nonplussed silence; and then, after a little delay, suggested obligingly that perhaps Louise meant ‘Palmer’?

Louise agreed to this at random and at once, and was forthwith given the Palmers’ telephone number.

After all, she reflected, as she dialled this number, I’m only a voice on the telephone; it doesn’t matter if it all sounds terribly silly. They’ll only think I’ve got a wrong number….

‘Hullo. Frances Palmer speaking. Who is it, please?’

The voice was young and self-possessed; and before her
self-confidence
drained away completely, Louise plunged into her enquiry.

Miss Brandon. Yes, Frances Palmer did know a Miss
Brandon –
had
known her, rather. Yes, Vera Brandon, that was right. There was a hesitancy, a lack of ease, about the previously confident voice. The owner seemed to be searching for words; to be afraid of saying too much, and yet anxious not to close the conversation.

‘Oh. You mean she’s living with you right now? Oh.’ Again the voice hesitated. ‘Listen,’ it went on, hurrying a little. ‘Listen, could you possibly come round here? Now? I – well, it’s rather difficult talking on the telephone, isn’t it? If we could meet, I might be able to tell you – that is, to ask you – I mean, I don’t know you, do I?’ the voice concluded rather lamely.

Louise was reassured. The speaker was not, after all, as
self-possessed
as she had seemed at first. And she seemed interested – indeed, she had sounded as if she was anxious in just the same way that Louise herself was anxious. A meeting between them might clear up a lot.

It was not until she had agreed to this proposal and had rung off that she began to face the question of how she could walk out of the house at four o’clock in the afternoon with no one to look after the children, no tea ready for them and no idea what to cook for supper when she got back.

She decided to try Edna Larkins. If she was home from work (and, after all, it was Good Friday tomorrow, she might easily be finishing early today) there was a very good chance that she might be lured, knitting and all, from the sofa of her aunt’s front room to be re-deposited on the corresponding sofa of Louise’s front room.

It all worked perfectly. Edna was only too delighted to come once she heard that Louise had a pair of No. 8 needles she could lend her for when she came to the end of the ribbing; and she was soon happily settled on the sofa, with a brand new pair of No. 8 needles and an assurance that Margery would be a
great
help over getting the tea, won’t you, darling?

‘What?’ said Margery discouragingly; but Louise felt that the moment had come for her to escape without further argument. She always clung hopefully to the theory (based on observation of other people’s children) that her family behaved better when she, their mother, wasn’t there.

N
o. 61 Elsworthy Crescent was one of those little red brick houses so smart and clean that you would think it was kept indoors. The front garden was discreetly ablaze with almost unnaturally healthy flowers; and on a tiny patch of closely-clipped grass stood a pram so new and shining that Louise expected to see an equally new baby in it. She was surprised to observe that the child with the clean white frock and the clean pink face was at least as old as Michael. And it wasn’t crying, she noted enviously. Its mother was expecting a visitor, was anxious for a quiet talk with her and it
wasn’t
crying
.

The mistress of all this perfection, in a starched cotton frock and really white sandals, greeted Louise with a sort of guarded warmth, and led her into a white-painted chintzy sitting-room, where the only evidence that a baby belonged to the household was a new fluffy Teddy bear with a red bow round its neck. No nappies. No bits of chewed rusk. Louise sighed, and wondered if she should ask the girl how she did it. But it wouldn’t be any use. These competent mothers never could tell you how they did it. The clean, quiet babies, the unsticky Teddy bears, simply seemed to happen to them.

Frances Palmer, competent though she might be, was clearly worried. No sooner had she produced tea and a plate of nicely
browned little cakes, than she began to question Louise. How, she wanted to know, had Louise heard of her? Had Vera Brandon spoken of her? What had she said? Had anything seemed – well – odd in any way?

Louise could not answer any of this very satisfactorily; she could only ask other questions in her turn, and very soon Mrs Palmer was recounting all she knew.

It had all happened, apparently, one day last autumn. There had been a ring at the front door, and when Mrs Palmer answered it, there was this tall, distinguished-looking woman, carrying a little case, and announcing that she had seen Mrs Palmer’s advertisement for a housekeeper.

‘I was utterly mystified, of course,’ continued Frances Palmer, ‘because I’d never advertised for a housekeeper at all. Why should I, with this tiny house, and I’m not working or
anything.
She had the cutting with her, she said, and she began fishing about for it in her case. Well, I felt I had to ask her in – it was so awkward for her, I mean, standing there on the doorstep trying to look through this case full of papers. So I brought her in, and we had a cup of tea – she still couldn’t find the cutting, by the way, and I told her it must be Elsworthy
Avenue
she wanted – people are always getting us mixed up with them – though actually I found out afterwards that they hadn’t advertised for a housekeeper, either, and anyway this woman never called there at all. Well, anyway we got talking, and she stayed quite a long time. I got a bit fed up with it,
honestly
, because of course I’d only expected her to stay for a few minutes, and I’d got a lot to do. I didn’t even get the impression that she was enjoying herself, either. She was sort of
making
conversation, if you know what I mean – as if – how shall I explain it? – as if she was waiting for something. As if she had to fill in time. She kept glancing about the room – glancing at the clock – glancing at me when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I don’t know – I began to feel very awkward; and what made it more uncomfortable still was that I had an odd feeling that I recognised her. That I’d seen her before somewhere, only I couldn’t for the life of me think where—’

‘But that’s exactly how
we
felt,’ burst out Louise impulsively. Briefly she described Mark’s first reaction to seeing Miss Brandon, and also her own qualms about the suitcase. Frances Palmer had gone a little pale.

‘You see what
that
means, don’t you,’ she said, her voice quivering slightly; and then, recovering herself, she went on: ‘But of course – how silly – I haven’t even told you what
happened
yet! Well, as I was saying, there she sat, and I kept dropping hints to make her go. I told her we were going out that evening – all sorts of lies – but it was no use, she wouldn’t take any notice. After a bit I simply had to feed Lesley and put her to bed, and then Tom came in wanting his supper; and that
did
seem to shift her at last. She was full of apologies for having stayed so long, and off she went. I don’t suppose I’d have thought anything more about it, only, later that evening—’

Frances Palmer paused, and offered Louise another cup of the now cooling tea. She seemed to have lost the thread of her story; almost to be deliberately transferring her uneasiness to the problem of the tea: was it hot enough? strong enough? Did Louise want more sugar? Or didn’t she—?

‘Later that evening—?’ Louise prompted gently; and Frances Palmer started, flushed a little, and then continued:

‘It sounds so stupid really,’ she apologised. ‘I mean, Tom was quite sure I was imagining it all, but anyway, this is what I
thought
I saw. We’d been out, you see – just for a stroll, after supper. We often do, just for half an hour, when we’re sure Lesley is settled. We usually go as far as the canal and then back along the Avenue; but this time, for some reason, I felt anxious about Lesley. I don’t know why; she’d been perfectly
well all day and had gone off to sleep as good as gold. But I kept worrying about it, and Tom kept telling me not to be silly; and at last I got so worried that I said I must go back. He was furious about it – he’s Irish, you know, real redheaded Irish, and men like that
do
flare up easily, don’t they? He said it was crazy to turn back like that; and then when I began hurrying he was crosser still, and wouldn’t try to keep up with me. So I got home by myself, and the minute I stepped into the hall I had that feeling – you know – that there was someone in the house. I told myself it was silly, but all the same I was almost too scared to move. I was so frightened I actually took my shoes off and tiptoed around peeping into every room. It was in my bedroom that I saw her, Tom says I didn’t. Tom says I was imagining it all because of my fright, and because it was getting dusk by then and I hadn’t dared turn any lights on. But
I
know I wasn’t imagining it. She was there. There’s a mirror, you see, a big mirror on the wall facing you as you go in, and I saw her reflection in it. Just her back view, bending over the little table by the bed, but I knew it was her. Something in the way she was standing – I’d have recognised it anywhere. Not only from seeing her that afternoon, you understand, but from
having
seen her somewhere before. I had that feeling even more strongly then than I’d had it earlier. That’s what frightens me, really. Why do I recognise her? And why do
you
recognise her—’

‘But wait —’ said Louise. ‘What did she say? Didn’t she explain what she was doing – why she’d come back into your house—?’

Frances Palmer looked rather shamefaced.

‘No – that was the ridiculous part. I ought to have gone in straight away and challenged her. Of course I ought. But I was frightened, you see. I wanted Tom to be with me. I just scuttled down to the front door to look for him, and when he came – it
can’t have been more than half a minute later – we went up to the room, and she’d gone! Absolutely gone. That’s what I can’t understand. That’s what makes Tom say it’s all my
imagination
. You see, she
couldn’t
have come down the stairs behind me as I stood at the front door. Well, I mean, you’ve seen our tiny hall – she’d have been barely two yards away from me. Of course,’ she added a little wistfully, ‘if only there’d been
something
missing it wouldn’t have seemed so queer. We looked through my jewel case at once, of course, and at Tom’s silver I’d seen her standing – it’s an old-fashioned silver one, you know, it belonged to Tom’s father. Tom never wears it, he has a wrist watch, but it keeps very good time, and I suppose it’s worth a few pounds. Anyway, she hadn’t taken it. Nothing seemed to have been touched at all.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Louise slowly, ‘she hadn’t time. I mean, if she was going round examining things and making her plans, and then
you
came in – well, naturally she’d give it up and make a bolt for it.’

‘But how?’ protested the other girl. ‘I
know
she didn’t come down the stairs. I told you.’

‘Through a window, then,’ suggested Louise, though without much conviction. The chances that a respectable
tweed-costumed
lady could climb from an upper floor window in a street like this without being observed by the local Mrs Morgans seemed small indeed. Frances Palmer was speaking again:

‘I puzzled about it for ages,’ she said. ‘And for weeks I was scared of coming back into the house by myself. And then, when I’d just about stopped bothering about it,
you
rang up. You really scared me, you know. When I first heard your voice I thought it was
her
; but then when you went on talking, I realised the voice was quite different, and I knew it couldn’t be.
So then I thought she’d been asking about me – trying to track me down again – or something—’

Frances Palmer’s voice trailed away uncertainly, and Louise hastened to reassure her.

‘No, no. Nothing like that. She’s never mentioned you. It was just that—’ It was Louise’s turn to hesitate. She could hardly confess to this comparative stranger that she had been prying into her tenant’s private diary. ‘I – she left a paper about with some addresses on it,’ she lied feebly.

In spite of her agitation, young Mrs Palmer managed to put up a most courteous show of believing this, and was quickly rewarded with an only slightly edited account of Louise’s own fears and suspicions about Miss Brandon.

‘You know what all this adds up to, don’t you?’ said Frances slowly when Louise had finished. ‘You and I both recognised something about her. And your husband too. It’s too much of a coincidence that we should all of us have met her by chance on some previous occasion. The only explanation is that she must be some public figure. Don’t you see? Someone we’ve all seen photographs of in the papers.’

Louise did not immediately grasp Mrs Palmer’s full meaning.

‘You mean she’s a film star or something?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Honestly, I don’t think …’

‘No no – nothing like that!’ corrected Mrs Palmer, a trifle impatiently. ‘Other people beside film stars can get their pictures into the papers. Criminals, for example. Murderers.’

Louise swallowed.

‘But that’s nonsense!’ she exclaimed, a little too quickly. ‘I mean,’ she added foolishly, ‘she doesn’t
look
like a criminal—’

Didn’t she? Who’s fears was she trying to quieten, her own or Mrs Palmer’s?

‘I don’t see that,’ Mrs Palmer was saying. ‘I mean, a murderess who
looked
like a murderess would have been caught in the
first place, wouldn’t she? That’s why she’s still at large. That’s why she can still prowl about in other people’s houses —’ The pretty, capable little face suddenly crumpled: ‘She’s here now! I’m sure she’s here now!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I’m so frightened! Please don’t go! Oh, please stay until Tom gets in.’

Louise was surprised. This sudden collapse into panic seemed out of keeping with all that enviable housewifely competence. Or was housewifely competence a more limited quality than one usually supposed; something that didn’t stand up to much strain? However, there was no time now to dwell on the
comfortable
corollary to this theory – namely, that domestic incompetence such as Louise’s must necessarily denote other, more sterling qualities – for something must be done, and quickly, to soothe this frightened young woman.

‘There’s nothing for
you
to be frightened of,’ she pointed out. ‘Whatever brought her to your house last autumn – well, she hasn’t done anything more about it for six months, has she? Why should she suddenly start being interested again now? It’s
me
she seems to be interested in now. Or my husband.
I’
m
the one who should be frightened, not you.’

Louise observed, a little wryly, the look of relief that spread over her companion’s face at this not very comfortable
deduction
. But, after all, why should this girl worry overmuch about Louise, who was still, when all was said and done, almost a stranger?

‘I’d better be going,’ she began; but at this all Mrs Palmer’s alarm seemed to revive. ‘Oh –
please!
’
she exclaimed, ‘not till Tom comes in.
Please!
I know it’s absurd, but this has brought it all back to me so, you can’t imagine! I’ve got an awful feeling that when I go upstairs I shall find her in my bedroom bending over that table, just the way she was—’

‘But I
must
go!’ protested Louise. ‘It’s nearly six, and—’

Her companion broke in agitatedly:

‘Oh! I know. I mustn’t keep you. But please – before you go – I wish you’d just come up to the bedroom with me and look. I know it’s all nonsense, of course, but if you’d just do that before you go, then I think I’d feel all right again.’

‘Very well,’ said Louise resignedly; and a minute later she was following her hostess up the neat little staircase with its white painted banisters.

The bedroom had the same clean, dolls’ house prettiness of the rest of the house. The walls were painted pale pink, a pink floral counterpane covered the bed, and clean white curtains hung crisply at the windows. The tidiness of it all could have made Louise weep as she thought of her own bedroom at home. Mark’s second oldest suit thrown over a chair to remind her (so far unsuccessfully) to take it to the cleaner’s. Books and papers on every available surface. And shoes. Where on earth did other women keep their husband’s shoes? In this room, not a shoe was to be seen – nor, indeed, any garment of any sort. All the polished surfaces of the furniture were bare except for a few neatly placed lace mats, and, on the small bedside table, a pair of silver-framed photographs of Mrs Palmer’s snub-nosed baby and her astonishingly similar
snub-nosed
husband.

And, of course, the room was empty. No mysterious figures leaned over tables or cowered in wardrobes. To set her hostess’s mind still further at rest, Louise explored the rest of the little house with her. Everything was quiet and in perfect order.