The Strange Story of Linda Lee (16 page)

They then discussed terms. Mrs. Burnaby said the only single room she had free was on the top floor at the back of the house, but it overlooked the bay, and Linda could have it for forty-five dollars a week, which would include full board; so Linda said she would like to see the room. It proved to be small and had a sloping roof, and she would have to go along the passage to a communal bathroom, to which she had long been unaccustomed. But the bedroom was quite pleasantly furnished. She was then shown two rooms on the ground floor. Both ran the full depth of the house. One, a lounge, had a reasonable number of easy chairs in it; the other, which was a dining-room, had one long table in the centre and six small ones along the sides. Linda guessed that, had she not so stupidly said she was a film actress, she could have got such accommodation for forty dollars or less, but staying at a good hotel would have cost her at the very least three times as much; so, having stipulated that she should be given one of the small tables in the dining-room to herself, she said that she would move in.

Mrs. Burnaby’s brother obligingly carried up the seven suitcases. Linda tipped him handsomely and, having shaken hands with her, he went off grinning. The luggage almost filled the small bedroom, but the landlady
said there was an attic along the corridor that Linda could have the use of to hang up some of her clothes and store the empty cases; then she left Linda to unpack.

For a few minutes Linda gazed out across the beach at the Pacific. It was not blue, as she had hoped, but there were several ships in the distance and, nearer the shore, four small yachts, which gave the view a pleasant animation. She had only freshened herself up with a wash, redone her hair and unpacked her overnight bag when a gong sounded downstairs, evidently indicating lunch.

In the dining-room there were two elderly couples and one middle-aged pair, seated at small tables, and two Chinese men at the larger one. They all eyed Linda with interest as she was shown to her table by a pert, teenage waitress; but she gave only the slightest of bows on passing the nearest couple, then settled herself to read the menu. It was handwritten and offered no choice, simply stating:
Cauliflower Soup, Macaroni Cheese, Strawberry Ice
. When the waitress brought the soup, Linda asked for the list of drinks. The girl’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Drink list! We don’t have them sort o’ things here. No licence. But you can bring in yer own if you like. I could do you a Coke, though, or a Seven-Up.’

A shade ruefully Linda settled for a Coke. While she was eating the meal, which proved quite passable, two ladies, who looked like spinsters, and a bald man with a limp came in and took separate places at the big table. Linda had, in any case, decided to keep herself to herself as much as possible, and what she had so far seen of her fellow guests strengthened her determination.

Having been up so early, by the time she had finished
lunch she felt very tired, so she went up to her room and lay down on the bed to sleep. When she woke it was close on five o’clock. Although she did not feel like going out, to drink cocktails and wine had become such a habit with her that she could not face the prospect of a drinklcss evening, so she dressed for the street and went in search of a wine merchant’s. Failing to find one in the neighbourhood, she enquired of a policeman, to learn to her dismay that in Canada there were none. One could buy liquor only from the State stores, and these shut at five-thirty.

A little further back she had passed a quite large hotel, so she retraced her steps, went in, settled herself in the lounge and beckoned over a waiter.

Smiling, he shook his head. ‘No drinks served here, Miss, nor in the rooms. The only parts of an hotel like this that are licensed are the dining-room and the bar downstairs.’ Marvelling at this evidence of barbarity in an otherwise civilised country, she made her way down to the bar. There were only a few people there, so she took one of the unoccupied tables and ordered a White Lady. As she drank it, a man nearby started to ogle her. Looking straight through him, she froze him with her stare, then ordered another cocktail. As she lingered over the second, she was beginning to wonder if she had been wise to choose Canada as her place of exile. For a single woman, and a very attractive one, who could get a drink only by going into bars where she was likely to be pestered by men, life there did not promise to be very pleasant.

By the time she got back to the Astley she found that she was late for the evening meal. The dining-room was now nearly full, but the guests she had not previously seen appeared to be as dull as those who had been there
for lunch. Again, although there was no choice on the menu, the meal proved quite good, and she noted with relief that on several tables there were bottles of wine, so she would not be remarked on if she brought her own in. Afterwards she felt that she could not face the lounge, so went straight up to her room and read a paperback until she became drowsy enough to go to sleep.

The following morning she unpacked two of her suitcases but left the rest untouched, taking them along to the attic to get them out of the way; because as yet she was by no means certain that she would stay on at the Astley. Her trouble was that, for about the same money, she would encounter similar conditions in any other small hotel, and she was reluctant to make serious inroads into her capital by staying for any length of time at a big one. For the same reason she resisted the temptation to go out and lunch at a good restaurant, instead of eating the unexciting but adequate meal she was already paying for, because that might become a habit.

But immediately after lunch she telephoned for a taxi and when it arrived, taking with her the brief-case in which she kept the precious jewels, she asked the driver to take her to one of the banks in the centre of the city. He set her down at the Bank of Montreal, and there she arranged to hire a safe-deposit box. Into it she put the jewels, except for a few minor pieces to wear if the occasion arose, and the rest of her Swiss francs.

After that she had a hair-do, which made her feel much more cheerful; then, having spent an hour window-gazing in Grenville and West Georgia Streets, she went into the big Hudson’s Bay Company store, where she bought chocolates, fudge, butterscotch, sweet biscuits and several paperbacks.

Her last visit was to a State liquor store. To her great annoyance she found the price of French champagne prohibitive and even European still wines were very expensive. Mistrusting the wines with names unknown to her, she bought two bottles of rum, two of gin and one each of sweet vermouth, brandy, Cointreau and Benedictine. With the rum she could spike Cokes to drink with her meals and the other half-dozen bottles she reckoned would keep her going for quite a time with a variety of cocktails which she would mix in her room.

As she returned to the hotel in a taxi with her purchases it occurred to her that, although she had become a criminal, she could at least console herself with the thought that, had she not become one, she would now be living in a London boarding house which would be less comfortable than her quarters at the Astley, and leave her next to nothing to spend on such luxuries as books, drink and chocolates.

During the day the thought that had worried her most was that she would have to spend her evenings in the lounge with her unattractive fellow guests; but a way had occurred to her of avoiding boring conversations.

That evening at dinner when the little waitress asked her a question, she pretended not to hear it clearly. The girl repeated it louder and added: ‘Didn’t know you was deaf.’

‘Unfortunately, I am; rather,’ Linda replied.

Later, in the lounge, when the bald man with a limp came up and introduced himself, she again pretended that she found difficulty in catching what he said. After a few minutes he gave up and, with a little smile, bowed himself away to look at the television programme
which was operating on a low key at the far end of the long room. Shortly afterwards the two ladies whom Linda had judged to be spinsters came up and spoke to her. By the same tactics she soon got rid of them and was able to settle to her book.

At the far end of the street lay the entrance to Stanley Park, so next morning she went for a walk there. The park covered the whole of a great irregular, club-shaped peninsula that jutted out between English Bay, on which Beach Avenue stood, and Burrard Narrows, in the broad inland bight off which lay Vancouver harbour. The park was a thousand acres in extent and Linda thought it the loveliest she had ever seen. Near its entrance nearly every form of sport imaginable was catered for, and further on there was a large, boat-studded lake with a lovely fountain in the centre; also great areas preserved as primeval forest in which rose towering Hemlocks, Douglas Firs and Redwoods, one of the latter bearing a plaque stating that it was estimated to be two thousand years old. At the Tea House on Ferguson Point she had a light lunch, then continued to wander about in the beautiful woods for a good part of the afternoon.

She spent the next morning in the town and in the afternoon went to see a film. The following day she again spent in the park, this time exploring the eastern side, where there were two zoos, one specially for children, and an aquarium in which there were sharks, dolphins, turtles and even a whale. There were also a miniature railway, a rose garden with one bed in which both red and yellow roses were blossoming on every bush, and another garden which had in it every tree, bush and flower mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

These expeditions served to while away the days, but
the meals and evenings in the lounge at the Astley were already proving tedious. An alternative was to let herself be picked up. On numerous occasions in London men had endeavoured to accost her and here, while walking in the city, several had given her more than a passing glance. But if she allowed a man to dine and wine her more than a few times he would naturally expect her to go to bed with him, and that she was not prepared to do.

For her to get a job of any kind was out of the question, because she had no work permit, and to obtain one she would have to produce her passport to the Canadian authorities. They would then register her as Linda Lee and, by now, Interpol might be aware that Linda Lee and Linda Chatterton were one and the same person; so such a step could prove her undoing.

To move on to another city was no solution, and Vancouver at least had museums, art galleries and other attractions which would provide her with things to occupy her for a while. But she could not escape the fact that she had saved herself from poverty only to face a bleak and lonely future.

On her fifth morning in Vancouver, after her bath Linda sat for some minutes looking in her dressing-table mirror at the face she knew so well. The golden brown eyes with their exceptionally clear whites under the high arched eyebrows were undeniably beautiful; so was the mouth, with its full inviting underlip and perfect teeth. The oval face made an admirable setting for the features but they had been even more striking when crowned with the halo of springy curls.

Her brown hair, with its golden lights, was now parted in the middle and hung down on either side of her face. But, after nearly a week, it had become slightly wavy
and showed a distinct crinkle where it had grown a trifle above her forehead. To keep it straight it would soon need another treatment. It then occurred to her that this partial disguise was now pointless, and that to restore it to its pristine glory she need not wait for it to become naturally curly again. She could have a permanent wave.

In consequence she spent the better part of the afternoon at one of the best hairdressers in the city; and during the long session she had ample time to again contemplate the situation in which she had landed herself. She had beauty, intelligence and plenty of money; but of what use were these to her if she must continue to lead this dreary, solitary existence? Too late she saw that she had acted like a fool. She now felt no remorse for having robbed Elsie of the jewels, as she had not done so from greed, but on a stupid impulse to which she had been driven from fear of poverty.

If only she had had more time in which to think she would have realised that her own one hundred and eighty pounds, plus the pay from any typing job, would have enabled her to live without real hardship for several months. That would have been ample time for her to trace Eric and get in touch with him. Even had she failed in that, it was certain that within a few weeks he would have learned of Rowley’s death and written to her care of her mother, whose address she had left with Elsie. In either case his response, she felt certain, would have been immediate. He would have rescued her from poverty and with him she would have found security and happiness. Whereas, in a moment of madness she had cut herself off from him by becoming a criminal and was now faced with a miserable, joyless future.

Next morning, now listlessly, with not the faintest premonition that fate had in store for her a drastic new turn in her affairs, Linda once more went for a walk in the park. This time she took the main road that ran through it up to Prospect Point at its northern end.

She had covered about half the distance when she started to cross the road to get a closer look at a rare species of tree that she had never before seen. Just there the road curved and, as she stepped out from behind a clump of tall bushes, a car came round the corner. Before she could draw back it ran past, narrowly missing her. But one of the door handles caught the handle of her bag. It was jerked from her hand and the sharp pull on it flung her sideways to the ground. Her forehead struck the exposed root of a tall tree, and she was knocked out.

Linda remained unconscious for barely a minute. She was lying face down, with her forehead on the tree root. She heard running feet, then strong hands grasped her shoulders and turned her over. As she opened her eyes she found herself staring up into the anxious face of a brown-complexioned man with a high-bridged nose, black eyes and smartly-trimmed black hair.