The Crimson Rooms (54 page)

I playacted admiration but the idea of actually living there seemed too unreal for me to take seriously. The flat occupied less space overall than the servants’ floor at Clivedon Hall Gardens; there was no obvious means of heating apart from one oil stove; the bathroom, on the floor below, was shared with three other flats; and all in all it seemed absurd to reduce myself to Leah Marchant-type conditions. Fresh from the humiliation and, as it seemed to me, chaos of the Wheeler trial, my thoughts were all negative: I couldn’t possibly work in such a cramped space, we couldn’t afford it, we would be bound to fall out, and above all I could not abandon Mother to Clivedon Hall Gardens and the heartbroken Prudence.

“So now,” said Meredith, “tell me, what happened after I left? Weren’t you just so surprised to see Sylvia’s father in the dock? I was. Whatever will poor Sylvia make of it when she finds out? Surely all that stuff with the dancing girl was a bit of a red herring.”

“Maybe. But when I found her I thought she was significant. So much didn’t quite fit, notably that the dancer was worth a small fortune yet nobody seemed to know how Stella came by her.”

“And I don’t understand why there was such high drama. Why drag Hardynge in at the last minute, without warning?”

“Because up until today we couldn’t connect the dancer with anyone who’d bought her. We tried but . . .”

“It’s so unfair. Here we are, scrimping to find a few shillings’ rent, there he is, splashing out on bronze dancers. But then he is an extravagant soul, as I well know.”

“What do you mean, you
know
?”

“Remember I was in his house only a week or so ago. The place positively reeked of money. And do you know what, when he walked into court this afternoon I recognized him from the war. Like they said, he was a benefactor, fetched up at one of the hospitals from time to time bearing gifts, treats. But we didn’t like him. Oh, he had an eye for the young nurses all right. Some men are like that with women in uniforms. And there was something about his son, rumors that he’d bought him out, got him sent home. We didn’t like the sound of that either.”

“You knew of Hardynge’s son, Donald?”

“By reputation only. Through what they said about the father. We were supposed to be grateful to Hardynge, he bought the hospital supplies of medicines when we were very short, and chocolate and cigs for the men, you know. But we couldn’t like him. We avoided having to speak to him. There was something calculated about the favors he gave us, as if he were bound to want something in return.”

Sylvia’s friend came back and I offered to wash the cups while she discussed the flat with Meredith. From the kitchen I glimpsed her, a girl from another world, plucked eyebrows, luminous skin, flitting from room to room as she gushed about the views, the convenience for Victoria Station and shopping, the whole of London, in fact, though she skimmed over the question of how many people actually shared the bathroom and whether the temperature was bearable in winter. Finally, we all shook hands and Meredith and I ran down the steep staircases.

Outside, the skies were gray and there was an untidiness about the streets typical of London on damp and blowy summer evenings. The gutters were full of litter and smoke gusted from chimney pots, hinting at autumn. We had agreed to catch an omnibus, the number 16, which carried us along the side of Hyde Park, and we sat side by side on the top deck, second seat from the front, she with her little green bag on her lap, I with my briefcase.

Meanwhile, beneath all this activity, I was trying to work something out. Surely Meredith had said nothing much of significance? Only that Sir David Hardynge had visited her hospital in France. Well, our postwar world was full of people who’d known each other in that other life. But then, as the omnibus rumbled along the Edgware Road and the familiar nausea of travel sickness set in, I became aware of a weight settling in the pit of my stomach, which had nothing to do with the swaying motion of the top deck, and there was such a ringing in my ears that when Meredith gripped my wrist and spoke to me—something about preparing the ground with Mother—I couldn’t attend to what she said. We got off the bus and walked in silence, I stumbling occasionally and even knocking into her. At the door, I pleaded a splitting headache and said I would go straight to bed.

Upstairs, I turned the key in the lock, flung off my skirt and blouse, and lay with my hands clasped on my breast, gazing up at the glass bowl of the light fixture as the evening grew darker.

Hardynge. Bronze dancer. Stella Wheeler. Donald Hardynge’s career as a soldier. Connected.

Breen said he mistrusted coincidences and here was an entire parcel of them. A witness in a murder trial, unearthed through a bit of dogged ferreting by the commendably persistent Theo Wolfe, had turned out to be none other than the only suspect’s employer and benefactor, who admitted to a passing fondness for Stella Wheeler, former waitress. Was that all?

No. Meredith, a chance spectator to the proceedings, had recognized Hardynge from the war and knew him to have a fondness for young nurses or at least their uniforms, and a reputation for some kind of distasteful dealing to do with his son. Was that all?

No. I had been sent to Lady Curren’s house to be offered the release of the Marchant children. And there, on a side table, was a photograph of her close relatives, the Hardynges, and in their midst, Nicholas. Was that all?

Yes, surely.

No. There was something else. What was it?
Why drag Hardynge in at the last minute, without warning?
Meredith had asked. The reason was that the salesman at an exclusive dealer of fine art in Piccadilly, who had promised to connect the bronze dancer with the name of its purchaser, had disappeared. And what day was that?

Last Friday. The day after my tea at Fortnum’s with Nicholas. I had told him, as an aside to hide my anguish at his lateness:
There is a statue, a bronze dancer, someone must have bought it . . .

I got up, strode about the room, seized a pen and paper, and wrote everything down: the date of Stella’s murder, the date of Wheeler’s arrest, the date that Nicholas came into my life during the Leah Marchant hearing. He had spoken my name on the steps of the court.
Miss Gifford
. He even claimed, during our afternoon on the hill above Chesham, to have heard details of my brother’s heroic death.

There was a tentative knock on the door, a testing of the latch. “Evelyn, may I come in?”

I unlocked the door. Mother was very pale and too distraught to notice that her blouse had lost a button and was gaping at the breast. “Evelyn, what is this I’ve been hearing from Meredith about your sharing a flat together?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Mother. Nothing will come of it.”

“That’s not what she’s saying. Prudence is hysterical. I’ve never seen her like it. Meredith made her lie down with her feet on a cushion. We had to ring for Min. Meredith says you went to see the flat this evening. Why didn’t you mention it? Is this to punish me because I didn’t tell you about James’s letter?”

“It is nothing of the kind. You know I would not be so cruel. It was very wrong of Meredith to mention it without consulting me first.” Or perhaps she had consulted me on the bus and I hadn’t been listening. “I really have no intention of falling in with her plans.”

“I thought we were getting on so well together. That lunch we had. I told you I was sorry, what else must I do? Oh, Evelyn, I really don’t think I could abide it here without you.”

“You’re always saying I should marry,” I said, rallying suddenly. “What’s the difference?”

“You know full well that if you were married I would have a second home. Grandchildren. Perhaps, in time, a refuge. And I sometimes thought that if you married, you might choose to live here with your new husband. To save money, you know.”

“Mother.” I couldn’t help laughing.

Her mouth turned down at the corners, a familiar look of hurt disappointment. “I brought you a letter. I always seem to be delivering letters these days, don’t I? It’s been sitting in the hall all day. Your friend from the north, I believe.”

I took the envelope, kissed her, closed the door, and locked it again. This time I waited many minutes before I could bring myself to open the letter.

I
lay wide-eyed most of the night
and every so often made another jotting in my notebook. The nightmare went on and on. I wanted there to be a flaw, something to call a halt to this speculation. But no. The more I thought, the more plausible it all became.

By five o’clock I had a plan of sorts and at last turned on my side and slept for an hour. Then I dressed, bathed my stinging eyes, went down to the kitchen, and begged a cup of tea from sleepy Rose, who was riddling flame into last night’s embers, ate a slice of bread and butter, and told her I would not be back until very late, nobody must wait up for me. Then I crept out of the house and into the early morning, which was already humming with a new day’s activity. There was no sign of yesterday’s cloud except for a faint pallor in the west, and the streets were skimmed with mist in the early sunshine. I presumed that Wheeler, in his cell, would have no idea whether or not the sun was shining. And I thought of Nicholas, in Manchester, rising from his bed in some rather grand hotel room, dressing in his wonderfully tailored garments, packing his bag, eating a substantial breakfast, thinking perhaps of me.

I had plenty of time, so I took an omnibus to Hyde Park, entered by the Albion Gate, and walked down its eastern end to Hyde Park Corner. As the morning advanced, a breeze got up and a few early fallen leaves rustled along the path and settled at the edge of the lawn. As I passed the bandstand—deserted, of course—heaped deck chairs, clusters of trees and shrubs, my head was full of images of the lost. The day after we’d received news of James’s death, I had got up early, like today, and taken this identical route to the Censorship Office, my feet performing their regular task of carrying me forward, my heart stone, my mind refusing to recognize the indelible line that had been drawn beneath my brother’s name. And then there was Stella, who had met her death among trees, a fearful end for a city girl. Yet she had made a sorrowful little collection of acorn cups and conker cases. What had she been trying to cling to as she tucked them away at the back of her wardrobe? The nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital emergency department had said that they regularly received scrapings from the park, an assortment of vagrants, drunks, and prostitutes, some of whom, as I well knew, appeared in the magistrates’ courts each morning. Perhaps Stella had also spent time in London’s green spaces. Alone? With whom? With him?

Next Green Park, St. James’s Park, and the long path by the lake. Every moment London was growing louder. And then I was on Great George Street, among the significant buildings of Westminster. It was nearly a quarter to eight.

All but a handful of women had been dismissed from our office after the war, but I hoped that some men, or rather one in particular, might have been retained. So I found a bench with a good view of the side entrance, where we used to bundle in each morning, having wrapped ourselves deeper in coats and scarves because we knew it would be far colder inside than out, and watched hopeful pigeons approach my feet, men in trilby hats, clean collars, and rolled newspapers, the occasional office girl in her cheap summer frock with its skirt crumpled in the back, and an older woman in a light green, knitted suit. I saw a brown paper bag tumble over itself and automobiles, with their hoods up against the morning chill, a queue of omnibuses, cabs, delivery lorries, a brewer’s cart.

Just after eight-thirty, I saw him approach, recognizing him at once though he wasn’t in uniform. It was his gait that marked him out, somewhat apologetic, an air of being guarded against the world. Perhaps he had retained his chic little flat behind Harrods where he slept each weekday night, perhaps he even possessed still that startling red bowl. His empty sleeve was hanging loose and his face had grown thinner. I had pondered for hours how I might approach him; as it was, I simply stood in his path and spoke his name.

He was very puzzled, as well he might be, when his mind had to stretch back more than six years. Perhaps, I thought with a ghostly internal smile, I had made no real impression upon him at all. But finally a light came to his eyes, then clouded as the memories flickered.

“I need your help,” I said.

He considered me for a few moments with his thoughtful, rather beautiful eyes, the color of sky just before dawn. Then he instructed me to follow him and we went through the main entrance into the lobby, where the porter whipped off his cap and hurried to summon the elevator. We waited in silence for the doors to open, ascended three floors without speaking (in the old days, the elevator had been out of bounds to girls like me and we had clattered up flights of tiled steps), and came at last to his office, which was very grand with book-lined walls, a silken rug, and south-facing windows. He sat on one side of a vast, empty desk topped with leather, I on the other.