The Crimson Rooms (10 page)

“An insurance company wouldn’t pay out in a case where there had been such obvious foul play,” I said. “How could Wheeler hope to get away with it?”

“Exactly my thought. Wheeler, as I recall, was hardly the brightest boy in the class, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. The police, of course, have come up with a theory. They say it was purely by chance that Stella Wheeler’s body was found—after all, it took a particularly tenacious dog owner to unearth it. They say that it was probably Wheeler’s intention to go back, remove the gun and gloves, and rebury her more thoroughly, having raised the hue and cry to make it seem as if she was genuinely missing.”

“Has Wheeler said anything about all this?”

“Wheeler is still not speaking. He weeps and shakes his head and turns his face to the wall. I suspect he’s in shock though the prosecution will say it looks like guilt. I’m very concerned about the health both of his body and mind. Next time I visit I shall take a decent doctor with me.”

“Given the gun and the gloves, and Wheeler’s silence, isn’t it likely the police are right and that he did kill her? Who else would it be?”

Breen raised the newspaper higher to shut me out. “At this moment I have no idea. And it could indeed be Wheeler although I make a point of never believing a client of mine is guilty until he tells me so himself or a jury decides for me. But unless we take action, that man will be in and out of the dock and hung by the neck before anyone has time to get near the truth of the matter.”

In Wealdstone we walked along streets
milling with children released from school. Girls sat cross-legged in a circle on the curb with their summer frocks pulled up over bony knees, intent on a game of fives despite being in the midst of a crowded football match in which a dozen or so boys kicked a battered leather ball from gutter to gutter. A baby howled in its pram and waved frantic fists; a couple of toddlers earnestly collected a pile of cinders while their mothers leaned together, deep in conversation. I heard the name
Mrs. Wheeler
and realized that by now news of Stella’s death would be on everyone’s lips.

As we neared the Wheelers’ street, we discovered that the atmosphere was indeed charged. Although it was a balmy suburban afternoon, there was a distinct frisson of excitement and, as strangers, we were watched with more than usual interest. At the coal merchant’s on the High Street we turned left and then immediately right onto Byron Street, which consisted of two rows of terraced houses, a chosen few, including number 7, distinguished by the fact that they had bay windows on the ground floor. Later, as I built a mental image of Stella Wheeler, I realized that having that superior bay window would have meant a great deal to her.

A policeman waited on the doorstep, very hot and self-conscious, surrounded by a small crowd clamoring for information. Though Stephen Wheeler had paid a deposit on this house a couple of months before his marriage, its faded paintwork suggested that it had not been much cared for since. Even before I set foot across the threshold, Prudence’s strictures on the art of good housekeeping (until now, largely ignored) were playing on my mind. Stella Wheeler had not been an ideal housewife; her front step had collected more than a couple of days’ litter and her net curtains were grimy.

The policeman removed his hat, revealing a rash of pimples on his youthful forehead, and let us into a narrow hall. Pushier members of the crowd had to be discouraged from clustering in after us. There was a strong smell of damp, even in midsummer, and the linoleum on the floor was so well-trodden that in places the pattern was worn away. Though the house had been shut up for only a couple of days, there was a hopeless quality in the stale air as if even the bricks and mortar knew that the Wheelers were not coming back.

Prudence would have had a field day; there was grit along the skirting and dado, torn wallpaper, and grease marks around the door handles. The front parlor was bleakly furnished with a couple of ugly chairs, probably passed on by relatives of the newly married pair, and the hearth was ornamented by unlovely china, a floral vase with a yellow rim and base, and a matching ashtray.

The back room was a little more inviting. On the dresser, a dainty tea set was arranged with great precision, its gilt-edged cups polished, its saucers stood on their sides to show off their pattern. Inside the milk jug was a little card with a printed bouquet of flowers at one corner:
On Your Wedding Day. From All Your Friends at Lyons.
In the scullery beyond, preparations for the picnic were still evident (more proof of Stella’s slovenliness); it looked as if mice had got at the heel of a loaf of bread, and a pickle jar had been left open, attracting the attention of flies.

I had rarely felt as uncomfortable as I did then, on the verge of those other, ruined lives. And the stillness of the air, the way in which everything was suspended at the moment that the couple had set forth to catch the Metropolitan Line train to Chesham, the knife flung across the bread board and a dishcloth trailing on the side of the sink half in and half out of scummy washing-up water, reminded me of how time becomes warped in moments of trauma, so that physical surroundings are out of step with the lives that inhabit them. I remembered how Clivedon Hall Gardens, at the instant that I flung wide the front door and saw an envelope in the hand of a telegraph boy, had become frozen in time, so that it was not until the next morning that the toasting fork was hung back on its hook in the hearth or the tea tray carried down to the kitchen. Until then, Grandmother’s crochet remained in a heap on the floor, my coat and hat flung untidily across the hall stand, my satchel on the bottom stair.

I was reminded of this, fleetingly, at sight of Stella Wheeler’s little scullery with its half dozen or so flies buzzing at the window. She had presumably expected, as she left the house for a picnic, to return and continue where she had left off.

“The prisoner’s things will be upstairs in the cupboard,” said the policeman, suddenly officious. “I was told nothing else should be disturbed.” We climbed the stairs with their strip of diamond-patterned carpet and found two rooms, the back pitifully unused, with a spare bed covered by a blanket and a few incongruous household items, including a brand-new cast-iron boot-scraper in the form of a hedgehog, and a pitcher and basin in pink ceramic. I edged past a heap of packing cases and a chair with a broken cane seat, to peer out of the window onto a little backyard containing a privy, a shed, and a couple of pots planted with dying geraniums. Beyond and on either side were more backyards, in one of which a trio of women stood with folded arms, staring up at me. My appearance at the window would presumably cause yet more sensation in the neighborhood.

As we left that bleak little room, I saw a picture propped face to the wall. Expecting a wedding portrait—I had seen none so far—I turned it around, but it was, in fact, a photograph of two soldiers, one scarcely more than a child, full-lipped and with a pimple between his brows, the other a beardless Stephen Wheeler. Then as now, Wheeler’s eyes were his best feature, steady and solemn. Both men had signed their names underneath:
Paul Christopher Fox. Stephen Anthony Wheeler
. I thought it the saddest thing in the house, not the photograph itself but the fact that it had been set aside.

We went through to the front bedroom and here at last the figure of Stella Wheeler became more vivid to me. I understood that though she loathed housework, a great deal of time had been lavished on her own appearance. This room was entirely hers; there was no sign that she was married even, other than the man’s plaid dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. The bed was covered in a patchwork quilt, worked in shades of pink, and the surface of the dressing table spread with lace mats, upon which were arranged bottles, brushes, and pots of lotion. A flighty satin nightdress was folded on the left-hand pillow, great care having been taken to smooth it flat and keep the elaborate embroidery on the bodice exposed, and fluffy pink slippers of the kind also favored by Meredith peeped from under the chair by the dressing table.

Fortunately, there was hardly room for the policeman to enter—he had obviously been instructed to keep us in his sights—so instead he had to stoop under the lintel and crane to see what was going on as Breen made a great show of slamming drawers and throwing open wardrobe doors in search of Wheeler’s underwear. Meanwhile, I did as I had been instructed and attempted to uncover Stella’s secrets, which included a drawer full of surprisingly expensive-looking undergarments (all far more glamorous than my own): a bust flattener, a flesh-colored rubber girdle, a white
broderie anglaise
petticoat, satin knickers with fine lace trim, meticulously rolled silk stockings (I had one pair, Stella three). The dressing table had a shelf under the mirror and two small additional drawers on either side. One contained a few items of costume jewelry, the other her sponge bag, which smelled of damp toothbrush. Presumably, in the absence of a bathroom, Stella carried this bag down to the scullery each morning and night.

“So have you got everything?” asked the policeman.

“That’s it,” said Breen, “handkerchiefs, underwear. Good. Do you want to check them over, Officer? Anything else catch your eye that you think the poor man might need, Miss Gifford?”

I had found nothing startling; everything fitted the portrait I had been building of a youthful wife with a taste for finery and not much interest in her domestic surroundings. When I glanced inside the wardrobe, I thought the allocation of space very telling, Stella’s pastel frocks and coats occupied two-thirds of the rail while Stephen’s two suits were crushed at one end. But as we waited for the policeman to make a note in his book of the items we’d removed, I took another look at the sponge bag, it being the most personal item in the room. It contained toothbrush and paste, face cream, tweezers, rouge, a lipstick. Nothing else. Except that there was a tear in the oilskin lining, and slipped inside, between the inner and outer shell, was a scrap of paper, folded very small and of poor quality. I felt a little stab of excitement, thinking this might be it, whatever it was we were looking for, but when I smoothed it out, I found that it was just a cloakroom ticket, number 437.

When I returned that evening,
late again, to Clivedon Hall Gardens, the aura of the Wheeler house and its abandoned contents still clung about me and mingled with those other, more powerful images of my own loss. But as I unlocked the front door, all other thought was driven from my head by the sound of music—
jazz
, of all things—coming from the drawing room, and then the trill of Meredith’s laughter. As I hung up my hat, I was amused to catch myself patting my hair into place at the mirror. Just because Meredith said she admired you at lunchtime, I told myself, suddenly you’ve grown vain. Then I pushed open the drawing room door.

Meredith sat in Grandmother’s usual place at the end of the sofa by the open French window, the curtain blowing against her shoulder and a glass of what looked like whiskey in her hand as she mouthed the words of the song. Prudence was at the writing desk, as if to disassociate herself. A whole clutch of unwritten rules were being broken: no strong alcoholic beverage to be drunk by women unless in extreme circumstances such as Christmas, influenza, or a death; no music in the drawing room where, since James’s death, the piano had been shut up tight.

Another unwritten rule of postwar Clivedon Hall Gardens: no discussion of relations between the sexes, unless in the pages of an Ethel M. Dell novel sneaked up to her bedroom by Prudence and discovered quite by chance one day when Min brought it to me, supposing it must be mine. It had got caught up in a mound of sheets taken down to be laundered. After reading the first page and the last, I was never able to view Prudence in quite the same light again.
You are the prince of my heart—for ever. I love you as—as I never thought it was humanly possible to love.