The Crimson Rooms (18 page)

“When is your tea break?”

“Half an hour.”

I waited, at first fretfully, then more calmly. There were any number of uses to which I might have put that half-hour. Prudence’s birthday, for instance, was imminent and I might have shopped for handkerchiefs or some equally unimaginative gift. Prudence was impossible to please, because she had so many negative opinions about things. There were bookshops nearby in which I could have looked up the latest legal publication or even found some little treat for Edmund. I could have taken a walk. But instead I remained at the table, sipping tepid, overbrewed tea and accustoming myself to Stella Wheeler’s world. An older waitress stood listlessly in the doorway, arms folded, watching the street. Her cap was neater than Carole’s, but her hair had been badly cut and sat unevenly on her collar. She adjusted her weight from one leg to the other, as if to relieve pain.

Time passed. An elderly woman came in with a couple of children a little younger than Edmund, who spent a painful length of time choosing between chocolate and banana milk shakes. Which would Edmund prefer? I wondered. Perhaps one day he would come with me to a tea shop. My heart ached at the thought of his sturdy legs swinging from the chair opposite. James had been for chocolate, every time. Carole reappeared with a trolley and began systematically clearing and wiping tables. I heard the hands on the clock above my head shift a notch and somebody drop a bit of china in the kitchen. A grubby boy arrived at the counter and asked if he could have something for a farthing. What an uncomplicated trade a waitress’s must be, I thought, skimming the surface of other people’s lives, their moments of celebration, exhaustion, or simple thirst a matter of complete indifference. In my own work I was expected to meddle, and look where that had got me.

Promptly at a quarter past three, Carole again emerged from the kitchen, this time without apron or cap and with the top button of her dress undone. She wore a pink cardigan and a straw hat, so that her ashen skin seemed rosier. When we were outside, I heard her inhale sharply and it was true that even the air in that street, reeking of manure and motor fumes, seemed fresh after the cigarette smoke and kitchen smells of the tea shop. She walked ploddingly with her handbag clasped in both hands and told me that she worked until six and caught the bus home to Balham. It was a long day—ten hours—and she missed Stella all the time and couldn’t believe what had happened to her.

“We were mates,” she said. “We used to get the giggles terribly, you know, about some of the customers. There’s no one to have a laugh with now.”

“Can you describe her for me?”

“She was quite moody. She liked her own way. But she was very pretty and always hugged you after she’d been mean, or bought a bit of chocolate, so you had to forgive her. And she was hardworking and would always cover for you if you was tired or sick. I think in all the years I knew her she was hardly ever off ill or late even.”

“How long is it since you last saw her?”

“A couple of weeks. Like I said, I went to her wedding in April and then she came into town after work and we had a drink. I can’t bear to think that was the last time I’ll ever see her. I’ll try and go to the funeral, although the manager says we can’t all have time off. As far as he’s concerned one person is more than enough and it’ll probably be him.” Her skin was so fine that I thought the tears might seep through rather than hang on the edge of her lids.

“Tell me about the wedding.”

“Well, of course, because she was getting married she had to stop work, and she was excited about that, but then sad at the end, I think. We had a party on the Friday, and we’d had a collection, even head office chipped in, and so we gave her this tea service she wanted from Lawleys—she and I were always walking past the windows and she had her eye on one set in particular—and on the Saturday we went to the wedding and she looked beautiful, but then she always did. It took her weeks to choose a frock, creamy-yellow, all floaty at the back. It suited her lovely because she was thin and it showed her ankles. But she said it wasn’t to be so fancy she couldn’t wear it afterward.”

“Did you like Stephen Wheeler?”

It had dawned on me that I must not underestimate Carole—her responses were carefully weighed. “Does it matter if I liked him?”

“The thing is I don’t know either of them. We are having to defend Stephen based on very little because as I said he’s not talking to us yet, though we hope that might change.”

“But his gun was there.”

“It was. His gun and his gloves.”

“He was nice,” she said, taking the plunge suddenly. “
I
would have married him if he’d asked.”

We smiled, though the expression in her eyes was raw and pitiful. “He was quite a bit older than she, wasn’t he?” I asked gently.

“
Much
older—fourteen years or so. But he seemed so kind even though Stell said the war changed him, made him heavyhearted sometimes. Whenever we met he’d shake my hand and give me ever such a lovely smile. And when he wasn’t smiling he’d look sad again but I thought lucky old Stell, to have a man like that, who you could bring ’round easy enough, I thought, by taking care of him and treating him very softly. I used to be so jealous of her, the way he’d be there after work with his hat off, waiting for her. I thought she took him an awful lot for granted.”

“And after she was married, do you think he was still kind to her? Were they happy?”

This drew a very sharp look indeed. “I don’t know much about that,” she said. She broke off suddenly. “Do you have a watch? I only have quarter of an hour for tea.”

“Your time is almost up.” We walked much faster back along Hanover Street while I decided which of a dozen questions was most important. “What did you talk about that evening in the pub after work?”

“Mostly about work, and the manager, and customers she remembered. She said she sometimes even wished she was still working, which we thought was mad because she’d been champing at the bit to get out.”

“So she was a bit bored but otherwise all right. There was no suggestion that she was frightened or anything?”

“No. Definitely not. Just restless as usual, always looking around. There was a sort of spark in her eye that I’d not seen before. She said we should go out for tea in her house one Sunday afternoon when she’d got it all nice but she couldn’t fix on a date for the time being.”

But how long would it have taken Mrs. Wheeler, I wondered, to make her house presentable enough to hold a tea party?

We were on Regent Street again and the noise of cabs and carts was almost too intrusive for speech. “Miss Mangan, is there anything else you can think of that might help me? Any reason Stephen would suddenly turn on her? Nothing she might do to make him angry or jealous?”

“Jealous?”

“For instance, was she ever keen on anyone else?”

“The police asked me that.”

“What was your reply?”

“We all have our admirers, even me. I gave them a list of men who used to ask especially for Stella.”

“But there was no one special?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Could I have a copy of that list?” We were at the doorway of the tea shop. “And Miss Mangan, might you have a photograph of Stella?”

“A wedding photo, yes.”

“I’ll call back then, shall I?” She nodded and gave me one of her shyly acute glances. Then she stepped across the threshold to the interior, which had grown much more crowded in the short time we’d been away.

I
dreaded my return to the office,
where I would have to face Breen, but although I was back by four-thirty, a time when Wolfe was generally taking tea and Breen rattling off dictation, I found Arbery Street deserted save for Miss Drake, who was stabbing at the keys of her typewriter. I placed the Lyons receipt in her in-tray, bade her good afternoon, and descended to my basement office, where I made a note of my discussion with Carole Mangan and wrote up Leah Marchant’s disastrous bail hearing.

Periodically, as I recalled the painful events of the morning, I glanced up at the corroded bars on the window, the lime-stained sink, and teetering stacks of files, thinking how ironic it was that after Leah’s first hearing I had offered my resignation, whereas after her second I faced dismissal. At six o’clock I heard familiar movements overhead, presaging Miss Drake’s departure; the whisk and clatter of a typewriter closed down for the night, the washing of cups in the new scullery, the upending of chairs so that the floor would be properly swept tomorrow morning. Next I heard her reluctant footfall on the basement stairs and a note was pushed under my door, typed on the inside of a thrice-used envelope.

Another slip of paper followed (my receipt from Lyons). On the back, Miss Drake had written in her famously regular copperplate:
Application refused. All expenditure pertaining to company business must be authorized before its incurrence.

The atmosphere in Clivedon Hall Gardens,
when I arrived home, was even more frigid than at Breen & Balcombe, and with some cause: I was late for dinner, everyone was hungry, Meredith had gone out, and Edmund was misbehaving by sitting on the bottom stair and refusing point-blank to go to bed. His thumb was stuck in his mouth so deep that his lips lapped his wrist while he glowered at Prudence, to whom thumb-sucking was an anathema. Min was hovering exasperatedly at the top of the basement stairs. Had she been left in charge, like in the old days when James and I were children, she would have brooked no such nonsense.

“I’ve promised him a story,” said Mother, trying to take hold of his free hand, which he snatched away and pushed under his thigh, “but he says no. He’s being very naughty. He hardly touched his supper. We had no idea when you were coming so we insisted he ate his.”

“But Meredith and I had agreed he would eat with the grown-ups.” Faced with an intransigent boy, none of us knew what to do with him. Mother, it seemed, had forgotten all she ever knew about handling children, though if my memory was accurate it had always been her preferred duty to float downstairs in a mist of lace and rose water, ready to dine out or watch a play, rather than to stay in and put us to bed.

“It’s no use his being hungry now,” said Prudence, “he should have eaten when he had the chance.”

The little boy pressed his knees together and pattered his fingers on the side of his nose.

“Oh, dear, are you hungry, Edmund?” asked Mother, and I knew she was terrified lest he was, because what could she do about it? She could scarcely defy Prudence.

Rather than reply, he lowered his eyelids so that his cheeks were shadowed by his long lashes. I admired his obstinacy. “Why don’t you and Prudence keep Grandmother company?” I said to Mother. “I’ll put Edmund to bed.”

“But what if he won’t go? We’ve all tried. Mother offered to take him up one of her collections.”

My heart ached for Edmund, with his downcast eyes and wedged-in thumb; he must be very miserable. But I also knew that this had become a battle in which we were all joined. If I failed to get Edmund to bed, it would be a triumph for Prudence, who was bound now to be willing him to stay put.

Once Edmund and I were alone, I attempted to stroke his head but he flinched away. Had this been the six-year-old James, and such behavior of Edmund’s was uncannily like his father’s, I would have tickled, cajoled, and joked until I had persuaded him to race me up the stairs. But I was no longer nine and I had forgotten how to tease a small boy without hurting his pride, so instead I found myself addressing him like a court of law. “It seems to me you have three choices, Edmund. You can either stay there until your mother comes home, though I think you’ll get very tired, or you can sit at table for us, which as you know is pretty dull, or you can come up with me and we’ll have a story, and you can wait for your mother in your bed. The latter seems by far the most advisable course of action, but it’s up to you.”