Footsteps in the Park Page 7

  And Dorothy was pale, but composed, just as he had prophesied she would be, and Margaret was late sitting down at the table, having spent longer on her face and her hair than usual. Phyllis was determinedly saying nothing.

  ‘Two strong wills out to please themselves,’ she had told the bacon as she flipped it over in the frying-pan. Two rashers each, with the eggs broken into a cup first. ‘So what is the point of me saying anything?’ Besides, Gerald was coming round to pick Margaret up, and heaven forbid that he would think they were the sort of family who made bother over the breakfast table. He had hinted vaguely about having had a nanny when he was a small boy.

  ‘I can just imagine him as a dear little red-haired Christopher Robin, can’t you?’ she had asked her sister Ethel, who had gone home and told her husband Raymond that she thought Phyllis was getting carried away.

  ‘You’d think their Margaret was marrying into royalty,’ she’d sniffed.

  He rang the bell just as Phyllis was carrying the plates through into the dining-room.

  ‘That smells good, Mrs Bolton,’ he said, smiling.

  He was wearing a suit she hadn’t seen before in a dark blue cloth, with a matching waistcoat, and his hair, flattened to his head with brilliantine, shone a darker red in the sunshine streaming through the high window in the hall. Margaret, who had let him in, kissed him on his closely shaven cheek, and thought he looked and smelled delicious.

  ‘Don’t tease Dorothy this morning,’ she whispered to him. ‘You’ve seen it in the paper about the beastly park murder? You remember I told you she was friendly with the girl’s brother? Well, Father is taking her with him when he goes to the house. Mother and him had words about it last night.’

  ‘Beastly business all right,’ Gerald said, and followed her into the dining-room.

  ‘Cup of tea, Gerald?’

  Phyllis raised the pot and smiled at him. ‘I do believe we might be getting some warmer weather at last. It says on the wireless that it’s going to rain later, but I refuse to believe it.’

  Gerald shook his head. ‘No tea for me, thank you, Mrs Bolton. I’ll just sit here and look at the papers if you don’t mind.’ And he took them from the sideboard where Matthew had hoped they might lie until he’d left the house.

  ‘Aye, it’s in,’ he said, in answer to his wife’s raised eyebrows. ‘Trust the Mail to be quickest off the mark.’

  ‘Beastly business,’ Gerald said, reading the account avidly as they ate. ‘Don’t feel you have to hurry back to the mill, Mr Bolton. I can cope with anything that might crop up, and fob the police off if they try to disrupt things too much.’

  Matthew smiled wryly, wondering what old Tom Sowerbutts, who had worked at the mill as under-manager since his father’s time, would have to say to that. Wondered, not for the first time, if Tom’s decision to retire at the end of the year had anything to with the arrival of the young accountant from London.

  ‘New brooms sweep clean, Mr Bolton,’ he’d said when Gerald’s method had clashed with his own well-tried schemes. ‘And never let it be said that I clung on when my time came to go. Besides, the wife and me have set our minds on a bungalow at St. Annes. It’ll be nice for the grandchildren to come and spend their school holidays with us – all them sand-dunes to play hide-and-seek in, and Blackpool not more than a tram ride away.’

  ‘We won’t be stopping down Inkerman Street, just calling there,’ Matthew told Gerald. ‘It’s just the least I can do to offer to help in any way I can.’ He folded his white starched napkin up and rolled it into the right shape for the silver ring. ‘Finished, Dorothy, love?’

  And in spite of his warning glances, Phyllis followed them to the door, handing her husband his trilby, and telling Dorothy to come straight back with Philips in the car.

  ‘I won’t feel safe with you out on the streets till they’ve caught that man,’ she said, and flushed as Dorothy gave her an unexpected kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Mother, for not going on about it. If I . . . if I can see that I’m in the way, I won’t even go in . . . it’s just that I want Stanley to know that I’m . . . that I . . .’

  Phyllis counted ten to stop herself from saying that surely a nicely worded letter would have done just as well, but in any case Mrs Wilkinson was coming up the path clutching the inevitable basket, and whatever Phyllis might have said was certainly not for her ears.

  And to anyone walking down the tree-lined road that spring morning, with the sunshine lying dappled on the wide pavement, and with Philips holding the door of the car open as his employer and his daughter climbed in, there was nothing to suggest that life in the big house wasn’t going on in its usual serene way.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Bolton,’ Mrs Wilkinson said as she made her way round the back of the house to the side door.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Wilkinson,’ Phyllis answered, waving as the car reversed into the road.

  Then she closed the door and walked into the kitchen where Mrs Wilkinson was tying the strings of her flowered apron behind her back, and saw the Daily Express reposing in the basket on top of the fur-trimmed bedroom slippers.

  ‘That poor little lass,’ Mrs Wilkinson said, sitting down on a kitchen chair to ease her feet out of her bunion-shaped black lace-ups. ‘To think that your Dorothy is so friendly with her brother! It brings it home don’t it? – when you actually know the family what’s involved. I could see how pale she was, poor lass, she must be right cut up about it. Did she know the sister – the one what’s been murdered – as well?’

  Phyllis closed her eyes for a moment. It was beginning already. . . .

  Six

  ‘YOU’VE BEEN TO Stanley’s house before, have you, love?’ Matthew Bolton’s voice was gentle. This was not the time for recriminations, or even for questions, and the way he phrased it made it sound more like a statement of fact.

  Dorothy shook her head. She looked scared half way to death, as if what she was doing was a tactless embarrassment, but had to be done all the same. Like strangers gatecrashing somebody’s funeral, Matthew thought grimly. He patted her knee.

  ‘I’m not trying to pry, chuck.’

  She forced a smile. ‘I know that, Father, but Stanley’s mother knows about me. She’s told him off many a time for not being more open about being friendly with me. She asked him was he ashamed of me, or something?’

  Matthew’s mouth turned up at the corner. Aye, he could just imagine Mrs Armstrong saying that. She would see nowt wrong with her son being friendly with, or courting, a mill owner’s daughter. She’d reckon her Stanley was doing Dorothy a favour . . . he’d come up against that fierce kind of pride many a time in his dealings with his workers at the mill. He didn’t suppose Ada Armstrong would turn a hair of her black head if her Stanley took the King’s daughter back for tea. And that was something Phyllis would never understand. Pride to her was based on possessions – what a man had, not what he was. Change a man’s accent and his mode of dress and his status in life matched. Nay, Phyllis would never understand. He breathed deeply, staring straight forward, transfixed, at nothing. What was it his father used to say?

  ‘Do what’s right, lad, and there’s no one in the whole world better than thee. Allus remember that.’

  They were turning now into Marston Road, a long road with the houses, though terraced, of Victorian respectability. Each with its own flight of steps, some of them made of dark red and yellow tiles, adding a note of almost Continental cheerfulness. Here lived the white-collar workers of the town. The clerks, the shop managers, the printers and compositors, with unleafing bushes in the tiny iron-railed front gardens, and if they were lucky, the box-room plumbed in as a bathroom. Matthew was pleased to see that Dorothy was leaning forward, staring out of the car window with interest. Seeing how the other half live, Phyllis would have said.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve never been along here before? Isn’t that awful? I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never even been this way.’

  The par
t of her that was all Phyllis was deciding privately that these houses weren’t bad at all. One of them had a striped awning over the front door, almost a replica of the one Philips would be fitting over their own polished front door, should the sun shine for more than two days running.

  But Philips was signalling right now and turning the car into a much narrower street, and there, far below them, was a panoramic view of the town, its thousands of chimney pots on thousands of roofs lit to a mellow softness by the early morning sun, its tall mill chimneys pointing black fingers into the blue sky.

  Here, as the car moved slowly down the steep slope, the houses huddled closely together, front doors opening straight on to flagged pavements. Women, down on their knees on pieces of matting, were mopping doorsteps, edging them with a thick line of yellow-stone, wiping over a semi-circle of flags directly in front of their own door. Throwing pails of water over the entire frontage, then sweeping the water into the gutter with long-handled brushes. Standing on straight-backed chairs to clean the windows with wash-leather bundles, the more daring sitting out of the top windows, clinging on with one hand and feverishly rubbing away with the other.

  ‘It’s the next street, Mr Bolton.’

  The back of Philips’s neck betrayed his ill-concealed excitement at what was going on, by taking on the hue of a ripe tomato. After all, as he was to tell Vera that evening, going to the house of a murder victim was not the sort of thing everybody did every day. It had upset him, of course it had, but all the same, there was a sense of importance and even of excitement at being involved, even if only indirectly. Like all the people who had claimed to be patients of Dr Crippen. . . . He shuddered pleasurably.

  But if Philips had been expecting to have to beat off crowds of reporters, or avid sightseers round the door of 27 Inkerman Street, he was doomed to disappointment. Death was respected and given its fair due in streets like Inkerman Street. Now that it was common knowledge that Ruby Armstrong was dead, the flag-moppers and step-stoners were at the backs of their houses, doing their gossiping over the yard walls, or standing in little groups beneath the lines of flapping washing in the cobbled backs. Front doors were closed, and some of the neighbours, in a gesture of sympathy, had drawn their long curtains, giving the short steep street a closed and shuttered appearance.

  Philips parked the black car at the kerb, and before he could get out to open the rear door, was told to stay where he was.

  ‘We’ll not be long,’ Matthew said, holding out his hand to Dorothy. Then, crossing the pavement, he raised the iron knocker set high in the door of twenty-seven, and gave three short raps.

  ‘I won’t know what to say . . .’

  Dorothy turned a worried face towards him, looking, at that moment, far younger than her seventeen years. ‘To say we’re sorry seems so . . . so inadequate.’

  ‘Just coming’s enough, love,’ Matthew whispered, hearing the sound of footsteps down the uncarpeted passage behind the door. ‘It’s you coming what he’ll appreciate.’

  And when Stanley opened the door, and she saw his thin, suffering face, there was no need for words. To her dismay, tears sprang to his eyes as he opened the door wide for them to pass, and Matthew left them there, staring at each other with a mute and touching obvious affection. By God, but they’re really smitten with each other, he thought as he found his own way through into the living-room.

  Ada Armstrong was sitting by the inevitable fire, wearing a black cardigan over a navy-blue dress, her face as white as a corpse’s, her hands for once idle in her lap. Her lack of surprise at seeing him standing there by the big square table, covered now with a maroon velour cloth, told him that she was in a state of complete and utter shock.

  Matthew put his hat on the table. ‘Good morning, Mrs Armstrong,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to tell you that, if there’s owt I can do, tha’s only to speak.’ He went over to her and touched her gently on her shoulder. ‘Tha remembers me? Matthew Bolton, from the mill?’

  She nodded, but didn’t speak. It was going to be harder than he’d imagined. He put an envelope on the table next to his hat.

  ‘Tha’ll be needing this, Mrs Armstrong.’ He tapped it with a finger. ‘There’s folks might think I’m being tactless at a time like this, but I’ve never been one for keeping me mouth shut when to open it might help. And I don’t suppose tha’s much put by.’

  ‘Put by?’ she said, and the pale lips in the dead-white face lifted just a fraction at the corners.

  Matthew moved over to a chair, and lifting the tails of his black overcoat, he sat down. By the gum, but it was hot. What with the sun slanting in through the window and that great fire roaring away up the chimney, already he could feel the beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead. She read his thoughts.

  ‘Three buckets of coal, all left outside ’back door. Folks is very kind.’

  ‘Aye, you find your friends. . . .’ Matthew nodded. ‘And I’m going to tell that lad of yours to come to me for owt you might need . . .’

  She looked him straight in the eye, then glanced at the envelope on the table. ‘I’ll not insult you by refusing, Mr Bolton. You’re a good man, but our Stanley will see to things. He’s finished all his exams so he’ll be stopping off school till after the . . . the funeral.’ She tilted her head bravely. ‘He might only be a lad, but he’s doing what has to be done.’

  ‘This is Dorothy, Mum.’

  Stanley came into the room with Dorothy following, and led her over to his mother’s chair. ‘She’s come to see if there’s anything she can do.’

  ‘Like running errands, Mrs Armstrong,’ Dorothy said, the words she had been rehearsing deserting her completely. ‘There must be food you need . . . and I’ll know better what to get than Stanley. Or writing letters for you . . .’ She faltered. Gosh, that was a silly thing to say. Now this little woman who was staring steadily into that enormous fire would think she thought that she couldn’t write. ‘Or ironing,’ she added desperately, causing Matthew, even in spite of the circumstances, to raise an eyebrow in surprise, as never, to his knowledge, had he seen his younger daughter wielding an iron.

  Ada Armstrong nodded, still without looking at Dorothy. She didn’t want to look at her, if the truth were known. This was a young girl, not much older than her Ruby had been, a pretty girl with a soft and tender voice, and hair as fair as Ruby’s had been dark, curling sweetly round her bonny face.

  And she was alive.

  And Ruby was dead. . . .

  ‘We have a good neighbour,’ Stanley said quickly, stepping in for his mother. ‘She’s out doing a bit of shopping now. She says she’ll take over me mother’s commitments till . . . till . . .’ He stopped talking and stared at the floor.

  ‘There’s to be a post-mortem. At two o’clock this afternoon,’ Ada said then, speaking directly to Matthew. ‘He’s going down . . . I wanted them to bring her home, but it’s not . . . it’s just not possible.’

  ‘They’ll get him, Mrs Armstrong,’ Matthew said. ‘They’re clever, the police are. They’ll leave no stone unturned. Aye . . . Aye,’ he said again, standing up and reaching for his hat.

  ‘That won’t bring our Ruby back though, will it?’ She was rocking the chair gently, backwards and forwards, her face as expressionless as the poker resting in its stand in the hearth.

  Again Matthew pressed her shoulder, then he turned to Dorothy. ‘I’ll be waiting in the car,’ he said, and walked out of the room, down the brown-painted passage and out into the street, conscious of twitching curtains as Philips scrambled out and held the door open for him to climb inside. He was conscious of a dismaying sense of anticlimax. He’d said it all wrong. Whatever he’d come to say, he’d said it all wrong. It was all very well feeling sorry from a distance, sincerely feeling sorry and wanting to help. But it wasn’t brought home to you that what had happened had happened to real people; could have happened to Dorothy. Or Margaret. Damn it, it could have been Phyllis sitting there in a chair having to listen to what was
practically a stranger mouthing stupid offers of help. He should have sent the money round from the mill with a messenger . . . and it weren’t enough, nowhere near enough. The way she’d looked when he’d said that bit about having a bit put by. Phyllis was right in some ways. There was a big gap, a bloody big gap, and nowt could bridge it. Matthew sat there, brooding into the top of his hat which he’d laid across his knees.

  ‘I’ll come again if I may, Mrs Armstrong,’ Dorothy was saying. ‘May I come again?’

  Ada nodded. ‘If you want to, lass. Our Stanley’ll be glad to see you.’

  ‘Even if I couldn’t care less’ her expression said, and overcoming with difficulty a sudden urge to bend and kiss the pale cheek, Dorothy turned away and, choking back tears, walked out of the room.

  Behind the front door Stanley put his arms round her. ‘I’ll not forget you coming,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not that she doesn’t like you; it’s just that . . .’

  ‘I’m not Ruby,’ Dorothy finished for him. Then, as her heart seemed to be physically swelling with emotion inside her, she looked up and gently touched his hair. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘If it helps to know that, I love you, Stanley.’

  Then she was outside in the street, running round the car to get in beside her father, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The car broke down two streets away from the mill, the engine dying with a splutter as Philips changed into bottom gear. So leaving it standing black and square at the side of the road, they walked the rest of the way, three abreast, Matthew muttering that he’d give that garage what for when he telephoned. ‘You can’t trust nobody to do a proper job these days,’ he said, then turned to Philips. ‘It might be better if you went there, now, in person. If I get through it’ll only be that bit of a lad in the office. Come back and tell me what they say, and tell them I want that car on the road by this afternoon. And don’t take no for an answer,’ he shouted as Philips touched the neb of his cap and crossed over the street.