Bob and Gillian were perfectly dressed. Mila had suggested they go for something that looked a bit like tennis whites, but which were either showing signs of great age or last-minute improvisation. Gillian was wearing a white pleated skirt of a length that hadn’t been fashionable since before the war, a rather dainty cream blouse with a lace collar, a greyish pullover three sizes too big and presumably borrowed from Bob and a dark green cloche hat. Bob had dug out the cricket whites he hadn’t worn since Oxford. They’d yellowed and still showed signs of ancient grass stains. Both carried plimsolls to change into. Bob’s were black. Their rackets looked like survivors from the age of the underhand serve.
Mila was wearing a yellow linen suit over a white blouse. 252Her shoes and racket were modern and Wimbledon standard, but soiled and scuffed for disguise. Like Gillian, she wore a cloche hat.
Skelton, as a non-combatant, was dressed in his usual Homburg and ill-fitting black overcoat.
Ellie the daughter and Putney the dog had been left at home with the nanny.
Their effect on Digby St Clements, who wore an outfit that looked as if it had been bought that morning from Lillywhite’s, was very satisfying. He looked around cautiously. What if someone saw him playing with this crew of ragamuffins? He’d never be able to hold his head up in the saloon bar again.
By the time they’d arrived at the court he’d consoled himself with the idea that the game would probably be over in no time at all. The possibility that any of them might take a point off him seemed remote. In fact, there was a good chance he’d never have a serve returned.
He smirked. They shook hands and he suggested a knock-up to ‘get the juices flowing’. Mila galumphed gracelessly around, nurturing a false sense of security in her opponent by striking the ball whenever possible with the wood of the racquet. Bob shouted encouragement when either she or Gillian actually returned a ball but never managed to return one himself.
It was too cold to be standing around. Skelton had seen Mila pull these stunts before and, besides, had spent far too much of his youth standing on the side lines, watching girls 253and boys play tennis knowing it was a courtship ritual in which he could never hope to participate.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. Mila saluted him with her racquet.
Towards Paddington, he knew there was a junction of two canals that somebody had once said looked a bit like Venice. It was something to aim for.
It took about fifteen minutes of brisk walking to get to the canals, and when he’d done so he decided that if this was, indeed, what Venice looked like then Venice was overrated. There was a towpath that might have made a pleasant summer stroll, unless it vanished into an endless tunnel somewhere, but it was cold and forbidding down by the water.
Skelton noticed that the street of stucco houses overlooking the canal was called Blomfield Road.
This was, he remembered, the address of Denison Beck’s alleged victim, Mrs Edith Roberts, also known as Marcia the Whip. He couldn’t remember the exact number but suspected it was somewhere in the twenties, so he walked up that way.
One of the houses had a mourning wreath on the front door. Skelton thought it was probably not the house of Mrs Roberts. She had died sometime in October and though a year’s mourning had been considered proper etiquette before the war, these days a couple of weeks seemed generous. On the other hand, the wreath was looking fairly dog-eared.
A maid came out of the house holding her apron like a hammock. 254
‘Excuse me,’ Skelton said, ‘is this the house where Mrs Roberts used to live?’
‘Oh, you’re him, aren’t you? Mr Skeleton.’
‘Skelton.’
‘That’s right, Skeleton. You’re doing the—’
‘Yes, I’ll be defending Mr Beck in court.’
‘Can I just say, it is terrible the things they’ve been saying about him. Sorry, can I just get rid of these?’
The apron was filled with scraps, crusts of bread and bits of cake. Skelton followed the maid down to the canal where ducks were already assembling. She tried to be fair, throwing scraps to the shy ones at the back, while the more aggressive ones fought over the big bits that had fallen on the towpath.
‘It looks as if they know you.’
‘So they should. Every day, on the dot. I’m Evie, by the way. Look out for that big ’un. He’ll have your leg off if you give him half a chance. Do you want a go?’
Skelton accepted the crust of bread she offered, broke it into smaller pieces and aimed for a small black bird with red on its beak that was hovering on the edges of the pack. Annoyingly, a bigger brown duck stole that piece. Red beak started to swim disconsolately away, but Skelton managed a couple of long lobs that hit a mark almost directly under his beak.
‘You’re a good thrower,’ Evie said.
‘I used to play a bit of cricket.’
‘I bet you were ever so good.’
He wasn’t. But it was nice of Evie to think so. 255
‘Have you seen, Mr Beck? Is he all right?’
‘He seems in very good health.’
‘He’s not in prison, is he? They haven’t put him in prison?’
‘No. He’s at home.’
‘He’s ever such a nice man, always had beautiful manners.’
‘Did you go often with Mrs Roberts, when she went to Wimpole Street?’
‘No. She went on her own. Got a cab and went on her own. No, I only met Mr Beck when he came here, and I gave him his tea and so on.’
‘He came here to Blomfield Road?’
‘All the time. Is it all right to say?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mr Beck said it would be best not to say anything about him coming here, not after they started accusing him of goodness knows what, but it’s all right to say to you, isn’t it? You’re on his side, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m on his side.’
‘He brought such a lot of happiness here. And, with her bad back and what happened to her husband, I thought Mrs Roberts deserved every scrap of happiness she could lay her hands on, and Mr Beck made her ever so happy. Brought the colour back to her cheeks and everything.’
As well as Marcia the Whip, then, Mrs Edith Roberts was Beck’s lover. No case had ever proved more baffling.
‘Was marriage ever mentioned?’ Skelton asked, wanting to make absolutely certain that he hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick and Evie was indeed talking about a romance. 256
‘Not as such, but you could see by the way they were together it wasn’t far off. Mr Beck told me I wasn’t to tell anybody.’
‘So, you didn’t mention any of this to the police or anybody?’
‘He told me specifically not to mention it to the police.’
There was sound reasoning in this. If the prosecution found out that Mrs Roberts, as well as being Beck’s patient, which she never was, was also his lover, it would be much easier to bump the charge up from manslaughter to murder. A lover’s tiff, an argument, a heavy hand on the voltage dial. He’d hang for that.
Which would be better? To let him hang, or to try to save him from the noose by revealing the existence of the photographs thereby invoking the wrath of Norris Lazell who would kill Beck anyway, along with Rose, Edgar, Aubrey, himself and possibly the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Skelton wished he was a duck.
When the bread was finished, they began to walk back to the house, with Evie rattling on about the good that Mr Beck had done for Mrs Roberts’ back.
‘Her relief when the pain started to get better – I’ve never seen anything like it.’
He was right then. Cracking a bullwhip was indeed the ideal exercise for a bad back. He made a mental note to recommend it to anyone he came across who suffered from lumbago.
‘She practically stopped taking the pills altogether.’ 257
‘What pills were these?’ Skelton asked.
‘The ones the doctor gave her for the pain.’
He knew from Mrs Roberts’ medical records that she had down the years been given various medications to ease her pain, none of which had been particularly effective.
‘And of course she’d tried no end of massages and osteopaths and … what are the other ones …?’
Skelton knew, because at one time he’d tried most of them himself, to see if they could help with his hip. ‘Chiropractors.’
‘That’s the one. And the tea. She loved the tea.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Comfrey.’
‘I tried that myself, for a bit,’ Skelton said. ‘I’ve got a dicky hip.’
‘I noticed you were walking a bit funny – sorry, no offence.’
Comfrey, otherwise known as ‘knitbone’, had been recommended by some well-meaning client.
‘Chap I used to know said I should give it a go,’ Skelton said. ‘So, I got hold of some and brewed it up, but I couldn’t get on with the smell or the taste, so I only had it once or twice.’
‘You have to drink it every day for months before it does any good. Mrs Roberts used to have it cold with lots of sugar. It grows wild, further down the canal and up the waste ground in Kilburn. She used to send a lad picking it for her. Gave him twopence a bunch. Here, you should try it again.’ 258
They were back at the house now. A couple of bunches of comfrey were hung out to dry in the porch. Evie took one down and gave it to Skelton. He smelt it and turned up his nose but stuffed it into his overcoat pocket out of politeness.
‘Try it cold with lots of sugar.’
He walked back to Paddington Recreation Ground slowly, stopping now and then to fill and light his pipe. He’d have liked to have been invited into the house to see whether there were any whips in the umbrella stand or leather trousers hung on the line to dry, but the invitation never came.
The game had finished by the time he got back to the tennis courts and Digby St Clements was doing his best to overcome the humiliation he’d suffered at Mila’s hands with a brave show of superciliousness.
‘And you certainly found your form in those last couple of sets,’ he was saying. ‘Managed to steal quite a lot of sneaky points off me. Serves me right, I suppose, for being too much of a gent and giving you an easy time. But I did think it important to make sure you enjoyed the game, because that’s the point, isn’t it? I tell you, though, if you work a little harder at that backhand and your serve, you could really make some progress.’
Mila gave him a playful smack on the head with her racquet and hurt him quite badly.
‘Must be off,’ St Clements said, ‘got to see the master of my old Oxford College. I think the cheeky blighter wants me to deliver some lectures.’ 259
And he went.
Slowly, Mila, Bob and Gillian collected their ragtag assembly of discarded overcoats, pullovers and scarves, and left the court.
Gillian had burnt a ginger cake for tea. Luckily, Pompey had a good appetite and afterwards had the decency to be sick somewhere discreet.