Saturday night into Sunday, June 18
Stella lay in her bed and looked at the ceiling. It was a hot night, muggy and damp with a torrid feeling which only London in high summer with no wind can achieve. She was too nervous to have a window open. She must have a metal grille fixed.
She shifted uneasily, trying to get cool. Under the sheet she was wearing only a thin silk nightgown but even that felt too much. She slipped it off and tossed it to the ground. Somehow her body still felt hotter than the sheets. Perhaps she should have kept the gown on. It was amazing how warm and sticky bare skin could feel.
She wondered how John Coffin was doing upstairs. It was probably cooler in his tower.
She tossed around, restless and nervous.
In all her life, which had included two marriages and numerous other alliances, no physical violence had ever been used against her. Certainly not in sexual attack.
She wondered what it felt like. What she would do? Would she see it coming and try to evade it, run away? That was the sensible thing to try for. She was fleet of foot and could run fast if she got the chance. Everyone said that was the best thing to do. Shout and run fast. She’d be able to shout, she knew how to use her voice.
But there might be nowhere to run. Trapped in a room, a passage, a dark corner, then you couldn’t escape.
She’d fight, she knew herself well enough to know that as a truth. But she had never had to fight physically and would probably not be very good at it. She had to hope her teeth and nails would be sharp enough. She thought she could guarantee to leave a mark or two on her attacker.
But what would it really be like? This impact of one violent, hostile male body upon her own. The smell, there was bound to be a smell, all bodies had their own smell. There would be nothing pleasant about the attacker’s smell. Drink, drugs, sweat, urine.
Stop that, Stella, she thought. Leave it.
She couldn’t leave the subject. How would I feel if the worst happened?
She imagined the hands, the heat, the actual moment of penetration.
Unwelcome thoughts piled in.
And would you, in the end, enjoy it? Would your body simply say: This is what I was made for?
What a question to ask a woman, she thought, as she sat up in bed and piled the pillows behind her. You aren’t supposed to ask that sort of thing. I won’t answer.
But she did answer. No, she thought, the answer is No, because you’d be frightened, in pain, not ready.
But the body had its own rules, its own ideas. Nothing was certain.
I might cry if I go on thinking like this, she decided.
She went to the refrigerator and got herself some iced water, then carried it back to drink.
One thing was certain: if the worst happened, she would bear it better than one of the Feather Street ladies.
The moment she held that thought clearly in her head, she knew she was coming out of her bad mood, and feeling better.
You could always tell a Feather Street lady. They admitted it themselves. As well as Mary Anneck and Philippa Darbyshire, there was Alice Graham and Daisy Armour and Mrs Farmer (she had never got to know her first name, perhaps no one did) and Violetta Mason.
They all had the same walk, it was the way they put their feet down. Firmly and cleanly, as if they always knew the way. They didn’t wear the same sort of clothes, but they always looked the same somehow.
They all went to the one hairdresser. Or didn’t go at all. But it couldn’t be that on its own. No, it was that they all thought they had a right to know.
To know what? she asked herself. To know what was necessary, of course.
Leaning back on her pillows, she began to feel interested. Well, she’d got the female side of Feather Street weighed up, but what about the men, no one mentioned them? That meant something. Then she felt amused, and then sleepy.
‘Better now,’ she told herself. ‘All over.’
It was the sort of thing you said to a child after a bad dream, but it helped her.
She drifted off to sleep.
John Coffin was sleeping soundly in his tower. Night noises filtered up through the open window, but did not disturb him. He had his own private nightmares, but they were different from Stella’s and centred more on civil riot and disturbance.
But sometimes he had a dark dream in which Stella was at the centre of this rampaging crowd, that she was pinned there, calling for help. The crowd wanted a scapegoat, a victim, and although it should be him, somehow it was Stella they had caught. And in this dark dream he failed to rescue Stella. He had woken, sweating yet shivering, from this dream more than once.
A church clock struck the hour, a cat called hopefully to another feline, a late aeroplane muttered across the sky to Heathrow. A night silence is made up of all sorts of noises, his brain accepted them and was not troubled.
But with dawn, one noise did get through to him. He turned over restlessly. It seemed to him he heard a dog whining.
Yet it was pretty far away, and presently it stopped. He had hardly stirred in his sleep.
But he remembered it when he woke up in full daylight, it was going to be another hot day, and he stood in his kitchen making a cup of that instant coffee that Stella so despised. She had bought him a special automatic coffee machine, but he never had time to use it.
And, as a matter of fact, he really liked this strong powdered sort he stirred up.
That dog in the night, what had it been upset about?
Death always distressed a dog if it was forced to notice it. Bob, the mongrel, had not noticed the death of Kay Zeman because he had been carefully sheltered from it by Val and Jim Marsh, both of whom, in their different ways, had seen that his life went on as normal. Which was all a dog asked of life really.
But Bob could be frightened, and that night he had been frightened. He had noticed death.
Feather Street awoke to the day slowly, and with care. They were usually stirred to life by the arrival of their milk, followed by the delivery of the newspapers and the post. When all three deliveries had been made, Feather Street got up and made breakfast.
Each household had its own favourite breakfast but there was a sort of similarity between them, as Stella would quickly have picked up. Milk was skimmed, but would have been unpasteurized if this had been procurable in London, bread was unbuttered, and fruit unsugared. Coffee, if taken, was carefully ground and filtered.
Being nearer to the whining Bob than John Coffin, the Feather Streeters had been more disturbed by him.
Leonard Zeman who was a heavy sleeper had heard nothing, but Felicity came down, fully dressed as always, and said: ‘I think you ought to go over to Val’s. There may be something wrong there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Didn’t you hear the dog in the night? No, obviously you didn’t. Well, there was a dog howling and I think it was Bob.’
They had a basement kitchen, always lit by artificial light and very clinical, so there was no looking out of the window, but it was what he wanted to do at that moment, to draw in some cool fresh air. He drank some chilled orange juice instead.
‘Wake up, Len,’ she said.
‘How do you know it was Bob?’
‘I didn’t recognize his voice, if that’s what you mean, but the howling was coming from that direction.’
‘But it’s stopped now.’
‘He’s a selfish old sod,’ said Felicity. ‘Once he’d got himself comfortable, he’d give up.’ Arthur, her white peke, came and lay across her feet. Danger here, he was saying. ‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’
‘You don’t sound worried.’ Nor did she, she sounded calm and quiet as if she was not surprised, as if this might even be something she had been expecting or even waiting for. Of course, she didn’t like Val.
‘I’ll ignore that. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, I’d better investigate.’ The juice had woken him up. ‘Are you coming too?’
‘Of course.’
‘This may be about nothing. Val can look after herself.’ He was taking the keys of the what had been his mother’s house from the board where they hung for anyone to take as required.
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘Where’s Tim?’
‘Still asleep. Tomorrow he goes for his interview with Superintendent Lane. I shall go with him, of course.’
‘I think it would be better if I went.’
‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘I just thought it might be easier for him if I went.’
‘I’m close to Timmy,’ said Leonard defensively. ‘As close as anyone. I don’t think one ought to keep bothering the lad.’ He ignored the fact that the police, not to mention life itself, were about to bother Timmy in a substantial way.
‘I don’t think anyone is very close to Tim,’ said his mother. ‘Not at the moment, poor lad.’ She led the way down the garden and along what they called the dog walk. A gap in the hedge would, by skirting the Anneck house, bring them to the other Zeman house. ‘I think he’s in a state of clinical shock. We really ought to get him looked at. Lieberman’s good. He might be the man to go to.’
‘My God, you can be cold sometimes, Fe.’
‘Oh no, not cold at all.’
Felicity was not a Feather Street lady, you could tell it by her kitchen, by the way she walked. This was perhaps why she was not liked by the other ladies. They felt she was a different sort of animal.
‘Lieberman, though. So that’s what you think of Timmy. That would please the police, if we walk in there with Timmy in the care of an expert in criminal psychology. They’d probably get the handcuffs out straight away.’
‘Lieberman has other interests,’ said Felicity coolly. ‘And Timmy has other problems. You may not choose to call them that, but I think he does.’
When you approached this Zeman house from the back you saw how badly it needed painting, Leonard, who was his mother’s executor, knew that she had left it to Val for her lifetime and then to Timmy. Val knew this, and probably Tim too. The unwritten provision was that with the house went Bob the dog.
Everything was very quiet, but Val never got up early.
‘Shall we go in at the back?’
‘We can’t just burst in,’ said Leonard.
‘Val won’t be too surprised if she sees you, will she?’ said Felicity drily. ‘I mean it won’t be exactly the first time.’
Leonard ignored this. ‘I’ll ring the bell.’
‘No one ever answers that backdoor bell. I can’t think when anyone ever rang it. My goodness, there isn’t a tradesmen’s entrance these days.’
They were standing arguing in the garden.
Leonard got the keys out of his pocket and opened the back door. ‘Val, you there? Val?’
No answer.
He went through the kitchen, where there were signs that Val had made herself a drink at one point, there was the open tea-caddy and the tin of biscuits. She had left the bottle of milk outside the refrigerator; in the hot night it had gone sour and looked solid.
In the sitting-room, Bob was in his basket, sleeping heavily, he gave little snorting snores every so often.
‘Told you he’d be asleep,’ said Felicity. ‘But where’s Val?’
‘She’s upstairs asleep, I expect,’ said Leonard. ‘We shall look fools.’
‘But why doesn’t she answer?’
Felicity went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Val, are you there? It’s Felicity.’
She started to move up the stairs, but Leonard drew her back. ‘Wait. Let me.’
Felicity halted. She was a doctor too, but if there was anything wrong, then probably Val would prefer Leonard to find her. In this restraint Felicity was unlike the Feather Street ladies, not one of whom would have hesitated to go bounding up the stairs to see what was what.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at her hands, capable, well scrubbed, good hands. Hands which obeyed her behest, whatever she told them to do.
Leonard came to the top of the stairs. ‘Fe … Come up.’ His speech was unsteady, as if he could not breathe.
Felicity walked up the stairs slowly, not hurrying.
In the back bedroom which had always been hers, Val was lying on the bed on her side, her face buried in the pillows. She had been sick.
On a tray by the bed was a small teapot with a cup and saucer. A plate, empty except for chocolate-coloured crumbs, was on the floor, as if Val had knocked it from the table.
Her body was still warm, but she was not breathing.
Felicity drew away from the bed.
‘Shall we try resuscitation?’
‘No.’ Leonard was still having difficulty with his breathing. ‘It’s been too long. If we did bring her back, the brain would be gone. There would be nothing there.’ He drew a bedcover over Val’s face. ‘She’s not there now.’
Felicity picked up the plate and put it on the table.
Leonard was still looking at the bed. ‘There’ll have to be an inquest this time.’
‘Why do you say that?’ A strange thing to say. This time? When was last time? She was aware she should not have asked. But some questions just pop out.
‘I’m not sure. At all events I can’t give a death certificate. She’s not my patient. Not even in our practice.’
Of course not, thought Felicity, they would be too wise to mix patient and lover relationships.
‘She’s under Jeff Green at the Elmgate Centre. I don’t know what he’s been prescribing. If anything.’ It was hateful to talk about darling Val in this way, as if she had not been a person he loved, but professional training helped.
‘I’ll ‘phone him for you, shall I?’
‘No, I’ll do it myself. Better that way.’ He looked at the plate. ‘Not sure if you ought to have touched that plate.’
‘Why?’
‘The police …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. ‘It depends on what Jeff Green says, but I think it’s something we’ve got to face.’
They went down to the kitchen together. The telephone was in the hall; Kay Zeman stuck to that old-fashioned placing when everyone else had them all over the place, and even in a pocket.
Leonard started to dial the Elmgate Health Centre and his wife went through to the kitchen.
‘Where’s the dog?’ he called out, telephone in his hand.
‘Asleep in his basket.’
Bob was still in his basket, still asleep, still breathing heavily, but now irregularly in bursts.
‘Cheyne-Stokes breathing,’ recorded Felicity absently, without thinking much, her mind still on Val and the telephone call Leonard was making and what might follow.
Then she looked at the dog, knelt down by him, and touched his nose. He did not stir. He was too deeply asleep.
She thought: It wasn’t for Val he was howling, but for himself. Bob thought he was going to die.