"Don't be silly now," Ida said. "I'm your friend. I only want to save you from that boy. You're crazy about him, aren't you? But don't you understand he's wicked?" She sat down on the bed and went gently and mercilessly on.
Rose whispered: "You don't know a thing."
"I've got my evidence."
"I don't mean that" the child said.
"He doesn't care for you," Ida said. "Listen, Fin human. You can take my word I've loved a boy or two in my time. Why, it's natural. It's like breathing.
Only you don't want to get all worked up about it.
There's not one who's worth it leave alone him. He's wicked. I'm not a Puritan, mind. I've done a thing or two in my time that's natural. Why," she said, extending towards the child her plump and patronising paw, "it's in my hand: the girdle of Venus. But I've always been on the side of Right. You're young.
You'll have plenty of boys before you've finished.
You'll have plenty of fun if you don't let them get a grip on you. It's natural. Like breathing. Don't take away the notion I'm against Love. I should say not.
Me. Ida Arnold. They'd laugh." The stout came back up her throat again and she put a hand before her mouth. "Pardon, dear. You see we can get along all right when we are together. I've never had a child of my own and somehow I've taken to you. You're a sweet little thing." She suddenly barked: "Come away from that wall and act sensible. He doesn't love you."
"I don't care," the childish voice stubbornly murmured.
"What do you mean, you don't care?"
"I love him."
"You're acting morbid," Ida said. "If I was your mother I'd give you a good hiding. What'd your father and mother say if they knew?"
"They wouldn't care."
"And how do you think it will all end?"
"I don't know."
"You're young. That's what it is," Ida said, "romantic. I was like you once. You'll grow out of it. All you need is a bit of experience." The Nelson Place eyes stared back at her without understanding; driven to her hole the small animal peered out at the bright and breezy world: in the hole were murder, copulation, extreme poverty, fidelity, and the love and fear of God; but the small animal had not the knowledge to deny that only in the glare and open world outside was something which people called experience.
The Boy looked down at the body, spreadeagled like Prometheus, at the bottom of Billy's stairs. "Good God," Mr. Drewitt said, "how did it happen?"
The Boy said: "These stairs have needed mending a long while. I've told Billy about it, but you can't make the bastard spend money." He put his bound hand on the rail and pushed until it gave. The rotten wood lay across Spicer's body, a walnut-stained eagle couched over the kidneys.
"But that happened after he fell," Mr. Drewitt protested--his insinuating legal voice was tremulous.
"You've got it wrong," the Boy said. "You were here in the passage and you saw him lean his suitcase against the rail. He shouldn't have done that. The case was too heavy."
"My God, you can't mix me up in this," Mr. Drewitt said. "I saw nothing. I was looking in the soap dish, I was with Dallow."
"You both saw it," the Boy said. "That's fine. It's a good thing we have a fine respectable lawyer like you on the spot. Your word will do the trick."
"I'll deny it," Mr. Drewitt said. "I'm getting out of here. I'll swear I was never in the house."
"Stay where you are," the Boy said. "We don't want another accident. Dallow, go and telephone for the police and a doctor, it looks well."
"You can keep me here," Mr. Drewitt said, "but you can't make me say "
"I only want you to say what you want to say. But it wouldn't look good, would it, if I was taken up for killing Spicer, and you were here looking in the soap dish. It would be enough to ruin some lawyers."
Mr. Drewitt stared over the broken gap at the turn of the stairs where the body lay. He said slowly: " You'd better lift that body and put the wood under it.
The police would have a lot to ask if they found it that way." He went back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. "I've got a headache," he said, "I ought to be at home." Nobody paid him any attention. Spicer's door rattled in the draught.
"I've got a splitting headache," Mr. Drewitt said.
Dallow came lugging the suitcase down the passage; the cord of Spicer's pyjamas squeezed out of it like toothpaste. "Where was he going?" Dallow said.
"The Blue Anchor, Union Street, Nottingham," the Boy said. "We'd better wire them. They might want to send flowers."
"Be careful about finger prints," Mr. Drewitt implored them from the washstand without raising his aching head, but the Boy's steps on the stairs made him look up. "Where are you going?" he asked sharply. The Boy stared up at him from the turn in the stairs. "Out," he said.
"You can't go now," Mr. Drewitt said.
"I wasn't here," the Boy said. "It was just you and Dallow. You were waiting for me to come in."
"You'll be seen."
"That's your risk," the Boy said. "I've got things to do."
"Don't tell me," Mr. Drewitt cried hastily and checked himself, "don't tell me," he repeated in a low voice, "what things..."
"We'll have to fix that marriage," the Boy said, sombrely. He gazed at Mr. Drewitt for a moment the spouse, twenty-five years at the game with the air of someone who wanted to ask a question, almost as if he were prepared to accept advice from a man so much older, as if he expected a little human wisdom from the old shady legal mind.
"It had better be soon," the Boy went softly and sadly on. He still watched Mr. Drewitt's face for some reflection of the wisdom twenty-five years at the game must have given him, but saw only a frightened face, boarded up like a store when a riot is on. He went on down the stairs, dropping into the dark well where Spicer's body had fallen. He had made his decision j he had only to move towards his aim; he could feel his blood pumped from the heart and moving indifferently back along the arteries like trains on the inner circle. Every station was one nearer safety, and then one farther away, until the bend was turned and safety again approached, like Netting Hill, and afterwards receded. The middle-aged whore on Hove front never troubled to look round as he came up behind her: like electric trains moving on the same track there was no collision. They both had the same end in view, if you could talk of an end in connexion with that circle. Outside the Norfolk bar two smart scarlet racing models lay along the kerb like twin beds. The Boy was not conscious of them, but their image passed automatically into his brain, released his secretion of envy.
Snow's was nearly empty. He sat down at the table where once Spicer had sat, but he was not served by Rose. A strange girl came to take his order. He said awkwardly: "Isn't Rose here?"
"She's busy."
"Could I see her?"
"She's talking to someone up in her room. You can't go there. You'll have to wait."
The Boy put half a crown on the table. "Where is it?"
The girl hesitated. "The manageress would bawl hell."
"Where's the manageress?"
"She's out."
The Boy put another half-crown on the table.
"Through the service door," the girl said, "and straight up the stairs. There's a woman with her though "
He heard the woman's voice before he reached the top of the stairs. She was saying: "I only want to speak to you for your own good," but he had to strain to catch Rose's reply.
"Let me be, why won't you let me be?"
"It's the business of anyone who thinks right."