Wexford had never seen anything like this before, but the interior of Flat Fifteen was less unfamiliar. It reminded him of certain Kingsmarkham cottages he had been in. Here was the same squalor that is always present when edibles and washables are thrown into juxtaposition, opened cans among dirty socks, and here in one of those battered prams was a baby with a food-stained face such as town and country alike produce. It was deplorable, of course, that this young girl and her child should have to live in a subterranean cavern, perpetually in artificial light; on the other hand, daylight would have revealed even more awfully the broken armchairs and the appalling carpet. In a way, this was a work of art, so carefully had some female relative of the landlord's repaired it. Wexford couldn't tell whether it was a blue carpet mended with crimson or a piece of red weaving incorporating patches of blue Axminster. The whole of it was coated with stains, ground-in food and the housekeeper's hair combings.
She alone of the room's contents could have stood up to the searching light of day. Her clothes were awful, as dirty and dilapidated as the chair coverings, and dust clung to her greasy black hair, but she was beautiful. She was easily the most beautiful woman he had seen since he came to London. Hers was the loveliness of those film stars he remembered from his youth in the days before actresses looked like ordinary women. In her exquisite face he saw something of a Carole Lombard, something of a Loretta Young. Sullen and dirty though she was, he could not take his eyes off her.
Howard and Clements seemed totally unaffected. No doubt they were too young to have his memories. Perhaps they were too efficient to be swayed by beauty. And the girl's manner didn't match her looks. She sat on the arm of a chair, biting her nails and staring at them with a sulky frown.
'Just a few questions, please, Mrs Pope,' said Howard.
'Miss Pope. I'm not married.' Her voice was rough and low. 'What d'you want to know? I can't spare very long. I've got the bins to take up if Johnny doesn't come back.'
'Johnny?'
'My friend that I live with.' She cocked a thumb in the direction of the baby and said, 'Her father. He said he'd come back and help me when he'd got his Social Security, but he always makes himself bloody scarce on bin day. God, I don't know why I don't meet up with any ordinary people, nothing but layabouts.'
'Loveday Morgan wasn't a layabout.'
'She had a job, if that's what you mean.' The baby had begun to grizzle. Peggy Pope picked up a dummy from the floor, wiped it on her cardigan and thrust it into the child's mouth. 'God knows how she kept it, she was so thick. She couldn't make her meter work and had to come to me to know where to buy a light bulb. When she first came here I even had to show her how to make a phone call. Oh, they all irnpose on me, but never the way she did. And then she had the nerve to try and get Johnny away from me.'
'Really?' said Howard encouragingly. 'I think you should tell us that, Mrs Pope.'
'Miss Pope. Look, I've got to get the bins up. Anyway, there wasn't anything in it, not on Johnny's side. Loveday was so bloody obvious about it, always coming down here to chat him up when I was out, and it got worse the last couple of weeks. I'd come back and find her sitting here, staring at Johnny, or making out she was fond of the baby. I asked him what she was up to. What d'you talk about, for God's sake? I said. Nothing, he said. She'd hardly opened her mouth. She was such a bloody miserable sort of girl.' Peggy Pope sighed as if she, the soul of wit and gaiety, had a right to similarly exuberant companions.
'Do you know why she was miserable?'
'It's money with most of them. That's all they talk about, as though I was rolling in it. She asked me if I could find her a cheaper room, but I said, No, I couldn't. We don't have any flats less than seven a week. I thought she was going to cry. Christ, I thought, why don't you grow up?'
Howard said, 'May we come to last Friday, Mrs Pope?'
'Miss Pope. When I want to be Mrs I'll find a man who's got a job and can get me something better than a hole in the ground to live in, I can tell you. I don't know anything about last Friday. I saw her come in about ten past one and go off again about ten to two. Oh, and she made a phone call. I don't know any more about it.'
Wexford caught Howard's eye and leant forward. 'Miss Pope,' he said, 'we want you to tell us about that in much greater detail. Tell us exactly what you were doing, where you saw her, what she said, everything.'
'O.K., I'll try.' Peggy Pope pulled her thumbnail out of her mouth and looked at it with distaste. 'But when I've done you'll have to let me get shifting those bins.'
The room was rather cold. She kicked down the upper switch on an electric fire and a second bar began to heat. It was evidently seldom used, for as it glowed red a smell of burning dust came from it.
'It was just after one, maybe ten past,' she began. 'Johnny was out somewhere as usual, looking for work, he said, but I reckon he was in the Grand Duke. I was in the hall giving it a bit of a sweep up and Loveday came in. She said hello or something, and I said hello, and she went straight upstairs. I was getting out the vacuum when she came down again and said had I got change for ten pence because she wanted two pence to make a phone call. She must have known I don't carry money about when I'm cleaning the place, but, anyway, I said I'd see and I came down here and got my bag. I hadn't got change, but I'd got one two-pence piece so I gave her that and she went into the phone box.'
'Where's that?'
'Under the stairs. You passed it when you came down.'
'Do you know whom she was phoning?'
She warmed her bitten fingers at the fire and creased her beautiful face into a ferocious scowl. 'How would I? There's a door on the box. She didn't say I'm going to give my mother a tinkle or ring my boy friend, if that's what you mean. Lovedaynever said much. I'll give her that, she wasn't talkative. Well, she came out and went upstairs again and then I went down to see if the baby was O.K., and when I came up with the pram to take the washing to the launderette she was just going out through the front door, all got up in a green trouser suit. I noticed because it was the only decent thing she had. She didn't say anything. And now can I get on with my work?'
Howard nodded, and he and Clernents, thanking her Wetly, made for the stairs. Wexford lingered. He watched the girl she was round-shouldered and rather thin lift one of the smelly bins and then he said, 'I'll give you a hand.'
She seemed astonished. The world she lived in had unfitted her for accepting help graciously, and she shrugged, making her mouth into an ugly shape.
'They should employ a man to do this.'
'Maybe, but they don't. What man would practically run this dump and do all the dirty work for eight quid a week and that room? Would you?'
'Not if I could help it. Can't you get a better job?'
'Look, chum, there's the kid. I've got to have a job where I can look after her. Don't you worry yourself about me. Some day my prince will come and then I'll be off out of here, leaving the bins to Johnny.' She smiled for the first time, a transcending, glorious smile, evoking for him old dark cinemas and shining screens. 'Thanks very much. That's the lot.'
'You're welcome,' said Wexford.
The unaccustomed effort had brought the blood beating to his head. It had been a silly thing to do and the pounding inside his temples unnerved him. Howard and the sergeant were nowhere to be seen, so, so clear his head while he waited for them, he walked down to the open end of Garmisch Terrace. A thin drizzle had begun to fall. He found himself in something which at home would have passed for a high street. It was a shabby shopping centre with, sandwiched between a pub and a hairdresser's, a little cheap boutique called Loveday. So that was where she had found the name. She had possessed some other, duller perhaps but identifying, distressing even, which she had wished to conceal....