Missing Person (9 page)

Boots skimmed through the four-page form, noting the information he had to supply.

‘Frightening?’ smiled Mr Finch, who shared Sir
Henry’s
expectations of another war, even though few other people did; not after the carnage of the Great War. Mr Finch knew, however, that it was a consideration in the minds of certain elite German military men, as it was in the ambitions of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party, now known as the Nazi Party.

‘Not frightening, no,’ said Boots. ‘Challenging.’ He put the form back in the envelope as Rosie reappeared with a fresh bottle of ale and a tumbler.

‘What’s that, Daddy?’ she asked.

‘Who’s asking questions?’ smiled Boots, who would choose the time to tell his family.

‘Oh, sorry, Daddy, nosy me. Shall I go and have ladies’ talk with Mummy and Nana?’

‘You can still stay and have men’s talk with us,’ said Boots.

‘Love to,’ said Rosie, ‘I’ll go and stick on a moustache. Oh, Mummy’s putting Tim to bed and wants us to go up and say goodnight to him first. There, Sir Henry.’ She unscrewed the stopper of the bottle.

‘Thank you, Rosie,’ said Sir Henry, understanding why Polly adored this girl.

‘Will you excuse me while I go with Daddy?’ asked Rosie, and off she went with Boots. When they reached the stairs, she said, ‘Love you, Daddy, so I’m not charging you for opening Sir Henry’s bottle of beer.’

‘Well, love like that, kitten, does wonders for my pocket,’ said Boots.

Dan Rogers, who had somehow found himself and his daughters trapped by gossipy Mrs Higgins, managed to eventually break free. Alice Higgins had been a bit
desolate
about her fractured ankle, heavily encased in plaster. It was making her housebound. But she’d suggested to Dan that he could ask Cassie Ford, that funny but likeable friend of Freddy Brown. Cassie was still waiting to be apprenticed to a florist. Dan, who knew Freddy and Cassie, said yes, he’d ask Cassie if she’d stand in for Alice, and he knocked on the Brown family’s door after leaving Mrs Higgins talking to thin air. Cassie, however, wasn’t with the Browns, Freddy had taken her to the pictures, saying she needed a change from her potty parrot. Dan said he’d call at Cassie’s house sometime tomorrow. Mrs Brown wished him luck, saying Cassie was a very capable girl and did a lot of housework for her widower dad every day. She’d probably be happy to look after Bubbles and Penny-Farving until Alice was back on her feet. It’s a very trying time for you, Mr Rogers, she said, with your wife away with a travelling circus. She thought it was also disgracefully hard on a husband and father, but didn’t say so. Mrs Brown, that most agreeable woman, rarely let words of criticism escape her lips, and she wouldn’t have upset Mr Rogers for the world, him being such a happy-go-lucky man.

Tilly heard the girls enter the house with their father, at a time when she thought they should have long been put to bed. But no, she wasn’t going to interfere, and certainly she wasn’t going to offer to put the girls to bed herself. Mind your own business, that’s what you’ve got to do, Tilly Thomas, she thought. On the other hand, she might just do him a good turn by keeping on at him about getting married to the girls’ mother. That would be a good turn for the girls as well. Otherwise they’d grow up illegitimate, which would be downright shocking.

She heard him come up with the girls a little later,
the
girls noisy. And they were noisier still when they were in bed, giving little shrieks of laughter at things their dad was saying. They’d never get to sleep if he didn’t act sensible with them. Eventually, however, she heard him say goodnight to them. Then he paused on the landing to call to her.

‘Everything all right, Tilly?’

Her door was ajar.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she called back, and got up and closed the door, just in case he took it on himself to come in.

‘Hope you sleep well tonight,’ he called, and went downstairs.

Tilly resumed her work. Twilight turned to dusk and she lit the gas mantle. Sitting down again, she noticed light showing at the windows of the kitchen next door. She could see the windows over the yard wall. A man appeared and drew the curtains.

Tilly resumed work at her sewing-machine.

Bubbles and Penny-Farving went soundly to sleep.

Dan made himself a pot of tea and listened to his new wireless set. He thought about his girls and their wandering mother.

I suppose I ought to get married or I’ll give my kids a bad name. Still, we’re happy as we are, and their mum chucks things about. She’s taught herself to have an Hungarian temperament. Silly woman. But I’m daft meself. It was her spangles and tights that did it. What legs.

He grinned at the wireless set.

Dan Rogers really was a happy-go-lucky bloke.

The woman known as Mrs Agnes Harper woke up in the night, in the bedroom that lay between the kitchen and the parlour. What had woken her? Whispers and
rustles
. Where from? Everywhere, or were they mostly from the kitchen? She thought they were, except it wasn’t as if she was sleeping just outside the kitchen door. It couldn’t be Percy. Once his hood was on he never made a sound.

It was one of the men, of course, or both of them. What had they come downstairs for? You couldn’t always tell with their kind, secretive and close. They’d only confided so much to her, the rest they were keeping to themselves. But they were clever all right, coming here to use this house of all places, and she’d been willing to help.

And why shouldn’t she? She was the daughter of a German immigrant and an East End cockney woman. Her father, a cobbler, had been building up a modest little business doing boot and shoe repairs until the war came along. Not long after it broke out, an anti-German mob smashed up his little shop in Shoreditch and left him lying near to death before the police arrived. He managed to stay alive, but was still a bit of a cripple. She’d never forgive that mob.

More whispers and rustles. Hold on, Agnes me girl, is it one of the men shuffling about and trying to make up his mind about slipping into bed with her? They had good bodies, both of them, and one of them might be thinking of helping himself to what he fancied. Well, come on, then. Wait a tick, it might be both of them shuffling about and whispering who’s going to have first go. I’m not having that, I don’t mind one of them, but two would make me look like a tart from Whitechapel.

She slipped from the bed, the lino cool beneath her feet, and in her flannel nightgown she quietly opened her bedroom door. The darkness of the passage confronted her, and the rustles reached her ears more
clearly
. Her body turned a little cold, but she felt her way to the kitchen and pushed the door open. The whispers and rustles fled into the darkness, and the silence that followed seemed to offer a ghostly hello to her. She knew then that no-one was there. No-one human. Icy fingers ran down her back.

Oh, did yer know it’s haunted?

The remembered words of that girl slid into her mind, and she rushed blindly back to her room and into her bed, pulling the sheet and blanket up over her head. It took her some time to get to sleep again. When she next woke, light was streaming in, lovely light that made her laugh at her imaginings, the kind a kid could suffer in night darkness.

‘Yer daft woman,’ she said to the ceiling.

She heard the men about upstairs. They’d have breakfast, then go out and not come back until evening, much as if they’d been at work all day.

They’d made a good job of fixing a blind to the upstairs back window.

THEY WERE UP
, Dan Rogers and his angels, and so was Tilly. She was having breakfast, a cheap but satisfying meal of a poached egg on toast, to be followed by an apple. Down below were the sounds of Bubbles and Penny-Farving larking about over their own breakfast.

Tilly wondered if the carefree father had made arrangements for anyone to come in and look after the girls for the day.

She heard him then, coming up the stairs, his footsteps quick.

‘Tilly, you there?’

The enquiry was followed by a knock on her door.

‘All right, come in,’ she called, and Dan came in, his blue serge suit fairly commonplace, but fitting him well. Dan kept his overalls at his place of work.

‘Mornin’, Tilly,’ he said cheerfully. She eyed him suspiciously.

‘What’re you after, Mr Rogers?’

‘Call me Dan.’

‘What’re you after, Mr Dan Rogers?’

‘Just thought I’d let you know I’m off to me job now,’ smiled Dan.

‘Good,’ said Tilly, ‘it’s nice to know you’re responsible enough to ’ave a job. Well, don’t let me keep you. Mind, while you’re at work do some thinkin’ about that woman who thinks she’s ’Ungarian. You
owe
it to them young gels to drag ’er off ’er tightrope and to turn ’er into a proper mother.’

‘All right, love, I’ll—’

‘Don’t call me love,’ said Tilly, who was looking a treat. The splendid top half of her figure was wrapped up in a clinging yellow jumper. ‘I don’t want any familiarity.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Dan. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know I’ve been talkin’ a bit of turkey to Bubbles and Penny-Farvin’. They know they’re not to go out, except in the back yard, which saves me havin’ to say a prayer for them. They’ll stay indoors, bless ’em, so I’m relieved I don’t have to ask you to look after them. Still, if you could just listen out for them in case one of them falls down the stairs or gets her head stuck between the banister rails, I’d be much obliged. That’s all, then, have to go now. Thanks, Tilly, I’ll—’

‘Oh, no you don’t,’ said Tilly, getting up to put herself between him and a quick sneaky departure, ‘you’re not leavin’ me landed with the same responsibilities like yesterday.’

‘It’s only if one of them looks like she might break a leg—’

‘Nothing doin’,’ said Tilly.

‘All right, understood,’ said Dan, and slipped by her in a flash. Down he went and out of the house, and Tilly was left fuming again.

The offices of Adams Enterprises Ltd, situated on the first and second floors above their shop a little way from Camberwell Green, were fully staffed. There were three companies, the affairs of Adams Fashions and Adams Scrap Metal being looked after by the parent company, Adams Enterprises. Boots, general
manager
, held the administrative reins securely and competently, while Sammy provided the driving force that ensured a profitable turnover year after year. That in turn ensured all the Adams’ families were comfortably off.

Sammy was currently in favourable consideration of an offer for Adams Scrap Metal Ltd. He was in Boots’s office, giving his eldest brother the good news. The offer had come from Johnson and Company Ltd, a rival firm well-known in the trade. Boots, however, wasn’t too sure it was good news, and said so.

‘Come off it,’ said Sammy, ‘prices are near to rock-bottom.’

‘Not quite,’ said Boots.

‘No difference, old cock,’ said Sammy, ‘considerin’ the offer is forty thousand quid.’

‘Yes, well under four thousand for each of our twelve yards,’ said Boots, ‘and we own the freeholds of eight of them. Sammy, for the first time since you launched yourself into business, I think you’re making a mistake. All the yards are returning a steady income.’

‘At a minimum profit,’ said Sammy.

‘Fair enough under present circumstances,’ said Boots, ‘but if there’s a crisis in the affairs of Europe, our yards will be a collective goldmine. Hang on to them, Sammy.’

‘You feelin’ your age?’ said Sammy.

‘Not yet, Junior,’ smiled Boots. ‘Are you feeling a need for a large chunk of cash in your pocket?’

‘Being as I am, a married bloke with a fam’ly, I’ve got expenses of a ruinous kind,’ said Sammy, happy husband of Susie and doting dad of three-year-old Daniel and one-year-old Bess. Remembering his years of poverty and striving, he meant to give his kids
the
best that he and Susie could afford.

‘You’re thinking, are you, of investments that’ll look after the expenses of a superior education for Daniel, Bess and any others that come along?’ said Boots.

‘Susie being a lady, despite being brought up in Peabody’s Buildings, I’m in favour of makin’ sure they all turn out to be a personal credit to her,’ said Sammy.

‘What does Susie say to that?’ asked Boots, who seemed quite good-humoured about everything, despite having voiced opposition to an acceptance of Johnson’s offer.

‘Well, I’ll be frank,’ said Sammy, ‘she’s against Eton or Harrow.’

‘She probably knows neither of those would get past Chinese Lady.’

‘I wasn’t thinkin’ of askin’ our revered Ma’s opinion,’ said Sammy. Boots raised an eyebrow. Sammy raised a grin. ‘My mistake,’ he said.

‘Granted,’ said Boots.

‘I’ll admit Susie speaks kindly about your old school, West Square,’ said Sammy.

‘I’m fond of Susie,’ said Boots.

‘You’re fond of the fact that Rosie and Annabelle are attendin’ West Square these days,’ said Sammy. ‘Point is, would it educate Daniel into bein’ smart enough to own a City bank when he’s old enough? I put that to you candidly.’

‘And I put it to you, Sammy, has Daniel said he’d like to own a City bank?’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Sammy.

‘Some of us,’ said Boots. ‘It means striped trousers, a frock coat and a top hat. And aspirins in the afternoon.’

‘All the same, old cock,’ said Sammy, ‘I take it you appreciate my feelings as a parental dad wishful to see his kids don’t end up pushin’ a barrow.’

‘Sammy old love,’ said Boots, ‘your present salary would take care of the expenses of a superior education for any of your kids.’

‘Presently two,’ said Sammy.

‘You’ve got four in mind,’ said Boots, who’d have liked another son and daughter himself.

‘Which coincides with Susie’s ideas,’ said Sammy. ‘But there’s other expenses, like fur coats for her.’

‘Susie doesn’t want fur coats,’ said Boots, ‘any more than Emily does.’

‘Also,’ said Sammy, ‘I ’ave in mind wages for gardeners and suchlike.’

‘I see,’ said Boots, his smile lurking, ‘you’re thinking about being lord of a manor, are you?’