‘Miss Thundersley, I fancy that the detectives at Scotland Yard are not in the habit of making public every shred of evidence upon which they happen to be working.’
This was unarguable. The headmistress continued: ‘And I have already answered more questions than I believed possible. A charming man, the chief inspector: although not quite like the detective of fiction.’
‘What questions did they ask you?’
‘That is not a proper question to ask, and I don’t think it would be proper to reply to it, Miss Thundersley.’
‘Did they talk to the little girl, Sonia’s friend, who was told by poor Sonia that a friend of her father’s was going to …’ the words stuck in Asta’s throat. ‘…going to Show Her A Secret?
‘Yes, they did talk to Violet Almack. I was there at the time. The chief inspector was most tactful and charming — he put the child quite at her ease at once. She could only repeat what Sonia had said to her: that a friend of her daddy … etcetera, etcetera. Nothing more. And in case you propose to ask Violet about it, I want to say in advance that I strongly disapprove.’
‘No, I don’t propose anything of the sort. Poor little things! Let them have a little bit of innocence while the going’s good! No, no — not for the world. But tell me one thing, Miss Handle. Which way would Sonia have gone home so as to pass by the place where that coal-cellar is?’
‘Well, Miss Thundersley, she might have gone by any of four or five different ways. She might have started in a wrong direction in order to make a game of skill of getting home. You know what high-spirited girls are, I dare say?’
‘I was one myself. But tell me — which way would Sonia have gone if she had been going directly home?’
‘In that case she would have side-tracked the excavated street and gone the longer way — as it is until they get the road mended. Especially in that fog.’
‘Thank you, Miss Handle. You may, and will, call me the damnedest old fool in the world. But I tell you, I’ll hang someone for this if it’s the last thing I do.’
Miss Handle said, with an intonation of sarcasm: ‘I wish you luck, I am sure.’
‘Thank you for your good wishes. I an-s much obliged to you. And I can assure you that I generally achieve what I set out to do.’
‘I haven’t the slightest doubt of it, Miss Thundersley.’
‘Thank you, Miss Handle.’
‘Good morning, Miss Thundersley.’
17
Asta went out, cutting little crescents into the floorboards with her angry, stamping heels. The fact was that she had not the beginning of an idea of what she proposed to do. First of all, she decided, it was necessary to look at the scene of the crime. She had no difficulty in finding the place: as soon as she asked the way a dozen men, women and children seemed to spring out of the earth. They all shouted directions. One girl asked her if she was on a newspaper. Asta said no. The girl did not believe her, and followed her, walking about eighteen inches behind her and keeping up a running commentary full of geographical information:
‘This is the street. All these houses are going to be pulled down. They’re condemned. Unfit frooman ‘abitation. That’s Mrs Switch’s house they’ve begun to pull down there. It was full of bugs. My mum says they pigged it, they didn’t live in it, they just pigged it. You wouldn’t keep a selfrespecting pig in such a house. They used to let rooms. They made ever such a lot of money. My mum says anybody can make money that way. My mum says they lived twelve in one bedroom so as to let rooms. See where that grease mark is on the wall? They had a gas stove in the bedroom. You ask my mum.’
‘Why aren’t you at school?’ asked Asta.
‘I’ve got ring-worm.’
At the far end of the street a policeman stood, contemplating a pillar-box. In the remote distance someone was playing a barrel-organ. Asta, looking at the front of the house, was overwhelmed by a sort of sickness of heart. It was not merely that the house was derelict: not that it was unoccupied, unused, unusable, and for ever abandoned — it was that she could somehow perceive in the aspect of the place exactly what they meant when they said that it was Condemned. It was finished. It was better torn down and wiped off the face of the earth. She could see how, for the past fifteen years or so, no tenant of the house had been able to bring himself to spend as much as it cost to paint the railings or the window-frames. The place was condemned property: nothing was worth while. The house which, as the little girl had said, had been full of bugs, and was now half torn down, gaped at the rainy sky. Asta could see the greasy pink paper of the bedroom. It had been worth nobody’s while to hang paper there. There must indeed have been a gas stove in that bedroom: she could see the greasy black outline of it. Above this outline there was nailed an oblong of painted green tin, curling away from the wall at one corner. The demolition men had not yet started to break up the house in which Sonia Sabbatani had been murdered. It was exactly like every other house in that street: four storeys high, built of a muddy-mustard-coloured brick and sinking, as it seemed, into a squalid basement bristling with spear-headed rusting railings.
Little boys had smashed the windows with stones. Every frame enclosed a shivered frieze of dust-encrusted grey glass. Through a splintery star of dark space in the ground-floor window she could see an empty, desolate room, and, on the only visible wall, an oblong of patterned paper, lighter than the rest, where a framed picture must have hung. The brass-headed nail was still protruding from the wall above it. Asta would have sworn that the picture which had hung framed in this space was of a little girl and a mastiff, with the caption:
Now, standing in front of this empty house, Asta was almost afraid. She wanted to go home. She remembered certain bad dreams of ruins in wildernesses. So she became angry; stamped up the three dirty steps to the front door, and wrenched at the door-knob. She had expected to feel the resistance of a turned lock — indeed, she hoped to find the door immovably shut.
But it opened.
She found herself standing in a short, narrow passage leading to a steep, narrow staircase. There was a smell of dereliction, of damp, and, as it were, of darkness. On the left, beyond the door, she could see a heart-shaped mark where an umbrella-stand had stood. Beyond it a gas-bracket protruded. She went in. Her footsteps reverberated. This house enclosed something of the misery, the loneliness and the hollow silence of the outer dark. The street door slammed behind her with the noise of a gunshot. A foul wind was blowing through the passage. The
