The Right Sort of Man Read online

  Trower’s address was at the end of the lane. A park lay beyond it, much of it taken up by allotments for community gardens. It will be nice when it goes back to its original purpose, thought Gwen. When there’s food enough again that we can all start enjoying life like we used to.

  The house itself was different than the others in that it stood alone, with a tower on the side facing the park. Built between the wars, she guessed. Much of this neighbourhood seemed recent, slapped together to take advantage of the improved railways after the previous war, notwithstanding the mock-Tudor exposed beams on the garrets meant to give one a sense of history. There was a chicken coop out back—she could hear them contentedly clucking away from the street. She opened the gate and walked up the short front walk, noting with approval the tea-roses growing on either side of the front door. She took a deep breath and rang the bell.

  The door opened, and a woman in a housedress covered with an apron looked up at her in surprise and suspicion.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Are you Mrs. Dowd?” asked Gwen.

  “I might be, and then again, I might not,” said the woman. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Gwendolyn Bainbridge. Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge. I am here on behalf of Mister Trower.”

  “Dickie? He’s not here. You can’t see him.”

  “I’ve just come from visiting him, Mrs. Dowd, if that is who you are,” said Gwen, removing the letter from her handbag and handing it to her. “He asked me to look in on Herbert.”

  Mrs. Dowd read the letter and clapped her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh, that silly fish!” she exclaimed. “I had forgotten all about him!”

  “May I come in?”

  “Yes, you had better. Oh, dear, I hope he’s all right. With all of the excitement and the police rummaging through everything, he had gone plumb clear out of my mind. Poor Dickie will never forgive me. This way, Madam. Do I call you Madam?”

  “Mrs. Bainbridge will do, thank you,” said Gwen as she stepped across the threshold.

  The entrance hall was small but neat and well-lit. A side table nestled against the wall, holding a small pile of letters. Gwen saw that the top one was addressed to Trower.

  “His room is in the garret,” said Mrs. Dowd, leading her to the steps. “Watch your head—it sticks out on the turn. The ceiling, I mean, not your head. Never a problem for me and Dickie—Mister Trower, I should say.”

  She hustled up the steps, which were covered with a worn, dark red paisley-patterned carpet. Gwen had a chance to observe her better as the older woman made each turn. She appeared to be around fifty, guessed Gwen. Or a hard forty-five. She kept her hair in a neat bun, not a strand sticking out. There were grey streaks amidst the brown, and her face, devoid of makeup, showed signs of strain.

  “I have a perfectly good lodger room on the second storey,” said Mrs. Dowd as they circled the landing to the stairs to the garret. “But Mister Trower wanted the top one. He liked the quiet, and there’s a view of the city out the front window. More of a chore for me, of course.”

  She paused when she reached the door and fumbled in her apron for a key.

  “I cleaned it after the police were done,” she said, unlocking the door. “Such a shambles they made of everything. I washed the sheets, except for the bottom one. The police took that one.”

  “Why, do you suppose?” asked Gwen.

  “Looking for blood,” said Mrs. Dowd.

  “But wasn’t the woman killed elsewhere?” asked Gwen. “I wouldn’t think that Mister Trower would be able to bring her here without you noticing.”

  “Not likely,” sniffed Mrs. Dowd. “I hear every creak of board and bedspring in this house. He wouldn’t get anything by me. Not that he’d try, of course. This is a respectable household, and Dickie’s a good boy, he knows the rules. There’s the fish tank on the desk by the window. Poor little creature—he must be on his last legs.”

  Gwen peered into the tank. A solitary goldfish swam slowly about a tiny underwater landscape consisting of a miniature farmhouse surrounded by fenced paddocks and tiny metal horses, cows, and sheep. The fish dwarfed the pastoral scene like a flying leviathan. It looked up at her with what she thought was a forlorn and reproachful expression.

  “He does look like a Herbert,” said Gwen.

  “Doesn’t he?” agreed Mrs. Dowd. “I can’t say why, but there it is—Herbert the fish. That’s his food in the tin.”

  Gwen espied the small, round King British Fish Food tin next to the tank. There was a tiny pewter spoon next to it.

  “I don’t know how much Herbert eats,” said Mrs. Dowd. “He’s probably extra hungry.”

  “Two spoonfuls should do it, I imagine,” said Gwen, unscrewing the lid. She dipped the spoon in and sprinkled the dried flakes into the tank, then repeated the process.

  Herbert’s placid demeanour changed immediately to one more predatory, his tail waving frantically as he darted back and forth in pursuit of the flakes drifting slowly through the water.

  “My, he is a hungry little thing, isn’t he?” laughed Gwen.

  “He is,” agreed Mrs. Dowd. “Well, you’ve done a good, Christian deed there, and that’s no lie. May I fix you a cup of tea?”

  “I would be most grateful,” said Gwen. “However, before I leave Herbert, I wonder if you know when the water in the tank was last changed.”

  “This Sunday past,” said Mrs. Dowd. “Dickie changes it every Sunday without fail. He’s so good to that fish. ‘He’s my best mate, Mrs. Dowd,’ he tells me at dinner. ‘He listens to all my troubles and never doubts me for an instant.’”

  “We could all do with a Herbert in our lives, couldn’t we?”

  “Well said, Mrs. Bainbridge, well said,” applauded Mrs. Dowd. “Now, come downstairs and tell me how he’s doing.”

  Gwen glanced around the room before she left. It was small and neat, much like Mister Trower. Mister Trower normally, she thought, not like she saw him today. A single bed with a hand-made quilt was against the far wall. On the nightstand was a blue and white ceramic jug and two glasses, and a framed black and white photograph of him standing between what must have been his parents. A small shelf over the bed held a collection of cheap editions of Dickens and Thackeray.

  Mrs. Dowd held the door so that Gwen could go down the steps first, then came through and locked the room behind her.

  “He’s paid through the end of the month, of course,” she said as she followed Gwen downstairs. “After that, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to rent out the room while he’s in jail, but I don’t know how long that will be.”

  “I hope not too long,” said Gwen.

  “Of course, I’m not making him meals or doing his laundry, so there’s a savings,” said Mrs. Dowd. “You sit, dear. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  The parlour was small and crowded with furniture, leaving little room for Gwen to maneuver. She felt like a growing Alice trying to find a good fit for her long limbs. She sat first on a low divan, but it put her with her knees sticking higher than her lap. She shifted over to one of a pair of high-backed upholstered chairs, its edges dotted with round brass buttons, like a doorman’s uniform at Claridge’s.

  There were photographs everywhere—on the tea-table, the mantelpiece, and so crowding the walls that the broad blue and yellow stripes of the wallpaper were barely visible. Most were of Mrs. Dowd in younger days with a man who Gwen assumed to be Mister Dowd. Mrs. Dowd was smiling in every picture, a petite young woman filled with happiness and hope, traits not much in evidence in her current persona.

  Gwen wondered if Mister Dowd, so present in the pictures, was still in the present picture.

  She also wondered if living without happiness and hope would turn her into a Mrs. Dowd someday.

  There were two stacks of magazines on a side table, Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Own. She picked up the most recent issue of the latter, and became engrossed in an article about new books for childr
en. Little Ronnie had become addicted to repeated readings of the Worzel Gummidge books after hearing the story on the Children’s Hour, and Gwen was on the lookout for anything new, just for variety’s sake. She was halfway through the article when Mrs. Dowd returned, carrying a tea tray.

  “Earl Grey all right?” she asked.

  “It’s fine, thank you,” said Gwen.

  “How do you like yours?”

  “Milk, please.”

  “Do you take Woman’s Own?” asked Mrs. Dowd as she poured.

  “I do not. It looks like a very informative magazine.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t live without it,” said Mrs. Dowd enthusiastically. “You’d think that housekeeping was stuck in the last century, but they keep finding better ways to do everything. And Mary Sedley’s advice column—have you read Mary Sedley?”

  “I have not.”

  “Wonderful. Much more practical than the usual Agony Aunt columns, which I cannot tolerate. My morning ritual after breakfast dishes is to prop me feet up, turn on the Light Programme, and read an article or two.”

  “Sounds heavenly.”

  “I swear I’d be barking if I didn’t have it. It gets too quiet around here. Now that it’s back to how it was, anyhow.”

  “It was rather noisy for a while, wasn’t it?” agreed Gwen.

  “Oh, you don’t know half!” laughed Mrs. Dowd. “I had a cat, he would go absolutely wild when the Wailing Winnies went off. And I couldn’t take him to the bomb shelters—he wouldn’t stay put. I had to leave him here, and he would scratch the place up something awful.”

  “Poor thing,” said Gwen. “What happened to him?”

  “He ran off,” said Mrs. Dowd. “Least, I suppose he did. I came back, he wasn’t here. Never saw him again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Funny thing is, I got him to keep me company after Mister Dowd did the same thing. Ran off, I mean. Unlucky in men am I.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Gwen. “Is that him in all of those photographs?”

  “Yes. Handsome devil, wasn’t he?”

  “He was.”

  “We were quite the picturesque couple,” said Mrs. Dowd, picking up one showing the two of them in a café. “This was our first date. He brought his camera along to commemorate it, can you fancy that?”

  “Very romantic.”

  “Oh, he was that,” said Mrs. Dowd. “Swept me right off my feet, and it was a long time before they touched ground again. It was good when it was good, but then it wasn’t. And now there’s Dickie gone. I still can’t believe he’s a murderer.”

  “Neither can I,” said Gwen firmly.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Mrs. Dowd began hesitantly, “how do you know him? How did you know he was—taken away? It hasn’t been in the papers yet.”

  “He was—he is a client of mine. Of ours, I should say.”

  “Client?” repeated Mrs. Dowd, her eyebrows raising.

  “My partner and I operate a small business concern,” said Gwen. “Mister Trower came to us seeking—”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything else,” huffed Mrs. Dowd. “Well. To think that I have been nursing this, this viper in my very household. To think that I, a respectable woman, would have sitting in her parlour a, a, oh, I cannot even say the word!”

  Gwen looked at her in shock as the import of the other woman’s words became clear to her.

  “Mrs. Dowd!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I don’t know what you are thinking, but you have clearly mistaken my meaning. What sort of woman do you take me for?”

  “Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t take you for—what’s that?”

  Gwen handed over her business card. Mrs. Dowd took it and read it over several times, then put her hand to her breast.

  “Oh. Oh, my word,” she said. “I am so, so sorry. Forgive me. Good Lord, what you must think of me.”

  “Perhaps I should have made it clear who I was from the start,” said Gwen graciously.

  “Well, this explains it,” said Mrs. Dowd. “You’re the tall one.”

  “I usually am,” said Gwen.

  “No, I mean when he came back from his first meeting there, he couldn’t stop talking about the two of you, especially you, dear. He was very complimentary.”

  “That’s sweet,” said Gwen. “He’s a lovely lad. We were hoping to find him someone. We thought we had. Then all of this happened. I don’t know what to say. We’re still reeling from the shock.”

  “I don’t know how it works in the courts,” said Mrs. Dowd. “Does he get out on bail?”

  “I think not,” said Gwen. “It’s a serious matter.”

  “Well, murder generally is, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course. Do you know anything that would be of help to him?”

  “Me?” said Mrs. Dowd in surprise. “Why would I know anything?”

  “Well, something that might convince the police that he didn’t do it.”

  “I’m sure I told them everything I know,” said Mrs. Dowd, sipping her tea thoughtfully.

  “The night it happened … was he home?”

  “Well, at first, yes,” she said. “But I went to bed early. I thought he had as well.”

  “And you would hear if he went out after, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, well, you would think so. But I was very tired that night. We both were—we remarked on it. He was talking about the canceled date, I remember. He was very put off about it.”

  “Was he?”

  “Oh, yes. ‘I suppose she decided I wasn’t good enough,’ he said. It was a disappointment.”

  “I’m sure it was,” said Gwen. “Did he seem particularly angry about it?”

  “I don’t like to say,” said Mrs. Dowd shortly.

  “Oh, dear,” said Gwen, her heart sinking. “I do hope that it wasn’t him.”

  “He’s been such a lonely boy,” said Mrs. Dowd. “He had all sorts of expectations built up. Kept talking about this girl as if his whole life was waiting to start on that night, and then he got that letter. The look on his face—heartbreaking.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, he’s still got his room waiting for him,” said Mrs. Dowd, brightening. “At least, until the end of the month, he does. And his laundry done, so that’s a load off for me, and now that you’ve reminded me about Herbert, I’ll have him waiting for him as well. So, it should all be fine, shouldn’t it?”

  “I only wish I knew,” said Gwen.

  “I’m glad you reminded me about that fish,” said Mrs. Dowd. “It will give me something to do. Someone to take care of. That’s all we need when all is said and done, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Gwen. “It truly is.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Dowd gave her the issue of Woman’s Own to read on the trip back, and Gwen became quite absorbed in it, reading articles with expert tips on beauty, fashion, and baby care, all of which concerned her, as well as on cooking, furnishing, and housekeeping, of which she had little to no experience whatsoever.

  I must learn these things, she thought. I must learn them if I am ever to—

  Ever to what? Take Ronnie out of Kensington Court to live with her on their own? Could she do that? Not just legally, and there was already one whomping great hurdle to leap, but could she manage even a smallish household on her own?

  She was not without financial resources. Her husband had left her something. She wasn’t sure of the details, but there was a family lawyer managing it. But there was much tied up in trusts and holdings, and what with her in-laws seizing custody of her son and an unsympathetic guardian being appointed by the court for Gwen herself after her stay in the sanitorium, she wasn’t certain how much she could access, or what legal battles would be triggered by any attempts to do so on her part.

  What would she require if she succeeded? She would at the very least need a governess to take care of Ronnie while she went off to the Right Sort every day. And a maid and
a cook. Or a maid who could cook. Or a cook/maid/governess, if there was such a thing.

  Oh, wait, she thought. There are such things. They’re called wives.

  Maybe she could ask Iris to find her one. She had already offered to find Gwen a husband, so it would only be a matter of changing one little word in the request. She smiled at the idea.

  Yes, she would take a wife to handle all of the household matters. And drop Ronald Colman a line to see if he would occasionally squire her about town—oh, wait. He was married to that Benita Hume in real life, wasn’t he?

  She detested real life some days.

  She reached Victoria Station and exited the tram. She glanced at her watch. It was already after one. She hurried to catch the bus to Oxford Street, then walked quickly to the office.

  She hoped that Iris had managed all right in her absence. It was the first time that she could remember that either of them had been alone there for that long. Having both there continuously was a comfort, even when there was little to do. She knew that Iris was self-sufficient, fully capable of taking on all comers. Gwen doubted that she would be the same in similar circumstances. A woman alone can be—

  “Mrs. Bainbridge!” shouted a man. “Mrs. Bainbridge! Over here!”

  She looked up, startled, and a flash bulb flared from across the street.

  “Give us a smile, love!” shouted a man with a camera as he quickly replaced the bulb.

  “There they are, the jackals,” said her mother. “Now, my girl, let’s give them a good show. You don’t want to see yourself looking fearful in the morning tabloids.”

  Gwen straightened her shoulders and gave him a brilliant display of perfect teeth.

  “Lovely!” shouted the photographer, bringing his camera up.

  She held her magazine in front of her face right as the flash went off. The photographer muttered an imprecation.

  “Gwen!” called Iris, lurking behind the partially opened front door. “Do not engage! In here! Now!”

  “Mrs. Bainbridge!” shouted a heavyset man next to the photographer. “What is your comment on Tillie La Salle’s murder? Why didn’t you properly investigate Dickie Trower before sending her to her death?”