A Case of Doubtful Death Read Online Free Page B

awaited the glad news that he was in a place where he could no longer trouble them, Chas and Barstie had decided to become citizens of Bayswater. They had accordingly taken accommodation in Westbourne Grove above the shop of Mr Beccles, an elderly watchmaker. Chas, bulging with optimism at this recent development, spoke airily of their ‘apartments’ and their ‘offices’, his words conjuring up a picture of vast suites of elegance and comfort, as if the apartment and the office was not in fact one and the same location and numbered more than a single small room, and was not at the top of two flights of damp, narrow stairs. The elevation of the premises above street level was, thought Frances wryly, what justified Chas in claiming that he was going up in the world of commerce. They had recently established a company, The Bayswater Display and Advertising Co. Ltd, although whether that was actually the nature of its business Frances was unsure. Whatever it was they did, it seemed to involve long hours facing each other across a shared desk, a great deal of running up and down stairs, and occasional food fights.
    ‘Mr Palmer’s disappearance may have nothing at all to do with his occupation or any person at the Life House, but I must first satisfy myself of that before I dismiss the idea,’ Frances told Sarah. ‘If the gentlemen can tell me anything about the business, the directors or the employees, whatever it might be, that would be of the greatest assistance.’

    Dr Mackenzie’s lodgings were on the east side of Ladbroke Grove Road, just a little to the north of its junction with Telford Road. The houses in that location were not so tall or so grand as those in other parts of the long thoroughfare, and the builder had not thought it necessary to encrust them with pillars and porticoes, but they were respectable enough. As Frances stepped up to the door she saw the top of a housemaid’s cap bobbing about in the basement area below. At the sound of the knocker, the maid turned her head up to look, her face a white circle, as pale as the cap, with watery grey eyes and a pinched nose. She said nothing, but made to go indoors at a pace that suggested that Frances might have to wait several minutes for admission. Moments later, however, the front door was opened by the landlady.
    Mrs Georgeson was a capable-looking woman in her middle years. The hardened fingers that peeped from her mittens suggested a life spent in toil, but they were not roughened by recent work. Frances explained her errand while Mrs Georgeson studied her calling card as if it was a difficult acrostic. ‘So he’s not been found, then. You’d better come in.’
    Frances stepped into the hallway finding it drab, and only tolerably clean; she felt sure that Sarah would have regarded the state of the cornices with something approaching indignation. Little flaps of wallpaper that might once have been flesh pink but had died away to the colour of weak coffee, curled like dried leaves edged with brown. A single gas lamp turned to its lowest setting supplied just enough light to pass through the hall, but failed to conceal an enforced neglect which the landlady might have hoped her potential tenants would not notice. Queen Victoria stared from the only portrait on the wall with an expression of stern disapproval.
    ‘There are only gentlemen lodgers here,’ said Mrs Georgeson, as she led Frances down the stairs at the rear of the house. ‘That was the position when Mr Georgeson and I chose to supervise the premises and so it has remained. Respectable single gentlemen, preferably those in the professions, they are so much more reliable.’ Mrs Georgeson, while having no ambitions to appear genteel, was determined to be accounted worthy, and revealed that her husband was engaged in work of the utmost importance to society. She was so evasive when Frances politely enquired as to the nature of Mr Georgeson’s occupation that she could only conclude it had