Apartment 16

TWENTY-THREE

Behind the large desk Piotr moved heavily to his feet and wiped at his forehead. ‘Hello Miss Apryl. How can I help you today? Maybe the umbrella it is you need?’
It was raining again and she’d been caught in a downpour walking to Knightsbridge from Bayswater. Her mood had slipped further into the black when she’d seen Piotr grinning behind the desk. She’d been hoping for Stephen. ‘Sorry, I’m dripping on the carpet.’ Slowly, she warmed up after the chill from the wind and the heavy burst of rain outside, leaving her slightly dizzy in the heat of the lobby.
All about her brass door handles sparkled. Glass shone on the doors and picture frames. And the thick clean carpets beneath the heels of her boots made her feel self-conscious about tramping dirt inside. This part of the building was immaculate – dust free and show-home lit – but still unable to conceal the fragrance of age that seeped down from elsewhere. The reception area was nothing but a front. Behind this little capsule of bright light and warmth she could already sense the sepia gloom of its stairwells and rotten apartments, waiting up there to frighten her. How soon her impression of the place had changed. Staying in the hotel room and taking a few days out to explore the city had given her a distance, put her back in touch with herself, and now just the merest whiff of Barrington House made her remember the fear and confusion of her nights here.
But not long now and she would be free of the place. The cleaners would be in this week and then the estate agents. After that she’d never have to come back here again. Ever.
‘Got caught in quite a storm out there,’ she laughed and patted at her hair; the rain had flattened it. ‘I never know what the weather’s doing in this city. The sky was blue when I left Bayswater.’
She kept up her smile, but the affability of the fat porter failed to put her at ease. It always felt like he was making a pass. He came around the desk and stood too close, one hand reaching out to take her elbow. ‘Please. Sit down. You must rest, no?’ His shirt seemed too tight again, as if the collar was squeezing his round head up and out of his body, and then strangling him.
She took a step to the side and placed one hand on top of the desk to regain her personal space. ‘I’m fine. Just a bit damp.’ She put her bag on the counter, patted her leather coat down and then removed her black gloves. She couldn’t avoid Piotr today; she needed him.
He maintained a constant and irritating banter. ‘You know, it is nice to be in the warm and dry, no? And I am always happy to let the beautiful ladies come inside from the weather, yes?’ He finished with a loud, excitable laugh.
It was becoming difficult to maintain the smile. But what she intended to do was invasive. She had shown up in the rain to interrogate the staff, and potentially a long-term resident, for information about apartment sixteen. She knew from Stephen that these exclusive apartment buildings in west London were often havens where the wealthy and famous expected the strictest privacy and security. Porters were forbidden to give out any pertinent information about the residents or the building. Stephen told her kidnap was now an ever-present danger for the children of the wealthy.
‘So what can I do to help you, Miss Apryl? Today I am the happy man because of the pay day see? So anything at all I am happy to do for you.’
‘Well, I have a strange request.’
Piotr slapped one hand over his heart. ‘At last the day is a here. When the beautiful lady comes into the Barrington House and say she have a request for me, no?’
Don’t push it, fat boy. ‘I don’t know whether you know, but this building has some history. You see, a painter lived here. A man called Felix Hessen.’ Without revealing the fact that he lived in number sixteen, Apryl watched Piotr’s face for traces of recognition, but it remained blank and slightly distracted as if he was merely thinking of the next thing to say to her. Before he could interrupt, she told him of her research into her great-aunt’s life and of her desire to speak with a long-term resident, someone who had lived in the building since just after the Second World War.
‘Ahh.’ He raised one finger in the air. ‘I think there are two peoples that live here after the war, no? Mrs Roth and the Shafers. Very, very old now, yes? But their nurses tell Piotr that they live here oh so long ago.’
‘That’s amazing. My great-aunt said she was friends with Mrs Roth, and Mr and Mrs Shafer. How do you spell those names?’
He moved back behind the desk and opened a leather-bound ledger on the desktop.
One of his plump fingers moved down a list of names and telephone numbers stored beneath the laminated pages of the desk ledger.
Quickly, she leant over the desk. Her eyes became frantic, flicking up and down the names and searching for apartment and telephone numbers. She looked at the place in the ledger where Piotr’s index finger had paused: Mrs Roth, followed by three phone numbers. One was next to what had been misspelled as Dawter, another was next to Nerse, and the third read Landline. This was an 0207 number and she quickly committed it to memory while fishing for her cell phone.
While Piotr talked quickly about them meeting for ‘the coffee, no? To speak about the history and the aunt Lillian, yes?’ she smiled and nodded, half-listening but trying to screen out the sound of his voice while she quickly added Mrs Roth’s number to the address book of her phone. When she caught Piotr studying her, she raised the phone to her ear, as if to listen to a message. ‘Sorry, I have to listen to this. A voicemail.’ She rolled her eyes as if irritated. After a suitable pause she snapped the lid of the phone shut, shaking her head. ‘Not what I thought.’ Then looked into Piotr’s eyes and smiled.
He went into a diatribe about ‘the mobile’, while her eyes scoured the page of the open ledger again to find the Shafers. There it was: number twelve, with one phone number given, which she also rehearsed and then surreptitiously inputted into her cell phone by holding it below the top of the desk.
‘It is not so good at this time to speak to Mrs Roth and the Shafers.’ Piotr beamed and held out his arms. Then closed his eyes. ‘Ahh, but I will surely tell them that you asked about the aunt Lillian, no? In the mornings they don’t like to be disturbed. Maybe if we meet and you tell me the interesting story about the aunt Lillian, then I can say to them: hey, I know this really nice lady who comes to our lovely building and is the relative of Lillian. Then I think they might say the yes, no?’
‘No.’ She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. But then softened it to say, ‘I don’t have time. I’m very busy with sorting out the apartment and seeing . . . friends in the evening. I can catch up with these people another time.’
Maybe the Shafers and Mrs Roth would be annoyed when she called. They’d already refused to see her once. It was all such a long shot. But it was a shot she had to take if she was to validate anything in Lillian’s journals. Miles had said as much in the bar in Notting Hill the night before. After reading a few of Lillian’s journals he was suddenly very keen for her to find out whether anyone had seen Hessen’s paintings in Barrington House before he disappeared. For an art historian, this kind of information would be a coup.
Apryl was shepherded by Piotr up to the door that connected the lobby to the east wing. Close to her, his breath was unpleasantly warm on her face and neck, and the broken-English banter was relentless, insistent, until she practically fell into the sombre elevator to escape the bulbous shape beaming through the glass of the doors as they slid shut. He mimed the holding up of a phone, while showing her all of his little square teeth.
She half-turned and pretended not to see his hand signals. But then saw something else from the corner of her eye. She glimpsed it in the mirror at the back of the carriage. Something moving quickly behind her shoulder. Tall and thin and whitish, it rapidly vanished from her line of sight.
Sucking in her breath, she lurched around to see the gleaming but empty carriage. Nothing there but her. ‘Jesus,’ she said, breathing out. Then looked at the panel, as the elevator made what felt like a deliberately slow ascent. Six, seven . . . come on . . . eight . . . nine. And why wasn’t the door opening now? It hadn’t ever taken this long before, had it?
With a swish the doors finally opened and she rushed out of the carriage, looking back over her shoulder, at herself in the elevator’s mirror, at her frightened pale face. A face with an expression she’d only ever seen before in the mirrors of Barrington House.
‘Who is this? What do you want?’ The tone of voice was as unsettling as the smashing of crockery on a tiled floor.
Apryl cleared her throat, but the thin voice that slipped out was not one she cared to recognize as her own. ‘I’m . . . Er, my name is—’
‘Will you speak up! I can’t hear you.’ Mrs Roth’s voice rose beyond annoyance. Elderly, sharpened by age, too brittle for warmth, it instantly made her want to hang up.
‘Mrs Roth.’ She raised her voice, but couldn’t banish the tremor from her words. ‘I hope you don’t mind me disturbing you, but—’
‘Of course I do. Who are you?’ In the background she could hear the music from a television show.
‘My name is Apryl Beckford, and I’m—’
‘What are you saying?’ the old woman shouted, adding, ‘I don’t know who it is’ to someone who must have been in the room with her. ‘No! Don’t touch it. Leave it! Leave it!’ she shouted at the other occupant.
‘The television. Perhaps you should turn the television down,’ Apryl prompted.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m watching it now. There’s nothing wrong with it. Stephen fixed it for me. I’m not interested in anything you have to sell.’ The phone hit the cradle with a sound like a stone hitting a windshield.
Apryl winced and listened to the dialling tone for a few seconds, too stunned to move.
Three hours later, sitting on the bed in Lillian’s bedroom, she called again. This time there was no sound of a television booming in the background. Instead, the woman sounded as if she’d just been roused from sleep.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, I hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘You did.’ The words uncurled like something dark and mean, and in her mind Apryl saw small cruel eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t sleep at night. I’m not well. How can I sleep?’
‘I’m very sorry to hear about that, Mrs Roth. I hope you get well soon.’
‘What do you want?’ The question was more of a bark than a sentence.
‘I’m . . .’ Her mind went blank. ‘Well, I’m calling because—’
‘What are you saying? You’re making no sense.’
Then shut your mouth, you evil bitch, and I’ll make some sense. ‘I’m very interested in Barrington House, Mrs Roth. The history. You see—’
‘What’s it got to do with me? I don’t want to buy anything from you.’
Apryl imagined the phone crashing down again and braced herself. ‘I’m not selling anything. I’m the niece of Lillian Archer, Mrs Roth. I’m just trying to find out about her. I never knew her. And I believe you’ve lived here for a long time. I would really like to talk with you because I’m sure you have some very interesting stories. Especially about the artist—’
‘Artist. What do you mean, artist?’
‘Erm. A man called Felix Hessen. He lived—’
‘I know where he lived. What are you trying to do? Frighten me? I’m not well. I’m old. And it’s a cruel thing to call me and remind me of him. How dare you?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, ma’am. Only, I’m visiting here from America to sort out my great-aunt’s—’
‘I’m not interested in America!’
Apryl closed her eyes and shook her head. What was wrong with these people? Apart from Miles, every tenuous connection to Hessen led her to the unstable, the dysfunctional and the senile. It was wearing her out. It was impossible to communicate with them. They didn’t listen. She was just there to function as an audience for their craziness. She took a deep breath. ‘You don’t have to be interested in America. Please, just listen to me. It’s quite simple really. I’m not trying to sell anything. Nor am I trying to frighten you.’ Irritation gave a force to her words.
‘You don’t have to shout, dear. It’s not very nice.’
Apryl bit her bottom lip. ‘I just want to talk to someone who knew my great-aunt, and the artist Felix Hessen. She wrote about him a lot. Nothing more. Just a conversation.’
And then an extraordinary thing happened that filled Apryl with remorse at having raised her voice to this confused and elderly lady she’d woken from a nap. Mrs Roth’s voice quivered with emotion and then thickened with a sob. ‘He was an awful man. And I can’t sleep because of him. He’s doing it again.’
‘Mrs Roth, please don’t cry. I’m sorry I upset you. I just want to speak to someone who was here when Lillian was alive.’
The crotchety voice disintegrated into a few frail words interspersed with sniffs. ‘I can still hear him. I’ve told them downstairs.’
Apryl struggled to comprehend what she was being told. ‘Mrs Roth, I’m sorry you’re upset. You sound so sad. My aunt was too. Because of him.’
‘Well I am, dear. And you would be too. You believe me, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. Of course I do. And talking to someone might help. I think you need a new friend, Mrs Roth.’
Somewhere in the apartment, the metronome of a clock’s hand struck a steely echo that travelled like sad tidings throughout the empty rooms. But she couldn’t see the clock or seem to be able to get any closer to the far-off sound. And it was still hard to believe homes like this existed in Barrington House: peeling and faded with neglect from floor to ceiling, room after room.
As the small Filipino nurse, Imee, scurried ahead of her, Apryl found herself in a daze, dawdling down the long hallway of Mrs Roth’s apartment, the soles of her boots landing hard against the worn carpet. It might have been blue once, but was now threadbare and grey.
To the side of the hatstand and telephone table, a small and aged kitchen presented itself, cramped with an old enamel cooker and refrigerator. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
Apryl glanced into the living room. With her quick eyes she caught glimpses of elegant disorder. A silver drinks trolley sat idle, loaded with crystal decanters, an ice bucket, tongs, and half-empty bottles of spirits. Ageing heavy furniture retreated sorrowfully into the corners. The air was shadowed by leaden drapes, drawn by heavy gold braid. And all this beneath a magnificent chandelier, hanging like a gigantic ice crystal over a mahogany table.
The thin light caught these once glamorous but now dust-filmed objects. They seemed frozen in a forlorn disappointment at the absence of whoever it was who once peopled the space. It made her melancholy. In the noisy maelstrom that existed outside, of angry traffic and marching strangers, of ugly, tragic council estates, of wind-blown garbage, beggars, and the intense energy that both drained and invigorated you at the same time, how could such stillness exist? Shabby with neglect but undisturbed and ominous in its silence, it was another quiet relic from an era of elegant ladies in long dresses and gentlemen in dinner jackets.
And there was nothing on any of the walls. No pictures, no mirrors – not so much as a single watercolour. Nothing.
An open door beside the bathroom revealed a smaller bedroom with an unmade bed. The nurse’s room, beside the Queen’s chamber. Outside which they came to stand. The nurse paused before the closed door and lowered her solemn eyes, too tired to even attempt an encouraging smile. Behind the antique door the sound of a television boomed. Imee knocked so loudly it made Apryl jump.
When a voice, fierce with age, cried out from the other side of the door, she entered the master bedroom.
Apryl suspected the wizened figure had been deliberately positioned and prepared for her arrival. Small as a child, with mottled arms as thin as sticks resting upon the covers, the big hands incongruous below the lumpy wrists, Mrs Roth sat propped up in bed. She was clad in a nightgown of blue silk edged with white lace, an outfit that did nothing but add to the horror of the aged body inside it. The carefully arranged but grotesquely old-fashioned hairstyle had the unmistakable sheen of hair that had been recently attended to. It was as high and perfectly conical as a bishop’s hat, but transparent. And the lipless beak of a mouth above the heavily grooved chin, protruding like the muzzle of a small dog, had been painted bright pink. Small eyes full of mistrust watched Apryl enter.
‘Sit there,’ the voice commanded while the hard eyes glanced at the two chairs at the end of the bed, arranged on either side of the television.
Smiling weakly, Apryl unlooped her bag from her shoulder and made a move for the nearest chair. ‘Hello, Mrs Roth. It’s so good of you to see me. I—’
‘Not there!’ the figure barked. ‘The other one.’
‘I’m sorry. I was just saying—’
‘Never mind all that. Take your coat off, dear. What kind of woman wears her coat indoors?’
On either side of the enormous bed in which the tiny figure was huddled at the very centre, surrounded by large white pillows, two small dressers were cluttered with photographs. The black-and-white faces all looked towards the foot of the bed, where Apryl now sat, uncomfortable on a hard chair with wings that obscured the room on either side of her head, tunnelling her vision forward to the little creature among the pillows.
An audience had truly been granted. But what kind of audience? Mrs Roth’s manner was hardly conducive to any kind of reasonable conversation – but that was the point. The clever old bird maintained complete control of both the discourse and the visitor by immediately unsettling and belittling them with her unpleasantness. And who was anyone to object, either as a guest or as a disempowered member of staff on her payroll, like the porters downstairs? Even the garrulous and feckless Piotr shuddered at the mention of Mrs Roth. And poor little Imee’s face reflected the same fear and aversion. The nurse didn’t enter the room – some rule probably forbade her doing so. Instead, she waited at the door.
But as Miles had reminded Apryl, Mrs Roth was one of a small and shrinking group of people still alive who could attest to the existence of Hessen’s mythical paintings. She was now here on Miles’s behalf too. More importantly, Mrs Roth had known Lillian. And the last tangible traces of her great-aunt’s life were evaporating.
At least Mrs Roth was more lucid than Alice from the Friends of Felix Hessen, and beneath her inhospitable carapace there was a vulnerability about the old woman.
‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Mrs Roth said, as if reading her mind.
‘Mmm?’ Apryl asked.
‘You know who I am talking about. Don’t play games with me. I’m not stupid. But you are a bloody fool if you think I am.’
Then why did you agree to see me? She couldn’t risk an argument. Mrs Roth was not someone to trifle with, but to weather until the woman’s mood changed. And she knew from experience that the rude and unpleasant were not insensitive to flattery; the very insecurity that created a menacing facade could be turned into an Achilles’ heel.
Apryl smiled her sweetest and most guileless smile. ‘Not for a minute would I suggest such a thing, Mrs Roth. Would a fool live in such a grand apartment? I’ve never had the pleasure to see such a place.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s terrible.’ But no sooner had her attempt to win Mrs Roth been rebuffed than the old woman’s mood changed swiftly to something more agreeable. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes flared with self-importance. ‘You should have seen it when my husband was alive. We had such wonderful parties, dear. You’ve never seen anything like them. Full of lovely people. The kind of people you would never meet. You have no idea how charming the men were. You’ve never met such gentlemen. And the beauty of the ladies. You girls are nothing compared to how we used to be. I mean, look at you, dear. You should do something with your hair. It’s awful.’
Apryl tried to maintain her smile. ‘Yes, I should. Maybe you could recommend somebody. As soon as I came in, I noticed the lovely colour of your hair. It’s so shiny.’ Apryl looked at the carefully domed wisps and smiled as sincerely as she could.
Mrs Roth blushed. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘That would be nice.’
The old lady picked up a small brass bell from her bedclothes and began to ring it furiously. ‘Oh where is she?’ she cried out at exactly the same moment she began to ring the bell.
In seconds the door opened and Imee shuffled in, her eyes lowered to her white gym shoes. ‘We want tea, Imee. Tea! My visitor has been in the rain and you have forgotten to make tea again.’
‘I am sorry, Mrs Roth,’ the woman said.
‘How many times must you be told. And cake. Bring in the cakes. I want the yellow one and the pink one.’
Mrs Roth glared at Imee until she’d left the room, then said, ‘Look over here. Here, dear. These are my daughter’s grandchildren. They are so beautiful. I took Clara to Claridge’s for lunch yesterday. And when the head waiter asked her what she wanted she said, ‘Fish and chips.’ What a darling she is. You’ve never seen such a beautiful child. Look. Here. I said look here.’ Irritated because Apryl hadn’t moved quickly enough to satisfy her most recent and impulsive demand, she began pointing in the general direction of the cabinet on her right side.
When Imee returned with the tea and cakes on a small silver trolley, Apryl looked at the floor. Squirming in her seat and powerless to act, she listened to Mrs Roth humiliate the nurse, going so far as to call her a ‘bloody fool’ for not positioning the tea things in the manner she had been told to ‘a hundred times’. Imee responded by saying, ‘I am nurse, Mrs Roth, not waitress,’ before scurrying from the room on the brink of tears.
‘Cake, dear. Have a slice of cake, dear. I like the pink one. My daughter bought it for me.’
It was so cheap and dry, Apryl struggled to swallow a mouthful of it.
‘You look like Lilly,’ Mrs Roth said, dabbing crumbs from the side of her mouth with one swollen knuckle.
‘I do?’
She nodded. ‘When she was young. Very pretty woman. Such a shame she went mad.’
And then, quite suddenly, Mrs Roth asked Apryl to turn the television on so she could watch some quiz show, during which she was forbidden to speak. But by the first commercial break, Mrs Roth had fallen asleep while the television boomed within the room.
Watching the sleeping figure, who made infrequent whistling sounds through her nose, Apryl sat still for a few minutes. Then she called out, ‘Umm, Mrs Roth. Mrs Roth,’ three times, but to no effect. The woman could not be woken. Perhaps she was dead. But when Apryl became desperate for the toilet and stood up, Mrs Roth’s eyes opened. Milky orbs drifted around her eye sockets, then locked on to Apryl. ‘Where are you going? Sit down at once.’
‘I was going to use the bathroom.’
‘Oh.’
‘You were asleep.’
‘What?’
‘You fell asleep. Maybe this is the wrong time.’
‘What? Nonsense! I did no such thing. Don’t make things up.’
‘No. Well, I was mistaken then. I’ll just be a moment.’
The bell was hoisted aloft and Mrs Roth began furiously ringing it again. Apryl and Imee passed in the doorway and exchanged tired, nervous but ultimately knowing glances. A look familiar to those beleaguered by the petty and the powerful.
When she returned from the bathroom, she tried to formulate a tactful way of bringing the conversation back to Felix Hessen, but Mrs Roth pre-empted her. It seemed she was now ready to speak of him without a prompt. It was as if until now she had been testing her guest’s fitness for disclosure. Playing a game, unwilling to give her what she wanted until she’d tormented her first. And mercifully, the television was silenced.
‘So you want to know about Felix. That’s why you’re here. I’m not fooled by you, dear. But it’ll do you no good. You won’t understand. No one does.’
‘Try me. Please.’
‘He drove Lilly mad. You know that much, don’t you?’
Apryl nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. But I want to know how.’
Mrs Roth looked at her hands in silence. When Apryl began to wonder if the woman would ever speak again, she said, ‘I don’t like to think of him. I never wanted to remember him.’ Her voice was tired. Every vestige of her brittle, difficult, impossible character was now absent from her words. But she was unable to meet Apryl’s eye as she spoke. ‘When he was finally gone we all hoped that was the end of it. But we were naive to have thought so. Men like that don’t follow the same rules as the rest of us. Lilly knew that. She’d have told you the same. No one would believe us. But we knew.’
Apryl leant forward in her seat.
‘When he first came here . . . I don’t remember when . . . but after the war, when Arthur and I came back from Scotland, he was here.’ She paused to paw at the bedclothes with her knotted fingers. ‘He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. We all thought so. But he never smiled. Not once. And he never spoke to a soul. We thought it odd. It had never been a building for recluses. Quite the opposite. It was nothing like it is now. This was once a wonderful place where your neighbours were your friends. We all entertained each other. Only decent people here, dear. Not like today. It’s full of rubbish now. People with no manners. You should hear the noise they make. We have no idea who is living next to us any more. People move in and out all the time. It’s intolerable.’
Mrs Roth began to sniff. From under the sleeve of her nightdress she removed a white tissue and began to dab at her eyes. A long heavy tear that appeared incongruous on her face rolled down her cheek and splattered against her wrist.
Instinctively, Apryl went to her and sat on the side of the bed. Mrs Roth immediately offered Apryl her free hand. It was crooked with arthritis and very cold. Apryl warmed the fingers between her palms. The simple act made Mrs Roth cry harder, in the same way a child’s grief intensifies within the safety of a parent’s arms.
‘One would often come across him in a stairwell. He never used the lift. He would be standing alone and looking at the pictures. He would take them from the wall and study them. But he would turn on you if you disturbed him. I hated it. No one liked to look into his eyes, dear. He was a lunatic. Quite mad. No one in their right mind had eyes like that. No one was comfortable with him here. Many of us were Jewish and knew he’d been one of those Hitler people. What are they called?’
‘Fascists.’
‘Don’t interrupt me, dear. Nothing upsets me more than a woman with no manners.’
‘Sorry.’
‘But that was how it was for years. I never once had a single conversation with him. Nothing. No one did. The porters didn’t like him either. They were frightened of him. We all were, dear. He lived in the flat underneath us. Down there.’ She pointed at the floor. ‘And he was always making such a noise at night. Moving things. Waking us up. This bumping. And shouting. You could hear him talking in a loud voice. As if he was in another room of our home. And right up against his ceiling we heard the other voices. Under our feet. But we never saw any visitors coming or going. No one knows how he got them up here. We asked the porters and they swore no one had called on the gentleman in number sixteen. But he had company. It wasn’t a radio. Radios never sounded like that, dear.
‘Sometimes it seemed like his flat was full of people. As if he was having a party, but not a very nice one. His other neighbours said the same thing. We all heard it in the west wing. And it got worse. Before his accident. The noises and voices. People were leaving because of them.
‘And then one night – I’ll never forget it – we heard such a dreadful commotion. Screaming. It was awful. This screaming from below us. Like someone was in agony, dear. Like they were being tortured. We were so shaken. We couldn’t move. Arthur and I just sat together in bed and listened. Until the screaming stopped.
‘And then Arthur went down there. He called your uncle Reggie, and Tom Shafer, and they went down with him. They were all in their dressing gowns. Reggie came because he had been trying to get Hessen evicted from here. The head porter was called too, and the police. And when they opened it up, they found him in the living room . . .’
Mrs Roth covered as much of her face as possible with the handkerchief and sobbed. When she spoke again her voice was broken. ‘I went down with Lilly to help. He’d had a terrible accident . . . His face was all gone . . . Down to the bone.
‘They took him away. We thought he would die. No one could have survived those injuries. And no one knew what had happened to him. He must . . . he must have done it to himself.
‘But he came back. Months later. With his whole head in bandages. And there was a nurse, who he dismissed a few days later. Some of us even sent flowers and cards to the wretched man. We knew he was in there, but he wouldn’t come to the door. Like before, he just wanted to be left alone. So we left him alone. At least until it began again. And the next time it was worse than before.
‘He was evil. I told you that. And now I have them again. The nightmares. They killed Reginald and Arthur. It was the dreams, dear. No one would believe me now, but we knew then. He killed them both.’
Apryl couldn’t remain silent any longer. ‘How, Mrs Roth? I thought he was just a painter.’
‘No. No. No,’ she shook her head, the rims of her eyes now inflamed. ‘I told you. He was all wrong. Evil. I never knew anyone could be so bad, dear. He should never have come here. I don’t remember why he did. But he ruined the building. Killed it.’
‘How, Mrs Roth? My great-aunt wrote the same things. What did he do?’
‘The shadows have come back to the stairs. We could never get rid of them then, and they’re back here now. They changed the lights but it never made any difference. People stopped coming here. People left. But some of us refused to let him ruin our home. It was such a wonderful place until he came here.’
‘Did you see . . . his paintings?’
Mrs Roth nodded. ‘Horrible things. You’ve no idea. He didn’t know what beauty was. He made us all dream of them. We thought the Colonel was going gaga. He used to live here, the Colonel. And Mrs Melbourne. They saw them first. At night, dear.
‘People took pills and went to doctors. Real doctors. Not like you have now, dear. They don’t know anything now. They’re bloody fools. But even our doctors could do nothing for anyone who had the dreams. Reginald had them next. And Lilly. Then me. I was only young.’ She began to weep again and to squeeze at Apryl’s hands.
‘What were they? I don’t understand. What were the dreams?’
‘I can’t say. I don’t know how to. But he made us see things. You think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes you do. You think I’m a silly old woman. I’m not.’
‘No. No.’ Apryl rubbed Mrs Roth’s back, to which she responded with a surge of sobs.
She began to sniff and talk at the same time, in a tearful voice. ‘The voices came out of that flat and onto the stairs and into our rooms. Arthur and I used to sit together and hear them. There was never anyone there, but we could always hear them around us. Anywhere near his flat, you could hear the things he brought with him. They came out of there.’ Again, she pointed a twisted hand at the floor.
‘Oh, it was terrible.’ Mrs Roth began to speak in bursts between her sobs. Apryl moved her head closer as it was becoming difficult to make out exactly what she was saying. ‘And Mrs Melbourne jumped from the roof. I saw her down there in the garden. She hit the wall. She wasn’t the last to do it either.’ The last sentence she spoke softly and with a genuine remorse that shook her words, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t look at Apryl as she spoke.
‘Oh, Mrs Roth. I’m so sorry. They were your friends. It must have been terrible.’
‘You have no idea. It was his fault. He did it.’
‘With his paintings?’
Mrs Roth drew a deep breath and swallowed a sob. She nodded, once. ‘They confronted him. Reginald and Tom and Arthur. They went to see him, dear. They were so angry, you can’t imagine. We were all going mad with it. So the men went to his flat because he wouldn’t receive our telephone calls and wouldn’t answer letters from the management. The men took keys from the head porter and let themselves inside.
‘And . . . and he looked terrible. They said his head was all wrapped up in something. Over his face he wore this mask. It was red. Cloth. And through it they could see the terrible shape of his face, dear. It was so tight on his face. No one knew what to say. But Reginald tried to be calm. Asked him what it was he thought he was doing to our home.
‘He laughed at them. He just laughed. They were very reasonable. They were all good men. But he just laughed. His face in this . . . this red thing. They could only see his eyes.
‘And then the men saw them again. On the walls. What he’d been doing in there for so long. They were worse than before. All the terrible things from our dreams. The paintings . . .’
‘What were they like? Please tell me. Please.’
‘And then Reginald lost his temper. They . . .’
‘They?’
Mrs Roth sat up in her bed and released Apryl’s hand. The sobbing and sniffing stopped abruptly, and her face froze back into a grim facade. ‘I’m tired.’
‘But . . . I mean, you were telling me . . . about the paintings?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not important.’
‘But you were so upset. I want to understand.’
‘It’s none of your business. I want Imee. Imee. Where’s my bell? It’s time for me to eat. You shouldn’t visit at mealtimes. It’s rude.’ The bell was ringing next to Apryl’s ear, the action deliberate, she felt.
She moved back to the chair to collect her things. Then turned to speak as Imee came through the door – but Apryl found herself too bewildered by Mrs Roth’s story to move her lips. And it was clear the woman was terrified and had told her far more than she ever intended to.
Apryl moved quickly from the bedside, only looking behind once she reached the safety of the doorway to see Imee beside the bed, bent by the force of the shrieked reprimands issuing from amongst the pillows. A cushion over that old face would not be unreasonable. Apryl felt shocked at the presence of such a thought that did not feel like one of her own.
She would let herself out. What kind of woman lets herself out, dear? Relief to be away from the dreadful woman pushed her down the aged hallway, and excitement at the revelations she would recount to Miles made her nimbler in her high-heeled boots. Until she opened the front door and passed through onto the landing.
With a breath-stealing suddenness, there was a quick flurry of whitish motion on her left side. Cringing, she sucked in air so fast she issued a tiny shriek. Then looked past the gloved hand she had raised to fend the thing off. In her peripheral vision she’d seen a flapping shape speeding towards her, with a smear of red above what could only have been bony shoulders.
And as she peered through her gloved fingers at the large polished mirror on the wall opposite the elevator, there was a brief billow of something white within the gilt frame. Which made her turn about swiftly to see the origin of the reflection on her right side.
Terrified she had flinched at a reflection and not the actual assailant, she staggered back two steps and braced herself for the impact.
But there was no one on the landing with her. She scoured the stairwells and elevator door for what had come rushing at her, but nothing moved, with the exception of the rapid ascent and descent of her own chest that struggled to take a breath.