No Business of Mine

I arrived outside Netta’s flat at ten minutes past seven. I paid off the driver, stood back, and looked up at her windows on the top floor. The house was one of those dreary buildings that grace the back streets off Cromwell Road. It was tall, dirty, and the lace curtains at the windows were on their last legs. Netta’s flat, one of three, still had the familiar bright orange curtains at the windows. I wondered if I was going to walk in on a new lover, decided I’d chance it. I opened the front door, began the walk up the three flights of coconut-matted stairs.

Those stairs brought back a lot of pleasant memories. I remembered the nights we used to sneak up them, holding our shoes in our hands lest Mrs. Crockett, the landlady who lurked in the basement, should hear us. I remembered too, the night I had flown over Berlin with a R.A.F. crew and had arrived at Netta’s flat at five o’clock in the morning, too excited to sleep and wanting to tell her of the experience, only to find she hadn’t come home that night. I had sat on the top of those stairs waiting for her, and had finally dozed off, to be discovered by Mrs. Crockett, who had threatened to call the police.

I passed the doors of the other two flats. I had never discovered who lived in them. During the whole time I had visited Netta I hadn’t once seen the occupiers. I arrived, a little breathless, outside Netta’s front door, and paused before I rang the bell.

Everything was exactly the same. There was her card in a tiny brass frame screwed to the panel of the door. There was the long scratch on the paint-work which I had made when slightly drunk with the latchkey. There was the thick wool mat before the door. I found my heart was beating a shade quicker, and my hands were a little damp. It seemed to me all of a sudden that Netta had become important to me: I’d been away too long.

I punched the bell, waited, heard nothing, punched the bell again. No one answered the door. I continued to wait, wondering if Netta was in her bath. I gave her a few more seconds, punched the bell again.

“There’s no one there,” a voice said from behind me.

I turned, looked down the short flight of stairs. A man was standing in the doorway of the lower flat, looking up at me. He was a big strapping fellow around thirty, broad and well-built but far from muscular. With a frame like a hammer-thrower, he was yet soft, just this side of fat. He stood looking up at me with a half-smile on his face, and the impression he gave me was that of an enormous sleepy tom-cat, indifferent, self-sufficient, pleased with himself. The waning sunlight coming through the grimy window caught the gold in his mouth, making his teeth come alive.

“Hello, baby,” he said. “You one of her boy friends?” He had a faint lisp, and his corn-coloured hair was cut close. He was wearing a yellow and black silk dressing-gown, fastened at his throat; his pyjama legs were electric blue, his sandals scarlet. He was quite a picture.

“Go jump into a lake,” I said. “Jump into two if one won’t hold you,” and I turned back to Netta’s door.

The man giggled. It was an unpleasant hissing sound and for no reason at all it set my nerves jumping.

“There’s no one there, baby,” he repeated, then added in an undertone, “she’s dead.”

I stopped ringing the bell, turned, looked at him. He raised his eyebrows, and his head waggled from side to side ever so slightly. “Did you hear?” he asked, and smiled as if he were privately amused at some secret joke of his own.

“Dead?” I repeated, moving away from the door.

“That’s right, baby,” he said, leaning against the door-post, giving me an arch look. “She died yesterday. You can still smell the gas if you sniff hard enough.” He touched his throat, flinched. “I had a bad day with it yesterday.”

I walked down the stairs, stood in front of him. He was an inch taller than I and a lot broader, but I knew he hadn’t any iron in his bones.

“Calm down, Fatso,” I said, “and give it to me straight. What gas? What are you raving about?”

“Come inside, baby,” he said, smirking. “I’ll tell you about it.”

Before I could refuse, he had sauntered into a large room which stank of stale scent and was full of old, dusty furniture.

He dropped into a big easy chair. As his great body dented the cushions a fine cloud of dust arose.

“Excuse the hovel,” he said, looking around the room with an expression of disgust on his face. “Mrs. Crockett’s a slut. She never cleans the place and I can’t be expected to do it, can I, baby? Life’s too short to waste time cleaning when one has my abilities.”

“Never mind the Oscar Wilde act,” I said impatiently. “Are you telling me Netta Scott’s dead?”

He nodded, smiled up at me. “Sad, isn’t it? Such a delightful girl; beautiful, lovely little body; so full of vigour — now, just meal for the worms.” He sighed. “Death is a great leveller, isn’t it?”

“How did it happen?” I asked, wanting to take him by his fat throat and shake the daylights out of him.