The Paying Guests

The next morning, Lilian comes down for a bath, supported by Vera. Lilian apologizes for all the trouble Leonard’s death has caused Mrs. Wray. Mrs. Wray promises she will pray for Lilian, though Frances notices “an odd lack of warmth on her mother’s part, despite the kindness of her words” (316). Mrs. Viney arrives, carrying a copy of News of the World. The press has already caught on to Leonard’s murder.

Not wanting to be separated from Lilian any longer, Frances goes upstairs to offer her assistance to the women, who are sewing and dying mourning clothes for Lilian.

Netta’s daughter announces the arrival of two policemen. Sure enough, Sargent Heath and Inspector Kempe have arrived to collect further statements from Lilian and Frances. They confirm that they believe the case to be a murder. Charlie Wismuth told the police that he and Leonard had parted ways just after ten that night. Kempe believes Leonard must have disturbed a burglar as he returned home. Frances is confused; she knows that Leonard was already dead and in the street by ten. Charlie lied to the police, and she does not know why.

Kempe assures the women that they will find the killer and the weapon he used. He believes it was “Someone with regular habits” as opposed to an experienced criminal (325). He has a strange feeling about the case and believes it was perpetrated by someone with a grudge against Leonard. This revelation is the first bit of relief that Frances has felt in days. She thinks, Kempe “couldn’t catch someone who didn’t exist” (326).

The police inquest will begin tomorrow, and Kempe requests Frances, Lilian, and Mrs. Wray’s attendance. He wants to interview Lilian to clarify her statements and asks if he can go through Leonard’s things. He also requests that Lilian and Frances give them hair samples to match against hairs found on Leonard’s coat. Frances reluctantly agrees.

While the officers and Lilian are out of the room, Frances becomes acutely aware of the evidence they left behind in the room. She watches in horror as Vera scours the room for an ashtray, eventually reaching behind the couch and withdrawing the murder weapon and standing it in the middle of the room. Frances watches in mute horror, but nobody notices. The little girl makes a show of dancing around the ashtray, pretending to smoke. When the policemen leave, they take no notice of the ashtray, though Kempe jokes with the girl about smoking. They apologize for the intrusion and leave.

Frances escorts Lilian to the water closet so they can have a moment alone. Lilian reveals that Kempe insisted on asking her questions about Charlie. They took away an assortment of Leonard’s possessions. Lilian is worried about the hair samples; but Frances is confident the police are not on their trail.

The police inquest happens the next day. Frances views it as a “nightmarish wedding” (334). Kempe, the police surgeon, and Lilian are called as witnesses. They run into Charlie, who tells them he wishes he had gone home with Leonard, his “voice thickened, with real emotion” (335). Frances is still confused; she knows he is lying about the night of his friend’s death. The newspapers publish increasingly sensational accounts of the story.

Mrs. Viney insists on taking Lilian home with her; she does not want to intrude upon the Wrays anymore. 

Reporters hound Frances and Mrs. Wray for several days. Vera comes to pick up Lilian’s clothes. Newspapers published photographs of Lilian after the inquest; Frances is baffled by it all. The newspapers “captured something of Lilian, they had got the life and solidity of her, and it was incredible, dizzying, mad!” (338). The neighbors visit and discuss the rumors flying around.

Mrs. Playfair visits. She and Mrs. Wray rehash the case, which makes Frances feel “boneless with exhaustion” (341). However, she uses the opportunity to rehearse the case as the police have constructed it in order to make it stick in her mind. Mrs. Playfair knows the coroner and will ask him for details the police have not let out. Frances feels relief: the police do not suspect them, and Lilian is free.

Mrs. Playfair returns later to report the news. Something is not right about Charlie’s story: there are no witnesses at any of the pubs he claims to have gone to with Leonard that remember their presence. Leonard’s body had a very low blood alcohol level, indicating he had not been drinking. Most disturbing is the fact that a man and a woman heard noises in the alley while Frances and Lilian were taking Leonard’s body out to the street. Frances is horrified.

As Mrs. Wray and Mrs. Playfair speculate, Frances’s panic and anger rise. She goes off on Mrs. Playfair for saying “‘Men don’t kill each other for no reason’” (344). Frances compares Leonard’s death to the pointlessness of the war, shocking the older women. Mrs. Playfair leaves soon after. Frances notices that Mrs. Wray seems suspicious.

A messenger delivers Frances a telegram from Christina. When Mrs. Wray realizes who it is from, it turns into an argument. Mrs. Wray had assumed Frances no longer saw Christina. She wonders what else Frances has lied to her about. She asks Frances about the night of Leonard’s death and regards her with suspicion when she does not answer directly.

After Mrs. Wray lies down for a nap, Frances panics. She thinks her mother has guessed everything; and if she has, it is only a matter of time before Kempe does. In her panic she almost writes an incriminating message to Lilian. Instead, she decides to answer Christina’s telegram.

Mrs. Wray goes out the next day, and Frances uses the opportunity to scour Lilian’s apartment for evidence. She empties the ashes and finds a scrap of fabric from the some of the cloth she burned. She buries it by the rosebush. She scrubs the hallway, finding a small splash of blood and half of a black button that she thinks might have been from Leonard’s coat. She buries it in a potted plant in the kitchen.

There is a knock on the door. It is Inspector Kempe. He tells her about the two possible witnesses that Mrs. Playfair mentioned. Frances determines that Kempe suspects Charlie; she tells him it could not be him, and Kempe keeps her statement in mind. He questions Frances about Lilian and Leonard. She lies that she did not know them well.

Inspector Kempe mentions that Frances accompanied Lilian to the party. Frances had told the police that she had not gone. He begins to make insinuations about Lilian dancing with other men at the party. He says that others have mentioned Lilian’s exuberant attitude and the fact that she paid a great deal of attention to her appearance that night.

Frances lies that she did not know that Lilian was unhappy in her marriage. Kempe mentions the oddity of Lilian doing spring cleaning on the night of the murder. He thinks she may have been packing for a hasty departure.

Inspector Kempe reveals that Leonard’s life was insured and Lilian was his “‘sole beneficiary’” (356). Frances frantically tries to think through what this implies. Apparently, Leonard had extended the policy in July, shortly after the night of the party. Frances nearly loses her head again, but she calms herself down in time.

As Kempe gets ready to leave, he tells Frances that the hairs on Leonard’s jacket belonged to Frances, Lilian, Leonard, and Charlie, while some remain unknown. He is “almost chummy now” (357). Before he leaves, he mentions Frances’s past arrest. When he leaves, Frances feels “a sickening combination of being rid of him and alarm at what he had revealed to her. It was all so much worse than she’d been supposing!” (358). Kempe has worked out that there was a lover involved and worries that she will be suspected.

Throwing caution to the wind, she decides to go to Mr. Viney’s shop to visit Lilian. She is rudely greeted by a neighbor, Lydia. Mrs. Viney is shocked to see Frances. She invites her in. She is struck by the interior of the house, “all of it meaner and more old-fashioned than she had been expecting” (361). At Mrs. Viney’s insistence, Lilian takes Frances through to the parlor, where she is introduced to Mr. Viney.

Frances and Lilian are able to speak alone for only a few minutes. She tells Lilian about Mrs. Wray and the inspector’s visit. Lilian is horrified; she thinks it is the end. However, she claims that the insurance policy is nothing—all married men at Leonard’s work take them out. They are worried about what Kempe suspects.

Lilian regrets not letting Frances go for a doctor while Leonard lay dying. She wonders if she should confess to the police. Frances is shocked. She manages to convince Lilian against doing so. They kiss and Frances leaves.

On the street, she suspects she is being followed by a man in a “buckled grey mackintosh” who she thinks she had passed earlier (365). She suspects that Kempe is having her followed. She returns home “feeling sick, feeling trapped and exposed” (365).

Leonard’s funeral takes place two weeks later. Two wreathes on Leonard’s coffin “one marked BROTHER, the other SON—recalled the awful untimeliness of his death” (366). The mourners move into two groups: the Peckham group, Leonard’s family; and the Walworth group, Lilian’s. Lilian’s other and sisters silently fight with Leonard’s family for placement of flowers on the coffin. Mrs. Barber will not let Lilian place her flowers on the coffin; the papers have published speculation about Charlie and Lilian and about Leonard’s insurance money.

Frances attempts to get a glimpse of Lilian, but they are separated in the crowd.

News of the funeral spreads, and crowds of onlookers and gawkers descend upon the cemetery. Frances sees Charlie trying to escape the scene. She sees Lilian’s family attempting to leave in a car; Lloyd gets into an argument with Douglas Barber, Leonard’s brother, whose voice is exactly like Leonard’s. She sees Lilian as the car drives away; Lilian puts her hand to the window, looking like “she might have been drowning” (369).

After a few days of hallucinatory fear, Frances visits Christina and promptly breaks down in tears. Christina takes her inside and gives her a tumbler of brandy. Sobbing, she tells Christina about how life has been since Leonard’s death. She tells her the police suspect Lilian and lets on that Charlie is lying. Of course, she cannot tell Christina why she knows this.

Christina has been worried about Frances. Frances tells her that Mrs. Wray saw her telegram. She tells her that Lilian lost a baby. She has the urge to tell Christina everything. However, she looks around Christina’s flat and realizes that the “lies that were being told here were such harmless ones […] so uncorrupted, so safe” and decides not to tell her anything (374). She knows this will cause a breach between them.

Frances asks Christina if she can sleep for a while Christina works. The sound of her typewriter lulls her to sleep. She wakes to a newspaper crier calling something about an arrest in the Champion Hill murder case. Christina rushes to get a copy.

Frances is sure Charlie has been arrested. However, the man in custody is “Spencer Ward, a motor-mechanic, of Bermondsey” (376). Spenser Ward was arrested following a new statement given by Charlie. Ward is suspected of attacking Leonard after learning of intimacy between his fiancé, Billie Grey, and Leonard.

It takes a moment for it to sink in. Leonard had been having an affair, and the boyfriend of his mistress has been arrested for Leonard’s murder. The implications fill her with horror. Christina lends Frances money for a cab, and she rushes off to see Lilian.

Traffic is bad and Frances’s anxiety only increases along the way. She goes directly into the Vineys’ apartment. They are surprised to see her. She tells Lilian what the newspaper said, but they had already heard the news from Sergeant Heath that morning. They are shocked and disappointed in Leonard. Spenser Ward had the murder weapon on his person when he was arrested.

It was Spenser who attacked Leonard on the night of the party. This explains why Leonard did not go to the police. Vera is vindictive toward Leonard and his mother; Mrs. Viney feels sorry for Mrs. Barber.

Frances asks to see Lilian alone. Lilian hurriedly dismisses her mother’s protests and takes Frances upstairs. Frances asks what they are going to do; an innocent man has been arrested for Lilian’s crime. Lilian says, “‘It’s like a judgement on me, for everything I’ve done’” (380). Spenser will first go through a police court inquiry and then will go on trial at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. The whole process will take weeks. Frances wants to turn themselves in, but the idea of “the newspapers, the neighbors, her mother’s stricken face” makes her think otherwise (382).

Lilian lets slip that she knew about Leonard and Billie. Frances grows suspicious. While they were on vacation, she found tickets to a show on a night Leonard said he was at his parents’ house. She confronted him and they fought.

Frances realizes that this is what made Lilian write her the letter. Lilian denies this, but Frances anger mounts, “so pure, so complete, it amazed her” (384). Lilian kept this information from her. Frances accuses her of knowing she was pregnant when she found the tickets and wrote the letter. She questions whether swinging the ashtray was an accident. Lilian is crushed. She tells Frances, “‘I love you more than I ever hated him’” (385).

Frances tells Lilian that she cannot take the wall forever; she will not keep shouldering Lilian’s burden alone. Lilian abruptly hardens. She calmly begins to get ready to leave. As she watches, Frances begins to feel physically ill. Her anger and resolve break; she stops Lilian. They will wait and see what happens at the police court hearing.