The Breaking Point Read Free Page A

The impulse was strong within him to say, ‘I have come to strangle you. You and your child. I bear you no malice whatever. It just happens that I am the instrument of fate sent for this purpose.’ Instead, he smiled. The woman was pallid, like the child on the steps, with the same expressionless eyes, the same lank hair. Her age might have been anything from twenty to thirty-five. She was wearing a woollen cardigan too big for her, and her dark, bunched skirt, ankle-length, made her seem squat.
    ‘Do you let rooms?’ asked Fenton.
    A light came into the dull eyes, an expression of hope. It was almost as if this was a question she had longed for and had believed would never come. But the gleam faded again immediately, and the blank stare returned.
    ‘The house isn’t mine,’ she said. ‘The landlord let rooms once, but they say it’s to be pulled down, with those on either side, to make room for flats.’
    ‘You mean,’ he pursued, ‘the landlord doesn’t let rooms any more?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘He told me it wouldn’t be worth it, not with the demolition order coming any day. He pays me a small sum to caretake until they pull the house down. I live in the basement.’
    ‘I see,’ he said.
    It would seem that the conversation was at an end. Nevertheless Fenton continued to stand there. The girl or woman - for she could be either - looked past him to the child, bidding him to be quiet, though he hardly whimpered.
    ‘I suppose,’ said Fenton, ‘you couldn’t sublet one of the rooms in the basement to me? It could be a private arrangement between ourselves while you remain here.The landlord couldn’t object.’
    He watched her make the effort to think. His suggestion, so unlikely, so surprising coming from someone of his appearance, was something she could not take in. Since surprise is the best form of attack, he seized his advantage. ‘I only need one room,’ he said quickly,‘for a few hours in the day. I shouldn’t be sleeping here.’
    The effort to size him up was beyond her - the tweed suit, appropriate for London or the country, the trilby hat, the walking-stick, the fresh-complexioned face, the forty-five to fifty years. He saw the dark eyes become wider and blanker still as they tried to reconcile his appearance with his unexpected request.
    ‘What would you want the room for?’ she asked doubtfully.
    There was the crux. To murder you and the child, my dear, and dig up the floor, and bury you under the boards. But not yet.
    ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ he said briskly. ‘I’m a professional man. I have long hours. But there have been changes lately, and I must have a room where I can put in a few hours every day and be entirely alone. You’ve no idea how difficult it is to find the right spot. This seems to me ideal for the purpose.’ He glanced from the empty house down to the child, and smiled. ‘Your little boy, for instance. Just the right age. He’d give no trouble.’
    A semblance of a smile passed across her face. ‘Oh, Johnnie is quiet enough,’ she said. ‘He sits there for hours, he wouldn’t interfere.’ Then the smile wavered, the doubt returned. ‘I don’t know what to say . . . We live in the kitchen, with the bedroom next to it. There is a room behind, where I have a few bits of furniture stored, but I don’t think you would like it. You see, it depends what you want to do . . .’
    Her voice trailed away. Her apathy was just what he needed. He wondered if she slept very heavily, or was even drugged. Those dark shadows under the eyes suggested drugs. So much the better. And a foreigner too. There were too many of them in the country.
    ‘If you would only show me the room, I should know at once,’ he said.
    Surprisingly she turned, and led the way down the narrow, dingy hall. Switching on a light above a basement stair, murmuring a continual apology the while, she took Fenton below. This had been, of course, the original servants’ quarters of the