‘And your mother?’

‘Mummy’s dead,’ said Geraldine, with no diminution of cheerfulness. ‘She died when I was a baby two months old. She was in a plane coming from France. It crashed. Everyone was killed.’

She spoke with a certain satisfaction and I perceived that to a child, if her motheris dead, it reflects a certain kudos if she has been killed in a complete and devastating accident.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you have-’ I looked towards the door.

‘That’s Ingrid. She comes from Norway. She’s only been here a fortnight. She doesn’t know any English to speak of yet. I’m teaching her English.’

‘And she is teaching you Norwegian?’

‘Not very much,’ said Geraldine.

‘Do you like her?’

‘Yes. She’s all right. The things she cooks are rather odd sometimes. Do you know, she likes eating raw fish.’

‘I’ve eaten raw fish in Norway,’ I said. ‘It’s very good sometimes.’

Geraldine looked extremely doubtful about that.

‘She is trying to make a treacle tart today,’ she said.

‘That sounds good.’

‘Umm-yes, I like treacle tart.’ She added politely, ‘Have you come to lunch?’

‘Not exactly. As a matter of fact I was passing down below out there, and I think you dropped something out of the window.’ 

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’ I advanced the silver fruit knife.

Geraldine looked at it, at first suspiciously and then with signs of approval.

‘It’s rather nice,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a fruit knife.’

I opened it.

‘Oh, I see. You mean you can peel apples with it and things like that.’

‘Yes.’

Geraldine sighed.

‘It’s not mine. I didn’t drop it. What made you think I did?’

‘Well, you were looking out of the window, and…’

‘I look out of the window most of the time,’ said Geraldine. ‘I fell down and broke my leg, you see.’

‘Hard luck.’

‘Yes, wasn’t it. I didn’t break it in a very interesting way, though. I was getting out of a bus and it went on suddenly. It hurt rather at first and it ached a bit, but it doesn’t now.’

‘Must be rather dull for you,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is. But Daddy brings me things. Plasticine, you know, and books and crayons and jigsaw puzzles and things like that, but you get tired ofdoing things, so I spend a lot of time looking out of the window with these.’ 

She produced with enormous pride a small pair of opera glasses.

‘May I look?’ I said.

I took them from her, adjusted them to my eyes and looked out of the window.

‘They’re jolly good,’ I said appreciatively.

They were indeed, excellent. Geraldine’s daddy, if it had been he who supplied them, had not spared expense. It was astonishing how clearly you could see No. 19, Wilbraham Crescent and its neighbouring houses. I handed them back to her.

‘They’re excellent,’ I said. ‘First-class.’

‘They’re proper ones,’ said Geraldine, with pride. ‘Not just for babies and pretending.’

‘No…I can see that.’

‘I keep a little book,’ said Geraldine.

She showed me.

‘I write down things in it and the times. It’s like train spotting,’ she added. ‘I’ve got a cousin called Dick and he does train spotting. We do motor-car numbers too. You know, you start at one and see how far you can get.’

‘It’s rather a good sport,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is. Unfortunately there aren’t many cars come down this road so I’ve rather given that up for the time being.’

‘I suppose you must know all about those houses down there, who lives in them and all that sort of thing.’

I threw it out casually enough but Geraldine was quick to respond.

‘Oh, yes. Of course I don’t know their real names, so I have to give them names of my own.’

‘That must be rather fun,’ I said.

‘That’s the Marchioness of Carrabas down there,’ said Geraldine, pointing. ‘That one with all the untidy trees. You know, like Puss In Boots. She has masses and masses of cats.’

‘I was talking to one just now,’ I said, ‘an orange one.’

‘Yes, I saw you,’ said Geraldine.

‘You must be very sharp,’ I said. ‘I don’t expect you miss much, do you?’

Geraldine smiled in a pleased way. Ingrid opened the door and came in breathless.

‘You are all right, yes?’

‘We’re quite all right,’ said Geraldine firmly. ‘You needn’t worry, Ingrid.’

She nodded violently and pantomimed with her hands.

‘You go back, you cook.’

‘Very well, I go. It is nice that you have a visitor.’

‘She gets nervous when she cooks,’ explained Geraldine, ‘when she’s trying anything new, I mean. And sometimes we have meals very late because of that. I’m glad you’ve come. It’s nice to have someone to distract you, then you don’t think about being hungry.’

‘Tell me more about the people in the houses there,’ I said, ‘and what you see. Who lives in the next house-the neat one?’

‘Oh, there’s a blind woman there. She’s quite blind and yet she walks just as well as though she could see. The porter told me that. Harry. He’s very nice, Harry is. He tells me a lot of things. He told me about the murder.’

‘The murder?’ I said, sounding suitably astonished.

Geraldine nodded. Her eyes shone with importance at the information she was about to convey.

‘There was a murder in that house. I practicallysaw it.’

‘How very interesting.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a murder before. I mean I’ve never seen a place where a murder happened.’

‘What did you-er-see?’

‘Well, there wasn’t very much going on just then. You know, it’s rather an empty time of day. The exciting thing was when somebody came rushing out of the house screaming. And then of course I knew something must have happened.’ 

‘Who was screaming?’

‘Just a woman. She was quite young, rather pretty really. She came out of the door and she screamed and she screamed. There was a young man coming along the road. She came out of the gate and sort of clutched him-like this.’ She made a motion with her arms. She fixed me with a sudden glance. ‘He looked rather like you.’

‘I must have a double,’ I said lightly. ‘What happened next? This is very exciting.’

‘Well, he sort of plumped her down. You know, on the ground there and then he went back into the house and the Emperor-that’s the orange cat, I always call him the Emperor because he looks so proud-stopped washing himself and he looked quite surprised, and then Miss Pikestaff came out of her house-that’s the one there, Number 18-she came out and stood on the steps staring.’

‘Miss Pikestaff?’

‘I call her Miss Pikestaff because she’s so plain. She’s got a brother and she bullies him.’

‘Go on,’ I said with interest.

‘And then all sorts of things happened. The man came out of the house again-are you sure it wasn’t you?’

‘I’m a very ordinary-looking chap,’ I said modestly, ‘there are lots like me.’ 

‘Yes, I suppose that’s true,’ said Geraldine, somewhat unflatteringly. ‘Well, anyway, this man, he went off down the road and telephoned from the call-box down there. Presently police began arriving.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Lots of police. And they took the dead body away in a sort of ambulance thing. Of course there were lots of people by that time, staring, you know. I saw Harry there, too. That’s the porter from these flats. He told me about it afterwards.’

‘Did he tell you who was murdered?’

‘He just said it was a man. Nobody knew his name.’

‘It’s all very interesting,’ I said.

I prayed fervently that Ingrid would not choose this moment to come in again with a delectable treacle tart or other delicacy.

‘But go back a little, do. Tell me earlier. Did you see this man-the man who was murdered-did you see him arrive at the house?’

‘No, I didn’t. I suppose he must have been there all along.’

‘You mean he lived there?’

‘Oh, no, nobody lives there except Miss Pebmarsh.’

‘So you know her real name?’