Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

She had always protected her younger brother, because she had loved him from the moment when, as a toddler, she had taken the fragile burden of him in her arms for the first time. As he grew up their parents had characterised him as “lazy,” “unreliable,” “dishonest,” and finally “hopeless,” but she had always leapt fiercely to his defence. Since he had returned from South Africa, the joy of having him living with her again was intense, almost overwhelming.

Only Brian had been less than delighted.

As she dried her hands she shrugged. She was not very interested in her husband’s reactions. If he wanted her as his domestic servant he would have to put up with William. And the children — to whom he was something new — were delighted with him. William was staying.

She put on her coat, took up her old-fashioned basket, and went out to do the shopping, casting her usual glance of distaste at the new hutches for human beings rising on what had been the site of a factory opposite.

Brian Longthorn put down his pen as he heard the front door shut. The article for Rock Monthly could wait. More important was the selection of records for his Radio Two fifties and sixties nostalgia programme, The Heartbreak Hour. He got up and went across the landing to what he called his studio. Here, piled on shelves from floor to ceiling, were the tapes, CDs, and old 78s and EPs that represented the passion of a lifetime. Here he could find every record — well, nearly — of the performers of his childhood and adolescence, along with discarded takes, audition tapes, pirated live tape recordings, and suchlike specialist but delicious items. Much of the more arcane material couldn’t be used on the BBC, worst luck, but just possessing it gave him a delicious thrill. To get in the mood he put on the old EP of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

He loved playing his music when the children weren’t in the house. How they sneered! In fact, he’d got into the habit of only playing it when they were out. They’d got much worse recently, probably spurred on by that no-hoper of a brother-in-law. He still smarted from their parody rendition of what they called “Are You Loathsome Tonight?” and their horrible pelvic gyrations to “Hound Dog.”

Something stirred in Brian. It was ages since... since... In fact, not since his brother-in-law ensconced himself in the house. Isabella had said she was going to the library before doing the shopping. She’d be out for an hour at least. His eyes settled on the battered old suitcase. They contained his absolute treasures. The rest were in suitcase after suitcase in the attic. He went and closed the curtains, then switched on a desk lamp and opened the dear old case. Wonderingly, he drew out the topmost item — the beautiful, spangled, silver-blue suit. Even in the dim light of the lamp it sent out a magic sparkle. His own! Elvis’s own! He held his breath for a moment, then quickly removed his old jeans and his striped shirt. The wonderful old trousers were tight, of course — they had been for years — and the jacket felt constricted around the armpits. But — oh, it was wonderful to have them on again!

He went without hesitation to a tape, then set it going on the recorder. As the first bars of “Jailhouse Rock” sounded through the little room he began energetically, sexily, swinging his hips as he mimed to his idol.

On the building site, Simon Carraway was laying carefully, almost lovingly, the first row of bricks on top of the foundation blocks. It was really rather satisfying work, building. When he finished the row he straightened and looked towards the house in Gordon Road. Then he wiped his forehead and looked again. He could hear nothing for the din of the concrete mixers, but he could see dim shadows behind the curtained windows on the first floor of number eighteen. He knew that the woman of the house (he called her Sheila) had gone out, leaving the lodger (he called him Mick) alone in the house. Yet he could see shadows of the torso of what looked like a belly dancer, performing a dance of seduction. Though he could not see the hips, or their shadow, he could see that they must be undulating. Was this Mick’s kink? Did he have an exotic Eastern beauty he let into the house by the backdoor as soon as his landlady went out? Where on earth in the vicinity did he find such a creature?

“Something’s gone wrong,” Isabella thought one evening some weeks later as she watched her brother silently eating his supper. He had not been himself the evening before either. He was normally, once home, a riot of fun and amusement for the children, with the oddest games he had learnt during his travels around Africa, or a series of impressions of the strange people he had met. But tonight he had once again failed to cast off his sober, daytime self and had sunk into thought the moment he had finished his dinner. “Something’s gone wrong,” Isabella thought. And then: “I shall have to do something for him.”

She tried not to think what that might be, because over the years the things she had been asked to do had become more and more unacceptable to her. But she had always done them.

One evening in late October, clear and surprisingly balmy, Simon Carraway remembered he’d left his Walkman in the workmen’s hut on the Gordon Road site. There was a guard there, but a dozy one, and he decided to walk the half-mile from his home (where his dad had ranted over tea about “making something of himself”) to retrieve it. He waved through the darkness to the guard, and found it under the bench where he’d left it. He tried it out: nostalgia hour on Radio Two — “Wooden Heart.” Yuck! And he couldn’t stand the reverential tones of the bore who presented The Heartbreak Hour. He turned it off. He found “Wooden Heart” about as exciting as Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy, and imagined they must come from around the same period. He waved again to the guard and left the site on his way home.

The concrete mixers were still now, but this was London and there was the inescapable hum of traffic and of people living their lives close together. But the windows of number eighteen were open, or the living room one was, probably to let in the cool night air. Simon had never been past the house before when there was a chance of hearing anything from inside it, and as he strolled in the direction of home he slowed down when he neared the yellow-painted front door.

“Yes, of course it’s valuable,” he heard a woman’s voice (Sheila’s, surely) say. “That kind of memorabilia fetches a packet these days. But he’d never give it up — never. It’s his whole life, poor fish.”

Simon walked on. He would have felt awkward if he’d lingered; how could he have explained it? But when he reached the intersection he waited, thought, then turned and walked slowly back.

“But we couldn’t, William! We couldn’t!”

Simon heard a male voice, but it was an indistinguishable mutter.

“No, of course I don’t,” came back the woman’s voice. “You know that. All that died years ago. But this... this is different.”

This time the temptation to stop was irresistible, but the male muttering came again, then the sudden shutting of the window. Simon shook his head, turned again, and began the walk home.

A collection — some kind of collection of memorabilia. What sort of collection would that stuffed-shirt of a husband have? Medals? First World War bits and pieces? Cricket trophies? Souvenirs from the Great Exhibition? And what were they planning to do? Steal it?

Because Simon had changed his mind about the lodger, about Mick. He had been wrong about what he had seen. The wife had gone out shopping by the front door, but what was to stop her coming back in by the backdoor? Depending on her shopping route that could be the most natural thing to do. And he was in no doubt that it had been she doing that exotic dance for her lover, the lodger — one of their kinky games together. Now she and the lodger were planning to rob her boring husband. Or...