The Girl at My Door

by Rebecca Griffiths

Genres: Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

London, 1949. On the dark streets of Soho, a killer is waiting in the shadows. Inspired by the true crime story of the Rillington Place murders comes a chilling re-telling of one of Britain’s most infamous serial killers.

Queenie Osbourne is the talk of London. Rising to fame as a singer after the Second World War, she is about to head to New York to make her fortune.

On the surface John Reginald Christie is an ordinary man. By day he wonders the bustling city streets. By night he is entertained by Queenie and her band. He is always searching for prey. Soon a young waitress named Joy catches his eye and his dangerous obsession begins.

Joy is preparing to wed Charles Gilchrist, one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. But Queenie has always held a flame for him and the spark between them is obvious.

When Queenie commits the ultimate betrayal against Joy, she knows her bright future is at risk. With nowhere else to turn, there is only one man who can help her. But Queenie has no idea of the dark secrets which lie behind the door of 10 Rillington Place. As Christie watches her approaching, will he risk everything for his highest-profile victim yet?

Blending the real life story of notorious serial killer John Reginald Christie with a fictionalised cast of characters, this thrilling mystery is perfect for fans of Gregg Olsen, Louise Douglas and Jess Lourey.

Release date: September 23, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

He could almost taste her anxiety. Brackish. Moist. Anxiety that had nothing to do with him. Not yet, anyway. Neat and ordinary in his brown trilby and raincoat, he was one of the invisible people, no different from the thousands of others who moved about these city streets after dark. It was his ordinariness that allowed him to walk close on her heels, silent in his soft shoes, listening to the tantalising rasp of her stocking tops as thigh rubbed thigh. Close enough to reach out and touch the tender skin behind her ear, if he wanted to. And he did want to, very badly. He licked his lips and leered into her shadow. Women knew what they were doing; they knew their power. Arousing his masculinity and then stifling it, mocking it… humiliating it. It was why he committed such bestial and revolting crimes against them.

London cowered behind the fog. The vapour curling up off the Thames and thickening in his lungs made it difficult to breathe. Buildings, rising taller than trees from the wet pavements, melted into the murkiness as he trailed the woman down street after street, his eye fixed on the glittery diamante trinket pinned to the folds of her hair. The only thing of interest amid the gloom, in a city where everything was filmed in the greasy hue of gaslight and choked in smog.

When she reached a busy thoroughfare, she stopped and turned. For a terrible moment he thought she was on to him but the gesture was nothing more than a reflex: something carried from childhood and the automatic drill of road safety lessons. Things he’d needed to learn in adulthood when he arrived here twenty-five years ago, unfamiliar with the tempo of London traffic. Her face was as pale as the moon that rose above the moors back home, and looking at her more closely, he appreciated how young and beautiful she was. It made his heart beat faster.

Hurry, she seemed to tell herself, crossing briskly from kerb to kerb through the grind of buses and taxicabs and the rain that had begun to fall. He was guessing this route she’d decided on was a shortcut and now she wasn’t sure. Shame he wasn’t wearing his special constable’s uniform, with the bogus authority it gave him – bogus because his role in the Emergency Reserve had ended in 1943. It would have allowed him to march right up to her and offer his assistance. Women in distress were always happy to trust an officer of the law.

‘Are you lost, lass?’ He chuckled to himself, delighting in her panic as she scanned the stretch of pavement, the whites of her eyes caught in passing headlamps. ‘You look as if you are.’

Now.

Do it now.

He knew his persistence would be rewarded. Like the trapping of the small yet exquisitely beautiful tortoiseshell butterfly on Swales Moor when he was a boy. These chances were just as rare, so he needed to go easy.

Then, a passing bus and the woman’s expression brightened. Too fast, surely? Pulse thumping and oddly concerned for her safety, he gasped when she stepped into the road and thrust out a hand to seize the pole.

He watched her swing aboard, whiplashed by the tail of her coat. He had gone and missed his chance, but there would be another. He only had to be lucky once, he consoled himself; she had to be lucky every time.

Queenie Osbourne stepped back from the microphone and slipped, slinky as a mermaid in her sequin-scaled gown, beneath the wave of applause. It was as if the appreciation in the smoky nightclub was going on in another room. For another singer. And had nothing to do with her. She noticed the cigar-sucking bulk of Cyril Bream, the Mockin’ Bird’s owner, a man everyone called Uncle Fish, watching from the wings and beckoned to him. He swayed towards her: an overloaded cargo ship negotiating the sea of music stands, drum kit and piano, his Humpty Dumpty appearance belying the intellect of a man who had made his fortune in the cotton mills of Manchester. He reached for her hand inside its satin glove and lifted it into the air while she stared out at the members seated at tables adorned with tasselled lamps.

‘They love you.’ Cyril kissed her hand, his white Edwardian moustache prickling the satin. There were tears in his eyes. Tears like he’d had the day of her audition. ‘Pop in and see me before you go,’ he said, then disappeared.

Queenie left the stage and trailed the cheers of appreciation down to the dressing room in the fishtail of her dress. Once inside, she drew back the red velvet curtain, making it clatter on its rings. The curtain was there to partition the room and give her privacy when she needed it. Most of the time she didn’t. It was her dressing room, and apart from Terrence, the other boys in the band rarely came in here. She sat before the mirror, unclipped her hair and fanned it over her shoulders, loving the loose, long waves. Who else had hair like this? She appreciated its glassy sheen, its rich brown tones. Close to the mirror, melting into her image, Queenie failed to notice Terrence Banks standing by the door.

‘You coming for a drink?’ Tall and dapper in his pinstriped suit and polka-dot tie, his question slid beneath her vanity.

‘I was only…’ Her excuses died in her mouth. What was she doing? Admiring herself, loving herself? ‘Sorry.’ She blushed.

‘What for?’

She shrugged – there was nothing to say. She’d been caught out and now she was ashamed.

‘You’re beautiful, darling. And if you’ve got it, flaunt it.’ Terrence fiddled with the handkerchief ruched in his breast pocket. ‘Another full house tonight. It’s that write-up in the Standard, calling you the next Billie Holiday. It echoed what that Herbie Weiszmann said. Lucky, on his visit from New York, he walks into our little club. Who’d have thought it? Our Queenie, singing on Broadway… Let’s go celebrate.’

‘I won’t be a tick.’ She turned away, strangely embarrassed, not quite knowing how to deal with the prospect of stardom. ‘I just need to sort my face out.’

‘Pretty necklace – who gave you that?’

Queenie pressed a hand to the emerald pendant swinging from her neck. ‘Digsby.’

‘Not that old chrome dome?’

She winked and applied a fresh coat of red lipstick.

‘God, Queenie, you don’t let him touch you?’ A horrified look.

‘Don’t be silly. I never let any of them touch me.’

‘How come? They must want something in return.’

‘I know how to play them, that’s all.’ She blotted her mouth.

‘You worry me. Everything’s a game to you.’

Another wink. ‘Silly old duffer gave me these too.’ A flash of her earrings.

‘You and your sparkly things. You’re such a magpie.’

‘But I don’t steal things.’

Terrence undid his top button and loosened his tie. ‘No, you just steal their hearts, darling.’

They left the dressing room and walked up the narrow flight of stairs, made their way to the bar with its dimpled stools and banks of glasses. Aside from the rest of the band, the Mockin’ Bird was empty.

‘What’ll you have?’ Terrence waved a hand over the optics.

‘Port and lemon. Easy on the ice.’

‘Our singer’s such a star, isn’t she, lads?’ The click of his lighter and he lit one of Queenie’s slim white Sobranies. ‘She told you about Broadway?’ He passed it to her and took another for himself.

‘Shh, Terry. I’ve not signed the contract yet. I might stay here.’ She drew on her cigarette.

‘You can’t pass up on that.’ He exhaled smoke in two grey tusks. ‘Weiszmann’s fixing you a recording deal with Atlantic Records, too. This is the chance of a lifetime.’

‘I’m with Terry,’ Dick, the saxophonist, piped up. ‘You’ve gotta go for it.’

Buster, the band’s drummer, sat at the bar wearing his haunted look and a suit that had probably belonged to his late father. Prone to angry outbursts, he was a man racked with anxiety and Queenie had always found him a little unnerving. Not that she could blame him if he ranted at the likes of her: someone who hadn’t heard a shell fired, or seen a friend blown to pieces, who didn’t have nightmares and hear dead men screaming in the dark. As a girl, she’d been packed off to her grandparents’ farm to be safe during the Blitz because this man, along with thousands like him, believed it was his job to protect her and others like her.

She watched as he took a last leisurely pull on his fag and fumbled for the edge of the counter. It was obvious he was drunk, that he needed its support to get to his feet.

‘Come on, Buster, tell us a story.’

Queenie thought he was at his best when he told stories, on nights like these when they sat around listening to him pluck things from the air. Frightening things that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

‘I’d best be off.’ Buster downed what was left of his pint and pocketed his Woodbines.

‘Want a hand? Can’t you reach?’ Terrence, teasing, lifted Buster’s army overcoat down with ease. A coat which, although carefully dyed, still betrayed its origin in every line.

They waited for their drummer to leave, for the outer door to bang shut, then an outbreak of chortling and adenoidal snorting.

‘He was out again tonight.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Queenie looked at Dick, who nodded, letting Terrence explain.

‘He’s missing the beat all the time.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘He drinks too much.’

‘You can’t say anything – the poor guy thinks the world is against him as it is.’ She lit another of her cigarettes. ‘He told me he still has nightmares because of the war.’

‘We all have nightmares. Everyone’s lost something, someone… We’re all half of what we were before the bloody war.’

Surprised by the bitterness in Terrence’s voice, she thought of her brother who never came home from the South China Sea.

‘You’re smoking a lot.’ He changed the subject.

‘No more than you.’

He leant over the ashtray. ‘Excuse me. I don’t wear scarlet lipstick, it’s not my colour, darling.’

Queenie broke into song. ‘… A cigarette… a lipstick’s traces…’ Her voice, caramel-sweet with its sexy rasp, circled the empty club.

Terrence hummed along to the tune of ‘These Foolish Things’, his fingers working the burr oak counter of the bar: an imaginary piano.

At that moment the main door of the club swung open and a tall, loose-limbed black man in a smart coat and hat hovered unsure on the threshold. His row of beautiful white teeth gleamed like an advertisement.

‘Who’s that?’ Queenie liked the look of him.

‘It’s Malcolm. He must’ve finished early. Blast it, I told him to wait for me outside.’ Terrence fumbled for his overcoat.

‘That’s him, is it? I’d love to meet him.’

‘You will, Queenie. Soon.’

‘Why not now? Go on, Terry, invite him in. We can have a drink, all of us.’

Terrence shot her a look that said this was impossible.

‘Where are you going? Can I come with you?’

Another look, sheepish, his cheekbones flushing cherry-pink. ‘Not this time, Queenie. Sorry.’

It was almost three in the morning and Cyril Bream, his ledger open on his desk, was poring over the bills. A cigar smouldering at his elbow, his round face illuminated by the desk lamp. The increase in taxes and business rates was beyond his comprehension. He tallied the incomings and outgoings, wrote his findings in pencil in the corresponding columns. The next few weeks were going to be lean. He let his big soft body sag into his chair. At least with the invention of the NHS, he no longer had his wife’s hospital bills to pay. If he was careful… if he could hold on to Queenie, they would get through. But who was he kidding? She wasn’t going to pass up a chance like that and stay in this little place.

He rubbed his eyes and got up to lift the blackout curtain he’d yet to take down. Revealed a sky full of stars. There would be a frost tonight, he predicted, before dropping it again. On the sideboard, a bottle of single malt the band had bought him for his birthday a fortnight ago. Sixty-five. He was a relic in a dead world. He poured himself a compensatory fingerful and gulped it down. All very well playing the jolly old buffer, but the truth was that he nurtured a real dread of the future. There was hope when he’d still had his sons, but neither George nor William had come home from the front, and now Cyril felt he was nothing more than flotsam in a world that had no room or use for him any more. He sat down again and tried to focus on his accounts, but instead his mind wandered to his wife. Not the bedridden woman she had become in the last few years, a woman too ill to leave hospital, but the way she had looked when they’d first met. Barely twenty, her long legs muscular like a tennis player’s. Her bobbed blonde hair and beaded headband, the swish of the braided fringe on her flapper dress when she danced the Lindy Hop.

Queenie left the bar and knocked on the office door.

‘My dear girl, come in.’ Uncle Fish motioned her to one of his easy chairs. ‘Would you like a drink?’

She shook her head and sat down tidily. Her fingers coiled around the strap of her evening bag. ‘How’s Gloria?’

Queenie looked at a framed photograph on the desk: a family snapshot of her employer with his wife and sons. Terrence was right – everyone had lost someone.

‘As well as can be expected. They’re looking after her very well at the Royal Brompton.’

‘I could visit her?’

‘Would you?’ He sucked on the end of his cigar. ‘Poor darling could do with cheering up.’

‘You said you wanted to see me?’

‘I did, my dear.’ He pushed a poker deep into the fire. A fire so low it was nearly out.

Queenie watched the flames lick, one then two, until it was ablaze.

‘I think it’s about time we upped your wages.’ If this was his way of stopping her from leaving, it was feeble and touching and made her feel worse than she already did. ‘You should at least be earning the same as the boys.’ He plumped down on his chair with a leathery creak.

‘Sounds fair.’ Isn’t Uncle Fish going to ask me about Weiszmann’s offer? Evidently not… head in the sand.

‘On top of your clothing allowance, of course.’ He downed another mouthful of cigar smoke.

Queenie smoothed her dress over her knees and shared nothing of her need to use this allowance to supplement the shortfall in housekeeping. That her father’s emphysema had worsened and meant he had reduced his hours at the bottle factory.

‘Should be easier now clothing rationing’s ended. Although I must congratulate you, my dear.’ He tugged on his moustache. ‘That’s another wonderful outfit. You are good at giving your public what they want.’

My public?

It seemed farcical to someone of her origins. She couldn’t seriously believe she had a public. Returning, as she did, to the bleak-bricked monotony of that rented terraced house and her room squashed under the eaves. Whatever her evenings here brought with them – adoration from the audience, a stream of male admirers – it all melted into nothing when she was back at the Belfast sink.

Uncle Fish counted out money from his cash box and she took the bundle of notes, thanking him.

‘Just one other thing.’ He picked up his cigar and filled his cheeks again.

‘Yes?’ She breathed in the rich, spicy smoke.

‘Gladys is leaving to get married and I need a new waitress. Someone personable, happy to muck in. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone?’

It had stopped raining by the time Joy Rivard reached the top of Great Russell Street. But the damage had been done. Her old green school coat was blackened by rain and her stout shoes mud-encrusted. Even her hat in fawn velour had failed miserably. The brim collected water so that when she tipped her head, icy rain slid down inside her collar. Refusing to travel by Tube, if it rained, she would usually pick up a bus but had been caught on the hop today. Never one for heels like her best friend Queenie, the walk from her lodgings in Gloucester Road and up through Hyde Park wasn’t a problem. The interest she found along the way helped energise her for a day cooped up inside the British Museum, where it was her job to classify and catalogue the thousands of books, journals, patents, prints and ancient manuscripts in the Reading Room.

Since first arriving in London from Northern France, the ink still wet on her bilingual secretarial certificate, Joy found she shared the same fears as her father, who wouldn’t go underground either. Whenever recounting tales of Paris, his youth spent working the kitchens of Maxim’s, he would say it was only rats and those with something to hide who went beneath the paving slabs. A distressing irony, coming like a stab to the heart, to think her father had been buried in the churchyard of Arras’s Saint-Géry these last three years.

Tilting her nose to the sky, where a glimmer of sun found a space between a dip in the rooftops, she pushed the sadness about her father away. Today was her birthday and to celebrate she was meeting Queenie before work. Work was another thing to feel good about. Joy knew she was lucky to have a job; the labour market was flooded. For every man that returned after the war, there was a woman who refused to be shooed back inside the home. Her mother used to say it was a mistake to be born a woman – a woman needed to earn her own living. But Joy didn’t see it like that. After leaving school at sixteen, an aunt had paid for her to attend college, where she learnt how to be useful in the business world of men. And even though she was always short of money – after paying rent, there was barely anything for food and nothing for luxuries – she refused to go back to her mother’s house in Arras.

Joy was on the last leg of her journey and she loved this street. As long and straight as a corridor, the lofty buildings engulfed the pavements in shadow. Great Russell Street was made up of ubiquitous pubs and laundries, drapers and tobacconists with windows advertising everything from Neapolitan ice cream to Old Holborn tobacco. When she came upon a fruiterer, its wares set out in crates on the pavement and looking as colourful as jewels, she opted for a large apple and stepped inside to present it at the till.

‘Just this, please.’

‘Those are display only,’ the shopkeeper barked at her.

She shrugged inside her wet coat and breathed back the musty shop smell. ‘I’d still like to buy one,’ she said, allowing the offending fruit to be snatched away.

The man in a starched apron pulled a face, but Joy stood firm, forcing him to go behind a curtain and return with a paper bag heavy with an apple.

‘Thank you.’ Joy dropped the necessary coins on the counter and left the shop.

The people running the outlets in this part of town had an air of hostility that made her feel – as many Londoners did – the foreigner on foreign soil. Something she supposed she was, as this wasn’t her country, and despite her impeccable English, the moment she opened her mouth, her accent made people suspicious. The indigenous population of this city evidently had trouble differentiating a German accent from her French one.

When the tall black railings encasing the British Museum came into view, she peeped through the gaps and sighed at the Greek Revival façade that never failed to impress. A miracle, surely, when so much of London had been bombed, that this remained relatively intact. The clip-clop of hoofs on the road and she turned to a horse hauling a cart. It pulled up in front of her, and a dusty-coated man jumped down and began humping coal sacks to the pavement. She went over to the horse, stroked its muzzle and was sorry for the drooping head, the matted mane. She supposed the animal never galloped in grassy meadows, free of its harness and cart. A flash of her wartime childhood at Bugbrooke Farm: sun-kissed and dirty-kneed, sauntering the lanes around Goldchurch aboard a Suffolk Punch belonging to Queenie’s grandfather.

She took the apple she had been saving for lunch out of the bag, nibbled off pieces to feed the horse from the flat of her palm. Listened to the jolly jangle of metal bit.

‘All gone,’ she told the long-lashed eyes behind the blinkers.

‘Joy!’ a woman’s voice called from across the street.

Queenie. Her hourglass silhouette cut from the gloom. But for her dark hair, she was the image of Betty Grable. Joy raised an excited hand and with a final goodbye left the horse behind.

‘Happy birthday.’ Queenie kissed Joy’s cheek. She smelled of Californian Poppy.

They linked arms and set off along the pavement, passing a lone policeman who couldn’t stop himself from turning to admire Queenie from beneath the peaked cap that looked too big for him.

‘What were you doing with that horse?’

‘Feeding him my apple.’

‘You’re a one, you are.’ Queenie gave her an affectionate squeeze.

‘I am?’ She didn’t understand.

‘You decided where we’re going?’ Leading, steering, Joy kept pace with Queenie’s positive strides.

‘You look lovely.’ She stole a glance at her friend.

‘As do you,’ came the quick reply.

Do I? Really? Joy didn’t believe her. In her drenched coat and muddy shoes, her imitation panama with its thin blue ribbon, limp and ruined. Queenie obviously wasn’t looking at her. No one looked at her. Compared to Queenie, Joy believed she was nothing. Queenie was exotic and not quite of this world. With her dark eyes and bounce of hair, she had always cast Joy in the shade.

‘What about trying down here?’ Queenie piloted them into a side street.

Joy waved a hand in the direction of a Lyons Corner House. She had been envisaging a breakfast of bacon and eggs and had counted the shillings and pence out ready.

‘This looks nice.’ Queenie, as assertive as her heels striking the cobbles, led her on towards the candy-striped awning of a tea shop. ‘We’ll go in here.’

They dipped inside, pushing beyond the tinkling bell and into a space confused by mirrors, packed with women of all shapes and sizes. The smell was of roasted coffee, almonds, perfume: expensive things. They chose a table by the window, to have what was available of the daylight.

‘Marie Antoinette.’ Queenie twisted away to read the name of the shop, while a ginger cat beside the till eyed them with suspicion. ‘Didn’t she come to a sticky end?’

‘Her fault for telling the starving population of France to eat cake.’

‘Talking of cake, what d’you fancy?’ Queenie cocked her hat at a better angle in the mirror then removed her coat to reveal a bold red dress beneath.

Joy admired the way it flowed from the waist and swayed when she moved to the counter to choose tea for two with apple cake and shortbread. Embarrassed about her ready-made suit bought on credit from Oxford Street, she kept her coat fastened and picked up the menu, saw they served cream of chicory soup at lunchtimes. The remembered bittersweet tang of this, one of her father’s specialities, in her mouth.

‘You look miles away.’ Queenie sat down opposite.

‘I was wondering what happened to Papa’s recipes after he died.’

‘Have you asked your mother?’

‘She probably burnt them.’

‘Burnt them?’ Queenie, appalled.

‘She burnt his clothes and books.’ A memory of her mother poking them down into the hot hungry mouth of the brazier her father had fashioned out of an oil drum to incinerate leaves. ‘She made sure there was nothing of him left.’

‘That’s horrible, Joy, I’m so sorry.’ Queenie reached over the tabletop and put a hand on hers.

When their rather odd breakfast arrived, Queenie lifted her hand away and the warmth of her was replaced with a strange cold feeling.

‘You heard from your mother?’ Queenie’s eyes shone from a face that was as flawless as the inside of her porcelain cup.

Joy groaned over the clatter of crockery. ‘She’s threatening to visit in the summer.’

‘I’ve some news that’ll cheer you up.’ Joy listened to her say the Mockin’ Bird was looking for a waitress. ‘You’d be perfect. I’ve told Uncle Fish all about you.’ Queenie passed her a cup of tea. ‘How about it? You’re always saying you could use some extra cash.’

‘I don’t know.’ Joy squirmed. ‘What would I wear?’ She was thinking of Queenie’s lustrous gowns.

‘I can lend you something.’

Joy was conscious of the other customers sitting close by: the clink of their china, the delicacy of their conversation.

‘Don’t look like that. It’ll get you out of that crummy bedsit, and we’ll get to spend more time together. Look, I know you said you were doing something with Amy tonight, but why don’t you come to the club?’

‘It’s too late to let Amy down. I’ll come another time.’

‘You’ve been saying that since forever.’ Queenie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s lovely there. I don’t know what you’ve been imagining. Uncle Fish wouldn’t let any riff-raff in.’ Queenie ate a square of shortbread, dabbed crumbs from her mouth. She transferred her customary red lipstick to the damask napkin Joy thought too beautiful to even unfold.

‘Don’t tell me you’re still feeding that pigeon?’

Queenie had noticed Joy take the last corner of cake and fold it into the paper doily. ‘Yes, I am.’ She ignored the look she was getting. ‘I can’t disappoint him; he’s come to expect it now.’

‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ Queenie dived for her handbag. ‘I hope you like them.’

The gloves were beautiful. The leather was the colour of the purple plums her father used to grow. She put them on and tilted her hands to admire the tiny button at the wrist, the flawless stitching.

‘Queenie.’ She gasped. ‘This is too generous.’

‘Do you like them?’

‘Like them? I love them. Thank you.’

‘I’m so glad.’ Queenie lifted her teacup and toasted her. ‘Happy birthday, Joy.’

Terrence Banks didn’t seem to need sleep. However late leaving the Mockin’ Bird, he would make the short journey from Mayfair to Soho for the shadowy after-hours café life because he happened to love the wrong person.

‘Here will do. Thank you.’

He wasn’t stupid; he never took the same taxicab twice and always asked to be dropped a few streets from his intended destination. Even the most affable of cab drivers could be working for the police, and he needed to be vigilant. Handing over the necessary fare, he stepped out into the night. The piercing cold sharpened to a spike in his throat as he adjusted his homburg and buttoned his overcoat for the walk ahead. A glance at the moon. Full and rare and hanging in the night sky. It silvered the pavement and the dejected bomb-blasted metropolis as he tracked down one dilapidated street after another.

This area of the West End that would never quite reach the dizzy heights of neighbouring Mayfair or Bloomsbury certainly had its uses. With its cheek-by-jowl townhouses, taverns and gaming rooms, it served as a gathering place for refugees and the dispossessed and was, since the end of the war, becoming known for its raffish, unregulated air. But only if you knew where to look. Because the endless parades of G. . .