People hate me .sx Nobody held it against Victor Yafford's wife Ada that she didn't even pretend to be sorry when he died .sx For years she had been telling her friends and acquaintances in this spa town about his ill-treatment of her .sx None of them doubted that what she told them was true , and those she had not told but who knew him would readily have believed her if she had .sx He was never well thought of by any of his near neighbours in Belton Street , and at least one of them , Jack Derwent , a prosperous local master-builder occupying the detached house next to his own , detested him sufficiently to be glad that he was dead .sx Only James Pelligrew , a retired civil servant with a Belton Street home farther from the centre of the town , was neither relieved nor indifferent on hearing of Victor's death .sx He did not hear of it till nearly a week after it had happened .sx Noticing an unusual fragrance as he was passing Victor's house to go shopping in the town , he stopped to peer between the untended overgrown bushes in the front garden .sx Along one side of it the privet hedge was in full bloom , a disorderly wildness which Victor wouldn't have tolerated if he'd been less seriously ill than he was .sx James Pelligrew recognized the fragrance with some nostalgia as that of privet blossom , and he remained unmoving for a while to savour it .sx He was just about to walk on when he was startled by the voice of Ada speaking his name .sx He turned to her and saw that she was smiling .sx She had been shopping in the town and carried a loaded wicker-work basket .sx He said , " I hope you will forgive me for not having called in to see you yet this week .sx I'm afraid I have no excuse .sx How is Mr Yafford today ?sx " .sx " He's no longer with us , " she said .sx Although Pelligrew had known that Victor could not last much longer , the news came as an unexpected shock to him .sx He sincerely said , " Oh , I am so sorry to hear that .sx " .sx " He died four days ago .sx The funeral service was at St Saviour's yesterday .sx There wasn't a wet eye among any of us there .sx " .sx Pelligrew could not think what to say to this .sx She went on , " I would be a hypocrite if I didn't admit I feel nothing but relief now that he is dead .sx " .sx Pelligrew thought of something he could ask her :sx " Will you still be living in this house ?sx " .sx " I can't afford to keep it up , " she said .sx " In his last years he deliberately spent most of his money so that I should inherit as little of it as possible .sx I shall go and stay with my sister and her husband - unfortunately this will have to be at their expense , though I know they will be glad to help me .sx I shall stay with them till I can get a job and can earn my own living .sx " .sx " If there is anything at all I can do for you please tell me , " Pelligrew said .sx " That is very kind of you .sx " The grateful smile she gave him made him aware , not for the first time , how beautiful her face still was .sx He had more than once wondered why she'd chosen to marry a man like Victor Yafford who in any case was 20 years older than she was , and the thought had come to Pelligrew that he wanted a housekeeper - companion in his own house .sx After all , the difference in ages between him and her was not great - he was just over 65 and he reckoned she could not be much less than 60 .sx Also she was intelligent and amiable besides being good-looking .sx He had an impulse to make her an offer now , at this moment , but he was inhibited both by a feeling that it was too soon after Victor's death and by his own habitual cautiousness , so he said to her as pleasantly as he could :sx " Well , I suppose I must go and do my shopping .sx Can I come to see you again before too long ?sx " .sx " Yes , " she said , giving him the warmest of smiles .sx Smiling also , he lifted his hand slightly to wave goodbye .sx As he walked on , she was abruptly displaced from his mind by a return of the genuine grief he had unexpectingly felt when she had told him Victor Yafford was dead .sx How could he feel this grief , knowing as he did what a repellent man Yafford at his worst had been ?sx Pelligrew remembered in particular the summer during which Ada , finding Yafford's treatment of her unbearable at last , left him and went to stay with her sister who was married to a radiologist .sx One warm morning as Pelligrew was returning past Yafford's house from the town , Yafford in the garden called out to him , " Can you spare me a minute or two ?sx " .sx " Of course , " Pelligrew said ; and Yafford , looking morose , opened the garden gate for him , and shut it again before leading him on to the lawn .sx " Yesterday my wife left me , " Yafford said .sx " She went out with her shopping basket in a normal way , but I thought she was taking a long time to come back , and I began to be suspicious , though when I looked into her bedroom upstairs I discovered that none of those things which ladies use had been removed from her dressing-table , and the clothes she kept in her wardrobe were still hanging there .sx " .sx " Do you know where she has gone ?sx " .sx " I don't doubt she's gone to her sister .sx " There was a bitter harshness in Yafford's use of the word 'sister' .sx He did not mention that the sister had married a radiologist who was a black man , but Pelligrew had been told by Ada that when Yafford heard of this he ordered Ada never to invite her sister into his house again .sx Pelligrew guessed that Yafford's reason for not explaining why he heated the sister was his awareness of Pelligrew's disapproval of racism .sx Yafford did not want to appear in a bad light to him .sx " What are you going to do now ?sx " Pelligrew asked .sx " I have got in touch with the Vicar of St Saviour's , " Yafford said .sx " It was he who married us and it is up to him to persuade her that it is her Christian duty not to desert her husband .sx " He became vehement , " I would never have chosen a church wedding if I hadn't thought that it would bind her more securely to me .sx " .sx Pelligrew said nothing .sx " I am not the only husband in Belton Street to have been deserted by his wife recently , " Yafford said .sx " Mr Veale's wife spilt a cup of tea over him the other day as she handed it to him at the breakfast table .sx Then he gave her the fireman's chop , and she walked out on him .sx " .sx " What is the fireman's chop ?sx " Pelligrew asked .sx Yafford clasped his hands together and made a downward chopping movement with them .sx He explained , " That's what firemen do when people they are trying to rescue get panicky - hit them on the back of the neck .sx " .sx Pelligrew began to feel he'd had enough of Yafford for the present .sx He said , " Forgive me , Victor , but I shall take this load of shopping back to my house now and get myself some lunch .sx " .sx " I hope I shall see you again quite soon , " Yafford said , giving Pelligrew a strangely contrite look .sx " Yes , " Pelligrew said ; then walking away from him he thought , " Yafford has realized that the way he has just been speaking to me might lower my opinion of him , and he regrets it .sx That is why I can't really dislike him , in spite of all that Ada has told me about him .sx This is why , for the first time ever , I called him Victor just now .sx But he will never call me James , because he respects me too much .sx " .sx When Pelligrew was unloading his shopping-basket in his kitchen he began to think of more things that Ada had told him about Victor .sx On the second day of her marriage to him she went into the upstairs room which he called his study to have a look round it while he was out in the garden , but somehow he became aware of what she was doing and hurried up the stairs to say very sharply to her that she must never open the door of that room again .sx What did you see inside it ?sx " Pelligrew had asked her .sx " Not the corpses of his previous wives , I hope .sx " .sx " No , " Ada said with a brief laugh , " I recognized a lathe and a drill and a vice , and there was a chaos of other tools and bits of metal .sx I knew that he'd worked for years as a personnel manager for an important engineering firm and that he was keen on making metal models of cars and steam locomotives .sx " .sx Later , when Victor had heard of her sister's marriage to a black man he not only banned this sister from his house but he demanded that Ada should take down from the wall of her bedroom all the framed photographs she'd hung there of various other relatives of hers .sx A few days afterwards Yafford started his quarrel with Jack Derwent - a neighbourly enough man not known to lose his temper easily .sx One of Jack's sons had become a classical jazz enthusiast and had joined a band formed by three other equally enthusiastic young friends of his .sx On those Saturday evenings when the band gave a performance in the town his friends had begun to make a habit of walking back to his home with him , and sometimes they all stood talking rather loudly outside it .sx Yafford leant out of his bedroom window once and shouted to them to be quiet , but although this did quieten them temporarily they were almost as loud next time they came .sx Yafford after this had called in on Jack Derwent to complain about his son .sx Derwent momentarily felt inclined to be apologetic , but nettled by the insulting coldness in Yafford's tone he confined himself by saying stiffly , " I will have a word with him .sx " .sx The word was ineffective .sx The son and his friends were soon too noisy yet again .sx On the next morning Yafford went to see Derwent once more , but found he had gone out in his car .sx Between their two houses there was a narrow lane owned in common by the various nearby houses round the back gardens of which it extended .sx Formerly it had been used on Wednesdays by the municipal dustmen who collected refuse from the domestic dustbins left out there , though now the bins were left in front of the houses .sx At the point where the lane turned to go round the back gardens , Jack Derwent , without asking his neighbours whether they minded , had built a garage for his car .sx Yafford before trying to visit Derwent this morning positioned his own car directly across the entrance of the lane .sx The youngish woman who opened the door to him , and who was a friend of Ada's without his knowing she was , told him that Mr Derwent had gone out in the car to do some shopping but that she didn't expect him to be out for long .sx He asked her if she would give him a message as soon as he returned .sx She said that she would ; then a doubt came to him about her reliability , and he said , " May I ask who you are ?sx " .sx " I am the cleaning lady here , " she said .sx He didn't guess that she used the words 'cleaning lady' merely because she knew that this was what he and her employer would call her ( though not to her face ) , but the confidence and correctness with which she spoke , in spite of her slightly plebeian accent , disposed him to believe she would pass on his message to Derwent correctly .sx " Tell him that Ihave left my car across the opening of the lane , and that I shall leave it there until his son stops making a noise outside the house after midnight .sx