There Lies Your Love

by Jennie Melville

  Charmian nodded. — Plenty, she thought, and they’re usually on a criminal charge of some sort. At once she tried to relate this girl to the one she had already read of in Arlette’s writing. Was this the same one? Or was it a second girl connected with the unlucky Arlette? Aloud she said, ‘And you think she’s the one to look for?’

  ‘I think she’s the sort of person who could persuade a younger or more gullible person of almost anything,’ said Con, slowly looking forward and out of the window as if she could see the faces of Arlette Grey and Mary Lou Pallas written there.

  —But so are you, my dear, commented Charmian silently to herself. ‘ Where does she live?’ she asked Con.

  ‘I can give you the address she gave me,’ said Con, producing a notebook. ‘But if you ask me she doesn’t live there.’

  ‘You never checked up?’

  ‘Not my job,’ said Con briskly. ‘Here it is: 120 Rosings Avenue, East Tweem. That’s the other side of the county, you know.’

  Charmian nodded.

  ‘But if she lives anywhere she lives in that old yellow car. That car’s more than a car, it’s a home.’

  ‘A yellow car? She has a yellow car?’

  ‘Canary yellow,’ said Con; and then, as if it rankled somehow, ‘And we don’t have one at all.’

  ‘Let’s leave it there,’ said Charmian, who could see Tom Gilroy watching them. ‘I’ll come back later.’

  A big black and tan dog was in the front garden as she left and came rushing up to them.

  ‘Your dog?’ said Charmian, pushing it away. She was not a dog lover.

  Con shook her head. ‘It just lives round here. I don’t know who owns it. The Carters pretend to.’

  Charmian watched it leaping in and out of the bushes, chasing something imaginary. It was a very young and silly dog. Presently it caught the imagined object and started to bury it. It dug deeper and deeper as if it had really forgotten why it started to dig and now just had to go on digging.

  Burgen watched Charmian walk out of the Gilroys’ house and over to the telephone box which stood down the road. He leaned his head out of the window and gazed intently. He could hear the clip of her heels on the pavement (Charmian was inclined to walk well back on her heels in a solid rather slow way which was potentially ageing). He could hear the door of the telephone box creak as she opened it. He couldn’t of course hear what she said inside although he kept his head out all the time as if he was trying to listen.

  ‘I want you to send someone down here to Laurel Rise, Grizel or young Forbes if one of them is available, with a photograph of Arlette Grey, and ask at every house if anyone there has seen this girl. I am bringing in a bag of her books, and her handbag and jacket. But first I am going to make a few calls.’

  She put down the receiver quickly because she could tell from Pratt’s voice that he was only waiting for her to stop talking to tell her something, and somehow she didn’t want to be interrupted then. She put the receiver down on his ‘But yes, Charmian,’ and walked out. She was fascinated by the Gilroys. She didn’t know which one to believe but she found them absorbing and different. She had never had to deal with people like them before. Her witnesses were usually stiff, inarticulate people, not people like Tom Gilroy who wrapped his observations up in words, like a Christmas parcel. The outside of the parcel he was offering you might look like one thing and inside was something quite different. Charmian wanted to get at this parcel and open it up. She wanted to stay on the spot just a little longer. She didn’t put this into words, she simply thought it would be quicker if she called on the close neighbours of the Gilroys herself.

  Burgen watched her walk up the path to his own door without moving a muscle, except perhaps one on the side of his cheek which twitched a little.

  ‘Walks badly,’ he thought. ‘She shouldn’t use that orange-coloured lipstick with hair so close to red.’ In his way Burgen was a connoisseur of women’s looks. What he preferred was something young and tall and swaying and preferably blonde. In a way, he liked it better if the blonde was not natural but artificial. It made him feel less old, less provincial, and art, he was coming to feel, was infinitely better than nature. But he had to admit that Charmian had her style.

  He heard Doris letting her in and Doris’s voice didn’t sound too happy. Poor little Doris had had a bad night and he was afraid it was all his fault.

  ‘I ought to be a better brother,’ he said sadly. Immediately, his agile and constructive mind started to draw up plans for a better brother. So many feet of best steel wire, so many ounces of kapok stuffing. Two beads for eyes, no tongue, no need for a brain, sex omitted. Yes, you could build up a nice little toy brother, but you might have some difficulty putting any life into him.

  At the sound of distress in Doris’s voice he moved towards the door. If Doris wanted help then he must help her. He never forgot that he loved Doris, and that she had given him great comfort and harmony. It may be that in getting comfort you lost a great deal of other things but it had been something, oh certainly something, to have had that comfort. At times, when he was trying desperately to lose himself in trivialities, comfort, it had seemed, was the only thing that saved him.

  As he came forward now, he wondered which of them was really in most need of help. He moved quietly, softly; within himself he was really singing the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, loud, very loud.

  ‘No, we know nothing about these things, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’ Then he added, as if he could not stop himself, ‘They belonged to a girl, didn’t they?’

  ‘It’s not our dog, you know,’ said Laurence Marks. He handed Charmian a Kleenex to wipe her hands. She and the dog had met in the garden of the Cox house where the dog was burying a real bone this time. He had pretended to think Charmian was after his bone and had rushed at her. She dropped her bag and her bundle, defending herself, and then the dog had tried to bury them. He seemed obsessed with burying things.

  ‘Whose dog is it, then?’

  ‘He’s Emily Carter’s. But he won’t live there.’

  ‘Why not?’ Charmian rubbed her hands and examined her possessions. They hadn’t suffered too much.

  Laurence considered. ‘It’s a pretty crowded house down there for him. Too competitive. He’s a quiet dog. He doesn’t like having to fight off those children for his supper, or his bed … And then he has a thing about burying … We have a theory that he buried Emily once.’

  ‘Oh really!’

  ‘Well, she certainly went around looking very earthy and leafy once. Of course it was the spring.’

  Charmian looked at him helplessly. People often felt this way when confronted with Laurence. He gave her a sweet smile, making her wonder as many had wondered before exactly what was so tantalising about Laurence. He seemed to be telling the truth, he appeared to be making everything simple, but nothing was simple, you were not enlightened.

  ‘That dog would hide anything,’ he said.

  He bent his head to examine the books and the purse and the skirt which Charmian showed him. ‘No, I’ve never seen those. I can guess what they are, though. How odd they should turn up here.’ He touched the skirt. ‘Not very clean, is it?’

  ‘That’s the dog.’

  ‘No, see,’ he touched it delicately with one finger. ‘A stain here and it smells a little, have you noticed?’

  ‘That’s probably the dog too.’

  ‘No, really.’

  She sniffed. It was true, there was a faint, residual, non-human smell, too faint to identify. It had been dissipated in the fresh air and in the brush with the dog.

  ‘I’ve tied the dog up at the Carters’ gate,’ said Ben, coming in, a length of rope dangling over his arm. ‘Even Bobbie will have a job getting away from that post.’ He and the dog were enemies and had fought many wars, none decisive. ‘ Pity you had to let him get you, whets his temper.’

  ‘You mean his appetite.’

  ‘Same thing with him.’ Ben stared
at the skirt and the handbag and the books spread out on the table. ‘ No, I’ve never seen these things that I know of. But they’re not specially memorable, are they? I mean obviously I’d know if I’d seen a skirt like this spread out, yes, but I wouldn’t know if I’d seen it on anyone. Just girls’ things, that’s all. You’re wasting your time.’

  Charmian did not answer. She could not say: but there is always something to be gained. A positive act like showing you these things always produces its train of effects. This is how knowledge is gained. You have already told me that you are an observant sharp-witted person who would not necessarily inform me if you knew anything. You have reacted like the sort of person who can protect his own interests. And you have told me something about your feeling for your neighbours.

  Tom Gilroy speaks a kind of poetry, you speak prose. Moreover you have used the word ‘ girl’. Is there not something significant about that usage?

  Ben stirred uneasily under her blue gaze. Charmian was very often quite unconscious of the effect she had.

  ‘Of course I don’t know that they are a girl’s,’ he said, as if he could read her thoughts. Perhaps they were written pretty plainly to someone used to reading faces, like Ben. ‘But it’s a tiny waist, isn’t it? I don’t think many older women have a waist that size.’

  Charmian continued to keep silent, only a slight smile appeared on her lips.

  ‘Police work is asking a lot of useless questions,’ she said.

  Inside she was tingling with excitement; she was beginning to make contact on this case. Somewhere, somehow she was tapping a remote chain of events that would bring her to the final grand conclusions. She was sure of it.

  But why should it start with Ben Cox? What was there about Ben Cox and what had he done or said that made her feel this way?

  For the first time in over a year Charmian felt the thrill and pride of her craft, the knowledge that she was handling an investigation well. After a long hiatus, she was a professional again.

  She continued to stare at Ben, who stared back.

  ‘Drat you,’ said Ben. ‘I believe you’re a witch … Well, here it is: I’m a mathematician. Figures group themselves into patterns for me. Say I’m thinking about the theory of probabilities, nothing that requires the higher calculus, something anyone can do in their head. The chances of these things being hidden in any house by someone outside the household must be over two hundred to one. You see how I am getting there? There are over fifteen thousand houses in this town. If an outsider arbitrarily hit on the Gilroys’ house, the chances are one in fifteen thousand. In other words, probability against is immense. But if it was someone who knew them, then we can reduce the odds drastically. Say they knew over one hundred people: still it remains upward of a hundred to one. And if in addition you add the factor that these clothes are something which demands a police investigation, then the odds are doubled. That is what I was thinking.’

  ‘In other words you think it most likely that someone living in the house hid the things where they were?’ said Charmian.

  There was a pause. ‘ Well, don’t you?’ asked Ben.

  The two men watched Charmian depart. She was walking with a lighter springier tread than before. Burgen would no longer have said she walked badly. Strange how soon her mental state affected her body.

  ‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ said Laurence uneasily to Ben as soon as they were alone.

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘About probabilities and Tom and Con. I mean you should have left it.’

  ‘Con loves Tom,’ answered Ben obliquely.

  To Laurence it sounded like a condemnation.

  The post was a little late that morning in Laurel Rise. Its delivery had been impeded by the appearance of Bobbie triumphantly carrying the gate-post, to which a rope still bound him, in his mouth. The postman hated Bobbie. Tom Gilroy watched the postman approaching. He wasn’t expecting any letters; he rarely wrote any himself and so received few. He had few friends, none close. While his mother had been alive he had telephoned her every day. His calls always began in the same way with the words Dear Mother, this is Tom speaking, then went through an account of his day, and ended, Goodbye, Mother, until tomorrow. An outsider might have observed that Tom was somewhat an obsessive character. When his mother had died he had spent a week in deep gloom, written thirty letters, all on business, then married Con and hardly written a letter since. Con did all that for him. Con let him sign his own cheques, but otherwise the organisation was all hers. He might be cleverer than Con, but he felt strongly that in all other matters she won hands down.

  ‘You depend on Con too much,’ Mary Lou Pallas had said scornfully, and he had answered, ‘Not really dependence. You wouldn’t understand. Con’s good to me.’ Just for a moment the sun went in and Tom remembered that there was darkness and night and empty streets and faces you didn’t know, faces you could never know. Con could save him from all that. His heart began to beat fast. And then faster and faster.

  He hardly saw the postman as he handed him the letters. There was quite a bundle, unexpectedly more than usual. He sat down at the table in the hall and stared at the letters.

  One to Con, typewritten and from a shop. Clearly not important. A circular letter about someone’s encyclopedia. He looked hard at the rest of the letters, then put them down on his lap and shuffled through them, hardly able to believe what he saw.

  Four letters. And one after the other addressed to Mary Lou Pallas, here. Here.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought Mary Lou Pallas knew so many people to write to her,’ he muttered, licking his lips. His heart, which had steadied, as the feeling of being lost had receded, began to thump in his ears. ‘But to have them sent here! The coolness. The nerve. To have her letters addressed here!’

  He had no doubt what these letters meant or why Mary Lou had given this address. It was part of her scheme. It was a declaration of war, the running up of the flag.

  Tom had taken these letters from the postman, but on a normal Saturday he would have been in bed and asleep still and Con would have received them. Con was the person who was meant to have seen those letters.

  Tom picked them up, jammed them in his pocket, then hurried into the bedroom and locked the door. He could hear Con’s voice. She was talking to someone in the kitchen.

  One letter to Mary Lou Pallas was addressed in a sloping hand in green ink. A second was typewritten. A third was blocked out in pencil as if by a child and the fourth was addressed in pale blue smudged ink. Two white envelopes, a blue one, and a buff manila one like offices use. All were post-marked London and not easily made out but they could be read if you tried.

  Tom however was not studying the envelopes; rapidly he was ripping open one envelope after another. In each was a plain, folded piece of paper, a perfectly blank piece of paper. Puzzled and frightened now because this was not what he had been expecting, Tom stared at the blank sheets of paper.

  In the kitchen he could hear Con on the telephone making arrangements to leave. She was going away from him. As he moved out and looked at her he was not surprised to see Con still had on her house-dress and slippers and that there was no sign of any packing. He felt no surprise, only the usual sick feeling. He knew how it went.

  Chapter Four

  DRIVING down through the centre of the town on the way to her office, Charmian tried to sum up her thoughts. They were strange. Something was opening up inside her. The sensation that she was approaching something important which had come to her as she was talking to Ben Cox remained. Just for one little moment as she talked to Ben she had felt that soon the lid would be lifted and she would see inside. But what sort of box she would open and what its contents were going to be she couldn’t decide. Perhaps it was just the case of Arlette Grey. But was it just the case? She had the odd feeling that she was somehow personally involved.

  She turned left, parked her car and ran up the steps into her office. It was still early, before her day’s routine
had got going, but she heard Inspector Pratt’s nervous cough. There was no reason, of course, why he shouldn’t be in early. In the old days he always was, but lately, since his wife’s illness and that long convalescence which seemed to have made Pratt and his wife so close and so fond, he had been much tardier in his arrival. But he was here this morning, and coughing away as if he had something on his mind. Charmian had learned to interpret Pratt’s cough and this one seemed to her to indicate a situation medium to bad.

  But when she got to his office everything was orderly and Pratt was quietly working at his desk. There seemed no special reason for alarm. He looked up, saw her and started to cough again. So the problem, whatever it was, plated to her, thought Charmian with amusement.

  Pratt reacted with faint surprise. Amusement hadn’t been very common with Charmian lately. ‘Girl looks almost pretty,’ he thought, and wondered if here too there might not rest a problem.

  ‘They had Arlette Grey’s things up there right enough,’ said Charmian, putting herself down in the chair opposite him. She sat down a mite heavily, Pratt observed, new lightness of spirits or not. He frowned slightly; her action had disarranged his papers and he was a man who liked things left where he had placed them. ‘I don’t know how or why yet. But they had them. I’ve brought them with me. And I got an address that might be useful,’ she said, remembering Con’s reference to Mary Lou Pallas.

  ‘We’ll give them a medal,’ Pratt asked, ‘What sort of an impression do they make?’

  ‘Good. Very co-operative and helpful.’

  ‘Well, dig around. Those things didn’t get there by accident.’

  ‘You seem pretty certain that because these things were found in the Gilroy house, they have some connection with Arlette Grey.’