Dead Again

by Jennie Melville

  Baby could be very perceptive sometimes, which made you realize how clever she really was and that the breathless, feathery appearance was really a facade. She had after all built up a successful business and here she was still running it. This made her unique among her former sisters in crime.

  Charmian stayed with her until the local CID unit arrived and then, aware that Baby would be well looked after by them and also that Charmian’s own presence would not be welcome, she took herself off.

  She stood outside for a moment trying to think things through: she was surprised to find that she grieved for Diana, but she did. The woman had the right to those last weeks of life (which being Diana she might somehow have stretched out for longer), and she didn’t deserve to die that way but comfortably in bed. Charmian felt outraged on Diana’s behalf. She remembered the time they had both had tests in a hospital clinic and she had come through healthy while Diana had been told she had the seeds of the illness that eventually would otherwise have killed her.

  ‘Would have done,’ thought Charmian. ‘ But it wasn’t given time.’

  She drove home to pour out to her husband the latest drama. ‘ I am quite sure it is all part of the same story: Joan coming home and the murder of the two girls.’

  Her husband looked at her sceptically. ‘Are you sure this is not just your dramatic imagination?’

  ‘It’s happened, may happen again.’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’

  ‘There is a connection, quite clear in this case: she was threatening Joan.’

  ‘Are you accusing Joan? Or her sister? Or her son?’

  Charmian had to admit she did not know. She was flailing round wanting to accuse somebody but not sure whom.

  ‘Have a drink and calm down,’ advised her prudent husband. But she was not to be at peace for long.

  The phone rang just as he was pouring them both some wine.

  ‘Dolly speaking… I am down here at Baby’s, they want us here. Can you come?’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Sex comes into it somewhere, doesn’t it?’ said Dolly, as she stood with Charmian looking down at Diana’s body. ‘ With these killings, I mean. It has to.’

  Charmian turned aside. The room was crowded with the police team. The police surgeon had just withdrawn after pronouncing Diana dead.

  ‘Strangled.’

  ‘How long?’ Charmian had asked.

  He had consulted his thermometer. ‘Still warm, not long, two hours at the most, perhaps less.’

  The forensic team was already at work while SOCO concentrated on seeing that everything at the crime scene got the attention it deserved. A photographer was working with her. The Scene of Crime Officer was a woman, the newly promoted Sergeant Beth Dyer.

  It was as the photographer got into position for yet another shot that Dolly had made her pronouncement.

  ‘Sex came into everything with Diana,’ said Charmian, sadly.

  ‘That isn’t quite what I meant … It’s just a feeling, an intuition. Somehow, I find myself connecting this death here with the murders of the first girls. With Joan Dingham.’

  ‘Joan certainly had no love for Diana. But Emily Agent will have been keeping an eye on her.’

  ‘She wasn’t doing so well this morning.’

  ‘No, but I rang up and gave her a rocket. She promised not to let Joan out of her sight. She’s got a substitute to stand in for her when necessary.’

  ‘It’s the man,’ worried Dolly. ‘What about the man we saw with Joan in the pub?’

  ‘Got to find out who he is first, and that means talking to Joan.’

  By this time, Diana’s body was being prepared to go off to the mortuary where the pathologist would examine it to make certain of the cause of death.

  ‘I will talk to Joan myself,’ said Charmian, ‘ but first I must speak to Baby again. Not something I am looking forward to.’

  Baby was sitting in a large chair before a low table on which was a bottle of whisky. She faced Charmian with tears in her eyes. She was crying neatly and quietly, not disturbing her make-up, but every so often a large round tear would roll down her cheek. ‘Oh, you again.’

  ‘I came back to see how you were.’

  ‘Lousy. Rotten. I feel guilty; I let her down.’

  ‘That is not true.’ Charmian sat down beside Baby. ‘ Come on, Beryl Andrea Barker, stop crying and act your age. Diana’s death is not your fault. She was murdered, killed by someone who wanted her killed and whom you could not stop.’

  ‘But here, in my salon …’

  ‘Here or anywhere, if that killer wanted her, then he would get her. That’s how it works, take my word for it. A really determined killer always gets through.’

  Baby sat up and dabbed her eyes. ‘You’re right, of course. And what I must do now is help you find who killed her.’ She frowned. ‘You said he, but supposing the killer is a woman?’

  ‘Who do you have in mind? Better say.’ Because I think I know what you are going to say. Name the name.

  ‘Joan Dingham.’

  ‘I knew you were going to say Joan.’

  ‘She hated Diana, she’d be glad to have her dead. And she knows how to kill.’

  Charmian shook her head. ‘ No opportunity … She’s watched. She can’t just slip out and kill.’ Even as she said it, she remembered that Joan had done just that earlier that day. ‘I will be talking to her, of course, and having her movements checked.’ I thought of her myself, she might have said, of course I did, but I can’t see how she could have done it.

  Why, yes, the book Lou and Pip were bleating about, and the power to do it. She knows she can kill. But how would she have the opportunity? Charmian asked herself again.

  ‘It’s not clear whether Diana struggled,’ she said aloud, ‘ but the pathologist will let us know.’

  ‘Diana would struggle,’ said Baby with conviction. ‘ Yes, she sure would struggle.’

  ‘We will find out. There will be traces. With luck the killer will have left something for the forensic boys.’

  ‘She would struggle,’ repeated Baby, as if she had not said this already. ‘ But she was ill, very ill. The cancer had come back. I don’t know how much strength there was in her. She was dying.’

  Both women were silent for a moment.

  ‘Rotten luck,’ said Charmian.

  ‘Not even allowed to die in her own time.’ Baby kicked the table leg in front of her. ‘Bugger, bugger.’ She rubbed her foot. ‘I didn’t even like her much. She landed on me here, unasked. I didn’t turn her away, although I guess I might have done if it had gone on longer. But I thought she was dying.’ She started to walk up and down the room. ‘She didn’t deserve to die like that.’

  Charmian nodded to indicate that she felt the same and understood. ‘Not your fault,’ she said. ‘ You were good to her, that’s what counts.’

  ‘But I feel guilty.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort to you, I feel the same.’

  ‘Thanks, I don’t know that it does help, but I’m glad you said it.’

  ‘I’ll be off,’ said Charmian. ‘Will you be all right here? You won’t exactly be alone, police teams of one sort or another will be here all night.’ Apologetically, she said, ‘You won’t be able to open tomorrow, I’m afraid.’

  Baby gave a shudder. ‘ No. I’m not sure if I will ever want to open the salon again.’

  ‘Would you like to come and stay with me?’

  Baby smiled at her. ‘Thanks for the offer, but no. I’ll stay here, it is my home, I have to get used to the idea of living here and, as you say, I will have a police guard.’

  ‘You will have to come down to the office to make a statement tomorrow. I’m not sure who will be in charge, probably not me.’

  ‘I hope it is you. There might be things I want to say about Diana and her life that I may not want to tell anyone else.’

  ‘Anything you can think of at the moment?’

  ‘No.’ Baby shook her head. ‘Lou was go
ing on this morning about how Joan hated Di. I don’t think Lou liked her all that much either.’

  ‘Don’t pass judgement on anyone too soon. That’s my advice.’

  Baby nodded. ‘Rotten friends I’ve got.’

  Charmian patted her arm with sympathy. ‘ You’re in shock.’ She went to the door. ‘I’m there if you want me. Or,’ she added hopefully, ‘if you think of anything that might help.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh, it depends. Someone hanging around the salon whom you wouldn’t expect to see or don’t recognize, anything out of the ordinary, really.’

  Baby said slowly that she couldn’t think of anything. She accompanied Charmian to the door, walking down the stairs with her. She stopped short just before they got to ground level where the salon was.

  A uniformed man stood outside the door on the pavement where several police cars lined the kerb. A small crowd had gathered.

  ‘Is that a TV van?’

  Charmian looked. She nodded. ‘ Yes.’

  ‘Di would have been pleased. Pity she doesn’t know.’

  ‘Maybe she does.’ Her friends the white witches would have assured her that Diana was still around and watching. Pity she can’t drop in and tell us who did it, thought Charmian.

  Baby stood looking, she felt no desire to get herself on the TV screen, which was amazing really, because there had been a time when she would have killed for it. She started to go back up to what she now felt was the secure

  cave of her own set of rooms where she could crawl away and

  hide.

  A picture came into her mind.

  ‘Charmian,’ she said. ‘There is something: this evening, before I

  went off to do Evie’s hair, there was a dog hanging about the front.’

  Charmian went away, meditating on what Baby had said about the dog. Which dog? Before she could give her mind intelligently to the question of the dog, she was caught by an anxious telephone call from Emily Agent.

  ‘Can you come up here? To the flat. Joan has attacked her sister. Broken her nose, I think, we’ve got the doctor coming. I think you ought to speak to Joan before the doctor sedates her.’

  ‘On my way. I was coming anyway. You know what’s happened down here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is that what it’s about?’

  Charmian could almost feel Emily shrug across the telephone line. She was silent for a space.

  Charmian drove over fast, parked the car then ran up the stairs. Emily met her on the last few steps.

  ‘She wants you,’ said Emily. ‘ It’s my fault, she heard me talking on my mobile about what had happened to Diana.’

  ‘Who? Joan Dingham?’

  ‘Yes, she flew into a rage. She’s gone mute again. Or trying to. She’s trying to hide inside silence.’

  ‘That’s perceptive of you.’

  ‘Speech might burst out of her at any moment. There’s a big conversation going on inside her, you can almost hear it. God knows what words she’ll put to it when it does get out. But Lou wants you too. She’s talking, poor soul, as far as she can through a bloody nose.’

  She was leading Charmian up the stairs and into the flat as she spoke.

  ‘Doctor here yet?’

  ‘Any minute.’ She paused in the hall where the jug of flowers on the bow-fronted table still celebrated Joan’s return. She nodded towards the sitting room. ‘They’re in there …’

  ‘Was it safe to leave them?’

  ‘Yes, Pip’s there. Lou phoned him and he came running over.’ Emily added thoughtfully. ‘In a funny kind of way they are all close. But who loves who and who hates who I can’t make out.’

  The sitting-room door opened, Pip put his head round it. ‘ Thought it might be the doctor.’

  ‘On his way.’

  ‘Aunt Lou’s nose could do with help. Bleeding like a pig. Mum shouldn’t have whacked her.’

  Joan was sitting silently on the sofa in the window while Lou sat on an upright chair by a table. Charmian recalled that the drinks had been on that table at the party. Lou was holding a towel, which was indeed bloodstained but not as badly as Charmian had feared, to her nose, she had known noses that bled more freely. The room was quiet with Joan not talking and Lou also silent. Perhaps mutism was a family habit. And, come to think of it, if you were a family with the deadly secrets this lot might have had, then speechlessness might not be a bad habit to have.

  Then Lou stood up and, trailing the bloody towel, came towards Charmian, hand held out, Lady Macbeth style.

  ‘I’m sorry but my sister has made a serious accusation against me and I thought you ought to hear it. Sergeant Agent thought so too.’ She looked at Emily, who nodded. ‘She thinks I killed Diana.’

  ‘You did,’ suddenly Joan had found her voice.

  ‘Oh come on, Mum,’ said Pip. ‘ You know she couldn’t have done. Why should she?’

  ‘She strangled Diana. It has to have been her. I don’t know why. There doesn’t have to be a why.’

  And there speaks the authentic voice of experience, thought Charmian.

  ‘I think we can soon establish when Diana was killed, and if you can show you were nowhere near the salon at that time, then you don’t have to worry.’

  ‘I went to my office first, then I was out walking in the afternoon,’ said Lou. ‘I like to take a long walk.’

  ‘Someone will have seen you, I expect,’ said Charmian patiently. ‘And there is always forensic evidence. If you killed Diana, you will have left traces in the salon.’

  ‘Of course, I left traces there,’ said Lou, through the muffling towel. ‘I had my hair done there today, didn’t I? And I went back later on to leave a tip for the girl who prepares the shampoos and tints. I always do, but I had forgotten.’

  Charmian frowned. Not likely that Lou was the killer, but not impossible either, she began to think.

  ‘If anyone saw you and comes forward we will know,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps you will recall something.’ To Joan, she said, ‘Who was the man with you in the pub at lunchtime today?’

  ‘What? What’s this?’ asked Lou sharply. ‘What have you been doing?’

  Joan did not answer.

  ‘By God, I ought to have hit your nose,’ said Lou.

  Charmian intervened. ‘I wish you could suggest someone who saw you on your walk.’

  Wearily, Lou said, ‘Only Baby’s dog, if that counts. He could give me a bark, I daresay, if he would. I think I saw him in the park. On his own.’

  ‘Baby doesn’t have a dog.’

  Lou shrugged. ‘ I thought I saw him hanging about her place once or twice.’

  Charmian moved across to look at Joan directly, Joan moved her eyes away.

  ‘Joan, what did the cruciform symbol mean that was carved on the skin of the girls you killed? It meant something.’

  Joan’s face did not change. She went on staring into space.

  ‘You don’t remember? No? Well, you’d better start remembering, dig something out of your memory because otherwise I’ll make it my business to see you go back inside for a long time.’ It was not an idle threat, she could probably do it. ‘You can forget the degree course, you’ll go back immediately.’

  She turned to Lou. ‘Likewise you, Lou. Get together the two of you and tell me a story I can believe.’

  She knew she was angry, probably making things worse, and certainly making threats to Joan that were unwise.

  The door bell rang as Charmian was trying to sort herself out. Emily said, ‘The doctor. At last.’

  It was Dr Farmer, who did a lot of police work, who came in with Inspector Parker. Parker gave Emily the sort of look that blamed her for what had happened.

  Charmian got herself away as soon as she could. ‘I don’t suppose Lou wants to make a charge against her sister, but get them both to make statements, if you can. I’ll see them both in the morning.’

  As she walked out, her eye subliminally took in a photogr
aph on the wall, a group photograph. Something to look at some time, she registered, when she wasn’t in such a hurry.

  ‘Pity she didn’t get the dog’s autograph,’ said Dolly somewhat sourly. ‘ Or a photograph.’

  Back at SRADIC, Charmian had produced the story of Joan’s attack on her sister, her accusation and Lou’s attempt at an alibi.

  ‘Plenty of dogs on the loose in this town,’ observed Rewley, who was sitting on the edge of Charmian’s desk as she telephoned her husband.

  ‘Get off,’ she said, giving the desk a push to dislodge him. ‘Humphrey? Where’s the dog?’

  ‘Haven’t seen it all day. On the loose. Took off after we came home from the park. I expect it’ll be back soon. Knows where the food is, smart fellow. Why?’

  ‘That dog comes into it somewhere,’ said Charmian savagely. ‘Puts his nose in everywhere.’ She put the phone down. ‘But I don’t believe Lou killed Diana, I’d be surprised if Joan really thinks so. It’s a puzzle why she attacked her sister.’

  ‘Just a domestic,’ drawled Rewley, ‘ Lou’s always been the man in that family so when there’s trouble, she gets it in the neck.’

  ‘You don’t mean?’ Dolly said heatedly.

  ‘No, Lou’s not lesbian, or if she is, not active,’ said Charmian, who had been reading the records of the Dingham murders twenty years before. ‘It was thought that the Rhos-Joan relationship had that element, probably did, but nothing was established.’

  It was late and they were all tired, but no one was getting home just yet.

  Charmian started to walk round the room. ‘We’ve picked up the police gossip of the time which was that there was a third person involved in those earlier killings and that that person was a man. Today, we saw Joan having a drink with a man.’

  ‘Bald head, that’s all we know,’ said Rewley. ‘Wish we’d nabbed him on the spot.’

  ‘The dog,’ said Charmian, ‘came from Dr Harrie.’