Witching Murder

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I wouldn’t fuss, I’m not a fusser,’ began Flo. Mrs Flaxon’s living room was a disappointment to her. A quick glance told her that nothing had been done since the last tenant, a Mr Burges, who had not himself been a homemaker of merit. It was clean, it was tidy, but that was about all you could say. Mr Burges had not even been that. ‘If it wasn’t for this nasty murder so close … Merrywick isn’t far … You’ve heard about the murder, I suppose?’ Must have done, she could see the local paper on the table, and with her long sight could read it as well.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it.’ The words popped out before Denise could stop them.

  Flo was deeply, if falsely, sympathetic. ‘I know. One doesn’t. So terrible. But one can’t bury one’s head, can one?’ Something Flo was never likely to do, her eyes were always brightly peeping about. ‘And this man has been seen hanging about outside. I thought I ought to tell you.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The one that’s been lurking around the house.’ A couple of dusty urban trees stood in the road just by the block of flats; it was possible to lurk in them. Just possible.

  ‘What sort of man? What’s he like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him myself,’ said Flo regretfully. ‘But Mr Schmidt on the ground floor said he was a very ordinary sort of man.’ But then anyone might seem ordinary to Mr Schmidt, who for fifty years now had been so far from ordinary himself, having lived, as he would say through so many horrors in Germany during the war that only a good wife and a sound digestion had brought him through. However, his wife had whispered to Flo that, except for the short sojourn on the Isle of Man, he had spent the whole of the war in Manchester writing crime stories. So which was true? But wherever truth lay it made Mr Schmidt himself not one of your common, run-of-the-mill types.

  ‘It seems most unlikely he had anything to do with the murder, whoever he is.’

  ‘But we ought to be on our guard.’

  ‘That killer must be far away by now.’

  ‘Unless he lives locally. We know murderers often observe their victims before striking. I for one don’t want to be raped or murdered in my bed.’

  She had a point there, Denise inwardly admitted. ‘All right. I’ll watch out for him.’

  ‘And keep your door locked.’

  ‘Locked.’ But locks didn’t seem to work always. ‘ I promise to lock.’

  Miss Jessamon prepared to depart, having decided this flat was not ‘collectable’. ‘Of course he could be a private detective. They do a lot of watching, I believe. Only I don’t know whom he’d be watching here. It’s usually divorce, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m a widow,’ said Denise coldly.

  So you say, dear, so you say, thought Flo as she scuttled down the stairs. You have virtually the same sticks of furniture that Mr Burges had and he had the same as the chap before him. It was that sort of flat.

  ‘The murderer is not after me,’ said Denise coldly to Miss Jessamon’s back. ‘Nor you for that matter.’ Miss Jessamon was gone, though. ‘This murder was a murder of passion, can’t you see that, and you and I are not objects of passion.’ Since she had lost her husband she had felt bereft of passion.

  She went back into the room. In spite of her brave words, she was disturbed. It was frightening to feel watched, even if the figure might be (but might not be) only a fantasy of Miss Jessamon. And fantasies might summon up the real thing. If you thought about a thing enough it sometimes happened. She’d known it.

  Denise went to the window to look out. She could see through the trees to the pavement below. No one there. No one in the street at all. Not on foot. The usual number of cars parked along the kerb, of course, in any one of which an observer might be sitting.

  She felt like crying. Even a dry cry, more of a blink than a downpour, usually all she could manage, might be a relief, but she could not summon up any activity in the eyes. The murder of Vivien had upset her much more than she liked to admit. She wasn’t herself at all.

  ‘I haven’t been my usual self for far too long,’ she said, studying her face in the mirror and giving a shake of the head. ‘You won’t do much good in the beauty business, my girl, with a face as long as a week.’

  She adjusted her curls, put on fresh lipstick, and ran a soft, slightly moistened tissue over her face. The shiny look was in fashion at the moment and Elysium liked its ladies to keep in vogue. It suited her anyway and she wished she’d thought of it years ago. She looked and felt younger this way.

  She needed some food and she had the usual sort of small errands to do that a woman does whether living alone or not. She collected her keys, one way and another there were quite a bunch, and left the house to walk down the road to where her car was parked.

  On the way she took the opportunity to look in all the cars that lined the kerb. All were empty.

  It was late-night shopping at the big supermarket so the car park there was crowded, but she found a place to tuck the car. Pushing her trolley down the aisles, steering expertly round other shoppers, she considered what she needed to buy. More than you might expect, as always in her case. She was not a devoted shopper but she was a thorough one.

  As she filled her trolley with all the needs of the week, she wondered what the other shoppers would say if they knew she had looked down on a murdered woman. Fortunately, it was not branded on her forehead in red letters; she was anonymous.

  She carried her two bags of shopping to the car, where she locked them away. She felt the need to go to the public lavatory across the road from the car park, so she left the car, passing two women discussing married life in critical tones and another shouting at her child. Denise, in her loneliness, thought they did not know when they were lucky.

  When she came back, they were still there, but now the child was doing the shouting and a man had joined the two other women. He was silently loading the goods from a heaped trolley into the car. Husband, son or brother, he was not spoken to, the conversation continued over his head. Denise got in her car and drove away.

  Miss Jessamon had heard her go, closing the front door which had a distinctive sound to it. She grew uneasy when Denise did not return as soon as might have been expected from someone just going shopping, or paying for the papers, or taking a walk. Miss Jessamon, although good at guessing, did not demand of herself that she got everything right. Might be a good idea, she thought, as she settled in front of the television, to get in touch with the police about that man seen watching the house. She herself might have made a good detective, she sometimes imagined; she had listened to a very interesting talk in Merrywick one evening by a woman detective called Daniels and said to herself: that job would suit me.

  But later in the evening she thought she heard the sound of the door closing. And Denise was certainly there in the morning. So that was all right.

  Chapter Six

  At this time Superintendent Father, who was the head of the CID unit based at Prince Consort Road in Windsor, housed in a new and custom-built unit, was deeply occupied with a large-scale fraud case which engaged most of his attention. It was a secret investigation, code-named BLIND ALLEY, which had drawn off a clutch of his best officers. There was complete silence on BLIND ALLEY, no one was supposed to know about it, although speculation was rife.

  In addition, his new Inspector, moved in from another district, Fred Elman, a man looking to climb the ladder quickly, was dealing with a very nasty multiple killing in Slough which, because of its racist overtones, was getting all the media attention. His team also needed experienced and seasoned officers to deal with this critical investigation, which demanded more than the usual patient, foot-plodding interviews, and banging on doors not readily opened, while ignoring snubs, anger and hints of violence.

  So Dolly Barstow had been given charge of the third case, the murder of Vivien Charles, which was attracting only local attention and not getting television or radio coverage. For which Father and Elman were both heartily thankful.

&n
bsp; But however they were rated by the media, the method of setting up an investigation was the same for each case and each team.

  There was always the Major Incident Room, known as Miriam. In the investigation into the death of Vivien Charles, this room was in an old church hall round the corner from Dulcet Road. People came to the front office where Receivers took in all information, passing it on to the Office Manager who was a kind of long stop. Or, if the information seemed important, it went straight to the Investigating Officer. Dolly Barstow, in this instance.

  Indexers put statements on to computer files, numbered by statement, and cross-linked with the person who took the statement. Copies were sent to the Statement Reader who underlined all salient points.

  An Action Allocator sent out the errands that resulted from all this and which, hopefully, moved the investigation on a stage.

  Such a room, in an important case, called for about sixteen officers. Three such investigations were draining the relatively small CID force, so that Dolly’s outfit in St Mark’s had what was left after the cream had been taken.

  This investigation was code-named FANTASY because of certain elements which everyone had noticed. No one was willing to give it the code-name WITCH.

  FANTASY was being worked by Dolly Barstow, who was receiving information and initiating action. But the team remained under the nominal charge of Inspector Elman, who in turn looked to Superintendent Father. Neither man knew each other well or had worked together for long, there had been a lot of changes and promotions recently. Old hands had moved up and away, some of whom Dolly had known well, others whom Charmian had co-operated with on an earlier case in Windsor, and new men had come in.

  There was a kind of housekeeping that had to be done, which was how you might describe the questioning of neighbours who might have witnessed anyone entering or leaving the house in Dulcet Road, the necessary checks on all those who knew Vivien Charles, such as those in that little circle of so-called witches, and those that she had worked among in her last place of employment. Her bank manager and her doctor all had been visited and questioned. This was a routine process that must be gone through. From it nothing might come, but it was the classic way in which a case was built up.

  Technical reports on forensic debris and fingerprinting all had to be collated. It was a big job on a small case.

  Dolly was taking action and receiving reports on FANTASY, but so too were Father and Elman. She was receiving specialised comments and analysis from Charmian Daniels. The other two were not. Maybe they saw her reports, maybe they did not read them.

  Their ideas and those of Charmian Daniels and Dolly Barstow were not the same.

  Thus it came about that the conclusion that Superintendent Father and Inspector Elman arrived at about the nature and identity and motive of the killer were not the same as that of Charmian Daniels.

  For a time, it was possible that Dolly Barstow had a third and yet different idea.

  Chapter Seven

  In the evening of the day after this event in Denise Flaxon’s life, not to mention that of Flo Jessamon, and more than a week into the investigation, three women sat round the table in Charmian’s kitchen and drank coffee as they often did lately. A kind of companionship had sprung up between these three very different women at three different stages of their career. Charmian, established, successful, but beginning to ask the sort of questions of herself she would not have asked earlier in her life; Dolly Barstow, feeling lucky to be befriended by Charmian, just building up her career and subordinating everything to it; and Kate, artistic, impulsive, full of love, who was interested in everything and questioned everything. Willing to give the answers, too.

  There was another factor behind their meetings: the police investigation, of which Dolly was only one outer edge, and Charmian an honorary member, and in which Kate had no place at all but was passionately absorbed, was daily turning out results and they wanted to talk over what came in.

  It was not the best of times in their lives for any of them, none of the three was very happy, which was perhaps yet another reason that they hung together. There is a companionship in mild depression. A state of mind all three shared at the moment. Charmian because of her hand and with what that disability seemed to imply about her own nature; Dolly because she seemed to have lost interest in sex and at her age that was worrying; and Kate because she was beginning to doubt if life intended her to be an architect after all, and a wandering scholar she would not be.

  The only happy creature in the room was Muff the cat, who had come bounding in through the window, after what she considered a very satisfactory outcome to her territorial duties (a little blood, skin and fur had been lost on both sides but nothing to count) and was delighted to find an audience of three women, one of whom, Dolly, she sensed did not like cats but was looking trainable. Animals can always teach other animals, and some animals are better than other animals. It is only a question of establishing your ascendency. Muff landed firmly on Dolly’s lap, claws hooking delicately into her skirt, a nice bit of tweed.

  Dolly patted Muffs head with a careful hand, reluctant to admit to Charmian that she feared cats. ‘Good puss,’ she said.

  Kate was in the kitchen making the coffee and heating the milk, on health grounds she refused to allow them cream. Muff, having made her point with Dolly, leapt away to wind herself around Kate’s ankles, suggesting softly that cats also benefited from a drink of warm milk as evening came on. In her case, no coffee please, it spoilt a good saucerful.

  Kate had, of course, been listening to their discussion on the death of Vivien Charles in Dulcet Road as she laid out biscuits on a plate and brewed the coffee, adding her comments as they occurred to her.

  ‘Funny all that flitting in and out.’ Kate spoke from the cooker where she was watching the milk in the pan. ‘Door open so Mrs Flaxon can get in, then someone in the house when you go back. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ She looked at the saucepan. ‘I love the way milk froths up and goes all kind of solid just before it boils over.’

  ‘Don’t let it boil over,’ said Charmian in alarm. ‘ I hate cleaning that cooker.’

  ‘I had noticed. And you might have noticed, Godmother, that your efficient godchild had given it a good clean and polish. It is now as new.’ She poured the hot milk into a jug which she put on the table in front of them, placing beside it a plate of shortbread.

  ‘What did you make of Mrs Flaxon?’ said Charmian.

  Dolly considered. ‘Nice woman. Very nervous. Shocked, I suppose. Not that I blame her. Not pretty what she walked into.’

  ‘Good witness?’

  ‘Oh yes. Clear and succinct.’

  ‘What did she make of the fact the door was unlocked and she could walk in? Any idea? Had it happened before?’

  ‘No, on a previous visit she had rung the bell and been let in. This time she let herself in after ringing the bell and getting no answer.’

  ‘She could see the door was unlocked?’

  ‘She said she tried it. One does, you know, in that situation; I’ve done it myself.’

  ‘Did you get any good from the forensic traces? Or perhaps there weren’t any worth speaking of?’

  ‘There were a few, more than I expected really. A bit of dark cloth stuck to the sink. A sort of tweed apparently.’

  ‘Useful if one ever finds a likely suspect.’ But not otherwise, Charmian thought. Still, to be preserved and treasured just in case.

  ‘Scraps of skin on the door. Probably from the killer who may have been wounded. But it could have come from the victim herself. And there was a hint of something interesting about the blood. Two lots apparently. But the lab people say that everything needs a lot more work, and they were only giving me guesswork because I pushed.’

  She paused, and then said, ‘I think the blood is going to give us a lead. Perhaps even a shock. Or anyway say something striking. I just get that impression.’

  ‘More to come from Dr Leatheram then? Is Leathe
ram dealing with blood and tissues these days?’ She knew Leatheram from an earlier case, a tough but subtle man.

  Dolly nodded. ‘Tom Leatheram, yes, he’s good and doing his best, but you know how it is, forensic evidence can give you proof when you have someone lined up, but only hints of where to look otherwise, if that.’

  ‘But worth having.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Oh, in plenty. Mostly of Vivien, but a few unidentified. Again no use until we have a set of fingers to match them with.’

  ‘Did the neighbours see anything?’

  ‘Mostly out at work all day. You know what it’s like in an area such as Merrywick, most of the couples are young and have jobs. Two careers, two cars. The next-door neighbour, who was home with a cold, says she saw Mrs Flaxon arriving. She knew her because she had seen her before. Can’t say what time, a vague lady, but Flaxon gives us the time herself.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  ‘They won’t be pinned down to a few hours. But about six hours before she was found. That makes it morning. Possibly early morning.’

  ‘Or late morning.’

  ‘Or late morning,’ agreed Dolly amiably.

  ‘Well, we won’t talk about alibis then.’

  Dolly laughed. ‘As you would expect, none of the ladies in that little group would admit to having anything so undignified as an alibi. In the mornings they stay at home doing the housework or cooking. Caprice was in her shop, but she makes no claim she was there all the time or could prove it. No witnesses, no alibis.’

  But they both knew that this was how it usually went in an investigation.

  The orthodox police view at this time, largely unexpressed, but an assumption by such as Inspector Fred Elman and Superintendent Father, that they expected to be able to prove, was that it was a ‘group crime’. By the women. They were guessing but they were basing it on past experience and a guess was as good a place as any for a beginning.