Witching Murder

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Two men, two killers?’

  ‘We don’t know the sex,’ said Dolly.

  Charmian walked to the window to look out. The sky was darkening by the minute, and a few heavy drops of rain were already falling.

  ‘I have evidence of two men being involved.’

  Two cars, two men, two murderers?

  ‘Check this car number for me. It may not be entirely accurate but see what you get. Might be a red Cortina.

  ‘Right.’ Dolly studied the number. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Do that. And I’ve got something else for you,’ Charmian said, putting the image in the plastic bag down on the table. ‘It was left on my doorstep. Presumably to ill-wish me. See what Forensics can get out of it.’

  Dolly examined it distastefully. ‘Nasty. But why to you and not me?’

  ‘I suppose someone dislikes me more.’

  Or she could just be a neighbour who had only to pop round the corner. But she did not say this aloud. No prejudging.

  ‘And there’s this.’ She dropped the little bag on the table. ‘ Get this analysed, will you? Picked it up at Twickers. Said to aid sleep. I’d just like to know what sort of sleep you get.’

  ‘Do what I can. The lab will start to hide when they see me coming with all the work I’m bringing in.’

  ‘Do them good,’ said Charmian heartlessly. Between her and the technical services there had long been a war.

  ‘Don’t you want to try it yourself?’

  Charmian put her hand in her pocket again. ‘Got another. I paid for the first one and helped myself to a second.’

  Dolly, who had picked up a bit of this and that at her meetings with the group, looked thoughtful. ‘ Was that wise?’ she asked. On the whole she liked to pay for what she got from places like Twickers.

  Kate and Muff were both in the house in Maid of Honour Row when she got back. Kate was rubbing Muff down with a towel.

  ‘This poor cat has been shut out in the rain and got wet.’

  ‘All her own fault,’ said Charmian absently. ‘She would go out.’

  ‘Oh, you are hard.’ Kate herself looked as though she had got wet, her long fair hair was trailing over her shoulders and her jeans were damp round the ankles.

  ‘Glad to see you back. Quite a storm, wasn’t it? Dry yourself, why don’t you?’

  ‘Always feed and groom your animals before you do yourself.’ Kate nodded her head towards the kitchen table on which stood a ginger cake and a jar of pickles.

  Charmian read the signs with a prickle of apprehension. ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘Fine. Sends her love.’

  ‘And Jack?’

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ said his daughter. ‘ I’m not sure if Jack’s in or out at the moment. Mum cooked a lovely fish chowder followed by lemon mousse. That goes either way.’ She pursed her lips. The lemon had been sharp and sour. But served with cream. Annie was often ambivalent. ‘She’s sent us a jar of pickled onions.’ That was definitely a downward sign.

  ‘I haven’t been idle, I went into Twickers and sounded innocent,’ went on Kate, releasing Muff. ‘ I have got myself invited to the next meeting of the Merrywick Coven. I said I’d seen their notice in the Merrywick Library. Said I had the best intentions, of course. Nothing wicked. I’ve joined up with what you might call the white witch side. You know, good thoughts, and being kind to animals, especially cats. But I suspect there is a black side and I am looking out for it. Let you know.’

  But when Charmian showed her the bag from Twickers, she picked it up with the kitchen scissors and threw it down the waste pipe, setting the steel jaws to work at chewing it to bits. Then she flushed the bits away.

  ‘I just wanted to try it,’ protested Charmian.

  ‘The thought is not worthy of you, Godmother, and I am not going to let you. I don’t like Caprice and I don’t trust her. She’d damage you if she could.’

  Like sending nasty little images through the door. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what you are. Who you are. Have you ever crossed her or a friend of hers?’

  Charmian was thoughtful. ‘I might have done.’

  ‘And there’s something else. I hung about Caprice’s shop and heard what I wasn’t meant to hear. They’ve turned on Josh Fox. It’s a hunt.’

  Chapter Nine

  By the next day the storm had passed, but the heavy rain had depressed the roses which hung heads down, heavily. Fallen petals lay on the grass, leaving little brown stubs of calyx behind.

  Charmian drank her coffee in the kitchen, looking out of the window at the ruins of her garden. But it would pick up, give it a day of sun and you would never know there had been a storm.

  She wished she had such resilience.

  Her hand was moving well, willing to wash, eat and pick up a lipstick. But it still seemed reluctant to do any written work. She had managed to hide this disability as far as possible from Dolly Barstow and Kate, but she saw them watching, and somewhat resented their tact. In many ways she felt she would have preferred it if they had grumbled.

  Perhaps she wanted reproof, punishment. There was a thought, and not the first time it had come to her. But she refused to accept it as truth: she had killed in self-defence. A man had tried to rape her, then to kill her, she had killed him. She didn’t exactly feel guilty, but a little depressed perhaps. And when she met someone like Josh Fox, then she wanted to run away. Frightened.

  She poured some more coffee and added a spoonful of honey.

  ‘I ought to learn to laugh at myself,’ she said, staring out of the window. ‘I’m just not good at it.’

  Kate could do it, although not often; Dolly used to be good at it but had lost the trick lately, which might be due to meeting the witches, because witches cannot laugh; while she, Charmian, as now she realised, had taken herself seriously all her life.

  She poured a saucer of milk for Muff (and who takes themselves more seriously than an adult cat? – no jokes there), then went to get dressed.

  A work-day so she dressed appropriately in a dark blue linen dress with a matching jacket. It showed her mood.

  Where Charmian had to go next was entirely up to her. She was on leave, her office was not in touch, although her secretary sent on those letters she thought Charmian would wish to see or ought to see (she was a girl who took a stern view of life) and added to it a summary of important events in the last few days, so that Charmian knew exactly what was going on behind the scenes of an important fraud case now being prepared for prosecution. (A celebrated female academic was involved which was going to be a shock for everyone.) She knew also that it looked a strong possibility that the six men found buried in a mass grave had been put there, possibly when not dead either, on the orders of a woman. True that woman had been a Celtic queen, dead herself these two thousand years, but both cases showed what women were capable of when given the right motivation.

  Both these affairs interested her, but she wasn’t going back to them. Those two cases had been largely solved, the death of Vivien Charles had not.

  She wanted to know the answer, she wanted to be able to look down at a collection of evidence, a pile of notes and say: So that’s how it was. Somewhere in this puzzle would be the Witches of Merrywick, she hoped that they were right in there and as guilty as hell, because she was beginning to dislike them but they might merely be innocents caught up in it all.

  On the other hand, she had a strong feeling that two men were involved in the murder of Vivien Charles. Nameless men, so far.

  Those two men had to be found and identified. The car number ought to help there. The police machine, of course, was better at this sort of task than one solitary searcher, so she could leave that to Dolly Barstow. Or could she?

  She thought that Dolly did not seem quite so keen on the search for the men as she was. Dolly would rather go straight after Caprice. No prejudice, of course, Dolly just felt Caprice was a likely candidate. But which, all the same, suggested to Charmian a name
for one of the men.

  Why not hypothesise that one of the men was the enigmatic and attractive Mr Fox? Josh Fox. If she felt anything strongly about him, and, as it happened, she felt several things very warmly, it was that this was not his name. He was a contrived person, not exactly made up, but kind of pasted together.

  He might be a writer, she could accept that as part of his persona, because that might be the reason he had interested himself in the Witches of Merrywick. Writing them up. Was this what had angered the coven and turned them against him? She was on to something there, she thought.

  But one of the other feelings she had (apart from questions about his identity) was that she had somewhere met him before. And not as a literary figure.

  The third strong impulse she had about this man was that he was as attractive as Dolly had said. She couldn’t quite explain this since he was not remarkably good-looking if considered dispassionately. She had read that warlocks exuded a special smell from their skin to attract witches. Perhaps this was the case here. She must consider it. If so, he had it under control and was well able to manipulate his own attractions.

  All in all, someone to keep away from, except professionally, and she hoped she would be able to do it.

  From Dolly she had a dossier on all the people concerned: names, ages and addresses with telephone numbers. Thus she had Josh Fox’s address. He had provided an address in Slough: Elm Street.

  Charmian consulted a map of the district which showed her that Elm Street was close to the city centre. Digging around in her memory she decided that it was a newly developed street close to the big covered shopping complex.

  She telephoned Dolly Barstow who answered the telephone with a groan. ‘So early?’

  ‘It’s not that early.’ Charmian looked at the clock, it was nearer nine than eight o’clock.

  ‘Depends when you got to bed. I was called out in the night. Caprice’s shop had a break-in, and they got me out to look at it.’

  ‘Why you?’ Why hadn’t the uniformed outfit handled it?

  ‘I think because Caprice screamed for me so loudly … And there were certain strange features about it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Door hadn’t been forced. Almost like an inside job.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘If so, I can’t imagine why. But the lock was nothing much, anyone who could put his hands on a big bunch of keys could probably have found one to fit. And the burglar alarm was set off, Caprice has a sophisticated system, but an insider would have known about that and watched it.’

  ‘Might not.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see. Fingerprints and so on may help.’

  ‘Anything missing?’

  ‘Caprice claims she doesn’t know yet. Says she has to check. I’m not a hundred per cent sure she’s telling the truth.’ Dolly really disliked Caprice and would get her for something if she could.

  ‘Do you think she’s got any drugs there? That perhaps she’s marketing them under the guise of natural medicine?’

  ‘Not the hard stuff,’ said Dolly cautiously. ‘I think I’d know if she was on that list, even if we hadn’t got proof, I’d probably know her name. But the lighter stuff, yes, it has occurred to me, but no evidence. Of course, we will be having a look round for any traces.’ Caprice probably guessed that the search for fingerprints was not entirely disinterested. ‘ Someone may think she has, of course, and hence the search of the shop. It was really turned over.’

  ‘Kate informs me that the coven has turned on Josh Fox. Any connection with the attack on Twickers?’

  Dolly was at once interested. ‘So they’ve quarrelled? Wonder why? There might be a connection, but I don’t see it. My feeling is that it’s personal to Caprice.’

  Charmian considered. She didn’t like Caprice any more than Dolly did, but in every group there is a scapegoat and it might be that Dolly had elected Caprice as this without the woman being guilty of anything but not being likeable. ‘ What about the blood?’ she said. ‘Are you getting all contacts tested?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve all agreed to be tested. I’ve made appointments for them all with a lab technician.’

  ‘And do they know why?’

  ‘No, but I expect they can guess. I’ll be there if I can. I hope they go in one after the other and I’d like to watch their faces as they look at each other.’

  ‘You’re really vindictive.’

  ‘I am,’ said Dolly with feeling.

  ‘One more thing … about the break-in at Twickers, in which the door was not forced. Does it remind you of anything?’

  ‘It does indeed. Dulcet Road. Someone got in there without a key.’

  ‘I wonder if Caprice got the shop through Blood and Sons of Merrywick?’

  ‘The same thought occurred to me. I’m getting it checked, but so far I haven’t got the answer. No one felt like getting Mr Dix up in the small hours.’ Then she said crossly, ‘Do you know you’ve woken me up and I don’t feel a bit like going back to sleep.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Charmian ruffled the pages of the dossier supplied by Dolly Barstow and the investigating team. ‘I see I’ve got Josh Fox’s address.’

  ‘Of course. He gave it, and it’s there.’

  ‘Anyone been to check?’

  ‘Someone did. Not me.’ There was a strange note in Dolly’s voice.

  ‘And he does live where he said?’

  ‘Let’s say he’s got a place. As for living, who knows what he does or where?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘The address is up a staircase above a jewellers in Slough. There is a brass plate on the door with the name J. Fox on it. And that’s about all. The jeweller is a tenant, does not own the property and does not own or claim to know Mr Fox. Why not go yourself and take a look? Elm Street, got it?’

  ‘Exactly what I intend to do.’

  She had a list of addresses of which Elm Street was only one. Abigail Place, Garter Road, where Birdie Peacock lived and strutted, a number of addresses belonging to various women who had come to meetings of the White Witches and paid a subscription even though they were reluctant now to be named as sisters or members of the coven. She had Caprice’s home address and the address of the office in Hatton Woods which had last employed Vivien Charles. Twickers, she thought, she could give a miss.

  Charmian made a fresh pot of coffee because she could hear Kate moving around, and assembled her thoughts.

  A woman had been killed in her own house, stabbed to death with a knife from her own kitchen.

  That was where you had to start. Then around her had been placed symbols of witchcraft. But of black witchery, the sort of symbols that were famous or infamous in the annals. Anyone could have looked them up in a book and then put them together. Thus laying suspicion on the witches.

  Or someone who had hated the victim so much that even after doing the killing there was the additional need to degrade. Some killers were like that.

  The dead woman had been a member of a coven of professed witches, but witches, so they claimed, of the harmless, well-intentioned sort. Healers, feminists, worshippers of a female deity, not a black thought among them. Herbalists, not alchemists. Life worshippers not Satanists.

  Such worthy women, but had a change come over them, turning them into something not quite so harmless? They had produced a victim. The motive for whose killing was not yet known, but had surely to do with her pregnancy. And that brought in a man.

  And two men were alleged to be watching the house in which lived the woman who had discovered Vivien Charles.

  Kate said over her shoulder, ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Men and women,’ said Charmian absently.

  Kate laughed and took some coffee in a mug. ‘That’s a start. Godmother.’

  ‘And do they commit different sorts of crimes?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Neither do I. But when they commit murder does a man set about it in
a different sort of way to a woman?’

  ‘I suppose this all has some practical application to Vivien Charles?’

  ‘Of course. The killer leaves his or her imprint on the crime. All that we do leaves traces of what we are.’

  ‘So what do you see?’

  ‘I see a killer who hated the victim, who probably hated the witches. Or at least wanted to implicate them. I see a very angry face but it may not look angry. A face with a mask on it.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I think Vivien trusted her killer. Possibly let the murderer into the house. Certainly let the killer come close. There was no struggle.’

  The profile of the victim was important, too. She had to get nearer to Vivien, this young woman who had been pregnant, whose child had shown signs of malformation, which could have been one consequence of a shock when some weeks into the pregnancy. She was a girl whose life might have had many a shock in it.

  ‘I love to hear you talk,’ said Kate admiringly. ‘You make it sound so simple. But I know it’s not. You’re looking for someone whose face you can’t see. Do you think you’ll know where to look?’

  ‘Beginning to think so,’ said Charmian. ‘But it needs some straightforward police work.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Looking and questioning. Plodding, you know. It’s one of the things police do. Boring stuff but necessary.’

  A long time since she had done her own leg work, but she was enjoying the prospect.

  Kate let Muff out of the window, then went to the front door to collect the post. She sorted out those that were addressed to Charmian. ‘Here you are … Did I hear the telephone?’

  ‘Yes, I was talking to Dolly Barstow. I woke her up. She had a late night. Twickers was broken into last night.’

  ‘Do you think it’s anything to do with the murder?’

  ‘It could be coincidence. They do happen. It’s just possible the person who broke in may have been hopeful of finding drugs. Dolly is inclined to think so. It may have nothing to do with the murder at all. But I think it has.’

  Then she said, ‘I’m off out.’