Witching Murder

by Jennie Melville

  ‘She didn’t have anyone here,’ said the dark one. ‘Roger was a dish but he had his sights set higher. Knew his own value, did our Roger. Anyway, I don’t think she fancied him. You can always tell. Don’t you think, Freddy?’

  ‘Oh, you can,’ said Freddy. She was taking the opportunity to touch up her eyeshadow. ‘Those bloody screens flickering all the time ruin your looks. Don’t know why, but they do.’

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ said the other one. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh, you’re indestructible, you.’

  ‘About Vivien,’ Charmian reminded them.

  ‘Oh, she had someone,’ said Freddy. ‘We all do. Naturally. It might have been several someones, but it wasn’t here. We’d have known, wouldn’t we, Shelagh?’

  ‘Couldn’t hide it, it’s a village. But Viv kept things quiet. Didn’t talk about herself much.’

  What a nuisance, Charmian thought, a murder victim who was the soul of discretion was no help to anyone.

  ‘Do you think she talked to her family?’

  They both laughed. ‘Would you?’

  But they passed on freely what they did know about Vivien which was a lot: they knew where she had her hair done; where she liked to shop for her clothes (Wardrobe and Next with occasional forays to a shop they called Harvey Nich’s when she was in funds); that she was size twelve most of the time but could drop to a ten; that she put on weight quickly but soon lost it, and that her favourite colour was blue.

  Charmian sensed that Shelagh knew more about Vivien’s sex life than she had admitted. This was confirmed when the girl offered to show her out. As they got to the door, Shelagh said, ‘She did have someone, you know. I was sure of it when she left. She didn’t flash an engagement ring or talk about her wedding dress but there was someone. She wasn’t going to another job or she’d have told us. No need to keep that quiet.’

  ‘And there was need to be quiet about what she was doing or where she was going?’

  ‘She was secretive about it. Mum as the grave. We wondered at the time. I asked her outright, but she just laughed and didn’t answer. Perhaps he did come from round here even if not from Cay-Cay. But whoever he was he may not have given her a ring, but he gave her a beautiful bracelet. I saw it. Nothing cheap about it at all.’

  ‘No idea who the man was?’

  ‘I suppose it was a man, I don’t think she was a lezzie. Not sure of it. But who he was, or where she could have met him …’ Shelagh shrugged. ‘No, I can’t help you there.’

  ‘Did you like her?’

  Shelagh hesitated. ‘Not my sort of girl.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Into things I couldn’t take. Not exactly superstitious but odd. I like things down to earth. Viv said her grandmother was a witch, could charm warts away, that sort of thing. For that matter, my grandmother could, but I didn’t call her a witch, just a lucky old lady. She won fifty thousand on the pools and she didn’t drop dead. She married her butcher because she liked his red hair.

  Charmian digested all this information. It fitted in with the picture she was beginning to form of Vivien Charles: a physically attractive, but emotionally immature girl. Not very bright, perhaps, but interested in ideas.

  She looked speculatively at the lively and informative Mrs Shelagh Duncan. ‘You’ve answered questions already, I know. But did you pass on all this?’ DC Darty had been assigned to ask the questions at Cay-Cay House, so her records had informed her, and got precious little out of it as far as she could see. Maybe he hadn’t written it all down.

  ‘No, I didn’t. He didn’t get much out of me.’ Shelagh gave a satisfied nod. ‘He called me “Love”. Only once, but it slipped out. That shows what he thought of women. I like a man to be a man, but I’m not going to be patronised.’

  Charmian went out into the street thinking that she must pass the word along to Dolly Barstow to tell the young detective, tactfully or otherwise, to tone down his image.

  Across the road was a tall, narrow building seemingly sculpted of dark glass which glittered evilly, and richly (that too had to be said), in the sun. Cay-Cay’s side of the road was now in the shade.

  A great stone logo spread itself across one side of the bronze double door. No glass doors, no welcoming doorman here; it looked as though you had to shoot your way in.

  The logo, which must relate to the name of the business so splendidly housed, seemed to be a large EL. The style reminded her of something. She considered what that could be, then decided that it was the sign she had seen all over Merrywick and Windsor, and most notably in Blood and Sons, Estate Agents, Merrywick.

  HOMELINE.

  For the first time there was a link, a visual one, however tenuous, between two parts of the life of Vivien Charles. Not much, but something.

  She went into the wine bar to think about it. They really kept a very good Chablis. She ordered another glass and decided to see what she could find out about the EL outfit. What they did, who they were and who worked there.

  People who worked in wine bars picked up all the gossip.

  ‘There are things I have to tell you,’ announced Dolly Barstow when she finally got through to Charmian in person.

  ‘Good things?’

  ‘Depends.’

  Dolly was at the end of a long and trying day in which she had had to deal with a child assault case, probably perpetrated by a parent, and with a nasty case of poison in jars of honey in a food market. She was, accordingly, tired and fretful.

  Charmian, on the other hand, sounded annoyingly fresh and cool. Lively as well. She’d never heard that the lady drank, but perhaps tonight?

  ‘First the blood groups: this is just a flash first report which I forced out of the technician – none of the women tested have blood groups that match anything found in the Dulcet Road kitchen. All were blood group O. Perhaps it is a requirement of witches,’ she ended sourly.

  ‘And Josh Fox?’

  ‘A rare group all his own. But not found in the kitchen. It would also preclude him being the father of Vivien’s child. You can test for that too, it seems. But he turned up with a bruise on his face and a tear in the scalp. He could have done with a stitch. Someone has had a go at him.’ Dolly sounded sad, as if it grieved her to think that beautiful face had been battered.

  ‘I wondered how he was,’ said Charmian. ‘So someone had hit him?’ She considered the blood on his door, would it be worth a check? But she had already concluded that the traces were probably too slight to give much information. ‘ So we are no nearer knowing the identity of the third person in the kitchen?’

  Dolly said, ‘Looks like it. A bit of a blank … And about the lease of Twickers, a blank there. Bloods of Merrywick had nothing to do with it. Not one of their properties.’

  ‘Any more non-news?’

  ‘Well, the check on the car number was not very productive. But the computer did come up with a number on a red Cortina that was close to the one you offered. Belongs to a man called Edward Elder, an address in Sunbury.’

  ‘You’ll go after him?’

  ‘Yes, someone is checking,’ said Dolly with a sigh. ‘It all seems no-go. And yet I have a funny feeling old Dix knew something.’

  ‘I have news for you there,’ said Charmian, cheerfully remembering the Chablis drunk on her second visit to the wine bar, Nathanial’s. ‘I had a drink after I’d been to Cay-Cay and got talking to a solicitor from an office down the street; he seemed well-informed and willing to talk, and I picked up this from him. There is a link between a firm called EL in Hatton Woods opposite where Vivien Charles worked at Cay-Cays and Bloods of Merrywick. EL has recently gone into the property and estate agency business. A consequence of the Big Bang and the tremendous growth in property values. Among other things it now owns HOMELINE which in turn owns Bloods.’

  ‘I don’t know what to make of that,’ said Dolly. ‘Perhaps old Dix was lying.’

  ‘Have another go at him. Or get one of your citywise chaps on
to it. Likewise Josh Fox, that attack on him means something apart from a black eye. People, go for people,’ went on Charmian. ‘Check the list of employees at EL, see which of them might have met Vivien – in Nathanial’s, the wine bar, for instance – and known about property in Merrywick.’ Had a key perhaps to Dulcet Road. ‘Cross-checking might identify someone who turns up in both places.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dolly. ‘ I hope all these businesses are computerised and can turn up information quickly.’

  ‘Oh, they will be. So maybe, enter the Third Man.’

  That was definitely the Chablis speaking.

  ‘And I have news for you too,’ said Dolly, breaking in. She produced her trump card, which she had been saving up. ‘It starts with Twickers. The break-in, remember? Well, we discovered that the visitor left a visiting card. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charmian was surprised. ‘Shows some emotional involvement doesn’t it?’

  ‘Could just be a lousy joke from the criminal. I have known it.’

  Faeces, grumus merdae, the criminal’s carte de visite. The criminal’s nervousness produces an increased peristaltic movement which leads to an involuntary evacuation of the bowels. This is one view. Other people think that the criminal has to mark his identity on the scene of the crime and this is how he does it. So there were two schools of thought, you could take your choice.

  Certainly it demonstrates something, Charmian thought. Love or hate.

  ‘Interesting,’ she said.

  ‘I think so. I got the pathologist, the one who did the bloods, to run a test on it.’ All body waste products carry identifiable traces. ‘ It was easier than I thought. It seems he or she had some internal bleeding. Possibly an ulcer. So there was blood. And she thinks it could be of a group, the A type with subdivisions, which when combined with Vivien’s type, which was B, could have produced what we thought was the third blood type, that rare AB mix.’ She ended on this triumphant note.

  ‘So the murderer and the person who broke in at Twickers could be the same person?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hypothetically, anyway. It could just be coincidence, which happened more often in life and police matters than was always admitted.

  ‘Pity your expert witness didn’t think of it before, instead of getting us all worked up over someone who might not exist.’

  ‘It’s only a suggestion.’

  ‘Seems likely. So exit the second murderer,’ said Charmian thoughtfully.

  There had been Vivien in the kitchen, and her murderer, who had made two. But the blood groups had suggested a third person present. Now this third person seemed to have disappeared.

  There had been one man watching the house where Mrs Flaxon lived, who might be the murderer, then there had been another. Was this second person still there?

  ‘Question the two people in Slough about the men who were seen. It may be possible to clarify that situation.’

  Dolly had never quite liked the sound of those two men. Denise Flaxon who had found Vivien’s body lived in the house in Slough. That was the only positive fact. The rest might be the product of overactive imaginations.

  ‘We don’t know those men, if they exist, have anything to do with the murder at all.’

  Charmian accepted this, but ignored the comment. ‘Don’t forget EL,’ she said.

  Dolly had one last shot to deliver. ‘Oh, by the way, that little bag of herbs you picked up in Twickers, the analysis has come through … I don’t know if it would have given you a good night’s sleep, but if you had managed to absorb any through your skin you might have had some nasty dreams … Contains a fair amount of dried Black Henbane and the seeds of Thorn Apple … Datura, famous for producing hallucinations. I don’t think Caprice likes you.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. It was probably her who dropped the little doll on my doorstep. Made it at home, I should think.’

  ‘No report on that yet, I daresay they don’t know what to look for. But yes, Caprice has my vote too. Oh well, I’ll get the computers busy on the other stuff.’

  Dolly sounded cheerful now.

  But the computers turned up no one who seemed to have contact with Vivien Charles. No one whom the police questioned in the glossy glass building who admitted to knowing her.

  Nor could Miss Jessamon nor Dr Schmidt be shaken in their evidence. Both had seen different men.

  Nor could Josh Fox be located, and the blood traces on his front door proved too dried and weathered to be any use at all.

  They had entered into one of those periods when nothing seemed to go on and the investigation stood still.

  But Charmian hoped that this was an illusion. She had given the witch’s cauldron a stir herself.

  A day passed in which Charmian visited her doctor who said her arm was coming on nicely, which she took to be doctor-speak for no change and wait and see. She herself was aware of no change.

  That evening, her telephone rang.

  ‘Josh Fox here.’

  ‘Ah.’ Her number was unlisted, but he had it. Mr Fox must have methods of his own for finding out facts he needed to know. But she did not comment. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘I’d like to come round and talk to you.’

  She looked at the clock. After nine and Muff was asleep on her lap. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘No? Tomorrow then? There’s something I want to tell you. You’re intelligent. I think you’ll understand.’

  ‘What about telling me on the telephone, then?’

  He hesitated. ‘No, it’s a face-to-face thing.’ They made an arrangement to meet in the morning. Prudently Charmian asked him to come to the hall in Alexandria Road where there would be witnesses. She would tell Dolly Barstow in the morning.

  He had sounded less self-confident than the fellow she remembered meeting.

  A hunt, Kate had said. Well, someone had attacked Josh Fox already. It would not end there. Events might yet go at a gallop.

  Chapter Eleven

  On that next day, which was Tuesday, the inner group of witches, the coven – although Birdie found this name distasteful, preferring central committee – were now in session. They were also in a state of some fury.

  The object of their fury was Josh Fox.

  Ragingly angry and seeking revenge. Winifred Eagle thought it should be physical (she was in a very physical mood at the moment, so much so that Birdie was somewhat anxious about her balance of mind); Birdie herself suggested taking legal action, and Caprice Dash was out for blood and money both.

  Money first, blood afterwards.

  ‘Liar, betrayer, deceiver, dog,’ cried Winifred with gusto. ‘But oh he had a lovely face.’ Not so lovely now, today, she acknowledged, a little bruised.

  ‘What a mercy you got on to him, Caprice,’ said Birdie.

  ‘I have my contacts,’ said Caprice modestly.

  So far they had not actually touched Josh Fox, although they were aware that other hands had, and roughly too. He had been sighted leaving the hall in Alexandria Road.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Birdie. ‘In his trade you do deal with dangerous customers.’

  ‘You might say that of us, too,’ observed Caprice.

  ‘Rubbish.’ Birdie thought of all her friends, those she met at conferences and witches’ weekends (sponsored by SellaSpell Ltd, in which she was a stockholder), her juvenile groups with trips to Avebury and Stonehenge. They were all respectable people.

  Winifred said, in a sibilant whisper, unnervingly somewhere between a hiss and a moan, ‘I could dance on his bare flesh.’

  Birdie gave her an anxious glance. ‘Don’t let anyone else hear you say that, dear.’ To Caprice, she murmured, ‘ She’s going over the top.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Winifred. Her face was flushed, her hair escaping from the soft net of matching nylon that usually enclosed it. Such snoods tore easily, she had to buy one a week.

  As she straightened it, she said, ‘Are you really called Caprice, I’ve alway
s wondered?’

  ‘Christened it.’

  ‘Such a name. Now that is dangerous.’

  ‘My sister was christened Fortune. She married a man called Goode.’ Caprice laughed. ‘Just as well it wasn’t Bad.’

  ‘I never know whether to believe you or not,’ said Birdie.

  ‘In this instance, I am telling the truth,’ said Caprice smoothly, although not in a voice that made Birdie believe her particularly.

  ‘I don’t think we should have let that young woman, Kate Cooper, listen in to our anger.’ Birdie tidied away a few crumbs which had settled near the tray of coffee and cake which she had served for the three of them. She felt that a milky drink and something sweet to nibble settled the nerves and in her opinion Winifred needed settling. ‘It wasn’t wise.’

  They were meeting in Birdie’s bleakly tidy maisonette behind the county library in Merrywick. One of her neighbours was the head librarian, they were old friends, had been at school together, which accounted for the good publicity their group always got. Birdie lived in an austere way, the principal furnishing of her living room being a large wall display-board of green cork stuck with notices of meetings around the country which she might or might not attend; also a list of members and their addresses, and notes of future projects, she was usually planning something. A Junior Chapter seemed a good idea, she liked the idea of nourishing young minds.

  ‘Couldn’t have stopped her,’ said Caprice shortly. ‘All ears that one. I must say I do dislike that policewoman Daniels. Gets up my nose.’

  ‘You’ve done your best to get up hers,’ retorted Birdie. ‘I think the object on her doorstep was a mistake. In lamentable taste, not what we are for, Caprice. I thought better of you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you, I thought you’d see the joke.’ But it was no joke, when Caprice showed malice, she meant it. ‘ Winnie dropped it down for me.’

  ‘And look at her now,’ said Birdie sharply.

  Winifred was not paying much attention, that natural worshipper, who worshipped at more than one shrine before more than one god, was listening to a current deep inside her which was telling her that very soon now she might downgrade the Earth Mother and bow down before Buddha – she saw lovely things in that pale, calm face which attracted her.