Witching Murder

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I wonder about Tibet.’ Her voice was dreamy. ‘ We need fresh souls. Old souls.’

  ‘We need the young ones,’ said Birdie, her mind on a disciple group at the local comprehensive. The head was very open-minded and having a large percentage of immigrant pupils from all continents was obliged to be liberal about religion.

  ‘So you say. But look at Vivien, she was a young soul, raw even, and what has that brought to us?’

  ‘Josh Fox,’ said Caprice, ‘amongst other things.’

  ‘He was watching her, you think?’

  ‘Sure of it.’

  ‘Kill him, I say,’ said Winifred, forgetting the pursuit of the gentle Buddha.

  ‘That’s not respectable talk, we don’t kill people,’ Birdie reproved her.

  Winifred considered. ‘I believe I’ve got unrespectable feelings inside me.’

  ‘Do you think he was the one who broke into Twickers?’ Birdie pursued her enquiries.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ Caprice did not know about the visiting card or the bloody testimony it had held, but she had a gut feeling that the break-in was not Josh Fox’s doing. ‘ I don’t see why he’d need to.’ Now it had been the police, looking for drugs on spec and covering up for themselves afterwards … She could accept that as a possibility, but hoped it wasn’t. Probably be in for questioning now if that was the case. No one had mentioned drugs to her, although she hadn’t liked the look in that Barstow woman’s eyes. ‘Bastard,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Ah, he was the primitive male principle among us,’ said Winifred. ‘We needed that.’

  ‘You’ve got sex on the brain. Do you know his address, Birdie?’

  ‘Of course.’ Birdie looked at her notice board. List three, names and addresses, typed. It was the Elm Street address. Charmian could have told her that it was of doubtful value as a resting place for Josh Fox.

  ‘We’d better get him.’

  ‘Let’s telephone first.’

  Birdie did so and got his answer phone which told her in a pleasant voice that Mr Fox was not able to answer her call at the moment but if she would leave a message he would respond as soon as possible.

  Birdie did not leave a message. ‘About what I expected. He could be there, though.’ She looked with a question at Caprice, her dangerous lieutenant.

  Caprice nodded, she knew her part. ‘Let’s go.’

  Winifred gave a little moan of pleasure.

  ‘Any more nonsense from you and we shan’t take you,’ said Birdie. ‘This is business, this man is a menace to us. Has damaged us probably already.’

  ‘And been damaged himself.’

  ‘We don’t know who did that. Any more than we know who broke into Twickers.’

  ‘I don’t see really how he has damaged us,’ said Winifred.

  ‘He will pour dirt on us, if we give him the chance. He must have been collecting information. Watching Vivien, and watching us. And for what purpose? That’s what we don’t know and must find out. Good job that Caprice found out from her friend what Josh Fox really was. And don’t say we haven’t done anything wrong, everything can be twisted. Besides, it’s not just that …” Birdie paused. ‘He invaded us. Used us, acted a false part. He deserves to be punished.’

  Winifred, while enjoying the idea, still protested. ‘Well, I don’t know. He never said he was the Devil or Anti-Christ, although I often used to hope he might be.’ In her wilder moments, which were coming frequently these last weeks.

  ‘Let’s get ready,’ said Birdie.

  This involved a certain amount of preparation. If they were going to get physical with Mr Fox, even if he was not a representative of the Devil, precautions had to be taken. Some practical, some more spiritual.

  A change of clothes, into something older, was only sensible before an encounter which might be bruising. Birdie put on a printed cotton dress, several seasons old and easily washed. Winifred was given a shirt and a pair of trousers, Caprice borrowed an old raincoat to cover herself. Birdie quietly added a bit of plastic to protect vital parts. Plastic, being man-made, was neutral, whereas newsprint could be downright dangerous.

  The clothes themselves came from a pile freshly laundered, while the raincoat was straight from the dry cleaners. Birdie had a selection of such clothes, she took them to the nearest Oxfam shop if no other use came for them. The bundle from which she selected today’s garments had been intended for Afghan refugees, although what comfort they could have made of several Laura Ashley dresses and a waterproof from Biba (for Birdie had once had her fashionable period) was not clear.

  In fact, she was obsessively clean, washing herself and her clothes, firmly and daily. As Winifred said, ‘You’re always sure of seeing a clean pair of knickers drying in Birdie’s bathroom.’

  She herself, as Charmian had noticed, favoured the cleansing and liberating effects of nudity. It was not, however, practical if you were going to beat a man up, which was what she hoped for.

  Caprice hoped for a cash settlement and clearing him out of her life. Out of the town she did not hope for. There were limits. This was something of a business trip to her, albeit a crucial one.

  Birdie, the most theologically inclined, then handed round cups of hot herbal tea (peppermint and camomile mixed) to calm the nerves, suggested a short period of meditation to strengthen the spirit, then a prayer to the Great Earth Goddess for support, but Caprice wanted to get on.

  Birdie was disappointed, she had begun to suspect that the Goddess was herself, that they were as one; she had been granted a touch of the divine. One knew it was distributed around.

  ‘Come on,’ said Caprice. ‘Time’s passing.’

  Unshriven, they set out. Birdie drove, it was her car and she insisted. Caprice was a chancy driver and Winifred was mad today. ‘I’m not insured for another driver,’ she said. She turned the corner out of Merrywick.

  Winifred put a gentle but restraining hand on Birdie’s arm. ‘ Before we go I must feed my cat. Benedict cannot bear to be hungry.’

  ‘Oh, forget the cat.’ Caprice was impatient to be off.

  ‘Pain for Benedict is the same as pain for me,’ said Winifred. By which she meant: And I shall soon see there is some pain for you, too. She was the only one of them whose dooms occasionally worked.

  ‘Oh rubbish, you spoil that cat. Let him starve.’ Not that he would, great lump, enough fat on him to stand a siege. Birdie jerked her arm away.

  ‘You try being a cat for a bit and see how you like it.’ Winifred’s eyes rested as coldly on Birdie as Benedict’s own pale green gaze might have done. Birdie felt an uneasy movement inside her, just as her namesakes might have done at the sight of a cat.

  Caprice slumped in the back seat, moving her long legs uncomfortably. Packed in with her was a plastic sack inside which was a hammer, a chisel and a poker. And a spade, just in case. ‘ Let her feed the cat if she must. It’s not much out of our way.’

  ‘I’m driving the car,’ said Birdie, ‘and I say not.’

  She swung the car across the junction, narrowly missing a car that was proceeding in the opposite direction. The driver hooted, Birdie hooted back.

  ‘Ben,’ said Winifred. ‘Ben, Ben, Ben.’

  Quarrelling, they drove on.

  The door beside the jeweller’s shop in Elm Street still had a streak of what might have been blood on it, the brass plate with J. Fox inscribed was even more unpolished, since two more days had weathered it. J. Fox did not care about the appearance of his door.

  ‘Ring the bell,’ commanded Birdie.

  Caprice was already doing so. No one came. She rang again.

  ‘He’s not going to come.’

  ‘I’ll try the knocker, while you ring the bell.’

  They stood there, one of them ringing the bell and the other banging the knocker.

  ‘He can’t be there,’ said Birdie, between knocks.

  ‘He’s there, I feel he is there,’ said Winifred. She had her eye pressed to the lett
erbox. ‘ I’m trying to see. Go on knocking.’

  The jeweller appeared from his shop to demand angrily what was going on.

  ‘I’ve got a young couple in here trying to choose an engagement ring. How can they do that with all this banging and shouting?’

  ‘Be good for them, I should think.’ Caprice stopped ringing. ‘Give them a taste of the future, what married life’s really like.’

  ‘Are you married to that chap Fox, then?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then stop all this racket.’

  Birdie kept her hand on the knocker. ‘Is Mr Fox inside, do you know?’

  The jeweller said, ‘Everyone’s after him these days. Weeks and weeks when he could be dead for all I know, now three lots of ladies after him in as many days.’

  ‘Three?’ Birdie was surprised. ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He started to return to his shop. ‘We weren’t introduced. One the other day, and another one just before you. That one didn’t make the noise you lot are making.’

  ‘Is Mr Fox there?’

  ‘Yes, I just told you. He’s in and out. Here now, saw him go in with her.’

  That was it, all the information he was parting with. He disappeared into his shop, with a quick movement managing to circumvent the young couple who were on the point of departure.

  Caprice said, ‘ Be interesting to know who he’s got in there with him.’

  ‘Can we get in round the back?’ Birdie stepped off into the street, assessing the situation. There seemed to be a side passage leading to the back of the block. It was presumably where cars were parked.

  ‘Oh, do let’s.’ Winifred clapped her hands. ‘Break in.’ She shouldered the plastic sack, and the spade, ‘I feel he is there, he is hearing us, he wants us to come in.’

  Caprice gave her friend and enemy a sour look. She found Winifred on the other-worldly kick very irritating.

  Birdie tried to take the spade; Winifred was handling it in such an aggressive way people would look. ‘If he knew what we had in mind for him, he shouldn’t.’

  ‘He does, he does,’ said Winifred with a triumphant shout. She disappeared round the corner of the passage.

  The other two followed.

  The local constable on the beat who was cycling slowly down the road saw the party as they hurried into the passage.

  Wonder what that lot were up to? But they looked respectable ladies, the sort who might know your mother, so he pedalled on. He had no notion what he was watching.

  Witches rampant.

  Josh Fox heard the ladies scrabbling at his back door. It sounded like scrabbling to him. From where he was it was more like a scrabble than a bang or a rattle. Mouse noises, he thought.

  He had heard the noises at the front door also, but distantly.

  Now he picked up voices, possibly one he recognised. The voices ceased and the scrabblings started again as though the mice were trying to get through the door. Not mice, of course, mice did not try to get in through a door.

  People did.

  As the noise seemed to get fainter, as if the mice, who were not

  mice, of course, but mice people, were giving up, he wished they

  would get in.

  Get this business over, one way or another.

  Chapter Twelve

  In Alexandria Road on that same Tuesday the police team had shrunk. Another major inquiry, this time involving one of the Royal Household, had hit the beleaguered area, already burdened with two other important cases. Somehow the killing of a woman in her own home, although presenting fascinating aspects, now seemed of less importance.

  Not to those working on it, of course.

  ‘Damn,’ said Dolly Barstow to Inspector Fred Elman, who had looked into the hall to impart the news. ‘No one likes dogs better than I do, although I’m not all that fond of corgis. But to have three of the team called off is more than I can bear.’

  ‘A bomb threat always has to be taken seriously,’ said Elman. ‘Even if it’s to the kennels. And it wasn’t nice for the dog-walker to be threatened with a gun.’

  A member of the Household, walking a clutch of small dogs, had been threatened in the Park by a man with a gun who had then run off, either with, or followed by, the dogs. Next day there had been a telephone threat to bomb the kennels.

  ‘How many dogs have been stolen?’ asked Dolly gloomily.

  ‘We don’t know if they’ve been stolen. They may just have run off when their walker was attacked. Miss Anketell says they did.’

  ‘Then they’ll come back. Dogs always do.’ If they liked their home, and this lot must do. Could they hope to find a better?

  ‘They haven’t done yet. And there is anxiety in the Household.’ He added respectfully, ‘Thank goodness the dogs were being walked and not out with HM. It does happen, you know. Pops out the back door without a word to anyone and exercises them in the Park. It’s very worrying.’

  ‘You were lucky there.’

  ‘Yes, everyone’ – everyone who counted, he meant, seeing that Windsor had been as crowded as usual with inhabitants and tourists – ‘was in London yesterday.’

  So as a result of all this, the team in Alexandria Road was reduced by three, with the threat of another reduction if the highly secret case which Superintendent Father was embroiled in took him to Spain, as it might.

  ‘Nothing much is happening here, is it?’ said Elman. ‘Face it, you’re just filling in routine.’

  He had gone through all the files, and read all the reports, speedily but carefully, he was a careful man.

  He produced his summing up. ‘In my experience, crimes like this have one answer: the motive is personal hatred. And it has to be a man. Sort through her past and pick out the right man and you’re home and dry. I don’t say it’s the man Fox, although I think it could be.’

  It was obvious that his solution was going to be different from Dolly Barstow’s and different again from Charmian Daniels’s. He was sure the killer was a man who was filled with anger; Dolly still had a feeling that one of the women had killed Vivien, although the blood groupings were a problem here, but a female revenge killing was how she saw the picture; and Charmian was forming a different picture altogether, one which took in aspects of both the Elman and Barstow solutions.

  ‘Look for a man,’ advised Elman. ‘The obvious answer is often the right one. And routine, just as I said. You might dislike it but that’s how you get results.’

  Dolly had proof of this a few minutes after Inspector Elman left, still looking thoughtful about dogs and saying that he was a Boxer man himself.

  A routine enquiry she had set in train, produced its result.

  Dolly was pleased. She thought it was interesting, might not be important, but she thought it would open things up.

  She looked forward to telling Charmian. ‘She’ll like that info. Perhaps I don’t like it very much myself but the truth is worth having.’

  It explained a lot, too, about Mr Josh Fox.

  Perhaps it did not make him more likeable, but it certainly made him more understandable as the warlock of Merrywick.

  ‘And how mad those ladies will be if they ever find out. Kill him, I should think, if they could.’

  And they would find out, she thought, possibly had already, because information always got around in the end. Let a piece of news about a person surface once and it took on a life of its own, rapidly moving and expanding until it was everywhere. Oh yes, they would find out.

  She looked at her watch. Any minute now, she thought. Charmian would arrive first, and then Mr Josh Fox, alias Teddy Elder, would arrive to be confronted.

  Charmian walked in somewhat late and full of apologies. ‘I had trouble with Muff. The black cat Benedict, Winifred Eagle’s cat, pushed through the kitchen window and ate Muffs food. There was a bit of a fight. I wish Miss Eagle would feed her own cat.’

  She looked round the room.

  ‘Josh Fox not here yet?’ />
  Dolly shook her head. ‘ Not much over time. Might be the traffic. Anyway, I want to talk first, come into my cubby hole.’ She had contrived a private place for herself in a screened-off alcove. Years of college life and working in libraries, three to a table, had made Dolly value a private work area. As she led the way, she said, ‘Any idea what he is going to tell you?’

  Charmian shook her head. ‘Not much. I’m guessing.’ She looked around. A neat table with a polished top, two wire baskets full of papers, a telephone, and a small lap-top computer. ‘Nice little place you’ve made here … Something about himself, I think.’

  ‘Good guessing.’

  Dolly pushed a sheet of paper, a print-out from the main computer. ‘Remember the red Cortina? A car of that type and with a very similar registration number came up as belonging to an Edward Elder in Sunbury. That didn’t mean anything to me, but it rang a bell with the WDC doing the check.’

  ‘Get on with it. I want to hear before Fox gets here.’

  ‘She knew the name Elder. Ted Elder. She had heard of him as a detective working in the Met. He left. Voluntarily, she thought, but there might have been some trouble behind it. She rang up a friend.’

  Charmian waited, she thought she could guess what was coming.

  ‘Ted Elder bought a private detective agency. The contact didn’t know the name, but knew that it was in Slough.’

  ‘Josh Fox,’ said Charmian. ‘He’s a private detective.’ So was that why he was hanging about the house in Slough where Denise Flaxon lived? ‘I’ll be asking him some loaded questions about why and whom.’

  Josh Fox, real name Teddy Elder. She ought to have guessed his trade. And if he’d been in the Met it explained why she had the idea she had seen him somewhere. No doubt she had done.

  ‘He’s going to tell you something, remember?’

  ‘I can’t wait.’ Something about his work, who he was watching, who had paid him?