Dolly moved the pens around on her desk and looked at the clock.
Charmian stood up. ‘What’s the time? The sooner he comes now the better. He’s late, where is he?’
While she was waiting, she sat reading all the day’s reports that were gradually coming to rest on Dolly’s desk. Taking Charmian’s hint, Dolly had requested and got a report by what she called ‘a City expert’ on both the Cay-Cay organisation and their neighbour across the road in the glass building.
Cay-Cay was a PR agency of some reputation with another office in New York. There was nothing here for her.
But the report on the other business was more interesting.
The firm whose logo EL had attracted her, Charmian’s, attention in Hatton was a large organisation with many and diverse activities. They had recently been on the acquisition trail and had been buying up estate agents, grouping them together in a chain called HOMELINE. Bloods, the old established estate agents in Merrywick, was one of their latest buys which accounted for it still using its own name.
‘Have you read this?’ she asked, laying the report in front of Dolly.
‘No, I was just about to.’
‘Read it. I was right,’ said Charmian triumphantly. ‘There is a link here. Vivien Charles met someone from that office across the road in Hatton Woods. Perhaps in the wine bar, perhaps just parking her car, and that someone might have become her lover, and might have suggested where she lived.’
‘That’s just guessing.’
‘You start with guessing,’ said Charmian.
She had noticed before that when one break came in an investigation, others swiftly followed. The trick was to tie disparate pieces of information together and make a picture of them.
Anything might come out. You could liken it to an original solution to a piece of research, an answer which would have been unguessable when you started out.
‘How’s Fred Elman?’ she asked absently.
‘You’ve just missed him. Laying down the law as usual, but quietly. He always thinks he knows all the answers. Of course, he’s pretending to himself that you don’t exist and are not doing anything here at all.’ Dolly added philosophically, but tactfully, to herself, ‘For which you can’t blame him.’
‘Do you know,’ said Charmian suddenly, taking up the subject hitherto untouched between them, ‘ I haven’t thought about my wretched hand for days.’ She flexed her wrist.
‘Must be getting better.’
‘I get by, typing with one hand. I may never get back to using two.’ It was uttered in a light, lively tone which reflected how she felt.
‘That’s recovery,’ thought Dolly. ‘She’s nearly well now. I must tell Kate.’ Aloud, she said, ‘Just got a few notes to read. Forgive me, will you?’ Charmian waited for Josh Fox, who was probably Teddy Elder,
to keep his appointment. She fidgeted around.
‘He’s not going to come. Damn him.’
Dolly lifted her head from her work; she had been thinking the
same herself for some time. ‘ Doesn’t look like it.’
Charmian hung around for a little while longer, then when the
man did not come, she left to go back to Maid of Honour Row
where Kate might have reappeared.
Kate was out, but Muff was waiting for her.
After the coven, or as Birdie preferred, the committee, had banged fruitlessly on both the back and front door of the premises in Elm Street, they withdrew to consider matters.
With silent accord they went to the coffee shop in The Parade. A table in the window accommodated them in comfort, with a spare chair for the bag of equipment. The spade got them some curious glances but no comment was made. Or not to their faces.
Caprice ordered coffee and carried over the cups – there was no waitress service in The Oak Pantry. As she sat down, the girl behind the coffee machine said to her colleague who was buttering scones, ‘Think they’re digging for gold?’
‘If they find any round here, they’ll be lucky.’
Birdie complained to Caprice about the quality and the price of the coffee. ‘And it’s not even hot.’
‘Go and tell them yourself, then.’
Winifred drained her coffee before it got any colder and interrupted them.
‘You know I’m sure he was there. I think I saw a foot when I peeped through the letterbox.’
‘Standing there listening to us?’ Caprice was willing to believe he might do that. It was what she would do herself.
‘No,’ said Winifred thoughtfully. ‘Didn’t look like that sort of a foot.’
‘You are a fool, Winifred Eagle.’ Birdie was irritated, as she always was when Winifred started to get what she called ‘silly’.
Winifred picked up the spade. ‘Drink your coffee. I think we ought to go back and break in. After all, it’s what we meant to do, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t remember putting it like that.’
‘It’s one thing we can do. The other thing we can do is to go to the police.’
‘Talk sense.’
‘Or we can go home.’
When Charmian walked into her sitting room at Maid of Honour Row she found there was a message for her on her answering machine. She listened.
‘This is—’ began a voice, then stopped.
Charmian waited. Very soon she realised that nothing else was coining. The message had ended before it had rightly begun.
Like many police officers Charmian had had her share of strange telephone messages from angry, lost, or crazed persons. People in trouble, people in pain, she’d had them all. But this one seemed different.
It had sounded like Josh Fox. Something wrong with his voice, though.
The young police constable on the bike who had seen the trio of women entering the passageway off Elm Street was surprised to see the same group going down it again.
He dismounted from his bike, found a safe place to leave it (even policemen have to watch their property), and approached the alley on foot.
He could not see them, so they must have gone round the corner into the area of garages and parking. On night duty, it was one of the places he checked. During the day there were usually people around and he did not have to worry so much.
He hesitated, all seemed quiet, such respectable-looking women, even if one of them was carrying a spade. For gardening, perhaps. He had once had his card marked by the Sergeant for dealing harshly with a group of women who turned out to have been on their way to a harmless gardening festival and not planting a bomb at all. He didn’t want the same thing to happen again.
He turned back to where he had left his bike. A youth in torn jeans was examining it with apparent interest.
‘Hi you!’ He hurried off.
Winifred said, ‘Give it a bang. Go at it harder, or we’ll never get in.’
Birdie, who was trying to force the back door to J. Fox’s, recognised that Winifred was in one of her wilder moods, it had been coming on all day. For longer, if she was honest with herself.
‘I’m trying to be quiet. We want to get in quietly and confront him.’
‘Money or your life,’ said Winifred gleefully.
‘It’s not just money we’re after,’ said Caprice. ‘ We just want any files he’s been building up on us and any photographs. Adverse publicity could have a very bad effect on Twickers.’ Besides bringing the police to look deeper into what she dealt in there. ‘Be careful, Birdie, he’s bigger than us.’
‘That’s why we brought the poker. But he can’t be there.’
‘He’s there,’ said Winifred, ‘I feel he is there.’
The door, which had been locked but not bolted, suddenly gave before her.
‘I don’t feel so brave any more,’ said Winifred, ‘I wanted to kill him, bury him with my little spade, but now … I feel different. Oh so different. How do you feel, Birdie?’
Birdie did not answer. She was realising with a shock that she, Alice Peacock, had just broken
into a house. Surely white witches should be above such behaviour? Or do it by prayer? But her prayers hadn’t worked for some time now, perhaps never would again. Oh, I’m a sinner, she thought, I shall have to find someone to confess to. I wonder if Father O’Flynn would understand. He was several religions back, but she had found him sympathetic.
Caprice had pushed past her into the narrow hall, which ran from the front door to the back door with a staircase leading off it. Inside was surprisingly dark for such a bright day.
In the hall was a wall telephone which appeared to be hanging free, as if just dropped. She did not replace it. Some instinct warned her to touch nothing.
Winifred and Birdie followed her slowly, getting their bearings as their eyes got used to the dark. There was a shape, a darkness within the dark. A solid shadow. There was a smell as well.
Someone was lying slumped at the bottom of the stairs with his feet towards the front door, blood and the byproducts of his death agonies leaking out around him.
The policeman had recovered his bike and was about to continue his progress when he saw one of the women run out of the passage that ran between the two blocks of buildings. She was waving, and probably crying as well.
He went towards her. ‘Now calm down, madam, and tell me what’s up. Dead? He may not be, let’s go and have a look.’
He followed Birdie down the passage, round the corner into the yard and then into the house where two other women were standing, one holding a spade and the other a poker. A chisel lay on the floor.
He did not ask them how they had got into the building, that would have to come later.
At the bottom of the stairs, almost as if he had been trying to reach the front door but hadn’t been able to make it, was a man. Blood stained his shirt front and formed a pool on the floor. A knife lay by his side.
‘Yes, he’s dead,’ said the young constable. ‘Stabbed.’
Chapter Thirteen
The report came into the temporary Incident Room in Alexandria Road about the middle of the morning on Wednesday, whence it soon found its way to Sergeant Barstow’s desk. It was read almost at once by Dolly Barstow who sent a copy round to Charmian by a messenger. So there was no delay. Dolly had a patch of eczema on one cheek that was worrying her.
The report was dated Wednesday, a. m., and had been sent out by the Slough CID.
The body of a man, identified provisionally as Josh Fox, was discovered in the hall of a house in Elm Street, The Parade, Slough, at approximately 3.30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The discovery was made by three women. (Names attached.) There is some doubt about identification. The man worked as Josh Fox which was the trade name of his detective agency only. He was carrying papers which suggest his real name was Ted or Edward Elder.
He appeared to have been stabbed in the neck and abdomen. It is estimated that he had been dead less than an hour when discovered. Attack might have taken place some few hours before.
There were signs of earlier injuries on the deceased’s face. Height five feet eleven. Weight stripped twelve stone. Features about dental and details of fingerprints will follow.
Information about this man is requested by Superintendent Arbat, Slough CID. Also any details about the three women.
Scrawled in his own handwriting, Superintendent Peter Arbat, who had met Dolly and, as he put it to himself, fancied her like mad, had added the following note:
I think this might be of interest to you. I hear you have your eye on this chap. He looked to have been in a fight. If you know anything about him, we would like to know. Also any news about the women would be helpful. Who are these old birds, do you hatch them specially in Merrywick? Keep in touch.
He had attached two copies of a photograph of Josh Fox, otherwise Ted Elder. Some cosmetic work must have been done on him, since he was clearly, but not too clearly, dead at the time.
Dolly, who knew Pete Arbat, and also knew his reputation, grinned. She had, as he had probably guessed, taken deliberate evasive action on the occasion of the New Year Police Ball. But that did not mean she was not interested. Only that she was thinking about it.
We might be able to tell you something, Buster, she thought. Ted Elder had been a policeman, did you know that? Clearly Superintendent Arbat had not known. Sloppy policework there and she would enjoy not pointing out this remissness but letting him do that for himself when she passed the information along in due course. As she would do. He would be aware of her silent criticism and she would have the pleasure of not showing it.
That put Dolly one ahead in the game.
And with luck, because Peter Arbat was a sharp observer, especially of women, she would keep from him the pain that photograph of the dead man had given her. Her eczema began to feel better.
Charmian came round to see for herself as soon as she got the message. She had in the interval been active herself.
She had set up an interview at EL House in Hatton Woods, calling upon all the influence at her command to get entrance.
Because it had not been easy. EL House guarded itself against intruders. Her own position and the nature of her enquiry saw her in, but she needed to prepare herself first.
Her City informant told her that the boss, Leonard Eden, had had a bad experience with the press on his way up and now did not give interviews or allow his staff to do so. Instant dismissal followed any breach of this rule.
‘Secretive cove,’ the City Editor of The Globe had said.
‘You know him?’
‘Met him once. You never see him around at the popular watering holes. Not his style. Said to live a solid domestic life in one of the richer suburbs.’
‘Do you know where?’
Harry Jarvis thought about it. ‘I’ll ask around. Surrey somewhere, I think.’
‘I’ve met him once myself.’
‘Bet you didn’t get much out of him.’
‘Well, we weren’t talking,’ said Charmian, remembering the interview in Bloods, ‘I was more interested in someone else at the time.’
‘He may live round your way.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charmian, remembering how Surrey and Berkshire joined near Windsor. ‘Probably does. Seemed to take a local interest. Thanks for your help.’
‘Well, I wish you luck with them. Closed-up lot at EL. If you pick up anything interesting you might let me know.’
The conversation ended with an invitation from him to lunch or, if she couldn’t spare the time, for a drink. He liked Charmian. Also, it was as well to keep in with the police.
The call from Dolly to Charmian came just at the right time. She was shocked but not totally surprised. Somehow Josh Fox had been a worrying man. Trouble hung around him.
‘I wondered where he was. Never thought of death, though. Just that he’d changed his mind.’
‘Looks as though someone didn’t want him to talk to you.’
‘Possibly. But it doesn’t have to be that. They may just have wanted him dead. Dead men tell no secrets.’ And don’t try blackmail. There was that hint of trouble behind Ted Elder’s premature retirement.
Dolly said, ‘I’m in touch with the Slough police, and, of course, it’s their body and their case, but in view of our interest we are co-operating.’ To a certain extent, she added to herself. ‘They will be letting me check over his records, so we know who his clients were. That’s important, don’t you think?’
‘Very important,’ said Charmian. ‘Very helpful if we find a name we know there. But people do use aliases.’
‘He’d check on that. Be the first thing he’d do.’
‘I agree,’ said Charmian. ‘But he wouldn’t necessarily keep a record for us.’
‘I expect it was that he wanted to tell you.’
‘Could be.’
Charmian left a message for Kate, who had now been absent for some days and about whom one might have worried if it had not been such a characteristic piece of behaviour, and drove round to Alexandria Road. She moved at such speed that it took
her less than ten minutes.
By which time Dolly knew that three sets of callers had been after Josh Fox in the last few days of his life and been observed by the jeweller.
Charmian was one such caller, as she said at once, ‘I was there. Spoke to the jeweller. He’ll know my face. But I didn’t see Josh Fox.’ Or Ted Elder as they now ought to call him. ‘I never thought of going round the back. But I don’t believe he was there. Not at that time … I wish I’d known he was looking for me.’
‘Don’t we all?’
Ted Elder most of all, probably, in those long minutes before he died. The preliminary pathologist’s report did not make pretty reading. He had been stabbed several times, one wound severing the main artery in the stomach. Yet he had not died straight away. From the marks on his hands it looked as though he had tried to drag himself to the door as he felt his life ebbing away. But he hadn’t had the strength left in him to do it.
‘Must have heard the three women at the front door and tried to get to them,’ said Dolly; she felt a bit sick at the picture she was calling up. She had liked the man and thought he had liked her.
‘But he didn’t make it.’ He had tried to telephone as well.
He had probably died while the witches were drinking their coffee down the road and quarrelling about whether to go back to his door or not.
‘Those three were the last to call on him. And he certainly was dead by the time they got into the house.’ Dolly herself would see to some very sharp questioning of the three women. ‘I don’t think they killed him, although I’d like to believe they could have done. But the other caller … well, it’s the one in the middle we need to find.’
‘Did the jeweller give a description?’
Dolly consulted her notes. It was a hot afternoon and she was sweating, the palms of her hands felt greasy. Charmian Daniels on the other hand looked cool and fresh.
‘I don’t know if you could call it a description. I wouldn’t call him much of an observer and he’ll make a hell of a poor witness if we ever get so far.’ She pushed her notes across the table. ‘Here, read for yourself while I get a drink of water.’
Witching Murder Page 14
