A New Kind of Killer, and Old Kind of Death

by Jennie Melville

  There was a significant pause, as if someone was thinking about whether to answer the bell or not, and then footsteps. Slow, light footsteps. Then a man stood there.

  “I was looking for Miss Cosby,’’ explained Charmian.

  “There is no Miss Cosby. I’m James Cosby.’’ He had a sweet smile, but it stretched the skin over the bones which showed brittle underneath. “ My friend Cosby,’’ Alda had said; Charmian had wrongly assumed the female sex. “ You’re Alda’s friend Charmian?’’

  “Yes. You know?’’

  “I’ve seen a photograph.’’ He smiled again. Charmian noticed he spoke with a certain effort, as if speech depleted him.

  “I came round about the cat, Billy. I was worried for him.’’

  “I’ve got Billy. He came to me himself. He knows me.’’

  “Oh.’’ Charmian nodded. “That’s good.’’

  “I’m glad to do it.’’

  Their eyes met. “I think you were very fond of Alda,’’ said Charmian slowly. “And she of you. I thought there was someone.’’

  “She knew it. Alda knew it. ‘ Charmian knows there’s someone,’ she said to me.’’

  “Alda could always read me pretty well.’’ She saw him smile. “Perhaps I’m not so difficult to read.’’

  “Alda had the key, you see. ‘Watch Charmian’s mouth,’ she said, ‘and you can always tell what she’s thinking.’ ’’

  “Not everyone’s quite so observant as Alda was,’’ said Charmian. “I hope at this moment there’s one person I’m deceiving.’’

  “More than one, I expect,’’ said James Cosby. “Alda wondered why you were really here. A watching brief, she thought.’’

  “She did see a lot,’’ exclaimed Charmian.

  “She only talked to me,’’ he said gently. “And only so much to me because it helped us both to talk about impersonal things. We couldn’t talk about each other, you see.’’

  Charmian didn’t see, not quite, but she was beginning to wonder.

  “And I know why you’ve come. Alda’s death. Not Billy, but Alda’s death.’’

  “Yes,’’ admitted Charmian. “ I can’t stop thinking about it.’’

  “Yes.’’ He had already led her upstairs and they were in his sitting-room, a man’s room, cold and smelling of cigarette smoke. “I’ve already had the police here. Naturally they wanted to interview me. From every point of view I was a highly desirable person to question. They suspected me, of course. If someone has killed Alda with a blow, why look beyond me? I saw it in their face.’’ He looked at Charmian. “And you’re thinking it too.’’

  “No.’’

  “Well, you’re thinking—he’s free with his words, he doesn’t seem to mind what he says. And that’s usually a sign of guilt, isn’t it?’’

  “Not always.’’

  “Of tension, then.’’

  Charmian was silent because he had read her thoughts with fair accuracy.

  “There were ways I might have taken her with me. And there was a reason. But not that way. And never violently. Sleeping tablets, perhaps, or gas. Only there’s no gas in this house. It would have been what people call a suicide pact, though it is really a murder by one too cowardly to go alone.’’

  He was watching Charmian. “ You see, I have a cancer. No, don’t look shocked. Alda and I had both faced it.’’

  But Charmian knew that in truth neither he nor Alda had been able to face it, and perhaps he had killed Alda. The dying can hate the living.

  “Not violently,’’ he repeated, staring into Charmian’s face. “Don’t you see? I could never have killed Alda with a blow.’’

  “Someone did,’’ said Charmian.

  “No,’’ he said, to her surprise. “No. I don’t think so. Because there was no one here.’’

  “What, no one?’’

  “No one,’’ he repeated. “Except for me, there was nobody here at all. I was with Alda all the evening till she went downstairs. No one could have killed her.’’

  When Charmian returned home, she telephoned her contact at the local police headquarters, who confirmed, somewhat laconically, that as far as they could discover no one had been around the night Alda died. He was not communicative; he let Charmian know she was out of her own territory, an alien policewoman.

  No, there had been no one around and no evidence of a caller. The nurse who rented the third and top floor flat in the house was away on a case and had been for a month. The man Cosby they had questioned.

  No one, this policeman implied, if we follow logic to its conclusions (and we are logical), could have killed Alda that night.

  “We’ll have to get at the medical evidence,’’ said Charmian.

  “That’s the way forward, isn’t it? Remember the Empress of Austria?’’

  “She was stabbed to death, wasn’t she?’’ He was puzzled.

  “Yes. And went on walking.’’

  “I’ve never liked the sound of that.’’

  “Who could? There are good miracles and bad miracles. What happened to Alda was a black miracle.’’

  Mrs. Banks opened the front door herself to her caller, whom she was not surprised to see. Perhaps she had a precognition. Or perhaps there had been some secret tacit agreement to meet. Or was it merely an encounter that happened regularly?

  “Oh good,’’ she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk with you. I’ve got the photograph for you. But we must have a talk. Well, of course I’ll listen. How cold you are … My dear, put your hands down …’’

  Chapter Eight

  The next day Charmian was sitting at her own special spot in the University Library, reading, when a hand was placed on her shoulder. It was the policeman who had spoken to her on the telephone the day before.

  “You don’t know me,’’ he said, “but we’ve spoken.’’ He produced his identification card. “Yesterday, you went visiting. I want to know what questions you were asking.’’

  Charmian swung round and looked at him.

  “Come outside,’’ she said. “ We can’t talk here.’’

  Outside in the corridor he said: “ Yesterday, you went on a tour with Shirley Jackson, visiting addresses and asking questions.’’

  “Yes. But I don’t know how you know.’’

  “You were identified. But I’d certainly like to know what goes on and why. There might have been dynamite in those little questions.’’

  “I was just looking around,’’ said Charmian, but she was already alert with apprehension. Her mind was running over the names of the people she had visited. Mrs. Banks’s house where Priscilla Duval and Mr. Timms lived, more or less together. Betha Everard’s set-up with Joe the artist. And the first house they had visited where Mr. Arnson was keeping his landlady’s rules.

  “Who is it?’’ she asked. “ Which one?’’

  “Mrs. Banks. Two students found her.’’

  “A girl called Duval and a boy called Timms?’’

  “Yes. They put on a wonderful act, don’t they? Quite a pair. They found her. She was lying just behind the front door. The girl fell over her.’’

  “How?’’ Charmian put just the one word.

  He gave her three in exchange: “ Head bashed in.’’

  “Well, that makes it a personal matter, doesn’t it?’’ said Charmian. “Well, now we know where we are. Not like Alda’s death. No accident there. Just good straight personal stuff, the sort that kills.’’

  Within one small district in Midport, the University area, two women had now been murdered.

  “So poor Mrs. Banks got hers,’’ said Shirley, soberly. The two women were in Charmian’s room, both smoking.

  “Yes, and the same way as Alda Fearon.’’

  “So it was murder there too, and you were right and I was wrong. There’s going to be real panic over this—the second killing in the University district.’’

  “Yes. I was right. I knew it all along.’’

  “That’s you, Charm
ian,’’ said Shirley admiringly. “You knew it all along. Do you know the murderer?’’

  “Not yet. But at least I know I must be moving in the right direction. I was right to talk to Mrs. Banks.’’

  “Somewhat to her detriment,’’ observed Shirley.

  “Yes, I admit that. I ought to have warned her, given her a hint somehow.’’

  “It wouldn’t have done any good.’’

  “No? You may be right. And the killer’s getting better. This wasn’t a bosh job like Alda. Mrs. Banks died when she was supposed to.’’

  “It was gruesome about Alda,’’ said Shirley. “Walking around with an injury like that. I can’t get over it.’’

  “You often get a time lag with a brain injury. Especially with the contrapuntal type such as Alda had.’’

  “What’s a contrapuntal injury then?’’

  “It means that the killing injury is on the opposite side of the brain from the side of the blow that caused it. The brain itself swings against the skull. And yet on the head itself there may be no signs of the blow. This was so in Alda’s case. She was wearing a wig. It protected the skull.’’

  “You do know your stuff.’’

  “I do a course on Forensic Medicine here,’’ said Charmian.

  “I’ve underestimated you.’’

  “No, you haven’t,’’ said Charmian. “Maybe you’ve misunderstood me a little, that’s all.’’

  “It happens,’’ said Shirley grimly.

  “And I hope you’ve misunderstood about Alda too,’’ said Charmian. “I mean about the drinking.’’

  “I persist in that,’’ said Shirley. “I was afraid you might.’’

  “And when she was in that state, she let her worries out for all to see.’’

  “What were her worries?’’

  “You’ve been checking up yourself, haven’t you?’’

  “What makes you think that?’’ said Charmian, carefully non-committal.

  “It’s what you would do,’’ said Shirley. “You’ve been probing around. Getting questions asked about Alda Fearon. Probably you’ve been pushing your police friends in Deerham Hills to find out.’’

  “Tell me what Alda said about her worries,’’ said Charmian, ignoring this last sally.

  “Well, she was worried about you, for a start,’’ said Shirley.

  “Me? Why me?’’

  “Too much involved—too vulnerable, she thought. Too liable to be attracted by the young man from Berkeley.’’

  “Alda never said that.’’ Charmian was flushed.

  “Then she was worried about her man,’’ said Shirley, ignoring the interruption.

  “I know all about that.’’

  “Oh, you do? Well, about him she wasn’t too specific. Come to think of it she wasn’t specific about anything. She just rambled on. But something bad was going to come out of Amsterdam. That girl, Lulie … perhaps she meant her. Alda wouldn’t go for a sex bomb like her.’’

  “None of it sounds like Alda,’’ said Charmian, bruised and hurt. There was a tiny little sting of truth in all of it, enough for her to feel the whip.

  “Not your Alda maybe,’’ said Shirley. “But mine. Mine.’’

  A little proprietary ring crept into her voice, as if indeed she did own and had created that Alda. It was only a faint tone, but Charmian caught it. She smiled.

  Charmian had once said that a police officer was only as good as his stool-pigeons. Every policeman (or woman) needed good informers. She had made quite a point of this in one lecture to her student policewomen. There had been some wry looks as she said it, and she thought that only Ann Hooks and Nancy Bennett, the dark and the fair, actually accepted the truth of what she said. The others didn’t want to see it, because it damaged their image of themselves. Ann and Nancy took it, didn’t particularly like it, but saw it as part of the job. It might yet drive her out of the force, but that lay in the future. Charmian didn’t know; she couldn’t read the cards.

  But stool-pigeons were of little use in this case. She was dealing not with criminals but students. Nevertheless, she sent her enquiries out on their devious route. Do you know anything about a girl called Betha Everard or a boy called Joe Hatchett? About Mrs. Banks, whom I suspect was really Miss Banks? About Len Arnson, engineering student. Or Priscilla Duval and Mr. Timms? But she got nothing helpful back. She withdrew her pressure on these sources.

  However, a detective investigation does not exist in a vacuum, just as, in a disease, feverishness in one area promotes activity in another.

  The next day, two full days since the new murder, she had a telephone call from Grizel in Deerham Hills. Grizel sounded worried.

  “So you’ve had another death near you,’’ she began.

  “I don’t know much about it. The people here aren’t talking to me. Do you know anything?’’

  “Not much. A bit of gossip filters back, you know.’’

  “I do know.’’ There is a grape-vine network in all professions and with the police it worked quicker than most.

  “Blow on the head. The victim didn’t resist.’’ Grizel had slipped easily into a verbal shorthand. “ Must have known the killer. No strong lead. That’s about it.’’

  “Thanks. Anything about Alda Fearon?’’

  “No. Not directly. But I’ve been getting some strange rumours here. Something nasty, they say, is coming out of Holland. You’re not saying anything?’’

  “I don’t know what to say,’’ said Charmian, wondering whether she was getting back from the machine information she herself had fed into it earlier.

  “Goodbye, then,’’ said Grizel, not knowing whether to pass on to her the other rumours that were reaching her.

  Prudently (for Charmian had a sharp tongue) she decided not to.

  Charmian’s next telephone call was more peremptory. The speaker did not identify himself, but Charmian, although surprised (you call us, we won’t call you), knew who it was. Her caller was the man who controlled her surveillance of the students suspected of planning serious trouble.

  “We have information here that a bomb is being prepared in Amsterdam and will be brought over. A new type. Using jelly of gasoline and petroleum wax and something else. A sort of mini-napalm bomb. And if you can think of anything dirtier than that, just let me know. You have a big function coming up?’’

  “Yes. A big ball and dinner.’’

  “And the Chancellor is coming?’’

  “Yes,’’ said Charmian, thinking of that royal and lonely figure.

  “There you are then. We can’t risk the Big Bang.’’ Big Bang was police slang for political assassination.

  “My diagnosis of them is that they aren’t people who want to kill,’’ said Charmian.

  “You could be wrong. You have a link-up with Amsterdam? Right. You’re due to go there anyway, soon.’’

  “Yes.’’

  “Go now. Fly over. You could make it sound like work?’’

  “It would be work.’’

  “And if you’re offered a companion, take it. One of the students you are watching may be going. That’s our information.’’

  “Van? Lulie, the German girl?’’

  “So go. See what you can find out. If there’s a bomb, get it.’’

  “It’ll have to be a flying visit,’’ said Charmian, acidly, as she put the receiver down. She had caught undertones there which she did not understand. He knew more than she did. Before she did anything else, she rang up Ann. “I’ve got to be away. How’s your problem?’’

  “Oh.’’ Ann sounded glum. “I’m battling on. I suppose I know who’s causing the trouble. It happens to be a boy I know quite well. That doesn’t help. Makes it worse. I’d like to talk to you.’’

  “Can you hold out till I get back?’’

  “Yes.’’ Ann finished the conversation. “I can manage. Bye.’’ And then, fearing she might have been abrupt, she added hastily, “ I’ll be thinking of you.’’

&
nbsp; “You won’t be the only one,’’ murmured Charmian, thinking of her colleague who had abruptly ordered her to Amsterdam. There was an element in their conversation she had not cared for.

  He was in fact already discussing her. “There she goes,’’ he said, as Charmian’s receiver banged down. “ She doesn’t know her own weaknesses.’’

  “So?’’

  “Look at her. Married to an older man. Susceptible. She doesn’t know her own mind.’’

  “The student Don? Him, you mean?’’

  “He’s making a set for her. He knows the ropes. She could be a liability for us.’’

  “I rather admire the girl,’’ said the other. “So what do you do?’’

  “Send them to Amsterdam and let them sweat it out together.’’

  Charmian marched away from the telephone and into the student coffee-house. As always it was crowded: she sat by a window, sharing a table with a silent couple holding hands.

  Mr. Timms and Priscilla Duval had their heads together in talk. Smoke rings circled their heads.

  “The way you smoke, girl.’’ Mr. Timms waved the clouds away from his head. “ Don’t you know what it does to you? And you with a weak heart.’’

  “Ah, it won’t kill me.’’

  “Give it time.’’

  “Then I’ll be cremated,’’ she said flippantly. She looked across the room and saw Charmian. “I ought to go talk to her,’’ she said.

  “Leave it. It’s late.’’

  “Tomorrow then.’’ She settled back happily into her own life.

  Charmian got up and went out. Her scene seemed to be swinging like a great machine going out of control.

  Chapter Nine

  Amsterdam lay beneath the moon. Charmian and Don arrived there by night. As the plane banked over it, she looked down and saw the city, tiny like a toy. Even from the air you rarely got such a view. Then the plane sank and they were landing at Schipol Airport, walking past the fountains and the flowers to the airport bus.