The sun was really warm this morning. How sad to be dead on such a bright spring day. The old Charmian had never had such thoughts. In fact, looking back on it, she had been quite remarkably self-centred, thought the new Charmian smugly. Yes, there was no doubt about it, being deeply fond of someone else (a Scot even in her innermost thoughts, Charmian didn’t use any more passionate language) made you a better person all round.
And then the thought of Grace Chancey reminded her that it might also make you a little crazy. Grace was certainly fond of her departed sister, and look what it was doing to her. Grace however could hardly have been an average person even when sister Phoebe was at home. Where had Phoebe Chancey gone? Phoebe had gone to London town. What would bring Phoebe back? Nothing would bring Phoebe back. It was like a nursery rhyme. Every day some girl like Phoebe left home and disappeared. Sometimes they were found, most often they were not: because they didn’t want to be found, and were entitled to be lost if they chose. It was as simple as that. But it didn’t stop their friends and relatives from looking for them.
Deerham Hills town centre was a wide square with an old stone cross in the middle. The square and the cross were there because it had been an old market town in the days before it became a prosperous new town with factories and smart housing estates. The stone cross was flanked by two wide drinking troughs once filled with water for the animals that had walked to market to be sold. Now the drinking troughs were filled with flowers provided by the town council out of the rates. Animals didn’t drink any longer in Deerham Hills. There hardly were any animals except some cats and a number of pedigree dogs.
To the west the main road ran towards the big new hospital, to the east it turned towards Abbot’s End, which was considered the cheaper and less desirable quarter of Deerham Hills. After Abbot’s End the road became the London road, lined with factories, and eventually a rather scrubby patch of open country. It was on this road that Phoebe Chancey had last been seen.
Charmian drove into the hospital slowly and carefully. She parked the car in the forecourt and then walked round to the back. She knew the entrance to make for; she could see Pratt’s car outside it and a uniformed man standing at the door. Pratt was a familiar figure round the hospital. There had been a time when it seemed as if he was always round there either getting X-rayed himself or visiting his wife who was a patient. But those days were over now. Both Pratts seemed steady on their feet, although there were still occasional and probably untrue rumours that Pratt was considering an early retirement. But a policeman’s pension wasn’t much, so he probably wouldn’t.
None of these thoughts were apparent on Charmian’s face as she greeted Pratt and he wouldn’t have read them there easily anyway. To himself he was still John Pratt, a master figure, patron and boss of Sergeant Charmian Daniels, whom he liked. He didn’t grasp how, little by little, as Charmian grew older and more experienced, his authority over her was seeping away.
And since three months ago Charmian, although she still used her old name professionally, had been Mrs. Robert Ascham. That made a great deal of difference to many things.
“Hello,’’ she said in a friendly fashion, because an affectionate liking for John Pratt remained with her; she ignored the slight scowl on his face. She knew what it meant—it was nothing personal. It meant that although he had everything organised and the whole police machine was moving sweetly forward he had, as yet, no real idea where it was going.
“Come inside.’’ He drew her into the hallway. This was empty but already there was about it that indefinable air of having been taken over that always fell upon a place under police investigation. Charmian would have been prepared to swear she could smell it.
“It turns out this body actually came here by train,’’ he said irritably. “ Came into the station yesterday and they sent it up here this morning. People up here thought it was specimens of something. Not for long, though,’’ he said.
“Someone had a nerve, sending it on the railway.’’
“They had a break-in there last night. Which may or may not be connected.’’
To die by violence is somehow to relinquish all rights to privacy. The body is no longer the house of a sentient being but a piece of evidence that must be made to yield all the answers it can. Sometimes it can hardly give any, not even its own name. But science gets cleverer and cleverer at extracting information from even the most unpromising corpse.
This one had already been brutalised and dehumanised by the killer. It had no head and no hands. The head was severed at the lower neck, almost on the shoulders, and the hands at the wrists.
Charmian was resolute and toughened by experience, but she did not like what she saw. “Well, that’s not nice,’’ she said eventually. “Anyway, it’s not Phoebe Chancey.’’ Even from one look she could see they were the remains of a taller, fatter and probably older woman. Phoebe was only a girl. “ But then I never thought it would be.’’
“I’m not asking for guesses,’’ said Pratt. “ Especially I’m not asking for guesses about the Chancey girl. I can’t tell if it’s her from looking and neither can you.’’
Charmian shrugged; she thought she could tell.
“What I want to know,’’ went on Pratt, “ is just what you do see there. You leave the body for someone else to work on. Clothes and possessions are for you. You tell me what you see, no more and no less.’’
If Pratt was going to be in this I-know-your-job-as-well-as-my-own mood, then silence was safest.
“Make a list,’’ he said.
“You seem to have plenty of people here to make lists,’’ was all she allowed herself to say, having glanced round the room. A police photographer, two police technicians and a plain clothes detective were already at work. She herself had clearly not been among the first Pratt had summoned to work. Why had he brought her down here at all?
“No cheek,’’ he said, and gave her an unexpected smile. Smiles hadn’t been common with Pratt lately. Especially since her marriage. He considered that she should resign and go home. And yet at the same time he admired her, thought she did good work, and knew it would be a pity if her skills were wasted. He had trained her himself, and yet sometimes he couldn’t bear to have her around. In his heart he knew that his own career was coming to a stop, perhaps even going downhill, while she was only beginning to taste success. This was the true cause of his pain. The pain and the smile and the resentment all emerged now as one, and he hardly knew which was which.
“Come over here and examine what was in the coffin.’’ He pointed out a pile of clothes which lay on a table. They were dirty and spotted with blood. There was a scarf, a pair of woollen gloves, and a tightly rolled up blue raincoat.
“Well?’’ said Pratt.
“There’s no handbag,’’ said Charmian.
“No, I thought of that. What of it?’’
“Well,’’ said Charmian carefully, “ one’s first thought on seeing these clothes is that they are the personal possessions of the dead person, which the killer put in here to get rid of. But there is no handbag, so some discrimination was used and not all the possessions were put in.’’
“The bag might give an identity clue, of course, and have been suppressed on that account.’’
“Of course. Or it might just have got lost.’’
“In that case we ought to look for it.’’
“Yes,’’ said Charmian. She was still being cautious; there was a funny look on Pratt’s face.
“If we knew where to look.’’
“Always supposing that, of course.’’ Yes, there was no doubt about it, he was waiting for her to fall over her own feet. Her own image did not appeal to him. Her feet were a little large and to make them look neat she had to choose her shoes carefully.
Slowly she walked back to look at the body. It had not yet been moved from the coffin, where it was being photographed from all angles and in colour. What she could see showed a well-made body wearing a plain blue c
otton dress. On the legs were light tan stockings and stained brown shoes. It was probable that in life the woman had been not uncomely, but it was very difficult to get a true picture of her proportions with the head and hands gone.
“I don’t think the clothes on the table are hers,’’ she said suddenly.
“That’s what I think,’’ said Pratt, the sceptical look disappearing from his face at once. “Why?’’
“We haven’t got her hands, but the feet are quite small,’’ said Charmian. “ The gloves on the other hand are big. She is wearing a cotton dress, the gloves are of wool.’’
Charmian went over to the table and examined the checked woollen scarf and the raincoat.
“The raincoat might fit her. But there’s something wrong about it for her.’’ The clothes on the body had been plain but neat and feminine. Above all they were clean; the scarf and the raincoat were dirty. There was a kind of greasy scruffiness to them that spoke of years of wear and ill use. “ No, they don’t match. These clothes are not hers.’’
“There’s something else, too, isn’t there? Isn’t there?’’
“Yes.’’ Charmian took it slowly. “They are clothes a woman might wear, but not this woman. It’s not easy to be quite sure about the sex of some garments but judging by the type of the gloves and scarf and the style of the raincoat and also by the sort of wear they’ve all had, I should say these clothes had been worn by a man. And by not too clean a man at that.’’
“I agree.’’ He looked triumphant. “ It’s not bad, is it? We’ve got a body and straight away we can associate her with a man. The man who wore these clothes probably killed her …’’
“You could go further than that,’’ said Charmian, who had been examining a pear-shaped stain on the front of the blue raincoat. “You could say that he wore these clothes when he killed her.’’
The killer always leaves something behind on the scene of his crime. Sometimes it is a hair from his head found in the victim’s tightening grip, sometimes it is some of his skin left under a dead fingernail. Sometimes it is a piece of cloth, a scrap of paper, sometimes a fingerprint, sometimes the impression of a shoe. Sometimes it is nothing easily definable, nothing more than a disarrangement of a sheet on a bed or the breaking of a branch on a bush. But a killer always leaves something behind and always will do. It is his token confession of guilt. Perhaps this is what lies behind the belief of the old Anglo-Saxon law-givers that ‘murder will out’.
Then their momentary elation, in which they had both shared, left them.
“This woman came from anywhere in England,’’ said Pratt. “And these clothes came with her.’’ He turned them over thoughtfully. “Still, anything’s better than nothing and we might get something.’’
“She came from somewhere on the railway line,’’ said Charmian, more precisely. “And she came here. She was addressed, not just dumped in a ditch. She was addressed to Deerham Hills and she was sent to a hospital. More, to the hospital, not a hospital. I think there’s something rather special in that.’’ Then she added honestly, “But I can’t see what.’’
Pratt was still staring at the clothes and turning them over in his hands, measuring them against himself. The two of them were standing by the table where the clothes had been placed; they were a little apart from the others.
“I tell you what it means,’’ he said, not raising his eyes from the raincoat he was studying. “ It means they picked us.’’ He was gloomy.
“They? More than one, you think?’’
“Just a form of speech. Tell me more about these clothes, Daniels. You’ve got something more. I can see it in your face. Come on, it’s what I got you down here for.’’
“They’re a boy’s clothes, of course,’’ said Charmian abruptly. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it straight away. It’s absolutely clear. Not a woman’s clothes, not a man’s, but a boy’s.’’ She added, “Or a small man’s.’’
The cast was being assembled on the stage. They had a dead woman and now they had a boy. So they had two of the actors but they still had to find the stage. They both knew what the chances were.
“It’ll be luck, you know,’’ said Pratt. “ If we ever find that boy.’’
The population of the British Isles is over fifty million and without something to make him stand out both the boy and his victim could remain among the lost people for ever. Like Phoebe Chancey.
“Oh, what about Grace Chancey?’’ asked Charmian, suddenly remembering the girl. She looked about the room as if expecting to see her.
“Yes, take up your other assignment.’’ Pratt put down the clothes he had been holding, and gave a nod in the direction of the door. “She’s in the next room.’’
“I don’t think she is, you know,’’ said Charmian, whose ears were sharp. “ I think she’s just got out.’’
A shrill voice from the corridor began calling “Help, help’’, followed by a rat-a-tat of little knocks on the door. Just Grace’s style!
“She’s all yours,’’ said Pratt. “ Just get her away. Have her certified or something but don’t let her come back.’’
Charmian opened the door smartly, taking Grace by surprise.
“Right now, Grace.’’ Charmian was calm and decisive. (You couldn’t afford to be anything else with Grace. Also over the past weeks she had got in quite a bit of practice in handling her.) “ I’ve come to take you home.’’
“I don’t want to go home.’’
“All right then, you choose. Down to the station with me and be charged, or home.’’
“He’s got my sister in there,’’ said Grace. Pratt groaned in the room behind them and muttered something under his breath.
“He has not got your sister in there. No one’s got your sister anywhere in Deerham Hills. She got in a car and went to London. You know that.’’ Charmian had a grip on Grace’s arm now. Once again she thought how pitifully thin and wiry it was, like a boy’s.
“You’ve got a dead woman in there,’’ shouted Grace, intransigent as usual. Her red hair was falling round her face, which was grubbier than ever. There was a pale scar over one eyebrow and a scratch on one cheekbone. What did she get up to when she was at home? And no wonder Phoebe had left.
“Ask her how she knew that,’’ demanded Pratt from the room behind.
Charmian looked at Grace. “How do you know?’’ she asked.
Grace laughed. “Everyone in Deerham Hills knows.’’
“You exaggerate, Grace,’’ said Charmian calmly but also thoughtfully. Even allowing for hyperbole she did not underestimate the capacity of Deerham Hills for spreading the word around. There were one or two institutions which were brilliant disseminators of news. It just had to be news, whether true or false news hardly mattered. Lubbock’s, the most popular grocery store in the town, was one sure place. In Lubbock’s the news was fed in one end and came out the other packaged and ready for instant consumption. It was from Lubbock’s that the news had come that the Headmaster’s son and six other boys, all sons of prominent citizens, had been found guilty of organised cheating in exams; it was from Lubbock’s that the story spread about what was really going on at the newly opened Casino. Another centre for gossip was the group of old men who met in the park by the duck-pond in summer and at the Bus Station in winter. Charmian was a good centre for gossip herself, but she only received it and rarely passed it on. Instead, everything was entered on her private card index system where she had facts and rumours about a good many of the principal citizens of the town. She had her paid informants, too, who instructed her in the secret life of Deerham Hills. Charmian alone knew why the Headmaster’s son had cheated and what his true reward was.
“Where did you hear?’’
“I heard in the Laundry Shop,’’ muttered Grace.
“I shall have to pop in there,’’ said Charmian. She had suspected for some time that this latest shop was going to be a gossip centre. So many people went there, dropped their washi
ng in a machine and sat talking and drinking coffee while it washed that the news was bound to be given a stir and handed on. “ What were you doing there?’’ Not washing your clothes, was her thought. Or your face.
“I work there,’’ said Grace sullenly.
“Go on!’’ Charmian was sceptical.
“Oh, only round the back,’’ said Grace. “I could have a yellow overall if I worked round the front, but they didn’t give me a yellow overall so I work round the back.’’
“Take her away,’’ called Pratt over his shoulder; he was prepared to leave Charmian to deal with her problem.
“You and me are not friends,’’ shouted Grace. “ You’ve got my sister in there.’’ She gave Charmian a sharp kick on the shin and then put her head on Charmian’s shoulder and started to cry noisily.
At least, she tried for Charmian’s shoulder, but as she was short and Charmian rather tall, all she reached was the upper arm. Charmian did not respond easily to such calls upon her sympathy, nor did she enjoy physical contact with Grace. She stood there stiffly, noticing that there was a strange smell about the girl’s hair, and then let her arm drop away so that the girl stood alone. It was not an unkind gesture, but an affirmation, possibly an unconscious one, that as women she and Grace stood on different sides of the fence. There was no ‘sisters under the skin’ softness about Charmian; she stood where she did because she was stronger, cleverer and more determined than someone like Grace. Charmian knew her way; Grace could almost be counted upon to lose hers. There was a little sly sharpness about her, however, and she used it now.
“If you’re a married woman why don’t you wear a ring?’’ she said to Charmian, moving her rusty hair away from Charmian’s face.
Charmian did not answer. Over the girl’s head she could see Pratt’s face and its expression said: Yes, why don’t you?
Far away in New York, where he was attending an international police conference on crime, perhaps a visiting policeman was wondering why his wife did not wear a ring. It was unusual in a wife, but Charmian had made it clear from the beginning that when working she would not wear a ring. She would wear one at home, she promised. But, in fact, she never did. “ She’ll have to wear one when I take her travelling,’’ he decided firmly. In New York it felt easy to be firm. You could be firm and loving and decisive and adoring all at the same time. At home, as he very well knew, it was more difficult. He longed to telephone her, but every time he got to the telephone something seemed to go wrong. He had even got up in the middle of the night.
A Different Kind of Summer Page 3
