A Different Kind of Summer

by Jennie Melville

  Grizel watched her with sympathy.

  “I’ve come into the middle of a group of people. They all look placid and prosperous. But yet—I think they’ve got their troubles.’’

  “Oh yes, Willie Burton. He’s certainly got his troubles,’’ said Grizel.

  Two years ago, Willie had come cheerfully down to his breakfast one morning, wondering why Ella was so slow to call him, and found her stretched out on the floor beside the cooker with the coffee boiled dry on the gas.

  She had had a slight stroke, the doctor said. Slight was the word he used. But Willie wondered how slight it had been. Her consciousness and her speech came back but she was crippled all down one side. She had massage and therapy and they brought back the colour in her cheeks and made her look pretty again, but they didn’t get her moving. In a little while she let Willie get her a wheelchair and soon she was keeping house and baking cakes from the wheelchair. You can do a lot with electricity and will-power.

  Even so, she still had a lot of time to fill in and she filled it in reading. In the old days Ella had never been much of a reader. Now she read all the time and Willie got her the books. He went daily to the library with her list.

  It was almost a year before he discovered what she was reading. She was reading about deathbeds. It was true they were Famous Deathbeds, so there was a certain exclusive-ness to them, but Willie was taken aback.

  “Oh, are you sure you ought, my dear?’’ he asked. “Are you sure you ought to interest yourself in such a subject?’’ Even in his anguish Willie could not prevent himself asking his question twice.

  “It is a subject I must interest myself in,’’ she said gently, before returning to her reading.

  She was at home on the evening of Willie’s visit to the hospital, reading her favourite subject as usual.

  “Did you know that Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle the historian, never spoke at all on his deathbed? I suppose he thought he’d said too much before.’’

  “No, I didn’t know that,’’ said Willie politely: he had a good deal on his mind, but he would never fail in politeness to Ella.

  “Of course, people very rarely say anything memorable. There was Nelson, but you could hardly call his a typical deathbed.’’

  “No, indeed,’’ said Willie.

  “Oh, I must tell you what I discovered today,’’ said Ella, abandoning her subject for a moment. “Our new neighbour, that rather handsome-looking girl, works for the police!’’

  “Yes,’’ said Willie heavily. “I know. I recognised her.’’

  “She seems a nice girl.’’

  “I suppose she is. Do you think a really nice girl does a job like that?’’

  “Someone has to do the work, Willie.’’

  This was true, reasonable, but unpalatable to Willie, and it made him fidgety. He watered the geranium in the window, fed the one-eyed goldfish in the bowl and spilt its food, and broke three matches lighting his pipe.

  “Ella,’’ he said finally, “ Ella?’’

  “Yes?’’

  “I didn’t really tell quite all the truth.’’

  “People hardly ever do,’’ she said gently. “Why should they? Sometimes they don’t know it.’’

  “You do.’’

  “No, not even me. Certainly not me.’’ She was firm. “I’ve learnt one truth about myself and that is that I am a coward. I’m living with that for a while. What was your truth that you knew and did not tell?’’

  “I didn’t tell the police that we’ve had coffins in Deerham Hills before.’’

  He paused and Ella waited.

  “All in the way of business and quite legitimate. Going up to the hospital. Specimens I suppose you could call them. I mean they do good work up there. People leave their bodies for research.’’

  “Yes, I see,’’ said Ella, frowning.

  “This one looked just like the others,’’ said Willie levelly. “ More or less. You couldn’t have told it from one of the others.’’

  This time Ella did not answer. She was sensitive to Willie’s emotions, just as he was to hers. She could feel his worry and tension, but to her it seemed something of an anti-climax. Nothing much to shout about at all.

  The telephone rang and Willie answered it.

  “Hello? What? Yes, come right round. We’d like it. Ella says she’d like it too.’’ He smiled and winked at his wife. “Come right round,’’ he said, putting the receiver down and turning to his wife. “John. He’s lonely. Wants to come round.’’

  “Leonora not back yet?’’

  “When is Leonora ever back?’’ asked Willie, giving a shrug. Leonora was the world’s worst wife.

  Yes, Willie Burton certainly had his trouble, thought Charmian, considering all that Grizel had told her as she sat eating her lonely supper; but then she had hers too. Her house was on the crest of a slight slope and she could just see the lights of the Burton house from her kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table eating bread and cheese with her feet propped up on a chair. She had the door open so that she could hear the telephone if it rang. It hadn’t rung. That was trouble number one. She had green paint on her sleeve and that was trouble number two. And tomorrow she would be on her way to Midport when the telephone call from New York would certainly get through, and that was trouble number three.

  “So I’m an expert on missing girls,’’ she thought. “So I’m going to Midport.’’

  She sat up working, long after all the lights had gone out in the Burton house. There was no call from New York. Eventually she fell asleep over her papers, only to wake and drag herself up to bed.

  The telephone was very much in her mind as she slept; she dreamt that it rang and rang. Perhaps the strength of her thought stretched out across Deerham Hills to another sensitive mind and inserted a thought in it. A thought full of malice, a developing thought that could damage people’s minds.

  Charmian moaned slightly in her sleep as if her dreams were not so happy after all.

  She slept badly and Willie Burton slept badly and Inspector Pratt slept badly because he didn’t trust this business with Midport. It made him cough and that was an indication there was trouble coming. He had seen so many promising leads come to nothing at all in Midport. Midport was a sink of dead cases. So he slept badly.

  Len Chapman, on the other hand, slept pretty well that night, because he thought, poor fellow, he had done the right thing at last.

  All the jokers in the pack were loose now and laughing their heads off.

  Chapter Six

  Because one woman had died violently the lives of many other women were going to be disturbed.

  Meanwhile, it was to go on the record that one at least of the girls who had gone missing had come back home.

  “I went down to see the girl who came back,’’ said Charmian to Grizel.

  “She just walked back in? Just like that?’’

  “More or less. Her father rang up and reported her back. He seems glad. Now I’ve had a look at her I don’t know why. Surly girl. She’s saying nothing.’’

  “Why did she come back?’’

  Charmian shrugged. “Just got fed up. She’d had a job and didn’t like it. She lived in one room and didn’t like that either. It’s all true. I’ve checked as far as I can. There doesn’t seem more to it than that. She was simply living away from home and working. Wanted to be independent, she said.’’

  “And that’s all?’’

  “All she says. Just gave me a long, long look and kept silent.’’ Charmian added: “I got the distinct impression she hated the sight of me.’’

  “That doesn’t always mean anything in this job,’’ said Grizel, sadly and wisely.

  Charmian collected the list of the women that the Midport police considered might interest her and matched it up with the somewhat meagre information she had about the Deerham Hills body. The body was now receiving urgent publicity: the morning papers all carried the news. It made a tantalising story, opening up que
stions in the minds of everyone who read it, but hinting at the same time that the questions would never be answered. Charmian realised that this was a sour reaction on her part but her mood this morning was not optimistic. No one had signed this crime with his name.

  Annie Batchelor, widow, aged forty-eight, five feet three-and-a-half inches tall. Wears a wig. Spends all her spare time in learning how to shoot with a rifle. She has not yet learnt.

  Annie was out, then, not because she wore a wig (after all, they were in no position to say whether or not their body wore a wig) but because she was forty-eight. She was too old. Charmian would not have to hunt down Annie. A pity in a way because Annie sounded an interesting character with her passion for learning to shoot a rifle. Charmian wondered who she was learning to shoot. Still, nicer to think she had a chance of being alive.

  Jean Spiller, unmarried, twenty. Five feet ten inches. Black hair. One eye blue, one eye brown. No hobbies, no known habits.

  Poor Jean. Easy to see why she had gone. She was running from one eye brown, one eye blue. Perhaps she would manage to come back with two blue eyes. Or even just one. But she still didn’t sound like the girl Charmian was looking for.

  Josephine Jones, married, thirty-two. Five feet five inches, weighs over one hundred and forty pounds. Family think she may have committed suicide.

  There was a cold detachment in this comment that Charmian didn’t like. The family only thought she might have committed suicide. They weren’t sure. Perhaps they weren’t thinking too much about it. Perhaps they weren’t worrying. Possibly they were even hoping she had. In that case it was more than likely that Josephine hadn’t committed suicide. She would turn up and Josephine’s family would have to learn to live with her again.

  K. B. Black, height between five feet five and five feet seven, heavily built, dark hair, age unknown. Wears spectacles. Missing since Christmas. Left her job and room on Christmas Eve and hasn’t been seen since. No friends. Family unknown.

  K. B. No Christian name, just initials. K.B. Black didn’t seem too well known. Anonymous.

  Perhaps K. B. Black was the woman she wanted. Charmian considered the idea. There was some notion at the back of her mind, pricking at her, but it didn’t come out.

  So finally she considered the name Rose Chapman. Rose Chapman sounded eligible. No doubt about it. Rose could be elected to the club of those who might have ended up dead in a coffin in Deerham Hills. A club so far of one. Two, if you counted K. B. Black, who sounded likely.

  Member of the club, Rose Chapman, step forward. Rose was the right age and sounded the right shape and weight, and she had been gone the right amount of time.

  It was certainly going to be necessary to see Rose’s husband. There was no one to see about K. B. Black.

  However, she did what she could about K. B. Black. Because she was uneasy she tried hard, even when she could see she was getting nowhere.

  K. B. Black—it turned out she called herself Mrs. Black-had lived in one desolate room now occupied by two other people, neither of whom had ever heard of her, let alone remembered her. Between them and Mrs. Black’s tenancy of twelve square feet, a bed, a gas ring and the share of a sink down the passage, had come a string of six other people. The turnover was high in Cherry Orchard Street, Midport, and Charmian for one wasn’t surprised. Who would stay there if they could move?

  Mrs. Black had worked in a dry cleaners, behind the scenes, as a sorter of clothes. It was a humble task and she had fulfilled it in a humble, inefficient sort of way. In fact she would have got her notice to leave if she hadn’t forestalled it by going anyway. It was the owner of this shop who, for reasons of his own (which were not obvious) had told the police she was missing. Now he seemed to regret it.

  “I don’t know nothing about it,’’ he said. “She’s been gone a long while now. Since Christmas. Now it is summer. Spring anyway. I have forgotten her.’’

  “Still, you told the police. You must have had some reason for doing that?’’

  “And if she was missing at Christmas, why should she suddenly turn up now?’’ he said, offering a question instead of an answer.

  “Why did you tell the police she was missing?’’

  “I don’t know,’’ he said irritably. “It’s not something I’ll ever do again. I thought I was doing what was right. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t think she’ll thank me if you find her.’’ He looked cross.

  “How old was she?’’

  “I don’t know. Ageless.’’

  “Can’t you get closer?’’

  “No. I can’t.’’ He was irritable again. “She’d had a hard life. You could see it. She wasn’t so young. But she wasn’t old either.’’

  “Would you know her again?’’

  “Yes, I expect so. It’d depend.’’ He fell silent.

  “You may be asked to try.’’ Charmian thought of the body in Deerham Hills.

  “I’d know her face. She couldn’t change that.’’

  “It was striking?’’

  “No. Not striking but I’d know it. She had a big scar down her face. On the left. From nose to mouth.’’

  This time it was Charmian who was silent. The scar could be the reason for the decapitation.

  “I told you she had a hard life.’’

  “So you did.’’

  For the moment she left it at that. K. B. Black was still a member of the club. Quite a promising member.

  Rose Chapman, who was a founder member of the club, had left little to comfort her husband or encourage a pursuer. She had walked out, leaving everything behind her. Her husband had no insight into where she had gone or even why she had gone.

  “But I’m sure she’ll come back once she knows I’m looking for her,’’ he said optimistically. “I shan’t chase her, mind, she’ll have to come to me.’’

  “You won’t mind if there’s some publicity, then? If your wife’s name is mentioned in the press. It might help us.’’

  “Oh no,’’ he said, still convinced he was doing a good thing for himself, and for Rose.

  He thought the police were looking for Rose and was glad Charmian had called on him. He did not know that Charmian was trying to match up his Rose with a dead body she already had.

  “Deerham Hills police, you said?’’ He was a little puzzled but still optimistic. “ It’s good of you to help. I don’t think she’d be in Deerham Hills.’’

  Charmian did not reply but continued her silent, sharp observation of the room where they stood. She decided that it was too late to be sure whether Rose had been a good homemaker or not but that Leonard certainly wasn’t. The room was no longer clean and perhaps had never been tidy.

  He saw her looking.

  “I spend a good deal of my time looking for her,’’ he explained politely. “I am quite sure if we should meet face to face it would be all right. It’s only a temporary separation, you know.’’

  Charmian nodded. She thought he was a little mad. In her pocket, in an envelope, was a photograph of the dead woman. This photograph of the body had been carefully taken so that you hardly noticed, at a first glance, that it was without a head. She had not shown the photograph to K. B. Black’s employer, because he had only remembered K. B.’s face.

  “Do you recognise this woman?’’ She held out the photograph.

  “But this woman has no head,’’ he said, still hanging on to his politeness.

  “It couldn’t be your wife?’’

  “No. Certainly not.’’ He thrust the picture away from him. He sounded shocked. “ This woman is dead. Rose is alive.’’

  Charmian put the photograph away.

  “You shouldn’t have shown me that.’’ He was indignant.

  “I’m sorry. I had to make sure.’’

  He did not show her to the door and she let herself out. In the garden next door a small woman was kneeling by a flower bed, weeding among a few spindly plants. She looked up as Charmian passed.

  “The flowers don’t gro
w in Midport,’’ she said, her eyes bright. “Not like the weeds do.’’

  “Not anywhere,’’ said Charmian, thinking of the rich soil and hard east winds of her native Scotland. She hardly ever thought about it now, but for a moment she wanted to be back beside the dangerous, greedy Tay. “You’re from the country?’’

  “Anything’s country beside Midport.’’ The woman got to her feet. “Did you come about her?’’ and she nodded towards the Chapman house. “About her going?’’

  “Yes.’’

  “I’m surprised you’re looking for her. Although nothing should surprise me after living in Midport.’’

  “You know she’s gone?’’

  “Of course. Everyone knows. Even he knows. You some sort of social worker?’’

  “Some sort.’’

  “They never have any visitors. So when I saw you calling, I knew it was business. And they don’t have any business either. So I knew it must be her. You won’t do any good, you know.’’

  “Won’t I?’’

  “No. You should have come years ago. What sort of social worker are you?’’ She was studying Charmian. “Marriage Guidance? National Assistance? They aren’t in debt, are they?’’

  “Not that I know of.’’

  “No, they wouldn’t be. I’d have known. You don’t look quite like a social worker.’’

  “I’m really just looking for Mrs. Chapman.’’

  “You haven’t brushed me off either. You’re letting me talk. Perhaps you’re the police.’’

  Charmian was silent. This was the give-away.

  “I’m surprised you’re looking for her. Although nothing should surprise me after living in Midport. What did she do?’’

  “I just want to see her.’’

  “All right. Don’t say if you don’t want to,’’ the woman said indifferently, her interest evaporating. As she turned back to her weeding, she said: “ I’ll let you know, if you like, next time she comes back.’’

  Charmian was surprised. “Next time? Has she been back before?’’