A Different Kind of Summer

by Jennie Melville

  “Carter’s out,’’ said Pratt.

  “Oh?’’

  “He’s gone to London to a meeting.’’ Their eyes met and they laughed. They both knew that the ambitious Carter took every opportunity to meet influential people who could be useful to him.

  “He’ll have left it all in control, though,’’ said Pratt, who admired Carter’s efficiency, if not his character. “He’s got a new boy on his team.’’

  “They come and go down here.’’

  “Could you work for Carter?’’

  “No,’’ said Charmian, who had refused.

  “His theory about the torso is that it’s a gang job and connected with the Milburn bank raid.’’

  “Clever. But why?’’

  “I think he wants to solve the Milburn bank job,’’ said Pratt, opening the door. “As simple as that. He has a theory about that too.’’

  The workroom was empty; the box lay on a trestle table. It had been measured, photographed, searched for fingerprints and had had all the dust extracted from it with a special vacuum cleaner to see what this could reveal. Now it was lying wrapped in Porothene.

  “It’s had everything done to it we can think of,’’ said Pratt. He looked round. “Wonder why it’s so empty here? Where is everybody?’’

  Charmian nodded to the clock on the wall. “It is after six-thirty.’’

  “No one works but us.’’ He drew back the Porothene. The box looked very ordinary, slightly battered perhaps by the treatment it had received; there was a distinctly secondhand look about it.

  “Chris is working,’’ said Charmian. Although the room was empty and separated from the rest of the building by the huge hall and its own corridor, the peculiar acoustics funnelled noises down to it from the floors above. They came floating down, slightly distorted and irregularly; you could only hear part of anything; it was very frustrating. Among the ebb of masculine voices to and fro, Chris’s clear tones were perfectly audible. She sounded excited.

  “She must be on the telephone,’’ said Charmian. “It’s rather clever, this building, really, isn’t it? Sounds sort of chase you. It makes ordinary buildings seem dull.’’

  She walked round the box studying it carefully.

  “It doesn’t look new,’’ she said.

  “Not now. It looked newer when we first got our hands on it.’’

  “Had it been used before?’’

  “It’s possible,’’ said Pratt. “ They think it could have been.’’

  “A twice-used coffin. Do you think he robbed a cemetery?’’

  “I don’t think it went as far as that. But it’s possible it hung around a bit somewhere.’’

  “Shop soiled,’’ commented Charmian. She stood there silently looking at it. “It’s bigger than I remembered. Bigger, older and more battered.’’ She traced her finger over the slight indentations in the wood where the address had been written. The cheap soft wood had been easily scarred.

  She walked round the coffin and looked at it from the other side. Then she came back and stood by Pratt.

  “No.’’ She was disappointed. “ I thought for sure I’d get something by looking. I had a strong feeling I would. Just shows, in this business you can’t rely on feelings.’’

  “I’ve known them work,’’ said Pratt philosophically; he replaced the Porothene. “I have a strong feeling we won’t get anywhere. That’s my strong feeling.’’

  Charmian looked back at the coffin from the door, but no, it still said nothing to her. The room was quiet and still and, she felt, empty.

  “Chris has gone quiet,’’ she said, as she closed the door.

  She met Christine on the stairs.

  “I was coming to find you.’’

  “Was it the telephone?’’ asked Charmian, already starting to hurry on up.

  “Yes. No, wait, it wasn’t that.’’ No one in Charmian’s circle was unaware that she was waiting for a call from New York. Without saying anything, she had managed to put them all on the alert. “ It was a girl who wanted to speak to you.’’

  “Grace Chanccy?’’

  “No, not Grace Chancey. I know her voice. I ought to by now. This girl wasn’t Grace.’’ She left a pause then added: “ In my opinion she wasn’t English.’’

  “Who was she then?’’

  Chris shrugged. “ Wouldn’t say and I wouldn’t do to talk to, not me—it had to be you. She’d got your name from somewhere. Perhaps she picked it out of a hat.’’

  “Did she say what she wanted?’’ Charmian was impatient.

  Chris shook her head.

  “I’m out of sympathy with these girls who ring up and then won’t talk.’’

  Chris was silent, then she said: “ I spoke to her and I think she had real trouble. She wasn’t like Grace Chancey.’’

  “Grace has got real trouble,’’ said Charmian grimly.

  “You know what I mean. I’d say this girl was frightened. And I’m an expert on being afraid.’’

  The girl who had crouched in a burning building waiting for it to fall in flying cinders around her, the girl who had walked a beat in Soho knew all about women being afraid.

  “I’m telling you she wasn’t a hysteric, this girl, not a canary. She’s scared … And she may have a reason, mayn’t she? Supposing she’s the girl with Ralph Smith?’’

  “I don’t want to believe you’re right. But I don’t want to believe you’re wrong either,’’ said Charmian.

  She sat down at her desk and Chris stood facing her.

  “Let’s think about this. How could she know to telephone me?’’

  “Someone could have told her your name. She could have asked. Ralph Smith could have told her who you were.’’

  “That makes him even creepier than I thought,’’ said Charmian. “I don’t like the way your mind’s working these evenings. But you could be right.’’

  “And then that urgent little necrologist,’’ began Chris.

  “Now I don’t like the words you use,’’ said Charmian.

  “It just shot into my mind,’’ said Chris, appalled. “ Is that how I think of him?’’

  “You must have a reason.’’

  But Chris just stared at her with a troubled gaze.

  “You don’t look well.’’

  “I had a brush with a neurotic killer once,’’ said Charmian in a thick voice.

  “I know,’’ said Chris sympathetically. “ It’s practically the first thing they tell you when you get here. Charmian, they say, did you know she was once in love …’’ Chris really was the girl who told everything.

  “Shut up,’’ said Charmian.

  They sat looking at each other for a moment, then Charmian recovered herself.

  “It’s all right,’’ she said. “ I don’t really mind. And I wasn’t in love with him, it was a little more complex than that.’’

  “It always is,’’ said Chris with feeling. “It always, always is.’’

  They laughed at each other with sudden sympathy. They were both girls who thought of themselves as outriders rather than outsiders, they were sitting on little bits of the world trying to make it go their way. But Charmian was in the end the more conventional character of the two, and this was already beginning to show itself. Her ultimate aims and ambitions were completely orthodox. With Christine this wasn’t so. What she wanted she didn’t yet know, what she might become wasn’t at all clear.

  “I wasn’t in love with him, I didn’t really even think I was, I was just inexperienced.’’ In completing her confession to Christine, another block in her mind was swept away.

  Spontaneously a picture and a speculation formed in her mind.

  The picture was of the labelled coffin and the indented wood underneath.

  The speculations ran like this: we have assumed that the writing on the label caused the marks underneath, but supposing the marks on the coffin caused the writing on the label?

  Her rational mind rapidly reduced this gibb
erish to: the marks on the coffin were already on it before the torso was put in. It was already marked with letters which spelt out Deerham Hills to the close investigator. The killer could see this for himself. The coffin had been sent to Deerham Hills once before, and it bore the imprint of this address deeply upon it.

  “It was like I said,’’ she said aloud. “ The coffin was addressed to Deerham Hills because it had to be addressed to Deerham Hills.’’

  “If you say so,’’ said Chris. “It wasn’t what I expected you to say perhaps, but I’m listening.’’

  “The coffin came here once, quite innocently. It was labelled. The addressing marked the wood. When it came to be used again by our man he saw that only by writing the same address again could he make it look as if Deerham Hills had been chosen by chance. He wanted to show that this town had no connection with the body or the killer. But it had not been chosen by chance. It came from here. In Deerham Hills were both the killer and the victim.’’

  “I love that sort of logic,’’ said Chris. “It makes you feel dizzy.’’

  In the laboratory downstairs, still empty except for her and Chris, Charmian studied the lettering on the label and the marks on the wood.

  “If I’m right, it ought to show somewhere. We ought to be able to tell.’’

  Christine moved round the room, opening cupboards, lifting lids and reading the notices on the big blackboard.

  “I’ve never been in here before. I like it. Look, he’s got a sort of time-table on the board. Twenty-four hour clock too. What a man! All these notes, too. He must work hard.’’

  “I’ll introduce you,’’ said Charmian.

  “You could.’’ Chris seriously considered that there was room for him in her life and a half. She might be able to spare time for something. You could always do what you really wanted. “I’d love to see him.’’

  “Look,’’ and Charmian pointed. “ See, this D on the label doesn’t really fit exactly over the top of the D shape in the wood. It’s similar but not quite matching.’’

  “You could be right.’’ Chris was not quite convinced.

  “And this double L at the end …’’

  “You know, if you’re right then these people down here ought to have noticed something.’’

  A file of notes was clipped to a board at the end of the table. Charmian lifted and read them, Chris leaning over her shoulder.

  They soon saw that William Carter or his new assistant or some anonymous member of the machine had already noticed, measured and photographed the discrepancies between the label and the marks on the wood. There were two sets of photographs attached.

  “So it was just a question of time, really,’’ said Charmian, raising her head, “before someone pointed out what this meant. In fact, William Carter’s probably just waiting for the right moment to get the biggest splash.’’

  “You don’t like him,’’ said Chris.

  Charmian smiled.

  “And I know why.’’

  “I can still introduce you.’’

  Chris laughed. “Wait a minute. Here’s something else.’’

  A handwritten letter was clipped to the other papers.

  Charmian picked it up. It was hardly a letter, merely a hastily scrawled note from the pathologist who had dealt with the body.

  “Bill—’’ it began. “Re the torso, a thought. The operation scar indicates done by a technique not common in this country. Continental practice. Suggests origin of body. Will you pass this on to Pratt?’’

  William Carter, for reasons all his own but no doubt connected with his ambitions, had not passed on the suggestion. Not yet.

  “The boy wonder,’’ said Charmian, handing the note to Chris. “He was going to come out with this at a suitable moment.’’

  “It’s helpful about the girl,’’ said Chris. “May explain why we’ve had no success getting her identity. Could be a visitor. Or an au pair girl. Got mixed up with a man. He killed her.’’

  “Now we’ve got to take another great jump into space,’’ said Charmian. “ Who is the man? It’s not Tony Foss, I know that. Do we put our money on Ralph Smith or not?’’

  “It’s not only us,’’ Chris reminded her. “With us in our jump into space we’ve got to take Pratt, Moore, Beach, and all the rest of the machine.’’

  “I can usually convince Pratt.’’

  “I’ve heard about that too,’’ said Chris.

  The two girls made their usual tour of the town that evening in a silent, preoccupied manner. No jokes, not much comment. Their gaze continually sought out dark corners and parked motorcars. Without admitting it, both were waiting to see Ralph Smith with the girl.

  It was a warm, quiet night, with plenty of people out and about. Charmian saw lots of faces she knew. Deerham Hills at night was a strange little world of its own. You saw people that you never saw at any other time. To go about the town then could be a revelation; although it was not always the revelation you were expecting. You might have expected for instance that the manager of the Agricultural and Savings Bank would be enjoying an evening out with his head cashier who was reputed (and Charmian believed accurately) to have been his mistress for years. Instead he was with no less than three unknown and very young women who were clearly not sisters; he looked unhappy. Whereas the owner of the local picture gallery, who lived a quietly beautiful life, was at the corner table in the bar in the market, most unbeautifully drunk but looking very happy, although there was now nothing quiet about him either.

  “It’s a world on its own,’’ said Charmian.

  “We’re later tonight.’’

  “The change comes round about nine o’clock. A few minutes can make all the difference. People start to come out then who never came out before.’’

  “Not even to eat?’’

  “I don’t suppose they do eat.’’

  “Maybe a blood transfusion occasionally?’’

  “Not too often, they like their vitality low.’’

  There were a group of night birds, pale, hunched, drawn, crouching over a table in the Picasso Coffee Bar, drinking black coffee and fingering cigarettes. Sex was indeterminate, age was unimportant. No one was talking, but occasionally a word was passed round with the sugar.

  “They don’t breed, you know,’’ whispered Charmian, “They just have unicellular fission.’’

  “Not so much fun,’’ said Chris, thinking of her life and a half.

  “They don’t have to be happy, or angry, or sad. All they have to do is take care they leave one behind just like themselves.’’

  “No joke there,’’ agreed Chris.

  Sitting in a corner behind the group, hardly visible from the street, was a lonely figure.

  “That’s the paper-eater,’’ said Charmian, preparing to walk on. “He eats papers.’’ The old man was seen to be tearing at the top of a cellophane bag with his teeth.

  “All the time?’’

  “I don’t know if he does it all day, it may only be a night perversion. I’ve seen him around in the day looking normal enough.’’

  “That must be an illusion; he must be rigid inside.’’

  “I don’t know if he actually swallows it,’’ said Charmian tolerantly.

  “The papier-mâché man,’’ said Chris. “And he’s not old.’’

  They walked on up the covered market which still smelt of fruit and vegetables and meat.

  “Very secret here,’’ said Charmian. “But not just yet. We’re too early.’’ She looked around her: she pointed to one stall. “ I came here about three in the morning once. That stall was loaded with bananas and there was a tiny, tiny little yellow man with them, an Asiatic of some sort, not Chinese, I don’t think, and he had a wife and some children all there too: they had a school attendance officer talking to them and saying why didn’t the children come to school. It seemed the maddest thing in the world and all at three o’clock in the morning.’’

  “And what were you doing th
ere at three o’clock in the morning?’’

  “Just walking,’’ said Charmian vaguely. “ Just walking. Like now.’’

  But there was no sign of Ralph Smith, nor of the girl. There was no meeting for them that night.

  That night Ralph Smith stayed home. He did not take the girl for a drive to see a field. As far as could be discovered he went home from his work and sat there. Whether he actually did this or not the police could not check. His mother was away from home that week, staying with one of her married daughters. She had packed her bag and gone, in tears, so a keen-eyed neighbour reported. A family crisis of some sort was on, so the same neighbour said. She had seen the signs and read the omen. “Not that they’d ever tell, those Smiths, as close as close. Close to each other and close mouthed to the rest of the world.’’ She added that the crisis had been going on for some time too. The other neighbours, on the other side of the house, were surprised about the crisis, hadn’t noticed anything and thought everything was going normally, just fine in the Smith household. So you had a direct contradiction: one lot of neighbours convinced that all was well with the Smiths and the other lot sure it was all wrong. But one clear fact was that Mrs. Smith had packed her bag and left, temporarily and for a holiday it was understood on one side of the house, and permanently and in despair it was assumed on the other. Each of the neighbours was a mirror to the Smith home, but each reflected a different image.

  They were beginning to build up a case history for Ralph Smith. He had not served in the war, although he was old enough, but the war was also old enough for this to be forgotten too, and the reason with it. He looked healthy, so it hadn’t been that. He had changed his job four times; he had worked on the railway, he had driven a van; he had worked in the hospital; and now he worked in the plastics factory on the London Road. His hobby was rifle shooting. As they knew.

  “He’s worked in the hospital and down at the railway, you notice,’’ said Charmian.

  “I notice,’’ said Chris. She stretched her feet out; they were still recovering from her long walk of the night before.