The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  He knocked but came in before she answered, though he stood waiting for her to speak. Charmian stood up. ‘ Come in, sit down. Have some coffee?’ She looked at Dolly. ‘Pour him a cup. will you?’ She held out her hand. ‘ You’ve got the paper? Can I have it?’

  She bent over it while Dolly attended to the coffee and handed over a cup. Black, no sugar. They avoided touching each other and made no eye contact. So it was serious for both of them, then. She held this thought in her mind while she studied the photocopy, freshly done a few minutes ago judging by its pristine feel.

  Yes, there she was, a younger woman by some ten years but not so much changed. Better hair-cut and that figure in the background was surely Anny Cooper outside her own front door. Yes, she had stayed with Anny when she came up to give a talk and that was where the photograph had been taken. She remembered it now.

  ‘I don’t suppose it means much to you, ma’am, but do you see the date?’

  ‘August the first? And the child Alana was found dead in July? Is that what you are saying? That Margaret Drue who was missed from before that day was still alive and well afterwards?’

  ‘If she wrote that cry for help,’ said Dolly.

  Charmian looked at Jim Towers. ‘What’s the opinion?’

  ‘We think she did. It’s a starting point. If she didn’t, who did and why? It’s too many questions. Forensics may come up with something positive, linking the body and the newspaper cutting. Sometimes it happens.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Dolly.

  Towers turned to Charmian. ‘Could she have known you, or met you?’

  Ah, so that’s the question you came to ask? Or perhaps it was the one HG wanted to ask and put you up to it.

  ‘As far as I know we had no contact.’ Then, because this sounded bleaker than she wanted it to be, she said: ‘But she could have seen me or heard me, I did a few broadcasts and TV interviews about that time. She could have known my name.’

  ‘And, of course, you were not in Windsor at the time.’

  Now they were getting down to it.

  ‘I used to stay with my friend, Anny Cooper. I never stayed long, the odd weekend, but I was here quite often … But as far as I know not at the time the child was killed or immediately afterwards. I had some leave then, and I went away. I had been in Windsor when I was offered my appointment here, and that was the reason for the photograph.’

  Jim Towers finished his coffee and put down the cup; he placed it neatly so that the polish of the table at his elbow was not marred.

  ‘I was there,’ he said, awkwardly, as if he was shifting a burden from his shoulders and shifting it on to hers. Dolly made a slight protective movement with her hand.

  ‘I was still in the uniformed branch then, but I had ambitions …’ He smiled, revealing the taking young man he must have been. Was still, when less tense. ‘ I knew I’d make CID, it was coming, but I hadn’t got there yet. I’d just been married too.’ He shook his head. ‘ I think it was hard on her.’

  ‘It’s never easy.’ She was careful not to look at Dolly, wondering what was coming. ‘We’ve all been there.’ The platitudes were rising easily to her lips, which was not a good sign.

  ‘Not me,’ said Dolly, ‘careful not to marry.’

  This was true, Charmian acknowledged, but there had been enough love affairs to keep her mind occupied. From the deliberately blank look on Jim Towers’ face, she guessed that he had heard this remark before and had made his own riposte. Both parties had set out their stalls and knew what was on offer and what was not. It looked as though he would not, or could not, leave his wife.

  ‘There is a reason for the way I’m talking. I said I was there all those years ago, I didn’t tell you that I was the first police officer there when the child’s body was found. I was about twenty yards down the street when I heard screams, the front door was flung open and a woman … later I knew it was Nancy Bailey … came running out. She had opened a cupboard in a downstairs room and seen …’ he stopped. ‘ Well, I don’t know what she had seen, because she slammed the door shut and ran away, but she had seen enough to know it was Alana’s body. I opened the door wide: I was the first to see that the child had no head.’

  He paused again. ‘ I was sickened, frightened, and yet … interested … I had very little more contact with the case then, I was still in uniform, but I never forgot it. Why was the head cut off? What was so important about the head? I used to think about it, and I came to realize that for some killers the head was very important.’

  ‘Yes, I grant that.’ Charmian was watching his face, which was full of thought.

  ‘Some murderers seem particularly sensitive about it. Very conscious of the actual heads of their victims. Nielsen, for instance, cut off the heads of some of the men he killed and kept them in his refrigerator. Maria Madsen buried the heads in a circle round her little wooden house in the Hudson Valley. And each head had a penny on each eye. There is some suggestion that Christie tried and failed to cut the head from one of his victims. In one case, he may have covered the eyes. The Stavanger murderer cut the heads off his victims and gouged out the eyes. He cut the tongues too. PC Gutteridge had his eyes damaged. That gives us a clue, I think. Heads can talk and eyes have seen.

  ‘They are a symbol: think of the heads of those publicly executed in England prior to Victorian reforms. (I don’t mean the executions by the axe in the Tower of London, they were political) but the ordinary display of the heads of the dead at Tyburn. It mattered to have the head for public display. As with the use of the guillotine in the French Terror: there were other ways of execution, but cutting off the head said something very powerful.’

  ‘It certainly did,’ said Dolly, who seemed in no mood to be agreeable to her lover.

  Interestingly, he ignored her. ‘In murder, as opposed to judicial execution, I think the killer had superstitious feelings about the head which might shout his name. Whether he or she admitted to this feeling, I am sure it is what lies behind it. The head is dead but can speak.’

  ‘Didn’t they rot?’ Dolly again.

  This time she got an answer. ‘In England before those Victorian reforms took hold, the executioners used to boil up the heads first. They boiled them in a stove in what they called the “ Morbid Kitchen”.’

  Dolly was silenced.

  ‘You know your subject,’ said Charmian with some respect.

  ‘Yes. And that is why Superintendent Horris has asked me to concentrate on the head. Why it was cut off. Where it has been, and why it was placed with the woman’s body where it was found.’

  ‘Difficult questions.’

  ‘Yes. Were both child and woman killed by the same person and the head put in with her body for reasons we don’t know? Or did Margaret Drue in fact kill the child and was killed in her turn in an act of vengeance, the head being put in with her to display her guilt? Or did Margaret kill herself, and take the head to her death with her?’

  ‘Is it possible she killed herself?’

  ‘Not likely. I am just throwing up ideas. From the look of her, no, but the pathologists haven’t given a definite opinion yet.’

  Charmian said, very slowly and carefully: ‘I thought I saw signs that an attempt had been made to cut off her head.’

  ‘The Chief would like your help. He knows you are interested. He sent me to ask.’

  Charmian looked down at her hands. Fear the Greeks when they come bearing gifts was good advice when dealing with H. G. Horris. What was he after? Help possibly, observation at close hand by Jim Towers, very likely. Anything else?

  And what’s your motive, Jim? She caught Dolly’s intent gaze.

  ‘I’ve got a lot on hand,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘I realize that.’

  ‘I may not be able to do too much myself.’ Which was a lie, she was passionately interested, and would certainly be in there. ‘But we’re a team, I can’t give much time, but there’s Dolly now she’s back from her legal studies, and George R
ewley, and I have a couple of young assistants. Nick Elliot and Jane Gibson.’

  ‘I know the names, know Rewley of course. I’m sorry about his wife.’

  ‘Have you got any children?’

  He smiled, a tender smile, ‘A boy and a girl.’ Then he said, as if somehow the two statements were linked, ‘ I want you to come with me to see Emily Bailey.’

  In the outer office she could hear the voices of Amos and Jane, laughter, cheerful sounds, no tensions with them. Then a door banged and silence. She knew where they had gone: they were checking fraud in a chain of bookmakers.

  ‘When do you want to do this?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  Dolly stood up too.

  ‘I’ll leave you in charge, Dolly. You stay here. Mind the shop.’

  Dolly opened her mouth to protest, but shut it again. There were times you could argue with Charmian and times you could not. This was one such.

  ‘Meet me for lunch at the Fisherman’s Bar in Datchet and we’ll have a sandwich.’

  Dolly, who had fully intended to have a sandwich and coffee with Jim Towers, nodded bleakly.

  Charmian walked to the door, leading the way. Not my business to break them up, but I wouldn’t mind doing it, was her thought. ‘Love to Emily,’ called Dolly after her.

  Emily’s drab little room reminded Charmian of her own days in her first job after graduating. She had not gone straight into the police but had taken a job as a secretary. She had not distinguished herself, not helped her employer, a rising young MP, very much but she had taken away from the months they were together a healthy scepticism about public life, and typing skills which stood her in good stead. The MP had paid very little so she could afford only the most modest living space.

  Emily let them in. Her reaction to the detective was weary and unfriendly. ‘ Thought you’d be back.’ She made no apology for the disorder of the room where dirty cups rested on a pile of books which in turn sat upon a heap of clothes. A neglected pot plant in need of watering suggested that the owner of the room had once made an attempt at something better. ‘I ought to be at a lecture.’

  ‘Hello there.’ She managed to smile at Charmian. ‘It’s good to see you. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.’

  The girl looked as though she had not slept or even combed her hair since last seen. Charmian thought but did not say: I was brought. Don’t thank me.

  She was still amazed at the way she had fallen in so easily with Towers: he had force, that man. All of which was now about to be directed at Emily.

  ‘Can’t you work?’ Work had often been her support in time of misery. As well as drink, cigarettes and sex, but better not dwell on times past.

  ‘No.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Mind won’t function.’

  Try the other expedient. ‘Go out with the boyfriend.’

  Emily managed a smile. ‘ Can’t. Quarrelled.’

  ‘Now’s the time to make up.’ A good reconciliation did a lot for morale. She ignored Towers’impatient shuffle, but a look on Emily’s face warned her to keep off the subject of boyfriends. Leave it.

  She turned towards Jim Towers. ‘It’s your party.’

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Emily made the offer but showed no signs of being ready to do anything about it; she was slumped on her bed which doubled as a divan with the pillows heaped at one end. Charmian guessed the bed was unmade underneath.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Just as well, not sure if I’ve got any.’

  Emily, Emily, this is not a man to irritate.

  ‘I’m concerned with the head. The head worries me.’ There was an echo in his voice of the young man who had first found the headless body of the child Alana. But he looked every one of his thirty-odd years and also like a man who had quarrelled with his wife at breakfast and was not in love with life. ‘The head?’

  ‘I’m not overjoyed with it,’ said Emily. She drew her legs up on to the bed to crouch like a little cat. ‘Come on, get on with it.’

  Towers took her through her invitation to Charmian to go with her (this seemed to interest him, as in retrospect it did Charmian herself), the call at the house, then the finding of the body and the sight of the head.

  ‘You know all this,’ Emily was showing irritation. ‘I’ve told you.’

  Towers bent his head over his notes, which he appeared to be reading but Charmian suspected he was not. Well, she’d employed that trick herself. Unsettling your witness, it was called.

  ‘The old stove in the room, was it ever used?’

  Emily frowned. ‘It was lit sometimes in winter.’

  Towers nodded. ‘ The oven attached to it, was that ever used?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. It was a Victorian affair, I doubt if it could be used.’

  Towers nodded again. ‘I have to tell you … the head had been immersed in water,’ he said in a low voice. ‘And the water heated.’

  Emily stared at him. At last she understood. ‘Boiled, is that what you are saying? Cooked?’ She began to shake. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I must also say that there are traces of human body fat on the sides of the cooker.’

  Emily went white. ‘Then they must date a very long way back, to the days when the room was a kitchen.’ She shook her head as if dispersing the image of a cooking head. ‘You know yourself, you must know from the police records, that the house was swarming with police when Alana’s body was found. They would have checked everything.’

  ‘Perhaps not the stove, no need then.’

  ‘They would have looked inside.’ She swallowed as if there was a lump in her throat. ‘And then later the room was boarded up. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what’s so interesting,’ said Jim Towers, the head man. His eyes were bright and intense.

  ‘I can’t help you. I have no answers.’

  ‘No, that’s our job.’ He didn’t look at Charmian, but she got the impression he expected some input.

  I’m not a computer, was her reaction, you can’t just feed information my way and expect me to answer. ‘Someone got into this room,’ she said aloud. ‘Perhaps more than one person. Margaret Drue did not walk into the room on dead feet.’ Bringing a head with her, but this Charmian did not say aloud, and secreted on her body a message to Charmian.

  How did our paths cross? she asked herself. Did I see her one day? Not something I remember. But I meant something to her.

  Emily stretched out a hand and gripped Charmian’s wrist. ‘Save me. Think about the past. Remember something. Save me.’

  As they walked away, Jim Towers made his own ironic comment. ‘Save us, think about the past. Well, you might do that ma’am. Try to remember where Margaret Drue met you.’

  Chapter Three

  Charmian had plenty to think about as she walked away from Emily’s flat. She had refused the drive home offered by Inspector Jim Towers.

  ‘Save us,’ he had said ironically, immediately the door closed behind them, ‘Lives in a slum, doesn’t she? And one of her own making. Save us. Think about the past. That’s her advice, if you can call it that.’ His voice was cold.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much money.’ Charmian decided to be cautious because there was a passion rolling through this man that ought to be moderated. ‘It was save me, she said. I don’t think she was much worried about you.’

  ‘Thought that myself,’ he said, suddenly giving a grin and at once becoming younger and less tense. ‘Can’t blame her, poor kid. Not going to be good for her whichever way you look at it … Must have been her sister or her father that killed the child if it wasn’t Drue.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do. And more to the point, so does HG.’

  He held the door of the car open. ‘Sure you won’t take a lift?’

  ‘I feel like walking.’ And thinking. She did a lot of thinking when she was walking.

  ‘What do you make of her?’

  ‘Emi
ly? Difficult to say, I don’t know her that well, hard to know. A bit friendless.’ She thought about it. ‘Too much coffee and not enough food, it’s the way students are.’

  ‘She hasn’t had much of a life, that girl.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ And then there was the other girl, the child who survived, whom he did not mention but whom Charmian remembered. Clara Meldrum, was she called?

  ‘Take it from me, you don’t when you are dragging that sort of thing behind you.’

  ‘You could do with a trip to the past yourself. You found the child.’

  ‘I never forget it. Wasn’t my first body; that was a suicide in the Thames at Datchet, but it was the first child. I’ve seen other deaths by violence: one of the Cheasey little men (there was a group of very short families in Cheasey) was strangled by his brother, that wasn’t nice. Then a stabbing in Merrywick … you were in on that, ma’am.’ Charmian nodded, so she had been. ‘But the child was the first and the worst. Headless … Well, now we’ve got the head.’ Standing by the car door, he clenched his hands, opening and shutting the fingers. ‘And I’d give anything to remember something valuable, any little thing, and I can’t. I can’t remember a thing.’

  ‘I don’t know what I can do, but if I can remember anything about meeting Margaret Drue or even hearing about her, then you shall know. If you think it important.’

  ‘Anything, anything.’ He got in the car. ‘Sure I can’t drive you anywhere?’

  To Dolly you mean? No, we are lunching together and alone. But she took pity on him: ‘We’ve got things to talk over. Dolly’s still getting to terms with Kate’s death. So am I. We both loved her.’

  ‘I wish I had met her. I’ve heard what Dolly had to say about her. A blessed girl.’

  It was a good and unexpected phrase from him. And it was all he had to say on the subject. He gave a kind of half-bow to signify that he was going, but meant to go politely, got into his car and drove away.