The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

Baby said: ‘Come out of that dream, I’m talking to you.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You’d better … I had a friend of yours in here earlier in the week … Miss Eagle, she knows I know you and we often chat about you, I was doing her hair … well, her wig really.’

  Charmian was diverted. ‘I didn’t know she had a wig.’

  ‘Oh it’s not a secret, I’ve washed it before. Bright red. She doesn’t wear it all the time, she says it’s for ceremonial purposes.’

  Winifred Eagle and Birdie Peacock were friends and neighbours of Charmian in Maid of Honour Row where they shared a house round the corner from her. They were ladies of late middle age, but ageless as they said themselves, who practised a variety of white magic. They were friendly, charming witches of great kindness and equal eccentricity. ‘We are experimental with life,’ Winifred had said once to Charmian, who thought it an understatement. She admired them and was close to loving them for their generosity and integrity.

  She found herself wondering what the ceremony was for which the wig was required. Some carnal spring festival, perhaps. Winifred, although of great respectability in everyday life, was not inhibited in her religious or wiccer practices. Neither was Birdie, who celebrated nakedness with relish.

  ‘We were talking about the discovery of the body. There’s been a lot of talk, because all the locals remember the school and the Baileys, the girl Emily is still around. I don’t know her myself but her name came up as being still here. Talk, you see. There’s not been much detail in the papers but everyone’s been naming names and Drue was certainly top of the list. And there’s talk about a head being found?’ Baby looked at Charmian. ‘Well, you’re keeping quiet like you usually do, but there was a head, wasn’t there?’

  Charmian nodded.

  ‘I was dressing the wig on one of those wooden heads and that was how the subject came up; Miss Eagle had heard about the head and she said she’d like to talk to you about it, hadn’t seen much of you lately since your marriage. Heads were important, she said, and I agree.’

  Charmian nodded. You, Winifred Eagle and Jim Towers. ‘ I’ll look in.’

  At the door, the last thing Baby said, as if she had been saving it up: ‘She wondered if the head had been boiled.’

  A thought to leave you with. Charmian thought about it as she sat in her car. It was due time to visit Birdie and Winifred to pay the dog’s bill. Her dog Benjy lived with the white witches whose company and garden he preferred, but Charmian underwrote his expenditure, which, since he was accident prone and a big eater, was not small either in dog food or at the local veterinary surgery where he was known as Big Ben.

  She drove round there now, parking her car outside her own house and walking round the corner. Benjy was in the garden, he began to bark with enthusiasm when he saw her; he never forgot her, although Charmian sometimes wished he would.

  Birdie put her head out of the window. ‘ It’s Charmian, dear,’ she called back to Winifred.

  The front door opened, Winifred held out a welcoming hand. She was the plumper of the two women, usually the more conventionally dressed in a tweed suit and woolly shirt, whereas Birdie was wilder and colourful. Where Birdie got her clothes was a mystery; it may be she made them herself because her sweep of silk and brocade was often pinned and stuck together. Once a particular confection of gauze and chiffon had collapsed altogether, revealing that Birdie wore nothing underneath. But that had been in a heatwave. Today was chilly and she wore a red woollen shift to counterpoint Winifred’s brown and black check. Charmian felt wrongly dressed herself as she walked in, as if she was wearing camouflage and they were normal. She recognized that the witches were sending out strong thought-waves to which, alas, she was sometimes susceptible.

  ‘Thought you might be round. You got my message?’

  ‘Baby said something.’ Charmian bent down to pat Benjy’s head. From a high bookcase, the witches’ black cat, Ben, looked down with big yellow eyes. It was thought he resented the fact that Benjy had a name which so much resembled his own; both of them answered to Ben which caused trouble at feeding time, except that the witches usually summoned the dog with the words ‘Good Boy’, which call he was happy to answer.

  ‘Yes, I got the word.’

  ‘I thought Birdie and I could be helpful,’ said Winifred. She sounded grave. Her best witch’s voice. ‘We knew the school, and the whole family, even Emily who was so much younger. You know the gossip was that she was really Nancy’s child?’

  ‘I didn’t know that. Was it true?’

  ‘I think it was. But who the father was, I could not guess. Perhaps the driver of the car in the accident in which Nancy was lamed. She limped badly. Did you know that?’

  Charmian frowned. This sounded strange. ‘I had heard about her leg.’ Emily had told her.

  ‘She was good at disguising it, but on occasion it showed.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  Winifred shrugged. ‘Opinions differ: it might have been the result of the accident, she wasn’t born that way, she appeared that way after an absence, but she never explained and with her you learned not to ask. Years ago, of course, I hardly knew her then.’ She went to a side table, ‘ Take a whisky?’

  The witches whisked up herbal mixtures of amazing colours in the electric blender which they both drank themselves and pressed on their friends, but they made no secret of the belief that alcohol had its part to play and whisky was their preferred tipple, blended or a pale malt according to mood. Today, Winifred was offering a famous malt.

  ‘I won’t, thank you. What is it you were going to tell me?’

  ‘Heads are important. I want you to know that.’ Birdie said quietly, as she accepted whisky and added ice, ‘Don’t jump in, Win. You always go in with both feet.’

  ‘Best to be straight, Birdie.’

  ‘I know heads are important in murder cases, if that is what you are telling me.’ Charmian kept her voice down. ‘My last big case was one in which the body was in bits, as you very well know.’

  ‘Yes, poor girl, that was awful, that was just for the convenience of the killer, but that’s not what I am saying. There’s a psychic element to the severed head. I think of the heads in the Ruxton killing long ago … Dr Ruxton cut off the heads of the two women, and it was not just to prevent their identification.’ She held up a hand. ‘There was an element of that in it. Strands are mixed, but Jim Towers and I agree that there was something else. The same with the Cleveland serial murders …’

  ‘Oh, so Inspector Towers comes into it?’

  ‘He’s interested in the way we are.’

  Not quite, Charmian thought, you are two women and he is a serving police officer who has been interested in severed heads since he was first on the beat. Had his first direct experience. That builds up to a different picture in my mind.

  ‘What you’ve got to remember is that the killer fears the heads. They say something, the dead see him. The eyes can identify him. The killers of PC Gutteridge pierced his eyes so that their faces would not be there for all to see. Frozen, fixed in the dead eyes.’

  ‘You don’t believe that Nor does Jim Towers.’

  ‘It was what the killers believe, in the unconscious mind, perhaps consciously sometimes. The head is dangerous magic.’

  ‘So you think that was why the child’s head was cut off?’

  ‘Yes.’ Winifred said it simply; Birdie nodded sagely over her glass of whisky. ‘ Say it for us both, old girl,’ she said.

  Charmian had a sudden moment of illumination. ‘Did you know the child?’

  ‘Yes.’ Birdie answered this time. ‘We both did.’

  ‘Not well,’ said Winifred, ‘but we both used to meet her. I worked part-time in the library then, in the children’s room, and Alana used to come in. She was only a little thing but her parents were abroad a good deal so that she boarded in the holidays. So someone from school would bring her out for a walk or shopping and once or twice a week t
o the library. She liked books even though she could only just read. She would be left and then collected later. Sometimes when she was bored, and she was only little, after all, we would talk. She was so bright, observant and inquisitive. I encouraged her in that.’ Winifred looked at Charmian. ‘I felt that I might have encouraged her to observe too much and perhaps that was why she was killed.’

  Charmian did not answer.

  ‘Was a motive ever discovered? There wasn’t one, was there?’

  ‘So you think she saw or heard something which was why she was killed?’

  ‘I did feel responsible. Not at the time, it seemed too nebulous, but the idea grew on me, especially since talking to Jim Towers.’ She smiled at Charmian. ‘I don’t say I have felt guilty all these years, you know me better than that, but I have felt that I might have played a part.’

  ‘I see.’ And she did.

  ‘And the head was significant, you see. A child’s head, with eyes opened inquisitively, tongue speaking.’

  Charmian stood up. Time had passed rapidly. ‘I’d better get off. But thanks for telling me … if you feel guilty, any guilt at all, and want to help, there is one other young creature in trouble. Would you help with Emily?’

  ‘Yes.’ But Winifred frowned, she needed to know more. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Would you have her to stay? Just for a while, while the investigation gets under way. I don’t think she ought to be on her own.’

  Winifred and Birdie looked at each other. Then a nod passed between them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Winifred. ‘She can go in the spare room. She’ll have to look after herself a bit. Eat what we eat, not mind when we are out.’

  ‘A bit of company is what she needs.’

  ‘Will you tell her, or shall I?’

  ‘I will, I will telephone.’ And she would get Dolly to back her up.

  She drove back to her office, where she dialled Emily’s number. She didn’t have a line of her own, but there was a telephone in the hall outside her room and Charmian had noted the number.

  A young male voice answered, and said yes, he would bang on her door. In a short while he was back: ‘She’s not in, she isn’t in much, but she is usually home in the evening a bit later.’ He seemed to know her movements. ‘Shall I tell her you called?’

  ‘No, I’ll try again later.’

  She telephoned her own home in Maid of Honour Row, but Humphrey was not yet back. They had an evening engagement in the Castle so she left a message saying that she would be back in time to change and go. Would he book a table for dinner afterwards?

  She sat thinking, evaluating her day. Had it been a waste of time?

  No, she had got a sense of what might have been happening in the deaths of Margaret Drue and the child Alana. The killer of the child and her victim, was that what they had in the cupboard? The head of the child accusatory of Margaret Drue and placed there for that reason? Then who was the self-appointed avenger, who did what a policeman could not or should not, actually kill? Are we accusing Jim Towers, she asked herself. What rubbish, stop it.

  I suppose we are an evaluating outfit here, she argued to herself. I see all the records, check them and pass judgement. I am a kind of secret eye running over all crime cases in my jurisdiction, I have four investigators helping me: Dolly, Rewley, Nick and Jane, but I provide the power.

  The telephone rang, interrupting her thoughts. Possibly it was Emily. Good, she wanted Emily in a kindly and watchful household. But to her surprise it was Rewley. She started to tell him she had seen his daughter, and how was he, and he must have as long a rest from work as he wanted. But he broke in: ‘I have an informer. It relates to the finding of the body and the child’s head. I want permission to use.’ He didn’t say him or her, unlike Rewley who was usually so open.

  ‘Right, go ahead, you have my permission. Usual rules.’

  ‘No money has passed between us, nor will just yet, but I will keep the rules.’

  ‘Can you say anything, give me any details?’ She always allowed her team to work without a nagging supervision from her, but this time she felt she would like to know more.

  ‘I would rather not. Not yet.’

  ‘I need to know something.’

  There was a pause. ‘My informant …’ he hesitated.

  ‘Go on. What does he say?’

  ‘Did I say he?’

  ‘He, she or it,’ said Charmian irritably. ‘Give me it.’

  Rewley seemed to be speaking carefully. ‘My informant spoke of human remains …’

  She hesitated, then: ‘ OK, fine. Go ahead.’ The conversation ended there with no more talk between them. Rewley was back to work with a vengeance. Not perhaps the right word to use in this context, with revenge so much in her mind.

  Chapter Four

  Charmian went home to the house in Maid of Honour Row without having got in touch with Emily. But she had done one thing: she had driven past the house in Flanders Street where she saw a uniformed constable on guard. From the number of cars parked along the road, and the long black van at the end of the row of houses, she understood that Jim Towers had made this his Incident Room, at least for the time being.

  She sat there thinking. Was she really coming to believe that a young police officer could have killed in revenge? No, not revenge, as an act of retribution because he had seen the dead child. It was a mad thought, surely not to be encouraged.

  Just for a little while, she did encourage it: she liked Jim Towers but he aroused strong and worried reactions inside her. Was he an obsessive person who could kill? And if so, there were big questions.

  Where had he got the head from? And how had he found it and how killed Margaret Drue? No, it was madness.

  She sat watching because there was a lot going on around the black van. A uniformed constable arrived and walked in, followed by a woman police officer, neither of whom she recognized. Two men in plain clothes emerged and got into one of the cars and drove off; she didn’t recognize them either. Then Jim Towers came down the steps of the van, on his own. and stood looking around before walking into the house.

  Now what’s up.

  But he was out soon, striding towards his own car which was parked up the road. He sat for a minute, then drove off. He passed Charmian without noticing her. Well, good luck for you, she thought.

  So she continued to drive home. Home is where the heart is, but she asked herself if her heart was really there or in her office. Which would make the office her true home. And this was what her enemies and some of her friends said. It was a hard word, but it might be a true one.

  Yet when she got to Maid of Honour Row, her mood changed. The house felt warm and welcoming, Muff the cat observed her from a comfortable seat in the kitchen and Humphrey opened the door to her wearing the striped silk dressing-gown from Turnbull and Asser which had been her birthday present when she had not known him very long. Since she knew now that he really preferred his old woollen one which had seen long service, she took this kindly.

  He went to the kitchen. ‘Want a drink? I’m having one.’

  She threw her coat over the table, which was clean, empty and tidy which was not how she had left it that morning, so Humphrey must have got to work. Nice to have a house-trained husband.

  ‘No, thank you.’ She kissed him. ‘I’ve got a telephone call to make.’

  No response from Emily. Even the helpful young man left the phone unanswered. It didn’t mean that no one was there, it meant that no one was bothering. Let the phone ring, someone else’s business. Emily herself might be there.

  She came back to Humphrey. ‘I’ll have that drink now.’ As he poured it, she said: ‘Nice dressing-gown.’

  ‘Yes,’ he handed a cool long glass over. ‘A woman gave it me.’

  ‘Forward creature.’

  ‘I wanted her to be.’

  They looked at each other. ‘It wouldn’t matter if we were late for this party,’ she said.

  ‘Not a bit.’

&nbs
p; She picked up her drink. ‘I’ll bring my drink with me, it always tastes better in bed.’

  Later, but not too much later, because there was this royal party, she said, head on the pillow: ‘Do you ever have a wispy feeling about something, that is yet good and strong at the same time?’

  He didn’t quite understand her, but wanted to be helpful. ‘Often,’ he touched her bare shoulder, ‘ and it’s usually about you.’

  ‘This is about murder,’ Not a nice thought in bed.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know. It gets better, doesn’t it? I thought marriage might make it boring …’ She did not finish the sentence. ‘I suppose we had better get up.’

  But she did not move, and neither did he. ‘Mustn’t be later than the Queen.’

  ‘She would understand.’

  ‘Think so? We could hardly explain: Sorry, Ma’am, but we were otherwise occupied.’

  They were late for the party but the Queen did not notice. She was in a group of four, talking happily, and did not turn her head as they slid through the door.

  ‘She noticed,’ whispered Charmian. ‘ I believe she always does.’

  Their hostess walked across to greet them. ‘You’re late.’ Frivolous and light-hearted in many ways, Lady Mary took her duties seriously. Especially since she had recently married and was now Lady Mary Dalrymple; her husband was a serving soldier in a Highland regiment. No money, hut a marvellous pedigree and lots of ambition. He was at present serving abroad. Lady Mary was tall, and beautiful in a straightforward English way with blue eyes and straight fair hair.

  ‘Work,’ pleaded Charmian, trusting her lie did not show.

  ‘I know. I made your excuses. HM is interested in the case. She wants to talk to you.’

  Charmian rolled her eyes. ‘Surely not?’

  ‘Have a drink first, you will need it, HM will put you through a close questioning. Better get rehearsed.’ Lady Mary handed a glass of champagne to Charmian and whisky to Humphrey whom she knew well, and had indeed known longer than Charmian and had considered falling in love with him, only there was her soldier boy to whom her heart, if not always her body, had remained reluctantly faithful.