The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  Smell, really.

  Since H. G. Horris was a committed non-smoker, urging the same in all who worked for him and with him, this room was not so heavily laden with cigarette smoke as some she had known. But it didn’t smell of flowers, either. Instead, it smelt of men sweating slightly, with a tinge of aftershave.

  Someone had been brewing coffee, she could smell that, and there was a mug of it on HG’s desk, although it looked cold and had a skin on it. He was standing by it, talking to a shirt-sleeved detective whose face she knew. Farmelow, she thought, was his name, and his rank that of sergeant. He knew her too, and straightened himself and put on an alert, friendly look which might be assumed. She was not always welcome.

  HG swung round and smiled. It was one of his smiles into which you need not read too much of friendliness, more a desire to get on with the job by settling for easy relations. He could be aggressive and quarrelsome, as she very well knew, but he was not about to show that side to her at this moment. Possibly never, but equally possibly he could do so if he felt she was in his way: he knew how to fight for his territory. But so did she, she reflected; she had struggled her way up the career ladder, receiving bruises as well as handing some back.

  You never warmed to HG, but you did trust him. Now he came forward, not introducing Farmelow, who knew his place and melted away into it: he was a background figure at the moment although what he had been saying to the Superintendent might have been important, and she thought it had been.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ and HG drew her into a corner where two chairs had been strategically placed. ‘I expect you are thinking what I am thinking: why was the woman planted there, in that cupboard in that basement in that house?’

  ‘Not to mention why was the child’s head there too.’

  ‘Exactly. When it looked as though the dead woman was Margaret Drue, then the answer looked easy. Well, easier: it was a revenge killing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charmian nodded. ‘And either the dead woman had the head of the child and it went in with her as the child’s killer or her killer’ … she paused … ‘her killer somehow had or discovered the head independently and put it there.’ Another pause. ‘ But if the dead woman is not Drue, as now appears, why was she killed, and why put there with the head? It complicates things, doesn’t it?’

  ‘She may have been the child’s killer with Drue innocent. No trace of Drue yet,’ he added gloomily. ‘ Nor, for that matter, of the girl Emily, but I am more hopeful there. She hasn’t been gone long, somehow I think she will be back. It was human blood in the room, by the way, that was what Farmelow had for me there. And her blood group, but the blood group of a lot of other people too.’

  HG did lumber up to a point, Charmian thought, so she put it to him first. ‘But this must be what we are all thinking: the woman in the cupboard has to have had some connection with the child Alana and the school.’

  HG nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘And there are several women connected with the school, who worked there or were married to those who did. But only one of them is not around now.’

  HG nodded. ‘Madelaine Mason.’

  Madelaine Mason, who had been the matron and taught at the school.

  ‘I thought of her too,’ said Charmian. ‘What happened to her after the murder? The school closed, she no longer had a job.’

  ‘We are working on it. Her address was on the files, 3 Waverly Street, Merrywick, but she has not been there since two weeks after the school closed. There was a note in the file that she was doing teaching for the local council schools.’

  ‘Who must know her movements.’

  ‘She last worked for them over nine years ago,’ said Horris tersely. ‘In fact, just about the time she left her rented flat in Merrywick and left no address.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘And so far,’ said Horris, ‘ we have no further tracing of her.’

  ‘So it could be her in the cupboard?’

  HG nodded. ‘My guess too. We are working on it. But I have got a photograph of her. In colour, too.’ He leaned across the table and extracted a photograph from a manila folder.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘She left it behind, unpaid for, at a local photographer’s.’

  He had been hard at work, Charmian thought, and deserved a slight play of smugness around his eyes.

  It was the photograph of a tall, well-built woman in early middle age, with well-cut hair; she was wearing a pleated, striped skirt in light apricot with a white shirt. The hair, Charmian remembered, had been cut by her own friend and hairdresser, Baby: Beryl Andrea Barker.

  ‘We think that the face and body shown here match with what we have. We think we have a match.’

  Charmian nodded slowly, still studying the photograph. ‘ I remember skirts like that, we were all wearing them that year, stripes in different colours. I had one myself in dark blue.’

  She stood there while she looked at the picture and assembled her thoughts. The dead woman had held a piece of newspaper secretly about her person, she had written on it what sounded like a plea for help. The newspaper was not absolutely fresh from the press in all probability when she wrote on it with a pencil; it had been folded and refolded more than once. An old scrap, possibly in any handbag or briefcase she might have carried. None had been found, though. So a newspaper where she was at the time?

  That was the point, wasn’t it? Where she was. You do not use an oldish scrap of newsprint when you have free access to any better. Charmian followed the thought through: she did not have free access, she was not free. She was imprisoned. Madelaine Mason had been imprisoned before being killed.

  Charmian looked down and seemed to see that prison: small, cold and dark. Yes, it must have been dark, but not totally without light because the dead woman, Madelaine Mason, if it was truly she, had been able to scrawl a message on a piece of paper. My message, to me, Charmian thought. So either the imprisoned woman had had the paper on her, or she had found it where she was shut up; in the same way, either she had the pencil about her person or there had been one where she could use it.

  Two things followed logically from that: she had not been tied up, and she had not been watched. Or not all the time. That meant, then, that the prison was very safe. It must have been terrifying, and she knew that the woman had been terrified.

  She raised her eyes to H. G. Horris. ‘She was a prisoner, and I think she knew she was going to be killed.’

  ‘I’d have to be convinced about that,’ he said sceptically. ‘ It’s guessing, questions to be answered there.’

  ‘Then ask the questions and try to get answers. Where was she imprisoned? Where was she killed? Was it where she was imprisoned? And was it where her body was found?’

  A lot of questions inside questions there, she thought, and still left was the biggest of all. Why was she killed?

  ‘For sure she isn’t going to sit up and tell us,’ said HG somewhat sourly.

  ‘No, but her body might.’ Charmian couldn’t keep out the crack of the whip in her voice. Let him be obstructive and dour, but let him get on with it. ‘Get all forensic traces – shreds, fibres, hairs, bits of skin, traces of colour off her clothes, hair, hands.’

  HG admitted she was right: ‘Yes, I’ll consult the miracle workers.’

  ‘One more thing …’ she paused, but better get on with it. She wished she could have introduced it easily, that it had sprung naturally out of the conversation, because she knew that he did not like Rewley. Rewley was neither liked nor trusted in that group, as being too clever by half, and able to lip-read, which naturally made him suspect in that secretive society. She took the plunge. ‘George Rewley …’ and at once she saw HG’s face change … What’s coming now, she could read, so let him have it. ‘He has information about more human remains …’

  ‘Where?’

  This was the weak part. ‘Not known yet, but he expects to find out … he believes, we believe, it is connected with this cas
e.’

  HG let out a long melodious whistle, he was a musical man, which he then turned into a low groan. ‘ Isn’t it marvellous? Get one corpse and they start coming out of the woodwork. Who is it this time, not the girl Emily?’

  ‘Well, we hope not, don’t we?’ said Charmian in a level voice.

  ‘I’m counting on her being alive.’

  ‘I hope she is, but she has to be found.’

  ‘Sometimes girls like that just reappear,’ said HG cynically.

  ‘So they do, but not always … Let me say something. I think that the dead woman was kept imprisoned somewhere. Look for somewhere small, with not much light, but enough to read and write by, a room tucked away where no one could hear a voice calling for help. Possibly a shed or a garage, but not too near people. Yet near enough to Flanders Street so that the woman and the head, don’t forget the head, could be put there. She might not have been dead … As the head had been kept under refrigeration, the place I am imagining can’t be out in the wilds … It will be in Windsor, possibly somewhere in the centre of the town … that’s what I think. Look for that place.’

  Horris thought without pleasure of the resources he had at his command, not too many men when all was said, and he thought too of the operations already on hand: a robbery in the Castle (where no robbery ever should happen), an attempted rape in the Great Park, a mugging on the down platform at the railway station, and sighed. ‘We can try.’

  ‘And when you find it,’ she said crisply, ‘that will be the prison where Madelaine Mason was held.’

  ‘Have a go,’ conceded Horris.

  ‘And it will probably be where Emily is now.’

  Chapter Eight

  So that was how it was going to be, thought Charmian. HG was doing his best, but didn’t want her interfering; nor did he think she was being helpful. She walked back into her office in a thoughtful mood, hoping that the short walk back would clear her mind and lead to fruitful thought. But it did not.

  When she considered the town of Windsor with its many old mansions and houses, all with outbuildings of differing sorts, the many coach-houses and stables, not to mention garages and sheds, she could understand his gloom at her request for a search. As well as Windsor itself, there was the outer suburb of Merrywick and going towards London that part of the conurbation nearest Windsor which was Cheasey. In Cheasey anything could happen and anything be hidden. One just had to hope the killer of Madelaine Mason was not an inhabitant of Cheasey.

  No, she thought, it was not the style of a true Cheasey man to dispose of his bodies in Windsor; if he had one it would be safer in Cheasey. Indeed, there were probably any number of bodies laid about in Cheasey that she knew nothing about. Never would know anything with any luck.

  All the same this was not a Cheasey murder. They were a rough but straightforward lot there, their murders had no subtlety and were easily traced home. In fact, since the criminal circles of Cheasey (and there were precious few others) were made up of clan groups, the murders usually were what you could call home or domestic murders: they killed each other. Brother, cousin, spouse, it made no odds, Clytemnestra would have felt quite comfortable in Cheasey and, indeed, found strong competition.

  No, this was not a Cheasey murder. It was complicated and terrible and dark. A Windsor murder, in short. Windsor was a town with a history into which this crime could be fitted.

  She stood up and walked around the room, touching her books, looking out of the window.

  Place was important, she was sure of that, the place where Madelaine had been imprisoned and where she had been killed, where the head had been kept, this place was important. Hard to locate though: certainly she had blithely presented H. G. Horris and his team with a difficult problem. She wasn’t sure if he was really going to look, or not hard, nor could she blame him. She could pull rank and force to be very active, but in her time she herself had had insuperable problems thrust at her on a plate. As a consequence, she knew she was not going to push HG.

  Think about it yourself, dear, she said. Think of it as a historical or an archaeological problem … You are Schliemann looking for a site of Mycenae and the grave of Agamemnon; you are Arthur Evans searching for the Minoan shrines of Crete. You are that young man you met at a party in London who is trying to find out if and where the Romans bridged the Thames. You are a group of early medievalists trying to prove that the Vikings landed in North America. Eric the Red, step forward.

  No, it was no good, her mind was not working that way today; worse, she had the uneasy impression that it never would on this particular problem. Or perhaps it was true what people said: that happy married life, or even worse, motherhood, addled the brain.

  She turned back to work, she would not be brain-damaged. In such a mood it was best to stick to routine. And after all, she need not be involved in the case.

  Later, she put down what she was reading, she was making nonsense of it anyway, a report of London’s traffic as a security problem. Damn it all, she was involved. The woman who died had called on her for help. Ten years too late, it was up to her to deliver it.

  She went to her window to look out. She couldn’t see much of the town, but there was the top of the Castle with the Royal Standard visible to those with long sight, which meant that the Queen herself was in residence. A helicopter would be the thing, she thought, sailing over the town, observing all likely buildings, then photographing them. The force had a helicopter but it was usually in use checking either traffic or royal security. The Queen had her own fleet, of course, perhaps she would lend one.

  The idea diverted Charmian for a moment, and she considered it with amusement. There it would go, the royal helicopter, imperially furnished, possibly emblazoned with the royal arms, seeking out a murderer. The headlines in the newspapers would be a delight. She had no doubt that Her Majesty would agree if the request ever reached her, but of course it would not. Charmian knew only too well the many layers of authority that would step in to bar such a request. In a matter of life and death, the answer would certainly be yes: to hunt down a killer’s prison, probably no.

  One could not be quite sure, nothing about the Court could ever be taken for granted, but Charmian thought she had the psychology right.

  She went back to her desk. If misery sharpened the wits, then her best bet at the moment was Rewley, with Dolly Barstow and Jim Towers as runners-up. Towers, of course, was off the case, and Dolly was only on it if she asked to be, and Charmian agreed.

  With a special request of H. G. Horris for co-operation? This he would be obliged to give but might do so slowly and grudgingly. She knew the man and knew him to be honest, not very open-minded (although sharp-eyed and observant when it so suited him) and not in favour of women operating on his patch.

  She had heard, though, that he liked Dolly Barstow, and that Dolly had been known to say kind words about him.

  Perhaps it would be quicker and easier to ask Winifred and Birdie for a bit of co-operative witchcraft: crystal-gazing or a reading from the tea-leaves. And didn’t Winifred go in for a bit of hypnotherapy? No laughter, please. It was never a game to them, they were too serious and high-minded for that. Birdie might consent to do a reading when holding a scrap of material from the victim or to join hands with Winifred and try some telepathic communication. But no, she could send her thought-waves out into the blue and Charmian had no idea where to direct her.

  She might try looking for Emily that way. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. Charmian was a natural sceptic, but she had to admit when Muff the cat had been lost once, she had been sufficiently worried to hold hands with Birdie and Winifred while concentrating on Muff. She herself had seen nothing, but Birdie had seen a deep hole with wood on the top, which had turned out to be a neighbour’s coal-hole (the Maid of Honour Row houses were so old-fashioned that they still had coal-holes, even though life elsewhere had long since moved on to bunkers and even oil central heating), and Muff had indeed been in the coal-hole, cross, hungr
y and all her own fault for mouse hunting without due care. The dead mouse, partly eaten, was in there with her.

  True it was, that Charmian might have found the cat in the coal-hole anyway since Muff was letting out shrill cries at intervals, but she had given Birdie thanks for setting her on the way. Birdie had received the thanks most regally too. Now she thought about it, had not Birdie insisted she hold a few of Muffs hairs (Muff left them all over the place, so there was no problem there) in her hand?

  Charmian pushed the idea aside. This was not how the well-trained police mind thought. She could imagine HG’s face if she said: well, my private witchcraft source tells me that …

  She never finished the sentence, because there was a knock on the door, which opened at once before Dolly Barstow. Dolly did, it is true, hover on the threshold for a second as if she knew that was not how you burst in on ma’am even if she was your friend, but she was in a hurry and did not mind showing it.

  ‘I was thinking about you,’ said Charmian, swinging round in her chair in welcome. ‘Perhaps there is something in telepathy … I was thinking of sending you over Windsor in a helicopter.’

  Dolly ignored this, taking it as a flight of fancy. ‘Jim’s been given leave, forcible leave … with a suggestion he see his doctor and claim a rest on medical grounds. I’m furious.’

  ‘I can see you are.’ Charmian swung her chair back, no longer feeling so welcoming.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with it?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Not quite true; she had not made the suggestion, but she had certainly concurred in the idea that it was a good thing to keep Jim Towers away from too close a connection with Alana’s head, just as you would keep an adolescent schoolboy, not quite settled in his sexuality, away from the part of Juliet in a school production of Shakespeare’s tragedy of young love if Romeo was too taking a young lad. Some separations are made for the good of everyone.