The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  ‘A wrong identification, as it turned out.’

  ‘Yes, I admit, all of us jumped to the wrong conclusion there. The dead woman was Madelaine Mason. We don’t know why she was killed but she could have recognized Drue in whatever guise she was going round and been killed. I don’t know the motive for her death, perhaps she tried some blackmail, but she was killed. I think she was imprisoned, knew she was about to be killed and tried to get out a message for help.’

  ‘So once again, you tried out Drue for size?’

  ‘Yes, I did, and I felt as though she fitted. I still feel that way. I think Emily knew Drue was around, possibly she recognized her, and let Drue see it. I think she is imprisoned in the way Mason was. I don’t know where the blood in Emily’s room came from, perhaps it was Drue, I’d like to think of her bleeding.’

  ‘There’s a lot of guesswork there.’

  Charmian bit into the sandwich again, she was feeling hungry now, as she defended herself. ‘Try guessing better.’

  ‘I think you are obsessed with her.’

  ‘Well, maybe. I suspected Jim Towers at one point, if we are talking about obsessions.’

  Humphrey spoke up with decision. ‘No. it’s too complicated. She could never have done all that.’

  ‘I didn’t say she did it alone,’ said Charmian slowly. ‘She may have had help.’

  ‘And about Towers … there you go again. He’s just an unhappy chap who’s at odds with his wife and perhaps more in love with Dolly than she is with him.’

  ‘She is in love with him,’ said Charmian.

  Rewley stopped eating. ‘No, not Dolly; she’s sorry for him, that’s all. You know what she’s like. She can’t see a lame dog without picking it up and carrying it along.’

  Charmian felt tired and beleaguered: they were not helping her. ‘Listen, have you forgotten where we were tonight? Albert has been killed, slaughtered, that’s the way it looks to me. He was at the school when we found the body and the child’s head, he had known the school and the family for years because he was at the same school as Emily and Eddy Bell, he must have known the Drue woman. Known what she looked like, anyway. He was terrified, so much so that he tried to mask himself.’ She swung round to face Rewley, ‘And he said to you that he saw her come out … I think he recognized Drue, that she knew it, and killed him.’

  She thought she had silenced them both, until she saw that Rewley had dropped asleep in the chair.

  She got up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said to her husband. ‘You wake him up and see he gets there too.’

  She climbed the stairs to her room; she was glad to leave both men behind her. No doubt in the morning she would be glad to see them again, but now she needed to be on her own. She felt exhausted, she was tired all over, her body ached, and her mind felt emptied.

  Muff was asleep on the bed, already stowed away for the night. Charmian patted her plump curving back as she threw off her clothes to prepare for a shower: it seemed necessary to wipe the night away. Everything she had removed she threw into the basket ready to be washed. There was no blood on her clothes but she felt stained.

  They were right, those two downstairs, she was taking it too personally. Obsessed? She wouldn’t accept that notion though, a little trace of male chauvinism there. Let them talk about obsession, they had the odd traces themselves. Humphrey was mildly obsessive about his country house, and Rewley, well he was certainly obsessed with his child at the moment, but one couldn’t blame him for that.

  She stood under the shower, letting the hot water play on her back, not blaming anyone and feeling gently benevolent. It was an old-fashioned bathroom which she had not done much to when she moved in, beyond repainting it and installing a shower cabinet at one end. The basin and bath had brass taps which had to be polished and the bath stood four-square on rounded legs; it was a comfortable, homely room in which you felt safe. In Charmian’s life, safety was a precious possession to be valued.

  It was a bathroom which demanded thick, soft white towels and a maid to polish the taps. Since she did not have a maid, she polished the taps herself. Sometimes. As she wrapped the towels round herself she could see that some time had been a long time ago. You could probably train a husband to polish brass taps.

  A cat you could not train, she thought, going back into the bedroom. She looked down at Muff sleeping peacefully. ‘ There is one thing I have forgotten, cat,’ she said aloud, ‘and that is what Albert said to Rewley, and I quote as told to me, that “there were other human remains”. And he was not talking about himself.’

  She stood there thinking; H. G. Horris had two sites of possible buryings, she hoped he would get on and investigate them.

  She awoke to the smell of frying bacon, not a smell often met with in that house, and someone whistling. The bed beside her was empty, but had been slept in, the cat had gone too. From the bathroom was the sound of water running.

  She put on her dressing-gown, avoided Muff who met her on the stairs, and went into the kitchen. Rewley was standing at the stove, turning bacon in the pan with a fork and whistling. Not a tune she could recognize, possibly no tune at all, just a cheerful sound.

  ‘How are you this morning? Did you sleep well?’

  ‘I feel fine, better than for a long while. I think I had that chap on my mind, and now he’s appeared, I feel better. A weight off my shoulders.’

  ‘Even if he is dead?’

  ‘Yes. terrible isn’t it? No accounting for the human mind … I shall call on Anny this morning and make some strong noises about the child, she’s had it all her own way long enough.’

  ‘I won’t argue with that.’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind me cooking some breakfast. Can I do you some?’

  ‘Make me some coffee. No bacon for me, though.’ She went upstairs, where her husband was just emerging from the bathroom.

  ‘You seem to have cured Rewley,’ she said to him.

  ‘He did it himself.’

  ‘Did you stay up all night?’

  ‘A fair amount of it.’

  She had dressed in a skirt and a silk shirt, it was going to be that sort of day, definitely not one for jeans. ‘And what did you talk about?’

  ‘That’s private between him and me.’

  She accepted this in a peaceable fashion. ‘All right, I won’t take offence. It seems to have worked, he’s down there eating, and what’s more, you can go into the kitchen and eat with him.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘I think I would call it an ultimatum, wouldn’t you?’

  She left him upstairs and went down to claim her cup of coffee. ‘You make a good cup,’ she said.

  ‘Kate taught me.’ He was beginning to be able to talk about Kate again, he had spent most of the night telling Humphrey about her and how he felt. The pain had eased. He had been so surrounded by women, kind, helpful women, but he realized now that there were times you needed your own sex. ‘Not a natural skill of mine, I used to buy the powder and put it in a mug, now I do the thing properly.’

  ‘Kate instructed me too … It was after she came back from Italy.’ Then she stopped talking, because Kate had gone to Italy with a man who was not Rewley.

  ‘It’s all right … I know all about that, Kate and I had it out ages ago, and after all I didn’t know her then. I had my own confessions to make, and perhaps I did not tell her every detail nor she to me. But she did hand over the coffee machine, and I guess she gave you yours too …’ He looked at the shining glass and chrome apparatus on the table.

  ‘She did.’

  Charmian got up. ‘ I must go now. It’s going to be a difficult day.’ She could hear Humphrey coming down the stairs, and from the sound of it, the cat as well. ‘Cook some more bacon, will you? They will both want some.’

  She called a goodbye up the stairs with a promise to telephone, and departed. Her car started with no fuss, which was a good sign.

  H. G. Horris was on the telephone as soon as she was
sitting at her desk, he might have spies on her. His voice was gruff, his bad-day voice. ‘So you’ve got another one for me.’ He could be a very aggressive man, but the thing was not to let him know you had noticed.

  ‘Is it one for you then?’

  ‘Since it’s Albert Batting, who worked for Eddy Bell and was there when the body and head was found, yes, I think it is.’

  ‘I suppose you interviewed him then?’

  ‘We did and got nothing. Claimed to have seen nothing much and known less … just went along in the day’s work … Maybe did know nothing about that business but he must have known something about something.’

  ‘You’ll have to dig deeper.’

  ‘Oh we will, don’t worry. Friends, enemies, contacts … trouble is, I don’t think he had many. Lived on his own in the cottage where he had lived with his mother. It’s run-down and neglected but he was a sitting tenant and couldn’t be turned out. Not that anyone wanted to, as far as I can find out … he had his odd little ways, like not washing too much, but he was thought to be harmless.’

  ‘What about his employer?’

  ‘Eddy Bell? Gives him a good record. Always came to work on time, even these last few days, and did a good day’s work. Not bright, but willing.’

  What an epitaph, Charmian thought.

  ‘There must be more,’ HG went on, ‘but we will have to find it. The girl Emily might be a help if we can find her.’

  And if she is alive, he did not add, but Charmian thought. ‘No news of her, I suppose?’ You would have had it, ma’am.’

  I stand corrected, Charmian thought, put in my place. Of course, I would have had it.

  ‘I suppose today you will be looking at the sites the helicopter identified as recent buryings?’ She had asked him to look for the prison for a live girl, but he had chosen to look for a grave. Perhaps he was right. ‘Go for the nearer one first.’

  ‘You have information?’

  ‘No, just a feeling.’ How could you say that a witch had said that the ‘dark, black place’ was near at hand? And if she had simply been reading Charmian’s own imagination, what was the point?

  ‘I’ll do my bit, ma’am.’

  There it was again, the sharp reminder that he knew her rank was above his. He really was a cagey, sour devil. But clever and wily and honest.

  Jumped up cow, thought HG. Over-promoted, pushed into high office, given powers I don’t know all about. He did know, or guessed as they all did, that part of her job was secret. That she checked on more than he knew of, and had contacts in powerful places. What took her to that committee in Knightsbridge so regularly? Ask questions and you get no answers.

  Now married to someone who was the same only more so. Even higher rank in an unspecified office. Not that he suspected her of marrying for this reason. He’d seen them together more than once and it was not only a marriage of mind and common interest. No, sex came into it. Well, good luck to her.

  He did not truly resent her, or dislike her in any personal way, she was a good-looking woman with a nice voice; his anger was routine and would have been levelled at any woman with more power than he had. Nor was he alone in this, his reaction was shared by more than half the Force. In his age group, anyway. Perhaps the younger ones were different. She was honest though, and straightforward, even if she phrased her words carefully, and HG acknowledged this as a virtue.

  Phrasing her words carefully, Charmian said: ‘ I’ll be in London for part of the day, but back by late afternoon.’

  ‘We’ll be looking for the knife … But it won’t be there.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, from what the police surgeon and now forensics say it was a special bit of steel, a knife of quality, and a knife like that has a pedigree that might be traceable. No, you don’t leave a knife like that lying around: he’s got it with him.’

  ‘I think you are right.’

  It was the sort of point on which HG could be relied upon to be right.

  ‘Where is the first site you are digging?’

  ‘Bridge Hill, by the old railway cutting, where the line went through Cheasey to Slough and then Paddington before the line was closed.’

  ‘I know it.’ A bitter, malodorous place where more than one body could be buried by the feel of it. ‘I’d come if I hadn’t got an urgent appointment. And the other place?’

  ‘Edge of the Great Park, this side, near Egham.’

  ‘Ah. Further away’ And more salubrious. Not far from Runnymede, where King John met the Barons and sealed the Charter. A better spot to lie buried altogether, and if the river rose high and the ground flooded, as well it might, probably safer for the killer. But quite an open spot, you’d have to be cunning to avoid being seen doing your spot of burying. ‘A bit public too.’ Unlike the gloomy recesses of the old railway line.

  ‘Yes, you’d need to be handy with your transport and your spade.’

  ‘I’ll phone you when I get back.’

  ‘Or I will see you get a message.’

  There it was again: the not too delicate hint not to interfere. But no one had ever said that HG was delicate. Certainly no one who had lived or worked with him.

  She had a long, and it had to be admitted, somewhat acrimonious day in London, so much so that she would have been glad to be back in Windsor if it had not been such a murderous spot. She had managed to telephone her husband very briefly. It had been a pleasure to hear a quiet, friendly voice, and their conversation had been for the most part private and personal, until the end.

  ‘And you spoke to your Superintendent?’

  ‘He’s not my Superintendent. I have my own little team, but he isn’t on it.’

  ‘And did you tell him to look for Margaret Drue?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell him anything. But I felt tempted to tell him to look for a well-built woman who might be dressed as a man. Only I didn’t. Might have been counterproductive, the way he is. All the same,’ she paused, ‘ I think he is looking. Only for a burial at the moment.’

  Then they went back to personal chat.

  She got back to her office in time to receive a message from the Superintendent. It was on her answerphone but it had only just come in.

  ‘It was a donkey.’

  There was no request to telephone the Incident Room, or rooms since more than one linked investigation was going on, but she did so nevertheless. HG answered her at once, he must have been expecting her call.

  ‘Tell me about the donkey.’

  She could hear the gust of his sigh over the line: ‘An aged beast, left over from the last fair here. A natural death from age. Buried tenderly with his bridle, so someone loved him. Not long dead, but a dead donkey.’

  ‘Reburied now, I suppose?’

  ‘The public health people say he shouldn’t be there, so I suppose he was tucked away there one dark night, about two weeks ago it would be, by someone who didn’t want to send him to the knackers’ or the town tip.’

  ‘And tomorrow?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes, tomorrow we shall start digging again, at the other site. Too late today and one dead donkey a day is enough.’

  ‘I’d like to come. If I may?’

  He knew she would be there, and the only way was to be gracious. ‘I’ll send a car,’ and then he paused, ‘ma’am.’

  Charmian grinned as she put the telephone down.

  She knew how he felt.

  It was evening but there was shopping to be done. Food shopping. Even Charmian, undomestic as she claimed to be, was the one who bought the food which fed her household. In fact, she enjoyed doing it. She looked at her watch: time enough, all the shops she dealt with stayed open until late several nights a week of which this was one.

  She parked her car in the large car park of her favourite store and selected a trolley. She wondered whom she would meet tonight of her friends and neighbours. One of the pleasures of this shopping was that she met people she was glad to see and only seemed to meet in the shops. All as busy
as she was, she supposed.

  The town had seemed quiet as she had driven through it from Maid of Honour Row, but she knew there would be policemen all over the town, asking questions about where Emily had been seen, and where she might be. Also about Albert … Poor Albert who had lived alone in his untidy home; she had read the first report before she came out shopping and it was already clear that there would be few to mourn him.

  ‘Neighbours say they hardly ever saw him, that he never touched the garden, which is knee-high in weeds and muck, and the dustbin stayed unemptied till they complained. On hygiene grounds, they won’t miss him. Personally either, as he never spoke. They don’t know what he lived on, but judging by what they saw falling out of the bin it was curry or fish and chips.’

  He didn’t shop here then, thought Charmian, as she pushed her trolley down the aisle with fruit on one side and vegetables on the other.

  ‘There is a dog, white and brown mongrel bitch,’ the report had gone on. ‘ Now in the police pound.’

  What had he fed the dog on then? Chicken curry and poppadams?

  She grabbed several varieties of lettuce, some avocados and a cucumber from one side, veered across the aisle to collect apples and pears.

  ‘Hi,’ said a protesting voice, ‘that was my toe … Oh sorry, Miss Daniels, didn’t see it was you.’ It was one of the girls from the large typing pool in the main police building; they knew each other by sight.

  ‘Sorry, my fault.’ Charmian apologized. ‘Thinking of other things.’ Like fillet steak, which she didn’t much like but husbands seemed to, French bread, and butter not butter substitute. Soap and washing powder, not bio because Mrs Grady who did the laundry did not care for it. ‘Brings me up in a rash.’

  She had to make her way to all these things. She could see Dolly’s head down the aisle, past the bread display, choosing biscuits. That probably meant she still had Jim Towers staying with her as Dolly was always on a strict diet which forbade biscuits.