The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  ‘And what about friends and neighbours who came to what you called your street party?’

  ‘They have been questioned, but I don’t know what they added. Their part was really general concern for a terrible crime, but they were in no sense involved. Not even as much we were.’

  ‘Not involved,’ said Mrs Yeldon, putting her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

  ‘Only as friends, my dear, and that did involve us … no man is an island and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, you are too good for your own good,’ said his wife, letting her arm fall away as if she did not quite mean it. There was irritation in her voice. ‘Are you coming in, my dear?’

  ‘No, just let me know if anything comes to mind.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Anything from the past that strikes you, anything about Emily now. Anything your friends might tell you … they may say something to you that they would not tell the police … Just let me know.’

  Mrs Yeldon looked thoughtful. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘And I want you to be sure that the police are really pulling out all the stops to find Emily … wherever she is. The Superintendent says he will pull Windsor down stone by stone if he has to.’

  ‘I don’t think the Queen would like that,’ said Mrs Yeldon. ‘But I am glad he is really trying, we did begin to wonder how seriously he took her absence.’

  ‘Oh very seriously. Very seriously. She is the key to everything.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charmian assured her. ‘Once Albert was found, Emily’s position came into perspective. They knew each other, those two. Albert had something he wanted to say.’

  The two Yeldons nodded their heads together at the same moment.

  ‘Emily has to be found, then she can tell us what she knows.’

  ‘Do you mean she is hiding so that she cannot tell?’

  ‘Well, it has to be thought about.’

  ‘You are not saying she killed Albert? Oh surely not?’

  Charmian said: ‘As to that, I cannot know yet, but she has knowledge.’

  ‘What about the blood, her blood?’

  ‘It is easy to spill blood,’ said Charmian. ‘She may have cut herself, or someone may have done it to her …’

  ‘What is it you are trying to say, Miss Daniels?’

  ‘Would you protect her, Dr Yeldon?’

  ‘No, certainly not, not beyond a point.’

  ‘Have you reached that point?’

  ‘I have no idea where the girl Emily is,’ he said solemnly. ‘You must believe me.’

  ‘I do believe you,’ said Charmian. ‘I just wanted to be sure … in that case, Emily is either dead or imprisoned.’

  Dr Yeldon put away his spectacles, he no longer wished to see too clearly. ‘That is a horrible idea.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charmian, ‘which is why we must all help the police find her … Will you speak to your friends? See what they know.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Yeldon. ‘How could they?’

  ‘But someone does, someone, somewhere, knows everything.’

  Dr Yeldon began to shake. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Daniels, your ladyship, I mean?’

  ‘Miss Daniels will do,’ said Charmian, her voice unpromising.

  The shakes grew worse. ‘I think I will have one, yes, a nice hot cup of tea.’

  His wife touched his arm. ‘You go in, I will follow.’ She watched her husband as he shuffled off, hanging on to the wall as he passed. Then she turned to Charmian. ‘What was all that about?’

  Charmian was silent for a moment, framing her words carefully. ‘I think that your husband knows something, or his friends do, and I wanted to shake it out of him.’

  Mrs Yeldon looked grim.

  ‘I never liked the story of the street party so called.’

  ‘You were not there.’

  ‘Didn’t like what I heard, I don’t think you did.’

  ‘You have frightened an old man. That’s cruel.’

  ‘I am cruel,’ said Charmian, ‘when I have to be.’

  She closed the gate behind her, wondering, as she walked to her car, if she had done what was required. Looking back before she drove away, she saw that Mrs Yeldon had disappeared into the house.

  She drove herself away slowly, there was a lot to think about, but as she drove, other thoughts arose: as well as being a career police officer, she was a wife whose husband needed feeding. As did the dog and cat, but she bought food for them in bulk in large packets and tins. There was no tin labelled: Husband Food, carefully prepared.

  So she parked the car and sped down Peascod Street on foot to her favourite food store, picking up some tights on the way in. She was pushing her trolley down the fruit and vegetable aisle when she banged into Rewley. Literally banged in, for he was pushing his trolley one way and she was shoving hard in another.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Silly question when his trolley was piled high with food. At least he was eating, she thought.

  ‘I have to look after myself,’ he said, ‘and anyway, I’ve got Dolly and Jim Towers coming to eat tonight. Got to do my bit, he’s wearing Dolly out, there all the time. I wonder she puts up with it. Sorry for him, I suppose.’

  ‘She likes him.’

  ‘That too, of course.’ He grinned. ‘She always was one for lame dogs. But he’s a decent chap. And I want to talk to him myself. See what, if anything, he has got to say about Albert … when they got his clothes off, his back was raw, as if he had been whipping himself. That was how I smelt blood that first time.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘I think he did it himself. Self-flagellation, it happens. He wanted to punish himself.’

  ‘Albert?’

  ‘Sure. I am going to discuss it with Towers, the sort of thing he might know. He’s a good man, he’s really going to make something of that book, he’s got the title lined up: The Morbid Kitchen. Great, isn’t it? He tells me that the Institute of Criminology in London think their press might publish it. I want to talk to him about it all, see what ideas he has.’

  Charmian was sceptical about the book. Was he a scholar? ‘At least it takes his mind off his wife.’ Then she realized what she had said. ‘Sorry, clumsy of me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to have my mind taken off Kate. While I think about her, she is still alive. But don’t play down his book, he’s got some interesting ideas; he’s working on the relationship between executioners and surgeons … historically speaking, of course, And that’s what I want to talk to him about, might give me some ideas on these terrible murders. Well, I must push on, I want some chicken …’

  Charmian finished her own shopping, preoccupied with other things.

  When she got home, she telephoned the Incident Room and asked to speak to the investigating officer. HG if he was there or the next man down. She did not know the voice on the line, but the man recognized her. ‘Ask the pathologist working on Albert’s body if the knife used was a surgeon’s knife.’

  Later that evening, after a quiet meal with her husband, she got the answer yes, it was a knife. There was a bit of extra information too: the same knife could have been used on the child’s head and on Madelaine Mason. As to Margaret Drue, the work had not yet been done on her.

  In the middle of the next day, after a peaceful night with her husband, a way of life she was beginning to appreciate (eating too much though, and certainly drinking too much wine, she had better do some serious swimming), she had a telephone call from HG himself.

  ‘The girl has turned up.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  ‘Not sure if I am. Where was she?’

  ‘She was found sitting in the park on a bench not far from where Albert was found. Interesting, eh?’

  ‘What does she say?’

  ‘Says she can remember nothing. Knows her name, and that is all.’

  ‘What state is she in?
’

  ‘Dirty, and her clothes are torn. Bit of blood on them. No bruises that I can see but the doctor still has to examine her; his first reaction is that she has been drugged. There is a deep cut in her arm, which might be where the blood came from. Might represent a suicide attempt.’

  ‘Or the blood might just be for decoration. For painting or writing, People have been known to use it. Primitive man, early hominids.’

  HG absorbed the remark, which he did not care for, either as a joke or as a comment on the human race, saying drily: ‘Well, she is not a hominid or a primitive man and whether for decoration or for suicide, she has a wound and may have others. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘I would like to see her.’

  ‘Come round, she is in the Strait Road hospital.’

  ‘What state is she in?’

  There was a pause. ‘Hard to say, the doctor says not bad physically … but she’s not herself, don’t know what happened to her or what she’s been through, perhaps you will make it out, but she’s far away. On a cloud. I’m not sure if she really knows who she is.’

  Emily was crouched in a chair with her head leaning on the back; her eyes were open but not seeing much; she looked shrunken. ‘You won’t get anything out of her,’ HG had said.

  Charmian touched her arm. ‘Good to see you again, Emily. How are you?’

  No answer.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ She answered her own question. ‘I’m Charmian … remember now?’

  Emily just stared, then she closed her eyes without speaking.

  Charmian sat looking at her for some while. A nurse came in, nodded. ‘Still not talking?’; she shook her head and went out again.

  Charmian leaned across and touched the girl’s arm. ‘Tell me, let it out, it’s better you do.’

  There was a pause. Then, very softly, Emily muttered: ‘I can’t. Don’t remember.’ She closed her eyes, almost as if she had not spoken.

  Charmian patted the girl’s wrist. ‘I’ve had an idea. I’ll be back.’

  She looked at the girl. You took that in, she decided, your hands moved.

  HG was standing in the window, looking out at the hospital car park. ‘No go?’

  ‘No, but there’s something we might try. May I?’ She drew him into the window and began to talk.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘ Try, but get permission from the doctor first.’

  ‘Oh, I will do. Will you stay around?’

  ‘No, just let me know. I’m off.’

  To tell you the truth, Charmian said under her breath, it’s a relief. I don’t want you around watching. It might inhibit us.

  And this might take some negotiating. Strangely, however, it did not. The doctor, a youngish man, gave her a long, considering look and nodded. ‘Try it. She’s an enigma to me … physically, just a bruise on the head, but miles away. If you can get her back, good luck to you.’

  There was caution and scepticism of a healthy kind in his voice. Charmian thought she liked him. ‘Want to watch?’

  He shook his head. ‘Leave it all to you. Do magic.’

  Magic it is, Charmian thought an hour later as she ushered Birdie into the room where Emily still sat, black magic.

  Birdie was calm, her eyes bright and alert. Round her neck swung a crystal ball which caught the light on all its many facets. She went straight up to Emily and took her hand. ‘Now I am going to help you back into yourself, my dear. But we must do it together. It’s all there inside you and we will get out what happened to you, then you will feel better.’

  She looked at Charmian and mouthed silently: We hope.

  ‘Sit up, dear, and look at the ball which I am holding before you.’

  Emily sat up with care, and Charmian, who was watching her closely, thought something stirred again at the back of her eyes. Good.

  Birdie swung the crystal ball slowly, slowly in a low arc; the light caught it as it moved and it glittered with little chinks of light. ‘ Watch what I do, follow the lights, let them sink into your

  mind … So and so and so.’

  Her voice was very soft and persuasive. ‘Watch what it does,

  follow, follow, follow.’

  Emily let her eyes move as the ball moved. She was breathing

  deeply now, and a flush was coming up on her throat. Charmian

  watched with interest as the colour moved up her cheeks and on

  to her forehead.

  ‘You want to help me,’ Birdie intoned. ‘You want to help me,

  you want to come back … inside yourself, you know what happened

  to you, now you must tell us.’

  Emily sighed. ‘ Blackness … dark, I am in the dark …’

  Charmian leaned forward. ‘Ask her what happened in her room.

  How did she hurt her arm?’

  ‘What happened, Emily, how did you cut your arm? … Where

  did the blood in the basin come from?’

  Her, of course, thought Charmian.

  ‘I cut myself,’ said Emily; her eyes were closed now, she was not

  watching the ball or anything, but breathing deeply and regularly.

  ‘I remember doing that … then I was in prison, in the dark.’

  ‘What was it like in prison?’

  ‘Dark … black … it smelt.’

  ‘What did it smell of, Emily?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on, you remember. Tell us what your prison smelt of?’

  ‘Wood,’ she said; the words were ground out of her, against her

  will. ‘Wood,’ came out again.

  She opened her eyes sharply. ‘Charmian?’

  Birdie sat back. ‘That’s it. Over. We shan’t get any more out of

  her.’

  Charmian considered what she had heard. ‘What did you make

  of that?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Birdie, and she shrugged. ‘Ask yourself.’

  Darkness, a black prison, the smell of wood. It sounded like a

  coffin.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘What did I say?’ asked the girl.

  ‘The prison … do you remember saying you had been imprisoned?’

  Emily shook her head, she frowned. ‘No, I’m not sure. Perhaps I do. It’s kind of cloudy.’

  ‘And that you cut your own arm?’

  Emily frowned. ‘Did I say so? I may have done that,’ she sounded lost. ‘I shall never know.’ She looked at Charmian with a question in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, I think we will work it out,’ said Charmian briskly. ‘In the end.’ She patted the girl’s hand. ‘Stay there, you’ll be looked after while I sort out somewhere for you to go. You can’t go back to your own place just yet.’ She wondered if Emily knew about Albert or not. Probably best not to mention him just yet. Nor the discovery of Margaret Drue’s remains. Leave a lot unsaid. ‘What about going to stay with Dr Yeldon and his wife?’

  She looked in Emily’s face as she spoke. ‘ No? Well, we will see. Meanwhile you are here. Safe. Looked after.’ And the rest of us are no doubt safer because you are here.

  She went out into the hall where Birdie was standing in the window embrasure talking to the doctor. ‘What did you make of that?’

  Birdie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Not sure exactly what came out of my little session. I think she was under when she said about cutting herself. And just for a flash when she described where she had been. She could not hold it back.’

  ‘I see.’ She thought she did.

  The doctor said: ‘I have to say that I have not been convinced by the amnesia fugue, not entirely.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charmian. ‘That’s a very honest comment which I appreciate.’

  ‘We’ll keep her here overnight, but beyond that …’ he shrugged. ‘Hospitals never have spare rooms.’

  ‘I will find somewhere safe for her to go,’ said Charmian. She looked at Birdie.

  Birdie said that she supposed they could, but she would have to con
sult Winifred. ‘What about Dr Yeldon?’

  Charmian shook her head. ‘Dr Yeldon is not a happy man.’

  ‘There’s Eddy Bell … no, I suppose not. Doesn’t she have any other friends?’

  ‘Does she need somewhere safe?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘I think she does.’

  ‘Are you taking a high moral line?’ Birdie asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Charmian. ‘Of course, there are other people involved.’ Like HG, but he would gladly devolve any responsibility for the girl on to Charmian. That went without saying.

  Birdie returned to talk to Winifred, the doctor to do a ward round, and Charmian went back to her own office.

  On her desk were the reports from HG’s team of detectives working on the associated cases: where they came in, the finding of the body of Madelaine Mason, with the head of the child Alana. A sick imagination at work here was the judgement, but no clue as yet as to whose. So long ago, would they ever find out? Speculation suggested that Mason had tried some blackmail and been killed for it.

  She pushed all the reports on this case aside, worthless, a dead end: they had lined Margaret Drue up for the killer and all the time she was dead herself these many years.

  Then there was Albert who had beaten his own back till it was raw because he felt guilt. The masked man, terrified, but willing to talk for money so he could escape. Albert had not escaped.

  Emily had not escaped either. Or had she? Had she escaped into her own mind?

  Not too many factual, scientific reports on either Margaret Drue or on Albert as yet, too early. But bound together in her mind, all these killings were moving together to make a whole picture. The mind demanded that you rationalize what you have, make it all fit together. Not the random killings of a serial murderer, not at all, reason rejected it. These deaths were connected, because all the people, alive as well as dead, knew each other.

  That was how Charmian saw it: ‘It’s a whole thing,’ she said aloud to the wall, which often heard her observations but never answered. In the old days, when Dolly Barstow had reigned alone in the outer office, she had often heard the voice of her SRADIC boss and smiled. The new pair looked surprised.

  To her surprise, H. G. Horris knocked at the door, walked in to sit opposite her desk and look depressed. He had nothing to contribute but the complaint that he wasn’t getting anywhere. ‘I’ve been chewing Eddy Bell up to see what I can get from him about Albert. Damn it, the man worked for him, but nothing comes from Eddy. He says Albert wasn’t a talker although a good worker but not bright. He only employed him for old times’ sake.’