Footsteps in the Blood

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Glad to hear it, ma’am. I had heard rumours.’

  ‘Of course you had. Well, I’ve accepted. It’ll be official in the next few days. You can tell everyone.’ At the door, she said: ‘And I won’t be sending out those photographs as Christmas cards.’

  She knew she’d said the right thing. Shown she could make a joke of it.

  To hell with the photographs. I will not be a page-three-girl boss.

  George Rewley drove her back to Maid of Honour Row, since her own car was being held for a Forensic search. Just in case, she supposed, the bag containing Dick’s laundry had deposited anything of interest on the upholstery.

  ‘You’ll get your car back tomorrow,’ Rewley said, as if reading her thoughts, a process he was good at. ‘ I think Elman and Co. are just hanging on to it for the hell of it.’

  ‘I got that impression too.’

  ‘But I wanted a chance to talk to you. About the bones … I’ve been poking around and so has Dolly Barstow. And we picked up a story that interested us. One of the Tipper family, you remember, the little men, worked for Jake Henley for a while. He had lodgings in old Mrs Henley’s house. There was a row of some sort and he moved away, or was thought to have done. I expect he couldn’t stomach Jake and his ways, the Tippers were decent little men at base.’

  ‘And you think this man is our skeleton?’

  The description fits. Especially the wig. But there’s something else …’ he paused. The time Tipper took off was about the time Jake Henley’s brother Gerry went missing.’

  ‘You think perhaps Tipper knew something about that?’

  ‘Or saw something,’ said George significantly. ‘Because there was one other thing: a couple of bones found didn’t fit, so Mr Ahab said. They were extra. Human, but surplus to the requirements of the Tipper skeleton. Belonged to someone else. So we went down further. Dug lower still.’

  Charmian waited. ‘ So?’

  ‘There were other bones underneath. Another young man. The one had been buried on top of the other. I got Dolly Barstow to take Mrs Henley down to look at the remains. I got a call just now with the result. Positive. Reluctantly, the old bird indentified them. Her missing son Gerry. She didn’t want to admit anything else, of course, like a family quarrel. She said it was a mystery to her how he got there, but she did let out that the brothers fought over a woman.’

  ‘So you think Henley killed him in a quarrel? Killed them both? Killed Tipper because he knew.’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  Charmian was quiet for a moment, then she said: ‘George, do we know exactly where the blood on the grass came from?’

  ‘The little bitch Trix. She got hurt when Dick killed Foggerty. A glancing blow from a bullet that ricocheted, I don’t think he saw how badly she was bleeding when he walked her home. Out of his head himself, I suspect. But he must have noticed later because he carried her home under his cape, that’s when the blood and hairs got on it. And, of course, they both probably had Foggerty’s blood on them too. There was a hell of a lot of it about. Dick went home, changed his clothes and then took the spaniel out for its walk, and the rest you know. A bloody business all round.’

  Charmian looked down at his hands. She was waiting. She could see he was getting ready for something more.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard,’ he said with some hesitation. ‘But those photographs … they had a bit of a fire in the office. Some fool dropped a lighted cigarette-end down on a desk and the fire spread to a stack of folders. The negatives were there.’ He stopped talking.

  Charmian thought about it for a moment. I’m being protected, damn it, by a consortium of my peers. She didn’t now whether to be furious or relieved.

  ‘What a shame,’ she said eventually.

  It was the nearest she got to saying thank you. And come to think of it, the nearest that would have been accepted.

  Then she started to laugh. George Rewley let himself smile. There was another pause while Charmian’s mind went back to what really mattered. She thought about the blood and what lay under the grass. She said:

  ‘Do you think you’ll get Henley for the murders?’

  ‘I shall have a jolly good try,’ said George Rewley with conviction.

  The processes of the law rolled slowly forward. Eddie Dick came up in court, and bail being refused, was remanded in custody. An intensive study was made of the premises of his employment agency and of its records, turning up many interesting facts about his involvement with Jake Henley and the porn ring. Jake Henley himself was, for the moment, walking free. But a watch was being kept on him and he was known to be in Cheasey.

  ‘Old Mrs Dick must be turning in her grave,’ was Mrs Beadle’s comment, passing judgement as the longest resident of Merrywick. ‘I swear she didn’t know anything of what was going on. Not that she was herself anyway for the last few years, poor old lady. Lost her wits, but nice with it, poor soul.’ They had been roughly the same age, girls at school together, but Mrs Beadle was spryer and in possession of all her faculties.

  Charmian started to prepare herself for her new position. The affair of the photographs was known about, of course, but no one had seen them. She could imagine what might be said in private, but her joke had gone the rounds and done her good. ‘She was cool,’ they were saying. ‘You have to hand it to her, a woman like that you have to respect.’

  Inside she was very, very angry but she would work through it.

  The weeks rolled by.

  The news filtered through to her that Eddie Dick’s bitch had had her pups, so she telephoned the vet. She owed that animal something.

  ‘Six nice little pups,’ the vet said cheerfully. ‘She’s feeding them well and they’re suckling strongly.’

  ‘I’ll pay any bills.’

  ‘Thanks. Just give a donation to the fund.’

  She would make it a good one. ‘ What about the pups? What will become of them?’

  ‘I’ll find them happy homes. You wouldn’t like one?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve got a dog, a share in one, anyway. What are they like?’ Dolly might take one, or Annie. She and Jack were going on a course at a centre devoted to meditation and peace, which seemed a good idea for both of them. Or Kate might like a dog, except that she and George Rewley were talking of marriage, into which a dog might or might not fit. The difficult triangular relationship between Dolly, Kate and George seemed to have resolved itself.

  The vet answered thoughtfully that they were ginger-and-white and looked like their mother. ‘I don’t know who Dad was, some sort of game dog, I suspect, but he must have had very short legs.’

  Charmian looked down at Benjy, reclining happily at her feet. ‘Oh Ben, you were not running forward to protect Winnie that day in Maid of Honour Row. Eddie Dick must have had Trixie with him and you ran after her to do a bit of courting.’ Sucessfully, too, as it now seemed; those hormones he was taking had done a good job.

  Within minutes, her telephone rang. It was George Rewley. He sounded excited.

  ‘We’ve got Henley. A confession from a Cheasey man, one of the Rivers clan, who helped him bury the two bodies. Our London bones expert built up the face on the Tipper skull and put the red wig on it. Shocked the chap into telling all. Henley’s been grabbed in Cheasey. We’re taking him in, and we’ll hang on to him this time, believe you me; the charge will be murder.’

  Charmian put the receiver down. It was over at last.

  The bones had ceased their dance.

  Copyright

  First published 1990 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2015 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN–978-1-4472-9622-5 EPUB

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9620-1 HB

  ISBN�
�978-1-4472-9621-8 PB

  Copyright © Jennie Melville, 1990

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