Murderes' Houses

by Jennie Melville

  Charmian frowned as she watched the rather stocky figure get into a little blue minicar and drive off, somewhat too fast.

  In Deerham Hills Rachel Lawson lived a quiet self-contained life but Charmian knew that she had chewed her way through several love affairs in college, which suggested that she might find her present way of life claustrophobic.

  The telephone rang and Charmian picked it up absently, eyes watching the blue car dodging through the traffic and up the hill. It was Grizel on the line.

  ‘No luck here,’ she reported briefly, ‘although I made an appointment. Urgent business elsewhere.’

  ‘She’s on her way to London, I think.’ Charmian’s bright blue eyes could just see the minicar take the London road.

  ‘I don’t know what’s more urgent than the Flete business.’

  Charmian did not answer.

  ‘Meanwhile the little Flete girl is still crying her eyes out,’ grumbled Grizel.

  ‘She’s unreliable, I told you,’ said Charmian. A judgement of Rachel Lawson was forming in her mind: talented, nervous, unstable and yet in a position of authority. Was she not vulnerable to men like the joker from the north? Didn’t she fall into the category of the other four women whose names were on Charmian’s list? Yes, certainly Rachel Lawson was vulnerable through her position and through her temperament.

  There might be nothing in it at all, but it would be worth watching the successful Rachel Lawson, who in Charmian’s eyes was unsound. Wasn’t she as vulnerable in her way, and perhaps more so, than Velia?

  She revolved the two names uneasily in her mind; they personified the two categories most susceptible to the joker’s approaches: those women with authority and a little money, and those having once been married who consciously or unconsciously were looking for a mate. (And she thought Velia was doing it more or less consciously.)

  ‘Here, wait a minute,’ said Grizel rapidly, as Charmian started to put down the phone. ‘I picked up something about the unidentified woman … Or it could be something.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘The caretaker up at the school here is Stan Beadle, you know him, used to be a bus driver until he had a thrombosis. Now he’s got a part-time job as assistant caretaker. His son is the proper one.’

  ‘Sort of a family concern?’

  ‘You know how these things go. I don’t think Stan works too hard. He’s got plenty of time on his hands.’

  ‘If Stan is the source of information, which is what I suppose you’re working round to, I shouldn’t regard him as a highly reliable observer.’

  ‘He says about three weeks ago he met a woman, dressed exactly like the description he’s read of the drowned woman …’

  ‘So far as we can tell,’ interrupted Charmian.

  ‘Yes, so far as we can tell, of course. Anyway, he met this woman, she got on the same bus, going in the direction of the school, as he did, and got off at the same stop. Then she walked up the road in front of him, acting as if she wasn’t quite sure where to go. Stan says she walked as if walking were difficult.’

  ‘Stan would be taking in all that, of course.’

  ‘Then she asked him if he knew somewhere she could get a cup of tea. Stan says she asked him twice, as if she wasn’t listening the first time. And then, when he looked out of the school just a little later, there she was wandering up and down the road again as if she was lost and went on like that all the while he had time to watch her. When he looked out again, she was gone.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Charmian, disappointed.

  ‘Stan says he worried about her for days. He felt he ought to have done something about her. He thought then that she was looking for someone or something. He thinks now she must have been making up her mind to jump in the river.’

  ‘We know she didn’t commit suicide.’

  ‘In that case she was looking for something or someone.’

  ‘Stan’s an imaginative old man,’ said Charmian. ‘ Remember the time he thought the flying saucers had landed.’

  ‘He’s a serious student of human nature. And it was a genuine bit of a space capsule … the War Office came down and collected it. It’s a little odd what he saw.’

  ‘No behaviour is mysterious if you dig deep enough,’ said Charmian.

  ‘I don’t know if I agree with you there,’ said Grizel, who frequently found the world puzzling.

  ‘Oh, I grant you the ultimate unknowability of the human mind,’ said Charmian impatiently. ‘But you can get pretty well acquainted with the mechanics of behaviour.’ The fellow-countrywoman of Hume, Macaulay and Lady Macbeth wasn’t going to be dumbfounded by irrationalism.

  But Stan had built up an odd, vivid, little picture. Supposing the woman was wandering about Deerham Hills just before, or around the time she died? And suppose Stan’s second hypothesis came into operation, and she was looking for someone or something, what could she have been looking for in that neighbourhood? There was the Girls’ School and the Hospital.

  There was also the old police station.

  ‘Now who’s being imaginative,’ murmured Charmian. For that thought presupposed that the dead woman had been in the town before, although not recently, and that she had something she wanted to tell the police.

  But when you came down to it, what better motive for murder?

  She could hear Grizel breathing her characteristic little puffs and blows, probably in defiance, down the telephone line.

  She came to a decision.

  ‘You’d better get Stan down here to look at the clothes … I doubt if he could identify the body.’

  As she put the receiver down she had the distinct, disquieting impression that there was something more, something Grizel wasn’t saying.

  Velia was pleased to see Charmian. She had been feeling lonely again for the moment, although she knew that this was now irrational and also unnecessary. Also probably unwise. She was no longer alone; she had company in the house. She rejoiced in her good luck, yet she couldn’t quite take it for granted. All the same she felt golden, buoyant, light-hearted, and she knew it showed in her face. It was reflected in Charmian’s.

  Only, like one of those joke mirrors in a fun fair, what showed up in her face as happiness and expectancy, was imaged in Charmian’s as worry. At this distortion she felt her first stirring of fear.

  The finding of the drowned woman in Deerham Woods had reminded her for the moment that life, and especially it sometimes seemed her life, was a very chancy business. ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes me,’ she had thought on reading about the dead woman, forgetting that ‘There but for the grace of God goes Dusty’ had indeed been her very first reaction. But she had been able to dismiss both these emotions as chimeras, which indeed they were. She found she could not dismiss Charmian’s face. Perhaps she was going to be ill.

  Charmian came stumping in, making Velia feel more of a lightweight than ever. It was a curious thing about their relationship that Velia felt more feminine and Charmian less when they were in company, and if Charmian was, as she appeared to be, unconscious of it, Velia certainly was not.

  ‘I’ve come in on my way home.’ Charmian felt tired and a little grubby. Or perhaps it was just reaction to her contact with Velia.

  ‘Dusty still away?’

  ‘Back today,’ said Velia, her good humour sagging a little, in fact ill humour rushing in.

  Charmian laughed. ‘She’s good for you, Velia.’

  ‘Good for me to be surrounded by sergeant-majors?’ asked Velia tartly.

  Charmian sat down heavily in a chair. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

  ‘I haven’t locked the car.’

  Velia looked out of the window at Charmian’s car gleaming in the sunlight. Its colour and number were well-known in Deerham Hills.

  ‘No one will take your car.’

  Velia infused the tea and brought out her l
op-sided chocolate cake. She had cut one slice out of it for her lodger Mr Morgan. He hadn’t eaten much of it, though; he liked meat better. But this hardly mattered much to Velia. The cake, which to him was only a collection of flavours stimulating the taste buds (and not specially liked ones, either), was to her more than a cake, it was a symbol of domesticity revived.

  ‘You’ve been up to the Girls’ School, haven’t you?’ She handed a cup to Charmian.

  ‘No, not I,’ said Charmian.

  ‘Oh, I thought it would be you. The Flete girl, I mean.’

  Charmian kept silent.

  ‘She’s pregnant, isn’t she?’

  ‘I’m leaving that to the doctors.’ Charmian put down her cup.

  Velia lowered her voice. ‘It was rape, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You seem to know more about it than I do,’ said Charmian. ‘Much, much more.’

  ‘Some people say … Well, tight jerseys and those jeans and lipstick like that is asking … After all at fifteen some girls are women.’

  ‘She’s only thirteen,’ said Charmian tiredly, getting up. ‘I know she looks more. I don’t want to talk about it, Velia, you must see that.’

  ‘You’re just as interested as any of us, only you won’t admit it,’ said Velia in a sharp voice.

  ‘Anyway I didn’t come here to talk about the Flete girl, but about your lodger.’

  ‘Have they found out about the woman?’ asked Velia. ‘Do they know who she is yet?’

  ‘No … nothing. Tell me about your lodger, Velia. Did you get references?’

  ‘References,’ said Velia, scornfully. ‘Who would give me references? He told me where he works and all that. I wasn’t curious.’

  ‘You ought to be curious. I’m worried. What’s his name?’

  ‘Morgan … And I don’t see why you have to mind so much.’

  ‘Morgan,’ repeated Charmian thoughtfully. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He travels for Associated Boxes. It’s the big firm on the London Road.’

  ‘Travels?’ said Charmian sceptically. A travelling salesman was just what you would call yourself if you had no fixed job, and wanted an excuse to come and go as you pleased. Morgan could be home when he liked, disappear when he liked and no questions asked. She must check with Manchester whether the comedian, whose aliases had never included Morgan, had ever used the cover of a salesman before.

  ‘What’s he like? What sort of man is he?’ Charmian was wondering if there was anything odd about Morgan that could make him, as Fred had suggested, a comic figure.

  ‘Manly,’ said Velia, with quiet satisfaction.

  ‘Besides being manly, is he tall or short, fat or thin, old or young?’

  ‘Just medium,’ said Velia. ‘Medium all round.’

  ‘I’d like to meet your Mr Morgan.’

  ‘You need never meet him,’ cried Velia, exasperated. ‘In fact I don’t suppose you ever will.’

  ‘You don’t know enough about him, Velia. You don’t know anything about him. Be on the safe side, and say you’ve changed your mind about letting.’

  ‘I want him here. I need the money, and I like a man about the place.’ Velia was half crying. Charmian was being much more difficult to handle than she had expected.

  ‘I hear you talking about your neighbour Coniston enough,’ was what she wanted to say, cruelly, to Charmian. But she knew she couldn’t. Mustn’t. It was an imperative.

  Besides she knew what Charmian would say, what indeed she had said on the subject: ‘He was nice to me and he’s a neighbour.’ (‘And do you think that’s all?’ Velia wanted to shout. ‘Do you think that’s all he has in mind?’)

  ‘Get on without a man, Velia.’

  ‘You’ve never been married,’ said Velia, half petulantly.

  Charmian finished her tea standing up.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘Probably Morgan is all he says he is … And, after all, you haven’t got any money.’

  ‘I certainly haven’t,’ agreed Velia, glad to have relations restored between them: she couldn’t afford to quarrel with Charmian.

  ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  Charmian closed the door behind her. She stood there for a moment, thinking, wondering whether to go back in and tell Velia all about it, tell her about the man from Manchester and what he did to lonely women like Velia. She had the door half open to go back in when she heard Velia clattering pans in the kitchen as if she was starting to cook. Charmian closed the door quietly, walked down the path, got into her car and drove home.

  Inside the house Velia started to prepare supper, to which she had invited Morgan. She chopped an onion and let it soften in butter. The smell of frying began to float across the kitchen.

  Velia was frying liver tonight. Good rich chunks of liver.

  Charmian closed her own front door behind her, kicked off her shoes, and padded quietly across the room in her stockinged feet to pick up the object she had been longing to handle all day. She lifted it up, balanced it in her hands, and sighed with pleasure: it was the most satisfactory object she had ever handled.

  ‘Tactile pleasure,’ she told herself sardonically. ‘The most dangerous sort of all.’

  For Charmian knew very well what people like Velia said behind her back, and what Grizel said to her face: that she was a keg of dynamite waiting to be lit. Meanwhile it was a pleasure to handle the first piece of sculpture you’ve ever made that looked as you’d meant it to look. It was a plaster model of a fish. Curling, sensuous, and lithe.

  Charmian was right to suspect its implications.

  She set it down on the table and stared at it.

  ‘I’m a sculptor,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m a sculptor as well as a detective.’

  The sound of a lawn-mower attracted her attention and she went over to the window and looked out. It was her neighbour Coniston cutting his grass. He worked a good deal in his garden. She watched him for a moment. Then unconsciously her hand went to her pocket where there was a letter from Sergeant William Carter. It contained a proposal of marriage.

  But she would take that fence, she thought, with the headlong confidence of the horseman riding for the fall, when she came to it.

  Chapter Three

  THERE were several men in Deerham Hills each of whom could have been Marley.

  One was a thin, dark man who had taken a single room in a boarding house in Green Street, by the park, and who called every day at the chemist’s for tablets for his headache. He seemed to have no known occupation, except his headache.

  Another was the man who asked at the bus station if they had a clerking job for him, and although they told him they had not, still continued to ask each day.

  The third was the man who sat all day long in the cemetery, on the seat under the big copper beech and who only left his seat to attend every funeral. If he was obliged to choose between two funerals taking place simultaneously, he chose the funeral of the younger person. He was particularly faithful in attendance on the burials of children.

  There was the man who spent all the days alone in his room listening to his radio and dreaming of outer space, the man who was working as a temporary postman and who was constantly writing names and addresses down in his notebook, and the man who called every day at the Public Library.

  They were all new to the town, and they were all men who might, in police jargon, be thought of as ‘character actors’. At least one of them had a police record and another one should have had. They all had one thing in common: they rattled around unhappily in the society they lived in like teeth loose in the head.

  Finally, there was a man who wore a brown tweed overcoat whether the day was cold or not and a hat well pulled down over his face. He did not live in Deerham Hills but came in from outside. He too had a habit of calling in at the Public Library. He had a contact in the town, whom he met unobtrusively, a tall, fair-haired woman called Patricia. He was a man much interested in money and he often talked about it.

 
Any one of these could have been Marley, and one of them was.

  The man from Manchester was melting away into the population of Deerham Hills, at once establishing himself and effacing himself. He had once been called Marley – he had a new name now. Effacement was not easy, for he had a double part to play, and yet it was made simpler by the unsuspicious nature of all the inhabitants of the town. He was obliterating his northern personality and building up another. Whether or not he was a comedian, he was certainly an actor. He had one great advantage over Charmian: he could locate her precisely. He knew who she was and where she was. He was as interested in her as she was in him. The fact that it was dangerous to be interested in a policewoman added spice to the situation.

  Leaving Manchester had been no pain to him. He had never really felt at home there. It was a large enough town to get lost in, and that suited him, but he never felt really steady there. It was an energetic get-ahead society, and he always felt as if he might fall off and be trampled under-foot. There was a dizzy centre in his mind which made him all the time worried about falling off things and losing his sense of balance. A psychologist might have said it was psychosomatic, and represented a sense of insecurity, but then how right he was, his profession considered, to feel insecure. He was a sort of social steeplejack, and a sense of insecurity, a perpetual alertness, was his greatest protection. He could really have done with antennae or radar. But because of this dizziness, which was partly physical, and partly mental, he was very careful about crossing roads and crossing bridges. For instance, he would never have pushed the woman who was found drowned into the water from the bridge at Abbot’s End in case he lost his head and fell in with her. He had already rendered her unconscious by strangling so that he could tip her gently down the bank. She couldn’t swim anyway.

  From the age of puberty he had never really felt at home in the world, let alone Manchester. What he knew about himself he had always known, but it was only then, when he made his first approach to a girl, that he saw what it meant. Very clever of his mother to have covered up precisely what his predicament would mean for him. Very clever, very tactful, and very hateful. He was thoroughly prepared to hate her when he learnt that his ailment (if you could call it ailment) was inherited. From then on he was at odds, not only with women, but especially motherly women. They had to be milked. He used the word advisedly with horrifying comprehension. Thus set apart, there was a channel between him and other people, as if they were on the mainland and he was an island. He had no responsibilities towards the inhabitants of the mainland, and no moral guilts. He never let anyone onto the island with him. At first he thought this an act of his will, lately he had seen it would have been impossible. There was only room for one.