Murderes' Houses

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Well, let you have it cheap anyway,’ Baba was brisk. Her voice receded a little. ‘No, madam, there is no reduction in price for having the colour taken out of your hair … It’s not real gold we wash into it. No, I know it never even looked gold, but that wasn’t our fault, madam, you should have told us you were pregnant, that always affects the hair. Well, madam,’ Baba sounded outraged. ‘That’s your private business, madam, not mine; no frankly I think a wig … Yes, of course it’ll cost money. But it’ll look like hair,’ she ended up triumphantly. She turned back to Charmian. ‘Was it about that enquiry you asked me to make that you were calling? Because I’m afraid that I’ve got nothing for you … No new customer wanting their hair dyed.’

  ‘Except me,’ said Charmian rather self-consciously. ‘I’ll be in for that treatment, Baba.’ She put the receiver down, muttering to herself about ‘sisters under the skin’.

  Then she picked up the telephone again and tried to get Velia. She could hear the telephone ringing out, but there was no answer.

  Pratt marched into the room late in the afternoon; he looked a little more cheerfully than recently, as if the executioner’s axe was not hanging quite so closely over his head as he had thought.

  ‘Prepare to work late.’ He dumped a pile of papers on Charmian’s desk.

  ‘I’m always prepared.’ Charmian looked at the clock. Nearly six o’clock. Coniston would be freshening himself up and preparing for her visit. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just odds and ends, I suspect.’ He still sounded cheerful. ‘Everything that Manchester and the north has been able to collect about Marley and his earlier victims. All the background stuff we can get. You might be able to build up something from it.’

  ‘Anything about the Flete girl?’

  ‘Not from here.’ The cheerfulness receded from his voice. ‘We’re out looking. As you know. Any ideas?’

  Charmian shook her head.

  ‘Well, get on with these while you’re waiting.’ And he departed rapidly.

  Charmian telephoned Coniston, but there was no answer. She had already observed that you had to be precisely on time for him, just when he expected you, or you never got him; a little one way or the other in time, and he wasn’t there, as if he didn’t really exist.

  Colour, detail. Charmian sat there concentrating on the mass of heterogeneous information presented to her. Information about the school-teacher, the masseuse, the nurse. More information about the episode with Rose Anne Phillips.

  After two hours she got up, yawned and lit a cigarette. Coniston would have given her up now and gone to bed. No, not gone to bed, not at seven in the evening. How could she make such a stupid mistake. She flushed.

  She went down the stairs and out into the open air. Across the road, on the corner by the library, there was a small coffee shop, which she and Grizel used sometimes instead of the canteen. She stood there for a second, smoking and enjoying the evening air. She looked out for a moment at the lights of the town and then to the dark patch of the Deerham Hill Wood and wondered where in it all the Flete girl was, if indeed she was there at all.

  Slowly she walked across to the coffee shop. Her mind was still dizzy with some of the details she had been reading. Why for instance had Betsy Norris, the masseuse, always left her spectacles at home when meeting Marley (only she had known a man called Oliver)? Just vanity? Or at his suggestion, so that she wouldn’t be able to identify him again with confidence? For a little while Charmian amused herself with the idea of summoning all these women to Deerham Hills and showing them Morgan. A simple and possibly effective idea, but like most simple ideas it wouldn’t get Pratt’s backing just at present.

  Over a cup of coffee she saw Grizel walk across the road, presumably having come from the newspaper files where she was working late too, and go up to her office. Grizel always looked so composed and controlled, thought Charmian, as if she had mastered the situation and had decided what was the best thing for everyone concerned. ‘I used to look like that once,’ thought Charmian, irritably aware that she no longer did. Maturity, now that she had it, seemed to be something she didn’t know how to handle.

  Grizel saw her and waved, then turned back and came over towards her.

  ‘Relax, Charmian,’ she said sitting down. ‘You look as if you were eating someone there.’ She looked at Charmian. ‘Not exactly tearing them limb from limb, but grinding them down nice and small.’

  ‘You didn’t come over here just to tell me I still have my teeth?’

  ‘No,’ Grizel was serious. ‘ No, I think I’ve come across something in the newspaper … Might not be, but in the light of what we know, well, it’s likely.’ She opened her bag and drew out her notes. ‘I wrote it all down.’ She set her notes before Charmian and leaned back, waiting for approval.

  Charmian slowly read what was written there, then read it again.

  Grizel had copied out three extracts from the Personal Column of the Deerham Hills Courier –

  Wednesday, June 19, 196—

  Master to Pupil. Glad to have news. Miss you too. Business

  proceeding well. Will telephone usual number tomorrow

  at eight.

  Friday, October 3, 196—

  Master to Pupil. Agree to plans. Coming home. Will

  communicate date in usual manner.

  Tuesday, October 7, 196—

  Master to Pupil. Coming home tomorrow.

  ‘It stands out like a sore thumb,’ said Grizel, still hoping for approval. ‘Most of it’s the usual stuff: people selling old vacuum cleaners, prams and high chairs, or advertising for daily help. I’ve never seen anything like this before.’

  ‘There’s something very disagreeable about it,’ said Charmian slowly. ‘I don’t like the tone of it.’

  ‘That struck me. But the whole case is unpleasant.’

  Charmian handed the notes back.

  ‘You can’t assume it is connected … Don’t jump to conclusions. That’s your trouble, Grizel. When it comes down to it you jump to conclusions. Maybe you’ve got something there, maybe you haven’t, but work at it.’ She got up, paid for her coffee and went back to work.

  Grizel sat on for a moment, a little miserable, unaware that what had poured out on her was the anger that Charmian had saved up against Velia, Emily Carter, women in general, even herself.

  The telephone was ringing when Charmian got back to her office. It sounded as if it had been ringing a long time and this was its last attempt to make her hear.

  The man on the desk two floors down had taken the call first as a matter of routine, but he thought it was one Charmian ought to handle.

  There followed an interval. Remotely she could hear the operator who was handling the call say: ‘I’m trying, but she must have gone away. I’m doing what I can.’

  And then another voice interposed itself. ‘No, I’ve come back now, miss. I had to go away you see, to listen. I can’t see anything, but I can hear.’

  And before Charmian could say anything, a woman’s voice was speaking again. It wasn’t a voice she knew.

  ‘I’m Mrs Ryman’s neighbour. We’re right next door. I’m the only house near, within earshot anyway.’

  How she keeps harping on what she can hear, thought Charmian. What can she hear?

  ‘There’s something terrible going on in that house, I’m sure there is. I can feel it.’

  ‘What can you feel?’

  But the voice went on, not heeding the question. She wasn’t listening to Charmian but what was going on in the house next door.

  ‘You know … I feel as if the house is going to fall down about my ears.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ cried Charmian.

  ‘Oh, naturally I don’t mean I think that’s what’s really going to happen,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s emotional. It’s what it feels like. It’s the silence. I can’t stand the silence. There’s no noise.’

  ‘But surely you wouldn’t hear much from next door anyway,’ pro
tested Charmian.

  ‘You can hear in these houses. They’re so close and the walls are so thin, and Mrs Ryman was so noisy. I’d hear her singing, I’d hear the television, I could hear doors shut and open. Now it’s all gone silent. She’s still living there, it isn’t that she’s gone away, she’s just gone quiet.’

  In the house next door Velia Ryman sat at a table, writing a letter. She was weeping as she wrote. In her way she liked Charmian.

  Chapter Eight

  VELIA’S house was still and quiet in the late autumn dusk. It was a blue, hazy evening, the unseasonable heat still persisting so that women were wearing summer dresses. No lights came on in her house, although the house next door was brightly lit from top to bottom. Within the house, on Velia’s shelves, drawers and clothes-closets, her possessions rested undisturbed. Her many dresses, outfits they might almost be called, drooped on their hangers. The dresses she had worn to the office daily, and behind them the nurse’s uniform, the sports clothes and the widow’s weeds, stagnated on their pegs. They had never been more than costumes for her parts. It was essential to her nature that she play a part, even if it was only Velia the sad little widow of Deerham Hills, but the nature of her parts and their purpose had been suggested to her by another person. Velia never thought up her own repertoire.

  The house was only a sham too – a bit of window-dressing. When all was said and done Velia had only paid sporadic attention to it. When she was being Velia the little housewife it got shined up a bit, otherwise she neglected it. Only three rooms were furnished anyway. It had all been done on a shoe-string, and a pretty mean little shoe at that. The kitchen was the best furnished and even here Velia’s interest had been fitful. At the moment it was dusty and marked with little brown spots that looked like blood and were probably liver. Velia, her mind on other things, hadn’t bothered to clean up after her last cooking session. The only moving thing in it was a fly. The sitting-room had very little in it, a cheap carpet, an old sofa, and a mirror on the wall. The flowers in the bowl were dead. But this didn’t mean much with Velia, her flowers were often left to die. The bedroom had a bed and a table with make-up on it (plenty of that, in her way Velia indulged herself), and, of course, Velia’s clothes. This was all; Velia thought it was enough, she was only a stranger passing through.

  Nevertheless, although Velia was only a transient, houses are enormously retentive, and she had left her mark on it. It looked badly used, forlorn and lying. Houses can be very revealing of their owner. Velia’s house shouted out loud the true state of Velia. She too was badly used, forlorn and lying.

  Dusty, Velia’s fellow-worker in her late job, banged at the door. She had tried the bell already.

  Dusty banged again.

  ‘Come on, Velia,’ she muttered crossly. ‘I know you’re there. I can see you.’

  She peeped through the window. Velia was sitting in her chair with her legs comfortably stretched before her on a footstool.

  Dusty, a far from imaginative woman, had been exercising her imagination a lot lately. She had a funny feeling of anxiety about herself, as if someone was planning something unpleasant for her.

  At first she thought it must be her nephew, still persevering in his attempts to build a boat. Dusty was almost sure he had her sharp garden-knife and ball of twine stowed away in there. No good saying the birds had had those, like the raspberries and the peas. Dusty was no bird lover any more than she was a boy lover, but lately she had begun to feel some sympathy with bird life. She knew now how birds must feel who get a great cuckoo in their nest. Goodness knew what he was up to. But after all he was only a child, even if children seemed to have changed since her day.

  Then there was her sister. Probably she was wrong to have thought she could have kept her sister away from a man. Patricia certainly had an odd look about her lately, wry and knowledgeable, and in Dusty’s experience of her this meant a man. Penned up in the house all day with those children it had seemed unlikely she could get out to find one, but obviously she had. She was wearing an amount of make-up too which Dusty thought positively unhealthy. But after all, Patricia was her own sister. She surely couldn’t wish any harm to poor old Dusty? Loving old Dusty, who only wanted Patricia’s own good?

  Then she wondered about Velia. Certainly her feeling of unease dated roughly from the time she had caught Velia prying round her desk, but this was only nosiness. She acquitted her of all else. And anyway she hadn’t seen Velia for almost a fortnight. Impossible to believe she had anything to do with the uncomfortable feeling that bothered Dusty.

  Dusty’s mind moved uneasily from possibility to possibility. She was like a person with a generalised fever, unable to locate the precise focus of infection.

  Just before she reached her home that evening and while these anxious thoughts were milling round her mind, the telephone had rung in her sitting-room. It very rarely rang for Dusty; she had few friends, and fewer still who actually wanted to speak to her. There was only one person in the house at the time and that was the elder boy, the architect of the boat. He ignored the telephone bell for as long as he could, as he always ignored any disturbance when reading. ‘ Hello?’ He picked the receiver up but did not bother to turn his head towards it. Not surprisingly all he heard was a murmuring voice.

  ‘Hello?’ he said again, this time allowing himself to come a little closer.

  ‘Dusty?’

  ‘She’s out.’

  ‘Dusty,’ went on the voice, as if the speaker didn’t, or couldn’t take in what he said.

  ‘She’s out,’ he said in a decided voice, preparing to put the receiver down. Distantly he heard a mutter of ‘Need you, Dusty … Come …’

  He was sufficiently interested to tell his aunt that Velia Ryman had telephoned her.

  ‘She can’t have; we’ve quarrelled,’ said Dusty uneasily. Looking back now it was difficult to be clear exactly what she had suspected Velia of doing. She remembered making a lot of unpleasant remarks, most of which she hadn’t really meant and now regretted. ‘Anyway she left to get married.’

  ‘I don’t think she did get married, aunt,’ said her nephew, with an air of knowing what he was talking about.

  ‘Oh, I suppose you know everything that happens in Deerham Hills,’ said Dusty, unable to suppress her irritation.

  ‘No, I don’t know much about what goes on in this town,’ he said indifferently. ‘I’m not that interested.’

  ‘I’d like to know what you are interested in,’ thought his aunt, studying his calm profile, ‘apart from this Noah complex you seem to have.’

  ‘Then how do you know she’s not married?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, aunt. Look at it this way: where do people get married? In a church or in a registrar’s office.’ Trust him to have it pat, thought Dusty. ‘Either way you would have heard. Someone would have told you.’ His calm reasoning was convincing.

  ‘She might have got married in London,’ Dusty said in an obstinate way, but she believed him.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Where’s my barometer?’ she asked, her attention suddenly diverted to a bare patch on the wall.

  Her nephew looked sullen.

  ‘You’ve probably got it in that blasted boat of yours.’ She glanced out of the window. The boat was growing quite big. The top of it was as high as the garden fence, some of which had actually been incorporated into the wooden superstructure, although Dusty hadn’t noticed yet. The base was large and broad.

  ‘It’s not exactly a boat.’

  ‘Ark, then,’ said his exasperated aunt. ‘Boat, ark, what does it matter? It has to come down in double quick time. And why did you have to have my barometer?’

  ‘I have to have something to warn me of the approaching deluge.’

  ‘It’s no good, anyway,’ said Dusty. ‘ It just looks pretty.’

  ‘I’ve already discovered that … I’ll need about ten shillings to get it put right again.’ He gave her an oblique look from under his heavy black lashes. />
  Reluctantly Dusty put her hand in her bag for money. Her fingers felt something smooth and long and rounded. She drew it out. It was a slim blue fountain pen with a gold cap. Velia had lent it to her one day in the office. The pen was not valuable but it was probably the most expensive thing Velia possessed.

  ‘I ought to have given it back,’ muttered Dusty. ‘Suppose she said I stole it. Might get arrested …’

  Getting arrested was a fear often popping in and out of Dusty’s mind, and over the strangest things. She had dreams about walking down the High Street wearing only her brassiere, or being caught stealing jewellery from the Fine Gem Shop in Church Street.

  Beneath her calm, even stolid face, Dusty’s phobias bubbled away merrily. Her subconscious had a full and vital life.

  ‘Perhaps that’s why I was anxious,’ thought Dusty, her subconscious giving her another nudge.

  ‘Who are you going to get to repair it?’ she asked her nephew absently, no longer really thinking about the barometer.

  ‘I can do it myself,’ he said briefly. ‘ I only need a bit of stuff.’

  ‘You’re too clever by half.’ But it was true, a boy who could build a boat like that in a back yard, helped only by his brothers and sisters, could surely mend a barometer.

  Dusty’s mind shot back to where the conversation with the boy had begun: his remark that Velia had telephoned today. Had Velia been telephoning about her pen?

  ‘There was a telephone call, did you say?’ She turned to him. ‘From Mrs Ryman?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Didn’t say it was her calling. Didn’t give a name. But it was.’ He shrugged again. ‘ I recognised the voice. I saw her once with Mum.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘No message. Well, not one I could make out.’ Velia’s voice had sounded confused and incoherent as if she was operating under a strain of some sort. It had also sounded desperate. But he was not the boy to say so.

  ‘I’d better go round and see her,’ said Dusty.