Whoever Has the Heart

by Jennie Melville

  But there was competition. I knew from my Windsor friends Birdie Peacock and Winifred Eagle, retired witches now into faith healing and homoeopathy, that one of their band of white witches lived in Brideswell. She and her husband lived in the Midden, Ruddles Lane, and cured all, four-footed, winged, and otherwise, who needed help. I had not yet located the Midden, but had to assume that, sited as it was near the old village rubbish tip, it was tucked away somewhere out of sight since even a medieval village would put it at a distance. Birdie had pursed her lips at the mention of Ellen and Jack Bean. He was no good, she hinted, and the marriage of Ellen had put her out of the witch business. White witches were better unmarried, and most certainly better without spouses like Jack the rogue, she implied.

  ‘It’s a sink for money, that house,’ Humphrey said, ‘ you’ll spend a fortune doing it up.’

  ‘I’ll do it gradually.’

  ‘I can see you’re determined.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll see you through this stage too,’ he said, half in joke, half grimly.

  ‘Don’t look down on me.’ That was a joke too, because I am not that much shorter than he is. I’m tall for a woman, which has helped me in my profession. I’m a former gingerhead whose colour has toned down nicely with years. He is a bit grey. I have lost (or think I have) my Scottish accent, Humphrey speaks the Queen’s English with the slightly husky voice of an ex-smoker.

  I had known Humphrey for about five years and although it had been pretty obvious within a few minutes of our meeting what we felt about each other and what we would do about it, it had taken longer to add friendship to the equation.

  My fault, I think. I was prickly and on my guard. I had had an early marriage with friendship and respect and not much of any passion, and a subsequent relationship that was full of emotions but with certainly no respect on either side, and I didn’t believe either mix a good base for a marriage. I wanted something better. Humphrey had been married once before and all I knew about that was that she was Lotty and had wanted a more socially active life. I had been promised a look at Lotty but so far had never seen her.

  So I waited. The friendship started to grow stronger when I was threatened with an illness. Although neither of us talked about it much, I knew I had all the strength and love there that I needed. And when a searing, tearing case ended with me close to becoming the butt of chauvinistic police humour, he had seen me through that maze and shown me how to fight back. So the friendship was there all right.

  But in my mind the relationship was like a reel of cotton that was always unwinding and that I couldn’t get to the end of: I was half curious, half afraid. I didn’t think we’d kill each other, but you never can tell. So there it was, this marvellous relationship with everything, present and potential, and I was still holding back.

  Brideswell was quiet the day I took Humphrey to walk down the village street. I noticed the baker’s shop was called Dryden, and that a Beasley ran the Post Office, but somehow I could not associate the man I had met in the churchyard as either a baker or a postmaster.

  Chloe Devon might have walked down this street and then vanished.

  ‘I’m off to Brussels next week,’ Humphrey said as we drove back to Windsor. His own life was full of mysterious journeys about which one was not meant to enquire too much, while on the other hand I often felt he was shockingly well informed about what went on in my professional life. That was something I didn’t like too much.

  ‘That’s it, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Why I want this house … when you are away I want to miss you in a house of my own and not yours.’

  Thirteen days after my luncheon with Billy and Mary, I saw in a fax from one of the Met areas with which my communication was good and working well that a bundle of women’s clothes had been found in west London. A short black dress of very good quality – the label was torn out but it had been new and expensive – and the underclothes to go with it. No shoes, no tights, no handbag. The speculation was that the clothes belonged to Chloe Devon.

  I did not, at the time, tell either Mary or Billy Damiani.

  I spent the late afternoon at a committee in London, and got back to find a message from Humphrey on my answermachine.

  ‘About Brideswell … Don’t move there. Cut your losses and run.’

  Run? What was I supposed to be running from?

  And then I checked myself, and thought again. I played the message back. It wasn’t Humphrey’s voice, it was not all that much like his. What was the matter with me, that I should immediately decide it was?

  But if it wasn’t him, who was it? And was that person pretending to be Humphrey?

  A joke … ? Some of my colleagues had that sort of sense of humour, I regret to say. Or a real warning?

  Chapter Two

  I took advantage of a quiet afternoon on the next day to drive myself round the wooded and hilly countryside in which Brideswell lay. From one high point I could look down on the village.

  I could see the shape of the village street, observe the church tower, the doctor’s house seen distantly over the trees, and right on the edge of the area, down wooded lanes, the animal clinic. To the west lay the hospital, and beyond that, the microbiological research station.

  There was a ghost already abroad in Brideswell although I did not know it.

  Not a walking, talking, seen on the streets sort of ghost but a haunting none the less.

  The whole village knew but were not talking about it. When I say the whole village, I except the parson, who did not know and whom nobody told; the village thought innocence was his job. All the people I was getting to know, like Crick and David, Ellen Bean and Thomas Dryden, all were aware of the ghost, but saw no reason to tell me. Ghosts were not my business.

  This was not to say that all who knew about the ghost cared about the ghost. Brideswell was a down to earth working village, and although they might know it was, in a sense, a haunted village, it was something they could shrug off. You don’t have to see the ghost just because you live in a haunted village. Most of them had other and more practical worries. The current recession in farming and in the local industries was more important to these pragmatic people. In fact, if the haunting brought trade to the village they would be pleased.

  These villagers knew that ghosts only existed in people’s minds, and were fuelled by people’s imagination, so that if you kept your own mind closed then you were safe. Such villagers were the baker and his wife, the doctor and the vet. In fact, the vet, who only came in and out, had no notion of the haunting and would not have minded if he had done, being more concerned with the valuable minks and sables he was trying to breed.

  It was not an old ghost, it had not been around for very long, a new young phantom in an ancient village which had certainly known other ghosts. Those old ghosts had died away, leaving not even a memory behind. None of those old ghosts, legacies of ancient quarrels, ancient wounds, had done any harm, or if they had then years had buried the memory of it.

  It was a he-she ghost, which Ellen Bean was later to tell me was quite usual and rather nasty.

  But because it wasn’t a walking, talking, visible ghost didn’t mean it wasn’t an eating ghost. This was a new, hungry ghost.

  This was a murderous ghost.

  Chapter Three

  I visited the house in Brideswell at irregular intervals, gradually moving in a few of my possessions, and camping out there while I decided on a scheme of decoration. My goddaughter Kate, now married to George Rewley, a young detective whom I had just appointed to my own Investigation Unit, fancied her skills in interior decoration and would have been glad to help. But she would have taken over and I wanted this place, wallpaper, paint, curtains, and all, to reflect my own choice.

  As I went to the village, buying bread in the baker’s and choosing coffee in the general store, I realized that the Met had been in and about the area enquiring about Chloe Devon. They had come into my area unobtrusively, but they h
ad been there. No co-operation from me or the appropriate Windsor police unit had been requested. That interested me, but I did not complain, although I would do so with force when and if it suited me.

  By this time I had discovered more about Chloe Devon, and in doing so, had come to learn more about Billy Damiani. To begin with, he was her employer, a fact he had not brought out when we talked. He must have known I would find out.

  One of his enterprises (and I was sure he had many more) was a fine art magazine, Avian, which was run from an office off Duke Street in Piccadilly. Chloe had worked as a research assistant. Damiani had bought the magazine from its founder who remained as editor. It was said to lose money but had a good reputation in the art world. The prestige factor probably operated for Billy, who got invited into worlds he might not otherwise have penetrated. Windsor Castle, for one.

  Chloe was twenty-three (Damiani was forty-three – he didn’t look it, must dye his hair) and had taken a degree in French and Art History at Bristol University. Then she had travelled for six months in Italy and France which she had financed by working as a waitress and a courier or whatever came up. She was not a clever girl, the degree was a very average second, but she was pretty, hard working, and good mannered. She was liked by the other research assistants. Billy Damiani eyed all the pretty girls who worked for him, and took them all out in turn – in the media they were called his ‘harem’ – but Chloe was the first one who had mattered with him.

  Both Chloe’s parents were several times divorced and remarried with new families and not much interest was taken in Chloe. This had made her, as a friend reported, a ‘ tough girl’.

  She was also, the same friend said, one to take risks, a ‘chancer’. There was a hint from this last girl, one Rowena Adams, that Chloe was out for what she could get. Not exactly mercenary, but with a kind of mental price list in her head.

  To me, she sounded a mixture of toughness and vulnerability, the very profile of a girl who might walk out into the night and be murdered.

  About Billy Damiani, however, I had not discovered very much more than that he was rich, sociable, and ambitious. In what direction his ambitions went opinions varied, just as the stories of his origins did. The received impression was that he had neither been born nor educated in England, while giving a very good imitation of having done so. But he had a lot of solid investments in this country, owned much property, and might be exactly what he appeared to be: a rich social climber who liked living in England. ‘If he could marry a duchess or the odd sprig of the royal family, it wouldn’t come amiss,’ said my informant, an officer in the Met who claimed to know no more than he had told me but who might, just possibly, know the odd fact or two more.

  ‘Don’t think he’d blunder into murder, though,’ my informant said.

  But men like that do, I thought, just as girls like Chloe become their victims.

  Damiani telephoned me himself that evening. I wasn’t pleased to hear his voice and did not know how he had tracked me down. Mary, I supposed.

  He caught me at the house in Brideswell where I was talking to Crick and David whom I was beginning to know and like. They had been giving me a hand with moving some bits of furniture into the sitting room. A long bookcase had given us trouble and we were pausing for breath.

  I had put a match to the fire and the leaping flames were casting shadows on the wall that I had painted white.

  The bookcase was stranded in the middle of the room. There was a space in the wall opposite the window all ready for it, but we didn’t seem able to get it into position.

  David was awarding it an assessing survey. ‘If we give a shove to the left, I think we shall have it.’

  They were the only inhabitants of the village who had come forward in a friendly way. The rest were, understandably, keeping their distance. My reputation had gone before me: I was a police officer, a certain notoriety hung around me, danger could follow. They were wary, nervous, watching me while they saw how things worked out. And the disappearance of Chloe Devon played its part in this carefulness.

  When the telephone rang, the instrument was stranded on the other side of the bookcase, and I had to crawl round to answer it.

  Billy Damiani sounded tense. ‘Oh, good, you are there. You were such a long time answering that I thought you couldn’t be.’

  ‘There was a reason for that.’ I sat back on my heels, hoping he would not talk too long, it was cold and draughty on the floor.

  ‘I wondered if you had any news for me. Of Chloe, I mean. I know some of her clothes were found. I identified them. I wish it hadn’t been me. I felt strong suspicious breaths down my neck. He had a very mean look, that detective.’

  ‘Don’t let it worry you.’ I could see that Crick and David were listening to every word, while pretending to adjust the angle of the bookcase. If they weren’t careful it would tilt on to me. ‘Watch it, David,’ I said.

  ‘Have you got someone with you?’ asked Damiani nervously.

  ‘Only furniture movers,’ I said. ‘ Don’t let it worry you, carry on.’

  ‘I’ve been hoping she would turn up … but finding her clothes … that was nasty.’

  ‘It doesn’t look good.’

  ‘You can say that again … I wish she’d walk into the room, alive and well. I’d give anything not to have taken her out that night, and not to have had an argument with her.’

  ‘What did you quarrel about?’

  Hastily he set me right. ‘Not a quarrel, just different points of view.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Nothing really, this and that, you know how it is sometimes.’

  ‘She got up and walked out,’ I pointed out. ‘ She felt strongly enough to do that.’

  ‘Too strongly, it was stupid,’ he said reluctantly. ‘ She was jealous, a bit possessive, poor girl. Nothing in it. Not for me, not for her.’

  ‘Was she blackmailing you?’ I asked bluntly. Over the top of the bookcase I saw a look of passionate interest cross Crick’s face, only to be quickly repressed.

  ‘No, of course not, nothing to blackmail me on … If you must know, she wanted promotion at work and I couldn’t promise that … And she got annoyed, thought I could have done it for her, but I don’t interfere in that kind of way. If she was good, she would get there anyway, I told her.’

  ‘And then she walked out?’

  ‘Right.’

  And I didn’t blame her, I thought, it was damn patronizing. But where did she go?

  ‘She had a lot of friends,’ he was saying. ‘She got about. She must have met someone she knew and gone off with them. Probably in Bermuda by now.’

  Without her clothes?

  Billy said, ‘Let me know, won’t you, if any news comes in? I just have this feeling she will turn up.’

  I went back to the fire. ‘Let’s have a drink. Dry sherry or whisky?’

  ‘Whisky for me, please.’ David looked at his stepfather, and Crick nodded, before putting another log on the fire. I had discovered for myself what he already knew, that log fires need constant attention and can be hard work. ‘And for him too.’

  I poured myself some dry sherry. ‘Why did no one see the girl walking through the village?’ It was as if she had taken off on a flying carpet.

  Neither of them made any effort to hide that they knew what I had been talking about on the telephone.

  ‘It was a cold, wet night,’ said Crick. ‘And a big football match on the TV. Most people were home watching. The village is quiet at night.’ And dark. There were no street lights, only the lamps behind curtained windows.

  ‘She was wearing a short black dress and very high heels, no coat, just a little flyaway wrap. She must have been an unusual sight in the village street.’

  ‘Someone may have seen her and be keeping quiet. People don’t always tell the truth.’

  ‘Or she may have gone up one of the side-streets. Or a car may have picked her up,’ said David.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Billy had
said the same thing. He put it badly but in a way he got it right.

  I had a camp bed which I set up in front of the fire and I spent the night with the fire crackling and the flames making patterns on the wall. I thought about the girl walking out into the night and disappearing like a little lost cat. It made me shiver.

  When I got back to Windsor, I found a report that a woman’s arm, a young woman’s arm, had been discovered in rough ground near Waterloo. It had been wrapped in a black plastic bag of the sort that gardeners use and hidden under a pile of leaves where a dog had found it. But the rats had found it first.

  It was not immediately identifiable as Chloe’s arm, and in fact since the fingertips had been chewed away, it was not going to be easy to identify it at all, but it appeared to be the arm of a young and slender woman so the chances were that it was Chloe’s.

  Nothing to do with me, I thought, found on the Met’s territory, it was their body. I would hear about it, but I need take no action, I wasn’t on Damiani’s payroll.

  I waited but nothing more turned up.

  Two days later, the south of England was ravaged by strong winds. Windsor got the full force. The cat and I sat together on the stairs in the house in Maid of Honour Row and listened to the gale raging in from the sea. The houses shook with the force, the windows rattled. Suddenly there was a roar, the back door blew open and the wind was inside with us.

  It tore round the house and up the stairs, pushing me aside and banging into furniture. Then it loosened its grip and I battled out to close and lock the back door, still miraculously on its hinges.

  For a moment there was silence, then the winds screamed on us again, louder and stronger than ever. I heard a cracking noise above me and the sound of falling glass. I crawled up the stairs and saw that my bedroom window had been fractured, there was glass all over the carpet.

  That was the climax of the storm. Slowly the wind relaxed and silence and quiet came back. Muff and I went to bed, ignoring the open window. There seemed to be plaster and debris on the bed, but I was too tired to care.