The Saint Valentine’s Day Murders

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘Well, you might be better able to find out the truth than we could in a formal interview.’

  Rachel broke the silence that followed. ‘It’s all right, Robert. Forget about our going out this evening. I’ve thought of something useful I can do instead. You go on to Tiny’s house on your own and I’ll meet you back at the flat whenever.’

  Amiss emitted a sound half-way between a sigh and a groan. ‘I don’t know who to resent most, Sammy. That smart-ass DC Whatshisname…?’

  ‘Pooley.’

  ‘…Pooley. The slanderous old bitch, Miss Nash. Jim for his moral blackmail. You for so efficiently finding us. Or this woman for publicly granting me the freedom to get lumbered with a shitty job.’

  ‘It’s difficult to choose, sir.’

  ‘Goodbye, Sammy. You may tell Jim from me that only the debt of gratitude I owe his wife prevents me from telling him to take a running fuck.’

  ‘I shall make a note of it, sir,’ said Pike, as he got out to open for them the near-side car door.

  They walked silently for a couple of minutes, until Rachel stopped and faced him. ‘Robert,’ she said, ‘have I ever told you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’

  He made a valiant attempt to narrow his eyes, tighten his mouth and look severe. His failure was apparent to them both. ‘All right, you cow,’ he muttered affectionately. ‘I only hope you’ve got something spectacularly awful lined up for tonight.’

  ‘It may come to nothing, so I’ll keep it a surprise.’

  They rounded the corner to see the arrival of the funeral cortège. Gathered in the car-park was a small group of wet and miserable people and, for the fourth time since Thursday, Amiss found himself nodding at Shipton, Horace, Graham, Bill and Melissa. As on every previous occasion, he could not repress his astonishment that Melissa had elected to do the simple, decent thing.

  Supplemented by family and friends, they stood by unhappily until the coffin had been carried into the crematorium chapel by Tiny and five strong men who looked like stalwarts of the rugby club. As the mourners shuffled into the chapel, Amiss looked around for Rachel and saw she had moved back to join Melissa. She’s distancing herself, he thought. Making sure that she can make a clean get-away afterwards. If Melissa stayed true to form, she would be the only PD member who didn’t trail back to the house for the food and drink.

  At first, during the brief religious service, Amiss could keep neither his eyes off Tiny nor his mind off the accusations of Miss Nash. Could he really be the brute she portrayed? Surely he was merely an oaf with a quick temper. He tried to wrench his mind away to listen to the vicar, who was making it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t have known Fran if he had met her in the street. The unctuous voice flowed over the congregation, making bland utterances about ‘the natural goodness she displayed in the conduct of her daily life’, and that ‘though not outwardly apparently a religious person’ (code for never going to church), ‘she was possessed of an instinctive spirituality’ (code for promising that St Peter would do his bit without any quibbles). Nothing of course about the nastiness of her death. Don’t upset the listeners. Just like the anodyne services for Tommy Farson and Charlie. Hadn’t Edna’s service been preferable? Even though that Baptist minister had rather overdone the Old Testament angle, banging on about her slayer, he had at least known something about her and cared. It had been a bit surprising to find that Henry was a pillar of the congregation. Unlucky for him to have been born a Baptist. He’d have been better off a Roman Catholic. At least he’d have got a kick out of confession.

  This service, Amiss was thankful to see, was going to be briefer than any of the others. ‘Abide with Me’, he sang along with his neighbours, as a sub-standard type of organ music played in the background. The coffin began the slide down the rollers, with a squeak that suggested the maintenance staff might lack the sense of duty befitting their position. His teeth ground in sympathy with those who were really mourning Fran. Was there no way to be disposed of that didn’t have these ghastlinesses? He flinched at the memory of the heart-stopping moment on Thursday when one of the ropes had slipped and Edna’s coffin plummeted down into the grave with indecent haste. No. Panic was unnecessary this time. Despite the squeak, the coffin was making a stately progress along the decline. It was only seconds before it vanished, the curtains fell back together and the sing-along tape indicated that a few verses of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ would put an end to the proceedings. He sneaked a covert look at his watch. A quarter to five now. Allow about a quarter of an hour to get to Tiny’s house. What then? Was he supposed to hang around the whole evening in the hope of getting Tiny to himself? There were bound to be relatives staying. If he once realized there would be no opportunity for a tête-à-tête, surely he could get away within a couple of hours. As he joined the procession from the chapel, he looked around for Rachel to tell her that he’d ring her about seven o’clock and let her know if their evening could be salvaged after all. She was nowhere in the car-park. He looked about in bewilderment and then caught sight of her moving away in the direction of the railway station. She was talking earnestly to Melissa.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Would you like some of my tea wine?’ asked Melissa. I should not, thought Rachel wistfully. I can think of nothing more loathsome. What I’d really like is a large gin and tonic, with plenty of ice, and the promise of more to come.

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ she said. ‘That sounds great.’

  Melissa hung their coats carefully in a cupboard concealed by a long green felt curtain festooned with badges. As she left the room Rachel took the opportunity to scrutinize the display. Many of the messages were predictable. Only a couple of hours of Melissa’s company had led her to expect that she would be for abortion on demand, the environment, reclaiming the night, alternative living, positive discrimination, the IRA and international socialism. It was no surprise either that she appeared to be against capitalism, urbanism, female circumcision, pornography, rape and other varieties of male oppression. Rachel even felt a collector’s delight in actually seeing rather than reading about badges proclaiming ‘I am a lesbian’ and ‘I am menstruating’. The only legends that occasioned a wrinkling of the forehead were those concerning, on the one hand, ‘wimmin’ and, on the other, ‘wommin’. She knew about the liberationists’ rejection of the anti-female overtones of the word ‘women’. But now it seemed as if there was a split about the proper alternative. Or was ‘wommin’ a misprint? And why not ‘wimmon’—or even ‘wummin’?

  Better not distract Melissa by raising the issue, she concluded, and returned to the sofa to which she had been directed. She had worked hard to get this far. It would all prove a tiresome waste of time unless she could get hold of the information she needed for Jim. As Melissa reappeared from the kitchen carrying a bottle and two glasses, there was the sound of a key turning in the lock of the front door.

  A tall, slim fair-haired woman of about thirty came swiftly into the room throwing her anorak energetically into the far corner. Rachel just had time to note the grim expression and to learn from her chest that she was in favour of ‘WOMANPOWER’ and against the bomb when Melissa said, ‘This is my lover, Angela Perry. Angela, this is Rachel Simon. We travelled together from the funeral.’

  Angela nodded a distracted welcome, threw herself into an armchair and began a discourse that impressed Rachel with its fluency and spread of invective. Angela was angry. The peace demonstration had been thinly attended; there had been rain throughout; the police had been heavy; they had acted roughly in removing some of the women who had lain down in the middle of Whitehall; and Angela had a large bruise on her upper arm to prove it. She seemed if anything crosser with the women (including Melissa) who had failed to turn up than with the police, who were behaving true to their porcine form. Melissa was sympathetic and soothing, but impressed Rachel by her refusal to apologize for electing to honour Fran on this occasion rather than to enter her protest against cruise missile
s. ‘You must see, Angela,’ she said firmly, ‘that when violence against women occurs in one’s own vicinity, one must express solidarity.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so,’ said Angela grudgingly, ‘but I still don’t see why you went to the funerals of the man and the boy.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Melissa patiently. ‘They were the incidental victims of violence intended for women.’

  This line of argument struck Rachel as being short on logic. Surely Charlie’s death in particular should have been the cause of rejoicing that an anti-woman plot had boomeranged back on a representative of the collectively guilty male sex? It struck her that Amiss’s view of Melissa was probably correct. She could not in practice live up to the harshness of her theoretical views. With a hard-liner like Angela she sought to cover up her wetness by ideological obfuscation. Angela was forceful but simple-minded. Melissa’s office braggadocio was put on to cover more open-mindedness and intellectual uncertainty than she would like to admit.

  ‘Since two of the four who died were male, you don’t think there’s any chance that it was not violently intended against women, per se?’ As she asked the question, Rachel saw nervously that Angela’s expression became hostile.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ she demanded.

  ‘I just meant that maybe one of the men wanted to kill his wife and didn’t mind who else—of either sex—suffered in the process of obscuring the real target.’

  Angela looked thunderous. ‘God, you’re so naive,’ she began.

  Melissa cut in swiftly. ‘You’re not seeing this clearly, Rachel. The motive behind this is simple. This was as straightforwardly designed to kill women—and only women—as it would have been if the murderer had gone out into the streets and stabbed the first six women he saw.’

  ‘And which of your colleagues would have wanted to do that?’

  ‘Any of them,’ said Angela firmly. ‘Every man wants to violate women in some way. Any of them could have had so much aggression in him that he wanted to destroy as many as possible. It’s an inevitable consequence of living in a capitalist patriarchy.’

  Rachel took her first sip of tea wine and heroically controlled the grimace that fought its way nearly to the surface. ‘So there’s no point in speculating about the specific motives of any individual?’ she asked.

  ‘None whatsoever,’ said Melissa vehemently. ‘This is just one more expression of the backlash against the women’s liberation movement. If the police had any brains they’d be looking for whichever of those men feels most threatened by us.’

  What would that mean in practice? wondered Rachel. An opinion survey? A check on their propensity to buy pornography? A psychiatrist’s analysis of their sexual fantasies? This paranoid drivel was getting her nowhere. She had to steer them round to giving her the facts she wanted. Without thinking, she took a fortifying gulp of wine. The wave of nausea that hit her sent her rapidly to the bathroom. Through the partition she could hear Melissa talking rapidly. She returned to the living room trying not to look self-conscious. Angela challenged her at once. ‘So you want to join the women’s movement?’

  ‘Well, I feel I should be doing something about it. I was asking Melissa what kind of activities I could get involved in—when I’m transferred back from Paris.’

  ‘Rachel’s got a rather decent job in the embassy there,’ interpolated Melissa.

  ‘Foreign Office tokenism,’ snarled Angela. ‘If you’re really serious you shouldn’t be shoring up aggressive imperialist institutions but working for the movement itself.’

  Rachel assumed her most guileless expression. ‘I’ve been rather out of things over there. I can always think about changing my job when I get back.’

  ‘She wants a run-down on the local groups and that kind of thing.’

  Rachel’s heart warmed to Melissa. It was disarmingly trusting of her to take a known heterosexual time-server at face value so readily. She suppressed a spasm of guilt and prepared herself for dissimulation on any political or social issue they cared to throw at her. Angela’s first question was unexpected. ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you, with a name like that?’

  ‘And a nose like this,’ responded Rachel frivolously. ‘Yes, I am.’ She now recollected nervously that there was an anti-Zionist badge pinned to the green felt.

  ‘So where do you stand on Israeli fascist expansionism?’

  ***

  Rachel let herself into Amiss’s flat just before midnight. Mourn fully she realized it was empty. She poured herself a treble measure of gin, topped it with tonic and took a large mouthful before locating the ice. After a momentary dither, she looked up the Miltons’ home number. She was greatly relieved when it was answered immediately.

  ‘Rachel Simon, Jim. I wouldn’t have rung you so late if you hadn’t insisted you didn’t mind, and if I hadn’t put in a frightful evening on your behalf.’

  ‘Where? At Tiny Short’s?’

  ‘No. That, I imagine, is where Robert is. I’ve been doing my bit by sussing out whether the feminists of North London might have been gunning for Melissa.’

  ‘What results?’

  ‘You’re not going to get off as cheaply as that,’ said Rachel grimly. ‘I have come away from there feeling, as Angela Perry would no doubt put it, “marginalized” to an extreme degree. I have been abused for my sexual preferences and my racial origins. I have had to betray some of my relatives by agreeing finally that the simple wish to see Israel survive is morally wrong. I have eaten a meal of lentils and brown rice washed down with tea wine. Worst of all, instead of being able to incriminate one of that bunch of lunatics, I have to tell you that for all practical purposes you can forget them. Angela Perry is innocent.’

  ‘Who the hell is Angela Perry?’

  ‘Melissa’s lover. You told us you were trying to find out if anyone in Melissa’s circle with access to the PD list had reason to murder her.’

  ‘If you’ve managed to eliminate that lot, I am more than grateful. Melissa wouldn’t tell me a thing.’

  ‘Right. Here is the gist of what I picked up as a result of six hours of self-sacrifice, lying and taking advantage of Melissa’s and Angela’s desire to make a convert…’

  Milton listened intently for the next few minutes. When Rachel finished speaking she awaited a response.

  ‘You’re laughing, damn you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that, given all that polemic about male oppression and police brutality, it seems funny that I’ve just spent two hours ironing. Ann needed a wardrobe for the conference in the States she’s going to tomorrow, and I thought I might as well do a week’s shirts at the same time. To be serious, let me summarize what you’ve said. Angela has been Melissa’s lover for the past year—in other words, since long before she came to work in the BCC. You are absolutely convinced from their description of their lives that no one but Angela knows anything about Melissa’s work or colleagues. Therefore, only Angela could know which of them were married.’

  ‘Right so far. And since no chocolates were sent to Bill’s non-existent wife, only Angela could be a suspect.’

  ‘How can you be so sure that Melissa didn’t chat to others?’

  ‘Because she admitted that she associates socially only with a fanatical women’s group that won’t allow any man’s name to be mentioned.’

  ‘And you say that Angela’s alibi is uncontrovertible for the period between the last post on Thursday the tenth and the first on Friday the eleventh.’

  ‘You wouldn’t doubt it if you’d had to listen to her rundown of everything that happened at the consciousness-raising group on the Thursday night. Melissa had been at it too, so she wasn’t making it up. And why should she? She didn’t know I was a spy. She could never have got to the letter-box six miles away, because by crafty questioning I discovered that they went back to Melissa’s afterwards for a nourishing whole-food meal, went to bed together, and by nine o’clock the following morning Angela was opening the proceedings at a seminar
for social workers ten miles away in the wrong direction. Besides, they’re a very happy couple.’

  ‘Well, it’s always cheering to be able to make a straightforward elimination. DC Pooley will be disappointed, though. He suggested this afternoon that a feminist enemy of Melissa’s might have decided not only to get rid of her, but to eliminate several housewives as well on principle.’

  ‘I suppose that’s no sillier than Melissa’s view that one of her colleagues simply wanted to kill women as a form of revenge on the whole sex.’

  ‘It’s harder to rule out that possibility,’ sighed Milton. ‘Sensible motives are a bit thin on the ground.’

  ‘Any luck with the Twillerton wrecker?’

  ‘We’re working on it. Those BCC idiots were so convinced Robert was the miscreant that they didn’t bother to complete the routine investigation. We’re hoping to sort it out during the next few days.’

  ‘Where will you be tomorrow, if Robert has anything to report?’

  ‘At the Yard, I expect, shuffling paper and bullying subordinates.’

  ‘Good luck. I won’t see you for a while. I’m going back to Paris tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Of course you are. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. I’ve been the cause of ruining your last evening in London. Don’t think I’m not grateful for your help. I wasn’t looking forward to coming the heavy with Melissa and her gang. I only hope Robert’s time has been spent as usefully as yours. I’m afraid he’s probably had it rotten, too.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s better than ironing. Goodbye, Jim.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sunday, 20 February

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm. You know that, don’t you? They were only jokes. Only for the sake of a bit of fun. Livened things up. I’m sorry if they upset you.’

  Tiny was sitting perched on the edge of a small armchair that could only just contain the spread of his backside. What had possessed Fran, wondered Amiss yet again, to choose furniture which made her husband look ridiculous and ungainly? Only the sofa was big enough to offer him any bodily comfort, and that he refused to sit in. Nothing was too good for his friend Robert, he kept reiterating—‘my only friend’, he added in his more depressed moments.