Come Home and Be Killed

by Jennie Melville

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment, and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

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  Contents

  Jennie Melville

  Preface

  Preface

  Preface

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jennie Melville

  Come Home and Be Killed

  Jennie Melville, a pseudonym for Gwendoline Butler, was born and brought up in south London, and was one of the most universally praised of English mystery authors. She wrote over fifty novels under both names. Educated at Haberdashers, she read history at Oxford, and later married Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She had one daughter, who survives her.

  Gwendoline Butler’s crime novels are hugely popular in both Britain and the United States, and her many awards included the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger. She was also selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The Times.

  Kathy walked home down the hill from the bus station by herself, travelling case humped on one side, big brown imitation crocodile bag on the other; she walked quickly and neatly all the same, she was a quick neat little person. People who looked into her big friendly brown eyes immediately liked her. But now she looked flushed and hot and a mite irritable.

  She turned in at the garden gate. Home seemed quiet and still. A damn sight too quiet and still, Kathy considered.

  She went back to her journey in her mind. The fuss about her sister had occurred when they changed buses at the Lintown bus station. Crowds had pushed past loaded with holiday cases, on the way to Brighton, Bournemouth, Torquay and Blackpool. She had shoved her way on to her own local bus bound for Deerham Hills. The driver knew her.

  ‘Missed her?’ Looking round at the crowds he could understand that.

  ‘I have indeed,’ she said, words squeezed out of her like a concertina, which seemed an odd way of putting it, but Kathy was considered odd in Deerham locality on account of her job, which was known to take her travelling.

  ‘She was here a minute ago,’ she persisted, inaccurately, it had been more than a minute. ‘Where did she go? Did you see?’ she added. ‘You know what she looks like?’

  He knew her: a curly little blonde with big eyes and a one way only expression. Usually wore blue or grey. He looked around. No sign of the girl in the bus and it wasn’t his worry.

  ‘Got shoved on the first bus off,’ he said, ‘she’ll be home before you.’

  The old lady on the seat behind watched Kathy walk away, then leaned forward. ‘I could tell you something about that young girl.’ Seeing that he looked vague, she went on: ‘I want to tell you something… She went out the other door of the bus!’

  He looked at her – sixtyish, fat, kind. He knew her name, Mrs Uprichard, but not where she lived. She was a constant traveller with a large circle of daughters strung out in towns around and she was always oscillating between them.

  ‘So what?’ he thought. ‘The two girls had a quarrel, maybe.’ He knew all about girls having quarrels because he had five elder sisters, and boy, did they fight! Main reason he got married. Then he grinned, well, not the main reason, because when you looked at it, that wasn’t a reason, that was an excuse.

  Only afterwards did he realise – there wasn’t another door!

  A boy with a dog was walking on the edge of Deerham Hills, where the houses and gardens began to give way to real country. He was called Bedowes. He was passing a scrubby piece of land often let to campers. It was still called Rectory Field although the Rector and the Rectory had moved away to the other side of the parish.

  The field seemed to be let now. A small trailer caravan was parked in one corner. It was a pale pastel pink, a ridiculous colour for a caravan. Somehow it looked forlorn now. Bedowes was curious. So was the dog (a bitch named Laura). She snuffed round the outskirts of the little encampment. But who was doing the camping? There wasn’t a single living soul to be seen, and it looked almost as if there never had been. Only almost, for the sharp eye could see that preparations had been made; a potted plant was drooping on the window-sill; a bottle of milk stood in the shade, but it had stood there for too long and was gradually dividing itself into its two elements of fat and water.

  The Rectory Field was an isolated spot. True it was near the road, but the road itself was hardly ever used since the new Deerham Hills to Lintown road had been driven through. Bedowes himself was here because he was in a temper and wanted to put as much space as possible between himself and home. Home was a place where people didn’t read poetry and didn’t like jazz and said that boys who couldn’t pass ‘O’ level Latin had better not think about Oxford. Home was hell. In full retreat from adult scepticism he had walked six miles and was now limping. The bitch Laura had had more pleasure but even she was tiring.

  Laura gave a little snort and pulled out an old bone from the ditch that bordered Rectory Field. She carried it over to Bedowes and presented him with it. She was not an intelligent dog but she had a certain charm.

  Bedowes kicked her offering away. He sat down on a piece of wood and stared at the encampment. He was an imaginative boy. (It was imagination that wrecked his Latin proses.) There was something so desolate about the place. Rectory Field had never been a gay place to camp in but now it was positively dreary.

  He decided the atmosphere came from the caravan, the pretty pink caravan, which in spite of its brave colour seemed now a symbol of distress.

  Whistling to the dog, Bedowes walked away. Home seemed welcoming for the first time that afternoon. Anyway they were alive at home.

  He turned his head for a last look.

  You could hide away there, stay for days if you wanted, without a soul seeing.

  Or you could imprison someone there. Keep them shut up, imprisoned, far away from helping neighbours.

  He shivered.

  Kathy got on the bus and travelled home expecting her sister to be home before she was.

  Her job took her away a good deal as it was bound to do. She sold brassieres and corsets (it’s your health, madam!), tweeds and cashmeres, for which she personally fitted her customers; she took her job deadly seriously and made a good thing financially of it. Customers looking down on her neat head bent conscientiously over the tape measure always ordered more than they meant to do. All the same she was regarded by Deerham Hills, a conventional, orderly community, as not having a proper job. Proper jobs began at 9.30 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. and brought in regular wages. Kathy had been away five days this time: Janet had been to the seaside, supposedly because she suffered a good deal with her throat, although Kathy considered it a young man and wondered if Robert, Janet’s almost, near fiancé, knew. But Robert would never admit it. So loyal and upright. Kathy admired, liked Robert for being so upright, but sometimes she thought a little more of the spice of wickedness might not be a bad thing since virtue seemed to make for short-sightedness.

  At the gate she saw that no one had taken in the milk. By the milk was a loa
f in a bag.

  She opened the front door, planted her bag on the hall table under the mirror and took in the milk. It was quite warm. The loaf on the other hand was stale, cold and hard. ‘Been there all day,’ she thought crossly, ‘what will the neighbours think?’

  ‘Hello,’ she called out.

  Dead silence.

  No answering shout to warm up the house. Everything rested still and quiet.

  ‘Anyone home?’ she called.

  But there was no reply.

  She felt miserable at once. She hated loneliness. She felt immensely and unnaturally alone. Kathy sighed and pulled a face at herself in the mirror. ‘ Better buck up, girl,’ she said. Then she walked out into the kitchen. It was a pretty kitchen and her pride and joy, or it was when she could get Mumsy to keep it tidy. Mumsy specialised in untidying. But that was all a part of her big warm untidy personality. However it was tidy enough now, you could see that someone had had a tentative touch at untidying it, a sort of nibble, as it were, but had not finished off. Kathy gave a frown. This wasn’t how it should look, how it usually looked at five o’clock in the afternoon. By now Mumsy should be out here, ladling curdling cream into soup, beating steaks and mixing pudding for the early supper they usually had. All three women were interested in food, only they had different ways of looking at it: Kathy liked small, delicious, well cooked little meals and Mumsy liked rich thick food. Mumsy was a rotten cook and they all suffered a good deal from indigestion.

  Kathy put the kettle on for a cup of tea, humming as she did so. Presently she opened her bag and got out her little diary and consulted a list. She usually made a list of jobs for herself to do.

  Tickets

  Timetable

  Cleaners

  Mrs Ivory – tweed skirt

  She gave a nod at the first two items on the list. Tickets and timetable; they had been attended to. That problem was in the past.

  She drank her tea quietly and with enjoyment. But when it was finished it struck her that Janet ought to be in now even if she had come on the later bus. She went to the window and looked out. You could see the road from the kitchen as indeed you could from all the front main rooms in this pretty little house. She could see Mrs Carter mowing her lawn and keeping an eye on the baby in the playpen at the same time. Mrs Carter saw her and waved a friendly hand. Mrs Carter had been a nurse before she married, she had married late and she was roughly the same age as Kathy. They were as near friends as they both had time to be. ‘I’m sorry for that girl,’ Emily Carter said occasionally to her husband. ‘ Tied up with the other two. Oh they’re sweet and all that. I like Mrs Birley, she’s grand, but those two girls ought to marry.’ Her husband shrugged, ‘People get the sort of life they want, roughly speaking. And the reports say that Janet doesn’t lack for men friends.’ His wife hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I always have the vague feeling the other two think of Kathy … as well, expendable … that they’d go off and leave her the minute it suited them. Or worse.’

  ‘Could there be worse?’ said her husband handing her his cup. ‘Yes …’ said his wife. ‘ Em, you’re dreaming, pass me my coffee.’

  And if Janet was late where was Mumsy? Kathy gave herself a little shake. She was being altogether too calm about this. A little worry was in order.

  The kitchen clock ticked round another minute or two, then Kathy got up and in a determined way went out into the hall.

  Mumsy’s usual coat, brown tweed, was hanging in the hall, but after all she had several others (Mumsy loved clothes) and was probably wearing something lighter on a nice warm day like this. On the other hand Janet’s blue check coat was not there as it certainly would be if she’d got home before Kathy and gone to take a bath or do her face … but she would certainly have come down or shouted when she heard Kathy’s voice.

  Besides, the words underlined themselves irritably in Kathy’s mind, they always had a cup of tea when they came in. They all always did. Janet ought to be there right now getting her cup of tea. Where the hell was Janet?

  Kathy went over it again in her mind. Get the facts clear, Kathy girl, she told herself. She and her sister had got on different coaches at Lintown. (Well you don’t know that, she told herself, it’s only what the man supposed.) She should have been home earlier. She could have been home late. But she should be home now.

  Slowly Kathy went up the stairs. The stairs, covered in cherry red and white carpet, had a faintly untidy look as if people had tramped up and down with messy feet. At the head of the stairs she stopped; a window was directly ahead of her. It must have been open for hours because a drift of little white petals from the may tree had spread out in a semicircle on the floor. Kathy shut the window with a frown. She stood there for a moment debating whether to sweep them up now or leave them. She left them.

  Her own bedroom door stood open and in her present moment of preoccupation she could not help enjoying it. Pink frilled trim to bed and dressing-table, red roses on the walls, a smell of lavender, her dresses and shoes neatly treed in the wardrobes.

  The twin bedroom shared by Janet and Mumsy was in its usual state of disorder and Kathy smiled at it. It really did look as if Mumsy had stepped out of bed without touching a thing. She probably had. In spite of herself, Kathy couldn’t help smiling at the drift of bath powder that accurately traced Mumsy’s path from bath to dressing-table and then the little row of lipsticks showing that she had anyway made up her face. Indeed on this point Mrs Birley was adamant. She always appeared with lipstick. She might, indeed frequently did, appear with bedroom slippers on and an old dressing-gown but she always completely and lavishly made up. The smell of Amiez-vous which usually preceded her in a steady blast wasn’t as strong as usual.

  Kathy opened the cupboard door, and then shut it hastily before its entire contents fell out on the ground before her. Nothing neatly in rows there. Likewise nothing you could check on and say, well that coat’s gone so she must be out.

  But what are you thinking about, Kathy, my girl? she told herself. You know she’s out.

  Immediately she started to go over in her mind what could have taken Mumsy out, at this moment when she should, by rights, be in, cooking supper for her two girls? A telephone call summoning her to a sick bed? But, really they had no one to get sick, except Aunt Minny, and heaven knows she was permanently sick and not likely to summon Mumsy to minister to her since the time Mumsy and Janet, and Kathy herself, had let the electric blanket burn right through to Aunt Minny while they watched a T.V. show. An accident while she was out shopping? But there’d be some message. After all, everyone knew where she, Kathy, was. Her movements were readily predictable and well known in advance. She was due to be home today.

  Nor did any possible explanation which covered Mumsy, also explain where Janet was. While Kathy had been looking round the top floor the minutes had been ticking away fast, and the last coach by which Janet could possibly have travelled had been in some time ago. On an impulse, Kathy picked up the telephone and rang the bus station. She got the usual dreamy girl, but the girl was quite clear, yes the Lintown bus was in, and no, she certainly hadn’t seen Miss Janet Birley. She sounded puzzled and interested. Not so dreamy somehow and Kathy hastily put the receiver down.

  She opened the sitting-room door, this room too, like the kitchen, was tidy and unused. Only on the air was a faint smell of cigarette smoke as if someone had sat here, waiting and smoking. Kathy opened the window. The gramophone player and radio stood by the window and she glanced down at it. There was a gramophone record still on, and the playing arm had not been lifted. It had just whirred on and on at the end of the record until something had gone wrong with the mechanism and it had stopped.

  She frowned. That was wrong. Just how wrong she didn’t know. But wrong. She put out a hand to take it off and then drew back. Better to leave it.

  At this point the telephone rang. Kathy let it ring for a second. But it was just about the time Robert rang for his usual evening call with Janet. If they
were in the mood they might go on talking for minutes on end, and then meet again in the evening. This was a marvel to Kathy, who frequently ran out of conversation and had to relapse into silence. Someone had once told her that this meant Robert and Janet were well matched but privately she doubted this. Slowly, reluctantly, she reached out her hand and answered the telephone. It was Robert.

  ‘Hello, Rob,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Janet there?’ He sounded cheerful, confident, as usual.

  ‘She’s not back yet,’ admitted Kathy. ‘I’m expecting her any minute though.’ Are you really? asked that little voice inside her. Honest? ‘She ought to be here any minute.’

  ‘Oh,’ he sounded puzzled. ‘I thought you were coming home together.’

  ‘We got parted. As a matter of fact I don’t know just where she is; she must have stopped off to do some shopping.’

  ‘Of course.’ He sounded relieved. ‘I know about Janet and shopping. Got stuck in the shop worrying over the colour of her new lipstick … well, when the shopper gets in tell her I’ll pick her up tonight as per usual.’

  So he is jealous, he doesn’t trust Janet, thought Kathy. ‘I’ll do that, Rob.’ With relief Kathy put down the telephone. The impulse, always very strong, to speak a few home truths about Janet to Rob had been almost overpowering tonight, but it might have been fatal.

  Back in the hall Kathy decided, with a nervous approach to normalcy, that she must get on with supper. It was something she ought to be doing. After all, wouldn’t it be just what Mumsy would expect her to do? She tied on the clean white apron lying over the chair, and reflecting that she had very little appetite for supper, went to the cupboard to see what the supplies were. She felt like Mother Hubbard’s dog when she got there. It was pretty well empty. Surely Mumsy must have planned on doing some eating? There was plenty of tinned stuff of course, laid down on the orders, and for that matter at the expense of the provident Kathy. Mumsy and Janet did rather live hand to mouth. The food was rich but they might not know half an hour before what it was they would be eating.