Come Home and Be Killed

by Jennie Melville

  A car drove quietly up to the kerb and behind it yet another, black and official. The occupants of the car sat there for a minute, watching.

  Emily looked up, seeing the house, just as she had seen it before: a closed, quiet prison.

  Charmian saw it with exasperation as a part of a job that she had not done as well as she had wished: it was part of her experience, she was still growing.

  Pratt was outside it all. He saw it objectively and sadly as a house of a type with which he was familiar, a house to be stared at by the neighbours, talked about by the people. A house of violence and black deeds, a house uneasily digesting its past, but a house eventually to be sold, like any other, and lived in by another family.

  Within the house, now watched by so many people, Kathy crouched in the hall. She too was watching and waiting.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kathy, who ever since she had reported Janet missing at the bus station had lost all sense of what was right and wrong, what you could believe and what you couldn’t, and almost, of what was possible and what was not, was now faced with the worst thing of all: the inescapable, ultimate end of Kathy.

  Far away and long ago, your father met your mother and you were born and your mother died because she had it in her to go mad and die, and then your father married Mumsy and this was left as your legacy. You popped your penny in the genetic machine and out came murder. The thought fleetingly went through Kathy’s head that it was really more her mother’s fault than her father’s. If you bear a child the least of your responsibilities is to stay alive, and to keep it out of the way of people like Mumsy and Janet.

  ‘Ravening wolves,’ thought Kathy, ‘they’ll tear me to bits if I let them.’

  But in a way it was too late: they had already done so. The old cosy life she had built for herself with friends and customers and her house was gone for ever, and the Kathy that lived in it. What emerged might be a wiser Kathy but could hardly be a happy Kathy or even a whole Kathy: she had been cut in two. One half to Mumsy and one half to Janet. In their roaring, bustling heedless life they had eaten up hers.

  She could well believe that Charles Fox had loved Mumsy for the plump pleasure-loving little woman and the tough vulgar little man were well matched. They both had such pleasant good-natured faces and no doubt all their neighbours liked them and only I knew, thought Kathy vindictively, what there is underneath.

  Janet had no doubt been the seducer of Robert. The literal seducer? Probably not. But she had swayed Robert’s mind, so that behind the bright upright young business man was this dark figure.

  She faced Charlie Fox defiantly, although terribly afraid. (Dirty little dishonest gangster, she thought, all prissiness of speech, all restraint falling from her.)

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘And I know who you are, miss.’ He was taking off his coat. ‘Well, Robert couldn’t manage you, but by God I will.’

  ‘You won’t touch me,’ she was trembling.

  ‘No, no one’s to touch you.’

  ‘Why should you hate me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you. It’s a matter of business with me now.’

  ‘Take everything I’ve got but let me go,’ Kathy cried.

  She wanted to go on living. In retrospect the house, her furniture, her property, seemed a terribly little thing to fight for.

  ‘I’m too deep in,’ said Charlie fiercely, his eyes on the unconscious drunken figure of his friend and collaborator, Robert.

  They stood over Robert who lay between them head falling forward and hands limp. Charlie had cried out in anger when he saw Robert.

  Kathy saw a new and startling idea, a revelation.

  ‘You and Robert fixed this between you. This attempt to drive me out. Mumsy and Janet know nothing about it.

  ‘You’ve been trying all the time to frighten me, to make me panic,’ said Kathy. ‘But you haven’t succeeded, have you?’ This wasn’t true: Kathy was terrified and she had panicked. But the longer she could keep Charlie talking, the longer he would keep off her. She feared physical violence: she had never in all her life been able to destroy. If she had a cat killed, it had to be done by the vet in a padded cage by gas, if she killed a mouse, it had to be done by remote control.

  ‘And time is on my side.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Charlie taking a step forward. ‘ I don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t believe Mumsy and Janet are alive after all.’ Hope and fear, mixed about equally, flowed up in her. ‘They are dead,’ she whispered. And as if she had angered him beyond all bearing Charlie pulled

  a rope out of his pocket and tore towards her.

  From his upstairs window Jim Carter saw a huddle of police leave the two cars and, forcing open the gate which seemed to be wedged with a piece of wood, walk quietly up the path. In the middle of them, not much to his surprise, he saw his wife Emily’s head.

  He leaned out of the window and shouted. ‘Emily, you can come right back here.’ She didn’t answer. He hadn’t really expected she would.

  Charlie Fox had his own point of view. It was not the same as Kathy’s but that was only to be expected: nor was it identical to Robert’s. Robert did what he did for love, but Charlie considered he had a stake in the matter. Kathy was a threat to his plans for a new way of life, and to the picture of himself as a solid citizen that he was slowly building up.

  Therefore he hated Kathy.

  He and Robert had entered into this scheme with their eyes open. Robert anyway had not perhaps recognised how far beyond the law he was setting himself, but Charlie had. Charlie knew to an inch. And he knew how far he would go now. This made him braver.

  Or more ruthless, wicked and utterly without moral sense. According to which way you looked at it.

  He had behind him fifty years of battle with society; a quiet battle for he was not usually a violent man, but a determined one.

  And now when he saw himself on the point of getting what he wanted, Kathy came in his way.

  So what it boiled down to was: his motive was a human one after all. It was revenge.

  When the police entered the house Kathy was on the floor and Charlie had his hands round her throat and was pressing it hard. He was throttling her. There was a length of rope on the floor.

  Pratt dragged Charlie off, firmly but not ungently. ‘That’s enough, Charlie,’ he said in a curious detached way.

  Charmian moved over to Kathy, helped her up, and seated her in a chair. Emily was making a distracted clucking noise. ‘Get some water and a towel,’ said Charmian without taking her eyes off Kathy’s face. ‘Then you can get off home,’ she added.

  A machine had moved into the house and was taking over.

  Emily resented this. ‘I’ll stay,’ she said. ‘I’m a friend, she needs a friend, a woman,’ she added, casting an indignant look towards Charmian.

  She mopped at Kathy’s face which was bruised and flushed and examined her throat. Charlie had done a good job on it.

  ‘Can you speak? Swallow?’ she asked anxiously.

  Kathy nodded, then burst into tears.

  ‘You’re all right now,’ said Emily protectively: good little mother hen.

  ‘I really think you’d better go home, Mrs Carter,’ said Charmian.

  Charlie moved in the chair into which the Inspector had pushed him and Kathy flinched.

  ‘Keep that criminal lunatic away,’ snapped Emily, her eyes on her friend.

  ‘Sit down, Charlie,’ said Pratt. He was examining Robert, his hand on Robert’s wrist.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Kathy huskily. She did not mean to say it.

  ‘No,’ said Pratt, ‘ he’s not dead. Not yet. I don’t think you’re too good a judge of a dead man, Miss Birley.’

  He went off to telephone in the hall.

  Meanwhile the machine was operating. Policemen were quietly moving all about the house.

  Charmian glanced up at them. ‘Check the record on the record-player,’ she said. ‘Careful with it.�
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  Kathy heard her, and the words struggled through the dusk and mist in which she was sitting. ‘The gramophone,’ she said. ‘I knew there was something about the record.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Charmian. ‘And keep quiet.’ She spoke kindly.

  Emily was pouring a small glass of brandy for Kathy. She was worried about her. At the same time she herself was infected by the unease spread by the quiet but nonstop activity all round her. Her hands shook. She would like to get Kathy away.

  There were policemen in the hall, some on the stairs and she could hear movement in the bathroom up above her. So could Kathy by the upward nervous glance she gave. Where had all the policemen come from?

  She noticed another big black car had drawn up in the road outside.

  It came to her that this affair had not wound to its end as she had supposed.

  Kathy leaned back, white and spent. She had her eyes closed. But Emily could tell from the rigidity of her pose and the tightness of the muscles of her arm, hand and throat, that she was listening and on the alert.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ she said soothingly. ‘You can relax.’

  Emily listened. She could hear a faint, high wail. She moved uneasily.

  ‘It’s all over,’ she repeated mechanically. ‘You’re in no danger now.’

  ‘No present danger,’ said Charmian.

  Charmian summed up to herself: it was a family case. She thought of Mumsy and Janet, mother and daughter, of Kathy, stepdaughter and sister, of Robert the boy friend and Charlie the new husband. This was what gave the peculiar nastiness to the case. Love and trust had been offered and abused. She looked from Kathy, the attacked, to Charlie, the attacker. It was the good old classic pattern of jealousy and possessiveness and the one person you’d never think getting under the skin.

  She was too sophisticated to expect to see The Mark on a face, but she did sometimes hark back to Charmian, the little Dundee schoolgirl who had found it unfair that the girl who stole the pocket money and cheated in exams was as pretty as the next one (and prettier than Charmian) and hadn’t somehow got it written on her face.

  The house emptied around them. Robert had been taken off to the hospital: Charlie had gone off with Inspector Pratt, who had however muttered a message to Charmian before he went.

  There seemed to be only the three women left in the house. Outside the big black car still waited.

  ‘Better get off home,’ said Charmian to Emily Carter.

  ‘But you’re leaving her all alone,’ protested Emily.

  ‘The cause of all the trouble is in hospital,’ said Charmian.

  Kathy was alone in the house.

  This had always been planned. She sat down in the big red armchair and closed her eyes.

  While she was resting the murderer came out of hiding and took stock. Everything had gone well and, after all, the affair was coming to a successful conclusion.

  The police had been stupid, and also it must be said, a little careless. For which the murderer gave thanks.

  The murderer stood where she had always meant to stand in supreme and undisputed possession of her own house.

  Kathy opened her eyes and exulted.

  She had outridden all dangers: Mumsy and Janet were gone, in spite of her terrible fear that they might have survived, Charlie was conquered. Robert’s threat was removed. True, Robert was lost too, but he was expendable.

  The front door of the Birley house banged behind Charmian. She let it bang deliberately. She was not pleased to hear it open softly again and to see Emily’s anxious face. Why was Emily back? Charmian had work to do but Emily surely could stay away.

  Kathy appeared in the door from the sitting-room.

  The three women stared at each other.

  ‘If you really want to help, Mrs Carter, then you can pack Miss Birley a bag,’ said Charmian over her shoulder.

  ‘Why?’ said Emily. She put down the thermos of soup she was carrying.

  ‘To take with her. She’s coming with me.’

  ‘No.’ Emily looked at her in horror and surprise.

  ‘You don’t believe she’s innocent, do you Mrs Carter?’ said Charmian.

  ‘Should a policewoman talk like that?’ Emily asked herself distractedly.

  ‘But all the things were done against her,’ she cried, turning to stare at Kathy. ‘It was aimed at her.’

  ‘No. You went by impressions, by what you felt was the truth, by the way things looked. The police go by what actually happened.’

  ‘Who was gassed? Mrs Birley and Miss Lower.

  ‘Who nearly died of drugs? Robert Mitchell.

  ‘Who has now got her house all to herself? Miss Katherine Birley.’

  She turned to Kathy. ‘I have news for you Miss Birley: they’re not dead.’

  Kathy said nothing, but glared at the two women with great hostile eyes. She felt the forces of confusion were conspiring against her.

  ‘You’re not efficient, Miss Birley,’ continued Charmian. ‘The supply of petrol in the tank of the car ran out before they had absorbed enough fumes to kill them. The drug you had given them kept them under but they were brought round in hospital. And they remember quite a lot.’

  ‘They’re liars,’ Kathy cried. ‘It’s something they’ve cooked up. Don’t you see,’ she went on desperately, ‘they hate me.’

  Charmian hesitated. ‘And you were never in the woods, Miss Birley?’ she asked.

  Kathy had noticed and gathered strength from Charmian’s hesitation.

  ‘No and no,’ she cried.

  ‘But in your room we discovered shoes whose soles, cut across the middle, exactly fit the marks of feet in the mud around the car,’ said Charmian.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ cried Emily. She turned to Charmian: their eyes met, and the forces of instinct met the force of reason, acknowledged each other’s strength and instinct went down before reason and admitted defeat.

  ‘Oh Kathy,’ said Emily. ‘Oh Kathy.’

  It was her own defeat and her own guilt she was admitting as much as anything else.

  In the hospital room in the centre of the town the two women who had nearly died, Mumsy and Janet, talked to each other. Mumsy and Janet had endured rough treatment. A stomach wash, an enema, followed by doses of amphetamine driven in a muscle at half hourly intervals, had left them feeling bruised inside and out. They each had a headache; Mumsy had itching legs, and Janet had a rash like measles on her chest and back. But they were alive, and could talk, even if a little thickly.

  The sister in charge, a friend of Charmian’s, reported as much.

  ‘Doing fine,’ she said admiringly. ‘They’re in better shape than I am now. Certainly look better. Must have the constitutions of elephants.’

  ‘Donkeys,’ amended Charmian. ‘Why did they stay on in the house when they must have known she hated them being there?’ It was the question she had been asking herself all the time.

  ‘Oh but the father, old Mr Birley, asked them to stay, pleaded with them to stay on after he was gone. He thought his daughter needed an eye kept on her. I knew that. Everyone here knew. You should have asked me.’

  ‘Another time,’ said Charmian grimly, ‘ I will.’

  ‘You can see the two of them now if you want,’ said her friend, moving towards the door.

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘I should think you’d be curious.’

  ‘No,’ said Charmian. ‘I’m not curious. Not any more.’

  ‘You’re inhuman,’ said her friend. ‘You don’t care about people. Just figures, numbers, in a case.’

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ said Charmian. She sounded tired.

  The bus driver Alfy Nicklin, whose evidence, together with that of Mrs Uprichard, had blown Kathy’s foolish attempt to prove an alibi and make it look as if Janet had been around and kicking a day after she’d tried to kill her, went out for his day’s work in a morose spirit. He had suffered from a disturbed night’s sleep and his wife had burnt the
breakfast.

  Emotion at two o’clock in the morning is invariably followed by temper at nine o’clock, so they had begun the day with a nice quarrel.

  He now had indigestion.

  Robert and Charles, fellow conspirators in a naive scheme meant only to do good and which had ended with Charlie’s savage attack on Kathy, were willing enough to talk to the police.

  Mumsy and Janet had got more and more nervous of Kathy. She looked increasingly as if she was brewing something up. ‘I persuaded them to clear out. Mumsy and I got married quietly, and we were only waiting until the little bungalow I’m building for her got done before announcing it,’ said Charlie, looking every bit the bald, plump man Emily had noticed (his limp was only temporary, a torn ligament).

  ‘That delay was Mumsy’s idea not mine,’ added Charlie hastily. ‘I was all for shouting it from the house tops, but she had thought we ought to build up to it with Kathy.’ He looked grim, ‘ and look where it got her … So, the girls were going to camp out in a caravan I’ve got. Looking back it was all screwy,’ he added blankly. ‘We ought to have faced up to Kathy. As it was we hit the worst of both worlds. And when the girls didn’t turn up to the dinner Rob and I were giving them then I knew there was bad trouble.’

  All their intense activity directed at scaring Kathy into a confession, had been triggered off by the absence of Janet and Mumsy from the arranged party.

  Robert and Charlie had suspected Kathy at once and Robert had gone straight over to the house. Jim Carter had seen him prowling round the garden. Charlie had kept telephoning and waiting. Robert had to go on making excuses to telephone and occasionally slip out to meet him. Sometimes, like the episode of the case, these excuses were brilliantly harrowing inventions.

  The two men planned to scare Kathy into a confession, that she had harmed Janet and Mumsy, but there had been no traps laid with tarpaulins or anything else, no poisons used, these were the products of Kathy’s imagination. Kathy’s kind of imagination worked overtime. She had added her own imaginings to what they were suggesting. She thought that Rob had his car hidden ready to kill her in the way she had killed; she thought he had poisoned her; she thought there were traps laid for her. But her most deadly adversary had been her own mind, heavy with guilt.