Revengeful Death

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ said Rosie, irritated into action. ‘I’m doing it because I must.’ But she could feel the ghost of her dead young soldier lover nudging at her elbow.

  Humphrey pulled back. ‘ I’ll wait in the car.’

  It was a short trip down. The door opened directly into a lobby with swing doors through which Charmian pushed her way.

  The mortuary was a long, narrow, chill room, flooded with strong overhead lights. Several marble tables stood about the room; they seemed to have a curious bucket-like arrangement attached to each of them, the use of which Rosie imagined without pleasure. One wall was lined with metal drawers.

  Charmian was greeted respectfully by the man in charge who listened to her quiet words, consulted a kind of catalogue and then went over to the drawers.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Rosie. Her nerves were making her aggressive.

  ‘The mortuary attendant.’

  ‘Oh, I see. A kind of dresser for the dead.’

  ‘Watch it.’

  ‘Just stay quiet and do my duty like a soldier?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  As they had been talking, a drawer had been pulled forward. Inside, prone, cleaned up and naked, was a young male figure. A white sheet was wrapped around his middle, but his feet and ankles were bare. There was a metal bracelet with a tag on it around one ankle.

  Rosie, who had had a child, remembered that this was what they did to the newly born. Birth and death, she thought, ends of the same chain.

  She turned away. ‘ Yes, it’s the one called Pip.’ She walked towards the door. Charmian followed her.

  ‘Thank you, Rosie. You have helped,’ she said quietly.

  Rosie nodded without a word. Poor Pip, she had liked him. How had he come to be lying in that icy drawer?

  As they went into the lift, Rosie said: ‘That woman who found the body … isn’t it often the killer who pretends to do that?’

  When Mary had watched Charmian drive away, she had stalked off. ‘What a fool she is, that woman. Can’t she see that the child shouldn’t be where he is?’

  The man who had been sitting in the car, the quiet observer, drove away. Time to leave Mary to get on with it.

  But as Mary March got to her front door she saw a note had been pushed through it. She drew it out to read in the light from the street lamp.

  HERE I COME AGAIN. WATCH FOR MY NEXT

  APPEARANCE. I AM STILL HUNGRY.

  Chapter Four

  ‘He didn’t seem the sort of young man to die like that. Did he suffer? No, don’t answer – how can you know? But I hope it was quick.’

  ‘We die in bits and pieces,’ Charmian said to Rosie, thinking of the thymus gland which sits so close to the heart that it can cover it, torn from the dying man’s side.

  ‘I suppose you want to go and see the Trojans now?’

  ‘Yes, they have to be told.’ And questions asked.

  Rosie nodded. ‘ It’s late, but they don’t sleep early. What I can’t say is how many of them will be in the house. I wouldn’t call them stay-at-home people.’ She unlocked the big front door to lead the way in. ‘And they have been having a kind of rest time after their strenuous tour, and before starting publicity for the new Windsor show.’

  Every time Charmian came to Rosie’s house she felt the warmth and cheerfulness, most of which derived from the character of Rosie herself. The furnishings dated from several generations earlier: the reigns of George V and his father Edward and his grandmother Victoria being well represented. None of Rosie’s forebears had had much money and possibly not much taste either, but because they had gone for good solid furniture they had achieved a style that spoke of comfort and a pleasant life. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Rosie’s establishment was never empty.

  She was a good cook too when she had time for it, but because she was also a working actress, most of the cooking was done by Mrs Gregg, who was her second in command. ‘Mrs’ was an honorific and self-bestowed title because Alma had never married. But having been a dresser for years she had got used to the title and now preferred it. She was no virgin, so this was not without justification.

  ‘I expect Greggy will be here, and she’ll know more about where they are … I stay in the background and don’t ask questions, nothing to do with me, but Greggy likes to gossip – and knows all the best bits too.’ She was talking too much and she knew it.

  She pushed open the heavy glass double doors which led into the inner hall, and from which the sitting room opened up on one side and the dining room on the other.

  Rosie went to the stairs leading down to the basement and called, ‘Greggy, can you spare a minute, I want you.’

  A distant shout came after a second, a shout in which the word ‘telly’ could be clearly heard.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Rosie called back.

  ‘It’s my evening off.’ A short, plump woman with a froth of bright red curls emerged from the stairwell.

  ‘No it isn’t, you never have an evening off for the length of the run. Are the Trojans in?’

  ‘Don’t think so, all out as far as I know. Hello, Lady Kent, and Sir Humphrey too. Evening, sir.’ Mrs Gregg had known Charmian long before her marriage and had always called her Charmian. Now she used her full title, mouthing it with pleasure and playing the perfect English maid. She was a natural actress who had never managed to get a part. ‘Gina, Shirley, Emma, Albert and Joe all went out together. Gone to Slough to the cinema.’

  ‘And Pip?’

  ‘Not Pip. Don’t know where he is.’

  There was a sound of laughter and cheerful voices from outside. The doors, outer and inner, were pushed open and Gina led her party into the hall.

  She stopped short at the sight of the group standing there; her eyes flicked in assessment over Charmian and Humphrey. ‘Oh, hello there.’

  Shirley and Joe and Albert pressed in behind her, and Emma followed after closing the front door.

  ‘Hello, is this a party?’ said Albert.

  ‘No,’ said Gina, her voice level. ‘ Can’t you see their faces? That is not a party look.’ She turned to Rosie. ‘Introduce us, please. Oh don’t bother, I know you’re police.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ said Charmian.

  ‘I’m clever. I saw you one day in court when I was doing research for a courtroom drama. You were good.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I modelled a part on you. You might not thank me for that, she was a corrupt officer. So, what is it? We haven’t done anything, have we?’ She looked over the faces of the rest of the team. ‘You done anything sinful?’

  ‘Nothing bad enough to call out a high-ranking police officer,’ said Joe.

  ‘One of your group is called Pip? Do you know where he is?’

  Gina shook her head. ‘ No, no idea, haven’t seen him for a day or two. What’s he done?’

  There was a steady silence, not prolonged, but noticed by the Trojans. Gina looked at her friends and then Charmian, Rosie and Humphrey.

  ‘I suppose this is what’s known as a wall of silence,’ she said. ‘So what is it you know and I don’t?’

  ‘The body of a young man was found in a house not far from here. There is a possibility it might be Pip. I would like one of you … it need not necessarily be you.’ She looked at Joe and Albert. ‘One of the men perhaps.’

  Gina was decisive. ‘It’s for me to do it.’

  Joe said: ‘How did he die? He was killed, wasn’t he? He was a healthy, strong young fellow, he didn’t just drop down dead.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘Yes, he was killed.’

  ‘How? Was it an accident? You haven’t got that sort of expression and you aren’t talking to us how you would if he’d been run over by a bus.’

  ‘It may have been an accident that he was killed,’ said Charmian, carefully.

  ‘You mean he walked into something that was prepared for someone else?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Joe took a
deep breath, but before he could speak again, Gina said: ‘Are you saying he was murdered?’

  ‘Yes, it looks like it.’

  ‘And how was it done?’

  ‘He was stabbed.’

  ‘In a fight? No, from the way you’re putting it, it wasn’t like that. Cold murder, hot murder.’

  Shirley pushed herself forward. ‘He knew he was going to die, he knew he was going like that, he knew he was going to be killed.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Charmian received the comment coldly; she hated that sort of comment, it caused pain and led nowhere. If Shirley thought she was the first friend of a murder victim to say that sort of thing then she was wrong; a comment like that cropped up more often than she might guess.

  ‘He saw it happening to him. Felt it.’

  Gina put up an arm as if she wanted to fight off the comment. ‘Oh rubbish, Pip wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You don’t know what Pip was like,’ said Emma suddenly. She was the youngest and most colourless of the group, which was perhaps why she got on well, if quietly, with Gina. ‘You hardly ever spoke to him.’

  ‘All the time,’ said Gina.

  ‘Only about work. Pip was more than that.’

  Gina did not think that anyone could be more than their work, but she wasn’t going to argue the point now. She turned to Charmian.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Charmian looked at her husband. ‘I’ll take you,’ he said.

  But the Trojans moved forward behind Gina as a body: they were all coming.

  ‘Only one of you can go into the mortuary,’ said Charmian. ‘You can cast lots if you like, but one it is.’

  ‘I shall go, of course.’ Gina was already moving to the door.

  ‘No, it must be me,’ said Emma. ‘I loved him.’

  There was a moment of silence as the others took that in.

  ‘And he loved me. And what you said about him thinking he was going to be killed, Shirley, that was because he was ill. He knew he was but he didn’t know why.’

  ‘I didn’t know any of that.’ Gina stood still.

  ‘You didn’t know much about him.’

  ‘I didn’t know Pip loved anyone,’ said Shirley in a surprised voice. ‘Not love love. He was everyone’s friend, of course.’

  ‘This was love love, as you put it.’ Anger thickened Emma’s voice.

  ‘Sorry, Em,’ Shirley was apologetic, but still surprised. Secrets, secrets, how could the Trojans, closely as they lived together, have secrets? And Emma, too. From being one of the least regarded of the troupe, as the youngest and least vibrant, she had suddenly become a creature of mystery. Good luck to her, Shirley thought. And then she remembered that Pip was dead. Shirley put her arm round the girl’s shoulders. ‘Come on, kid, I’ll come with you.’ Emma did not pull away, but she turned round to Gina. ‘You quarrelled with him, and don’t you forget it. He told me. And that’s why I thought he had gone off for a spell away and I didn’t worry. He needed a rest from you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no quarrel. It was just business. He wanted to do one thing one way and I disagreed … Let’s get on with this—’ she hesitated, ‘this identification. It may not be Pip.’

  Outside the door, Humphrey was waiting by the car. He smiled at Rosie as he opened the passenger door for his wife. The Trojans were all piling into their van.

  ‘Well,’ Rosie said to him, ‘still want to be part of the theatre?’

  ‘Yes. Still want to. And in token of it, meet you at the Savoy. This day week.’

  ‘Bless you.’ Rosie watched them all drive off.

  Charmian gave a tacit assent to letting Emma and Gina go in together to see the dead man.

  Gina said nothing, just nodded and turned away. But Emma bent down and kissed Pip’s cheek.

  The mortuary assistant and Charmian drew her away.

  Gina took over and put her arm protectively around Emma. They may have had a sharp exchange on the way in but they belonged together – after all, they were both Trojans.

  ‘Come along, we’re leaving here.’

  Over Gina’s shoulder, Emma said to Charmian: ‘ Where did it happen?’ And when Charmian remained silent, ‘Where was he found? Come on, I’ll find out. Was it a street mugging?’

  ‘No, he was in a house.’

  ‘A house? What was he doing in a house? He didn’t know anyone in Windsor, he said so.’

  Gina frowned. ‘I think I can explain that. He was going to launch a publicity campaign for us, dressing up, going round telling people, ringing doorbells. It was an experiment. If it worked he wanted all the Trojans to take part … I didn’t care for it, it was why we quarrelled.’

  ‘You think he called on this house?’

  ‘Wherever it was … I notice you’re not saying. It’s an idea. He might have gone there and been killed by some maniac.’

  ‘It may have been why he was in the house where he was found,’ said Charmian cautiously. ‘Do you know if he made any special plans?’

  ‘I think he made a list of streets and houses. It’ll be in his room at Rosie’s.’

  ‘We’ll have to go over his room. All his possessions. Are you sure he didn’t know anyone in Windsor?’

  ‘Like the Queen? No, silly joke. No, none of us did. First time in town.’ She said slowly, ‘Who found him? I’d like to know.’

  ‘A woman, a neighbour.’

  ‘How did she do that?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it too much yet, but something attracted her attention to the house and she went in, and he was there.’

  Gina studied Charmian’s face. She had her own sensibilities. ‘There’s something about his death that you’re not telling me.’

  Charmian shook her head: the thymus gland cut from his body, the terror of the child, the flight of the mother.

  ‘Was anyone else there?’

  The child, the mother: but Charmian kept quiet.

  ‘I would like to meet her, this neighbour; I have a kind of right, I think … Can you tell me her name?’

  No harm there, Charmian thought. ‘Mary March.’

  Gina hesitated. ‘Is she tall, with flyaway dark hair? Nervy, emotional?’

  ‘She does resemble that picture,’ said Charmian, cautious again. ‘She was emotional and angry when I saw her. Abusive even.’ She did not go into any more detail.

  ‘That sounds like Mary March King.’

  ‘You know her?’ Charmian noted the name King.

  ‘Not exactly know … I know of her. We come from the same part of the world. Everyone’s victim … I bet she claimed the killer really wanted her. She’s done it before.’

  Charmian kept quiet, but Gina read her face.

  ‘Ah.’

  Charmian said, with a neutral expression, ‘She did say something along those lines.’

  ‘I bet she did.’

  ‘She’ll be looked into, never fear. That would have happened anyway, even without what you tell me.’

  ‘I know this is nothing to do with me. But rumour has it that there is a missing woman. What has happened to her.’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘And the child? Wasn’t there a child?’

  ‘The child is with his father. It has to be said in her favour that Mary March found where the child was hiding.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gina, ‘I have heard that she likes children.’

  Mary March – she had dropped the King, never used it in Windsor, her new name came from her family’s past – knew nothing of Gina, but she would not have been surprised that Gina had heard of her.

  Mary’s brother had been involved in a terrible motoring accident in which a woman had been killed, torn to bits by the impact, and then burnt in the fire. Her brother had escaped, thrown free.

  It had all been in the newspapers, and Mary’s own name had appeared because she had stuck up for her brother.

  ‘Not his fault,’ she had said. ‘Just one of those accidents.’
<
br />   Her brother, Richard, had gone to prison, done his time – not long enough, several local papers said – and had since established a new career as a popular novelist.

  Mary had done her time in a way, too: she had been subjected to abuse from a woman in the supermarket, blood had been thrown at her, excrement wiped on the windows and a dead dog left on her doorstep.

  Letters attacking her had come almost daily.

  The nursery school where she worked had dropped her. She could understand this – who wants a teacher who attracts such venom? One way and another, she became a victim.

  It was her belief that all these attackers had been paid. By someone.

  It was at this point that she had left her south London home, dropped part of her name and migrated to Windsor. Money fortunately was no problem: she had her own small income and her brother was generous.

  So he should be, she told herself, because it was certainly her evidence that had got him a short sentence.

  ‘It was outside my house. I was watching from the kerb when I threw myself forward to save the child walking across the road. Richard knew how to handle the car. Well, yes, he had been going fast, but there would have been no damage. But I saw the woman, his passenger, push him away and grab the wheel. It was her fault.’ So that woman had died, her own fault. The child had survived and Mary, for a little while hailed as a heroine, had suffered.

  She had suffered, losing her job, her lover (who departed rapidly when she became so infamous) and her home, really because she regarded herself as an emigrant, a refugee.

  After a while, victims turn positive – they strike back. Mary could feel this process starting within her.

  Charmian Daniels? She could see a head-on clash coming there.

  There is a lot of evil in the human race. Some writers think that early man, or proto-man, ate his victims’ brains. Knocked open the skull and took the brains out for that very purpose. Sinanthropus man, that was the fellow.

  Golly, that was a thought, and one way or another we are still doing it.

  And now the process which had driven her out of London was repeating itself in Windsor.