Revengeful Death

by Jennie Melville

  More terribly, as if the person who was after her was truly evil.

  She felt the breath of evil, now cold and smelling of the charnel house. The attack had been diverted to someone else for the moment, but she was the real victim. Not the dead man, not the child (whom she had tried to rescue but who had been taken away from her by the police). The police, well, they were enemies. Daniels was, for sure.

  Next morning, she went down the stairs to collect the paper. Pip’s face was all over it. So now she knew who he was, poor soul. Peter Ian Parker, known as Pip, an actor working with the Trojan Travelling Theatre.

  One actor who wouldn’t travel any more.

  There was a letter for her once more. Through the post this time, not delivered by hand. Was that progress or not? She frowned as she picked it up. Just a sheet of paper.

  HERE WE ARE AGAIN. KEEP WATCHING FOR ME.

  I AM ON THE MOVE.

  Chapter Five

  Charmian was up and at work next day even before Mary March had gone down to discover her letter. She said goodbye to her husband, kissing his cheek where he still lay in bed. ‘Have a good lunch at the Savoy.’

  ‘Not today,’ he muttered. ‘Still negotiating.’

  ‘Fix it up then.’ She kissed him again. ‘I love you; I want you to have a life.’

  ‘With Rosie?’ he said from the pillow.

  ‘If it has to be,’ she laughed. ‘As long as you come home to sleep.’

  In her office, where no one else had yet arrived, she dealt rapidly with a couple of reports, and ignored several faxes that had come through during the night. Did the fax never stop working?

  She made herself some coffee and considered what she knew.

  To aid thought she drew a diagram on the pad before her. A cladogram, that was it, used by the investigators into the origin and emergence of the hominid.

  A table of relationships of the people in this case. Where more lines seemed to cross at one person there was a chance that that person was the killer. You put the name of the person, the mother figure, at the base of the tree and added arms for other names. As other relationships came in, other names, you gave them arms higher up and ran dotted lines to where they linked with others.

  No proof, of course, but that wasn’t what cladograms were about. Just showed up connections and gave you ideas.

  After a bit of thought, she put Gina at the base of this tree. It could have been Pip, but Gina knew both Mary and Pip, so she was elected mother.

  From Pip’s arm of the tree others stuck out: this was Alice Hardy, the boy Ned and his father Edward.

  A dotted line ran between Mary March and Ned.

  That was as far as Charmian got for the moment.

  She picked up the telephone and rang Jack Headfort. She guessed he was up and at work; had probably been up all night.

  ‘Hello, Jack. So we know who the dead man was now.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Anything to add, is there?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me. We are collaborating on this.’

  ‘I can give you a short bio of the chap. In fact, it’s ready to fax to you now, ma’am.’

  Peter Parker: aged twenty-four (he had looked younger and could play younger still. Gina found this useful, once casting him as a boy of twelve in Yellow Morning, a play she had written herself), educated at Blackhall School, Oxford, then at RADA. Out of work for several years except for walk-ons and a bit of TV. An only child, parents dead.

  Most of this information he had got from Gina last night, and it would have to be checked, but no reason for believing her a liar or misinformed.

  ‘Any likely names as his killer?’ She was only half serious – it was too early for much except cladograms.

  ‘It’s a bit soon for that, ma’am.’

  Gina had said that he had many friends, and as far as she knew no enemies; he was not homosexual but his love affairs had been brief and amiable. ‘And as far as I know there’s only Emma at the moment but I won’t run a check; no business of mine.’

  ‘You usually have a name.’ It was the way he worked.

  ‘At the moment Mary March is my best bet.’

  ‘Oh?’ Charmian was interested. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Not really thinking, ma’am, just dwelling on her. Nice-looking woman,’ he added reflectively. Gina had not been unhappy to spend almost a night in his company. While genuinely grieving for Pip and wanting his killer nailed, she had found Jack Headfort attractive.

  Mary March, having read the third letter, was round at the police station fast.

  Having failed to get far with Charmian Daniels, she determined to try Jack Headfort … but don’t think I’ve given up on you, Daniels, she said inside herself.

  You can telephone or go in person, was her next point. Going in person will be more active. It had been hard to get in to see Charmian Daniels, who had her own offices apart from the local police HQ, but that, Mary told herself, was because she was a woman. It would be easy to get to that nice inspector.

  And, in fact, it did prove surprisingly easy, since he was standing by the door of his office when she arrived. She simply walked straight up to him.

  She threw the letter on his desk. ‘Read it, please. It’s a threat, and not the only one I’ve had. I don’t like it.’

  Headfort picked up the letter, handling it carefully with another bit of paper, like a glove. ‘Yes, I can see you wouldn’t,’ he said, reading it.

  To Mary he sounded altogether too calm. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  ‘That means you’ll do nothing.’ She snatched the letter back.

  ‘I might have it tested for fingerprints.’

  ‘That’s nothing. Unless you find the writer you have nothing to compare the prints with.’

  ‘You don’t have much faith, do you? You don’t think we’ll ever find him.’

  ‘That’s right; because you aren’t looking and won’t look. That Daniels woman thinks I write them myself.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘If I did, I’d make them longer.’ Mary rapped on his table, beginning to show some of the aggression she had hitherto reserved for Charmian. ‘It’s a threat.’

  ‘Not actually to you. Not as I read it.’

  ‘I’m beginning to hate you, Inspector Headfort. You and Charmian Daniels. Heartless lot.’

  ‘It’s work, Miss March. Heart doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘This isn’t my first brush with the police … Oh no, I haven’t committed any crime, but I did go to prison once and it wasn’t really my fault – I can see you thinking they all say that, and wiping me out as a serious person.’

  ‘Would you like to tell me about it, Miss March?’

  ‘No, I would not – find out for yourself.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘But am I worth the effort, the manpower, what it will take out of your budget? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I wasn’t worth the effort when I needed help before. I was followed, abused, persecuted, I got no help. Or not much. Standard routine assurance: steps were being taken.’

  She was getting angrier with every minute.

  ‘You think I’m making this up, don’t you? Like her, like Daniels. I tell you that the hatred has followed me here to Windsor. That there is a killer out there. Not a serial killer, but a hate killer.’

  He did not answer.

  ‘And there will be another body. You’ll see. And then perhaps another, to frighten me. Or perhaps I’ll be the next. Who knows?’ she added, getting angrier. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘No you don’t, or you wouldn’t still be here.’ Hop it, Miss March. I have serious work on hand. Then he saw that she had tears in her eyes. ‘I promise you that this threatening note will be followed up.’

  She had to be content with this. ‘ It’s not just for me, I’m worried about the boy. He ought to be protected. Where is he?’

  ‘You know. With his father.’r />
  ‘I’m sure that’s wrong, I feel it is. He’s in danger, I’m sure of it. I sense it.’

  Again Jack Headfort did not answer.

  ‘Where is his mother? Have you found her yet?’

  ‘We’re looking for her; she’ll turn up.’

  ‘She’ll be dead,’ said Mary with conviction.

  ‘We don’t know that.’ Headfort spoke with much less conviction – he was beginning to have his doubts about Alice Hardy’s survival chances.

  ‘Not fit to have a child. The father. Tell me where he lives.’

  ‘I can’t quite do that.’ Jack Headfort passed his hand thoughtfully over his head, smoothing down already neat hair. It was a characteristic gesture. ‘But you know his name.’ He gave her a meaningful look.

  ‘Be my own detective?’

  ‘I can’t direct you.’ But he looked towards the telephone.

  ‘You mean you’ll give me his telephone number?’

  ‘No, I can’t do that either.’

  Mary stood up. ‘But I can read. He’s in the telephone directory, I can get the address from that.’

  Jack Headfort did not answer, but he had this thought: I don’t know what you’re capable of but you are certainly an interesting woman.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said as she reached the door. Easy to leave a police station, she had thought, easier than I suspected. ‘What are you going to do when you find Mr Hardy?’

  She gave him an opaque stare, with a little smile. ‘That’s for you to think about. I’ll leave you the letter.’

  While Gina slept off her exhausting night, the rest of the Trojans sat around drinking coffee and waiting for her to wake up. The coffee was handed round in mugs by a thoughtful Rosie, who feared there would be no profit coming from this Trojan booking if they kept on drinking coffee at this rate. But you couldn’t be mean to them: a death, after all, had occurred. And while this went on, Charmian got on with the investigation.

  Charmian called in Amos Elliot and Jane Gibson, who both arrived at speed. ‘Lovely to have been woken up with a fax telling us that the chap who had been murdered had had his thyroid taken out,’ Amos said as he caught Jane up.

  ‘His thymus gland, which is quite different; it’s sweetbread in animals.’

  ‘You always know everything.’ But they hurried in to see Charmian, because in certain moods, which this seemed to be, she was better obliged with what she wanted quickly.

  Dolly Barstow followed soon after.

  Quickly Charmian told them what she wanted.

  ‘Chief Inspector Headfort will be cooperating on this. I fixed it up last night. He has more bodies to go banging on doors than we have, but it’s our case.’

  She did not say aloud that they would provide the intellectual force, but Jane said it for her. ‘So we are the brains?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. I have a lot of respect for Jack Headfort; he will be looking for the mother who remains missing, but I want you, Jane, to be the ideas merchant … Work out where she might be and why she was running and where she could run to. Work with Headfort but let them …’

  ‘Do the running too?’

  Charmian ignored this and turned to Amos. ‘I want you to interview all the Trojans. Get what they know about Peter Parker … Pip … and see if there’s any chance he knew Alice Hardy.’

  ‘He must have done. Or why was he in her flat?’

  ‘But he was trying to do publicity for the Trojans. So the other thing you can do is check where else he called and who saw him. It could be he heard some noise … shouting from the Hardy flat; he would go in then, he was like that. The door may have been open … that would alert him too.’

  Amos nodded gloomily. A lot of walking about seemed indicated, and he had a presentiment that he would get nothing out of it. Pity Headfort’s lot couldn’t do it.

  ‘And Dolly, hang on, I want to talk to you.’

  She stood up.

  ‘Delegation time,’ murmured Jane as they left.

  ‘She is the boss.’ Amos shrugged.

  Charmian’s outfit was known to the local force as Prude’s Corner because Charmian allowed no ‘fucks’ or ‘shits’ or sexist jokes, although capable of one or two herself when the occasion deserved it.

  To Dolly, Charmian said: ‘I want you to find out what you can about Gina Foster … She seemed to know the March woman, she’s the only one who knew Pip and knows Mary March. It’s a connection. May mean something or nothing. See what she can tell you about Miss March too. We need an in-depth study on her. You’re already working on March.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And Dolly … liaise with Headfort and keep me informed. I have to be in London this afternoon.’

  Charmian then chaired a committee, before going back to work on her papers. After a certain rise in life, there were always papers. Would she miss that if her life changed? For a moment she felt envious of Humphrey, now free of such work and probably even now telephoning Rosie to discuss what they might eat and drink and talk about at that lunch. He had her blessing.

  But underneath, her thoughts were preoccupied with Pip’s death and Mary March.

  As events churned on that day, Mary walked through Windsor feeling like a ghost, but reminding herself that in certain dangerous positions a ghost was no bad thing to be.

  Why was that good-looking policeman nice to me towards the end, she asked herself cynically. Because he was nice to me. Suggesting how I find the Hardy house.

  Perhaps he likes me? No; he might find me of interest, but he hasn’t had time to like me yet.

  Her experience of men had made her cautious about their motives. Not always what they seemed.

  So what had been behind the man’s behaviour? Did he want to watch her, to see what she did?

  What she did was straightforward; she reproached herself for not having thought of it earlier. She looked up Edward Hardy’s address in the telephone book. There was only one E. Hardy in Merrywick, where she knew he lived, and this made her task easier.

  E. Hardy, 7 Mayday Walk, Merrywick. Roads in upmarket Merrywick were always called Walk or Gardens, never Street or Road, just as the houses were usually given names like Briar Lodge or Rose Cottage or Maples. But Edward Hardy had struck out on his own. She almost liked the man without knowing him.

  It was some distance from where she lived to the quiet suburban street, but she could take a bus part of the way. It was a friendly ride on the bus with the sort of driver who talked to his passengers as if he knew them, and although Mary really preferred silence and anonymity, that trip she enjoyed.

  ‘Bye, Bob,’ she said as she jumped off at her stop. All the other passengers had said this as they alighted, so she did the same.

  Mayday Walk curved round a central island which had been planted with bushes and small trees, none thriving very well as far as she could see.

  She passed a laburnum tree … not dead yet but well on the way. The soil was wrong, or something or someone had poisoned it. People could poison plants, better believe it. And plants could poison them. She herself suffered from geraniums and could never grow a fuchsia.

  Number seven was a detached house with a garage on either side. She walked up the path, then rang the front doorbell firmly.

  No one came. She lifted the letter box so that she could see into the hall. The doors on either side were closed so all she could really see was the staircase. Even she could tell that it could do with a dust. The curtains on the windows looked grubby too, now she came to think about it.

  She called through the letter box: ‘This is Mary. I only want to see the boy. I know Ned likes me, and I like him.’

  There was no answer, but a thin tabby cat walked down the stairs and stared at her.

  ‘I will come back,’ she called. She felt as if she had posted a verbal letter somehow, and that it would be read.

  The house smelled stuffy – do people get to smell like their houses, or do the houses smell like them? If so, Edward Hardy smell
ed dry and sour, with something else added.

  Mary wrinkled her nose – was it a touch of sweetness?

  But there was no woman of the house to keep it sweet. Alice Hardy had left and taken the boy with her, or been awarded him by the courts, which in itself might be interesting. No, that could not have happened yet. Or had she just run as she’d run away again in Marlborough Street?

  Where was she now? The police were supposed to be looking for her. If they had found her, they had not said.

  But they might not, of course.

  At the end of the street, she looked back. Had a curtain moved at number seven? She thought it might have done. So someone was there, and had observed her. If it was the case then it was interesting.

  It seemed a long walk home, with the smell of the house still in her nostrils. Yet, as Mary March told herself, she now knew where to go and would be back.

  The smell troubled her. Smells are so important.

  Charmian got back to her office, tired and hungry. Dolly Barstow was waiting for her, hanging about the outer office and smoking. She had given up smoking once, and the going back on it said something about her current state of mind.

  ‘About Mary March, Mary March King she was then … she was a heroine figure.’

  ‘Really?’ Charmian dumped her heavy briefcase on the chair by her desk.

  ‘Well, some called her that. Not everyone, though.’

  ‘Give me more.’

  ‘Read for yourself.’ Dolly put a slender sheaf of photocopied pages on the desk. ‘She got some publicity but not a great deal.’

  ‘Tell me the crucial facts.’ Charmian was opening the cupboard door behind which she kept whisky and sherry. She didn’t encourage drinking on the job, but sometimes it was needed. ‘ Like a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, yes.’ Dolly was slightly surprised but grateful.

  Charmian did not have to ask what Dolly wished to drink: she poured her a moderate ration of whisky – the sherry she kept for her more genteel visitors or those whom she did not like. She took sherry herself.

  ‘It’s been that sort of a day,’ she said. ‘So?’