Revengeful Death

by Jennie Melville

  ‘So you did. Where was it and when?’

  ‘In the Dragon and Baby pub – it’s in the little street that cuts across the bottom of the hill. I had marked it down and I went in and waited.’

  Charmian knew the pub, as did Jack Headfort; their eyes met.

  The Dragon and Baby was a pub with a respectable surface but darker depths. If a man from Cheasey came into Windsor, then ten to one he headed for the Dragon. Every town has its subworld and the Dragon was tuned into Cheasey’s. The police kept an eye on it.

  ‘And your friend came?’

  ‘Yes, I was there first, but he came and we had a drink and a sandwich.’

  ‘Then you spent the evening together?’

  Gina licked her lips. ‘Not really, he had to leave. I stayed on for a bit. It was raining by then. I was waiting to see if it dried up.’

  He didn’t offer to see her home, Charmian thought, but made no comment.

  ‘We’ll get in touch with him. His name and address?’ Charmian turned to face Jack Headfort, who had kept quiet. ‘I expect you gave them to Chief Inspector Headfort.’

  Gina’s throat sounded dry. ‘ He was Dr George Capper … we didn’t exchange addresses. I expect we would have, but we were so busy talking and he knew where to find the Trojans, we advertise …’

  As Pip knew to his cost, thought Charmian.

  ‘He shouldn’t be hard to find – he told me he was headmaster of a mixed pre-prep school in Windsor, and there can’t be many of them.’

  That was true enough. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find him and he can confirm all this.’

  Gina nodded; she cleared her throat. ‘There’s something else … I didn’t go straight home.’ She was having a little difficulty in speaking. ‘I went round to Mary March’s; I wanted to talk to her. I found out where she lived from the newspaper shop.’

  ‘Did you indeed?’ She was aware of a movement from Jack Headfort as this came out: this was something he hadn’t known. ‘Did you tell the Chief Inspector this?’

  ‘No, it was what I wanted to tell you because I had lied to you about not going out, and wanted to tell you myself what I had done.’

  Thank you for nothing, Charmian thought, seeing the sardonic look in Jack Headfort’s eyes. He had known all the rest but not this last bit, and he was working out what it meant. If anything.

  ‘There was a policeman on duty across the road where Pip had been found but he took no notice of me.’ She swallowed. ‘There was no body there, of course. I don’t even know when the girl died.’

  About that time, probably, Charmian thought, giving Headfort a look.

  ‘I spoke into the entryphone on the front door. Mary let me through, and I waited in the hall for the inner door to open. She took her time, and when she did she just let me in and then stood there looking at me. Then she told me to go away.’ Hop it, had been Mary’s actual words.

  ‘I could have got blood on me somehow then. Perhaps the killer was down the basement street stairs at the time.’ She moved her eyes from one to the other, all but saying: And can I go now?

  ‘Why did you go to see her?’

  ‘I don’t know really, just wanted to talk to her. Perhaps I had had a bit too much to drink … You’ll check with Mary March, I know that, but she’ll tell you I’m telling the truth.’

  Jack Headfort stood up. ‘I’ll see about a car to get you home, Miss Foster.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Gina began to move towards the door. ‘I’ll take a taxi. Or you might let me have my car. I don’t want the whole house to see me come home in a police car. And I’d like my sweater back when you’ve finished with it.’

  When she had gone, Headfort stared at the whisky for a moment, looked questioningly at Charmian, then poured them both another drink.

  ‘I suppose the body could have been in the basement area at that time, Charmian, and the killer left some blood on the railings.’

  ‘But you don’t believe it?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem likely. And you and I know that there was no blood on the steps or the door because it was carefully checked.’

  ‘So if she got the blood on her then, it came from the inner hall … Or inside March’s apartment. It was checked by the forensic team, but either they missed it, or …’ He stopped.

  ‘Or after her visit, March did some cleaning.’

  They looked at each other. Charmian said: ‘Either way, we are right back at Mary March.’

  ‘If Foster is telling the truth,’ Headfort said slowly.

  Charmian let the words rest in her mind. Logic seemed of little help in this case. ‘ It’s a puzzle about the missing woman, Alice Hardy. No news?’

  Headfort shook his head. ‘A few supposed sightings, but nothing real when checked. The hunt was extended to London in case she caught a train or hitched a lift, but no luck.’ He said heavily, ‘There’s always the river; something of a search has been done there, but it’s difficult, the Thames is a tricky river. But if she’s there then the river will deliver her up in its own good time. On the whole, I think she’s dead.’

  ‘I think so too.’

  He stood up. ‘ See you to your car, ma’am? May I say that I enjoy working with you.’

  Whisky may have loosened his tongue a trifle, but Charmian knew what he was saying: I have heard the rumours about your position, and I’m sorry.

  Charmian went home. The house was empty; even the cat was out on her own affairs. Charmian went into the kitchen and sat down on a hard chair. She ought to eat. She had had just enough whisky for melancholy to set in.

  Her own future looked doubtful. She kept picking up hints and rumours. Even Jack Headfort’s remark as they parted suggested he knew as much, if not more, than she did.

  She would be offered some apparently choice position, she realized that; probably be given the equivalent of a knighthood and a well-paid sinecure, but she would be out of SRADIC.

  ‘Heaven preserve me from a life peerage,’ she said savagely to the cat who had just come in. She got no answer from Muff, who walked over to her dish of supper, pawed the ground around it angrily and walked away. Another disappointed soul.

  A splodge of cat food landed on Charmian’s shoe. She bent down to brush it off. ‘ Watch it, cat.’

  She got up to make a sandwich and some coffee. She cut her hand on the breadknife, so that a bright drop of blood hit her jeans; the coffee splashed on her shirt, and her mood soured still more.

  She carried the coffee into the sitting room, biting into the sandwich which could have done with more cheese. The coffee, however, was good and strong, so that soon the caffeine was raising her spirits. It was always the drug of her choice.

  Her house, too, was a comfort and pleasure. She had lived in it for almost, if not quite all, the time she had been in Windsor. It represented her first real, stable home. Or so she felt. She had taken out a handsome mortgage to buy it (small, attractive houses of this period in Windsor being astonishingly expensive) but she had never regretted it. She was still paying off the debt, having refused Humphrey’s offer to wipe it out for her. It was her house and no one else’s, and to her pleasure Humphrey had understood. He was the sort of man who liked a house in town somewhere, preferably London, and a place in the country, but life with Charmian was persuading him that one house was enough. He still owned the large family house in Berkshire that was now let to a business as a conference centre – it appeared there were always conferences looking for a weekend home. Charmian had for a while rented a country cottage, but it had been something of a millstone which she let go with a feeling of relief.

  Maid of Honour Row was where she felt at home. She had good neighbours, too, with Birdie Peacock and Winifred Eagle, a pair of white witches round the corner, always willing to look after her cat, take on her dog as a permanent boarder and cast good spells for her. As a sceptic and an agnostic, Charmian appreciated all the help she could get from the other world.

  She had not seen much of Birdie or W
inifred lately. They had been on a pilgrimage to India, from which they had come back quiet and somewhat depressed. Perhaps the witchcraft there had not been up to standard.

  It was quiet and warm in the kitchen, in which she had installed a large solid-fuel cooker out of deference to her husband’s repressed affection for country living. Her own desire for an easy life had been satisfied by choosing to have it run on gas, which made it, in her affectionate opinion, a fraud. But a cosy one.

  When the telephone rang, she felt so comfortable where she was that she considered ignoring it, but she reached out a hand. The cat jumped on her lap, ready to listen, purring gently as something in the vibrations of the telephone pleased her. Charmian sometimes wondered what she heard. Music from the spheres, perhaps.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Miss Daniels?’

  An official call then, since her friends from Humphrey’s world called her Charmian or Lady Kent, not Miss Daniels. But she recognized this voice.

  ‘Dr Darling here, David Darling.’

  Darling was a young pathologist who had recently joined the forensic team. She knew he hated his name, and the jokes of his rougher, cruder colleagues. Policemen are not famous for their subtle sense of humour. It would not have mattered so much to him, perhaps, if he had been a married man with a large brood of children, but she suspected that if he had any sex at all, it went the other way. Yet he was clever.

  ‘I recognized your voice. What is it?’ Tiredness came seeping back; she didn’t want to be bothered.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at night, but I have a worry about the report I made on the first body … I did the examination. I have now had a chance to look at the second body …’

  Charmian stroked the cat. ‘Yes, so?’

  ‘I’ve been sitting here mulling it over, and I felt I had to tell you what was in my mind.’ There was a pause before he went on. ‘First of all, the knife. You may recall that I noted that in the first killing the knife had a very sharp point … it was dug into the flesh, then the knife sawed in. I use the word “sawed” advisedly now, although I didn’t say so in that report. The reason being that in the second killing I believe there is evidence of some serration on the blade … it had been sharpened away, but some tears in the wound suggest it. It reinforces my view that it was a specially prepared knife.’

  ‘A breadknife?’ It was a particularly unpleasant thought.

  ‘Might be, but the quality of the metal had to be good. The point was very sharp … It leads me to what I wanted to say: digging the knife in is not the way a surgeon works.’

  ‘I never thought we were looking for a mad surgeon.’

  ‘But the user of the knife was confident and had some skill; it was not a hacking operation.’

  ‘A butcher then?’

  ‘Could be a baker or a carpenter or even a chef. Someone practised in the use of a knife, that’s all I’m saying. And strong – the knife went in with force.’

  A slightly obsessive self-consciousness was also his characteristic, as Charmian had already noticed. She muttered something encouraging; the vibrations must have turned and ceased to please the cat, who leaped away, tail flying.

  ‘It’s been there all day at the back of my mind. I couldn’t stop worrying about it. I felt I had to tell you. It might help identify the killer.’

  A strong-wristed killer with a certain skill with the knife which had been sharpened on purpose. Lovely, Charmian thought.

  ‘There is a little something else.’

  Ah, here we come to it.

  ‘I’m just reading the wound, like a map.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What it says to me is that the killer may have held the knife in both hands to make that first deep stab. That in turn … it may mean he was left-handed.’ Hastily, David Darling added: ‘That’s just a guess … Sorry to unload all this on you.’

  ‘I am grateful.’ She meant it, even though it conjured up a picture of a left-handed killer holding the knife in both hands to stab the victim, the tearing of the knife through the flesh after the first incision.

  David Darling muttered something else about disturbing her as she put down the receiver. The coffee was still hot in the pot. She drank it black, down to the last bitter drop. Then reached out for the telephone, hoping that Dolly was at home. She had missed out on the latest details of Dolly’s varied and not always happy private life, but she might be home.

  ‘Dolly, oh good, you are there.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No of course about it. ‘ Did you notice if Mary March was left-handed?’

  ‘Is this important?’ Dolly thought about it. ‘No, I don’t believe she is; she opens doors and reaches out to pick things up with her right hand. She may have trained herself to use both, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charmian, ‘so she might … Have you found out what she was before coming to Windsor? Work, I mean. What does she do now?’

  ‘She has done a bit of part-time secretarial work, but she has an income from her brother. No, I don’t know what profession, trade or craft she followed in London. I could find out.’

  ‘Do that. Now about Gina, she isn’t left-handed?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Charmian explained why. ‘I’m sure I would have noticed, and I know what she works at … she’s a strong woman, of course. I believe she helps with the scenery, what they have of it.’ The conversation ended.

  Dolly went back to her own thoughts in her own house. She had invested in a very small, very modern house in Merrywick, which she was still more or less camping out in, since time and money were short with her. More and more she was beginning to feel that she was out of place in respectable, quiet Merrywick. No murderers here, surely? She knew that there was the occasional fraudster, one or two bankrupts and at least one case of arson (unproven) for the insurance, but the face of Merrywick was prosperous and peaceful. She felt she disturbed it with her close relationship to violence.

  Dolly had heard the rumours about Charmian, which made her wonder about her own future. She didn’t see herself staying in SRADIC without Charmian.

  She went back to bed, where she was not, whatever Charmian thought, alone, pushed her bedfellow aside and said: ‘Should I move to Cheasey?’

  ‘God, no.’

  He was not a policeman – she had given up on policemen as lovers, they were either too full of their own testosterone and short on sensitivity or too neurotic. The ones with a straightforward, happy temperament did not come her way because they were usually happily married, and she had long ago decided that she did not sleep with married men. She had learned that rule from hard experience.

  ‘Why not?’ She snuggled up to his back; he felt warm and comfortable. They were at ease with each other because there was no intention on either side of getting into a serious relationship. Food, drink, a laugh and a little honest sex were all they wanted. Besides, he was a young journalist on a local paper and would soon move on.

  ‘I was sent to do a story on the little men of Cheasey … the Cheasey Dwarfs. Talk about ring of steel.’

  The Cheasey Dwarfs were a group of families, a clan, where the men were powerful and large of shoulder and arm but very short in the leg. The women were more normal, never tall but not remarkable. The men were gentle and quiet, not overly clever, while the women were bright, forceful and bossy. The Cheasey Dwarfs had been the subject of several studies in medical journals.

  ‘Did they attack you?’

  ‘Oh no, quiet as lambs … although I have met a vicious ram or two,’ – he was a farmer’s son from Wales – ‘ no, it was their criminous neighbours. They were immensely protective; they had made up their minds I was going to take the mickey out of the little men and they wouldn’t have it. So I did my article about them instead. It was good …’ he never hesitated to praise himself, ‘and I think – just think, mind you – that it’s going to get me an offer from a London daily.’

  ‘Good for you,’ sai
d Dolly, recognizing this for what it was: Farewell, I am on my way.

  He rolled over on his back. ‘Dolly, you are in on these two murders …’

  Dolly made a quiet noise, a verbal shrug.

  ‘I know you are – one of our photographers saw you on the scene of the latest. In fact, he got a shot of you and you look pretty good.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Only the editor couldn’t find room for it. But Dolly, if there was anything you could pass on to me, nothing secret, I’m not asking for confidences, but Headfort won’t say anything much and I could do with …’ He stopped.

  ‘One last big article before you push off?’ She raised herself on her elbow. ‘You are a pig … and calling the rams vicious.’

  ‘So they were, on occasion.’

  ‘They’re just full of selfish, pushy hormones. It takes males that way.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He stroked her arm. ‘It makes us warm and loving.’ He sensed a certain response and went on stroking. ‘ I admit that I am interested in these murders; a serial murder is always good for a headline.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything confidential,’ said Dolly. He could be quite beguiling, damn him. ‘But I can tell you that I don’t think they are serial killings. The victims may be chance victims but there’s a reason behind the killings. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s hate.’

  ‘Of the victims?’ He stopped stroking.

  ‘No, of someone else.’ It might even be self-hate, she said to herself, thinking of Mary March.

  ‘But that’s really wicked.’

  ‘Yes, wicked,’ said Dolly. ‘And I’ll tell you something else: the murderer has two arms.’

  ‘Is that important?’