Revengeful Death

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Pip?’ Charmian felt a brush of shock. ‘And the other?’

  Headfort put the phone down with deliberation; ‘Could be from the second victim: the girl, Marian.’ He walked over to his coffee pot. ‘Coffee? I wish I could have a cigarette but I promised myself I would give them up. But one would help. What do we make of it?’

  ‘So Alice Hardy is still alive,’ said Dolly.

  ‘And our killer? I’ll have that coffee, Jack – might clear my mind.’

  Dolly pursed her lips. ‘ Or someone wants us to think she is. No coffee, thanks, Jack, you make such bitter stuff.’

  Charmian agreed with Dolly about the coffee, but it was hot and strong, which was what she wanted. ‘All we really know at this moment is that a pair of jeans we believe to be Alice Hardy’s has been in contact with the blood of the two murder victims. That’s all we know.’

  ‘And by God, it’s enough,’ said Jack Headfort as he drank some of his own bitter coffee.

  ‘And that she’s missing,’ said Dolly. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  Edward Hardy, brought in at once by Sergeant Friner, wearing a thick woolly cardigan, hair wild, looked anxious. No, he said, the boy was all right, he had someone looking after him, although he would have to get back. No, he was taking some leave. Well, he was sort of freelance anyway.

  Led up to the jeans, he went white. ‘No, I can’t say for sure … jeans are just jeans.’

  Jack Headfort pointed out the belt.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I do recognize that. I gave it to Alice … Where is she? All this blood … Is she dead?’ His pallor became more pronounced.

  ‘We don’t know where your wife is,’ said Charmian. ‘We’re still looking.’

  ‘And the blood?’

  ‘It’s not her blood.’

  Edward stared. Comprehension and then horror at what he had heard came into his eyes and he sagged; he fell, arms dangling, towards Charmian. Headfort moved forward quickly to support him.

  Charmian watched as Headfort organized a car for Edward Hardy. She heard him tell Sergeant Friner to send a WPC back with him. ‘Jack,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to send Dolly too. See what you can see there, Dolly.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’ve been over the house. In a quiet kind of way. A WPC went in with the social worker for a look-see.’ Headfort was quick.

  ‘Not criticizing you, Jack, but let Dolly see what she can see.’

  Without a word, Dolly followed; she was not sure what she was meant to find, but perhaps light would dawn as she went to the Hardy house. For sure, the mood Charmian was in, she would have to come back with something.

  Charmian turned to the Chief Inspector. ‘I have to be in London for most of the day. But get March in. I’d like to talk to her myself. Make some excuse for keeping her here until I get back.’

  Jack Headfort nodded. ‘If you say so, ma’am. She’s a bit of a handful, but I’ll do my best.’

  Ten minutes later, Jack Headfort came across Dolly on the point of departing with Edward Hardy.

  ‘What’s in her mind?’ he asked.

  Dolly shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t read her mind any better than you do. But something solid is there. She may guess – she does guess – but only on good evidence.’

  ‘I hope she lets me in on it,’ muttered Jack Headfort. In his father’s day – a good copper who had retired with the rank of Superintendent – the police had been a man’s world. The ethos was still much the same, but women were creeping in all the time. In a way he did not mind, but deep inside he would have preferred not to have someone like Charmian Daniels in authority over him, with her degree and awards and classy ways. ‘I have plenty else to do: a man keeps trying to cut the manes of the horses that stand for hire with their carriage on the taxi rank outside the Castle.’

  ‘Any chance it’s the same man as our killer?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘If he is, we’ll know him by the bruises: one horse kicked, the other tried to bite him – they have big teeth, those horses – and the cab men on the rank set about him. No, not our killer, just a drunken lout and a coward with it. Our killer’s not that.’

  Then they set off on their separate ways: Dolly to see Edward Hardy’s house, and Headfort to get Mary March.

  Mary March opened the door a crack to the Chief Inspector, and allowed him to stand in her sitting room to talk to her.

  ‘I don’t know anything about the jeans, it’s just another attempt to drag me into it.’

  ‘You’ll come down to the station to view the jeans?’

  ‘Not today. I have a migraine.’

  Nevertheless, she did let him drive her over to Cheasey. She stared down at them, examined the silver buckle from a distance, touching being not allowed. Then she said: ‘Her jeans, Alice Hardy’s– she was wearing them that day, when she ran away. She’s the killer.’

  Headfort thanked her for coming.

  ‘You don’t believe me. It’s true. She must hate me very much, but I don’t know why. It’s all aimed at me. You ought to get the boy away, he’s in danger. I keep telling you that.’

  ‘He’s with his father.’

  ‘The father is protecting his wife. You’re a fool if you don’t see that … Ask the father.’

  ‘My officers have been in the house,’ said Headfort. ‘ So? She’s been there. He’s in touch.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ ‘I can smell her.’

  When she had gone, to her fury sent home in a police car, Jack Headfort made a note of what he would say to Charmian Daniels.

  She claims to know the killer – Alice Hardy – no evidence, of course. She’s not left-handed as far as I could judge. What we have here is a furiously angry woman. Whether that makes a killer or not is unclear.

  He added a note: My own feeling is that she’s cracked, round the bend, mad. He put it all in a fax.

  Charmian noted what he had to say when she returned home to read the fax Headfort had sent her. She also got a message from Rosie, passed on by her husband, that Gina wanted to see Charmian to discuss a plan she had.

  ‘I’ll fit her in,’ said Charmian, crumpling the fax, ‘when I can.’ She was deeply preoccupied with what Jack Headfort had to say.

  Disturbed, mad, Mary March.

  Chapter Ten

  Mary March was nervous, and when she was nervous she became angry. Jack Headfort had taken note of that. When angry, she was aggressive. When she was aggressive, she turned that aggression against somebody.

  Without hesitation she had chosen Charmian Daniels as her object. Charmian was everything she did not like in a woman who was her contemporary: she was good to look at, she was well dressed, she was successful, and she had not listened to Mary March in the way Mary had expected.

  Mary had had a knife out ready for her from the start, which recent terrible events had done everything to sharpen. She felt humiliation and danger on every side.

  ‘I am under threat, and she doesn’t believe me; the boy is in danger and she does nothing to protect him. I hate her and love the boy.’

  Mary got one of her favourite knives – she had two – from the kitchen drawer and sharpened it on a steel. She had done this twice already; a sharp knife always had a future. She did not own a gun; she was not physically strong; you had to do the best with what you could use. With a knife you could protect yourself, especially when you didn’t know for sure where the danger was coming from.

  Danger could have any face: it could be a man, it could be a young girl, it could even be a policeman. She was deeply distrustful of the police. Of almost everyone at the moment – even her brother, that distant provider of funds. People could be used.

  The knife shook as she handled it, but she steadied her hands. ‘I am under control.’ What she wanted to say was that she had everything under control, but this was, alas, not true, and she knew it. The last episode of the bloodstained jeans had pushed her to the edge.

  She sat down, the knife in her lap, while she consi
dered what to do.

  ‘I know I am under attack, but I don’t know why. No one believes me, but it is all against me, I’m sure of it. Two deaths.’

  She went to the looking-glass on the wall. Her hair was untidy, her eyes wild. ‘I look mad,’ she told herself. For a moment she was shaken, then she pushed the thought away. ‘But I must stick to my guns.’ She smoothed her hair. ‘There was that time in prison, although I never believed what the doctor said. I felt sane enough, although I was upset, I admit that.’ She moved away from her own image. ‘I suppose the police have found out about that silliness.’ Or if they had not, then they soon would.

  A cup of tea was supposed to settle your mood, but she fancied whisky did a better job. Early in the day for whisky though; a certain puritan streak remained with her. She drew open a drawer in her desk where she kept a bottle of little capsules. She studied them with longing, but better not to go that way.

  She looked at the clock: it was nearly noon. He would be at his desk, that elegant piece of furniture piled high with the pages of his next book, a word processor in front of him on which he wrote. He did not like her to telephone; she knew well that the comfortable cheques deposited each month in her bank were really to keep her away from him. David Exeter, he called himself now, it was his writing name. No secret about it, he said, plenty of people know I’m really Richard King, but I don’t dwell on the past. It’s all behind me.

  And you don’t want me around to remind you.

  She dialled the number, confident he would answer. He’d be there, doing his word quota for the day. He was as regular in his habits as an old cat.

  ‘Dick?’ She never called him David; he was Dick to her and always would be.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ He did not sound overjoyed to hear her. But when had he ever? The love had all been on her side. ‘The police have been inquiring about you here.’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell them you were my brother.’

  ‘They don’t wait to be told, you ought to know that.’

  ‘What did they want to know?’

  ‘Oh, just checking up, they said. Pity you had to get mixed up with this business.’

  ‘Not my fault.’

  He didn’t answer directly, he never did. He was better on paper than face to face. Sometimes he wrote her quite a decent letter. More often a postcard. She guessed, like the money, that any correspondence came into the category of ‘keep Mary quiet’.

  ‘Dick, when I was in prison … I wasn’t mad, was I?’

  ‘I was banged up myself, if you remember.’

  ‘But was I?’

  ‘You went for one prison officer with a knife. If it hadn’t been made of cardboard and you’d really got at her, you would still be inside, I expect.’

  ‘I was angry.’ Nearly all the time she had felt angry, life was so unjust. ‘ It was because of you, I was on your side. I don’t remember about it, not in detail.’

  ‘No, well, you wouldn’t, it’s in the past now.’

  But was it? Mary asked herself. ‘ Do the police know, do you think?’

  ‘I expect so; they have a knack that way.’

  So not in the past: an episode recorded and remembered in the police records, to be dug up and used. Probably had been dug up already.

  ‘The girl’s family,’ she hesitated. This was not a subject she was supposed to approach.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They were angry, they threatened to kill you.’ It was one of the reasons her brother had changed his name and moved to a distant county. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘My solicitor said they emigrated to New Zealand. Or the mother and father did. I dare say the brother and the other sister went too. He said to me, “ You won’t get any further trouble from them, but change your name and move.”’ He was irritable. ‘I must get back to work. It is work, what I do, although I don’t think you believe it.’

  ‘I do, I do.’ Do not anger this brother, he supports you. ‘How do you know for sure that they’re out of the country?’

  ‘I hired a detective, if you must know.’ He had hired one to check on Mary, although she did not know this. He wanted to know what went on in her life, for her sake as well as his own. The detective had sent in a disquieting report saying that the subject was ‘twitchy’, and too close to the violent events in Windsor. The detective was a retired CID man with excellent contacts, so that he knew more of what Jack Headfort and Charmian Daniels thought than he was telling his employer.

  ‘Have you still got any dolls?’ Dick asked suddenly.

  ‘No.’ It was not true, she had two – one in better shape than the other.

  ‘I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Anyway, it’s all in the past now.’ Her brother then replaced the telephone awkwardly; a recent accident had hurt his arm.

  But past events work inside you and round you and come out as a kind of emotional excreta, thought Mary March. She wondered if her brother really believed it was all behind him. Judging by the photographs on his book jacket he had changed the colour of his hair and possibly had cosmetic surgery, so he could be said to have done his best to create a new self.

  Perhaps she should try it. She sat down and covered her face with her hands. A knife seemed such an easy solution; dug into yourself or someone else, it brought peace. For a time, anyway. She had discovered this simple fact aged ten, when she had stabbed her doll.

  ‘I have arrived at a constructive solution,’ she said, reaching out a hand.

  The doll, if it could have felt anything, might have flinched.

  Her doorbell rang, twice. Come at once, it commanded. For a moment Mary ignored the summons, then she went to the door. She guessed it was not Chief Inspector Headfort; he rang once only.

  She saw a tall, good-looking woman wearing dark jeans and a bright red sweater, hair dishevelled, but that was the fashion; make-up, professional. Tidier, this time. ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  Gina Foster held out a hand. ‘Yes, me again.’ She focused on Mary – she looked different today: a slender, pretty woman with kind eyes and a distracted manner.

  Mary said: ‘Back again.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t talk to me. But while I was here, I got blood on my sleeve.’

  Mary opened the door wider. ‘ Come in.’

  Gina entered with a kind of neat flourish that she had developed when she’d created The Trojans, to show that she was in charge. Behind her came a slender girl with a fall of straight dark hair. Gina put an arm protectively around her shoulders. ‘ This is Emma; we both want to talk to you.’

  ‘Why is Emmma here?’

  ‘Emma loved Pip. Peter, who was the first victim. She has a right to be here.’

  ‘You had better sit down,’ Mary said.

  Gina had taken in the comfortable furniture, the flowers, the general air of money spent and enjoyed. She chose the large, soft sofa and drew Emma down beside her. So far Emma had said nothing, but Gina knew the girl well enough by now to know that this did not mean she had nothing to say, or would not say it when she felt like it.

  Mary took a hard chair by the table. ‘So, what do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘I know more about you than I did,’ began Gina.

  Mary allowed this. ‘I’m not surprised. There’s been publicity.’

  ‘You found Pip; there was blood from the girl on your garage. Not inside it, not on your car. A pair of jeans turned up outside your house. Your rubbish bin. Not your blood but the blood of the two victims. The two of them, mark you.’

  ‘You are well informed.’

  ‘I have good contacts.’ Rosie was a mine of information which could be and had been tapped.

  ‘I am a suspect, I know that,’ conceded Mary.

  ‘But I am too. My life seems to have crossed the lines of both victims. There’s a list and I’m on it. I got blood on me here. Either from inside the house or outside.’

  ‘Not inside,’ said Mary quickly.

  ‘OK
, I accept that. I happen to agree; then from outside. So perhaps the killer was there, had already left the body and was tidying up. If you could call it tidying up. But it made me a suspect.’

  ‘Welcome to the club … But I think I am a victim.’

  Gina leaned forward. ‘I want us to make a show of it, a play, in public, act it out.’

  ‘In public? I don’t understand.’

  ‘What I say is, we’ll act out what has happened. In the open air, for everyone to see.’

  ‘It sounds like a Poirot or Miss Marple enterprise,’ said Mary with some scepticism. ‘Will the police allow it?’

  ‘We don’t ask them. There’s a disused car park on the Merrywick road where it winds into Windsor. Traffic goes past, people walk that way. They’ll see us. Plenty of space.’

  ‘Who does the acting?’

  ‘You are you, I am myself, and the members of the Trojans will act out the parts as they feel inspired. They know the plot.’

  Mary was silent. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Drama can purge.’

  Mary remained silent.

  ‘Take my word for it: someone listening and watching may remember something. One of us may recall a vital fact. We will flush out the killer.’

  ‘We’re suspects – supposing it’s one of us who’s flushed out? Supposing I’m the killer? Or you are? Supposing you are the killer? Supposing that’s the truth that comes out?’

  Gina sat back. ‘That is what we have to face. We shall be exorcised.

  We will show ourselves for what we are. That’s what I mean: it will all come out, we won’t be able to keep it back.’

  Mary covered her face with her hands. Finally she raised her face, flushed along the cheeks and jaw. ‘The dividing line between madness and sanity is thin in this business. But I accept. Try it.’ She nodded. ‘Try it. But tell the police first.’ And they will stop it and then it won’t happen.

  To her surprise, Gina agreed. ‘All right, if it makes you happy. I was going to get a message to Charmian.’ But not until after it was well under way and too late to be stopped.