Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

  They ate a cold supper of smoked fish and salad which had been prepared before the tea party. The supper table was attended by the black cat. When he first appeared he had been resident in the house and garden, or so it had seemed, living off the land. He still lived an outdoor life but moved in and out of their household as it suited him, which it did more and more.

  Winifred stooped to offer him a saucer of milk. ‘We ought to give him a name.’

  Birdie looked at the shining black head bent over his drink. ‘Let’s just call him Blackie.’

  ‘A drop of wine to celebrate stage one of our opening?’ suggested Winifred.

  ‘Lovely.’ Birdie watched as her fellow witch opened a bottle of their own home-made plum wine. It was deep red and strong. She raised her glass. ‘Your health, Win.’

  As they drank, they listened to the local radio news. The leading item told them that one of the missing women, Mary Jersey, a schoolteacher, forty years old and unmarried, had now been missing for a week. In this time, money had been extracted from her account, using her cash card. The banks involved had been in widely different parts of the country, ranging from London to Glasgow …

  ‘Might mean she is still alive,’ said Birdie.

  ‘And it might not.’

  ‘Mary Jersey,’ said Birdie. ‘I believe she’s the one that Frostie knows. Or knew,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Nasty to lose a friend that way.’

  The newsreader was carrying on with the story, this time talking about Louise Sherry, a young woman of twenty who had now been missing for almost three weeks, leaving behind her infant daughter who was being looked after by Louise’s mother. Louise was a single mother, with no bank account and no money. A video film had shown her shopping in a big supermarket in Peascod Street in Windsor. She had been carrying a heavy plastic shopping bag, although she had been known to have little cash to spend that day.

  Was she shopping for someone else?

  If there was such a person for whom the missing woman had been shopping, then the police asked that person to come forward.

  ‘Nasty,’ said Winifred. ‘They weren’t drifters those two women, they had a circle of loving friends and relations. Wonder where the child’s father is?’

  ‘Dead. Killed at work. Read it somewhere.’

  Not a drifter, but lonely, Birdie thought, shut up with her child and little money. She might easily respond if someone made overtures, and asked for help like shopping in return. A person whose motives might not be what they seemed.

  Mary Jersey was not lonely, but a busy, successful working woman; but Frostie said she was known to seek out what she called ‘interesting people’. That could be dangerous too, and, perhaps, was a sign of unadmitted loneliness.

  Winifred poured them some more wine.

  The radio was continuing with the news of missing women, reminding them that two years ago, a local woman from Merrywick had disappeared while taking her dog for a walk. The dog, a Jack Russell bitch, had come home, but not Mrs Deborah Fair, middle-aged and divorced.

  ‘She came to one of our meetings once,’ said Birdie suddenly. ‘Remember? Just the one, didn’t fit in, and never came again.’

  ‘I remember.’

  It was not a happy thought.

  ‘Winnie,’ said Birdie. ‘Don’t let me go missing.’

  ‘I never will, dear friend.’

  ‘And if I do, then get me back again. Please. Somehow.’

  ‘If I have to go to the end of the world.’ Winifred held out her hand and Birdie took it. ‘And do the same for me.’

  ‘Oh I would.’ But Birdie knew that Winifred was not the sort to disappear. Some people were, she feared she was herself, but not Winifred Eagle.

  Winifred went to the window carrying her glass of wine. ‘Damn those workmen, they promised to start on the garage and storeroom today but there’s no sign of them.’

  ‘Win,’ said Birdie to Winifred’s back. ‘About a month ago, when I was down in Peascod Street, a woman called from a car parked round the corner … it’s about the only spot you can park there although not really allowed. I went over, and she said she was lame, couldn’t walk, and her carer was away, I looked a kind person, if she gave me her shopping list and the money would I go and get what she wanted and bring it out to her.’

  Winifred swung round.

  ‘I couldn’t do it, Win, because it was when my shoulder was bad. I would have, otherwise … Win, do you think … that I could have been kidnapped … She had very strong hands.’

  Winifred moved over and put her arms round her friend. They stood in silence, neither of them speaking.

  Winifred Eagle lay back against her pillows, and put down her book.

  Birdie is imaginative, I know that, she always has been, but all the same … I wonder.

  A horrid picture was forming in her mind: a woman, claiming to be frail, but with strong hands, asking piteously to have her shopping done, then those strong hands dragging the shopper into the car and off.

  Off to where? Somewhere that ended in death.

  Across the landing she heard Birdie moving restlessly, then the black cat pounding up the stairs and jumping on to her bed, eyes bright and alert.

  No one was sleeping well tonight in this house.

  Birdie got out of bed to walk across to the window which overlooked the street, quiet and empty in the moonlight. A police car came very quietly down the road and turned the corner. Birdie watched it, wondering what scene it was going to confront. A fight, a fire or a death? She pushed aside the idea of murder, – after all, accidents did happen.

  Then a burly man in a silvery tracksuit ran down the middle of the road; he was accompanied by a large mongrel dog which was running more easily than he was. What a time to go jogging, Birdie thought. He was already panting, and it looked as if a heart attack was waiting to happen.

  The police car came back so whatever crisis it had dealt with had been soon over. It passed the jogger, who waved to it, and the police driver waved back: they knew each other. ‘Don’t say he’s a policeman,’ murmured Birdie, ‘surely he’s too fat for that?’ Although she had noticed that on several of her favourite television programmes the policemen were fat and ate and drank a good deal.

  She was glad she had told Winifred about the shopping episode. The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

  What would have happened to her if she had collected the shopping and come back to the car? I’d have fought, she said to herself. I’d definitely have struggled and shouted, and I am stronger than I look. And like all witches, black or white, she knew a thing or two about self-defence.

  She realized now that she had picked up some sort of sexual threat from the woman in the car, which had helped her to say no. She should have gone to the police, or perhaps spoken to her friend Charmian Daniels. That knowledgeable and sophisticated lady would have known how to evaluate the episode.

  If she had spoken perhaps the missing women would have been saved.

  In her mind’s eye she saw posters on the walls.

  DO NOT GO SHOPPING FOR STRANGERS

  Especially if they have large hands, she thought as she crawled back to bed. The black cat slid back into the room where he climbed on to the bed to settle down to sleep once more.

  Winifred heard Birdie settle down. She closed her book, and drifted off to sleep herself.

  A quietness came over the house. It knew how to sleep, that house, although those in it sometimes had unquiet dreams.

  In the morning, Birdie and Winifred were anxious to show energy and enthusiasm and moved around the house briskly, getting breakfast and talking.

  ‘Both of us know,’ said Winifred, buttering a piece of toast (the butter was organic and vegie and had never known a cow), ‘ that this shop is a gamble, and we might lose a lot of money.’

  ‘Not everything, though,’ said Birdie, ‘we have been prudent.’

  ‘Not everything,’ went on Winifred, ‘but it is a strain and we show it. I ha
d quite a disturbed night. Nasty dreams.’

  Birdie nodded. ‘So did I.’

  ‘Stupid of us.’

  ‘Let’s go into the Great Park as we said we would and find a tree to help us.’

  Winifred said slowly: ‘You know I don’t think I believe in trees any more.’

  ‘Oh Win,’ Birdie cried in horror. ‘ You must believe or it’s all a dud.’

  ‘I know, that’s why I hesitated to tell you, but I thought it only right that I did.’

  ‘But when did this happen?’

  Winifred hesitated before speaking. ‘I think in the night, I woke up and knew. That’s how it was. But don’t worry, there will be something other than trees to get strength from.’

  The black cat strolled into the room, sat in front of Winifred, and stared at her as if giving her the opportunity to take strength from him.

  ‘No, not you,’ said Winifred quickly. ‘ On no account. You are a nice cat and I like you but let us stay apart.’

  The cat lashed his tail, suggestively, as if hinting that cats took strength but did not give it.

  ‘Have some coffee, Win.’ Birdie poured out a cup. ‘I don’t think you are yourself yet this morning.’ She gave the cat a saucer of milk which was perhaps all he had in mind all along. You just never know with cats, thought Birdie.

  ‘But what about your night, dear?’

  ‘The odd dream. We aren’t used to this place yet, Win, it makes us fanciful.’ Then she said: ‘All the same, Win, I didn’t imagine the woman in the car and the shopping. There was something wrong there.’

  ‘I believe you, and I think you had better tell our Friend. When Winifred spoke like that she meant Charmian Daniels. ‘She is appearing at our opening party as our distinguished guest and we will tell her then.’

  ‘Is her husband coming with her?’

  ‘I believe he is.’ Winifred did not regard husbands as important in the scheme of things. ‘But he won’t be in the way.’ If he came at all; he was famous for cancelling.

  They continued eating breakfast, making a comment here and there, sharing the newspapers. The story of the missing women was still running.

  ‘All padding,’ said Winifred. ‘Nothing new.’

  ‘I don’t know, look at this.’ Birdie pushed over the paper she was reading. ‘ It says that Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels, head of SRADIC (Southern Register, Documentation and Crime), is taking over the investigation unit in this area.’

  ‘Well, she would be interested,’ said Winifred, ‘but I suppose there is a lot of protocol and so on and she would have to be asked and other officers consulted.’

  ‘All that is true, but you don’t see what else it means: it implies other areas, other parts of the country, other missing women.’

  The black cat had finished his saucer of milk and departed, tail erect. Winifred ate the last piece of toast with honey from local bees and stood up. Birdie got up dutifully too.

  ‘I wonder what Charmian is doing?’

  ‘Working. Like us.’ They had already discovered that owning a bookshop demanded hard work and constant attention. ‘Come on, Birdie, let’s get those books on the shelves. Or we won’t have a shop to open. And after … well, what about a walk by the river?’

  Water, free, moving water, was just as powerful to the spirit as a tree.

  It could be dangerous too, power was always dangerous, you had to know how to use it.

  Charmian was certainly working, as she had been since an early hour. She had driven herself to work from her home in Maid of Honour Row. It was a small house built early in Queen Victoria’s reign for castle servants, and to which Charmian and her husband had returned after experimenting with a larger house and country living. They found they liked the closeness and intimacy of the little place. It was also warm and sunny.

  She had left her husband sleeping to drive to a breakfast meeting in Slough to meet the team working on the cases of the missing women. She took with her her assistant, Detective Inspector Dolly Barstow, heroine of many investigations and more love affairs. They would be meeting Inspector Rewley, who also worked in Charmian’s special unit of SRADIC, in that part of Slough that bordered on Cheasey, neighbour to Windsor and famous for the Cheasey dwarfs, who were virtuous and hard-working, and the rest of the population who were not and provided much of the wealth of criminal Cheasey.

  Charmian picked up Dolly from her house in Merrywick, a district as unlike Cheasey as could be imagined. Merrywick had careful streets and crescents lined with pretty houses with well tended gardens. Dolly’s house was pretty but her garden was neglected. ‘No money for a gardener, and no time to do it,’ Dolly explained. ‘Anyway, I may not stay here long, not sure if Merrywick is my ambience.’ Charmian had advised her to stay, pointing out that she had moved too often as it was, each removal consequent upon some upheaval in her life.

  ‘You stay there,’ she had said. ‘Get settled, you can’t keep moving on. Buy a dog, or a cat. Be domestic, and don’t grind your teeth when you disagree with me.’

  She thought about this conversation as she hooted the horn and sat waiting for Dolly to come rushing through the door. It looked as though she had bought a cat: there was one sitting on the wall, looking prosperous. Cats did well in Merrywick and Windsor, while even Cheasey had its roaming unneutered hordes.

  ‘Come on, Dolly.’ One more hoot of the horn. Disorganization usually meant emotional strife again. ‘In love and out of it, doesn’t take her ten minutes,’ Humphrey had said to his wife. ‘She has bad luck,’ Charmian had replied.

  Dolly appeared, banging her front door and running down the path. She looked as well made up and well dressed as usual, which was probably because everything else in the house, bed, breakfast things, even breakfast from the day before had been left as they stood.

  ‘That your cat?’ asked Charmian as she started the car.

  ‘No, just a visitor.’

  ‘Has it got a home?’

  ‘Oh yes, several, I should think.’

  Charmian drove fast round the winding road which led across Cheasey Common to the edge of Slough and to the office – just outside her own fiefdom – of Superintendent Hallows, who was running the investigation into the missing women.

  ‘Hallows called this meeting specially,’ said Charmian. ‘He’s getting tetchy that nothing positive is doming through.’

  ‘He was born that way,’ muttered Dolly. Between her and the Superintendent there was no love lost. ‘Pity he’s the co-ordinator.’

  ‘Well, we were the first to get a victim.’

  They knew now that they had more than the two missing Windsor women to consider. Fletely, on the edge of Hounslow, near to London and the Met, was weighing in with their quota, and it had also been discovered that they had a contribution from the lushly rich area of Bredon, west of Windsor.

  Inspector Chance was due from Fletely and Inspector Deast from Bredon. All the parties had agreed to pool their information. Charmian’s deputy, Inspector George Rewley, would be informed of all.

  ‘Deast, the beast,’ said Dolly gloomily. ‘I met him once on another case. Can’t bear women to work with him.’

  Charmian shrugged. In her long career, she had met plenty of hostility, but she had learnt to handle it, and there had been friendship too.

  ‘He’ll have to put up with it. I heard he remarried recently so perhaps he’ll have changed.’

  ‘Yeah, he might. Pat’s very nice.’

  ‘You know her then?’

  ‘She did a course at Police College with me.’

  ‘Sounds to me that he’s got over some of his prejudices about women,’ said Charmian as she parked the car. She didn’t know whose reserved parking slot she was taking and she did not care.

  ‘Oh he likes them well enough in bed.’

  Charmian raised an eyebrow at Dolly. ‘No,’ said Dolly, ‘as it happens not. He didn’t even try.’

  They were not late, just on time, but the men were there bef
ore them. Planned? she wondered. She dismissed the thought; even if it was true, she did not care. She could pull rank on any one of them and they knew it.

  ‘Sorry if we’ve kept you waiting.’ She caught the eye of George Rewley who was sitting quietly in one corner. He smiled.

  ‘You haven’t,’ said Superintendent Hallows.

  ‘I drove down and the M25 was almost empty for once,’ said Sid Chance.

  ‘And I came by train, and it’s either be early or late,’ said Inspector Deast gloomily.

  Rewley said nothing; he had come on his motorbike and enjoyed the ride.

  These four men had come together as a group because from each area women had gone missing: one from central Fletely, almost in London, two from Bredon and now, with the addition of Louise Sherry, two from Windsor.

  The group had worked together once before on a case which touched all the different areas: the case of the Horseman, so-called Joe Davy, who had mutilated horses. He had been caught and convicted.

  Now the group was meeting again, not for horses this time.

  Many women go missing from their home, family and friends in England; some come back, others never do. But there was something special about these missing women, something that had not been announced to the public, and which suggested that they had been abducted by the same person.

  The disappearance of each woman had been marked by the delivery of an envelope marked with the woman’s name to the local police. Each contained an item of hers: a ring from Amanda Warren in Fletely, a watch from Lily Green in Bredon and a handkerchief from Daisy Winner, also from Bredon.

  Mary Jersey had been robbed of money and had also parted with a ring, but Louise Sherry from Old Windsor had sent nothing. So far.

  ‘Might mean she’s still alive,’ was Charmian’s contribution.

  ‘They have to be dead,’ Inspector Sid Chance had said at the last meeting. ‘Either dead or seriously intimidated. I don’t see any of these women parting with their valuables. And the Jersey woman’s bank account has been used.’