Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

‘Yes, what a lovely idea. Just black cats, do you think?’ Rose had certainly had too much champagne.

  Good luck to her, Dolly thought, since she herself had had nothing stronger than a mug of tea.

  ‘Would the cats co-operate?’ she heard the supposed journalist asking Rose, and getting the reply that oh darling, cats love a party.

  Dolly stared down at the black cat, now rubbing against her ankle. Perhaps the speaker was right and cats did love a party. She looked into a pair of bright, green eyes, stony hard, but full of intelligent perception in a feline way. Or perhaps this cat was different.

  ‘Who is this Rose?’ she asked, bumping into Winifred at just this point.

  Winifred craned her head: ‘Oh that’s Rose Barry … she likes to put du in as in French, Rose du Barry, but it’s all nonsense.’

  She put a mug of tea in Dolly’s hand, a hand which would have preferred a beaker of champagne. ‘I’ll be glad when all this is over. Not quite the opening I planned, but it’s been good for sales.’

  ‘And publicity.’

  ‘That too. The poor things were out there in the stone and cold and damp all the while we were in here putting books on the shelves.’

  ‘At least one of them was there a deal longer than that.’ And the stone coffin possibly even longer if it once housed a dead Roman …

  ‘I suppose the other body, the skeleton, was a woman?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, not until the bones have been examined.’ It seemed a good moment to ask: ‘How did you come to buy this house?’

  Winifred’s eyes, as hard to read as the black cat’s, met hers. ‘I suppose I might as well tell you as I guess you speak as the voice of Charmian. I had it from a lady, Miss Evans, now dead. In her will … oh we had to pay, she had to think of her heirs, but it was a good price.’

  ‘That was kind of her.’

  ‘She was one of us,’ said Winifred simply. ‘ In fact, she was the one who taught me everything I know.’ Winifred’s face was solemn. ‘Oh, she was one of us and more: a great thinker, theology, philosophy; she left me her library, but most of it is beyond me, too philosophical, you know, I am more on the practical side, although I am great on imagination and ideas, so I gave it to the City Library. They keep it on a special reserved shelf – have to apparently with gifts – so most people think it is pornography.’ She paused for a moment, apparently meditating on the unfairness of this. Then she said briskly; ‘ I think she knew something of the history of the house, although I never heard what. She just said one day: “Might do for you, dear.” She had no use for it herself, she ran a shoe shop at the top of Castlemount Road, lived there, used this for storage.’

  There was something about witches, Dolly thought, they did bring you down to earth with a bang: shoes. What could be more down to earth than feet?

  Winifred took a deep breath. ‘She did say something, which may have had some relevance to what was found today.’ She paused, then said, ‘Minnie Queen warned me that, although she had never caught them, or seen them, she had the feeling that people got in the back gate. Never into the house, nothing stolen, but she felt that the garden was used.’ Winifred looked Dolly straight in the eye. ‘And I have had the same sensation.’

  Dolly thought about it. Perhaps this was what Birdie seemed to have been gearing herself up to say. ‘What about Birdie?’

  ‘If so, she has never said so to me.’

  Time to speak to Birdie, if she could see her, but Birdie had a way of disappearing, so Dolly found a chair while she drank her tea, which, thank God, was strong and hot, not one of the herbal brews that Winifred sometimes offered you if she thought you needed care and attention. Dolly herself had received this treatment at one of the more fraught periods of her life. Winifred had taken one look at her, handed her a cupful of pale liquid, and said, ‘Drink this.’ Dolly had drunk and to her surprise had felt better. Not at once, nothing mind-blowing like that, but over the next few days. Her then lover, a young doctor, had asked her to get the recipe from Winifred. But when asked Miss Eagle had smiled enigmatically, and said it was a little brew of her own. Her lover had said crossly that Dolly should have saved some so he could have taken it away to get it analysed. He had not been pleased to hear from Dolly’s own lips that it was all down to a spell put on it by Miss Eagle.

  Well, he was gone now, Dolly thought, back to the Antipodes, and his place had been taken by others. No one at the moment. Or no one permanent.

  She sat drinking her tea, momentarily switched off.

  Charmian had stood watching Victoria Janus busy selling books which it was no business of hers to sell, and handing out leaflets with the name of her own establishment, plus a map of how to get there.

  Janus was at that moment selling a book on Jack the Ripper to a plumpish man who had his back to Charmian. ‘For a friend,’ she heard him say, as if he was shy of buying such a book, but wanted to read it all the same. The book had a bright red cover, striped in yellow, so it was going to be hard to hide. Janus had a penetrating voice, so her comment that she was psychic about murderers, could always tell one, and would keep in contact with the police made Charmian wince. Not with me, she thought.

  She waited until Janus was joined by a tall, thin woman dressed in smart London clothes and a small tight hat with a diamond arrow on the side (the glitter might have been paste), an interestingly dated look to it all.

  She made her way to Victoria slowly, keeping her gaze on the woman, aware that Victoria was also watching her approach.

  ‘Miss Janus?’

  Janus held out a generously large hand, and smiled. ‘I am Victoria Janus.’

  Charmian introduced herself, submitting to a strong, hard handgrip. She flexed her fingers gently when they were returned to her, wondering whether Victoria Janus had offered her a touch of punishment on purpose.

  ‘We did meet once before,’ said Charmian.

  ‘I’m afraid I do not remember.’

  Dignified but stilted, Charmian thought. She has got used to putting on a face.

  ‘I am not surprised. You had other things to think about at the time … There was a lot going on, and I was not really involved … just an observer, really.’

  Victoria Janus nodded. ‘ Police, aren’t you? I thought so when you went outside and saw the bodies. Authority, you know, you can’t miss it.’

  ‘You have some yourself,’ said Charmian, half admiringly.

  ‘You need it in the publicity world, believe you me … have to promote yourself.’

  ‘Tell the odd lie or two.’

  ‘That too.’ She was unoffended. Perhaps she had learnt not to be difficult with the police, especially with the odd body or two on site. ‘I am offering myself to the pair here, not sure if I have made my point. Brought Ellery Queen, don’t think they liked him.’

  ‘But he’s dead.’

  ‘Of course he’s dead. I bring him back. That’s the publicity point. Anyone can get a real-life crime writer – thick on the ground.’

  Charmian was silent for a moment. ‘ If he was the one sitting in the car outside … wrongly parked by the way, you may be clamped … he looked very odd.’

  ‘You’d look odd if you were two people rolled into one … he always was, you know. I believe they were two cousins in the world … I have brought them back as twins, joined at the hip.’

  Charmian remained soberly interested. ‘Was that difficult?’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Janus ambiguously, ‘a little for them, I fear. Let me introduce you to another literary figure. She came along out of the kindness of her heart because she has always been fond of crime and also of Windsor. A debt to be repaid.’ She held out her hand to the elegant but old-fashioned figure at her side, someone out of the Tatler of the 1950s, Charmian thought. ‘May I introduce Ian Fleming.’

  ‘So glad to be here,’ she said.

  ‘But …’ began Charmian, then stopped. She had been trapped and knew it.

  ‘Yes, I know what you were going to s
ay, but the dear boy had a sex change over there, it can happen, you know, Oscar Wilde got a touch of it. But in this case, it was quite welcomed, she said she had always felt there was something wrong.’

  ‘It is very interesting to meet you,’ said Charmian. ‘Are you over for long?’

  ‘Just a working trip, off as soon as it’s done with.’

  ‘You know,’ said Charmian slowly, ‘I find that bit easy to believe.’ She turned to the smiling Victoria Janus. ‘Have you tried bringing Shakespeare back or Charles Dickens?’

  ‘There is a bit of competition there from another firm called Repeats; but yes, I would try if there was the demand. But, of course, it’s not always successful. I mean, today, for instance, the discovery in the garden rather stole my thunder.’

  Charmian looked her straight in the eye. ‘In the circumstances, it must have been difficult.’

  Over the shoulder of Victoria Janus, she could see that the two bodies, having been photographed and generally sniffed over by the Scene-of-the-Crime team, were being prepared for removal to a waiting ambulance. Victoria turned round to look. ‘Murder is it?’ she said.

  ‘Probably in one case. No idea about the other.’

  Dolly Barstow came up to Charmian. ‘Birdie wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Let’s go to the corner over there,’ said Charmian. The room was emptying. ‘Goodbye, Miss Janus, we may meet again.’ And not over there, she said to herself decisively, over here with feet on solid ground.

  ‘I don’t quite like that woman,’ said Birdie, her voice tremulous. ‘I believe she is not honest.’

  ‘Have you paid her anything for coming here with her dead authors?’

  Birdie shook her head. ‘She came on spec.’

  Then she told Charmian her story about being invited into the car to do some shopping. ‘When I saw the plastic bag over that poor creature’s head, I wondered …’ She lowered her head. ‘ I expect you think it’s just silly, Charmian.’

  Dolly was standing there listening. ‘Something in it, you know.’

  ‘Yes, there could be. Thank you for telling me, Birdie. You can talk to Superintendent Hallows. I think he would like to hear what you have to say. Then Dolly will take a statement from you.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Birdie was reluctantly compliant. ‘If anything I say can help.’

  ‘It might … Would you recognize the woman again if you saw her?’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m not sure. It was raining, you know, and she had a scarf on her head and wore glasses, they were tinted.’

  ‘So you couldn’t see her eyes?’

  Birdie shook her head. ‘Couldn’t see much at all … but I could see her hands, and they were big.’

  ‘All right, Birdie, thanks. Dolly will look after you. You were right to tell me.’

  ‘The woman in the coffin,’ said Birdie. ‘Poor soul, poor young thing. It could have been me. Not there perhaps, at the bottom of our garden, but somewhere else.’

  Dolly took her arm and led her away. Fortunately Hallows was a kind and patient man; he would be gentle with the unhappy Birdie. Sometimes one wanted to laugh at Birdie, but Hallows would never do that.

  At the door, Winifred was saying goodbye to customers and fellow witches as they departed. Victoria and her smart companion were bowed out.

  Victoria shook Winifred’s hand. ‘I am afraid that I bring death with me; I am so sorry.’ She looked at Winifred with an expression of sad sincerity.

  She really meant that, thought Charmian, watching, as the woman walked through the door to join her two companions in the car.

  ‘Strange woman,’ mused Winifred. ‘Interested in death. For profit, of course. I don’t take to her. Do you?’

  ‘I had seen her before,’ said Charmian. ‘In the place where I lived before coming here … in Deerham Hills. She was on trial for murdering two women.’

  She bent down to pick up one of the business cards which Victoria Janus had been distributing liberally round the shop. This one had either been rejected or had fluttered to the ground and been stepped on by a muddy foot, but it was legible.

  ‘If I want her, then I know where to find her.’

  Chapter Three

  Birdie and Winifred tidied up the shop before going out for a simple meal at a nearby restaurant run by an old friend, an elderly warlock now retired from that activity although still a keen businessman, Charles Briggs, always called Charley by friends and enemies alike. Winifred, who was more cynical than Birdie, had always suspected that Charley had been more interested in a young television producer who was going to do a documentary on white witches and warlocks than in witchery itself. In fact, as far as she could see, he was more of a self-made warlock, not having gone through training at the college near Salisbury as was usually done.

  They had left the shop locked and the cat inside.

  ‘Not likely to get broken into with a row of police cars parked outside, and the garden marked out with that yellow tape they plaster about.’ Birdie was excited but not wanting to admit to it. Accordingly when Winifred suggested a bottle of red wine, she agreed at once. Red wine gave you strength, and they felt in need of it.

  Charley brought the bottle over himself. ‘ On the house, a good strong wine, I don’t hold with the shibboleth you shouldn’t drink red with fish. Have what does you good,’ he said agreeably, sitting down. ‘I hear you’ve had trouble back at your shop.’

  ‘You could call it that,’ observed Winifred primly.

  ‘Corpses in a coffin, I hear?’

  ‘You hear everything.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s that sort of house. Was it difficult turning it into a shop? Even for books?’

  ‘Easier for books than say fish,’ said Winifred smoothly. ‘But the big front window does beautifully for display, and we put shelves up on the walls and have several large tables. Hatchards on the Thames, you could call it.’

  ‘You take yourself proudly, Winifred Eagle, but then you always did.’

  ‘Thank you, and so do you, Charley. Now how is the fish tonight?’

  ‘Excellent, it is always excellent for you, Miss Eagle.’

  ‘Catch it specially, do you?’

  ‘No, just say one of my spells.’

  ‘Spells,’ said Birdie. ‘Oh dear, dear, you shouldn’t use that word lightly, it brings no good things with it, unless handled properly by one who knows the rules. I feel you do not, Mr Briggs.’

  ‘I can never convince you two that I’m genuine,’ said Charley Briggs, exasperated.

  ‘Half genuine,’ said Winifred. ‘ You know a few tricks.’

  Charley bowed his head. ‘ That is true, but true of you also, Miss Eagle.’

  ‘Only when necessary,’ said Winifred, coolly, surveying the fish dish, which the waitress was presenting for her inspection; trout and salmon in a herb sauce. ‘ Sometimes we must use whatever means comes to hand.’

  ‘We all do that, Miss Eagle.’

  ‘Come on, Charley, out with it. What are you leading up to?’

  ‘It’s always been foxy, that house. Not good.’

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Unlucky. Bad atmosphere. Every lad who went to St Joseph’s Academy knew about it. Just around the corner, school was. Not there now, of course. A bomb fell on it. Or was it a flying bomb, or one of those rockets? … Wait a minute, you forget things, might have been a plane from Heathrow fell on it …’

  ‘Bit more detail, please, Charley. Either you mean something or you don’t.’

  ‘We used to break in, play in it, then we noticed bad things happened … broken legs, accident on a bike, a father dies … didn’t seem right.’

  ‘But not to you, Charley.’

  ‘No, not me. I must have been protected even then.’

  Winifred got on with her fish without talking. Her eyes were bright.

  Charley remained as if he were joining in their meal.

  ‘You’re a handsome woman, Winifred.’ He shook his h
ead. ‘ I never seem to come to terms with you. Now is that you or is it me?’

  ‘I am not a lesbian, Charley, but if I were, then I would not hesitate to proclaim my pleasure.’ Then she got in her dig. ‘And you are ageless, Charley. How old are you? We must discuss that some day.’

  ‘I’ve never had a lover,’ said Birdie, anxious to join in, ‘but if the offer was there I would never have said no.’

  Birdie’s occasional bursts of bleak honesty, well known to all her friends, were never embarrassing but sometimes difficult to answer. Not that Birdie wanted an answer. Usually she sat in happy silence, unaware that she had delivered a bombshell.

  ‘Let’s have a go some time,’ said Charley.

  Birdie gave him a radiant smile. ‘Oh you are kind, but I fancy someone younger.’

  Even Winifred wondered if Birdie, so far from being naive, knew exactly what she was doing and enjoyed it. She had that look on her.

  Winifred finished her mouthful of trout and herb sauce, and thought how much Blackie the cat would enjoy a taste. ‘Let me have some fish for the cat if the kitchens can spare it, Charley. I’ll pay, of course.’

  He nodded. ‘There will be something, I’ll get a bag made up. Have it on the house, if it’s for a cat, why not?’

  ‘A black one too,’ said Birdie. ‘Although sometimes he looks at me as if he could eat me.’

  Winifred leaned across to Charley. ‘Now, what’s all this about the house?’

  ‘I am a reasonable man, and I believe in a reasonable world but one with odd fringes to it. I don’t really believe in a wicked house, although I have met one or two that I thought were … that old place with the waxwork ladies of the town … now that was wicked if you like.’

  ‘Cured now,’ said Winifred seriously. ‘A most happy house. I dine there often with dear Fanny Fanfairly.’

  ‘Fisher,’ said Birdie, ‘ she was really called Fisher, the other was a stage name.’

  ‘We really ought to put a hood over Birdie,’ said Winifred, ‘the way you mask a falcon.’

  ‘Still, we always thought there was something wrong there. Smelled, to begin with.’

  ‘You aren’t telling me that you knew about the stone coffin? You may have known about the skeleton but unless you are the killer, you cannot know about the poor dead girl buried with her.’