Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Or someone we don’t know about,’ agreed Charmian.

  Both Inspector Deast and Inspector Chance nodded but for different reasons. Deast because the two Bredon missing women were still missing, and Chance because Amanda Warren was the only Fletely victim and they now knew about her.

  ‘What are the dates again?’ said Dolly from her corner seat. ‘If the eye is newish, that counts.’

  ‘That is pertinent.’ Charmian ran down the list again. ‘Amanda Warren, disappeared, 12 May. We know about her. Lily Green, 1 June. Daisy Winner, 8 July. Mary Jersey, 24 July. Louise Sherry, 13 July.’

  ‘We were late in hearing about Sherry, she was thought to have been on holiday, but the last day she was seen around was 13 July.’

  ‘And we don’t know if they were killed on the day they disappeared.’ This was from Hallows, who had sat in gloomy silence.

  ‘We don’t even know they are dead: this is guesswork,’ said Dolly Barstow.

  ‘It’s extremely likely they are dead.’ Charmian was blunt.

  ‘So it’s Mary Jersey who is the likely, last missing woman from whom the eye could have been taken. 24 July, and it’s 3 August, now. Ten days.’ Deast ran his eye down the dates. ‘Been a busy little man our killer.’

  ‘If they are all dead,’ said Dolly once again.

  ‘Could the eye have been kept in a freezer?’ asked Chance.

  There was a moment’s silence while they considered this possibility. It summoned up unpleasant images of a refrigerator with a human eye in a plastic bag in the freezer compartment. Possibly there were other human organs there as well.

  They were all behaving in character, thought Charmian, with John Deast being sharp and sour, like a cheap wine. Sid Chance was relaxed, and coming up with bright ideas, while Dolly Barstow was putting in the odd, cautious comment. And Superintendent Hallows was leaning back in his chair, looking as remote as he could manage. He sensed trouble over this business – pity Birdie and Winifred were involved – and he wanted to float above it all.

  He didn’t like what Sid Chance asked about the eye: it was a clever question, and on the whole, he distrusted cleverness.

  ‘Good question,’ said Charmian. ‘I think freezing might alter the composition of the eye somehow, but we must ask the pathologist about that.’

  ‘What about the new body in the stone coffin? The last found and we seem to know nothing much about it so far,’ said Deast.

  ‘No identity as yet, so I can’t say if she is wearing her own clothes, but her eyes were untouched.’

  ‘Mary Jersey, then, is the likely candidate for eye loss. But we haven’t found her yet.’

  ‘And may never do so,’ said Deast.

  Charmian said: ‘I think she will turn up, the killer wants his victims found. He may take them but he gives us something to identify them with.’

  Deast pointed out that nothing had been found, as yet, to identify the woman buried in the stone coffin. ‘But she was found. Did he know that this one victim would be found, anyway? And if so, how?’

  ‘Valid points,’ admitted Hallows. ‘But in a case like this, there are always questions difficult to answer. Some never get answered.’

  ‘I’ve got another one,’ said Deast. ‘If the eye was a symbol, to keep people away, or to say something equally hostile, why not use a glass eye?’

  Charmian shook her head. ‘He needed to use a real eye. It was an imperative for him. I think he is an obsessive killer. We are just beginning to recognize his obsessions.’

  The thought of the Horseman surfaced. There was a man with obsessions. It might be as well to get his file to see what the psychologist who had treated him after his last episode of horse slashing had to say. She was cautious about psychologists who seemed to ride their own particular theories very hard, but hidden in their jargon was always a core of good sense.

  As so often it was Hallows who came up with the right question: ‘What do we know about the missing women? Have they got anything in common? Something that might predispose them to abduction? Too trusting? Mentally slow? After all, Miss Peacock, if we accept her story, was approached and turned away.’ He thought that Birdie was both trusting and nervous; she would protect herself, but perhaps the others had not. ‘Are there other women around who were approached and walked away like Miss Peacock?’

  ‘Of course, there could be. They may come forward, but at the moment we don’t want any publicity for Miss Peacock.’

  ‘She’s getting plenty already,’ said Deast, still sour, ‘in all the newspapers. Both of them and a woman called Victoria Janus who claims to bring dead crime writers back to life. Back to sign books, I suppose.’

  ‘Janus has been interviewed briefly by Inspector Barstow,’ said Charmian. ‘And will be spoken to again. She has a publicity agency. You can read the notes on her. She has a history.’

  Inspector Chance had already read what was there. ‘Tried for killing two of her friends, but she got off. Yes, I’d say she had a history. But nothing to say she is guilty of anything here. Still, it’s interesting.’

  Deast opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Sid Chance spoke for him: ‘Yes, I know what you are going to say: It’s amazing how those two women, Peacock and Eagle, attract trouble.’

  Chance went on: ‘I want to say that I have learnt a bit about Amanda Warren, first missing woman to be found, and with the trademark bag over the head. She was nineteen, she lived at home, worked in a bank, had quarrelled with her boyfriend, but liked dancing and went out clubbing a lot. She also liked babies and cats and dogs. I don’t know what it adds up to, but that is it. What do we know about the other missing women?’

  Charmian said: ‘All there in the dossier in front of you. Put together with all the reports we have so far from the forensic and pathology team. Compiled by Inspector Barstow here.’

  ‘You missed out the bit where her mother said she was sensitive about her feet because she thought they were too big for her height.’

  ‘She was just five feet rand took size 6 shoes. Yes, I didn’t think it was important.’

  ‘We don’t know. She was also ten stone, I expect she was sensitive about that too.’ Chance turned to Deast who opened his dossier.

  ‘Lily Green from Bredon; she didn’t have the fat problem or the feet worry but she was nearly six feet. She lived alone, worked in an estate agency showing houses and flats. She had a network of friends, helped with the Girl Guides’ netball team, and was saving up to get married.’

  ‘Who was the boyfriend?’

  ‘Not named. Perhaps there wasn’t one, and she was just saving to be ready for the right man. She sounds a bit like that.’

  He was editing, there was more than that as Charmian knew. Lily Green had lost her parents in a car crash at the age of eight, she had lived with her aunt and uncle who had abused her sexually and in every other way. At twelve she had been put into care with the local authority, and because she was clever and lucky to be in the hands of enlightened professionals, she did well at school, went to university and had a good job. But she was shy. I bet she was, Charmian thought.

  ‘Well, she may have had problems,’ said Deast, meeting Charmian’s eyes.

  ‘Daisy Winner,’ said Hallows. ‘We don’t seem to have much on her. Divorced woman, living on her own. She had a daughter, aged six, who embroidered her mother’s name on a handkerchief. We have the handkerchief, damn whoever did it.

  ‘Mary Jersey, we know she was robbed, because her cash card was used to draw money from her account after she disappeared. We had hoped it meant she was still alive, but I must say my hopes are diminishing,’ continued Hallows. ‘She was a supply teacher, working when and where she was needed. Junior school, so she was used to children. She dressed casually, jeans or trousers. She was liked in all the schools she worked in. She had planned to go travelling in the summer holidays with her best friend. They called her a happy, confident woman with a kind heart.’

  ‘Could be her eye as D
east suggested earlier,’ said Dolly Barstow.

  ‘Do we know the colour of her eyes?’

  ‘I went to ask at the last school she taught at in Pickeltone Drive; it’s in Merrywick. There seemed a difference of opinion but the consensus was hazel. I couldn’t check with the best friend because she had gone on the holiday they had planned together.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Sid Chance.

  ‘We don’t know what she thought – probably that her friend had cleared out and left her to it. Remember we have been keeping all this under wraps … Anyway I sent a WDC to check eye colour with her hairdresser, Beauchamps in Nicholas Street, and the girl who did her hair confirmed hazel as the colour. She admired them and had recommended green eyeshadow. Apparently, she thought Miss Jersey didn’t make the best of herself.’

  ‘That leaves Louise Sherry,’ said Charmian, staring at the page in front of her, ‘ the youngest apart from Amanda Warren, almost a kid, aged twenty, with a baby daughter. She went out shopping and never came back. Thinking of going to college. Her father is an electronic engineer and her mother is a sports mistress at the big comprehensive. She is the eldest of a family of three, she has a brother and sister.’

  Charmian closed the file of papers. ‘Not much more to say at the moment. We don’t know the name of the young woman found yesterday. It is possible that we have either Daisy Winner or Louise Sherry. The other two missing women are ruled out on size and age.’

  She looked at Dolly Barstow as she finished. ‘ Dolly? Your turn.’

  Dolly spoke up in a soft, clear voice, putting on a pair of spectacles for the first time as she did so. ‘I must tell you that we have arranged for someone from the families of Daisy Winner and of Louise Sherry to view the body and tell us if it is recognizable.’

  ‘Is the body in a state in which it could reasonably be identified?’ asked Deast.

  Dolly hesitated. ‘We will be tidying the face and hair up a bit.’

  ‘It’s going to be tough on the relative. Who have you got?’ Deast had served in the Bredon district for many years and had spoken to the family of Daisy Winner.

  ‘The sister of Daisy Winner, and the father of Louise Sherry. I think he might bring the mother, she was insistent that she wanted to come although I tried to persuade her otherwise. I shall be there, and so will Superintendent Hallows.’

  ‘I shall be there too,’ said Charmian quickly. ‘And you too, Inspector Deast, if you wish, and Inspector Chance …’

  ‘I certainly do wish.’ Deast was quick, always suspicious that he was being kept out of things. ‘ Naturally. We might learn something from them.’

  Sid Chance nodded that he too would be there when the Sherry parents arrived. ‘I will probably drive them over. Be another chance to talk to them and see what comes out, you never know. The mother talks and the father keeps dead quiet. You only need one of each in a family, I suppose.’ He had found Martha Sherry difficult and was not looking forward to another confrontation – which is what their meetings had amounted to – especially if the body she saw was that of her daughter.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy for any one of us.’ Charmian was quiet. ‘Never is, no matter how often you have helped identify a dead body, it is not easy.’

  ‘It’s all bad news,’ said Hallows gloomily. ‘Except that if we get an identification it moves the investigation forward a stage. We will have found two of the missing women and can deduce that the others are dead, and that we can scale down the search for them as living.’

  Hallows put his hands on the table, looked at them for a moment as if some answer might be there. ‘I think we have to get a description of the woman in the car from Miss Peacock, get a police artist to do some drawings and when a likeness satisfies Miss Peacock, then we get it on the media: TV and the papers. And send the usual foot workers going round door to door in Windsor, Fletely and Bredon.’

  A groan, silent but almost audible, arose from those sitting around the table. Such searches cost and very rarely produced anything of importance.

  ‘You say we have to see if Miss Peacock can come up with anything more. Although I must say I don’t like the way she seems to be in the centre … She is accosted by the woman in the car to do some shopping, then we find the body of Amanda Warren who has been stabbed then suffocated with a plastic bag to finish her off, and then this body turns up in the garden of a shop owned by Miss Peacock and her friend Miss Eagle. Not to mention the clothes with the eye, which they also discover. I find it hard to take,’ said Deast.

  Charmian decided that to keep quiet was the wisest course, but Hallows murmured that it could be just coincidence.

  ‘Coincidence,’ hooted Deast, his voice rising. ‘ I tell you what I want asked: which one of them did it? Or was it both? I mean, who else is in the frame?’

  ‘Of course, we have been trying to find witnesses who were in the square that day and might have seen Miss Peacock and the car. Miss Peacock herself was certainly seen shopping in the store, and she has a dated receipt for what she bought.’

  ‘I bet she has.’

  ‘We do have one other possible suspect,’ said Hallows. ‘The Horseman. He has been known to follow women. He is an obvious suspect.’

  ‘You’ve brought him in,’ said Deast, making it a fiat not a question.

  ‘We will when we find him. He hasn’t been home for some days, it seems. Not seen around either.’

  There was a silence, then Deast burst out: ‘ You have a suspect and you can’t find him?’

  Hallows ground his teeth, almost audibly. ‘As soon as we realized he might be in the frame, he was looked for: he had been gone a week. But we will find him: he is six feet tall and almost as wide with a mane of black hair. He is not easy to hide.’

  Except, as both Charmian and Hallows knew, he could disappear into the countryside and not be seen except by the night crawling badger and the lonely fox.

  The fax in the corner of the room rang three times, then a message began to spill out.

  Charmian looked at Dolly, who got up and walked across to the machine. She read the sheet as she came back. ‘A message for you, Superintendent.’

  She handed it across to Hallows. Behind her, another page was emerging.

  Hallows read to himself grinding his teeth, nodded and passed it across to Charmian. He allowed himself a look of satisfaction.

  ‘From our inquiries we have located a witness who was shopping in the precinct on the afternoon when Miss Peacock claims she was stopped by the woman in the car. She saw the car and a woman sitting in it as if waiting for someone. Since cars are not supposed to park there, she was interested.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Deast.

  ‘All we know at the moment,’ said Hallows, ‘ but I will be talking to her.’

  He felt that if he had much to do with Inspector Deast, he would need false teeth soon.

  Dolly came back with the second message. ‘The archaeologist who has examined the skeleton also found in the stone coffin says it is probably Anglo-Saxon, male not young because of wear and tear on the bones, including signs of arthritis in the knees. Of course, more work will be needed …’

  A man and not a woman then,’ said Charmian. ‘Well, at least we know.’

  Dolly was reading on. ‘Apparently he did meet a violent death – it looks as though his neck was broken. He may have been hanged.’

  ‘Even Deast blenched at that,’ said Dolly, as the committee filed out and they were left alone in Charmian’s big, airy room, where, nevertheless, she could still smell the scent of tobacco that seemed a part of Sid Chance.

  ‘He was blenching all the time.’

  ‘No, that was just temper.’ Dolly spoke with some amusement. ‘Hallows wasn’t too happy, either.’

  ‘His wife is a friend of Birdie and Winifred. She went on one or two junkets with them. He’s sensitive about knowing them.’

  Gossip said it was a difficult marriage.

  ‘I know them,’ said Dolly, ‘so do
you for that matter.’

  ‘But we’ve never considered joining up with them.’

  ‘No, that’s true. Although I like the old ducks and I think they do a lot of good.’

  ‘Mostly to animals,’ said Charmian. ‘ I think they prefer them.’

  Dolly then said: ‘Do you think it is just coincidence that Birdie is mixed up in all this?’

  ‘No,’ said Charmian slowly, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s something I shall be thinking about.’ She went to the window to look out. From the shelter of her own carefully put together room, she could see a quiet, run-down, Windsor street.

  ‘Who is in the van outside the shop?’

  ‘Sergeant Yardley is down there. He has made it more or less his fiefdom. It’s a second Incident Room, in fact, the way he operates. There are several teams still going over the house and under the floors to see what is there. If anything. There is no basement. Dry but nasty under the floorboards it seems, no rats or not many – the cat found one – just the general look that you might find anything down there.’

  ‘Anything on the porn mags?’

  Dolly shook her head. ‘Tiger said they were ancient, looked as if they had been down there for decades … He was interested. I think he would have liked a good look at them himself.’ She grinned. ‘But they are now in the charge of the Document Department which is more used to dealing with high-class forgeries and such, though they have a chap who specializes in newsprint, and his first comment was that as a collection they covered a period of years.’

  ‘Wonder if there will be any prints worth having?’

  ‘I think it has been given the treatment there too … They photograph the document in a special light. I think there is something else as well, that can bring up old prints … Of course, you’ve got to find the fingers to match them too.’

  ‘It’s a vivid blue-green, that light,’ said Charmian absently, her mind elsewhere. ‘I’ve seen it trained on a document; fingerprints and other marks show up brilliantly. Let’s go and have some food, I am hungry and you look it.’