Stone Dead

by Jennie Melville

  Dolly gave her a wary look. She was on excellent terms with her boss, but when on a case, they tended to keep their distance. ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’d like that; didn’t get time to have much breakfast and I haven’t eaten all day.’ Was Charmian really thinking of her well-being? Somehow she doubted it. ‘Where do you suggest?’

  ‘I thought we might drop into the place run by Charley Briggs. I am told the food is good, if simple, and we can take the opportunity to ask him what exactly he said to Birdie and Winifred about what was under the floorboards.’

  ‘Do you think he meant anything, apart from teasing them?’

  ‘There was something to be found when they looked. So what did he know?’

  ‘He was interviewed; in the transcript there in the dossier he said he was just playing games.’ Dolly had opened the folder and was reading what was there. ‘DC Pesket did the interview. I know him, he’s good, he asked the right questions, but he couldn’t handle Charley Briggs.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you knew Charley?’

  ‘Oh, he organized a witches and warlocks fair on Cheasey Common and attracted the biggest collection of con artists and the light-fingered I had ever seen. We were picking them up all day but there was also a murder and I was on that case. I think Charley learnt a lesson there.’

  ‘What murder was that?’ Charmian frowned. Had she missed something?

  ‘It was just before you joined us, and I was a very humble probationer detective constable. It was nasty but soon cleared up by the murderer’s confession: there was a quarrel between two women who were running a stall selling food and drink, and one woman picked up a knife and stabbed the other. There was no mystery, just a lot of blood and a lot of ill-feeling. Well, you know what Cheasey is like, and both women were from Cheasey … Afterwards the two Cheasey families, the Ropes and the Twills, fought it out between them. We were more or less on the sidelines. And that was the lesson Charley Briggs learnt: to keep out of Cheasey. He had been thinking of opening a restaurant there but he decided that the Cheasey mafia would be too much for him.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of respect for the Cheasey folk,’ said Charmian, getting up and putting her things together. ‘ But that’s just a private view, doesn’t do to express it to straightforward coppers like Hallows.’

  ‘Oh, so have I,’ agreed Dolly. ‘ Still, Cheasey wouldn’t have done for Charley. Certainly there is a Cheasey moneyed class now but they wouldn’t have stood for Charley’s prices. I’ve heard the deals are wholesale with them, though, salmon, trout, game … No doubt the Queen is the provider without knowing it.’

  Charmian smiled. ‘Let’s get on. I could do with a drink.’ The thought of uninhibited, rumbustious Cheasey made her thirsty somehow. She had a private fantasy that the families of Cheasey had been there before the castle: a rough, tough encampment of ancient Britons, resolutely living their own life and bowing to no one.

  They were at the door, when Superintendent Hallows knocked and entered. ‘ Sorry to burst in, ma’am, but some news about Joe Davy has just come in, and I thought you would want to know: two sightings of him, both in the Great Park, one on the Windsor side and the other nearer to Ascot. He’s there all right, ma’am. Camping out, I expect. The Deputy Ranger will have men out looking for him, but he’ll be hard to find.’

  Charmian was shrugging herself into her coat. ‘Getting colder. We’re just off to eat. Come with us and we can talk over the meal, I want to discuss the Horseman as a candidate for murder … You haven’t eaten?’

  ‘No, I’ve been working on, trying to clear my desk.’

  ‘Then give your wife a ring. Ask her to forgive you.’

  ‘She’s away.’ His wife was always away.

  ‘Travelling, is she?’ she said with sympathy.

  ‘South Africa – I think … winter sports there. If any.’ Isla Hallows was a successful travel agent in Slough. The inhabitants of Slough travelled a lot. There was plenty of money, they wanted to get away from the town, and Heathrow was just down the road.

  ‘Saw her the other day at the Chief Constable’s cocktail party, she looked marvellous.’ Isla came to every police function of importance so well dressed that the wives of her husband’s colleagues wanted to spit, but otherwise she was always on the road, working out towns and cities, tours and hotels.

  ‘She is marvellous,’ agreed Hallows sadly. ‘A pleasure to see.’ He lingered unconsciously on the word ‘see’.

  ‘Well, come with us to Charley Briggs’s. Walk with me to my car and we can talk. I want to speak to Briggs and discuss the news of the Horseman. There’s plenty to say on the subject.’

  As they marched down the corridor, she said: ‘The Horseman could have done the killings, but I don’t believe he could have managed the technicalities … catching the victims, obtaining the clothes, hiding them in the shop, not to mention burying one woman in the stone coffin.’

  ‘Do you think he had a helper?’ asked Hallows as he hurried after her.

  Dolly Barstow walked behind the two of them, hastily getting together what she remembered of Joe Davy, the Horseman. Like Superintendent Hallows hurrying along the corridor, she knew that you had to move fast if you wanted to keep up with Charmian.

  Chapter Six

  Charley Briggs had stowed them away at a table at the end of the room behind a large potted plant. Whether this was because he thought they wanted private converse, or whether he was ashamed to have so many police as diners and did not want the rest of the room to see them, was not clear.

  Dolly looked at the food on offer and decided to have something rich and sustaining whatever it cost. She always overspent, and the cost of the new Caroline Charles suit at present hanging in her wardrobe, not to mention the silk scarf she had felt obliged, yes absolutely obliged, to buy with it, was weighing on her conscience. Bills were always coming in.

  Charley advanced towards them, apron round his broad figure, smiling cheerfully but with that hint of reservation that the sight of so many police officers brought to everyone’s eyes.

  Since he knew Dolly best and feared Charmian most, he addressed himself to Charmian. ‘You wish to order, my lady?’

  ‘Yes. My party,’ said Charmian, speaking to the air and to Dolly’s immense relief. She at once altered her eating plan, nursery rules came into operation: mustn’t be greedy.

  Hallows and Charmian ate fish while Dolly chose an omelette with salad and felt virtuous, not a feeling her way of life had recently allowed her.

  She said modestly she would drink water, but Charmian said she needed at least two glasses of wine with her meal and Dolly allowed herself, with gratitude, to be overruled.

  She noticed that Hallows made no protest of any sort and was, in fact, having a substantial meal. She was beginning to be certain that his world-travelling wife did not feed him well or perhaps at all. She felt like leaning across the table and saying that if you are going to work with Charmian you need all your strength.

  ‘About the Horseman,’ said Charmian. ‘I agree he has the history of stabbing; I agree he has the emotional build-up to kill as well as maim; that he may well feel it is time to move on to women; but I don’t think he has the expertise to catch them in the way we think the killer does, by dressing up as a woman, and beguiling them into a car, having first got them to provide the plastic bag with which he will smother them. I can’t see that.’

  ‘Why?’ Dolly put the question bluntly. The food had revived her, she was willing to take Charmian on in an argument. She could feel one brewing.

  ‘He’s not sophisticated enough. The killer who is catching these women, then killing them, changing their clothes for God knows what reason, is a different sort of animal.’

  Hallows said nothing, but he was listening, frowning as he listened. Eating too: his fork moved from plate to mouth with a steady rhythm.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about Joe Davy,’ said Dolly.

  ‘I’ve seen him, I never worked on his
case. I just went to court as an observer when he was charged.’

  ‘There’s more to him than you think.’ This was from Hallows.

  ‘I’m not saying he couldn’t entrap women and kill them, but he’d do it straight; grab them, drag them into a field, stab them and leave them there. Like the horses.’

  ‘He could do that, but you underrate him if you think Joe is not a man of education and sophistication. He’s got that there too, damn him.’

  ‘Come on then, tell me. Explain what I don’t know about him. In court, he didn’t come across as a scholar and a gentleman. I thought he looked a proper Cheasey man: uncouth and violent.’

  Hallows put down his fork. ‘He’s a surprise, I am not defending him, I think he’s loathsome, a monster, he could do the eye thing too – it might satisfy something deep inside him – but like some mythical monsters he has two faces.’

  ‘Don’t say Janus,’ said Dolly. ‘That name is already in play.’

  ‘No, he was a god. When you saw Davy in court he had his savage side on show, but I saw him in the Basil Town library after he served his sentence – in hospital most of the time – and he had his hair brushed, he was wearing a suit and tie, and he was choosing some books.’

  ‘I saw that side of him too,’ said Dolly, ‘ and I investigated. He has a degree in English … all right, it’s not Oxford or Cambridge but Brunel University, but he has the degree – second class. It’s all on the books, no fudge, he didn’t get anyone to do it for him, or that sort of thing. So you see, it could be the other side of him that is killing the women.’

  ‘I still go back to the practicalities: the car – if that is used, as the story from Birdie suggests – and the store of clothes in Gallows Passage and the body in the stone coffin. How did the Horseman manage all that? Does he drive? Does he have a car?’

  ‘I’d like to find him and then ask him,’ said Hallows, sitting back. ‘And I’d like to ask him about cutting out eyes. He never did it to a horse as far as I know.’

  ‘The eye we have is human,’ said Charmian.

  ‘I wish he wasn’t missing,’ said Dolly. ‘I’d feel easier if I knew what his movements were.’

  ‘If he’s in the Great Park, then the wardens will soon get him, but what I can’t understand,’ went on Charmian, ‘is why he is a runner. We have been talking about him as a suspect, but he hasn’t been questioned, and there has been nothing in the press. What has scared him off?’

  Hallows looked embarrassed. ‘I did send a constable to where he lives in Cheasey. Not to question him, but to ask around. He didn’t come back with enough information to write on a postage stamp.’

  ‘Oh he wouldn’t get much in Cheasey,’ said Dolly. ‘If they did come across some info it would be lies.’

  ‘I don’t know, apparently his nearest neighbour didn’t like him much. Called him a serpent … not the way I think of him, serpents slither, the Horseman just went in, bang, like that.’

  ‘Yes, don’t compare him to any animal, there’s no need, he’s the human animal gone wrong. Very wrong.’ Chairman’s voice was harsh. ‘We’ve got to find him. Flush him out of the Great Park.’

  Hallows was confident. ‘We’ll get him.’

  ‘All right,’ said Charmian. ‘He may be our killer. If he’s running then he’s running from something.’

  There was silence between them for a moment.

  Charmian was trying to put her thoughts into some sort of order. Hallows wanted Joe Davy, the Horseman, to be their murderer. Not only wanted but believed sincerely that he was. Dolly Barstow had showed herself willing to join in that game. She was prepared to help flesh out a character for Davy that made him fit the murderer. Charmian herself was only half convinced.

  If the murderer was a man.

  ‘We ought to speak to Birdie Peacock, show her a picture of the Horseman, see how she reacts.’

  Then Charley came towards them, smiling. ‘Everything as it pleases?’

  ‘The fish is delicious,’ said Charmian.

  ‘So many of my regulars like the fish we do that I have been considering turning the place into a fish restaurant.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Eagle was praising your fish dishes,’ said Charmian, seizing the moment. That was an interesting conversation you had with them. Of course, I know about it, and I’m aware you’ve been questioned about it.’

  ‘Just joking …’

  ‘So you said.’

  Charley smiled, shifted his feet and muttered something about if that was it, then …

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. Now come on, Charley, let me have a bit more truth, please. Not just a joke, because there was something to be found under the floorboards, wasn’t there?’

  Charley Briggs looked at the trio, all well known to him one way or another. ‘Enjoy your meal, then come into my office for some coffee and brandy and we will talk.’

  He put on his professional smile and walked to the end of the room.

  ‘He was glad to get away,’ said Charmian. ‘Good, we’ll get something out of him.’

  ‘Brandy anyway,’ said Hallows. ‘Bribing the police, eh?’

  Dolly said happily that she was willing to be bribed that way, and then, with a quick look at her boss, this once at least.

  They finished their meal in silence, gradually becoming aware that they were being studied by other diners in the room.

  Dolly passed judgement: ‘A posse of policemen, interesting but not popular.’

  Charmian thought Dolly sounded, suddenly, more cheerful, and she wondered why. She would give her mind to it when she had time, but at the moment she could see Charley smiling and nodding his invitation to coffee and brandy in his office.

  As they moved down the room, Dolly pulled at Charmian gently and whispered: ‘He’s been lying to us, I saw him crossing his fingers behind his back while he was talking, that’s an old witch’s trick.’

  ‘How could you see that?’

  Dolly nodded towards the wall. ‘In the mirror. Watch his hands this time.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak of what I don’t know,’ said Charley once they had joined him.

  ‘That’s a sound rule.’ Charmian took a chair facing the large table where the tray of coffee was placed.

  Dolly took a chair at the side where she could watch whatever Charley did with his hands.

  Hallows found a place under the window where there was a kind of bench loaded with papers and a neatly folded overcoat with a briefcase sitting on it. Charley was, after all, a businessman as well as a warlock and a restaurateur.

  ‘So speak of what you do know, Charley.’

  He poured the coffee and then offered brandy all round. It was a good brandy. Then he sat down himself with a cup of strong black coffee into which he had poured brandy in good measure.

  ‘It’s not easy, I’m not on terms with you like I am with Birdie and Winifred, I can joke with them.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a laugh.’

  When she looked like that, decided Charley, you took heed of how you spoke. ‘No, well I know that. About the floorboards, I’m not sure what I meant. I say things sometimes without thinking exactly what I do mean. More for effect.’

  ‘So what effect did you mean to provoke in Miss Peacock and Miss Eagle?’

  ‘I don’t know about provoke,’ he protested. He looked down at his hands. ‘Yes, I did think that bearing in mind where the body was found, in the garden there, it might be a good idea to look under the floorboards.’

  Hallows shifted uneasily on his hard chair. He was a local boy too and although he had not gone to St Joseph’s Academy as it had merged with the local comprehensive, still he had heard tales.

  ‘I was a boy once, not so long ago, and I know what sods they can be … Boys need to know, boys have need of sexual information. Not fair otherwise, and if the adult world won’t say, then boys find other ways. I know that.’

  He knew from his own knowledge. Charmian’s voice cut into his private confession.r />
  ‘Come on, Charley Briggs, out with it.’

  ‘The lads, I was one of them, always knew how to get into that house on Gallows Passage. It was used to store supplies, shoes and stuff for Miss Evans’s shoe shop, no more than a hole in the wall that little place, but in a prime position, you see. We had a kind of club, well, you could call it a club, just lads.’ He took a long swig of coffee laced with brandy, Charmian sipped.

  Dolly Barstow kept her eyes on Charley’s hands.

  ‘We used to drink and gamble there a bit, nothing much. But there was a little group that kept their library under the boards for safety … just dirty mags and so on. Anyway it was in my day, I never went for it much.’

  Dolly saw his fingers cross and gave a snort. ‘ Come on, Charley, that’s not true.’

  ‘I dare say I’ve forgotten how I felt, you do forget things … Looking back, it was harmless enough. Just the sort of magazines you could buy in any newsagent in those days.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Later, you know, years later, other boys, younger than my lot, I heard things were different. Nastier. Can happen.’

  ‘So it can,’ said Charmian dryly. ‘ But the underneath-the-floorboards library still went on.’

  ‘Seems so. Safe, you see.’

  ‘I shall want names,’ said Charmian grimly. ‘Inspector Barstow will see you tomorrow. In her office.’

  Charley blenched. ‘OK.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘ What time?’

  Dolly pretended to consult her diary. ‘Eight tomorrow morning. I have a busy day ahead. Let’s get on with it. You know where my office is?’

  Charley nodded, his face glum. ‘Yeah. Never been there but I know.’ He did not sound happy at the thought that tomorrow he would know more. ‘I have to get back here to supervise the lunch. We have several bookings. Regulars.’

  ‘I won’t keep you longer than I need.’

  Charmian rose. ‘ Thank you for the coffee and the brandy. Oh and Charley, something I forgot to ask: the eye as a symbol, mean anything to you as a warlock?’

  She thought he looked genuinely surprised at the question. ‘ I know it has a symbolic meaning, the evil eye and so on, but I never used it myself. Not my style.’