She wondered how Inspector Deast, Inspector Chance, Rewley and Superintendent Hallows were feeling about being kept waiting, and sensed that this was not the time to mention it to Charmian.
Inspector Deast shifted in his chair, moved a few papers on the table in front of him, and refused any more coffee. ‘Let’s start talking while we are waiting. Talk over what we’ve got and where the investigation is going.’ He did not quite say: if anywhere, but the implication got across. ‘Let’s go over what we have.’
‘Three bodies and two missing women,’ said Sid Chance.
Hallows added with a gentleness he was far from feeling: ‘Those three have been identified.’
‘So we are that far forward.’ Deast again. ‘Amanda Warren we already knew about. Daisy Winner was found in a stone coffin on top of a skeleton with a broken neck.’
Chance, reading from some notes he had made, said: ‘She may have been drugged before she died. Suffocated in a plastic bag. Other damage done to her. She had not been dead all that long when found, yet she had been missing for some time.’
‘Sedated,’ said Hallows. ‘Could be. She was not wearing her own clothes. Nor was Amanda Warren, nor Louise Sherry. No reason for this can be suggested at the moment.’
‘Not a nice chap, this killer.’
‘Or chapess,’ said Chance. ‘It has been suggested that the killer is a woman. Which is why Miss Peacock and Miss Eagle came into the frame.’
‘Plus Daisy Winner was buried in their garden. And a pile of clothes with an eye on it was found under the floorboards in their shop. And one of those two women found the eye,’ said Deast. ‘ I always suspect the person who finds the body.’
‘They didn’t exactly do that,’ said Hallows. And remember that Birdie Peacock might have been entrapped herself by the woman in the car.’
‘Another reason why I suspect her,’ said Deast dryly. A good tale if you believe it.’
‘I believe her to be a truthful person,’ said Hallows.
‘But she is also a witch … the eye business. Witchcraft that. Miching Mallech!’
The other two looked at him in surprise. ‘I shouldn’t talk like that if I were you,’ said Chance. ‘ Feet on the ground time, Deast.’
‘We are erecting all this in our own minds,’ said Hallows, with the cold bleakness that made him so powerful. ‘We don’t know anything about the killer: no name, no face.’
‘Chief Superintendent Daniels has put two names into the pot: Joseph Davy and Victoria Janus,’ Sid Chance replied. ‘And they have faces, all right. Davy we all know about, Janus not.’
George Rewley, sensing an attack on Charmian, whom he always wanted to defend, spoke up. ‘ Under another name, Victoria Janus was tried for killing two women. She got off, the jury accepted her story that it was an accident and that she might have died herself. I can show you the reports. Chief Superintendent Daniels wondered, believing she was guilty and that she was a “killer for sport”. Recreation, like a bored cat.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘OK. Right,’ said Sid Chance. ‘We know all that already, but I’d like to see the papers.’
‘You shall. And you’ve got to remember that Janus was on the scene at the shop in Gallows Passage. Put herself there. As the site of an old hangman’s drop, it might have appealed to her,’ said Rewley.
‘What we want,’ said Hallows with heavy practicality, ‘is some good solid evidence, tying any of these names to the murders. Forensics are being slow. I know it takes time but we need something.’
‘And while we are about it,’ said Chance, ‘we need either two more bodies, or to have two missing women to come forward and say sorry, they were just having a break and they aren’t dead and they apologize for causing us trouble. I could do with a good apology.’
‘The Navy think they can trace the sailor we found,’ said Hallows. ‘They keep pretty good records and are going through them now, and trying to bring up the address which was on the envelope we found in his pocket.’
Rewley could tell that the meeting was getting out of hand, and Charmian better turn up soon. ‘The skeleton that was underneath Daisy Winner has been dated by the archaeologist working on it as late Anglo-Saxon. He has asked if he can try to make a portrait by working on the skull … seems to think it will be interesting and useful.’
‘Why?’ This was Deast, clearly not impressed.
‘The chap was hanged but he was buried in a stone coffin … so it is possible he was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman.’
Deast grunted, making clear his opinion of the fatuity of reconstructing a long dead Englishman.
‘Some more coffee,’ said Rewley hastily. He stood up. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hallows begin to huff and puff in support of the head of SRADIC. He had his own disagreements with ma’am but no one was hotter in defending those within his sphere from any criticism. You didn’t spit on your own. Nor let others do it for you.
Rewley went round with the coffee pot and biscuits; Deast looked hungry and was probably suffering from sugar deprivation.
‘What we want,’ said Deast as he accepted coffee, ‘ is something definite happening.’
‘Like a bomb?’ asked Chance, stirring a sugar substitute into his coffee.
The bomb, or as good as, was going off as he spoke.
Charmian parked down the road from Vine House, which now looked empty and locked up. She walked back to the dirty, large white car which had been so awkwardly parked in front of her own car.
Dolly followed her. So what was happening?
Charmian was already opening the unlocked front door. ‘Empty.’ She got inside, studying the floor and the seats in front.
‘Should I ring through to check whose car this is?’
‘You can do. But later.’ She was bending down, running her hands along the floor. ‘I know whose car it is: it belongs to Victoria Janus. I impounded it yesterday for forensic examination. Nothing was found and it was returned to her first thing this morning.’
The car was carpeted with a dark grey rough pile with spots on it.
Charmian rubbed one of the spots, then sat up. She held out her hand to Dolly. ‘Look.’
Dolly stared. For a moment, she didn’t take in what she saw. Red, wettish. Smearing Charmian’s right hand.
‘Blood.’
‘Yes, blood.’ Charmian sat back in the seat, staring ahead.
‘She’s killed someone.’
‘Perhaps.’ She got out of the car and walked round to the back. ‘Let’s see if so and who it is, shall we?’
‘Are you joking?’
‘No. Help me open the boot … probably locked.’
It was not locked either, but sprang up at a touch. Dolly had just a moment to wonder why the killer had not locked the boot. Also, how and why Charmian had known what she would find.
The body was curled in the foetal position, head forward.
Charmian touched the dead woman on the shoulder; the head rolled back towards them. Her throat was cut, almost severed from the spinal column.
‘Victoria Janus,’ she, said. ‘Close the boot, we don’t want the world to see.’ She walked towards the kerb, looking up and down the road as if she was hoping to see the Horseman.
Dolly did what she was asked. She found herself swallowing hard. ‘How did he get here so soon?’
‘If you mean the Horseman, then he probably had a car. As for Janus, we don’t know where or when she died. The blood is wet, that’s all we know now.’
‘Where is he then? He brought the car here. He must be walking.’
Charmian shrugged.
The group waiting for her heard the news from Inspector Rewley without pleasure. They had another body but not one they wanted.
‘I suppose that means she didn’t abduct and then kill the young women,’ said Deast. ‘Or does it, come to think of it? She might have been killed because she was the killer?’
Sid Chance groaned. ‘I didn’t have h
er marked down as a victim.’
‘Didn’t know you knew her,’ Rewley said quickly.
‘Of course I knew her. In my patch, that office, I keep an eye on places like that. Also, ma’am wasn’t the only person who knew her record.’
‘I thought the address was Slough.’
‘Postally, yes, but Oakley Road comes under my bailiwick.’
He’s got it off pat, thought Rewley, wonder why?
‘Not a bad looking woman as well as running an interesting business. I wondered if it was a front for something,’ said Chance, providing half an answer. ‘So I sniffed around a bit, but nothing as far as I could see. I reckon she ran it as a bit of a joke. She had money of her own. Some of it inherited from the cousin she was tried for killing. Money was the motive. Alleged motive,’ he corrected carefully. ‘ Well she’s gone now. Wonder where she’s left the money? Some crime writers’ club if there’s any justice.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ Deast looked round the room. ‘I suppose this meeting is over?’ He was already gathering together his papers, ready to depart.
‘Suspended,’ said Hallows quickly. ‘Postponed only.’
‘I know where I go,’ said Chance. ‘I’m off to Oakley Road.’
Sid Chance offered a lift to his colleagues but they refused; Rewley because Charmian had told him to hold the fort where he was, the Superintendent because he had an important meeting to attend, and Deast because he thought, hoped, this was no affair for him. He was going back to Bredon and would keep in touch. He reminded them that if the new death was found to involve Mary Jersey or Lily Green, still missing, he expected to be told.
A police team from Cheasey had already arrived when Sid Chance got there. They were in touch with the Slough and Windsor units.
The body was still in the car; it had been seen by the police surgeon and was now being photographed. Sid Chance took a swift look, clicked his teeth at the state of the body, nodded and went off. ‘Let me see everything when you’ve done,’ he ordered. The man, was after all, one of his team.
Charmian Daniels was inside Vine House talking to a policeman from Cheasey when, to the latter’s relief, Inspector Chance arrived. Dolly Barstow had disappeared on instructions from Charmian to liaise with the team still looking for the Horseman.
‘You’ve got on with things,’ Chance said, half pleased, but half feeling that somehow all action should have waited on his arrival.
‘Had to, she looked as if she might still be bleeding, she might have been alive.’
‘Not with her neck like that.’ He was walking round the office as he spoke. ‘Weird outfit here … lookalikes.’ He swung round. ‘So who did it?’
‘I think that she was killed by Joe Davy.’
‘Any evidence?’
‘Not so far,’ said Charmian carefully. ‘Except that I think he knows about the history of the shop on Gallows Passage. The cut out eye is the sort of thing he would do … I’m just guessing.’
‘Aren’t we all, most of the time? I like a good guess myself, can give you a jump forward.’
Sadly, Charmian said that usually she liked evidence, and logical deductions from it, which you then checked against other evidence, but there alas, she seemed to be using imagination.
‘So? You are looking for Davy as a suspect for this killing?’
‘I am looking for Davy, full stop. I think he heard, possibly through Janus, that we were looking for him, so he went into hiding in the Great Park. We went for him, but he was gone.’ She paused before going on: ‘An empty house in the Great Park seemed to have been used by him. Inside, on a scrap of paper which Paul Laurie found, was what appeared to me to be a rough road map leading to Oakley Road. It brought me here.’
‘Good for you.’ Chance nodded. ‘So, you found her.’
‘Not straight away. I went into Vine House and asked for Janus, but I was told she’d been summoned away, after a telephone call which she had not liked. Inspector Barstow and I left, but on the way, I remembered that her car, which had not been there when we arrived, was there, badly parked, as if shoved into place in a hurry, when we left. So I drove back … and there she was.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘What’s his motive for killing her?’
‘Maybe be doesn’t need much in the way of motive, he likes the use of a knife. If there was a woman involved in the abductions, it could have been Janus.’
‘Allies do fall out,’ said Chance. ‘I know her history. Make a point of knowing that sort of thing. Like to know what I can about arrivals in my manor.’
‘It’s all guessing again,’ admitted Charmian. ‘But someone killed her and it wasn’t Agatha Christie.’
Dolly Barstow had followed her instincts and with a road map had driven from Oakley Road towards the Horseman’s house.
It was in Cheasey but only just.
‘Check it for me, Delsey,’ she ordered on her mobile. ‘It’s Chaucer Street, isn’t it?’
‘Palmer, Palmer,’ came the reply. ‘Got it on the screen: 7 Palmer Street, Cheasey End … that’s near that stretch of open land.’
‘All right, Palmer. Artist, wasn’t he? Samuel Palmer … village scenes?’
Delsey ignored this, she had never heard of Samuel Palmer. ‘ Hope you find it. And it’s not off Shakespeare Street but Grove Street.’
Dolly did not answer. She often had this kind of half joking conversation with Delsey, a girl of character, and most of it tough and sharp, which she attributed to being of mixed race in Slough. She was reliable, and if she said Grove Street led to Palmer Street then it did.
The house, when Dolly drove up to it, was a small bungalow on the corner, just facing a piece of common land. A good spot for the Horseman, she decided, since he could see in three directions with an escape route, provided he could run fast.
She stared at the front of the house, where the curtains were half drawn and thick net covered the rest of the glass. Davy was intent on privacy. The front door looked sturdy, not one to be entered easily. Dolly knew that the police had inspected the house earlier, but she wanted to get inside.
She went back to the car where she spoke again to Delsey asking for help to break in. She then sat quietly awaiting the arrival of the strong-arm outfit. Sergeant Tiger Yardley was once a distinguished member of this group, with the fame of having once pushed a door in with only one shove. He had been promoted above this task, however, and Dolly did not expect to see him.
So she was surprised when he was first out of the car. ‘Can’t keep his nose out of anything,’ she thought. She had noticed this trait in Tiger before. Now he was out of uniform, presumably off duty, and really should not be there at all.
She opened her mouth to say something on those lines when he cut across her.
He handed her a note: ‘Chief Superintendent Daniels wanted you to have this at the soonest.’
Dolly opened it and read: ‘ The first medical examination suggests Janus was stifled before being stabbed. This makes the murder technique the same as with the other victims.
‘A plastic bag was found in the boot of the car. Watch out for the Horseman. He may be trying to return home.’
How? Dolly asked herself. If he had been the driver of the car with murdered Victoria Janus in it, then he had left it parked outside her shop so he had no transport. Unless he had a bike in the car. Have to be one of the sort that collapses and folds up.
Don’t believe it, Dolly told herself. Wait a minute, though, if he drove to Slough and parked his own car nearby, somehow entrapped Victoria Janus in her car, he could then come back and drive off.
Didn’t sound believable somehow.
When a thing seems unbelievable, don’t believe it and seek another answer.
Must try telling that to Charmian, she thought. See what answer I get.
She stood there, thinking, while behind her the front door was being attacked. From the sound of it, the Horseman h
ad prudently had a steel sheet placed behind the door.
We don’t really know for sure when the Horseman left the Great Park … he may have heard park wardens outside searching for him early on, arid cleared out shortly before we realized he was gone.
He may have been on the loose all night, and he is clever.
The door was not going to give way. ‘ Try a window,’ she heard Sergeant Yardley advise.
Presently she heard glass breaking and then a voice called to her that the back door was open and she could come in.
‘Coming.’
There is a factor here that I do not understand, she thought, as she walked into the kitchen. A normal looking, clean kitchen.
No one had eaten in it for some time: the gas cooker was cold, as was the electric kettle. She looked in the fridge: empty except for a packet of butter.
Accompanied by one of the uniformed men, Dolly went over the house. Upstairs all was tidy. The Horseman kept a neat house.
There was a faint, faint smell of him to what Dolly thought of as her cultivated nose. I have cultivated the smell of Joe, she thought, it was strong in the house in the Great Park but probably fading. Here it is present but exceedingly faint. No one but me would notice it.
So how long since he was here? And how long since he left the house in the park?
A scientific approach was best, she told herself: at what rate did his smell disappear? Discharge itself into the air? Interestingly, although he was a wicked, violent, unpleasant man,
his smell was not animal, it was compounded of soap, toothpaste
and toilet water.
The Horseman liked to be clean.
In the bathroom the soap, lavender, was hard and dry. The tube
of toothpaste on the basin was screwed up tight next to a bone
dry brush. A bottle of Highgrove Lime aftershave was by it. Dolly
opened the bottle and sniffed. The scent was strong and clean.
Only the ghost of the mingled smells of soap, toothpaste and
toilet water remained on the air.
All right, how long was he gone? Three to four days?
Stone Dead Page 17
