A Cure for Dying

by Jennie Melville

That was the theory. But Joanna knew from listening to her grandmother’s complaints (‘We pay him a fortune so he can sleep in his armchair.’) that his was not the all-seeing eye. She could get through.

  There was no sign of the porter when she got there. Exactly as predicted. But a taxi drew up as she hovered about, from which stepped an elderly lady shrouded in pale mink (it was a warm night, too), who let herself in with her own key.

  This allowed Joanna to observe which of the two keys on her ring was to be used, so she did not fumble a minute later, but unlocked the door smartly, walked through the lobby, used the same key for the second door, and marched out towards her grandmother’s house. She was the lady of the house returning from a day in the country now, she had been studying wild flowers, on which she was a world expert, which accounted for her informal clothes.

  Once inside the front door, however, she was conscious of an enormous fatigue. She took a long drink of water and collapsed onto the bed. At first, in spite of her longing for oblivion she could not find it. Sleep would not come.

  Taking off her shoes, she padded into the bathroom and looked in the cabinet over the wash-basin. From what she knew of her grandmother, she would find something. A bottle of tablets ordered her to take no more than two a night, one hour before bedtime. She was to abstain from alcohol.

  Joanna took three with a wineglass of the sherry from the kitchen. That ought to do it. Shortly after, she fell into a deep sleep.

  She slept and slept.

  So it came about that all the next day, while her parents were talking to each other in Annabel’s room in the hospital, and while Charmian was looking out over London wondering where Joanna was, Joanna was falling from one restless sleep to another. In her sleep she occasionally shouted. Once she got up, not fully awake, and put on all the lights. With morning she woke up again and staggered around, drinking some more water and turning off all the lights. The drugs and the drink had been altogether too much, she needed help.

  There was one person who would help her. Must. Also, as she suddenly remembered she had something she must tell.

  It was still early morning, she could tell by the light and the quiet, although all the clocks in this place were stopped, but the place she wanted to telephone got to work early. A telephone call was probably safe if she worked it right.

  Getting the number was not so easy. In her muddled state, she had a bit of difficulty with the dialling code, but the number rang at last.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Johnny, she recognised his voice. She put the receiver down at once. In a little while she would try again. She knew his ways. He would not bother to answer the telephone twice in one short space of time. ‘One of you take it,’ he would shout. ‘ Some lunatic there who won’t answer.’ She had used this device in telephoning before. It was a kind of signal.

  She tried again. This time Lesley answered as she had hoped.

  ‘Lesley? It’s me. Joanna.’

  A moment of dead silence.

  ‘Don’t go away. Please, Lesley. Help me.’

  ‘Where are you? Everyone’s looking for you.’

  ‘Are they?’ She both knew and did not know that they must be looking for her. Didn’t want to know. She hated to be looked for, feared it. Had done since what she wouldn’t talk about had happened. To be looked for was bad. ‘I’m at Gran’s.’

  ‘Is she there with you?’

  Silence from Joanna now, while she tried to think what to say.

  ‘No, I’m on my own. I got in. I mean I had a key.’

  ‘Thank goodness you’re safe.’

  Lesley really meant it. But how long for? The one thing that Joanna’s life had taught her was that you couldn’t trust anyone. People had shifting faces. ‘ I’ve done something wrong.’

  ‘I know.’ Knocked your mother on the head, for one thing. What else? ‘Come on back. You’ll be forgiven.’

  ‘No, I’ve got to say … I had my case packed. I left it behind …’

  ‘Where did you leave it?’

  ‘In some bushes. Tucked away.’

  Then the police probably had it, but Joanna wouldn’t think of that, not in her present state.

  ‘It was my running-away case. I left my purse in it. But I had a bit on me.’ Quite a lot really, but she was not going to say so. She wanted to bring Lesley to her.

  ‘Is the case important?’ Keep her talking and calm her down, Lesley was thinking, while you consider all this. There was so much to bear in mind.

  ‘It had a knife in it.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Could she believe this? She decided she could.

  ‘Come and get me, Lesley. I’ll feel safe with you.’

  But will I feel safe with you, thought Lesley. Is she leading me into a trap? But if the police had the knife … The knife was undeniably important.

  ‘I’ll come.’ She could take the group’s old car. They would not be pleased, nor at her absence, but she would cover it up somehow. Say she had to go to her father. That had happened often enough in the past to be believable. ‘Tell me where.’

  There was a very long silence.

  ‘I think someone is looking through the letter-box. I think I see a face.’

  ‘You’re imagining it.’

  ‘I might be.’ Joanna did feel strange, as if the walls were coming in close and pressing down on her, shouting the while. Voices. She herself felt very very heavy.

  ‘Where to come, Joanna?’

  Sluggishly, Joanna said, ‘Arden Place, Sloane Street. Number Two, Arden Place. I think that’s right.’

  ‘It’d better be.’

  ‘You come along. You’re not to say anything.’

  Something she would have to say, but exactly what she would have to decide. ‘No,’ Lesley lied. It would really depend what she found when she got there, and how she managed the situation. She thought about that knife.

  Joanna lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes. For a little while she slept. The flat was very hot and the walls seemed to be moving all about her. Above her the ceiling seemed to have a face embedded in it. Likewise a soft voice, which was calling her, but not by name. Just asking who was there. And the answer was No one. Had to be no one. She was now no one.

  She got herself a glass of water, dropping the glass and breaking it. As she stumbled back to the sofa, she trod on a piece of glass, tearing her foot. No pain registered. Again she slept.

  Even in her sleep her thoughts revolved painfully. She was walking through blood and her feet were sore. She deserved punishment because she was wicked. A bad girl. She knew it was all her fault. Evil had descended on her from she knew not where or why. But somehow or other she deserved what was happening to her. Inside her she knew this to be a fact. But another part of her wanted to deny it and to run away and avoid punishment. Whatever she did, she knew she was wrong. She groaned and shouted as she slept.

  In the house next door, the neighbours heard it and complained. They had complained already to the porter that there was something going on next door in that house that should be empty.

  Without realising it, Joanna had wreaked a certain amount of havoc in the place. She had opened cupboards and drawers in the kitchen without closing them again, she had knocked over a chair and broken a glass. A tap was running in the bathroom. Blood had dropped from her foot to the floor, now she was bleeding on the sofa.

  She was awakened suddenly to find a man staring down at her. A small, stout man with a red face.

  ‘Come on now, who are you? What are you doing here?’

  Joanna leapt up, she started to scream. There were no words in her scream, just the high piercing shouts of panic. The sounds tore through her throat, ripping out into the room, tearing the silence apart.

  Fred, the porter, staggered back. He was almost as shocked as she was. He had responded to the complaints of the neighbours about strange noises coming from Mrs Porter’s flat which should be empty.

  He did not know what he had expected to find, bu
t certainly not a screaming girl. He looked nervously over his shoulder to the door which he had prudently left open.

  He put his hand on her arm. Joanna looked down to see blood. Her screaming stopped. She threw a vase at him, then grabbed a chair and hit him with it. Then she tore into the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the open drawer.

  She pointed it at him as he lumbered forward. The screaming began again. Fred desperately tried to fend her off. He was shouting himself now, as well as sweating profusely. He was bleeding too, they were both bleeding.

  It was into this scene that Lesley walked through the opened door. She saw at once that the girl was beyond Fred’s control, beyond her control, beyond her own control. Some boundary had been passed.

  Lesley felt fear for herself. Anything could happen now.

  This creature was no longer totally human. Evil had subsumed her.

  Charmian was told the news about the finding of Joanna and of her state on the telephone in her office. Sergeant Wimpey was her informant. He sounded stunned.

  ‘What’s happened to her?’

  ‘Temporarily under sedation in hospital. Poor kid.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we do have to say that.’ Somehow it did not seem quite an adequate description. ‘Do her parents know?’

  ‘They’ve been told.’

  ‘How are they taking it?’

  ‘I think the mother more or less guessed where the girl could be. So she didn’t act surprised. Perhaps she’s not capable of surprise any more.’ For which, Wimpey implied, he would not blame her. ‘By the way, the porter of the building is in hospital, too. Same hospital, not the same ward. He got cut by a knife and then had a mild heart attack. He’s not in any danger.’

  ‘I should like to see Joanna.’

  ‘I don’t think it would do you much good at the moment. You could try.’ But he gave her the name of the hospital in south-west London. ‘I’d better tell you that Merry has in no way changed his mind. Glad the girl is found. Blames the parents.’

  ‘He could be right there.’

  ‘Agreed. But he still can’t accept the girl as a multiple killer. Can’t take it on board.’

  ‘In spite of the blood on the knife found in Joanna’s case? In spite of the horseshoe? That ties the Bingham stables close in, doesn’t it?’

  ‘He’s digesting all that.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think one thing, sometimes another.’ He was being honest. ‘What about you?’

  After a pause, Charmian said, ‘ I think I would say that her behaviour is, in a way, a kind of confession.’

  But she had a good deal of respect for the judgement of Chief Inspector Merry. Imaginative, he was not, a good straightforward policeman, he was. He kept on a straight path, but he very often got there in the end.

  At the end of her day, Charmian drove home and submitted her hair to the ministrations of Andrea Barker. They were alone in the little salon.

  ‘You’re late.’ Andrea sat her client down and hovered accusingly. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

  ‘A busy day.’ Charmian shook out her hair. Yes, it needed attention, cutting as well as washing and tinting. Baby had trained her to call it ‘tinting’. No one dyes any more, she had said. ‘A lot in it.’ She had gone to the hospital where Joanna was incarcerated to be told she was ‘asleep’. If so, she was asleep with her eyes open. But it was impossible to talk to her, you could not get through.

  Baby was drawing Charmian’s hair through her fingers with a speculative look. ‘A bit out of condition. I can work on that. If you ever decide to go grey, I can do it for you beautifully.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Miss Barker smiled; she had her own little techniques for levelling up with Miss Daniels. She needed it occasionally, otherwise there would be no doing anything with the woman. She’d walk all over you.

  Charmian sat back while her hair was washed. She had to admire the skill with which her friend put out a lazy paw and scratched her, Muff herself could not do it better. Reminded of Muff, she hoped that Kate had remembered to feed her, or an angry and hungry cat would await her when she got home.

  Baby started on her job, brushing on a dark paste which would presently be washed out with shampoo. She hummed as she worked, keeping a firm, restraining hand on Charmian’s scalp as she did so. Thus may a surgeon or a torturer operate, with professional, pleasurable skill.

  In a pause, she said, ‘Rumour’s going around that the girl who’s gone missing is the one that did the killings. Is there anything in it?’

  ‘I wonder who started that story?’

  Miss Barker shrugged. ‘You know how it is— Keep your head down, dear.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  Another shrug. ‘Believe anything.’ She was towelling Charmian’s hair with energy. ‘But it would explain why the women got caught: they wouldn’t expect violence from a child.’ She wrapped a towel turban-style around Charmian. ‘Move over to here, dear. That’s right, by the mirror. Want a magazine? We’ll just have a wait before I give you a cut.’ She leaned against the basin and began to check on her own hair, teasing a strand of silver-blonde on to her check. ‘Mind you, nothing would have made Maggie Fairlie let down her guard. Miss Distrust in person. Of course, she might have known her killer.’

  Charmian tried a question at a tangent. ‘Keen on horses, was she?’

  Andrea, she was definitely Andrea as she studied her face, laughed.

  ‘Not her. Didn’t know one end of a horse from another. Took a job when she first came out and was hired as barmaid when they had a big do in the Park for some American polo players, that’d be the nearest.’

  Charmian tried to nod her head, but found it caught in a vice-like grip.

  Baby (she was back again, full of malice), gave a little scream. ‘Oh, horror! Something’s gone wrong. You’ve come out bright green.’

  ‘What?’ Charmian recoiled, staring at her image in the mirror.

  Baby reached for a cigarette and gave a giggle. ‘ Joke. Just a joke.’

  Then she saw the look of fury in Charmian’s eyes, remembered that she was teasing a high-ranking police officer whom it would be wiser not to offend and said hastily, ‘ Silly me. I’ll send you out looking lovely, you bet. And of course, it’s all on the house.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her hair immaculately coiffed (because, after all, she had had this occasion in mind), wearing a new Italian silk dress, and accompanied by Kate, Charmian stood sipping champagne in Tommy Bingham’s box. Box was a misnomer really since it was no more than a partitioned-off area of the main onlookers’ stand with an awning at the back where luncheon was served. You could stand in it and hail friends in other boxes and this was what was happening on this highly social occasion.

  Murder notwithstanding, the game of polo had to go on. This was an important international match against the Americans. Tommy would not be playing, of course, he had not done so since his illness but his ponies were there.

  If one of those animals could talk, thought Charmian, we could solve this case on the spot.

  ‘You’re a dangerous lady,’ said Humphrey. ‘When I introduce you to my friends, death starts walking around.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s my fault. Just my job. Anyway, I rather think I have you to thank for involving me so closely in all this.’ The Gaynors were notable absentees at this Sunday lunch-party, although one felt their presence as a set of ghosts. ‘I think it was rather brave of Tommy to go ahead with this party, all things considered.’

  ‘He is a brave old boy. And I suppose it is one of the last occasions of this sort he may have: time is running out.’

  Charmian looked at him. ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s got cancer. Terminally ill. I wonder he has lasted as long as he has. It’s as if he keeps getting a boost of new life. Every so often you think, well, that’s it, goodbye Tommy. Then he picks up again.’

  ‘I suppose that’s th
e way it goes.’ Across the room, her eyes met Lesley’s gaze, then flicked away. Neither of them wanted to be reminded of their meeting over Joanna’s bed.

  ‘It has with him.’

  Lesley and Johnny, together with Freda and Gillian, had been included in the party, but were not quite of it. They hung together in a group. A buffet lunch had been set out on a long table and they were tucking into that with enthusiasm. Charmian noticed a slight tendency on the part of Kate to edge towards them, but they were not encouraging her.

  ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ Humphrey nodded towards the food. ‘Chicken? Salmon? Tommy puts on a good spread.’

  They strolled towards the table. A girl in a crisp white overall was serving the food. She gave them a cheerful smile, as if she knew them. Or, as if even if she did not know them now, she would know them next time.

  ‘Tommy always gets in local staff to serve,’ murmured Humphrey, ‘even if a lot of the grub comes down from London. Fortnum’s, I think.’

  Charmian accepted chicken salad, taking it to a small table, with a good view of the party. There were a couple of dozen people present, a few of whom she knew. All present were noticeably well dressed and beautifully groomed. She had been right to get her hair cut.

  It was the sort of occasion on which at least two of the murder victims might have worked behind the serving table. Perhaps they both had, it might be worth checking. But then, this was the sort of routine inquiry that Chief Inspector Merry’s outfit did so well.

  Humphrey put her glass of champagne beside her and sat down himself. ‘Kate’s having a good time.’

  ‘She usually does, I fancy.’

  ‘You sound disapproving. You are a puritan.’ He wasn’t quite joking.

  ‘It’s because of my Scottish blood,’ said Charmian, placidly forking up her chicken salad. She did not intend to get into an argument with Humphrey who had greater verbal dexterity than she had and always won. ‘You can’t expect otherwise. As it happens, I don’t disapprove of Kate, but I think she is a bit rash, that’s all.’

  From across the room, Kate looked at her and smiled as if she had heard. Lesley and the other three had disappeared. Presumably to get back to work. Did all owners of a string of polo ponies let their stable lads come to drink champagne and eat smoked salmon? But Tommy Bingham seemed a special case.