A Cure for Dying

by Jennie Melville

  So he made himself a cup of tea (he did not drink coffee) and started to clear the drawers of his desk. In a plastic envelope were Charmian’s clothes. He had not put them away as well as he might have done, so he drew them out to refold.

  In the pocket of Charmian’s shirt, he felt something. He withdrew a folded piece of stained tissue. It smelt a bit. That was blood on it, too. Untested blood.

  A conscientious and scrupulous soul, he meditated for a short time about overlooking this trifle of paper, then turned to. He took a sample, shouldn’t take him too long. Tidying up was tidying up, after all, mustn’t sweep things under the carpet.

  ‘That’s interesting.’ He raised his head from the slide he was studying.

  He realised that what he had found might be significant. He had read the newspapers. And if he hadn’t, then his wife had done and kept him fully informed of what she considered interesting details.

  All the same, he might not have passed on the information speedily if he had not been a friend of Sergeant Wimpey. He wanted to talk to him anyway, they were playing cricket together at the weekend and he needed to set up the arrangements for travel. Who would drive whom? Both wives were coming too.

  He reached out for the telephone.

  ‘Hello, Wimp,’ he said. ‘Are you interested in horses?’

  Kate stood up. ‘If you want even more coffee, then the pot is keeping warm. I’m off to see someone I love.’

  ‘Johnny?’

  ‘No, I don’t love him yet, although it might come to it. I think it will.’ She smiled to herself. ‘It’s been pretty physical so far, but I think the rest is there. I’m rather chuffed.’ She produced the piece of slang with conscious pleasure. ‘ No, it’s Dad. I’m going to help him pack to go back to Anny.’

  Charmian sat over her coffee, which seemed to taste the better for being made by Kate. It was getting late, she ought to be off, but a meditative mood kept her sitting there.

  Without knowing the characters concerned but knowing the type of killings, what portrait of the killer would you make? She could hear Ulrika’s voice advising her. Some things can’t be put into words, she was saying, they are just emotions floating free. Bits of evil, slices of goodness, looking for somewhere to settle. This killer picked some up, or was offered them or stole them from family or friends. Probably family, because the family is the most notorious provider of such ingredients.

  Nevertheless, Charmian could only think in words, so here she had to part company from her mentor.

  She started to draw up a profile of the murderer.

  First, because of the nature of the crimes, manifesting extreme aggression towards women, it was very likely that this killer had suffered abuse within a trusted circle, for example the family, possibly from a woman. Or anyway, blamed a woman, the woman defaulted in some way. The mother left the home perhaps?

  Secondly, by the emphasis on the hole as manifested in the various notes and messages, this killer is saying he or she is filling a need in the family. Offering a death to fill a hole. The dead women are sacrifices. They are dying for something. That’s how the killer sees it.

  Thirdly (and this idea had only just occurred to her), this killer may not be sure of his or her sex. So, if a woman or girl, they may have a name that could be masculine or feminine. Might blame this on the family too.

  Joanna? It was possible. But, of course, there were other such names.

  Lastly, but importantly, this killer knew the victims, knew enough about them to find them, attract their attention without causing alarm, and so get close enough to kill.

  Charmian herself had been threatened and once followed. She had an idea that on another occasion she had come very close to an attack, but had been saved by a chance arrival.

  Nearly everything she was thinking matched Joanna, although it was hardly what Chief Inspector Merry would regard as evidence. Valid after the event, he would say caustically. When you know who’s done it, then you draw the picture.

  The telephone rang, and she heard Wimpey speaking. ‘You remember the attack on you?’

  ‘The one that happened, or the one that never was?’

  ‘The man in the park.’

  ‘Oh that one. Had no connection with the murders.’

  ‘No, a chance attack. But you sent the clothes you were wearing off for forensic testing. Helped us identify your attacker. In the pocket of your shirt was a blood-stained tissue.’

  ‘That was his blood.’

  ‘No, or not only his blood. There was blood from a horse as well.’

  ‘At that time, I knew nothing about the slaughtered pony.’

  ‘No,’ said Wimpey seriously. ‘So where did it come from?’

  Charmian did not answer, she put the telephone down on Wimpey in mid-sentence, without noticing that he was still talking.

  She knew where the blood had come from. She saw that all the details in the picture she had been drawing fitted this person as well as Joanna. The name of this person had been in the frame every time, had cropped up in the life-style of each murdered woman.

  She believed she even knew now why her own killing had not occurred after she had been appointed to the place of the next victim. She thought she could even see the motive for the killings. If you could call it a motive when it seemed more like a ritual act of sacrifice. Ulrika could get busy with her speculations here.

  She understood now what Ulrika had meant when she pointed out that there was more than one kind of family.

  The stables, with Tommy Bingham as father, that was a family. It had been Joanna’s family too, in a crucial way, and she had been influenced by it and been loyal to it. Been loyal to the killer, taking a knife and shirt to London in her case to hide.

  Poor Joanna, to find herself in the midst of two such dangerous families.

  Charmian sat thinking, trying to fit all the facts together into a rational picture. There was a terrible rationality behind it, although not one the so-called real world would perhaps accept easily.

  She could even blame herself. She found herself accepting that she had played her part. The killing of the pony had been a beginning from which nothing else might have followed, but for the attack on her. She could see now that that incident might have been inflammatory to a disturbed mind.

  Charmian dressed herself and drove to the stables where she would find everyone she wanted to talk to. She wondered if she ought to warn Kate, but decided to leave it. She had gone off to see her father who might be no help in some things, but could certainly be counted upon to keep his daughter occupied for a whole morning.

  She went right round to the stables, avoiding the house where Tommy himself would be resting.

  Lesley, her bright auburn hair covered with a silk scarf, was crossing the stable-yard, carrying a bucket. She stopped as soon as she saw Charmian. ‘Hello, looking for anyone?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  Lesley looked thoughtful. ‘Are you sure? Johnny’s around somewhere.’

  ‘I mean business, Lesley.’

  Lesley looked at her. ‘Not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘I have a right to talk. You nearly killed me. You would have done. I would have been victim number four if a car had not come down the road while I was looking down at the dead rabbit.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I suppose it was always some trick like that you used to get close to your victims. “ Do come and look at this,” and then the knife in. They all knew you at least by sight. They worked or visited places you frequented.’ It suggested a kind of selection of the victims which would be interesting if it ever came to a trial. ‘Joanna loved you. Still does, I expect, in what she has left of her mind. You may not have meant to destroy her, but you did. She got infected.’

  Lesley stared in silence. Charmian knew she must pierce this calm, break it up.

  ‘But tell me what the hole stood for, what did it mean? Because you did always leave that sign, didn’t you? What hole were you filling?’ She
could almost hear Ulrika’s voice asking that question. The only thing was that by now Ulrika would know the answer. She didn’t.

  Lesley started to walk across the stable-yard to the tack-room. Charmian followed her. No risk, she thought. Bound to be plenty of people about, but she was on her guard.

  ‘Come in,’ said Lesley. ‘It’s starting to rain.’

  ‘We won’t close the door.’

  The tack-room was warm and empty, it smelt of leather and horses.

  ‘I don’t know why you have come here.’

  ‘I’ve been asking myself that,’ said Charmian, ‘and it is not the way I usually go on, but I think I want you to confess. I want you to say Joanna is innocent. I think she deserves that from you. She’s had a raw deal. Not least from me. I am going to do what I can for her, and talking to you now is one of the things. It might help her if you confessed. I think she needs your confession. So do I, because I feel I did a lot of wrong things.’

  ‘You mean you feel guilty?’ Lesley sounded amused. ‘Well, good for you, Miss Daniels. Doesn’t guilt get around?’

  Charmian was silent, watching Lesley.

  ‘Well, I can soon get you out of that trouble. I need one more death. For Tommy, he has been more than a father to me, more than a mother. Especially my own, the bitch. I don’t mind telling you, I’m proud of it. Those women, those animals, and there were more than you know about, died for Tommy. Every time one died, every time I got one, Tommy got stronger. Cause and effect. They were dying for him.’ She was reaching behind her for a length of rein. It didn’t have to be a knife, strangling would do it. Might even be a more powerful prophylactic. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘I am not in any danger,’ Charmian told herself. ‘I am a strong, trained woman and on my guard. She will not fill that hole she is seeking to fill with my body.’ Had there been other deaths than those she knew about? Or was Lesley fantasising? Other animals perhaps?

  Charmian tried to step backwards. But she wasn’t moving. Like a rabbit that the ferret had fixed with its eye, she seemed stuck. She made a strenuous effort to move backwards through the door. Her legs felt heavy.

  From outside, someone was calling for Lesley.

  The door was dragged open. ‘There you are, Lesley.’ It was Johnny. He looked surprised to see Charmian. ‘Glad to see you, Miss Daniels. We need help. Tommy’s just had a haemorrhage. It’s bad. Come and give us a hand, Lesley.’

  Saved by blood, Charmian thought, as she pulled herself together, and found her legs would move after all. ‘ We’ll both come,’ she said, taking Lesley by the arm. The arm felt limp. Lesley would not resist. She might want to, but she could not. Some life, some force had gone out of her.

  Ulrika would have said, No, they never resist when faced with certainty, that’s what they are like, not quite people like the rest of us.

  An ambulance arrived to take Tommy Bingham away. From what she saw, Charmian guessed he was already dead. He would never know what he had been responsible for.

  Very soon afterwards Chief Inspector Merry and his team arrived. He was not pleased: events had taken over from him, which was not the way he liked it. An orderly progression of events leading to an arrest was the way he liked it. A team effort. This arrest had come about by what was almost an accident. He was inclined to blame Charmian Daniels, but did not feel able to say as much.

  He would have got there, he implied, was getting there. The marks of the special polo-pony shoe had been a vital piece of evidence, indicating clearly that someone from the Bingham stables had been involved. The usual routine police work would have done the rest.

  He did point out with quiet triumph that he had always said that the girl Joanna Gaynor was not the killer.

  Kindly, and allowing himself to forget for the moment his rank and her rank, he suggested that Charmian went home.

  There were already signs of police activity in the house next door to Charmian’s in Maid of Honour Row. There was a police car outside the door and a uniformed man posted on the pavement outside. A few spectators were already gathering to see what was going on. She was not surprised to see an interested Muff weaving her way around them.

  Someone would have to see Lesley’s father, she thought. She had better do it herself, if Merry agreed. Get Ulrika to help, she thought. She didn’t know much about the girl’s background except that her father was an invalid, but she suspected she would find a rejecting, probably cruel mother. Anyway, an absent mother. She knew that much.

  Charmian grabbed Muff to her, she wanted the feel of that sane animal body smelling so sweetly of fur and sun. Muff purred loudly, flattered at being wanted, and hopeful of food. Must be hours since she had had a good meal.

  While she had stewed rabbit, Charmian went through her address book, searching for a telephone number. She had not been strictly honest in saying she had forgotten this person, she remembered well enough, but it was a bit of the past she had tidied away.

  ‘Professor Lamb, please.’ He was eminent now, and had a chair.

  She had to wait for Professor Lamb to be located and dragged out of a seminar, but there were advantages to being a police officer. People did try to do what you asked.

  ‘David? Charmian Daniels here.’

  ‘Good lord, a voice from the past. What do you want?’ He knew what her career was, he was always well informed. ‘ One of my students in trouble?’ He’d never be in trouble himself, far too canny.

  ‘Just wanted to ask you something. Might be a test of your memory, I don’t know. Cast your mind back to our student days. Do you remember taking me round a museum and showing me some early Christian tombstones? Some of the effigies had beards. Frisian beards, you called them. Do you remember? Why did you call them that?’

  ‘My goodness, did I say that?’

  She could picture him sitting at his desk, holding the telephone and probably sucking on a pipe, if he still smoked. She remembered his red hair. One of the things (there hadn’t been too many) that they had had in common.

  Of course, it was the hair. From the first, her mind had made a connection between the ‘hole’ and red hair. It had been pointing her silently towards Lesley. She ought to have understood her own mind.

  ‘A Frisian beard, eh?’ She could hear him laughing. ‘I was joking, joking.’

  A case solved by a joke, Charmian thought. But it would not be one she would share with Chief Inspector Merry. Nor with Sergeant Wimpey, and certainly not with Humphrey Kent.

  She might tell Ulrika Seeley though, and goodness knows what she would make of it. She had a way of illuminating a mystery.

  Several days later Charmian was shopping for food in Windsor, choosing cheese from an array of some twenty or so different types spread out before her in Goodbody’s, the large and splendid store where she did her shopping. Kate had been absent from under her roof for a few days — settling Dad in the family home was her explanation— but she was expected back today. Charmian was planning a little celebratory dinner. To her surprise, she had greatly missed her god-daughter.

  She had just ordered a slice of Brie and a chunk of Parmesan, because they were going to have pasta, when she saw Miriam Miller smiling at her from behind a foot or so of French bread.

  ‘The Sesame Club is having a little supper party tomorrow. Do drop in if you can. Annabel Gaynor and I are doing the catering.’ She paused, waiting for Charmian’s reaction, which was circumspect.

  ‘I heard she was out of hospital.’

  ‘We decided that we had to grasp that particular nettle,’ said Miriam. ‘I put it to Annabel that she’d better get on a public face and come, and she agreed. Not easily, but she did. All of us in the Sesame Club think that the family is worth saving and we want to help. If that means helping Brian Gaynor, so be it. I’m not saying that we condone, or even understand, but we don’t intend to sweep the whole affair and the Gaynors with it under a kind of mat.’

  ‘I think you’re doing the right thing. I’ll come.’
r />   ‘Annabel tells me she had a telephone call from Joanna yesterday. Didn’t say much, asked after her pony and wants the little wooden horse she left behind, but it’s a start. You have to start from somewhere.’ Displaying her usual acumen, Miriam said: ‘I suppose Joanna knew or guessed from the beginning who had killed the pony and then the women?’

  Charmian nodded gravely. ‘ I believe she has said as much to Dr Seeley. She knew from the moment the knife that killed the pony was found in her own bag. They were very close, those two girls. I think Joanna had confided a lot of her troubles to Lesley. She had certainly tried to protect Lesley by packing a knife and T-shirt used by Lesley in her case when she ran away.’

  Or had Joanna realised these objects might be used to accuse Lesley and prove her own innocence? Relations between the two had got very mixed by the end, with both love and hate entangled. It might be that Lesley would have killed Joanna if necessary that day in London.

  ‘There’s a lot of strength and loyalty in Joanna,’ said Miriam. ‘And she’s clever. I hope that when she’s herself again someone will see she gets to a proper school, not that debby place she was in. Good boarding-school would do the trick. She needs a rest from family life, that girl. Of course, there won’t be the money there was before,’ said Miriam. ‘No one’s actually said, but reading between the lines we think it might be hard for Brian to go back to his practice as if nothing had happened. I mean men do forgive each other almost everything about sex, don’t they, but perhaps not this. So we don’t know what he’s going to do, but Annabel is a very very clever girl and she used to hold down a good job of her own, and will again.’