Daughters of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Tell me more about the suspect,’ I say.

  ‘She arrived on an early-morning train from London. She had with her a photograph of Dr Grace Stockton, cut out from a newspaper, and she was showing it around the station, asking if anybody knew where Dr Stockton lived.’

  ‘Murderers don’t, as a rule, like to draw too much attention to themselves,’ I point out.

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t planning to become a murderer at that point,’ George counters. ‘Anyway, as luck would have it – luck from her point of view, that is, because it certainly wasn’t lucky for Grace Stockton – one of the people she asked was a lecturer from St Luke’s, who was off to London for the day. He was a little suspicious at first, but then she said she was Grace’s cousin, and had simply lost her address.’

  ‘And he believed her?’

  ‘Granted, she looked a little eccentric, but Grace Stockton was a little eccentric herself, by all accounts.’

  ‘In my experience, most anthropologists are,’ I say.

  ‘We lose track of her at that point, and don’t pick her up again until she catches the bus which drops her off on the lane a good three-quarters of a mile away from Crocksworth Manor. The next time we see her, she’s back on Oxford railway station.’

  ‘She didn’t take the bus back from the manor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when’s the next time she’s spotted after her appearance on Oxford Station?’

  ‘There isn’t a next time.’

  ‘What do you mean, “there isn’t a next time”?’

  ‘What I say. Nobody remembers her travelling back on the train to London, and nobody remembers her arriving at Paddington Station. We splashed her picture all over the newspapers and the television news, and hundreds of people called in. Several claimed she was their neighbour, but we checked it out, and she wasn’t. Some said she worked in the local pub or chip shop. She didn’t. There were callers who’d spotted her in Edinburgh at the same time as we know she was in Oxford. One woman said she was the ghost of her grandmother, and got quite hysterical when we didn’t seem to believe her. We checked them all – as you have to – and they all turned out to be dead ends.’

  ‘People don’t appear out of nowhere and vanish into thin air,’ I say.

  ‘This one did.’

  ‘So what other leads have you got?’

  ‘Do you want a rough figure, or would you rather I was precise?’ George asked.

  ‘I’d rather you were precise,’ I tell him.

  ‘In that case – none.’

  ‘None!’

  ‘No other strangers were spotted, and none of the people Grace Stockton knew seemed to have a motive for wanting her dead, so if the woman in the duffle coat didn’t do it, then we have no idea who did. And if the woman in the duffle coat did do it, we don’t know who she is, why she did it, or where she is now. In other words, we have Sweet Fanny Adams.’

  ‘But despite all that, you think that I can find your killer for you, do you?’ I ask.

  George shakes his head. ‘No, not really,’ he admits. ‘But if you’re working on the case, then at least it will keep Julia Pemberton and her Home Office boyfriend off our backs.’

  Wonderful! I’m positively beside myself with joy.

  EIGHT

  As I may have mentioned previously in this narrative, I do not own a VCR player – but I have a mate who does. The mate in question is called Charlie, or, to dignify him with his full title, Charles Edward George Withington Danby Swift, Fifth Lord Lostock.

  Charlie is not just my mate, he is my best mate. I met him at my first college reception, held in the Master’s Garden, where – an unsure working-class lass from the north of England – I found myself surrounded by a sea of confident young women who had previously attended schools like Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I was drowning, and I knew it, and if Charlie had not appeared on the scene at that moment, it’s more than possible I would have caught the next train home and never have returned to Oxford.

  I might have fled even given his approach, if he hadn’t gone about it in exactly the right way. But Charlie, who knew instinctively how to play me, didn’t put a foot wrong. He offered no patronizing words of comfort and assurance. Instead, he took the piss out of me for feeling inadequate because I didn’t fit into this environment. I knew he was right, of course, but my hackles were raised, and I said something withering in return. And all Charlie did was laugh and suggest we go to the nearest pub for a pint – which was exactly what we did.

  Though we seemingly have nothing in common – I’m thirty-one and he’s in his fifties, I was raised on a housing estate and he owns a vast stately home with extensive grounds in Wiltshire – we’ve been close for over a decade.

  Oh my God, is it really that long?

  What we share is more than a friendship – it is love. If he wasn’t a homosexual, I’d ask him to marry me – and if he wasn’t a homosexual, I suspect he’d probably accept.

  Charlie is the bursar of St Luke’s College, which means he gets to control the college’s substantial fortune, and, as befits his status, he lives in rooms which overlook one of the college’s more impressive quadrangles.

  When he meets me at the top of the staircase which leads to his rooms, he is wearing a shot silk dressing gown which is all swirls and dragons. If it was anyone else wearing it, I would think he was imitating Noel Coward, but Charlie is a true original, and has never imitated anyone else in his life.

  We exchange a gentle, asexual kiss, then I say, ‘Could I use your video, Charlie?’

  ‘Of course,’ he agrees. ‘And I’ll make some tea. Darjeeling?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  Charlie makes an excellent cup of tea, but it is the only domestic task at which he is in anyway proficient. Fortunately, he does not need any other skills, since he has his scout to do his cleaning, ironing and shoe polishing, and the excellent college refectory to provide his sustenance.

  I go over to the machine, which is resting on an exquisite rosewood occasional table.

  ‘How do you work this thing?’ I ask.

  Charlie shrugs helplessly. ‘My scout, Baxter, knows how to load it, but unless I say that I’ll be needing him, he’s not here in the afternoon.’ He reaches for the telephone. ‘I could call the lodge and ask them to send one of the porters up, if you like.’

  I had my own scout when I was in college, but I’ve never felt very comfortable about other people doing things for me that I could perfectly well do myself. Thus, the prospect of summoning a porter sends a brief shiver of embarrassment coursing through my northern, working-class body.

  ‘We don’t need any help,’ I say hastily. ‘With a little application, I should be able to work it out for myself.’

  The instructions are simple enough, and it’s not long before I’m feeding the cassette into the machine and switching on the television. A black-and-white, slightly fuzzy, image of the inside of Oxford railway station appears on the screen. There are not that many people around, and looking at the clock at the bottom of the screen, I understand why.

  9.43 a.m. Too late for the worker ants who commute in their thousands to the city of London (they will already be chained to their desks by that time) and too early for the tourists (doing the grand cultural excursion which invariably includes the Tower of London and Stratford-upon-Avon) to start arriving.

  I spot my woman somewhere in the distance. She is too far away to see her face, but she is the only one on the concourse wearing a duffle coat. Besides, she keeps stopping and showing the piece of paper in her hand to passers-by.

  ‘Do you know this woman? Do you know where she lives?’

  She comes closer, and I freeze the image. This is more or less the frame that the police photograph was lifted from.

  Charlie places a teacup down next to me (a fine china cup of some antiquity, of course) and says, ‘Isn’t that the woman who the police were looking for in connection with Grace Stockton’s murder?’
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br />   ‘Yes,’ I agree. And then, because he is clearly expecting more, I add, ‘I’ve been asked to investigate the case.’

  ‘I see,’ he says, in a voice which ever so clearly indicates that he doesn’t see at all.

  The woman moves away. The screen goes blank for a second, and when the image comes back, it is from a different angle.

  ‘What happened there?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘A second camera,’ I tell him. ‘They’ve spliced the tapes together.’

  ‘Ah!’ he says, as if I’ve just explained how to cast a magic spell or split the atom.

  The woman is talking to another man.

  ‘That’s Philip Downes,’ Charlie says. ‘He’s an expert in Assyrian relief sculpture during the reign of Ashurbanipal.’

  Only in Oxford (and possibly Cambridge) would the second of those two sentences have been used as part of a personal description, I think. Still, it has established him as the St Luke’s don who, on his way to London for the day, gave Duffle Coat Woman Grace Stockton’s address, and thus, without realizing it, signed her death warrant

  The screen goes blank again, and when the image returns, the clock at the bottom of the screen says it is 3.07 p.m.

  The woman walks in through the main door, but she does it with a curious sideways motion, not unlike a crab, and since the hood of the duffle coat is now fully up, I cannot see her face.

  We switch cameras, and once again, she is contorting her body into unnatural positions.

  ‘Why is she doing that?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘She knows where the cameras are, and she’s avoiding them filming her face,’ I tell him.

  ‘It didn’t bother her in the morning,’ Charlie points out. ‘She made no effort to evade them then.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t know she was going to kill somebody in the morning,’ I suggest.

  ‘Even so, it’s nothing but a waste of her energy to evade the cameras in the afternoon, because she’s already on film.’

  He’s making a good point. I give it my careful consideration.

  ‘She’s acting on instinct,’ I say finally. ‘If she’d thought it through like you have, she’d have seen it was pointless, but she’s just cut another woman’s head off, and most of her logical functions have probably shut down, to make room for blind bloody panic.’

  The screen goes blank, and there is no more.

  ‘We don’t see her going onto the platform,’ Charlie says.

  ‘No,’ I agree. ‘That would have been on Camera Three, and Camera Three wasn’t working that day.’

  ‘You don’t think she fixed it, do you?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘Well, you have to admit, it is rather a coincidence.’

  God preserve me from amateurs!

  ‘To disable the camera, she would have had to be part of a highly organized team, working to a delicate and intricate plan,’ I say.

  ‘Well, that’s possible, isn’t it?’

  ‘And people working to a delicate and intricate plan don’t usually need to ask passers-by where they should be going. Nor do they need get there by public transport.’

  Charlie nods. ‘I can be a real fool sometimes, can’t I?’

  ‘Not really,’ I assure him. ‘You’ve just strayed beyond the field of your expertise onto the highway of murder and mayhem.’

  Charlie grins. ‘Nicely put. So the camera just broke down?’

  ‘That’s the most likely explanation,’ I say. ‘Do you know what’s bothering me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The timing.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She couldn’t have got to Crocksworth Manor much before eleven o’clock, and yet she was back here shortly after three.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Assuming she had her argument with Grace Stockton soon after she arrived, it would still have taken close to two hours to carry her body to the bluebell wood and bury it.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘That would take it up to one o’clock. It’s seventeen miles from Crocksworth Manor to the railway station. She didn’t take the bus, and she didn’t call a taxi. We know that because the police have checked both of those options out. And despite an extensive appeal on the television and in the newspapers, no driver has come forward to say that he picked her up hitchhiking. So how the hell did she make it back to the station by three?’

  We have sauntered up Broad Street and are now in the Eagle and Child (also known locally as the Bird and Baby, and, occasionally, as the Fowl and Foetus).

  The earliest record of it as a pub is 1684, and it was once the preferred meeting place of J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings), C.S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia) and various other members of the literary society known as the Inklings.

  That’s the sort of literary trivia that impresses the hell out of you when you’re a newly-arrived undergraduate, but by the end of the first year, the thrill is gone and it’s no more to you than a pub you haven’t yet disgraced yourself in by getting blind drunk.

  But for me, it will always be a special place, because it was to the Eagle that Charlie brought me when he rescued me from that dreadful gathering in the Master’s Garden.

  It is only half an hour to lunchtime closing when we arrive, and a number of the regulars are fuelling themselves up in order to be able to survive the terrible drought that exists between three and six, when the pub door is barred, and they’re the wrong side of it.

  I nod to Father Jim O’Brien, a priest held in high esteem by his parishioners for his wisdom, kindness and understanding, and by drinkers in this pub for his ability to ingest more pints of draught Guinness than any other man they’ve ever met.

  ‘How are you doing, Jennie?’ he asks, with an Irish lilt to his voice and a beam on his face.

  ‘I’m doing fine, Father Jim,’ I tell him.

  ‘And have you seen the error of your ways and decided to join the True Church – or are you still one of Satan’s handmaidens?’

  I grin. ‘I’m still one of Satan’s handmaidens. The hours aren’t great, and the pay is appalling, but at least I can look forward to a warm retirement.’

  He grins back. ‘That you can,’ he agrees. ‘Think of me sometimes, when the devil is jabbing his fiery pitchfork into your cute little arse.’

  ‘Cute little arse,’ I repeat. ‘Why, Father Jim, you really know how to flatter a girl.’

  Charlie and I walk over to a table and sit down.

  ‘I know the reason we’re here,’ Charlie says.

  ‘The reason?’ I repeat, to give myself time to think. ‘Are you suggesting I have an ulterior motive?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.’

  ‘Does there really have to be a reason for me to suggest to my best friend that it’s such a nice day that it would be a pity not to take a stroll?’

  ‘And that reason,’ Charlie continues, treating my remark with the contempt I suppose it so rightly deserves, ‘is that you thought I’d be less inhibited talking about my colleague, Derek Stockton, if I was a mile or so away from the place in which we both work.’

  Damn the man – he’s too clever by half.

  ‘My motives are pure,’ I say in my own defence. ‘I just want to bring an innocent woman’s killer to justice.’

  Charlie hums something which I recognize as the theme tune to an American television series. I think it’s the one about the handsome doctor who is on the run for killing his wife, and is searching for the real murderer, who apparently only has one arm.

  I sit there patiently waiting for him to finish, but he doesn’t finish at all. Instead, he morphs straight into another theme tune.

  There is more to this, I think, than meets the ear.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s about teaching you a lesson,’ Charlie says. ‘If you want to find out something from me, just ask, and I’ll soon let you know whether or
not I can tell you. But don’t try to soften me up first, because I have a whole repertoire of theme tunes I could assail your sensibilities with.’

  I bow my head. ‘You’re right, Charlie, and I’m very sorry.’

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ Charlie says. ‘Now ask me what you could have asked me back in my rooms.’

  ‘Will you tell me about the Stocktons?’ I ask, in a meek voice which is half mock contrition and half the genuine article.

  ‘Of course I’ll tell you,’ Charlie says. ‘But I don’t think you’ll like it.’

  ‘Why won’t I like it?’

  ‘Because your job involves searching out weaknesses and flaws, and everything I have to say about the Stocktons is positive.’

  I’m impressed, because Charlie is highly observant and rarely guided by prejudice, and I’ve always found everything that he’s said about other people to be spot on.

  ‘Go ahead anyway,’ I say.

  ‘They were the perfect long-married couple,’ Charlie says. ‘They no longer looked as if they couldn’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off, but they were clearly still very much in love. I don’t mean they didn’t have the occasional argument – all married couples do – but it was never serious, and it never lasted long. They did all kinds of things for each other – some little things, some much bigger things. Let me give you just one example. Shortly before she was murdered, Grace and Roger Quinn, Derek’s best friend, spent days and days organizing a surprise fifty-fifth birthday for Derek – a party which, sadly, never happened.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what they were doing?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘Oh yes. It was going to be a very elaborate affair. But, of course, after Grace’s murder …’

  ‘What I meant was, are you sure they weren’t having an entirely different kind of affair?’ I ask.

  ‘I knew what you meant,’ Charlie says, ‘but Grace Stockton was a strictly one-man woman.’

  ‘And what about him?’ I ask, because I know he has a watertight alibi in America, but I can’t quite bring myself to forget that in so many cases it is the husband who’s responsible.