There Lies Your Love

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I noticed. I didn’t think you did.’

  ‘I’ve had a snap report from the medical examiner on Mrs Gilroy. It’s not what you expect.’

  ‘And what did I expect?’ It was childish to be reduced to irony by Ascham. He treated everyone the way he was treating her, like an audience that wasn’t really supposed to answer the rhetorical question. No wonder Pratt had almost disappeared from view since Ascham had arrived. His only recent communication with Charmian had been a scribbled note saying: ‘Leave me your notes, dear,’ and a view of him disappearing hurriedly through a door. Charmian ground her teeth. She then became aware that Ascham was watching her in this unattractive act.

  ‘All right. I heard what you weren’t saying.’ He didn’t miss anything. No wonder all his associates retired early with ulcers. Then Charmian regretted even this flying thought in case he had telepathy too.

  ‘You know sometimes you act just like Jack Pratt,’ Ascham was saying. ‘You see too much of him.’

  ‘Not lately.’

  ‘He’s not in hiding. He’s thinking of retiring, did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mind you, I don’t think he will,’ said Ascham, turning back to the report of the medical examiner.

  ‘Naturally he’d tell you first.’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t tell me,’ said Ascham looking up surprised. ‘Is that what is rubbing you? No, the word’s just got round that Jack Pratt is retiring.’

  ‘It may not be true.’

  ‘I said I didn’t think he will, didn’t I?’

  Charmian just stopped herself grinding her teeth again.

  ‘But I mean what I said; it wasn’t in fun. You have been seeing too much of John Pratt and it’s been bad for you. John Pratt has a small town mentality.’

  ‘This is a small town.’

  ‘That’s all right for Pratt,’ went on Ascham, ignoring her interruption, ‘but not for you. It clashes with your energies and your ambitions. And that’s led you into a mistake here.’ He rapped the report he was carrying.

  ‘You’re too ready to condemn, Charmian.’

  They glared at each other, anger on both sides.

  ‘You’re doing it now,’ he said. ‘You’re doing it to me. But that’s not what I’m telling you about. You decided as soon as you saw those clothes in the Gilroy house that Arlette Grey was dead and that Mrs Gilroy had probably killed her. You didn’t come right out and say this but you thought it. You haven’t really been looking for Arlette Grey. Or not very hard.’

  Charmian sat silent.

  ‘I don’t wonder her mother cleared out and started to do the job herself.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s what she is doing,’ cried Charmian. She had found Mrs Grey an unnerving, ambiguous figure.

  ‘And shall I tell you what Pratt is doing? He’s going round and round the town looking for reasons to show that his friend Mrs King did not kill herself.’

  ‘And what is it you want me to do?’ demanded Charmian. ‘I do what you say, you know, that’s my job.’ He will bring my list of errands, she had said to Grizel.

  ‘I think I want you to do justice to Mrs Gilroy,’ said Ascham seriously. He knew that what he was really saying was that he wanted Charmian to do justice to herself. He wanted this bitterly and strongly. He surprised himself with the strength of this desire.

  ‘There were marks, constriction marks, from the rope around Mrs Gilroy’s throat,’ he said. ‘Her feet were about two feet from the ground, she could have hanged herself, but the marks were caused after death, the real injuries to her throat were deeper and more extensive. She had been strangled by hand.’

  ‘Con Gilroy was murdered?’ cried Charmian. And at once her mind began re-assessing the situation, resorting the facts as far as she knew them, trying to form a new and truer picture, in which Con was no longer the murderer but a victim. ‘About her smile?’

  ‘It wasn’t a true smile,’ said Ascham, starting to explain.

  Rigor mortis always attacks the jaw and throat muscles first. But in Con’s face her smile had been due to a cadaveric spasm, the result of extreme emotional tension. The muscles of her face reflected in death the strains they had known in life. Before she died Con Gilroy had been in the grip of great emotion.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time now to give some credit to Con Gilroy?’ said Ascham softly. ‘I think she suffered.’

  Chapter Eight

  AT one level of truth Arlette Grey was murdered, at another she was not. At one level of truth Con had killed herself; at another level she certainly had not. At one level of truth Nan King had committed suicide; at another level there had been a good many helping hands. The inquest on her had not yet been resumed.

  Twenty-four hours after the discovery of Con’s body, stories and rumours were all over Deerham Hills. Some people connected the two deaths, others said there couldn’t possibly be any connection. Up at the College where the Laurel Rise group worked there was less talk and more sombre inward speculation. Doris and Burgen did their work silently and avoided their colleagues. Laurence Marks was willing to talk but he was in one of his most perverse moods, and what he said was more tantalising than satisfying to his audience. Jim Carter just shook his head when any questions were asked. ‘Keep quiet and keep out of trouble’ had been his instructions to his wife and family before he left home, and he planned to keep these sensible rules himself. He expected that he would be the only member of his family to do so, except possibly the baby, who couldn’t walk or speak yet. Bitter experience had taught him roughly what his family was capable of. He didn’t trust even their aged tabby cat not to singe his fur. ‘And keep that dog tied up,’ he had shouted in parting.

  Tom Gilroy had gone back to his own house in the end; he spent an uneasy day there, buffeted by police and callers, shifting restlessly from room to room and eventually passing an uncomfortable night without sleep. He had slept heavily the night before, when Con had died, now he could not sleep at all. The police had gone home; he was alone in the dark empty house.

  He came down the stairs in the dawn, head aching, eyes swollen and unseeing. Half way down he stumbled and almost fell. He sat there for a moment on the stairs, head in his hands, eyes closed, with waves of sickness rolling within him.

  ‘I wonder if I’m ill?’ he thought drearily. No time to be ill now, with the comfort, the pleasure of being nursed by Con departed. But his body, carefully guarded and exercised by him for over thirty years, cherished and nourished, was so far equal to all the strains upon it, just as if it had been a stranger, and soon his head became clearer and his stomach steadier. ‘I suppose I’m just hungry,’ he muttered.

  He started on down to the kitchen.

  The room was dirty and untidy and smelt sour. He missed the order which Con had imposed on it.

  ‘Kettle,’ he muttered aloud. ‘Coffee. Bread.’ Toast seemed too much intellectual effort so he cut some bread and sat down to eat it while the water boiled.

  A dull thudding sound coming from the other side of the wall told him that early as it was, Burgen had a great orchestral piece on his record player but had it turned low to avoid disturbing Doris.

  ‘I wonder if you knew,’ he said to the presence behind the wall, ‘that for a long time now there hasn’t been anything between Con and me? Nothing real. Nothing you could count on, that is. I felt you were somehow blaming me. You shouldn’t do that. You of all people, Burgen, should not judge.’ What the trouble with Burgen was he had never known, but he and Con (for they could have long connubial discussions, when all was said and done) had agreed there was a trouble. He thought unhappily of Con’s case and the way she packed it, and the way she put the black slippers out for him to see. ‘Con could be very frightening, although naturally you, Burgie, didn’t see that side of her.’

  The music beyond the wall increased a little in volume as if Burgen was picking up in vitality, drawing it perhaps from a rapport with Tom, from Tom’s conversation. Tom went on,
‘Con was a woman who was always ready for you. I can’t explain it any other way but that’s how she was. Ready and smiling, or sometimes ready and not smiling, but always omnipresent. Yes,’ he said dreamily, ‘she had a lot in common with the Deity, Con. All-seeing, all-knowing, and all-loving …’ And this perhaps was the trouble: you didn’t want godhead in a wife. The music made a little tinkling sceptical noise. Or was the scepticism inside Tom himself? At any rate the music stopped and there was silence from next door. Which either meant that Burgen had gone back to bed or Doris was awake. No doubt Doris was awake.

  The thought of Doris was an intimidating one. She had come over three times yesterday offering Tom food, drink and help. None of the offers had been accepted and he had the strong feeling that Doris hadn’t wanted them to be accepted. In the end he had eaten steak and kidney pie with Laurence and Ben. It was better to hear them bickering and arguing than to feel Doris’s silent dislike. Tom was a man who needed approval to feel alive at all. Con had known this, it was the source of her power over him. Or at any rate, one of the sources.

  Now the music had stopped Tom could hear many other noises. Noises he had hardly known existed in the world before. Like the noise of the bricks and boards creaking and whispering in the house around him, like the sound of his own breathing. He listened to it for a moment wondering if his heart was beating regularly, He was always uneasy about his own health. He put his hand on his chest and held it there for a minute. Surely the heart-beat was too fast? The movement seemed to accelerate under his ringers, faster and faster.

  He was sitting there, puffing a little, when he heard the noise at the door.

  He was so far away from the everyday world of Deerham Hills that for a moment he did not realise it was the postman, then he heard the slither of letters falling one after the other on to the floor. He seemed to have quite a post. He sat there and stared at it.

  ‘This is not the sort of time to have any letters,’ he muttered, licking his lips.

  He went forward to pick them up. He was reluctant but he knew he had to do it. If he didn’t then who would? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  There were six letters waiting for him, and they were one and all addressed boldly and brassily to Miss Mary Lou Pallas care of Mrs Tom Gilroy. They were postmarked yesterday and had been posted in Deerham Hills.

  ‘No, no,’ he said aloud. ‘No.’ His voice grew wilder. ‘No.’ Grabbing the letters, which would all be empty, he knew they would be empty, he staggered back to the kitchen and sat down. He felt really ill now. ‘Now that Con is gone,’ he said, still aloud, ‘we don’t have to continue. Surely the plot against her can rest?’

  The letters sat before him on the table. This time there had been no pretence at trying to make them look different. One hand had addressed the lot. Nor had any real attempt been made to make them look like letters, they looked just like they were, empty envelopes. Tom wondered whether they had come by post. Wasn’t there surely some offence in misusing the Queen’s Mails? He shook his head muzzily.

  ‘Con’s gone,’ he repeated. ‘The plot’s finished. All washed up.’

  What he was saying did not carry conviction, not even to himself. He didn’t expect it to, the whole thing was becoming clear. Slowly he was reaching the terrible understanding that the plot was not only against Con but against him.

  Three . . . Last Love

  Chapter Nine

  ‘SHE’S got a sweet face really,’ said Grizel, raising her eyes from a recent photograph of Arlette Grey she was studying. The new photograph had reluctantly been produced by her father who seemed to hate to admit that his daughter was no longer a little girl. In this second photograph Arlette looked older, wiser and less girlish. Her face was thinner and yet still rounded.

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’ Charmian stared at the face again. ‘ Sweet? No, I hardly think so. I never go for those little faces with lots of hair and all eyes. She’s got a mean little mouth if you ask me.’

  Grizel put the photograph down. ‘ Well, how would you describe her then?’

  ‘Ambiguous,’ said Charmian; she walked towards the door.

  Grizel blinked. ‘She’s only a girl. With girls that sort of look often means they haven’t settled down quite. I was like it myself. You’re being a bit hard.’

  ‘You never had that look.’

  ‘What look?’

  Charmian paused at the door. ‘A look of duplicity,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘You need to go into a thought like that,’ said Grizel with a touch of tartness. ‘ Hold it up and look at it. Consider it.’

  ‘I will,’ said Charmian, closing the door behind her and giving it a little bang. They hadn’t exactly quarrelled but there was a question mark against their relationship. Disagreements had happened to them often enough before but each time they had ended up closer friends; this time Charmian felt it might go either way.

  This had nothing to do (and yet it had everything) with how she was beginning to feel about Rupert Ascham. She didn’t like him and yet she couldn’t help thinking about him. At the same time his presence in her imagination added to her energy of spirit rather than detracted from it. Disliking him made her more happy, not less so. A more sophisticated woman might already have been asking herself alarmed questions about the nature of this interest; Charmian had only slowly started to take notice. Even now she preferred to think that the real problem in her life was her relationship with Grizel, ignoring the fact that Grizel had perfectly satisfactory relationships outside of work and wasn’t all that preoccupied with Charmian.

  While she was going through all the routine motions of her work connected with the murder of Con Gilroy and the missing Arlette Grey, Charmian was really thinking deeply about the girl Arlette. It was impossible to believe that the death of Con was just a coincidence. Reason demanded that it must have some connection with the missing girl and the finding of her clothes in Con’s house.

  Earlier Charmian had rationalised the situation in this way: Con had found the clothes, Con had killed herself, therefore Con had guilty knowledge and had probably disposed of the girl somewhere. The motives here were not clear but it was probably concerned somehow with her husband.

  But she now knew that Con had not killed herself. Instead she had been murdered, strangled while her husband slept. So now Charmian had to produce another rationalisation. Figures and names flitted through her mind: Tom, Doris and Burgen, Laurence Marks and Ben Cox, Mary Lou Pallas, and she tried to relate to them what she knew of Con’s death, as if holding guilt up against them for size. This rationalisation said that they didn’t know for sure that Arlette Grey was dead while they did know Con was. Dead bodies usually turned up, didn’t they, and where was Arlette?

  And then momentarily she turned aside from rationalisation because she was enough of a policewoman to know that life was not tidy and neat, but dirty, inexplicable and obscure, and that Con’s death might have no direct connection with Arlette Grey at all. One act of violence sometimes had a magnetic attraction for another. The man who had just killed his wife might go home to find that his mother had been murdered.

  Charmian had the very strong feeling that she knew something about all these people, Tom Gilroy, Ben and Laurence, Doris and Burgen, the whole Grey family, but not nearly enough.

  Tom Gilroy was interesting and puzzling. She liked the way he talked; she had heard he wrote poetry. All this made him an attractive figure. He might be, and probably was in trouble of some sort, but she didn’t think he had killed his wife. He was really doped, really unhappy.

  Burgen and his sister Doris might be the innocent bystanders they appeared to be, but Burgen’s name, if not his face meant something to her. It was a professional memory too, not a private or personal one. Somewhere, sometime, Burgen had come the way of the police.

  Laurence Marks and Ben Cox were only on the periphery. Nothing would stop them interfering, however, if they wanted to do so, and perhaps they already had. Ben Cox was orthod
ox, conventional and straightforward. Laurence was not. She distrusted Laurence. (Everyone always came away from contact with Laurence with an uneasy feeling. It was rather like meeting Puck dressed up in a tweed suit. He had magic).

  And then there was Arlette. And what they knew about Arlette was that she had left her family, whom she didn’t particularly like, and her clothes, but perhaps she hadn’t particularly liked those either, and her life. She left behind her notebooks and her bag. She had left behind, or someone had caused to be sent after her, some locks of reddish hair. She had left behind the scent of disinfectant. Studying all these had led the police nowhere.

  So perhaps it was more important to notice what she had taken with her. As far as they could judge, she had departed, a half-clad crop-headed figure shorn of all personal possessions. This didn’t seem very much to take, hardly enough to start a life with.

  Charmian considered this thought. Outside she could hear Inspector Pratt talking on the telephone. Owing to the strange flaws in its construction, strange sounds and bursts of heat popped up all over the beautiful new sound-proofed and air-conditioned police building. The old headquarters had certainly been dark and dusty but altogether more solid and apparently healthier; everyone had strange coughs and headaches these days. Charmian’s room got no excess warmth but all the noise from Pratt’s room below was funnelled up to her while Pratt complained he was roasted with too much heat. The little room in which Charmian had left Grizel working was known as the ‘Bird Cage’ because it was a glass and steel box suspended over the stairwell. Privacy and even sometimes decency were impossible in it – Grizel complained you had to wear very dark underclothes and sit with your feet and knees pressed hard together; walking was out, you had to jump. It was hardly suitable for police work. At the moment, part of Charmian’s relationship with Grizel was that she was making her work in it. So Charmian’s thought about Arlette Grey also included, at the back of it, thought about Grizel.