There Lies Your Love

by Jennie Melville

  ‘What did she do?’ persisted Charmian, wondering what had become of academic truth if he could accept in a student what he would reject in a book. Perhaps he was like a lot of teachers, really frightened of young people.

  ‘Oh, little enough.’ He shrugged, moving about the room again, picking up a book here, a book there.

  He looked sad so that she saw he hadn’t been frightened but only trying for a little charity for a girl he hadn’t liked. ‘Besides, she started to collect my possessions. It was a bad sign.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. I had to put a stop to it. My writing on anything, my old newspapers, even a handkerchief once. She took them.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I transferred all her teaching to my assistant.’ He sat down at his desk as if his mind was now calmer. ‘Pretty little thing. Prettier than Arlette Grey. So that took care of that.’

  —Did it indeed, thought Charmian, we’ll see about that. Aloud she said, ‘What’s she like, this assistant of yours?’

  ‘Look for yourself.’ He pointed out of the window.

  A fair-haired young woman carrying a small case, her arms full of books, and wearing a plain tweed suit, was crossing the grass outside his window, apparently on her way to a library. Her pale yellow hair fanned out round her face. It was impossible to see her features and she had a short, stocky figure, but her hair was lovely.

  Charmian picked up the notes comprising the study of the girl which Arlette had written, the girl to whom she had tentatively and yet with some confidence assigned the yellow car and the name Mary Lou Pallas, the girl who might have killed Con Gilroy and possibly, though this she doubted, Arlette herself. Mary Lou Pallas had appeared silently and unobtrusively in this case. At first she looked unimportant, just a bystander, but the more you thought about her the more significance you saw. But who was she? Where did she come from? And why did she come?

  You might think on first examining Arlette’s book that Arlette herself had found the girl and sought her out. Yet there were ominous undertones in Arlette’s description of this girl. It was a case history perhaps but a very odd one. Did Arlette really believe in the truth of that strange, tragic and violent history she had written down? Rape, incest, lies, and anger seemed to hang like a wreath over Mary Lou Pallas.

  ‘But Arlette was such a liar,’ said Charmian. She closed the book. ‘Arlette was a phoney.’ She sat for a moment in silence. ‘ Therefore Mary Lou Pallas was phoney, a fake.’ She stood up, now she really was excited. ‘I don’t believe she exists at all. Arlette made her up.’

  There was a direct logical consequence of this thought, but Charmian was not yet ready to arrive at it. Her mind refused to accept it.

  Instead she fumbled with the question of the yellow hair. Had Arlette plucked this characteristic, as she had probably assembled everything else in Mary Lou, from someone she knew? Someone she didn’t like too much, like the woman who had taught her? ‘Yellow hair, yellow car,’ she mused. ‘She certainly had the money to buy a car.’

  She was just about to move her mind up and make it face the next logical step about Arlette. ‘Nothing real,’ she was saying, ‘all part of some game, some plot,’ when the telephone rang.

  ‘Blast.’ Like everyone about to face a fact they were not quite ready for, she was both glad and irritated. For a second she considered ignoring the telephone but she could guess who was calling and she wanted peace between her and Grizel not war. Grizel was capable of declaring war this moment if her feelings were ruffled any more.

  ‘Hey, where did you go haring off to?’ demanded Grizel as soon as the receiver had been lifted. There was someone else in the background, probably her husband, Ted. Charmian looked at the clock. Yes, he would certainly be home from his school. ‘Yesterday as well. Pratt’s starting to mutter.’

  ‘I’ll manage Pratt.’

  ‘I dare say. He’s had a shock about the Mrs King business. The resumed inquest is fixed for next week. You’ll be there, of course?’

  ‘What’s the shock?’

  ‘Something about drugs. That’s not what I’m ringing you about, though,’ went on Grizel hurriedly. ‘Ascham’s looking for you. Something’s blown up there.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charmian was thoughtful. Grizel was conveying a warning to her, she could tell it from her voice. ‘Thanks, Grizel. Do you know what?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t. Something about a dog.’

  ‘Thanks, Grizel,’ said Charmian again. She put the receiver down absently while Grizel was still talking.

  ‘She sounded funny,’ said Grizel, returning to her husband. He did not reply. ‘Of course she always sounds funny about Ascham. You don’t think …? No, I suppose they couldn’t really, it must be just work, still he does look sometimes …’

  ‘No matchmaking,’ said her husband hurriedly, swallowing what he had in his mouth and wishing he could have spoken sooner. ‘Charmian’s dynamite in her relations with men and the sooner you know it the better … Keep away.’

  ‘There’s William Carter,’ mused Grizel. ‘ I know for a fact he asked her to and she said no. Why should she do that if she’s not interested in Ascham?’

  ‘She doesn’t like Carter, that’s why,’ said her husband. ‘I don’t myself.’

  ‘She doesn’t like Ascham …’

  ‘I don’t think it’s necessary she should like him,’ said her husband slowly. ‘I think that may have very little to do with it… It didn’t with me.’

  ‘What!’ cried Grizel outraged.

  They stared at each other. They were still learning about each other, and sometimes in his heart it pleased him to shock his Grizel a little. My inner man is not always exactly what you think, he wanted to say to her, a little wilder, a little more perverse, even a little more in love than you know.

  Charmian drew a circle in pencil on the pad in front of her and then in the middle of the circle placed a dot which represented the dog, Ascham and her own feelings at one and the same time. Grizel almost certainly knew more than she was passing on and this probably related to Rupert Ascham.

  ‘I’ll show him I didn’t waste yesterday,’ she thought grimly. After her interview in London she had gone to East Tweem before returning home, driving herself round and round the streets. It was a stony place. Pavements, houses, shops and factories all seemed the same dull colour. The Grey family had lived here before coming to Deerham Hills and now Mrs Grey had returned. It looked as though she was searching for someone.

  Charmian had toured the streets, silently observing. She was beginning to ask herself if it was really the other way round and someone was searching for Mrs Grey. But there had been nothing in East Tweem to give her a clue one way or another.

  To her professional eye however it had been clear that there was more police activity than was normal: a police car patrolling up and down the main shopping area, a policewoman in uniform emerging from a large store and going into the one next door, a constable at the cross-roads.

  Charmian picked up the photograph of Arlette Grey which she had brought home with her.

  ‘You aren’t dead, you know,’ she said aloud, staring at the face. ‘You can’t be.’

  And deliberately she put her hand, palm down, on the face as if to obscure it.

  She heard a car draw up outside and a quick peal at her doorbell. It rang again as she still sat there.

  ‘All right, I’m coming.’ But for a moment she still didn’t move. She hadn’t seen Rupert Ascham for several days. She smoothed her hair and stood up. In the last year she had grown much thinner and it became her. The eager, graceful lines of her face were almost beautiful. She stood there for a moment thinking. She had so much on her mind – the Peeping Tom business, Nan King, all the other cases which involved her. And for a moment she looked just what she was: an anxious girl with her career to make.

  The bell rang again.

  ‘What does a dog do but dig,’ she found herself thinking strangely, as she moved forw
ard.

  Behind her the house lay dark and uncurtained except for the room where she had been sitting, which was full of light.

  While Charmian was in London, Doris Burgen had twice tried to telephone her. The trouble with Doris was that she took on Burgen’s conscience as well as her own.

  ‘Better to tell her, better to tell her,’ she muttered feverishly while she waited for the call. She was watching Burgen through the window. He was gardening placidly. ‘Why doesn’t he stick to gardening?’ she asked herself. But even Tennyson had his rosebud garden of girls, and it had proved an exceedingly murderous one too. ‘Maybe I’ll emigrate to Africa or the West Indies,’ she decided wildly, as the second call failed to produce Charmian, ‘and leave the whole lot behind.’

  Doris’s feeling that it would be as well to tell Charmian anything she had to tell rather than wait for it to come out was a shrewd one. Charmian was investigating her impression that she had heard of Burgen before. Eventually she would find her answer.

  For the moment Doris’s own problem, her description of the blouse which Arlette Grey was wearing as ‘ blue sprigged’, was something she tried to put aside.

  ‘I may be quite mistaken,’ she told herself, ignoring the strong visual memory she had of blue flowers against a paler background. ‘Or I may have seen such a blouse somewhere.’

  Even as she put the telephone down and abandoned her attempts to reach Charmian, she heard Burgen’s favourite piece of music, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, start up, very loud, thus suggesting to her that her troubles were not over. And yet surely there was hope in Beethoven? Wouldn’t Mahler have been a worse sign?

  Doris was looking for Charmian: Tom Gilroy was hoping to avoid her. He thought she saw too much, he feared those sharp blue eyes, unaware how interesting and unusual a character he seemed to Charmian. There was a side of her that would always be drawn to people who created things: poems, like Tom; bad sculpture, like a man she had once loved. Her taste was unsteady, she could not always distinguish between the true and the false.

  Tom stayed in his house, aware in every nerve of the police activity all round him, and got on with the arrangements for Con’s funeral. The police had told him that this could now take place. There had been a short formal inquest on Con which was now adjourned. He had worse dreams than ever. Several times as he packed away Con’s clothes, having refused Doris’s offers, he stopped because his heart was beating faster and faster. He felt like an animal prepared for the slaughter. First Con, then him. That was the way it would be.

  Sick and slightly mad as he was, he nevertheless had a specific reason for wishing to avoid Charmian.

  She reminded him too much of Con.

  The bell rang again impatiently. Dogs dig, bells ring: it was like a nursery rhyme.

  Charmian went out to meet Ascham, leaving the house lighted and unlocked, ignoring Cathy’s discreet warning. The house was open and vulnerable to anyone.

  Chapter Ten

  OF all the people with whom Charmian’s mind was at that moment concerned Tom Gilroy was not one. Rupert Ascham was thinking about Tom Gilroy; Charmian was not.

  She met Ascham on the doorstep. He loomed up there, blocking the light, a big man.

  ‘Hello.’ When it came to the point she was pleased to see him and it showed in her voice, more perhaps than she knew. At any rate Ascham saw it and smiled.

  Charmian saw the smile and misinterpreted it. ‘ I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Your friend Grizel, no doubt.’

  Charmian was silent. She could see a car standing at the kerb and hear that its engine was still running. There was urgency in that sound. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Several things have happened. Too much is happening too quickly. First, Mrs Grey has been seen in Deerham Hills and we’ve lost her again. Secondly, Pratt has uncovered a drug ring in the town – that’s his worry. Thirdly and lastly, this is ours: a dog came home to his owner’s house in Laurel Rise with this in his mouth.’ From an envelope he drew a piece of blue flowered cotton, muddy and earth-stained.

  ‘It’s part of a sleeve,’ said Charmian, staring at it. ‘Near the cuff.’

  ‘I’m going to make that dog show me where it got it if I have to stay with it for a week. That’s why I want you. You know this dog.’

  ‘It’s the Carters’ dog, I suppose? Don’t they know where it’s been?’

  Ascham shook his head. ‘ This dog lives a free life. The Carters say they sometimes don’t see it from one end of the day to the other. Mind you, in a household like they’ve got, anything could happen.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Sitting beside him in the car, Charmian felt confident and strong, able to do anything. Her young sister could have told her to watch this feeling. Grizel would have done so.

  ‘I want you to coax this dog along. Go a walk with him, see if you can get him to understand.’ He looked at her hopefully.

  ‘I was doing some work on my own yesterday,’ started Charmian.

  ‘Yes, so I gathered,’ said Ascham, swinging the car round expertly. ‘We’ll talk about that later.’

  Charmian pushed the hint aside. ‘I don’t think the girl Arlette is dead. I think possibly she killed Con Gilroy, and I’m certain the girl Mary Lou Pallas doesn’t exist.’

  ‘That can’t be,’ said Ascham shortly. ‘ You forget: several people know her.’

  ‘I don’t believe the girl Arlette Grey is dead.’

  Ascham smiled. ‘ There’s plenty of fish in that sea of yours,’ he said amiably. ‘You’re muddling yourself.’

  ‘So I think we’ll find a bundle of clothes and nothing else.’

  ‘As long as we find them,’ said Ascham, stopping the car.

  It was apparent that Ascham and his staff, the one silent man who went everywhere with him, and the young detective Forbes he had co-opted at Deerham Hills had taken over in Laurel Rise.

  Bobbie sat on the pavement outside the Carter house with a policeman on either side of him. Emily Carter watched him from behind the garden gate.

  ‘I knew he’d found something as soon as I saw that piece of stuff in his mouth,’ she was saying in an excited voice to the young detective.

  ‘I wish we knew what he’d found, ma’am.’

  ‘I was right to let you know though, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Oh yes, certainly.’

  ‘Is it true Mrs Gilroy didn’t kill herself but was murdered?’ asked Emily, lowering her voice. ‘That’s what they’re all saying?’

  ‘Are they?’ Forbes looked anxiously at his silent companion and wished Ascham would arrive.

  ‘Well, it all fits in, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’ With relief he saw Ascham’s car travelling quickly towards him.

  ‘There’s a strangler about. I expect you’ll find Arlette Grey and she’ll have been strangled too.’

  Forbes just shook his head.

  Laurence Marks and Ben Cox, who had been watching from their sitting-room window, came out when they saw Ascham and Charmian. After a moment’s hesitation Doris, accompanied by Burgen, came as well.

  Bobbie, still crouching on the pavement, began to growl softly. He didn’t like crowds.

  ‘Can you control this dog, Mrs Carter?’ asked Ascham looking at Emily.

  Emily shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. I’ve telephoned my husband, though. He ought to be here soon.’

  ‘I can manage him,’ said Laurence. ‘ He’s quite easy really.’ Ben gave a soft laugh. Bobbie watched them both alertly. ‘I wouldn’t call him clever, though, you might not be able to make him understand what you want.’

  Bobbie rose slowly to his feet and the circle round him moved back. He looked enormous.

  ‘What sort of a dog is he?’ asked Charmian.

  Emily looked thoughtful. ‘I think he’s a sort of Airedale, something like that anyway.’

  ‘There’s a touch of polar-bear surely?’

  ‘The colour’s wrong,’ said Laur
ence judicially.

  ‘The physique’s right,’ said Charmian, watching Bobbie lumber towards her.

  —I shan’t speak to her now, thought Doris, looking at Charmian; in the first place, it wouldn’t be the right time, and secondly she looks less sympathetic than I thought. And in fact the brief sight she had had of the torn piece of blue sprigged material had made her feel quite sick.

  Tom came slowly out of his house towards them. He looked as if he was walking in his sleep. Perhaps he was.

  ‘There’s a shed in the field behind the house,’ he said, in a drugged voice. ‘Bobbie’s been over there. I saw him. I thought I ought to tell you.

  ‘I thought I ought to tell you,’ he repeated into the silence that fell.

  The rotten floorboards had been wrenched up, the cavity disclosed, the bundle wrapped in an old blanket dragged out.

  ‘So I was wrong,’ said Charmian. She felt sick. ‘She is dead.’ She could see an arm in the remains of the blue blouse.

  She looked away. ‘ You know I thought she killed Con Gilroy. I was sure of it. I thought she was still alive and a murderess.’

  They both heard a strange almost gobbling noise behind them.

  ‘Keep that man out,’ shouted Ascham.

  There was a scuffle and Tom was dragged away.

  ‘I only wanted to see,’ he was saying. To Ascham and Charmian he sounded like some predatory bird. ‘Can I see her hair?’

  Chapter Eleven

  TOM knew himself that he was really an actor caught up in a terrible plot whose working he could neither quite foresee nor quite prevent. At times it felt a mere shadow play, his mind would not allow him to admit the reality of it. And then at another moment, he knew it was real, all right, he was damned like Faust and for much the same reason, having entered into a hideous compact.

  ‘I only wanted to see her hair and then her face,’ he muttered to himself as he returned alone to his own house. ‘ Oh, Con, Con, whose face will she have?’