Ashes From Ashes

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “What about the little girl Kate? If you taught her baking, she must have thought highly of you.”

  “Too long ago.” Iris shook her head. “She’ll be thirty-two or three by now. Such a pretty girl, big brown eyes, and shining brown curls. But I shall look forward to meeting Joyce. I’m terribly grateful.”

  They were interrupted by the white jacketed doctor with the stethoscope necklace, and Sylvia followed him from the room. While they spoke together briefly in the corridor, Harry, who was running out of chat, said, “Odd. Our Kate is about thirty or thirty-two with big brown eyes and brown curls. She loves cooking and makes glorious cakes, and she’s married to an identical twin. They could just about be the same person, especially if the triplet died in childhood.”

  Outside the doctor was saying, “I agree with such an ideal arrangement, Mrs Joyce and it’s an excellent idea. But Mrs Little will stay with us for another few days for tests and an MRI. She’s been in a very bad way, you know. I believe she was quite close to death. I presume she’s your aunt?”

  “Oh no,” Sylvia was surprised. Her thoughts had been wandering. “Oh, no. Just a friend. Well, not even a friend really. We met her, and she seemed in desperate need of help. So we helped. But then she disappeared again.”

  Doctor Barley murmured the correct words and strode off. Sylvia went back into the small white room. “Now you’re a lot better,” Sylvia told her, “they’re going to bring in a television. It will help pass long days since they want you to stay another week. But,” and she sat down again next to Harry, “I was thinking of something entirely different. This girl Kate you taught to bake. She’s probably the same Kate we know. Everything sounds the same except the third twin.”

  “I suggested the same,” chuckled Harry. “The twin who married our Kate is Maurice, and his twin is Mark.”

  Iris smiled wide. “Then it’s the same people. How nice. Yes indeed, Kate married Maurice, and then there was Mark, and the little triplet was – Milton. I remember all those ‚m’s.“

  “And did the poor child die?”

  Iris leaned back with a sigh, still propped against the pillows and restricted by the drip. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he might have. I believe he was not quite normal. You see, it was terribly sad. The mother went into labour at home and didn’t have proper medical help. The first little boy was born. But the second wouldn’t come. Too big, or upside down. I’m not sure. I think Agnes said he was sideways, but they couldn’t get him out. They thought they’d have to do a Caesarean, but it was going to take ages to get her to hospital. Well, I don’t know all the details, but they called for the ambulance and then they managed to pull the second twin free. But they didn’t know there was a third one, you see, and it was only little, and it had been all squashed up by number two. Poor little creature was born all crumpled up and broken legs and fractures and a funny head. Of course, I never saw him, but Agnes was in tears when Kate told her the story.”

  “And the mother died?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Iris, closing her eyes. “It must have been a terrible day, and so sad for the father. But I never knew him either. Evidently he went away and put the children with a foster family.”

  Nicholas Ostopolis stood silently at the end of the first narrow gurney and regarded the body. Following long study at university and further study during medical practice of many kinds, he had gradually become one of the top pathologists in the country. Homicide was not an unusual occurrence in any populated area, but he had never before seen anything like this. The work of examination and forensic diagnosis fascinated him, but the psychology behind such a situation disgusted him.

  To his right were three more trolleys, to his left two others. More lined the walls. This was the largest of the rooms at the Forensic Lab, and it was the last opportunity to compare and make the final study of the Chimney Killer’s work. Ostopolis was a short, slim man with intensive brown eyes and not a great deal of hair. Being on the bothersome end of middle age, he ran his lab as he saw fit, and rarely conformed to any system that involved more paperwork than he could get away with to hand over to his subordinates, but a large collection of notes clipped to a board rested at the foot of each table, headed with the identity of the body resting there. But the condition of the remains varied and most were sadly unrecognisable.

  Marley Webster lay naked, badly decomposed but with her dark hair and the left side of her face almost intact. She had been buried under a bush some years previously, and the ground there had remained dry. It was clear that she had been strangled and that was assumed to be the cause of death. Although there was also a brutal smash to the right side of her skull, which Ostopolis judged to have been antemortem. Her parents had both died in previous years, and her sister, now living in Scotland, had been informed.

  Sharon Bell had been discovered buried under the same bush. Her body was in a state of more advanced decomposition but had been identified by DNA.

  The remains removed from the chimney cavity in the principal room of the fake-Tudor building, had now also been identified. The most recent, Samantha Winston, had died of strangulation but her body showed signs of severe malnutrition, beatings, and the marks of other mistreatment. Her breast had been burned, her face had been scarred with the shape of a star carved into one cheek premortem. Wires had been inserted into her thighs, and several fingers were missing, the stumps closed with children’s Winnie-the-Poo plasters.

  Her grieving parents had identified her, and would never recover.

  Penelope Stent had died at age sixteen. Now she lay naked and bruised on the lab gurney. The signs of her misuse were less obvious, for her body was badly decomposed and subsequent fires lit in the grate below her unusual grave had singed her legs and de-fleshed her arms.

  Vivien Riley, identified by DNA, was no longer recognisable, but Roberta Laurence and River White had been wedged further up the chimney and were untouched by fire. Their naked bodies now lay side by side, decomposition having only partially disfigured their sleep. Their next of kin had come to identify each girl and had collapsed in misery, yet these two bodies had supplied the most information to Ostopolis, and he had discovered a vague affection for the sad little faces, and the knowledge they had brought him. The two girls most recently discovered in a totally different building had also been quickly identified. Beatrice Barrett and Joan Caveat had died within the past year, but were marked with numerous signs of energetic and vile torture. Beatrice had been twenty two but had looked younger, and had been seriously autistic. Joan was seventeen and worked at her father’s shoe store. He had committed suicide when she disappeared. Her mother now wept endlessly.

  Ostopolis recorded the cause of death as starvation for the tiny Beatrice. Joan had been strangled.

  On the last trolley at the far end of the silent room lay two small scatterings of what seemed to be ashes. But these had been carefully laid out, disclosing the teeth of two different girls, and the small remains of bones, and the shattered jaw bone from a battered skull. Paula Crabb had been twenty four years old when she disappeared when walking home from church. Joan Marshall had been eighteen and was hitchhiking up from Somerset to visit her grandmother in Cheltenham. They had both been identified by DNA from their teeth. Their families had long guessed they were dead.

  Many other girls had gone missing in the area over long years, but there had been other killers in the same area, some even more gruesome such as Fred and Rose West, and more recently Lionel Sullivan. Therefore the loss of a family member, after a year or so, was inevitably mourned, being acknowledged as probable murder. Eve Daish’s parents still hoped desperately that she was alive.

  Nicholas Ostopolis closed the door of the lab, sighed deeply, and plodded downstairs to the police canteen.

  “I remember it well. It was so exciting,” whispered Iris. “Just in the pub, you know, The George over the other side of Bourton. They had three fruit machines. That was the old days when you pulled a lever and everything
jangled. I used to like that.”

  Sylvia nodded. “I doubt I’ve ever been in the George, but I know what you mean.”

  “I wasn’t very happily married. He was very controlling. I was a shy little thing, so I didn’t mind that, but I just wasn’t allowed to develop any personality. At least, that’s how I felt.” Iris was mumbling as if wishing to prove what she was saying. “But then at the George, while Greg was drinking heavily and laughing about some young girl at the bar, I put a coin in the one-armed bandit, and it went clank, clank, clatter with the most amazing sound of tumbling coins. I just stood there. Staring. I couldn’t believe it. Greg never gave me any money except the housekeeping, and I had to account for every penny of that. This seemed like another world. I filled my hands with money. It felt like precious gold. I was tingling all over. I squashed as much as I could in my handbag, but then Greg saw me and hurried over. He took all the rest, and he thought that was all there was, so he kept the little bits he’d seen in my hands,t and I secretly felt rich.”

  Sylvia nodded. When her much despised husband had died and left her a fortune, she had felt like that. It had been almost sexual. Her legs had tingled, and her eyes had misted over. She still remembered it. She hadn’t ever felt the same again until meeting Harry. “I understand,” Sylvia said. “How much did you get?”

  “A hundred and three pounds,” Iris breathed. “That was a fortune to me back then. I stayed awake all night and wondered if this was going to change my life. It did, of course, but not the way I had hoped. I was such a silly ninny. I thought – well, I thought silly things. I went out the next day and bought a new coat. I still wear it though it’s terribly old and out of fashion now. Greg never noticed. He never looked at me anyway.”

  “He was too busy spending his own sudden bonanza,” Sylvia pointed out.

  Iris nodded. “I was so happy for a week. Then one night, wearing my new coat and shoes, I went to a small casino up a lot of stairs in a back street a long bus ride from where I was living. It was terribly dark and so exciting. There was loud music and all those chinkling sounds of falling money. I put in fifteen pounds, which frightened me because it was so much. But the risk and the fear was even more exciting, so I went on with my knees shaking. This was all I had left from my first win. It was nearly all gone when the machine went crazy. Clankity clash, and down came the money into my hands. Not as much this time, but more than I’d spent. I remember it so clearly. Thirty pounds. I thought this was proof. I was going to win and win and end up rich. I kissed the machine. I saw a young man sniggering at me, but he was losing, and I was winning.”

  “And that started it?”

  “Oh yes. I kept creeping back to the same place. Then I discovered other places, even more exciting. Sometimes I won a little bit, and that always gave me hope. But then I started putting in some of the housekeeping money, and when I lost it all, then I couldn’t cook dinner. I had to borrow from Agnes next door. But then she said she couldn’t afford anymore and Greg found out.”

  “You didn’t try to stop?” Sylvia asked.

  “Oh yes, a hundred times.” Iris shrank back down under the stiffly laundered hospital sheets. “I swore to Greg and Agnes that I would never, ever gamble again. I swore it to myself too. Then I couldn’t help thinking – well, just one more time. I’d win big – and then I’d stop forever.”

  “I suppose,” said Sylvia softly, patting Iris’s white gowned shoulder, “you never won anything more.”

  “Sometimes a pound or two. Usually nothing. Eleven pounds once, but that just proved I was onto a new winning streak, and I went again the next night. I started going during the day so Greg wouldn’t see me, but then he went to the pub every night, and I sat and cried.” Iris was crying again now. “All my own fault. You see what a horrible fool I’ve been. Greg left. The next year he divorced me and chucked me out of the house. I asked if I could move in with Agnes and she was sweet and hugged me but said no, she was sorry, but only one night. So then I went to a B & B, but after two weeks I couldn’t pay my rent. I moved into another one, really dirty and tiny and I never bought any more food and just ate the morning breakfast. I started getting Social Security but then I got thrown out of the B&B and I had to start finding sheltered places to sleep. Recently, well, I got worse and worse. I didn’t mind the thought of dying – it seemed like a good escape. But now I’m so blessed, Sylvia dear. You’ve been an angel, you and Harry too, and now Joyce. She’s had a dreadful life. Me too, but mine was my own fault, and hers wasn’t.”

  “I don’t think yours was either,” Sylvia stood smiling down at the little frowning pink face on the pillows. “I think that sort of addiction is a drug just like heroin and after a miserable life, you can’t help chasing improvements.”

  “I don’t think I like the idea of taking heroin.”

  “No.” Sylvia grinned. “So you see, you were very intelligent. You didn’t take heroin when you could have. You just lost a little money.”

  “Kind words.” Iris sniffed. “But I’ve heard about all that denial stuff. I have to admit what I did.”

  “I have to go. Harry’s waiting for me.” Sylvia turned towards the door. “But I’ll be back on Friday. They say you can leave Friday, and I’ll bring Joyce with me to usher you home.”

  “You’ve told her?” whispered Iris. “I mean, that I was an addict. But not any more.”

  Sylvia nodded. “You can work out the future together. Remember, when Lionel Sullivan is back in prison, Joyce can return to her own home. Whether you go with her or not depends on many things, especially on whether you’ve gloriously squashed the addiction. Other things too. You may not like her.”

  “She may not like me.”

  “But you’re both easy-going and you both want friends.”

  Harry was waiting in the car, parked in the pick-up bay outside the hospital. Sylvia flopped into the front passenger seat. “Thank all the angels and all the demons that I’ve never been an addict,” she mumbled to Harry’s ear as he leaned over to kiss her cheek. It was raining, and the water streamed down the windscreen, but the cold had softened. “Not for heroin or cocaine nor booze nor gambling. Not even exercise or sex.”

  “Shame about the sex.”

  Rochester Manor’s hundred windows ran with reflections in both glass and rainwater. Harry and Sylvia hurried inside, bringing a whistle of wind with them.

  “Oh, it’s you two at last,” said Lavender, trotting by with a tray of teapot and teacups. “Arthur was looking for you. Arthur, with David in tow.”

  Not an accustomed greeting. “They’ll find us,” said Harry. “We’ll be changing wet clothes first, and if none of that tea’s for us, can we have some later?”

  “Not too much later,” added Sylvia. “We’ll be down in five or ten minutes.”

  They were twelve minutes, and the tea was waiting for them. So were Arthur and David. Sylvia offered tea which Harry was pouring, but David said he’d sooner have a cream cake, although there weren’t any on offer.

  “That lady makes them,” David said. “The lady with the shop who married a teacher.”

  “But the shop’s closed,” remembered Sylvia. “At least it was last time I was there. Does anyone know if it’s reopened?”

  “It hasn’t,” said Arthur, looking morose. “And I asked, so I know the teacher went on long sick-leave. Both gone. I don’t know no more.”

  “Is that what you wanted to tell us?” asked Harry, bemused.

  David shook his head. “T’was me as wanted to tell you. See, I remembered. I got a good remembrance.”

  “We had this car-boot sale, see,” nodded Arthur. “I told you. I sold the white fluffy rug. Alpaca it was, really nice, but it had sort of silk in it too. I never took any notice of who bought anything, but David remembered. He reckoned it was the teacher’s wife. She didn’t have a shop back then, she was just a nice young lady with a nice young husband.”

  “The lady wanted the rug,” David said eagerly. “She paid
me lots.”

  “And then I sold other stuff too, and one was an acro-prop,” Arthur continued. “It was good for holding stuff up, like straw bundles when I was younger on the farm, but I didn’t need it no more, so I sold it at the same sale out on the roadside. I was talking to Lavender this morning, and she talked about acro-props and those nasty murders.”

  “Go on,” and then Harry held his breath.

  “It was the teacher as bought the acro-prop,” he said. “Maurice Howard was the name. That’s right, ain’t it, Dave lad?”

  “Yes, Dad,” David said through his smile. “See, I’s good at ever so many things right. I ain’t stoopid, is I?”

  “You’re bloody brilliant,” said Sylvia. “I’ll order some cakes from Cavendish House. But first of all, I have to phone Morrison. The police will be delighted to know about this.”

  “I didn’t do nuffing wrong,” said David suddenly, stepping back.

  “Nothing wrong,” said Arthur and Harry together.

  “Everything right,” said Sylvia, pulling her phone from her pocket and hurrying back up the stairs, Harry immediately behind.

  A brief phone call, but Morrison was most certainly interested. So was Sylvia. “ Her husband buys the acro-thing. Would Kate have guessed anything?” But Sylvia browned. “She knew, didn’t she? She knew everything. That’s why she’s been giving us hints for ages, and we’ve been too stupid to put them all together and guess what she’s been warning us about.”

  “No.” Harry was squeezing his own phone as though hoping for further guidance. “Kate;’s sweet. If she’d known about something that sick, she’d have found a way to tell the police. And the hints she gave us – well, they weren’t obvious, were they!”