Witching Murder

by Jennie Melville

  She pushed open the front door, hesitated for a moment, then went in. Charmian stayed looking.

  ‘The light’s gone.’

  And it had, there was no light at all now, except that coming from the street lamp.

  She followed Dolly into the house, which smelt at once cold and stuffy.

  Dolly put up a hand to the wall switch and flooded the hall with a clear white glare from a central lamp. ‘Perhaps it was some sort of optical illusion.’

  ‘Rubbish. I saw it,’ said Charmian. ‘And so did you. Turn out the light so we can look.’

  ‘There it is again.’

  Now they could both see a soft red glow from the kitchen. Charmian went forward.

  On one wall of the kitchen there was a plug which glowed.

  ‘Damn,’ said Dolly with relief. ‘I know what that is. It’s a kind of safety plug. Used in nurseries, that sort of thing. You can burn it night and day. In the daytime I suppose I didn’t notice it. Wonder why she had it?’

  ‘Didn’t like the dark?’

  ‘Not sure if I like it myself,’ said Dolly. ‘Not in this place.’

  ‘Says something about both of us, the way we reacted,’ said Charmian. Or perhaps it was the house. Certainly there was something disagreeable about its ordinariness. She would not want to live there herself.

  She put the kitchen light on. A long narrow strip of tubing over a central cooking area opened the room up with a cold dazzle. There was a window with a view of the garden over the sink, while on the right-hand wall there was a door with glass panels which led to an outer lobby.

  ‘She had a deep freeze out there,’ said Dolly. ‘And there’s a door to the garden.’

  ‘Anything in the deep freeze?’

  ‘Empty.’

  On the floor was the chalked shape where Vivien had sprawled.

  ‘She was on her back with her arms on her body?’

  Dolly nodded. ‘Yes. Head slightly to one side. To the left, as you see. It wasn’t a natural pose. She’d been laid out.’ Dolly paused. ‘It’s part of what I didn’t like.’ Only part of it though, she decided. ‘And then there were these objects laid out round her. Some of them had been moved and put in the sink, but you could see where they’d been.’

  ‘Witchcraft symbols?’

  Dolly hesitated. ‘Could have been. I don’t know enough about it to be sure.’

  ‘Are you all right, Dolly? I don’t mean here and now, but in yourself, in general.’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Just the way you look.’

  ‘Well, a bit loveless,’ Dolly admitted. She leaned against the sink. ‘You know how it goes.’

  Charmian nodded. She did know.

  ‘I suppose I was interested in these women and their white magic. Wanted to see what it amounted to. If it worked.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I half thought it did.’

  ‘But you’re a professional!’ Charmian was incredulous. ‘You don’t think like that. Nature doesn’t deal in magic.’

  ‘Call it a professional interest,’ said Dolly drily. ‘Shall we go?’

  She seemed to want to get away. Which is exactly what worries me, Charmian told herself.

  ‘Not finished yet,’ she said.

  Charmian walked round the kitchen, studying it. Apart from signs of police activity it was neat enough, with the same unused, uncared for look of the rest of the house. Whatever else about her, she was willing to guess that Vivien had not been a happy woman.

  On the kitchen table was a cardboard box.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Dolly took off the lid. ‘This must have got left behind. Damn.’ Inside the box was a small, black sodden object. Vaguely humanoid in shape, with a shock of hair. It seemed to be made of black wax, probably a candle, melted, then shaped into a little creature.

  ‘We had to get the plumber in.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘The lavatory was blocked. When the chap put his arm down he pulled that doll out. She must have tried to flush it away.’

  ‘Don’t wonder, gave her a shock, I should think. This looks like black magic,’ said Charmian, picking up the malevolent little object.

  Then she said, ‘I’m going upstairs for a look round.’

  ‘You won’t find much. Only one room is furnished. The Forensics discovered no blood traces. Not much of anything. It’s a bedroom. Viv slept there, of course, so there are her clothes and make-up. Then there’s the bathroom. Bit spartan and very clean.’

  ‘You stay here. I’ll go up.’

  Dolly nodded. ‘Right.’

  Her manner troubled Charmian. ‘ Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Not about the women,’ said Dolly slowly, as if she could say more, wanted too, indeed, but needed encouragement.

  ‘The man, then? The one they call their warlock?’

  ‘If he is one,’ said Dolly. ‘I don’t know what to make of him. But he has something. And I think I’ve fallen for him.’

  ‘Does he know? I mean, have you …’ Charmian hesitated.

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that. I haven’t and he hasn’t. But he may know. He’s quick enough. And it’s clouding my judgement. That’s why I wanted your help.’

  It had taken long enough for her to get it out. But no easy confession to make.

  ‘I’d like to meet him,’ said Charmian. ‘All of them, in fact. I shall need to if I am going to help. And it ought to be cleared officially. I’m on leave at the moment.’ As you probably know, but she did not say so aloud.

  Dolly hesitated. She knew something of what had happened to Charmian, it had been talked about.

  Two months earlier the boyfriend of a woman whom Charmian had put away for armed robbery had tried first to rape and then shoot her. In the struggle, Charmian had shot him dead. The inquiry that followed cleared her completely, she was praised for her bravery, her work did not suffer, she felt unmoved. Then one day when she picked up her pen, her hand simply refused to write.

  Working police officers do not have this sort of illness, so she carried on, tapping out her work notes on the typewriter with her left hand. For all other uses, such as eating, the other hand seemed willing.

  A thorough medical examination revealed nothing wrong physically. ‘Your body is telling you something, I’m not sure what,’ said the examining doctor. ‘But the best thing I can advise is to take a holiday.’ A psychologist, trained to deal with the traumas of police officers after a killing, was at hand to help, but he saw at once that this woman would resist the suggestion, she needed careful handling.

  Charmian had leave due to her. She took a month. Within the first week she was bored stiff.

  It was probably written all over her and Dolly could see it.

  ‘I’ll work on it,’ Dolly said. ‘ I have approached Elman already, not my best friend but he has his good side. You are the expert on women and crime. And the Force has used you before.’

  ‘It’s what I’m here for,’ said Charmian.

  She stood there thinking. Something that had been resting below the surface of her consciousness suddenly rose up. ‘But why did the light seem to go out?’

  ‘I’ve been wondering that,’ admitted Dolly.

  Charmian said slowly, ‘Someone could have been standing in front of it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And then moved away.’ She put up a hand. ‘Can you feel a draught?’

  She moved over to open the inner door of the kitchen. The back door was swinging slightly in a night breeze.

  ‘Someone has been here.’

  And had now gone.

  Charmian examined the lock: it had not been forced. ‘ Thought you said you had the locks changed?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Who else has got keys, then?’

  ‘I gave a set to an estate agents. Blood and Sons. Vivien only rented this place. They said they needed them.’

  ‘I think you may have made a mi
stake there,’ said Charmian, straightening herself. ‘All the same, I don’t think it was someone from the estate agents who was round here tonight. You’ll have to check.’ She began to move round the kitchen. ‘Anything changed here? Anything gone?’

  ‘No, all looks the same.’

  ‘What about the sitting room?’

  Dolly went to make a survey, presently returning to shake her head. ‘I can’t see that anything’s been touched.’

  Miserably she felt her career was taking a rapid dive down to nowhere.

  ‘We’d better look upstairs.’

  The bathroom door was wide open, but was empty of everything except soap and towels. A set of blue towels and a set in white. Both looked dry and untouched.

  In the bedroom, however, several drawers in the dressing table had been pulled open. By the bed, the frilled pink lamp had been knocked over and

  with the impact the light had come on.

  ‘He or she was up here,’ said Charmian.

  Dolly was morose. ‘ We missed something. Or he wouldn’t have

  had to come back to collect it.’ She gave a despondent shrug. ‘ I’m

  not going to enjoy writing the report on this.’

  She was first down the stairs. ‘ Nothing like this has ever happened

  to me before.’

  It felt like a rotten plot to ruin her. This had definitely never

  happened to her before.

  Someone had put a spell on her.

  As Dolly went through the back door to check on the garden,

  Charmian followed.

  By the freezer, a small upright chest, she paused. The door was

  slightly ajar.

  ‘Did you say the freezer was empty?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dolly called back.

  ‘Well, it’s not now.’

  Charmian opened the door wider. Inside, bolt upright, tail lashing,

  emerald green eyes shining, sat a big black cat.

  He sprang past her with a curse, lashing out with his paw at

  her as he went, drawing blood.

  ‘You devil,’ said Charmian.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I’ll help you in this case,’ said Charmian, as they stood outside the house in Dulcet Road. ‘Semi-officially, of course, but you’ll still have to clear it with the powers that be. No treading on toes.’ Or not more than she could help. She would probably do so anyway, it had been a knack of hers all through her working life, but at least she had prepared her defences. This she had learnt to do; Dolly, she thought, was still learning. Women had to learn more and harder, that seemed to be the rule, and no kicking it.

  I’m doing this for Dolly Barstow, she told herself, not because I am bored, not because I am madly interested in this troupe of white witches – Eagle, Peacock and the rest – and certainly not because I am terrified of thinking about my slightly dead right hand. Which was actually rather sore and hot this day, as if it was still taking an interest in life, albeit a painful one. This sense of its independent life was a secret she nursed inside her. Not the sort of thing you said aloud, not if you were a working police officer with a reputation for sanity to hang on to.

  ‘I’m grateful,’ said Dolly, who in general hated admitting gratitude to anyone. ‘ Tomorrow I have to be in court, but I’ll let you have a copy of what material I have got so far. The scientific stuff is slow coming in as usual, of course.’ All the police scientific departments were apt to cry that they were overworked or that their computer was hiccuping and they ought to have another, if not two. All true, no doubt, but fruitful cause for strife. ‘Keep it to yourself, of course.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘Of course. What happened to the cat?’

  ‘Got away,’ said Dolly briefly. It would do, cats like that did, a professional escaper if ever she saw one. Probably far away and in another country by now.

  ‘Where will you start?’ she asked, as she dropped Charmian back at her house in Maid of Honour Row. Even as she put the question, she realised she was being tactless. You didn’t talk that way to a distinguished colleague like Charmian Daniels. It just showed how this case was getting to her.

  But Charmian took no offence. ‘With your notes and the work you’ve done already. Then I’d like to find out how someone entered the house in Dulcet Road. You’ve got a key. So have the estate agents. I might take a look at them.’

  A flat package dropped through Charmian’s letterbox early next morning while she and Muff were still asleep. Dolly Barstow had made an early start.

  Muff, catlike, heard the noise at the door and trotted down to inspect. Nothing to eat, she decided sadly. Could have been a dead mouse or a bird delivered by a kindly God, one should always be on the look out for such things, although God usually handed such offerings on a special blue plate. She sniffed delicately at the package: a dull smell.

  Her duty done, she returned to the bedroom to awake God with a patted paw which felt, if you were on the receiving side of it, like cotton wool with pins in it, thus to remind Charmian that a day begun with a saucer of warm milk was a day begun well.

  ‘Coming.’ Charmian heaved herself from the bed; she was putting on weight lately, not much, but noticeable, and it annoyed her. A side-effect of idleness. ‘Milk for you, coffee for me.’

  On the way to the kitchen she picked up the post, which had now arrived, together with the newspaper, and Dolly Barstow’s packet.

  There was a card from Humphrey in the post: he had been absent for two months in Washington, occupied on one of those important but nameless missions that engaged him. He knew what had taken place in Charmian’s life, about which he had telephoned and sent loving letters, but he had not come home. She accepted it, work was work, but it rankled. Perhaps this was part of her trouble. She wanted, in the most feminine and uncharacteristic way, to come first above everything with him.

  The kitchen was a friendly, pleasant room where Charmian spent a lot of her time. Under the influence of her godchild and occasional lodger, Kate Cooper (an architectural student at present in Delhi observing the imperial buildings of Lutyens), Charmian had remodelled it and could now sit here admiring her high tech pipes and drains. She sometimes lost her way among all her equipment, some unused, but on the whole she was proud of herself for having achieved it. Considering its apparent simplicity of design it had been amazingly expensive.

  Today she found her way unerringly to the new coffee machine which ground the beans before delivering the brew. She could pour coffee and butter toast with her right hand. How strange that it refused to write her name.

  Dolly Barstow’s folder of documents told her what she needed to know.

  First, the neutral, toneless medical report.

  Vivien Charles had died from one major stab wound to the chest, delivered with some force, but she had also received several other savage punctures in her throat and abdomen, from any one of which she might have died, had not the blood spurted so speedily from a main artery.

  She had been attacked from the front, the attacker standing close to her. From the angle of the wounds, it could be deduced that the attacker was taller than the victim. The shape of the wounds fitted in with the knife found beside her. This knife appeared to be one of a set of Sabatier kitchen knives hanging on the kitchen wall.

  After she had breakfasted while reading Dolly’s dossier, Charmian dressed herself in what she called her ‘Windsor working clothes’, summer-style: a cream linen skirt, a pale shirt and matching sweater. They were the sort of outfit that all the local women wore and made her unnoticeable and anonymous.

  Then she strolled round the corner to where Miss Eagle lived. A very ordinary house with a well-kept garden, perhaps running to herbs rather than flowers but otherwise normal. Odd to think that a modern witch lived here.

  ‘Owned or rented from Blood and Son?’ she thought. But it looked like a freehold property, totally witch-owned.

  Presently she saw Miss Eagle advancing into the garden, armed with a pair o
f secateurs to do some pruning, although it was not yet the season for pruning.

  Miss Eagle, who had picked up the secateurs because she had observed Charmian, snipped away angrily at an innocent hydrangea which would regret it later in the year. ‘Snooping. What’s she up to?’

  Her cat wandered up and the two of them watched Charmian watching them.

  Estate agents had proliferated in Windsor and its environs lately, together with building societies to finance what the agents sold. Sometimes they were combined under one roof. Merrywick had three such firms.

  Peter and Paul Ellistons, a very bright young firm who had cleverly established themselves next door to Florence’s Old Curiosity Shop, in which indeed Peter had money. In fact, he was Florence, more or less, there being no other.

  Down the street was London and National, brash and new, not really smart enough for Merrywick but doing very well because their salesmen never gave up. So they claimed.

  Blood and Sons were the third firm and had been there the longest. They still retained the air of a genteel, old, established agency, but a small notice in the window revealed that it was now part of a chain called Homeline.

  A large, gleaming car was parked on a double yellow line as Charmian drove up, but it had the confident air of a car to whom no one ever gave a parking ticket. Charmian looked round hopefully for a traffic warden to point out the offender, but of course there never was one in Merrywick.

  In the front office a young woman, auburn-haired and with big greenish eyes, was seated in front of a large screen across which a line of figures was reeling at speed. She touched a knob and they went backwards. This seemed to satisfy her and she gave Charmian her attention.

  ‘Mr Blood?’

  ‘There hasn’t been a Mr Blood for a long while,’ said the young woman. ‘ Mr Dix is the manager.’ Charmian observed with interest that behind this young woman was a large board from which were suspended bunches of keys, tagged and named.

  At another desk, bare of any equipment except a green leather blotter, a bowl of flowers and a telephone, sat another young woman, smartly dressed in the uniform (blue suit and silk shirt) of a young executive. She too was a beauty. Bloods only employed young ladies with style.