The Woman Who Was Not There

by Jennie Melville

  Coats were retrieved from Dorie’s bedroom and the party set off. It was a fine evening, if cold, but it was not far to where Fanny had her rooms.

  On the way, they crossed an ancient stone bridge that passed over a tiny stream that filtered towards the Thames. Fanny hesitated, reached into her pocket and threw a small object into the river. It glinted as it fell, making a muted splash.

  She did not look at her friends. ‘That was the key,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Got rid of it.’

  Without a word she walked on quickly, the others following in silence.

  ‘Watch you while you go in,’ said Dorie. There were lights on in the house; Fanny would not be alone. Fanny kissed each of her friends, walked up the three steps to the big white front door and turned at the top. She waved, put her key in the lock, then went in. She did not look back.

  For her the night was not yet over; she had to sleep through her nightmare, but she would not say so to them. In the morning, if she lived that long, she would telephone Charmian.

  The other three waited until the door closed with a thud, then they looked at each other.

  ‘Right,’ said Dorie. ‘We all think the same, don’t we? We’re going to take a look at Waxy House.’

  ‘Can’t go in,’ pointed out Ethel, with her usual decision. ‘Fanny chucked the key into the water.’

  ‘No, she didn’t, I could see. It was a 10p piece she threw in, she was lying.’

  Ethel accepted it with a nod. ‘Fanny does tell lies,’ she agreed placidly.

  Paulina pursed her lips. ‘Not lies, exactly. More fairy stories.’

  ‘Think she’s telling stories now?’ asked Dorie. They all three had fantasy lives to some extent, it was admitted, but just a resort, something to cheer up a girl when low in spirits. Dorie thought of getting that BIG part, Paulina of her husband coming alive again, Ethel fancied a demon lover, but then she thought that, after all, perhaps a bottle of champagne would be even better.

  Ethel wouldn’t have it. ‘No, I saw something, remember.’ She led the way forward in silence, wondering exactly what she had seen and how. And why. Why was quite a question. She thought about why as she walked, head down, first of the three of them to get to Waxy House.

  Some streets have no character to speak of, but Leopold Walk had a subdued character of its own, somehow giving the idea that it was a street that knew how to keep its secrets. There was a quietness to it; no lights shone, and even the cobblestones drank in the light from the street lamps rather than reflecting it. As it happened, the lamp at the end of the street, in front of Waxy House, was dark anyway.

  The three women paused for a moment to look down the row of houses.

  ‘Not very cheerful, is it?’ commented Paulina.

  Dorie agreed. ‘Mostly business places, no one lives here.’

  A high brick wall closed off the end of the street and abutted on to the house of Bacon, Accountants. Next door was the home of C. and C., the architects, a married couple called Fenwick, who had little to do with either of their neighbours, and had only once spoken to the owner of Computer Wizard, Harry Aden, known to Inspector Frank Felyx as Daddy Christmas, not too kindly perhaps.

  ‘Who knows what life there is.’ Ethel’s face was sombre.

  Paulina gave her a little push. ‘ Shut up, Ethel, or I’ll go away. It was you that wanted to come here.’

  ‘We all wanted to. That doesn’t mean to say we like it. I don’t, I can tell you.’ Ethel moved slowly towards Waxy House, which looked dark, no more lively than anywhere else in the street.

  Not that it was more likeable, Dorie felt, on that account.

  She gave herself a little shake. This was letting imagination get the better of you.

  But she could not hide the interest she felt. She pressed forward behind Ethel. What was there about the improbable and even the impossible that fascinated the mind?

  It was not easy for all three to stare through the ground-floor window to get a good look into the dining room because the gap in the heavy curtains was narrow, so they took a turn each. The darkness made it more difficult still, and Dorie, as she stepped back from her turn, reflected that she ought to have brought a torch.

  She turned to the other two who had looked and remained silent. ‘Couldn’t make out much, could you?’

  ‘No, indeed.’ Ethel was disappointed.

  ‘Makes you wonder what Fan saw,’ said Paulina.

  ‘You’re not doubting?’ Dorie faced her friend.

  ‘No more than we all were when we started out.’

  Ethel marched up to the front door, the scene at which she herself had seen something. Or nothing? The movement of a cloud on the looking-glass, the swaying of a curtain in the old window frame? ‘Something happened to Fanny here,’ she said stoutly, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think that,’ said Dorie, ‘ but reason has to come into it.’

  ‘Oh, reason,’ muttered Ethel, her nose pressed up against the glass panel of the door. She shook her head. Nothing to be seen, except a narrow stair with dusty carpet on it.

  Dorie went for her look and walked away quickly with a shrug, to be followed by Paulina, who took a long, interested look. ‘Very dirty,’ she said, drawing away at last as she heard Ethel fidgeting. ‘We ought to put in for the cleaning job here.’

  Ethel pushed her friend aside and bent down to peer through the letter-box, a heavy dark object with baroque decoration. She stayed, her face sharpening.

  ‘What is it, Ethel?’ asked Dorie at last.

  Ethel moved away. ‘There’s a smell in there. I don’t like the smell.’

  ‘Death?’ Paulina was half hopeful, half fearful.

  Ethel was thoughtful. ‘No, not death, living, maybe … Something that smells.’

  ‘What kind of smell?’

  Ethel hesitated. Is it medical? Sort of. Would the word be clinical, antiseptic? No, that wouldn’t do either, because there was an earthiness as well. ‘Smell for yourself,’ she said.

  First Dorie and then Paulina put their noses to the letter box. ‘Just smells like good old-fashioned damp and dust to me,’ said Dorie.

  There was a dampness to it, Ethel thought, but damp with a difference.

  Without much more talk they parted, Ethel and Paulina to go one way and Dorie another.

  The street behind them was quiet, the house silently nursing its own secretions while the living hands that had carefully moved the wax figure down the stairs to frighten Fanny twisted and turned with a life of their own. They were hungry, active hands …

  POETIC INFORMATION

  A poem by Angus Cairns, aged ten. A pupil at Abbots Langton School, Merrywick.

  By the liver, willow veiled, walks a boy with eyes

  beguiled.

  Watching the water, gleaming, flashing.

  A skein of mallards high flying, swans and cygnets

  splashing.

  Angus walked on, and then composed two more lines.

  Beauty on the water, rubbish on the bank,

  Tins and bottles, green and blue, a shoe, the foot there

  too.

  I’ll show this to my dad, he said to himself. He’ll know what to do. Angus was a boy who knew what it was to be laughed at and he did not want to be laughed at now. He showed his poem to his father, who went with him to the river at Runnymede, that island on the Thames where King John met his fate with the angry barons of England.

  Angus’s father was a police surgeon and knew exactly what to do with the foot and the shoe, although he did not always know what to do with Angus.

  Chapter Three

  Monday Next

  Fanny did nothing about Waxy House for just under a week after talking to Charmian. She dreamt about it, nightmares, but she did not speak of it, even to her friends. Nor did she mention it in the club, although she went there as usual. She knew that the trio did not think her mad or hysterical or over-imaginative; indeed, they had let her know
that they had inspected Waxy House for themselves and had found it unpleasant. All the same, it would not do to keep going on about it, she said to herself.

  She thought that no one was talking about her story; in fact, Waxy House was in several people’s minds. Charmian Daniels found herself thinking about it at intervals in a very busy week (a fraud case to be unpicked, a child abduction case, and a quarrel with her friend Anny Cooper which must be dealt with). Nor was it forgotten by George Rewley. The inspector took himself down Leopold Walk to inspect it. Dingy old house, not one he would care to live in, but it made no other impression. All the same, he thought, weird things did happen, it had to be admitted.

  He walked on down the street, past the various business houses where he was observed by a young clerk in the accountant’s office, who knew he was a detective because her grandfather was a copper.

  The architect, Christopher Fenwick, also saw him from his work table by the window. He was a thoughtful, introspective man, who did not know Rewley but realized he was a stranger. Because it was a cul de sac few people came down Leopold Walk. Except on business, he said to himself, pencil raised above the drawing of a new housing block to be built in Bristol, so presumably this chap was on business. His wife Caroline would have known; she seemed to know everything, which sometimes came in handy in a wife and sometimes not, but she was out of the office.

  Harry Aden, sitting at his winking green screen and surrounded by all the electronic equipment that he loved so dearly, caught just a glimpse of the back of Rewley as he passed his office. And only then because he had a large looking-glass placed at an angle in his window so that from his desk he could see into the street. He liked to know what was going on.

  Only Angela, the junior in Bacon, Accountants, made any comment on Rewley’s tour of inspection. She went back into the office and announced to the world at large: ‘ I think there’s a policeman checking on us in Leopold Walk.’

  No one, as far she observed – and afterwards she was questioned about this – no one person took any notice.

  ‘Come away from the window, Angie dear,’ said the chief clerk, Freda Langey, who demanded to be called Miss. ‘I’m transcribing a very difficult-to-read set of accounts here; it seems to have more crossings-out than you’d believe, and any number of extra clauses written in Mr Bacon’s own foul writing. You’re blocking my light.’ A bell rang on Miss Langey’s desk. ‘Yes, Mr Bacon, I’m coming. Angie, back to work, please, or I’ll send you out to do the accounts of Parker and Piece and you know you hate that.’ Parker and Piece were a small sausage factory on the outskirts of Slough. Angela disliked going there, as had other trainee accountants before her, because she said the smell stuck in her hair. She also complained that she had noticed only women were sent, which was sex discrimination. Parker and Piece were women too but that did not influence the feminist in Angela. She went back to her seat in silence.

  But that evening she spoke of it to her friend Edward Underlyne, a young solicitor in the office of Mr Grange of Grange and Grange, Old Inn Street.

  The two, Angela and Edward, had been fellow students at university, close friends but no more, since. Edward had then been in love with a beautiful drama student and Angela had had a bit of a fling with a young lecturer. They shared a common interest in real-life crime and detective stories, and had even discussed writing one themselves. But incomes had to be earned and they had both decided to go into business and agreed to look for positions in Windsor because they liked each other’s company; they shared a flat in the heart of the town.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Edward. ‘We’re dealing with a house in Leopold Walk, an inheritance. But I don’t suppose he was looking at that particular house.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Angela was thoughtful. ‘I’m remembering something my grandpa said … He’s a detective himself. He did talk about a house there.’

  ‘Anything criminal?’

  ‘Don’t remember. I don’t think so. It was one of those conversations that you aren’t supposed to listen to as a kid … I did, of course. I knew the crack in the floor that let the noise through.’

  ‘What a girl you must have been. I admire you. You ought to be doing law like me. Or the police force, like Grandpa.’

  ‘I chose accountancy because I took a maths degree and I thought it would be a good career for a woman. I think I might have been wrong. Sexist lot, these accountants, not sure if they think much of women. I may go into the City. I believe I might do well there.’

  ‘Do you think so? Don’t know if the law is any better for women … Yes, it probably is. Mind you, I don’t know if I approve of it. Wouldn’t like to see a woman LCJ.’

  Angela threw a cushion at him, which he caught neatly (he was a good cricketer) and popped behind him. They lived comfortably in their platonic household, but it was edging towards something stronger every day. On his side at least – he was not sure of Angela. He admired her a great deal; she was cleverer than he was – life with her was never boring. But he flattered himself she did not find him boring either.

  ‘I hope the policeman wasn’t looking at us,’ said Angela. ‘Mr Bacon is the soul of rectitude, or anyway he acts it. Looks it, too. I’m not sure if I like him and he certainly doesn’t do me any favours, but I would call him incorruptible.’

  ‘No one is that,’ said Edward Underlyne, the cynical lawyer. ‘Still, he might be, and if he isn’t I’ll defend you in court if you come up.’

  ‘Thanks, but I might do better to take my chance.’ She ducked as the pillow came back. ‘ Peace, peace, I didn’t mean it. I expect the policeman was just taking the air.’ She frowned. ‘I dunno, though …’

  ‘Let’s go and look at the old house, just to see. If there is anything wrong, I’d like to know. Be a good mark for me to find out. We are handling probate here. Besides, I’d like a walk, and then we can go in to the wine bar and have a drink.’

  ‘You’re on.’ Angela got up. ‘Tell you what: shall we play one of our games?’

  The games were pretending to be characters from one of their treasured and favourite authors.

  ‘Right. Dame Agatha or Dorothy Sayers … I feel Sayerish tonight.’

  ‘I think it’s more a Michael Gilbert scene,’ said Angela. ‘You know, the accountant’s office and you being a lawyer.’

  ‘But we don’t suspect the accountant, you said so yourself.’

  ‘And you said we might have to. Let’s talk it over as we walk. Give me a minute to put some lipstick on and get my coat.’

  ‘Why do you need lipstick?’

  ‘For protection,’ called Angela from her bedroom.

  Hope it’s not from me, thought Edward, as he shrugged himself into his coat.

  Edward knew Leopold Walk since he had called for Angela from work once or twice on the way to a concert or the theatre. They walked in companionable silence until Angela stopped suddenly on the corner of the street. ‘I’ve remembered that my grandfather called the house Waxy House.’

  ‘Why? Do you know?’

  ‘Wax dolls, I think. Yes, that was it, it has a collection of wax images.’ She chose the word carefully because she thought her grandfather had used the word doll in a strange voice, as if he was editing what he said.

  ‘So it’s a museum? Or a small waxwork show. I remember going to one in Rome once, old and out of date, it was, with figures of Mussolini and Hitler … Interesting, though, as a relic.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s like that,’ said Angela in a thoughtful voice.

  Edward looked in through the downstairs window. ‘ Can’t see much … a dining table, someone sitting there. Female in a long dress.’

  ‘Waxwork?’

  ‘Could be. Not moving.’

  ‘Look through the door. Is there anyone sitting on the stairs?’

  ‘What a question.’

  ‘I’m psychic.’ She had seen bare, white knees, legs that stopped at the ankle. Where were the feet? Quite a vision but just imagin
ation.

  He looked, getting as close to the window as he could. ‘There’s no one there. Personne.’

  Then he drew back. ‘You know it’s not a Michael Gilbert show … not rational enough.’ He considered the problem. ‘Too rum, somehow. Sense of evil … More John Dickson Carr.’

  ‘Get thee behind me, Dr Fell,’ said Angela.

  Charmian Daniels, like most in the police service, was not a great reader of detective fiction, although she had heard that it was sometimes used in police training. ‘Nothing like the way it really is, too much is cut out. If you wrote it the way it was, then the readers would drop dead with boredom.’ She had never thought of writing one herself, although she had been approached by one enterprising publisher.

  Rewley was different. He read everything and might write anything from a thriller to the great novel of the decade. She regarded him as a prodigy and an enigma. Since the death of his wife he had become even harder to work out. But that said, he was a good detective, the best on her team. He and Dolly Barstow were two of the chosen; they might not stay with her – they were both high-flyers, so called – but while they worked on SRADIC she knew she had the best.

  She did sometimes find herself wishing, though – as today, for instance, when they met to discuss the papers on the fraud case – that Rewley would loosen up. Have a love affair, dye his hair, take up yoga.

  Idle thought, she said to herself. ‘Some coffee?’ She walked across the room to the machine, small and gleaming, in which she prepared her potent and famous brew. ‘I’ve got a new coffee blend, Guatemalan. Very powerful.’ She fancied Rewley blenched, which pleased her.

  She came back with a black brew. ‘This report is most slovenly prepared and put together. The whole matter must be unpicked and redone … We need a meticulous pair of hands. Let’s send Dolly.’

  Dolly, across the table and hitherto silent, looked surprised. ‘Not my sort of thing.’

  ‘You’ll do it beautifully.’

  Dolly was silent. ‘OK, you’re the boss. But I have an idea we might get involved in something else quite soon.’