The Woman Who Was Not There

by Jennie Melville

  She dealt rapidly with a few routine matters, then put her head round the door of the outer office to see if Dolly had arrived. Jane Gibson was perched on the edge of her desk gossiping to Amos Elliot, but she got off quickly when she saw Charmian.

  ‘Don’t worry; I’m in early. Any sign of Dolly?’

  ‘Not yet. But Rewley must have been here before anyone because he’s left a message saying he’ll report to you as soon as he gets back from London.’ Jane handed the slip of paper over. ‘I read it; he didn’t say who the message was for.’ They ran things informally under Charmian’s rule, and it often helped to know exactly what the other fellow was up to. ‘But I don’t know what he meant by the list on the back.’

  Charmian turned it over. Just scribbles. ‘Two Windsor addresses,’ she said. The bus station and the number of a taxi rank. It was rather endearing, Rewley’s economical use of scraps of paper, and also handy because it gave an insight into the workings of his mind – always useful. Might mean something, or nothing, you could never tell with Rewley, but she would remember to ask.

  Dolly arrived at that moment, pink of cheek from hurrying and inclined to be apologetic. She did not explain why she was late but Charmian could guess: since Kate’s death, she had moved from the flat she and Kate had once shared to a small house on the Merrywick Road where sometimes, because she was lonely and miserable, she cheered herself up with the odd bottle of wine. Or maybe a man, or both, and the mornings after were often late ones. So far it had not touched her work, but one day it might, Charmian wanted to help Dolly but so far she had not seen the way.

  Sympathy could, however, take a practical form. ‘There’s time for a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘In fact, I could do with one myself. I had to take Humphrey to catch an early flight.’

  Jane slipped happily from her chair. ‘I’ll make it.’ She looked at Amos Elliot. ‘Want one?’

  He was already moving towards the door. ‘No, I want to get off … See you later.’

  Dolly drank her coffee gratefully, quietly slipping an aspirin into her mouth, an operation that Charmian pretended not to notice.

  ‘I hope he’s at home,’ said Dolly as they set off, Dolly driving.

  ‘Oh, I think he will be. It’s still pretty early, and he doesn’t strike me as an early riser’ She did not say that she had ordered a check on Frank Felyx’s movements by Drimwade’s men and knew that he had not moved from the house since midday the previous day.

  Felyx lived in a terrace of small but pleasant houses not far from the main shopping centre. The front garden was tidy if not beautiful, but the house itself needed repainting and the window curtains, although not dirty, looked faded, as if no one cared. Charmian had learned that Frank had been a widower for a very long while and that although he had a grand-daughter, he seemed to have no other family.

  They sat for a minute or two in the car while they discussed how to go about it. ‘ He likes you,’ Charmian said. ‘I know it’s a weak and sexist approach, but with someone like Frank you have to use what you’ve got. You ring the bell. When you get in, I’ll be right behind.’

  ‘Or we’ll both get the door slammed at us,’ said Dolly, easing herself out of the car, ‘which seems to be his style at the moment.’

  Dolly marched up the garden path, crazy paving, so called, which she thought illustrative of Frank. She rang the bell and banged on the knocker. No point in being sensitive or coy with Frank in his present state.

  He opened the door and stood there before her in an old dressing gown and striped pyjamas that looked as though they had lived and been washed through several wars.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Dolly in a polite voice.

  ‘I’m not sick.’ He looked about. No press around, thank God.

  ‘I never said you were.’

  ‘Just having a late breakfast.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  He looked across to the car where Charmian still sat. ‘So who’s that with you? No, don’t tell me, I know her.’ He held the door wide. ‘Well, tell her to come in; I know when I’m beat. Can’t keep you two out.’

  ‘Much as you’d like to, eh?’ Dolly turned to wave to Charmian.

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  When Charmian came in quickly, the two women joined Frank in the kitchen. ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Not me. You look terrible, Frank.’ Not like the man I had a drink with the other day: thinner, redder and older. ‘What is it?’ She studied his face. She could see traces of tears around his eyes and nose. ‘You’ve been crying.’

  ‘Maybe. Why not? I have plenty to cry about.’

  Charmian said: ‘Perhaps I will have some coffee after all.’

  ‘I notice you don’t ask why? I could say I’m mourning for myself. One day a police officer with a clean record, even if no distinguished service medals …’

  ‘You didn’t do badly,’ said Dolly. ‘ Promotion, a commendation or two.’ And a handsome leaving present with a party.

  ‘And the next moment I’m a murder suspect,’ he went on, as if she had not spoken.

  ‘How well did you know Alicia Ellendale? … If that was her name.’

  ‘Who says I know her?’

  ‘She certainly knew you. Or knew of you; she had the name off pat.’

  ‘I might have known her.’

  ‘Was it a professional relationship?’

  Frank thought about it. ‘I knew her as a police officer,’ he said at last.

  ‘So she was coming to you as a professional, was she?’

  ‘I wasn’t one of her clients, if that’s what you mean.’

  It was what Charmian had meant. ‘Did she come to you for advice, because you were a policeman? Was there some problem?’

  Dolly, who had kept quiet, said: ‘I bet she had a lot of problems. A working woman, not getting any younger … She might have known a criminal and been frightened. Or perhaps she had something to confess.’ She looked Frank in the face. ‘Or someone to accuse.’

  ‘Now you’re doing it too,’ he said.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Accusing me. I thought you were a nice girl, Dolly Barstow.’

  He’s just the tiniest bit drunk, Charmian told herself, and perhaps has been for days.

  ‘So why was she coming to see you?’

  ‘Who says she was?’

  ‘She told the coach driver, he says so.’

  Frank poured himself some coffee from the battered pot on the stove. ‘And he’s a reliable source, is he? Why should you believe what he says?’

  ‘I don’t know that I do, Frank, I don’t know what I believe yet. I’m trying to find out. It’s all speculative at the moment: all we have is a missing woman, a shoe with a foot in it and a lot of questions to answer.’

  ‘My advice to you is to ask some more questions of that driver. I tell you that as a man who did his thirty years and got to know what stinks.’

  ‘Do you know the driver?’ asked Charmian with a frown.

  ‘I know him, not as a friend, but we’ve met. Arthur Doby.’

  ‘He’s been questioned already, you must know that. And I’ve sent an officer of my own to question him this morning.’

  Dolly reached out and drank Charmian’s coffee, which had not been touched. ‘Frank’s got something to tell us, I think. Remember, Frank, when we worked together once, a long time ago, when I had only just been made a detective? It was that hospital job and you said I always seemed to know what you were thinking. What I thought then, Frank, was that you fancied me a bit.’

  Slowly Frank smiled. ‘So I did. Never did anything about it.’

  ‘No, you were a gent, Frank … I know what you’re thinking now. Can you trust us, that’s what you’re asking yourself.’

  Frank stood up. The coffee seemed to have sobered him. ‘ I’ve got something to show you.’

  He went out of the room, then they heard him mounting the stairs.

  Charmian went to the door to listen. ‘ What’s he doing
? … He’s not going to do anything silly, I hope?’

  Dolly shook her head. ‘ No. Come and sit down. He’ll be back.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got telepathy, have you?’ Charmian returned to her seat.

  ‘No, but I can hear. He’s opened a drawer and is now coming down the stairs.’

  Frank reappeared, holding a plastic carrier bag which he put on the kitchen table. He had a clean towel under his arm which he spread out, then he opened the bag and let the contents gently slide out.

  A woman’s high-heeled shoe.

  Charmian took a tissue from her bag, which she wrapped round her right hand, then picked up the shoe. She said nothing, but looked at Frank.

  ‘I found that shoe in the litter bin in the men’s lavatory in the coach station.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Nearly a week ago … I’d heard about the missing woman, and a pal let me know I came into it … So I went down to the coach station to ask some questions. I know some of the drivers. I found the shoe by chance.’

  ‘I shall have to take it.’

  ‘Do.’

  ‘And get you in to make a statement about finding it.’

  She was trying to keep her voice steady but inside she was appalled. What was he telling her?

  ‘I’ll come down, don’t worry.’ He sounded calmer. ‘I feel better now I’ve told you. It’s out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you hand it over at once?’

  ‘The other shoe hadn’t been found then,’ he said simply. And there’s no blood on this one. I was just guessing then … and afterwards …’ He shrugged. ‘Well, would you have rushed forward?’

  ‘So I think that coach driver needs to be questioned.’

  Outside, Dolly said to Charmian: ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not all of it, but I’m not sure which bits yet. But there’s more, I feel sure. More than he’s saying.’

  ‘He’s in trouble.’

  ‘He certainly is. Tell me, Dolly, can you really read his mind?’

  Dolly laughed. ‘Of course not.’

  Charmian looked down at the bag which Dolly now held on her lap. ‘ Drimwade will need to have it, and forensics will have to go over it. I imagine they’ll go over Frank’s house as well.’

  She started the car. ‘ Wonder how Rewley’s getting on with the coach driver. Pity he didn’t know about this shoe.’

  Dolly said: ‘ If Frank’s not telling the truth, and he killed the woman, then why did he not just destroy the shoe? He didn’t have to give it to us.’

  ‘That’s true. So perhaps he is telling the truth. And if the coach driver is guilty, why was one shoe in the river with the foot and the other left behind in the coach station lavatory?’

  ‘There’s no accounting for killers.’

  Charmian moved her hands to start the car, then she stopped and turned her head to look again at the house. ‘Wait here a minute.’

  She got out of the car and went back to ring on Frank’s door. After a pause, during which Charmian moved restlessly on the path, and Dolly turned the radio on in the car to play some music, Frank opened the door. ‘What do you want now?’

  ‘I want to ask you about Fanny Fanfairly. She came to see you. What did you say to her?’

  ‘Turned her away from the door, didn’t I? She slipped and fell, not my fault.’

  ‘But she came back, didn’t she?’

  Frank was silent. Then he said: ‘Did she now? On the watch, were you? Saw with your own eyes?’

  ‘No. Just a good guesser.’ She had struck gold, and would never admit that it had been a lucky shot, inspired by something in Fanny’s manner. ‘ What did you say to her?’

  ‘All right, she did come back. Wanted to talk to me again about the house in Leopold Walk. Was it haunted? Had I heard that it was? What did I think? I told her that I didn’t believe in rubbish like that, and that if she wanted to find out, then she should spend a night there and see for herself.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘So that’s why she did it.’

  ‘She did? Silly old witch.’ He seemed discomfited. ‘It may be haunted for all I know; there’s more than one way of haunting a house.’

  Dolly looked at Charmian with curiosity as they drove away. ‘Get what you wanted?’

  ‘Just confirming a guess about Fanny Fanfairly.’ And she told Dolly how Fanny had spent the night.

  ‘Game old thing,’ said Dolly, half amused, half admiring. ‘But I reckon she knows how the world goes … She ought to by now.’

  They drove back to the office in companionable silence with the shoe on Dolly’s lap.

  Charmian mused about the shoe which Frank claimed to have found. If it had been left in the coach station, then either the driver had left it or someone was trying to incriminate him. And where was the other foot? Burned, buried, or in the river? Never find it, she thought, and wondered if the shoe and the foot in the river; were one of those unconscious calls for help?

  As she arrived at her office, she said: ‘Deliver the shoe, if you will, as I asked, and then it seems to me that your best part is to dig into the background of this woman, Alicia Ellendale. Get what help you need from Drimwade’s team – he’s offered it – and let me have what you get soonest.’

  Superintendent Drimwade’s reception of the shoe was an icy explosion of anger that boded ill for Frank Felyx.

  Charmian and he met in his office, where he sat facing her at his desk. A computer screen on his desk flashed brightly, and a fax on the shelf behind him spilled out its messages, but he ignored both. The air felt drained of oxygen.

  He thanked Charmian in a tight-lipped, frozen way, and said the shoe would go at once for forensic examination. ‘ I’ll have to talk to Felyx myself, after all,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’ What an uneasy partnership we’ll make, thought Charmian with some amusement as this truth dawned on her too.

  ‘We need to find the body, you know,’ he said. ‘Without that we’re struggling. We can bring a charge of murder without the body but it makes everything so much harder.’

  Charmian knew that too. ‘She’ll turn up. I’d like to know why the feet, or at any rate, one foot, has been cut off.’

  ‘If we can work that one out,’ he said ruefully, ‘ we’ll probably know the killer. I admit it, I’m not a man of imagination and I’ll want it spelled out in big letters. Why cut off one foot at the ankle and leave it by the river?’ He got up and started to pace round the room. ‘Oh, by the way, Cairns, the police surgeon whose son found it, said it had not been in the water long as far as he could judge, just resting on the edge, otherwise the shoe would have come off.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’

  ‘It was just dropped there. On the edge of the river. Casual. And now we have this other shoe, if it’s a match, and my guess is that it is, and it turns up casually dropped in a lavatory waste paper bin. What do we have here? Some sort of shoe fetishist? Or is the foot the important thing?’ He sounded harassed.

  ‘We only have one foot, of course. But it is the one that can be identified as Alicia Ellendale’s.’

  ‘What about the boy who found the foot and shoe? It must have been disturbing for him.’

  ‘Yes. Angus Cairns. Skinny little lad, but as bright as could be … I went to see him. I think he was fascinated by what he’d found, couldn’t stop talking about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t having the odd nightmare. Both his parents are doctors, busy people. I know Cairns; he said he’ll talk the lad through it.’

  ‘I’d like to see him myself.’

  ‘They live in Merrywick, give you address, he’ll be at school now, of course. Good scholar, too, so I gather.’

  ‘Which school?’

  ‘Abbots Langton, I think.’

  ‘A good school,’ said Charmian thoughtfully. ‘Better to see him at home, though.’

  Drimwade let out a great sigh.

  Charmian looked at him with more sympathy than she had expected to feel. This was n
ot the sort of problem Drimwade liked to face. But he was facing it, reluctantly forcing his mind to concentrate on it. ‘Do you still believe Alicia Ellendale is dead?’

  He nodded. ‘I do.’

  ‘So do I.’ Charmian hesitated. ‘ You realize she may be in pieces? That perhaps it is not only feet at the ankle that have been cut off?’

  ‘It had occurred to me. And of course it will make her harder to find.’

  ‘Well, we have suspects: Frank Felyx and the coach driver.’ She looked at the clock. ‘Rewley is in London seeing him now.’

  ‘Let me know how it goes; Rewley is a sharp fellow,’ Drimwade said dolefully. ‘I was sorry when he was seconded to you. I’ll keep in touch. I was going to take a few days leave, but I won’t do so now. Not just yet.’

  Charmian thought with amusement: we seem to be working well enough together, after all.

  But it had been a disquieting talk because of the pictures that it conjured up.

  Bits of a body, is that what we’re now looking for? she asked herself as she returned to her own office. And where will they be? Distributed all over Windsor? There is always the river – the body could be there. But where would the river take it?

  She didn’t know, although she could soon find an expert who would. It might end in divers and a full-scale underwater search.

  Her mind dwelt for a time on the woman Alicia Ellendale, about whom she knew very little, who had come to Windsor for a day trip and never been seen again. She turned to the slim folder of information that had been delivered to her from Drimwade’s office.’

  Alicia Ellendale, aged 53, although she claimed 43, real name Mrs Alicia Beeton, born Fisher, divorced. Address: 110A Greenwich Lower Road.

  She ran several so-called ‘Social Agencies’ under different names, which had a surface respectability, but nevertheless she was up before the magistrates in Central London several times.

  Now said to be retired, but is thought to carry on quietly on the side.

  Height: 67 inches, approx. weight: 130 lbs. Distinguishing characteristic: the right foot had an extra toe, now removed, but the stub remains.