‘It’d be neat. Hard to explain but neat. A bit of a jigsaw puzzle slotting into place. But I don’t see how he left it in person.’
‘Perhaps he sold it or gave it to whoever did?’
‘At the moment the likeliest suspects are me and Fanny. We were the only ones with access to the house.’
‘As far as you know.’
‘As far as I know,’ said Charmian with a frown. She was looking at another object on the table. She moved a newspaper aside so she could get a better look. ‘What do you make of this photograph?’
Dolly came closer. ‘A woman in a summer dress in front of a house … I suppose it could be Alicia Ellendale … It’s like the photograph we were sent. Younger.’
‘I think it is Alicia.’
‘So Doby must have known her longer than he admitted.’
‘I always thought there was more of a relationship than he admitted. But look at the house behind. It’s not this house.’
‘Where she lived? No,’ said Dolly frowning.
‘No. It’s not very clear, but I think it’s Waxy House.’
The sergeant came into the room quietly for a big man, and stood looking at them, then he turned for one more word with Mary Carter. ‘The SOCO can come in but no one else just yet. Keep everyone else out,’ he was saying.
Over her shoulder, as Charmian walked towards the door to greet the new arrivals, she said: ‘I shan’t say anything about coins to the sergeant, and don’t you. Or the photograph.’
Dolly’s eyebrows went up.
‘Yes, I know. I’ll let them know in the end. But I want to think things out.’
Sergeant Edwards was a fair-haired young man, with a long face, pale blue eyes and a broken nose. A rugger player, Charmian decided. Not a boxer, too tall and rangy. He had a slight Cockney accent, which was not unattractive. Against her expectations he was not hostile and, indeed, he seemed pleased to see her. ‘Nice to meet you, ma’am; knew you were taking a hand in the Windsor end of our little trouble.’
He stalked into the room and took a good, long look at the dead Arthur Doby. He stared down and clicked his teeth. ‘Oh dear, dear, not a pretty sight.’ He shook his head. ‘All the same, I wonder he wasn’t done before.’
‘You didn’t like him.’
‘Who did? No one. Although when he got himself up, he didn’t look too bad. A one for the ladies.’
‘Was he now?’
Edwards gave her an alert look. ‘ You’re wondering about Alicia Ellendale? You’re interested in her; so are we.’
‘She may be alive, she may not be,’ said Charmian, aware as she spoke that Dolly Barstow had moved towards the table where she was unobtrusively studying the envelope of coins. ‘But she is certainly without a pair of shoes and one foot. I think she’s dead.’
‘She’s dead,’ said the sergeant with certainty. ‘She was dead when that foot was cut off.’
‘So they say.’
‘I never met her myself, but, she had quite a fan club round here …’ His eyes narrowed with amusement. ‘She was a purveyor of good information, you understand. My colleagues liked that.’
‘Don’t we all? Is that why you’re so keen to find her and/ or track down her killer?’
‘Well, I understand,’ he kept his voice cautiously down, as if imparting a secret, ‘that when she went missing she was sitting on some very useful information that she was going to tell all about. The idea is she might have been kidnapped to stop her doing this.’
‘Perhaps that’s what happened.’
‘Could be. Now it looks as though she’s dead, so we’re having to keep an open mind about it.’
‘The man … I suppose it was a man … on whom she was going to drop the dirt, might have done it.’
‘Well, difficult for him,’ confessed Edwards. ‘He’s banged up. He could have paid someone, but it doesn’t seem likely.’
‘What’s he in for?’
‘Rape, and she was going to tie him into a killing … Men like that don’t have many friends inside.’
Charmian meditated on this truth. ‘ I had Doby down as Alicia’s killer. His own murder makes this unlikely. Unless it has nothing to do with Alicia’s disappearance, but I find this hard to believe. I don’t care for coincidences.’
‘Neater if you don’t have them,’ agreed Edwards obligingly.
‘Inspector Barstow and I will get back to Windsor. I think the answer is there. We have to find the rest of Alicia, it’s got to be somewhere.’
‘You won’t wait for a word with my boss? He’ll be here any minute.’
‘No need. We can talk on the phone. Tell him I’ve been and gone.’
‘We’ll need a statement,’ suggested Edwards modestly.
‘Send someone down.’ She was pulling rank now.
Edwards paled a little but accepted what he could not refuse. There might be trouble about this, but on the whole not for him.
‘The most virtuous thing about him was that he collected coins,’ said Edwards. ‘ I don’t know if you noticed.’
‘I did notice.’
‘Thought you had,’ he grinned.
‘And, of course, you will send me all the forensic reports, and so on. Photographs, et cetera, as soon as you can.’ Sooner, her voice said.
‘Will do, ma’am.’
Charmian and Dolly Barstow escaped just as some more of the local CID team arrived. They saw her go and probably waved a couple of fingers at her.
‘What do you make of Edwards?’ asked Charmian as they drove away.
‘Sharp.’
‘Yes. I thought he was.’
‘But we’re sharp too.’
‘True.’ Charmian sat back in her seat. ‘Wonder what he meant about the coin collection?’
‘Probing.’
‘Yes. Don’t let’s go back to Windsor yet. Let’s stop and have lunch first. I want to think.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Know anywhere to eat round here?’
‘No.’ Dolly kept her eyes on the road.
‘We’ll go to the place I go to with my husband sometimes … It’s on the way home.’
Knightsbridge, Dolly calculated accurately to herself as she drove. I’m devoted to Charmian, my boss, but how her standards have risen since she married. No dropping into little sandwich bars any more.
Charmian seemed to read her thoughts. ‘It’s quite modest, you’ll see when we get there. I’ll direct you once we’re past Piccadilly.’
This she did with a right here, and a left there and finally: ‘Here we are.’
Dolly looked out at a neat, brown-painted establishment with the name Fergus above in gold. You could see through the windows to tables of people eating. You always know, she said to herself, that a restaurant with just one plain name like that is going to be expensive.
But she parked the car at the kerb and followed her boss in. Charmian sailed forward to be greeted by the proprietor, presumably Fergus himself, who certainly seemed to know and like her and called her by her married name.
‘Right, Your Ladyship,’ muttered Dolly.
But Charmian had been correct in her judgement: the food was simple but good. They both ordered an omelette and salad, and were allowed to drink no wine, but coffee with their meal.
Charmian pushed her coffee cup aside and put her elbows on the table, ‘If that house is, as it looks to me, Waxy House, then it ties in Alicia and the house and what is going on there.’
‘Perhaps she is its ghost,’ said Dolly lightly. She was still troubled that Charmian had said nothing to Edwards. She thought: She’s getting a bit above herself what with her marriage and being head of SRADIC. The old Charmian wouldn’t have hung on to what might be important information, she would have told Edwards.
‘If you believe in ghosts.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Nor do I. Something real and horrible is happening in Waxy House, but I don’t know more. I’m guessing.’
‘Guessing what?’
Cha
rmian took a deep breath. ‘I guess that there is something in Waxy House that has to be protected. Fanny, the new owner, the only person to take an interest in the place for years, is to be kept out. Frightened out.’
‘Fanny won’t be frightened easily.’
‘She is frightened, though, and who’s to blame her? I was myself. She won’t give up ownership, but she might give up possession, put the house up for sale.’ She asked the waiter for some more coffee; suddenly she needed it. ‘That’s as far as I’ve got. Dead end.’
Dolly drank her own coffee and watched Charmian’s face.
‘And this is only for you, Dolly. It’s not the sort of speculation I should pass around some of my other colleagues. I shall talk it over with Rewley, I can trust him.’
‘Trust? Does that come into it?’
Charmian leaned forward. ‘Think about it, Dolly. Police come into this: Felyx was one of us, Alicia was an informer … I know you think it was wrong of me not to tell Edwards all that is in my mind, but I want to be sure.’
‘You don’t trust Edwards?’
‘I don’t have any reason not to, but I want to see how events develop.’
‘He seemed straight enough to me.’ Dolly looked at Charmian and shook her head. ‘Aren’t you being supersensitive about police involvement?’
‘I certainly hope so.’ Charmian waved a hand for the bill. When it arrived Dolly stretched out a hand too. ‘I’m paying, Dolly.’
‘I’ll owe you,’ said Dolly firmly. ‘ You can dine with me at home, one or both of you. I’m getting to be a good cook and I’ve got some decent wine.’ She wasn’t prepared to let Charmian play hostess.
‘Accepted.’ Charmian had the depressing feeling that her old easy relationship with Dolly was melting away somehow. Her fault or Dolly’s?
Never had you down for one of the ruling class, lady-of-the-manor types, Dolly was saying to herself as she started the car; thought we were mates. She made a resolve: ‘I’ll see this case through, then I’ll ask for a transfer to another posting, another area.’ She looked at Charmian out of the corner of her eye and felt sad: life did bring you to partings. ‘She’s not noticing,’ she said to herself sadly. ‘She doesn’t know at all how I feel.’
Friendship between women was a tricky business, Charmian mused as they sped down the motorway. In some ways harder to manage than the relationship between men and women: sex did loosen things up and if you hadn’t got that to work off emotion and lighten a mood, where were you?
‘I’d better tell you, Dolly, that I mean to go into Waxy House when we get back. I shall get permission from Fanny and I shall have it searched.’
Dolly weighed it up. ‘Do any good, do you think? And which case – which crime – will you be working on? Alicia Ellendale, Arthur Doby, or the spectre of Waxy House?’ She was sorry when she had said this because it sounded like a joke, and she did not wish Charmian, in her present mood, to think she was being mocked. Added to which, Dolly was deadly serious.
Charmian had her answer ready. ‘Perhaps the lot, and don’t laugh at me.’
‘Well, I wasn’t, but I would like to know the answer.’
They drove on in silence. Running into Windsor with the castle in view, Charmian said: ‘ Tear it to bits, if I have to.’
‘Fanny will like that.’
Pushing from her mind thoughts of all the blue files on her desk demanding her attention, Charmian said: ‘I wonder where Fanny is at the moment?’ She looked at her watch. ‘Only mid-afternoon.’
‘Probably playing cards with her three friends.’
In fact, Fanny was at home playing dummy whist with only two of her friends, Ethel and Paulina, because Dorie was working.
‘What she calls work,’ Ethel said, laying out the cards. ‘Just standing in front of a camera and holding out her hands.’
‘She has got lovely hands.’ Paulina reached out for her cards. ‘And she earns a lot of money by it.’
Dorie was doing a commercial for a new hand cream.
Ethel turned her attention to Fanny. ‘You don’t look your best today, Fan, and I don’t think you’ve had your mind on your game either.’
‘Haven’t had the cards, have I?’
‘Never stopped you playing a good hand before.’
‘She’s had a bad night,’ pleaded Paulina. ‘Didn’t you, Fan, love?’
‘Yes, and so did Charmian Daniels.’ There was satisfaction in Fanny’s voice. ‘Now she believes me when I say it’s an unquiet house.’ She looked at her cards. ‘Lucky at cards, unlucky at love … I ought to look around me, there must be someone out there longing to embrace me.’
‘You’d know, Fanny dear, if anyone would,’ observed Ethel.
‘I’ll ignore that, Ethel, as we all know your love life was severely limited. If not non-existent,’ she finished in an audible whisper.
‘Oh, come on, you two,’ said Paulina. ‘Cards, please, not bitchiness …’
For a moment or two they played in companionable silence. The bickering meant nothing but gave pleasure to all parties. Paulina joined in when the right tart line came to her lips, and Dorie would always quote Noel Coward … ‘So quotable, dears, and always so right.’
‘I’m thinking of calling on my old friends Winnie and Birdie for advice and help,’ said Fanny, when the trick was over. She had lost, so lovers look out. Old she might be, the toss of her head said, but didn’t Catherine the Great go on having lovers till she died?
Birdie Peacock and Winifred Eagle were spinster ladies, living not far away, in a companionship that had caused many eyebrows to be raised. Gossip and speculation being spiced when Birdie was seen dancing naked round a tree in their back garden as she greeted the spring equinox. They were reputed to be very good at spells to promote well-being, excellent at talking to animals, patchy at predicting the future, and hopeless at forecasting the weather. On the whole, they were a much-loved local phenomenon. Up there with the Queen, Royal Day at Ascot, and the Windsor Festival.
‘Those old witches,’ said Ethel.
‘They are good women.’ Fanny was clear about this. ‘On the side of goodness. I shall consult.’
‘It’ll cost,’ said Ethel.
It was known that Birdie and Winifred did not give their services free, and although they always said that the money went to animal charities, people did wonder.
‘I’ve spoken to them already,’ said Fanny, ‘on the telephone. I spoke to Birdie, who consulted Winifred, who said: Raise the temperature, the Devil cannot survive in the heat … Wonder what she meant by that?’
‘Keep out of the deep freeze,’ said Ethel with a laugh. ‘Your play.’
They played with happy concentration, breaking only for tea and cake, a sacred ceremony which they always honoured. This comfortable moment was broken by a telephone call for Fanny.
‘Charmian? Hello, dear.’ Fanny covered the telephone and turned to her friends. ‘ Pour the tea, Ethel, I won’t be long, and Paulie, dear, you cut the chocolate cake …’
‘Fanny, I want your permission to go into Waxy House and search it from top to bottom.’
Fanny wasn’t sure if she liked that. ‘ I’m not really the owner yet, dear. I don’t know if it’s for me to say.’
‘I’ve spoken to Mr Grange, the solicitor dealing with the will, and he tells me that probate is through and Waxy House is all yours. It is all yours, Fanny, and you can give me permission.’
‘What would you be looking for?’
‘Just giving the house a look over, Fanny. You must agree that what happened last night merits it. To try to find out who was in there.’
Fanny muttered something about spectral forces not having feet.
Charmian had no intention of telling Fanny that Arthur Doby had been a coin collector and possibly the source of the sovereign which they had found in Waxy House. But the murder was something Fanny had to be told; she would read it in the newspapers or see it on the television news, in any case.
She felt herself pregnant with heavy news of which she must deliver herself without alarming Fanny too much.
‘I have to tell you, Fanny, and this is in confidence, that the coach driver, Arthur Doby, the driver of the coach that brought Alicia Ellendale to Windsor, has been found dead.’
‘Lord, Lord, you don’t suspect him of having any connection with Waxy House? Surely he can’t be haunting it?’
‘No, Fanny, I don’t think he’d stray so far from London.’
‘How did he die?’ And when Charmian remained silent, Fanny answered herself. ‘He was killed. Murdered. How?’
‘It’ll be in all the papers; wait until then. Besides, I don’t know much yet myself.’
But you know more than you are saying, Fanny thought with her usual shrewdness. ‘Is it connected with Alicia being missing, dead too, I suppose?’
‘It may be, I can’t say more than that. Not at the moment. But I have your permission to search the house?’
‘I suppose so. But I must think about it. I shall want to know more.’
‘You shall, Fanny, in due course.’
Fanny put the telephone down. A ghost in her house was one thing; you could be interested, diverted, possibly in profit, from a ghost. But a search by the police was another thing. This would not improve the value of her property.
She returned to her friends, who had been drinking tea, eating chocolate cake and listening to every word.
‘Pour me a cup, Ethel, please, and I’ll have a slice of cake.’ She cast a beady eye at the chocolate sponge. ‘If you’ve left me any.’
‘Plenty.’ Paulina cut a generous slice. ‘Here, on your favourite plate.’ It was a small, round plate of fine china decorated with brightly coloured birds. Fanny said, and perhaps believed, that it was Meissen. ‘She kept you talking. Bad news.’
Fanny frowned. ‘ She wants to search Waxy House. I couldn’t say no. But I haven’t agreed yet. I’ll need to think.’
‘I told you it would do you no good bringing her in,’ said Ethel, over a mouthful of cake.
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Well, we won’t argue. What was the other thing? There was something else, wasn’t there?’
‘The driver of the bus, the coach, that brought Alicia from London to Windsor, to the coach station at College Green. He’s been found dead.’
The Woman Who Was Not There Page 12