The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Well, we know that.’

  ‘I’m keeping quiet about finding Drue’s body but I think the local press is on to it, so that silence won’t last long. We shall have the whole media circus hanging round when her death comes out.’

  Together they discussed all the material that was coming in from the men and women on the streets and banging on the doors to ask questions. Patient work was dredging up this and that. Such as the fact that Madelaine Mason had a nasty reputation as a watcher of young lovers, and that she had once been accused of blackmail. But nothing had come of it and the case had been dropped.

  It also appeared, although it seemed to be no help to anyone, that the Bailey school might have closed anyway since it was badly in debt. Nancy was liked, the father was not, and hardly anyone remembered Emily.

  ‘Bloody useless,’ said HG.

  He got up. ‘Well, I only came in to be cheered up.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m much good at it.’

  ‘Better than you think. You are so reasonable, you see, you make me feel reason will prevail and I don’t often feel like that.’

  ‘I hope it’s true.’ It had never struck her before that HG had moods, he always seemed resolutely downbeat.

  ‘Now don’t you start.’ He was lumbering towards the door. ‘You don’t know what a figure you are in this town. We point to you.’

  The horrible thought came to Charmian that HG was flattering her for a purpose. But what purpose? She looked at him, wanting to ask, but not wanting the answer.

  Then he provided it, but nicely and modestly, more so than she might have expected. ‘My eldest granddaughter wants to join the Force. Saw her this weekend and she talked about it. I didn’t know what to say to her. I wondered if I might bring her to meet you? Explain to her what she’s in for, the paths to follow, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course.’ So she was a role model? Ah, well she had been used that way before. Probably Dolly Barstow had looked at her and taken notes, so Dolly could be useful to her now. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Phyllida.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘She’ll be twenty. She has a degree from Reading. Law and politics.’

  ‘A good degree to have. Yes, I’d like to meet her. Set it up. And Inspector Barstow might come along and talk.’

  ‘Thank you, you’ll like her, I think. I do, I get on with her better than my own daughter, but that’s often the way, isn’t it?’

  At the door, he turned. ‘Oh, I forgot to say, that query of yours about the knife used on cutting the head … Yes, it could have been a surgical knife … just could have been.’

  ‘Thank you. Confirms a notion that I had.’

  He gave her a long, calm look … Was this, after all, why he had come? ‘ Let me know if anything comes of it.’

  ‘Oh, I will, for sure.’

  She finished her work, then returned to Maid of Honour Row for another quiet evening. Alone this time, as Humphrey was on a plane to Brussels.

  She did not sleep well, she had got used to having a husband, a comfortable human figure to whom you could murmur when you could not sleep and not worry if no answer came because just the nearness was enough. Then as dawn came, she gave up the struggle to sleep and went into the sitting room where the cat at once joined her, delighted to have early morning company.

  Snatches of conversation that had long rested, undigested, in her mind came back to her. She could hear Dolly Barstow’s voice saying: There was a low-key story that there was something odd, unpleasant, going on in the school. She had asked: What sort of thing?

  Sex, Dolly had said, hint of child abuse. A woman who sold newspapers in the town had passed on the gossip. Dead herself, now.

  And then there was what Jack, Kate’s father, had had to say when she had talked with him. At the time she had believed the dead body found with Alana’s head had been Margaret Drue. Now she knew it was not. No matter, it did not touch what he had reported.

  Margaret Drue, not a totally nice woman, as he had admitted, yet better than was said, had told him there was, exact words, ‘some sex game going on among those kids’.

  Little bits of information were slotting into place. The picture had always been there at the back of her mind, but now it was floating upwards like a long buried relic.

  I am not sure if I know where to start, she told herself, aware that her head was aching.

  She went to her office, looked over the day’s engagements, cancelled two, and drove to the hospital.

  It was still early, ten thirty in the morning, with the sun out in a blue sky, but cold. She felt cold.

  The hospital entrance hall was crowded with patients making towards the right clinic, looking for the ward where they were expected, with other people, visitors presumably, shopping for flowers and newspapers in the hospital shop. There was a coffee shop close by in the hospital arcade which was already crowded.

  Charmian, for a moment at a loss, with her head still aching, made her way to the second-floor ward where Emily had been tucked away in a small side-room all to herself. She tapped on the door, and went in. The room was empty. It was quieter up here, but even so it was hard to capture the attention of anyone. At the end of the corridor, a nurse in a smart blue uniform spared her a minute.

  ‘Miss Bailey discharged herself and left early this morning … She was free to do that.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Damn the girl. ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  The nurse shook her head. ‘She may have told Sister.’

  Sister, interrupted in her morning rounds, knew nothing. ‘No, I’m sorry. She didn’t say, She wasn’t really ill, you know, we would have been discharging her today in any case.’ As Charmian turned away, the Sister added thoughtfully: ‘I have an idea she left with someone … a woman.’

  Her head still aching, Charmian went back to the shop on the ground floor, bought some aspirin, then took herself next door for a cup of coffee which, to her surprise and pleasure, was hot and strong. Then she went back to her car to telephone. First Birdie and Winifred.

  ‘Is Emily with you?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’ It was Winifred who answered. ‘Birdie told me you suggested we have her here. The answer is yes, we will, of course, but she is not here now.’

  One more call, this time to Dr Yeldon. ‘ Doctor, I know this is a long shot, but is Emily Bailey with you?’

  He sounded flustered, but clear all the same. Emily was not with him, he was home alone, and had not seen the girl for weeks. Perhaps longer.

  She made one more call. ‘Dolly, glad I found you in.’

  ‘Just going out, off to London on the Vander case, your idea, remember.’ Dolly had not fancied the Vander case for herself, another boring fraud. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You’ve almost answered what I wanted to know already … Emily Bailey is not with you?’

  ‘No.’ Dolly did not sound surprised, she had learnt never to show surprise. ‘Haven’t seen the girl. You want her? Can’t help.’

  ‘Dolly, I am going down to see Eddy Bell in his work shop. Forget London and come down and join me there. You know the way?’

  ‘Think so.’

  Charmian drove into the town, parked her car by the river, walked over Eton Bridge, which only allows foot passengers, turned left at the bottom and walked about a hundred yards along the river bank. There was a small, ancient grey church to pass, and a graveyard where a funeral had recently taken place, she could see wreaths on a new grave. One wreath missing, she thought.

  And next door was the place she was looking for: Eddy Bell’s. Bell’s Yard, it said on a large board, where his father and his grandfather before him had had their workplace. It was quiet and rather shabby but not unprosperous, the Bells were known to be good workmen, each in their day, even Eddy now. But the new road, long planned and now to be built, would run through here, and force the Bells to move from the present site. Things would not go on here as they had done for so long.
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  But there was no one in the outer yard, so she walked through the archway at the back, past piled up timber and ladders all in orderly disorder. Eddy’s lorry was parked here, as well as a small van.

  A doorway led into a barn, high and gloomy, not much light got in; there were more planks, more scaffolding, all smelling of dust and paint. The wood, some of which looked ancient, as if it had been bought by an early Bell to build a house for a Victorian artisan, seemed to be piled up to create alcoves of darkness.

  She heard a girl laugh. Not a happy laugh but one with pain in it. Why did you come back here, Emily, to this place next door to a graveyard? But she could answer that herself: where else to go when you are at the end of everything, but into hell. This would do for hell.

  A light, unsteady laugh with a note of fear in it.

  Charmian moved forward slowly into the dusk. ‘Emily? Is that you? Are you there?’

  Then she could see Emily sitting on a piece of sacking in one of the alcoves. No wonder so much dust of wood and stone had got into and on to all the bodies.

  ‘Emily!’

  Eddy Bell appeared through a gap behind the girl. ‘Miss Daniels.’ He was polite, not welcoming but not going to be rude. If he could help it.

  Charmian stood still: the darkness, the dusty smell of wood, the closeness of it all, came home to her. Here was Emily’s ‘prison’. This was where she had been, whether imprisoned or not. No matter what other lies, what ignorance she might have pretended to, the truth had popped out about this. Birdie had achieved that much.

  She took a step forward. ‘ So this is where you have been.’

  Eddy came forward. ‘ What’s all this about, Miss Daniels? You’ve got me there … what is it with Em? I call her Em, don’t I, Em?’

  Emily nodded.

  ‘She won’t say much, she’s a bit speechless at the moment. She cut herself did you know that? Silly girl, she was doing it when I went to call on her, so I brought her back here. To tell you the truth, I think you lot have frightened her. Put the wind up her.’

  ‘I think she’s been frightened a long time.’ And had wanted to come out into the open. Why else had she let Charmian into the basement? ‘Did you send that silly wreath? I can see where you might have got it from.’

  Eddy didn’t answer, just gave a laugh. ‘It’s always a pity to waste a good set of flowers … Come through to my office, it’s round the back.’

  Still talking cheerfully, he led the way to a small room lit by a single central electric light. Against one wall was a huge old desk, with an ancient typewriter. The telephone, however, was modern, and there was a fax machine. A big chest-refrigerator and freezer sat on another wall.

  ‘My old dad’s office and his dad before him. I’ve left it much as it was, haven’t bothered, but I have added one or two touches of my own.’ He folded away the local newspaper he had been reading, but Charmian noticed it.

  He saw her looking. ‘I always take it, we advertise in it ourselves …’

  No need to ask where Madelaine Mason had found her piece of newspaper.

  An overall, none too clean, hung on the door, and an open shelf was lined with drills, hammers and odd bits of oily builder’s tools. Charmian let her eyes run over them. An oil can, draped with old rags, stood underneath. The rag, like the refrigerator, interested her.

  ‘Do sit down, please.’ Eddy seemed to have put himself in charge, which Charmian did not care for.

  ‘I want you, Emily, and you too, Eddy, to come down to Superintendent Horris’s office to answer some questions.’

  ‘Whatever for? Em, what have you been doing? What have you been up to?’

  Emily stood where she was without answering.

  ‘She’s not talking too well at the moment, Miss Daniels, I don’t know what’s come over her.’

  ‘She can talk well enough when she has to,’ said Charmian. ‘Or when she is made to.’ She directed her words to the girl. ‘A prison, you said, Emily, dark and dusty … this is it, isn’t it? I am not sure if you wanted those words to pop out, but they did. It is very hard to keep silent in this world, words have a way of pushing to the top. It’s called guilt, I think.’ She added: ‘Albert saw guilt in someone’s face, saw a real horror peeping out of the eyes.’

  Eddy started to talk but Emily spoke then, her voice suddenly sharp and hard. ‘ Shut up, Eddy, stop making a fool of yourself.’

  ‘She’s right. But I will speak and you will listen. When I first picked up the talk about the sex play in the school, I didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t sound like anything I had heard about that school that Nancy Bailey ran so successfully. She may not have been wise in one or two of her staff, maybe she did have a blind streak that misled her, so that she employed a woman like Margaret Drue and another like Madelaine Mason, but she tried to be careful and good with her school. I didn’t believe she would let anything touch her pupils. On every level, they were valuable to her.’

  ‘Please,’ said Emily. ‘ Don’t go on. I’ve had enough of this already.’

  ‘But then I remembered that there was another group of schoolchildren associated with that household but over-looked. Not pupils there, but at another school, but who knew their way about the Bailey premises. Who probably absented themselves from their own school without anyone caring much. You, of course, Eddy and Emily and Albert.’

  Eddy said: ‘I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Thank you, Eddy, and I am sure you would like to. Emily’s frightened of you, that’s why she got away. What did you do to her down here, Eddy? She had already tried to slash her wrists … Or did you do that for her?’

  ‘Anything on Em is self-inflicted,’ said Eddy. ‘I don’t say anything about anything else. And I didn’t fetch her back here. Ask another.’

  ‘You were three strong youngsters, playing sex games. Helped by drugs, Eddy? There’s a funny smell down here that reminds me of it. Still on it, are you? That would account for something. I’ll ask you later where you get the stuff, but I can guess who started you off.’ She put out her hand. ‘No, stay where you are. I’m talking now … The child Alana must have seen you there, playing some sex tricks together. The Bailey garden has some secluded corners and outbuildings. So you killed her, all of you or one of you. Were you high on something, Eddy?’

  A sound escaped Emily, it might have been a no.

  ‘About the head cutting off, well, we will go into that later … But I suppose Madelaine Mason saw something that made her wonder, saw you, or guessed it was you and perhaps came to you later, she was something of a blackmailer so I have heard. She too was killed. Did you keep her body here? Plenty of places, that’s my guess, and when the school closed and Nancy moved away and the house was empty for so long, you, Eddy, builder Eddy Bell, were well placed to tuck the body away here. She couldn’t stay with you, nor the head in the fridge, because the new road is coming through here and you knew it. So you moved the head and the body to where it looked safer. Did someone advise you to do that, Eddy?

  ‘It must have been a bad moment when you realized that the place had to be opened up. As it would not have been if the place was left outright to Emily.

  ‘Madelaine Mason was killed because she saw or guessed something and was set for a bit of blackmail, but Margaret Drue had already gone, hadn’t she? Killed because she knew it was you three.’

  ‘Rubbish talk.’

  ‘No, guessing, but not rubbish, and there will be traces in your van and your refrigerator even after all this time. You killed Margaret Drue and you and Albert buried her. I am not saying it was all your idea … you took advice from someone older.’

  Two deaths and two more to come, Charmian thought; she was talking hard in the hope that Dolly would appear soon.

  ‘Albert lost his nerve, didn’t he? He was going to tell all and then run away, because he suddenly saw madness, evil, in the eyes of a person he had known a long time. It popped out, he said. He wasn’t bright but he saw that, and because of it h
e was killed. Was it you, Eddy? I have some thoughts there. Guilty and strong you are, Eddy, but are you strong enough for all that evil?’

  Eddy was standing close to her, she could smell his breath. He had been drinking and perhaps had smoked a loaded cigarette.

  ‘But don’t try and play innocent, Eddy, because you are both guilty and stupid. I’ll tell you why you are stupid. Over there, you have a can with oil in, and as an oil rag you are using a bit of striped cotton. I can’t see the colour very well, because it is so dirty, but I saw the stripe, and the scientists are so skilful they will bring out the colour and say yes, the colour and the fibres match the skirt on Madelaine Mason.’

  Yellow stripes for Madelaine Mason, orange for Margaret Drue, this had looked yellow. She was imprisoned here, poor yellow-skirted soul, and wrote to me on a bit of your newspaper.

  Eddy moved away from her, to look behind her as if there was a noise.

  ‘I seemed to sense another figure behind you, a fourth person, older and wicked. I thought it must be Margaret Drue at first but I maligned her … no, it turns out she was dead all the time.’

  She could hear movement behind her.

  ‘So who is this other person in the shadows, there all the time, using you, corrupting you?’

  She half turned. ‘Is that you, Dolly?’

  It was then she felt the hands coming from behind her, and the knife at her throat.

  There are times to be brave, and times where it has no point, times to scream for help and times when you cannot. Charmian did not feel brave and with a knife at her throat she could not scream. As it was, she could feel the sharp edge scratching her skin.

  ‘Don’t try to kill me, plenty of people know that I came down here. And one of my officers is on the way now.’

  I hope she arrives before you cut my head off, she thought. ‘And I know who you are,’ she said as loudly she could. ‘ I heard your laugh on the tape.’