The Morbid Kitchen

by Jennie Melville

  ‘Heads are safer off,’ said an answering voice. ‘You know they are dead for sure.’

  The Queen was right, thought Charmian, there is a practical reason for cutting off the head. A bead of blood rolled down her neck. By God, if I am going to die, I am going to take this lot with me. Somehow.

  But it was Emily who moved. She screamed, and then perhaps realizing that it would be her throat next, she fainted. She fell against Charmian and her attacker, knocking them all three to the ground.

  Charmian felt the knife bite into her neck as they fell. She could sense it tear into the flesh. My throat is cut, she said to herself, but I am going to live. I have to: there’s Kate’s baby, there’s SCRADIC, too. And I’ve got to beat Horris … and there’s that sizzling rumour just going round about his young girlfriend … must stay alive to hear the end of that. Can you laugh as you die?

  Behind her, she could hear Dolly shouting. ‘Held up by that bloody security alert.’ And there was a man’s voice too. Was it Rewley?

  As darkness clouded her eyes, she knew, no, not Rewley, she recognized the tones: it was Jim Towers. She had just the vital spirit left to grasp she would be part of his book.

  Extract from The Place of the Head or The Morbid Kitchen by James Towers

  An extract from Chapter V: Heads Lost. The Case of Mrs Mary Yeldon

  … this interesting case in a Berkshire town nearly resulted in the decapitation of a high-ranking police officer. All the officers who worked on the case, Chief Superintendent Daniels, Superintendent Horris and Inspector George Rewley, found it a difficult and painful investigation.

  A series of murders took place for which three people, Eddy Bell, Emily Bailey and the prime instigator of the whole ill doings, an older person, wife of a revered local doctor, Mrs Mary Yeldon, stood trial. All three were found guilty of the murders; Bell and Bailey are serving prison sentences and Yeldon is in a mental hospital. The trial illustrates the importance of the Dead Head.

  To Mrs Yeldon, whose sexual activities of voyeur and child abuser led her to murder, the head had great importance. She regarded the victim’s head as the source of all vital power, and there is some evidence she continued to talk to the child’s head. She is now in a high-security mental institution. The sexual games in which she encouraged the youngsters to indulge did not involve the innocent pupils of a school owned by the Bailey family, but they brought about the death of one child and the subsequent deaths of two teachers at the school. In addition they ruined the lives of several people concerned and broke up the family of Dr Yeldon.

  The case has a special interest because there is evidence that the head was first frozen for some years (the body of another victim being stored in some place where there was wood dust) and then both head and body were moved when a road development threatened the site. In this second hiding place, in an old kitchen, the head was boiled.

  The police officer, Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels, recovered.

  Note: Much interesting evidence was given by Miss Clara Meldrum, a graduate and former pupil at Miss Bailey’s School, who was the girlfriend of one of the killers. She said Eddy Bell was a nice chap and she had no idea what he was really like. She never got to know Emily Bell well, but Mrs Yeldon was a terror, and the children had called her the ‘Dragon’.

  Copyright

  First published 1995 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2015 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN–978-1-4472-9636-2 EPUB

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9634-8 HB

  ISBN–978-1-4472-9635-5 PB

  Copyright © Jennie Melville, 1995

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